Kama plants

Izhevsk weapons and steel making plants. Around 1916

In 1754, by decree of Elizabeth Petrovna, her favorite, Count P. I. Shuvalov, was on favorable terms (payment from the treasury of expenses in the first year of operation and an interest - free loan with a return after 20 years) were transferred to the Goroblagodatskiye factories ( Kushvinsky , Baranchinsky and Upper Turinsky) with the requirement increase metal production. On September 15, 1757, Shuvalov received permission from the Berg-Collegium to build three hammer works: two in the Kazan province on the Votka River and the Frequent one and one in the Ufa province on the Kutmas River. Of these plants, only one was built — on Votka; instead of two other Shuvalov, the Izhevsk factory was built, 70 versts south-west of the first ^[1] . The decision to build two new plants for processing Goroblagodatsky iron in the Kama region on Izhe and Votka was made in view of the shortage of fuel and water resources in the Urals at that time. It was planned to deliver cast iron along the Chusovaya and Kama rivers ^{[2] [3] [4]} .

Both plants were built under the direction of A. S. Moskvin and, along with Goroblagodatsky, Perm and Theological, were part of the Goroblagodatsky mining district of Count Shuvalov ^{[5] [6]} . In the construction of both factories and the construction of dams ( Votkinsk and Izhevsk ponds), assigned peasants from nearby settlements and craftsmen from the Goroblagodatsky factories ^[2] were employed to ensure the rotational force of the drive wheels.

By the decree of the Senate dated October 20, 1757, 4,160 state peasants were allowed to be attributed to the Kama plants. The addition began in the winter of 1757–58, when peasants of the nearest Sivinskaya volost were assigned to the factories. Then the area of ​​registry was extended to more distant volosts, right up to the settlements near Elabuga . Only able-bodied men of Russian nationality between the ages of 15 and 60 were subject to registration. It was produced by officers from detachments of soldiers required for forcing the peasants sent from the Kazan provincial office. Violent measures led to the emergence of centers of peasant unrest, for the suppression of which Count Shuvalov appealed to the Empress for support ^[7] . In response, Elizaveta Petrovna issued a decree dated February 12, 1761, according to which the Goroblagodatsky and Kamsky plants were transferred to Shuvalov’s property, and the peasants assigned to the plants were assigned to the plants and could be resettled at the discretion of the owner ^[8] .

Production at the Votkinsk plant was launched in 1759, at the Izhevsk plant - in 1760 ^[2] .

At the end of 1762, Catherine the Great sent a special commission to the Urals under the leadership of Prince A. A. Vyazemsky to solve the problem of the rebellious peasants ^[9] . Part of the rebellious peasants had already been in prison by that time (out of 55 convicted for organizing riots in February 1763, 12 people were in prison). Vyazemsky banished two to penal servitude, the rest were freed, punishing some of them with a whip ^[10] . Then he organized the reception of complaints from the peasants through elected representatives, eliminated the rigid fixation of the peasants for a particular plant and introduced peeling of peasants for periods of field work ^[11] . Vyazemsky also severely punished bribe takers in factories that exacerbated the situation of peasants ^[12] . However, these steps did not allow Vyazemsky to finally calm the peasants, whose unrest resulted in the end in support of the Peasant War ^[13] .

At Kama plants, Vyazemsky used for the first time the practice of paying for bonded peasants. Catherine II, by her decree of April 9, 1763, recommended this practice to all enterprises ^[14] . Subsequently, part of the instructions was canceled by her. In October 1764, the practice of working out the poll tax at the factories and the right of the factory bosses to judge and punish the peasants was restored. By a decree of 1765, the landowners were allowed to exile the peasants to penal servitude at their discretion, and the law of 1767 punished any complaint of the peasant to the landowner with a reference to hard labor ^[15] .

After the death of Count Shuvalov in 1763, the Kama plants together with the debts that had accumulated by that time were transferred to the treasury under the management of the Berg College ^[5] . For the management of the factories, the Main Office of the Kama Plants was established ^[16] . From 1782 to 1896, the plants were under the jurisdiction of the Vyatka State Chamber ^[17] . During this period, there was a drop in production volumes and an outflow of personnel. Mountain officers sought to transfer to the civil service, as the best paid ^[18] . In 1796, the plants were again transferred to the Berg College.

