Elements of "Fordism" policy as a tool of anticrisis management in the Urals tank industry in the period of the Great Patriotic War

The article covers the complex of social-economic transformations in the tank industry of the Urals in the period of the Great Patriotic War resulted from the implementation of the basic elements of the "Fordism" concept. The author analyses how these ideas penetrated into the USSR during the 1920s-1930s on the wave of Soviet-American economic cooperation and trade. The research stresses the significance of assembly line production in the region's economy modernization. The work reveals how, by adopting "Fordism", soviet authorities sought to mend the quality of management in the region's military industry. The author analysed examples of implementing specific technical, technological and social principles in the Ural tank industry which were typical of "Fordism". The author shows the relative effectiveness of introducing "Fordism". Nevertheless, Henry Ford's model was never fully implemented in the soviet reality, because it was considered a "bourgeois theory", not acceptable for the socialist economy. The system of non-flexible mass production created in the tank industry of the Urals and the USSR in the period of the Great Patriotic War turned out to be the most effective management method with the shortage of qualified personnel and lack of special equipment, raw materials and energy. It has been proved that the accelerated establishment and development of the tank industry in the Urals in 1941-1945 contributed to the solution of complex tasks of how to provide the necessary quality of military products. The introduction of the basic elements of "Fordism" into the socialist production was due to the significant amount of equipment manufactured in the United States and acquired by the USSR in the first "five-year period" to upgrade the fleet of industrial equipment. The system of no-flexible mass production, borrowed in the West, enabled the Soviet machine building industry to produce the necessary amount of modern military equipment, taking into account the limitations of the available industrial potential, mainly the relatively low-skilled staff. Experience in the implementation of the "Fordism" elements in the tank industry of the Urals in the period of the Great Patriotic War obviously demonstrates the need to accelerate transformation to a new "post-industrial" formation nowadays in order to maintain the leading positions of the region in the arms and high-technology machine building market. The analysis of historical experience demonstrates that despite a sufficient historical interval which has passed since the time of "Fordism" implementation, Russian military industry is still strongly dependent on equipment, technology and management concepts from the industrially developed Western countries.

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