Soviet Optics - Great Patriotic War
It was recognized by the Soviets in the 1920s that they had to make a tremendous push to develop their heavy industry and military technology. That meant being able to make the tools necessary, and many of those tools were optical. A good example is the development of Soviet microscope manufacturing. In 1936 they contracted with Karl Zeiss in Jena, Germany, to set up a microscope production plant in Leningrad. That firm was called Progress, and they were quite successful. They eventually merged with other companies to become LOMO.
In the mid 1930s the Stalin purges had left many orphans, and they were settled in a special commune in Kharkov, in the Ukraine. and The NKVD (later the KGB) took the responsibility for those children and teenagers. Somehow it was decided that they should learn manual skills, and that to do that they should make cameras. They made a copy of the Leica II that met all of the quality standards of the original Leica. The factory was called the FED, after Felix E. Dzerzhinsky, the first head of the NKVD. In the pre-war years, optical mechanics plants of the country acquired a status of secrecy. In 1939, approximately 25,000 people worked at them. First, the plants were transferred to a special security category and in May 1940 they were assigned numbered tags: No. 217 (Geofizika), No. 356 (Geodezia), No. 349 (Leningrad State Optical Mechanics Plant), No. 350 (Leningrad Optical Mechanics Plant), No. 354 (Leningrad Optical Glass Plant), No. 357 (Progress), etc.
The Great Patriotic War affected the development of the optical industry. A number of optical centers were evacuated to the inland part of the country. The products of the optical mechanics plants were mainly oriented to military purposes.
In October 1941, Fine Mechanics Plant No. 69 was moved to Novosibirsk, Plant No. 217, to Sverdlovsk, and Leningrad State Optical Mechanics Plant was evacuated to the site of the Kazan Optical Mechanics Plant. In autumn 1941, Zagorsk Optical-Mechanical Plant was evacuated to Tomsk, however, by 1943, the majority of its equipment was returned to the original site.
The workers of the plant who remained in Moscow organized a workshop to repair broken and damaged tank sights, artillery panorama pictures, and anti-aircraft optical tools. In 1942, the workshop was reorganized into Military Plant No. 589. The majority of its staff consisted of employees of Geofizika who had not been able to evacuate to Sverdlovsk. Meanwhile, in Sverdlovsk, the material and technical facilities moved from Moscow served as a basis for the construction of a new optical mechanics plant. Both Muscovites and local people worked there.
In February 1942, the USSR People's Commissar for Armaments made a decision to establish a new factory on the vacated site of Plant No. 69, which had been evacuated to Novosibirsk in 1941. This became State Union Optical Plant No. 393, later renamed the Krasnogorsk Mechanical Plant.
Optical mechanics plants significantly contributed to the victory over Nazi Germany.
During the War there was, of course, need for cameras for photoreconaisance. Russia designed their own cameras and lenses. Most were made in the Krasnagorsk factory, near Moscow, and many think they were superior to German and American instruments.
When the Zeiss microscope factory was captured and transported to Leningrad from occupied East Germany, the Zeiss camera factory was captured and transported to Kiev, in the Ukraine. The company Kiev Arsenal was given the job of making copies of the Zeiss cameras, and the early ones even used captured Zeiss parts.
In 1945 the Soviets captured the Zeiss factory. All of the machinery, and many of the engineers and technicians were transported to Leningrad, and produced the designs of many of the products later sold by Zeiss. Much of that machinery is still in use. While other companies are using computer controlled equipment, plastics, and other shortcuts, decades later LOMO was still using hand skills, brass, bronze and steel.
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