User:Doncram/Kaganovich Ball Bearing Plant

The Kaganovich Ball Bearing Works, also known as State Ball Bearing Plant Number 1, was a Soviet era ball bearing factory in Moscow that was intended to free the Soviet Union from dependence on other countries. It was built in the First Five-year Plan (1928-1932) and began operations in 1932. It opened with 2,400 workers and grew to 11,300 by 1934 and to 23,600 by 1937.

Construction workers were under-supplied. Before or after direct recruitment and hiring by key RSFR factories was legalized in September 1931, the director recruited a group of Gypsies to help build the plant. About 60 percent of its workers were peasants. One-half were under age 24 at a point in the Second Five-year Plan, then one-third as of 1937.

However "not a day passed without there being a queue of would-be workers...

Ciocca, an Italian engineer, commented unfavorably on piece-work compensation used everywhere in the plant.

Carnelli commented negatively about Stakhanovism Stakhanovist introduced at the plant.

Ciocca, about food shortage, of 300 supposedly at work only 200 present only 100 working.

"War and Conflict. Communism. pic: 1938. Moscow. A resolution is read to workers in the Kaganovitch ball bearing plant, denouncing the 21 men on trial for treason and murder."

National minority persons were beaten at the barracks of the factory.

Housing shortage. Families were getting one room per family, but sometimes more. In the 1930s up to 15 families sharing one apartment. Construction workers arriving in 1931 were assigned to housing that was already occupied, and shared beds, or even tables and benches, or moved to other worksites or nonenterprise housing on Moscow's edge.

Food supply network was inadequate so directors created links to collective farms. "All large factories created their own collective farms sovkhozy to supply their workers with produce and livestock. In 1935 the ball bearing plant and the Kirov Dinamo plant created their own rabbit-breeding operations.

Village culture continued, did not adopt city-dwellers going to movies or cultural events. "Some first-generation workers at the ball bearing plant organized evening dances and games around their barracks, while others played cards and gambled late into the night." Strolling, dancing, card-playing could be supplemented by drunken fights.

Many large factories Komsomol membership exceeded 90 percent.

Following Kruschev's denunciation of Stalin in February 1956 and concurrent with the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and its repression, in October 1956, "a full-fledged strike was reported in the Kaganovich Ball Bearing Works in Moscow, the first such manifestation by Soviet workers in decades."

In 1988 when Gorbachev visited the plant, half of its workers were women.

It closed in 1990.

"Ownership of Moskva was initially split between Moscow and the Moscow Ball-Bearing Factory. According to the Federal Securities Commission, 57.73 percent of Moskva’s shares belong to a firm called Ilion-Trade and 42.27 percent belong to the Moscow government. Ilion-Trade bought its stake from the Moscow Ball-Bearing Factory on Aug. 29 for 350 million rubles ($12.6 million)."

Chechens in October 2002 seized Moscow theatre which was formerly the "Palace of Culture, of the plant.

In 2005-6 it was used as Media City's television studios.

2016 fifty percent of Media City...." film studio in the territory of the former ball-bearing factory in Novoostapovskaya street in Moscow."

Kirov Dinamo plant was the largest machine-building plant in Moscow, made heavy-duty motors and cranes. 5,330 workers by 1932.

Ball bearings revolutionary, explained in 1895.