Ural versus the south: crawler tractor in the visual culture of the USSR in the era of industrialization

The paper analyzes the role of the tractor as a visual symbol in the Soviet culture of the industrialization era, using a number of different cases including those of painting, photography, graphics, textual narratives, and presentations of material objects. The author shows that, originally, it was wheeled tractor that served as a visual symbol of the socialist transformation of the Soviet village, including both imported machines and those produced by Soviet factories in Leningrad. The start of industrialization and launching of facilities in Stalingrad and Kharkov led to changes in symbolic system: the wheeled tractor SKhTZ-15/30 ("international") moved to the foreground. However, since the mid-1930s, the symbolic status transferred to the crawler tractor, which corresponded with the major trend of the Soviet economy of the period. Thus, the "Stalinets" tractors of the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant started to dominate in the sphere of symbols, combining spectacular appearance, technological reputation of the plant, choice of name, and design solutions in regard for coloring. The paper examines the ways in which the "Stalinets" crawler assumed the leading role in the Soviet visual culture of the second half of the 1930s. However, in 1937, both Stalingrad and Kharkov plants launched their own mass-produced crawler under the name of SKhTZ-NATI. A sort of competition between crawler machines of the South and the Urals unfolded in the Soviet culture of the late 1930s -early 1940s. The author investigates the case by studying the presence of crawler tractors imagery in the decorations of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition (VSHV) in 1939 and in the mosaics of Moscow Metro in 1943. The conclusion is made about the double character of the symbolism of crawler tractors, which served both as general symbols of the promoted success of the Soviet agriculture, and as manifestations of the industrial identity of particular enterprises, cities and territories.