QUESTION ASKED: Who Built the USSR?
One of the epic stories of World War II is how Russian troops held the Stalingrad tractor factory against repeated assaults by German units from August to October 1942. That factory, the historians tell us, had produced more than half of the Soviet Union’s tractors before the war, and had begun manufacturing T-34 tanks in 1941. The factory finally fell in battle, but it was rebuilt after the war as a symbol of Soviet resistance to fascism—and an enduring icon of the economic miracle of Soviet socialism.
The truth was, the Stalingrad factory had been designed and built by American engineers and American workers living on-site in the early 1930s, and then outfitted by a dozen or so American companies, including International Harvester. The McClintic-Marshall Company made the plant’s steel structures, which then shipped to Stalingrad for assembly. The first tractors to roll off the assembly line in June 1930 were designed by the McCormick Deering company.
In other words, this supposed icon of Soviet industrial prowess was one of many examples where American companies, engineers, and workers helped transform the USSR into a major economic power.
Oh sure. Next you’re going to tell me that the Americans designed the Soviets’ postwar Tupolev Tu-4 bomber:
