Projects and Reality: Industrial Construction in the First Five-Year Plans in the Central Urals

Abstract

This article considers the peculiarities of designing industrial enterprises and their settlements in the USSR during the first five-year plans. Referring to the Pyshminsky Electrolytic Copper Plant (Rus. PMEZ) and Medny Rudnik, the settlement around it, the author carries out a comparative analysis of its designs and their implementation. The author refers to the collections of the State Archive of Sverdlovsk Region, periodicals, and materials related to plans for the economic development of the Urals and the USSR. Analysis of the main decisions demonstrates a gradual departure from the project in each of the points, often caused by subjective reasons. The plan of the settlement combined ideas of new Soviet everyday life and real conditions, reflecting national trends in the life of an individual enterprise and locality. The construction of the PMEZ and its settlement is compared with other projects from the first five-year plans (Uralmash, Magnitostroy, etc.), singling out typical and specific features. The author pays special attention to the reasons for a significant discrepancy between what was initially planned and what was implemented, such as insufficient funding, constant short-ages of materials and equipment, lack of personnel, changing administrative trends, the specialisation of regions and industrial complexes, and architectural policy. Many elements of the projects were unrealistic, and some solutions that were implemented but proved unsustainable reveal serious problems in the field of industrial design in the USSR between the 1920s and 1930s.