“There is an enormous plant in Nizhny Tagil”: The Emergence of a Narrative Identity of UralVagonZavod (1920s–1980s)

This article examines the process of industrial identity formation at one of the largest industrial enterprises in the USSR and Russia, i.e. UralVagonZavod (Eng. Ural Railroad Car Factory) in Nizhny Tagil. The author identifies the most important stages of this process and key elements that formed the discourse about this enterprise. It is demonstrated that the initial characteristics of UralVagonZavod in the 1920s and 1930s were built around the concept of “American technology” in the Urals, emphasizing the innovative production scheme for the USSR, which included a car-producing conveyor. The unprecedented size of the workshops of UralVagonZavod for the country, in particular, the largest car assembly shop, allowed it to be characterized as a “great plant” (an expression of the writer I. I. Likstanov). However, the difficulties associated with the development of flow-conveyor production did not allow UralVagonZavod to take a place in the Soviet public sphere on a par with other giants of the five-year plans. Even though during the Great Patriotic War UralVagonZavod became the world’s largest tank manufacturer and maintained a defence component in its production programme in the following decades, defence themes did not play a significant role in public perceptions of the plant until the 1980s. In the 1950s, a view was formed of UralVagonZavod as a keeper of the original tradition of “Ural masters” dating back to the eighteenth century (historicism). Later, an idea was formed of the plant as an outpost of a kind of industrial humanism (comfortable work environment, formation of a “new man”). It is concluded that the emergence of a narrative identity of industrial production, despite the existence of certain models, is largely a product of factors unique to each specific enterprise.