In the interwar period, Red Army commanders headed by Tukhachevskii developed a new doctrine of mobile warfare and "deep operations". The military requirements of armaments and industrial production in the event of war was a central parameter in Stalinist industrialization. Based on recently opened Russian archives, the book analyzes military dimensions of Soviet long term economic and military reconstruction plans from the mid 1920s until 1941. It presents a new framework for estimating the Soviet war economic preparations, drastically underestimated by contemporaries.

"Tankograd depicts the daily life and strivings of the people in the Urals, ordinary workers, peasants, engineers and managers who transformed a slumbering provincial city to a central element in Russia's defence industry. It combines social, economic, and cultural history with military analyses of the Urals' importance for the Soviet war efforts"--

A major production site of Soviet KV and T-34 tanks in WWII, the town of Cheliabinsk in the Urals was nicknamed 'Tankograd', its civilian machine-building factories swiftly converted to arms production. This book gives a social, economic and political panorama that describes everyday life in a typical Soviet company town during the Stalin era.

In the interwar period, Red Army commanders headed by Tukhachevskii developed a new raw doctrine of mobile warfare and "deep operations." The military requirements of armaments and industrial production in the event of war was a central parameter in Stalinist industrialization. Based on recently opened Russian archives, this book analyzes military dimensions of Soviet long-term economic and military reconstruction plans from the mid-1920s until 1941. It presents a new framework for estimating the Soviet war-economic preparedness, drastically underestimated by contemporaries.