In 1799, Kama plants were surveyed by the commission of the Ekaterinburg management of mining plants. The report of the commission indicated that the plants used the same equipment as 50 years ago, and the technical improvements introduced by that time at private enterprises were not applied at state-owned Kamsky factories. The premises and equipment of the plants were dilapidated and not repaired for a long time ^[19] .

In 1801, the Goroblagodatsky mining authorities were created ^[5] , and A.F. Deryabin ^[20] was appointed as the head of the Goroblagodatsky, Kama, and Perm plants.

Three years after the survey, in 1802, Kama plants were allocated funds for the construction of stone buildings: two at the Izhevsk factory — for the bloomery and anchor industries, and two at Votkinsky — for the anchor and blacksmith shops ^[19] .

In 1807, the Izhevsk plant, with the filing of A.F. Deryabina, was converted into an armory, and on October 28, 1808, was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Military Ministry. This date is conventionally considered the end of the joint history of Kama plants, which later developed independently of each other. In 1809, the head office of the Kama plants was finally abolished ^{[21] [22] [23]} .

In the 1830s, shipbuilding was established at the Votkinsk plant, and later, in the 1860s and 70s, the production of steam locomotives . The transition in 1861 from serf labor to civilian led to an increase in the cost of production of the plant. The reduction of orders for anchors led to the transfer of their production 1870s to Izhora plant ; the production of artillery guns was transferred to the Perm cannon factories . This led to the need to develop other industries in accordance with the existing demand. The remoteness of the enterprise from the large shipping line had a negative effect: the plant's products were loaded onto barges in the factory pond and transported along Siwa to Kama. Only in 1896 the plant was connected to the railway station Galevo on Kama ^[24] . The years 1871–1873 in Votkinsk, they mastered the rolling of rails , but ceased production due to low profitability. In 1880, the Votkinsk plant produced more than 170 pairs of beds for gun carriages of artillery pieces, from 1885 began the manufacture of railway fasteners , and in 1891 - designs of railway bridges for Transsib ^[25] .

The serfdom at the Izhevsk plant was abolished later than other factories under the special “Regulation on the transfer to the civil department of people assigned to the Izhevsk arms factory” of November 22, 1866. On January 15, 1867, the lease management of the plant, formally approved in October 1865, came into force. The workers received freedom, but the tenant was entrusted with the right to interfere in public life in the face of the threat to the security of the plant. The abolition of serfdom was accompanied by the mass departure of workers from the factory. The number of workers fell from 4,125 people at the beginning of 1867 to 2,673 people at the end of the same year ^{[26] [27]} .

Cast iron for processing at Kama plants was delivered from Goroblagodatsky plants and visually, since chemical analysis was not carried out at that time, sorted by type . Gray was preferred for iron making. In the production of crits used crowbars, shovels, hooks, workshops and pincers, axes, noodle , iron buckets, sticks, carts for bringing the cribs to an anvil hammer. The smelting was carried out in rocky hearths , which were laid out with cast-iron plates. The bottom plate was water cooled, the sides of the furnace were lined with fire-resistant bricks. The length of the single horn was 240 cm, width - 213 cm, double, respectively: 442 cm and 360 cm, with a depth of 30-35 cm. The height of the pipe reached 15 meters. Each horn was supplied with two air lances for air supply. In the Votkinsk plant in the 1790s there were 32 forges (including 10 single and 11 double in the bell factory, the rest in other rooms) ^[28] . The practice of steel smelting at the Votkinsk plant, where steel was produced more successfully and efficiently than at Izhevsk, showed the need to build less deep hearths, setting the tuyeres closer to the bottom and supplying an air jet of lower consumption ^[29] .

