Votkinsk's shipbuilding during the First World War. Reconstruction and analysis of the structure of military orders

Reconstruction of order's numbers of shipbuilding production of Votkinsk plant during the First World War was carried out. It was based on the available order's numbers that recovered in the documentation of the Technical Bureau of the Votkinsk Plant, the missing numbers were reconstructed by the drawing in archival information and logical conclusions. This made it possible to assess the change in the qualitative picture of the Votkinsk's shipbuilding during the WW1. If before the war the intellectually capacious production in the form of steamers and bots prevailed, then in the wartime the factory was redesigned for the production of barges, which amounted to a small fraction of orders in pre-war production. And, in fact, of the steamships accepted for execution, only half was completed, and during the war only one ("Splavshchik"). In addition, if before the war the assembly at the sites in Sretinsk and Tyumen was predominant, then in the military conditions, the work at the branches was curtailed. The branch in Syrygol, stopped working in 1915 after the assembly of the last floating crane for the ports of the Black Sea. This circumstance may indicate that the degradation of the Votkinsk shipbuilding, which stopped this production while the plant was being preserved in the mid-1920s, began during the World War, and not during the Civil War, as was previously assumed. Therefore, the statement in the literature that the shipbuilding industry in Votkinsk underwent modernization due to military orders is not well-off. Copyright © 2017 by Sochi State University.