Audio tour Hall ONE

The adjectives "first" and the "most" can often and deservedly be applied to the city of Kharkiv in the 1930s.

On December 19th, 1919, the Bolshevik authorities declared Kharkiv the capital of the newly created USSR, as opposed to the then-existing UPR with its capital in Kyiv. Kharkiv had the status of the capital until 1934. And even after that Kharkiv did not lose its significance, because most of the important people's commissariats (ministries) and all-Ukrainian departments remained here.

As the capital of Soviet Ukraine, Kharkiv was rapidly being developed. From 1925 the planning and construction of the administrative complex on Dzerzhinsky Square (now - Freedom Square) began: the construction of the State Industrial Complex “Derzhprom” (1925 - 1928), the construction of the State Project Building ”Derzhproektbud” - now Karazin University 1930 - 1933. These buildings were built of monolithic reinforced concrete in the style of Soviet constructivism. They initiated the architectural trend of "Kharkiv constructivism" and are the hallmark of modern Kharkiv.

In 1935, a monument to Taras Shevchenko was unveiled in the center of the city, on Sumska Street (authors: sculptor M.G. Manizer and architect Y.G. Langbard).

The Kharkiv industrial district played an extremely important role in the economic, political, and military-strategic life of the country. Before the war, there were more than 1250 industrial enterprises in the region. Kharkiv transport hub then and now is one of the largest in South-Eastern Europe. Kharkiv was a powerful scientific and educational center of both Ukraine and the entire USSR. Prominent Soviet aircraft designers Polikarpov, Sukhoi, world-famous physicists - future scientists Walter, Landau,  Sinelnikov,  Kapitsa, Kurchatov worked here. Kharkiv for the first time in the world, on October 10, 1932, scientists of the Ukrainian Institute of Physics and Technology split the lithium nucleus, obtained liquid hydrogen and helium, and built the first three-coordinate radar.

In the 1930s, the formation of the industrial potential of the Kharkiv region, which had begun in the pre-revolutionary period, was completed. At the end of the 1920s, the old enterprises were modernized (KhPZ (Kharkiv locomotive Plant), KhEMZ (Kharkiv Electromechanical Plant ), “Serp and Molot” (“Sickle and Hammer”), “Svitlo Shakhtaray” (“Light of the Miner”), Rope Plant and others). In 1933, 26 new enterprises were built in Kharkiv. Among them are such world-famous ones as the Kharkiv Tractor Plant, the Turbine Plant (1932), the Radio Plant, the Aircraft Plant, the Cement Plant, the Machine-Tool Plant, the Bearing Plant, and so on.

But everything had its price: for the rapid pace of industrialization and its first successes Kharkiv had a high price - not only excessive stress of the peoples of the USSR, who showed extraordinary enthusiasm in mass labor, but also millions of peasants who died of starvation from 1921 - 1922 Wanting to break the resistance of the peasantry, intimidate and drive it into the collective farms, the Stalinist criminal regime in Ukraine staged an artificial famine - the Holodomor 1932-1933, which took lives, according to various estimates, from 4 to 10 million peasants. About 1.5 million people died of starvation in Kharkiv region.

In 1932-1941, Kharkiv locomotive Plant became one of the leaders in the defense industry. The most significant successes were achieved by the plant in tank construction. Serial production of combat vehicles began - high-speed tanks BT-2, BT-5, later - more advanced tanks of the BT series, developed by the design team under the leadership of AO Firsov - BT-7, heavy tanks T-35.

In 1939, the plant's design bureau under the leadership of Mikhail Koshkin developed the best medium tank of World War II - the legendary T-34. Prior to the evacuation of the Kharkiv locomotive Plant equipment to the East, more than 600 tanks were produced, and for the entire period of the war - 35 thousand units.

Hoping to avert aggression from its borders, on August 23, 1939, the USSR government signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany for a period of 10 years (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact).

 In addition, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had a secret protocol in which Stalin and Hitler divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence. The borders of the spheres of influence of Germany and the USSR were supposed to be established along the rivers Narew, Vistula, San. In fact, this document meant the neutrality of the USSR and freed Hitler's hands to seize the Polish state.

Events in Europe were developing rapidly. On September 1, 1939, Germany launched an attack against Poland. On September 3, Britain and France, allied with Poland, declared war on Germany. Thus began the bloody countdown of World War II.

On September 17, 1939, the Red Army crossed the Polish border. The troops occupied the territory of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. The fighting in eastern Poland killed 1,500 Soviet servicemen, including up to 20 of our compatriots from Kharkiv.