To obtain fritted iron, a layer of coal was laid on the bottom of the hearth, above which ferrous slag was poured. The coal was set on fire, after which pieces of iron were placed with the addition of scrap iron, and a layer of coal was again added on top. With the help of bellows , which were driven by a water wheel, air was supplied. Under the influence of atmospheric oxygen and solid oxidizing agents, the process of burning carbon , silicon, and other iron impurities proceeded. At the bottom of the furnace, the reduced iron gradually accumulated in the form of a spongy, pasty shrimp with slag inclusions. The critsu was divided into pieces and melted several more times. At the same time, carbon was removed from the metal, and the hot cruttered pieces of the metal were forged with bright hammers to remove slag impurities. Metal waste reached 20-30%. A team consisting of a master, an apprentice and an employee produced up to 12-13 pounds of iron in a 12-hour shift ^[29] .

At the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, the Kama plants gradually upgraded from water wheels to steam ones, from charcoal to coal, and they introduced crucible furnaces. Requirements for the quality of the metal from the processing and engineering industries are constantly increasing. The critical method is morally obsolete and has become economically unprofitable, primarily because of the large metal losses ^{[30] [25]} .

In January 1832, a special committee was created to search for ways to produce better iron and steel at Kama plants. The committee worked unsuccessfully for a year. In 1838, a project was submitted to Nicholas I for consideration on the destruction of the Izhevsk plant. The king signed the project, but the military authorities contributed to the preservation of the plant, because it was believed that the iron produced at that time in Izhevsk was the best for use in weapons production. In 1844, a commission for the study of trunks of iron under the leadership of the Chief Chief of the Ural plants , VA Glinka, also unsuccessfully worked at the Votkinsk plant ^[31] .

For the transition to more progressive methods of metal production in 1836, the first puddling furnace in Russia was built at the Votkinsk plant. The performance of the puddling furnaces was higher than crucible, but the quality of the gun barrels made in Izhevsk from the steel of the Votkinsk plant decreased significantly. In the future, it was possible to improve the quality of the metal by introducing the heating of the puddling furnaces with gas from a special generator, in which incomplete combustion of firewood or charcoal was provided. The yield of metal increased by 90%. The final production at Votkinsk plant was ousted only in 1911 ^[32] .

The next step in improving the quality of the smelted metal was the transition in the beginning of the 19th century to a two-stage smelting puddling furnace → crucible furnace in both plants. In 1864, an experimental Bessemer furnace for 150 pounds of pig iron was built at the Votkinsk plant. Experienced swimming trunks were successful, but did not receive further development. In 1868, the Votkinsk plant began construction of the first open-hearth furnace in the Urals and the second in Russia, and the first smelting was carried out on February 18, 1871. At the Izhevsk plant, an open-hearth furnace was built under the direction of P. A. Bilderling in 1877 ^{[33] [25]} .

In the first year of operation, the Votkinsk plant produced 75,617 pounds of iron of all sorts. At the Izhevsk plant, iron output in the second half of 1763 was 7 thousand pounds, and in 1764 - 17 thousand pounds. The share of anchors in the total volume accounted for 3% at the Votkinsk plant and 1.15% at Izhevsk. The share of banded and high-grade iron was 85–87%. From 1760 to 1808, the plants jointly produced 8.65 million pounds of iron, with an average annual productivity of 184 thousand pounds ^[34] . Subsequently, the Izhevsk plant was reoriented to the production of small arms, and at Votkinsk, production of tool and sheet steel, shipbuilding and the production of metal structures were mastered ^[35] .

At the beginning of the 20th century, the volume of production on the already independent from each other after separation according to the departments of the Kama plants was ^[36] :

Votkinsky plant acquired a reputation as a manufacturer of high-quality metal, including through the supply of anchors Admiralty . Production of anchors amounted to 10-15 thousand pounds, which accounted for up to 60% of the anchors produced in the Urals. In the 1850–60s, the Votkinsk plant was the only domestic supplier of anchors to the navy of Russia . In 1837, the factory produced a 167-pudovy anchor, in which the heir to the throne, the future emperor Alexander II, who attended the plant at that time, participated in forging. The anchor was installed on the pedestal as a monument, it was melted down in the 1930s, and restored in 1959. After the restoration of 2012, the monument is located near the dam of the city pond and is one of the attractions of Votkinsk ^{[37] [38]} .

The main building and the dam of the Izhevsk armory are architectural monuments of federal significance ^[39] .

• Metallurgical plants of the Urals
• Izhstal
• Kalashnikov (concern)
• Votkinsk plant

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