Cheliabinsk Tractor Works

(full name, V. I. Lenin Cheliabinsk Tractor Works), a major enterprise of the tractor-building and agricultural machine-building industries of the USSR that manufactures crawler tractors. Located in the city of Cheliabinsk, the works began operating in 1933 and until 1937 turned out S-60 tractors equipped with a 60-hp ligroin engine. In 1937, after retooling, it began producing the first diesel tractors in the USSR, with a 65-hp engine.

During the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45, the works was modified for the production-line manufacture and conveyer assembly of tanks. It produced various types of tanks, self-propelled guns (SPG), diesel tank engines, and semifinished parts for ammunition and supplied the front with the KV, IS, T-34, and SPG combat vehicles. After the war the works manufactured the 92-hp S-80 tractor until 1958 and the 100-hp S-100 tractor until 1963, when it began producing the 108-hp T-100M tractor and its modified versions: a swamp tractor for land reclamation work and hydraulic industrial and farm tractors. In 1961 the works began producing the 310-hp DET-250 diesel-electric tractors. The Cheliabinsk Tractor Works produces general-purpose tractors that operate with 120 trailer-type or toolbar-mounted implements; 90 percent of the tractors are supplied to industry.

The shops of the works are equipped with special unit-head machine tools, mechanized production lines, and automatic transfer machines. In 1970 general retooling began for the lot production of the 160-hp T-130 tractor. In the 1970’s the works manufactured the standardized T-330 and T-500 industrial tractors, with 330-hp and 500-hp engines, respectively. In 1971 the V. I. Lenin Cheliabinsk Tractor Works Production Association was created; in addition to the main works, it includes four branch plants.

The Cheliabinsk Tractor Works exports to 70 countries, and its tractors won the Grand Prix at the Paris Exposition of 1937 and gold medals at international expositions at Leipzig in 1965 and Moscow in 1966. The works was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1970, the Order of Kutuzov First Class in 1945, and the Order of the Red Star in 1944. The pilot plant (now the pilot-production shop) at the works and the diesel design bureau (now the section of the chief diesel designer) were awarded the Order of Lenin in 1944 and 1945.