Krasnoe Sormovo

(full name, A. A. Zhdanov Krasnoe Sormovo), one of the oldest shipbuilding enterprises in the USSR, in the city of Gorky. Established in 1849 by the Nizhny Novgorod Machine Factory Company and the Volga Steamship Line and called the Nizhny Novgorod Machine Factory. It began building metal steamships in 1851 and screw-propeller schooners in 1854. In 1858 the shipyard produced the first steam bucket dredge, and in 1870 it produced the first open-hearth furnace in Russia. It produced the two-deck passenger steamship Perevorot in 1871 and the dry-cargo steamship Danilikha in 1913. Between 1849 and 1918, 489 ships were built at the yard; in addition, the enterprise manufactured steam engines, railroad cars, steam locomotives, bridges, diesel engines, cannons, pontoons, and dredges.

The Krasnoe Sormovo enterprise has a rich revolutionary history. The May 1, 1902, political demonstration in Sormovo was described by M. Gorky in his novel Mother. During the Civil War of 1918–20 the enterprise built armored trains and cars, as well as ships for the Volga Military Flotilla. In 1920 the plant built the first tank for the Red Army. It received the name Krasnoe Sormovo in 1922. During the Great Patriotic War (1941–45) the yard produced T-34 tanks. In the postwar period it has switched to sectional and large-module construction of ships and oceangoing and river tankers, suction dredges, and bucket dredges. In 1955 the country’s first industrial installation for continuous steel pouring was built at the enterprise; the process of pouring and cutting slabs was automated, using radioisotope technology; the first hydrofoil vessels in the domestic fleet were built; the diesel-electric passenger ships Lenin and Sovetskii Soiuz, the flagships of the Volga River Steamship Line, were planned and built; and the Sormovich, the first high-speed gas-turbine air-cushion passenger vehicle for river use, as well as a series of diesel-electric railroad ferries for the Baku-Krasnovodsk line and the unique 250-ton double-hull crane ship Ker-Ogly, were built. The country’s first series of dry-cargo river-and-ocean vessels was planned and built to avoid transshipments. The enterprise has been awarded two Orders of Lenin (1943 and 1949), the Order of the October Revolution (1970), the Order of the Patriotic War First Class (1945), and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1939).