History
The domestic production and research of Agricultural machinery in Russia began in the mid 1800s when Artisans Andrei Terentyev and Moses Creek created the first Russian threshing machine. Some other events of note include:
- 1888 - Mechanic Fyodor Blinov builds the world's first model of a crawler tractor.
- 1893 - Yakov Mamin invents the plow with two plowshares.
- 1910 - Yakov Mamin created a tractor named "Dwarf", later known as the "Russian tractor".
In 1917 there were approximately 165 tractors across the entirety of Russia, this reflects the lack of industrialization present in the country as the Mass production of agricultural equipment such as tractors only started in the 1930s. After the Bolsheviks took control of the nation following the Russian Civil War, production of agricultural machinery on an industrial scale began.
- 1918 - At a Petrograd factory, the Bolsheviks organized small-scale production of crawler tractors.
- 1921 - The Soviet Government issued a decree "On agricultural engineering".
Following the revolution there was a dramatic change in the agricultural industry as the government pushed a change to Collective Farms which necessitated the introduction of mass-mechanization. Examples of factories include Kolomna, Kharkiv Locomotive Factory, and the Obukhov plant. Most of the production for tractors occurred at the "Red Putilovets" which produced a derivative of the Fordson tractor. The ZAZ produced the first domestic harvesters.
- 1926 - Production started for tractor cultivators that could do continuous tillage .
- 1928 - Production of tractor plows began and the nation at this point has produced 1,300 tractors .
- 1933 - Commissioned in 1930, the Stalingrad Tractor Factory began producing tractors with a capacity of 144 tractors a day. This marked the true beginning of mass-production of tractors in the USSR.
- 1931 - The Kharkiv Tractor Plant was built.
- 1932 - Production of tractor potato harvesters began.
- 1933 - The Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant was built.
- 1937 - The USSR produced 44,000 units of combine harvesters this year which represented the largest such production on Earth, the U.S in comparison only produced 29,000 units that same year.
- 1937 - The S-65 tractor began production which was the first tractor in the USSR with a closed cab.
By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War in 1941, the Soviet Union was the largest producer of crawler tractors in the world. The war greatly affected the entire nation including the production of agricultural machinery which was heavily disrupted by the destruction of several factories and the relocation of others to the eastern areas of the Union. Furthermore the economy changed to primarily support the war effort until the production of tractors resumed in 1944. After the war concluded, many more advancements in the agricultural industry followed as the USSR rebuilt.
- 1947 - The S-4, the first domestic self-propelled combine harvester began production.
- 1948 - The Minsk Tractor Works started production of the first Soviet skidder KT-12.
- 1956 - The S-100, the first industrial tractor began production.
- 1957 - The DET-250, the first Soviet high-power industrial tractor diesel-electric drive began production.
- 1960 - The Soviet Union had the largest production of tractors in the world .
- 1975 - The T-330, the first Soviet tractor-bulldozer with a front cabin began production.
- 1983 - The T-800, Europe's largest tractor began production. It was designed to work as a crawler dozer, it weighed 106 tons. (without blade length - 7945 mm, with blade -12 400 mm, width without blade -4185 mm, Width -6000 mm blade height -4775 mm.).
- 1991 - USSR collapses, many factories either close or are privatized.
- 2001 - The state-owned company Rosagroleasing is established to provide support for agricultural producers and to support leasing program.
- 2003 - Concern Tractor plants was founded, uniting the main Russian producers of tractors.
Stalinets S-65 (1937-1941)
DT-54 (1949-1979)
DT-75
DET-250
