Kiev Arsenal factory
Encyclopedia
State enterprise of a special instrumentation Arsenal , for brevity Arsenal Factory, is one of the oldest and most famous industrial
factories
of the Ukrainian
capital Kiev
.
compound in the Pechersk
(Печерськ) district of the city. It is now a large state-owned company. Workers at the factory included sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko
, who worked as a grinder
at the factory prior to 1941.
mutiny known as a Kiev Arsenal mutiny or a January Rebellion against Tsentral'na Rada, the Ukrainian assembly that declared the independence of Ukraine. To commemorate the event, the Soviet
authorities preserved the historic defensive wall bearing the traces of shelling (situated on the city's Moskovs'ka Street near the Arsenal'na metro
station).
While the civil production lines were added to the factory starting from 1918, the factory produced mostly the military related products throughout its history. In the 1920s, 1930s and during World War II
the factory mainly produced the artillery
, anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns. In summer 1941, immediately after the outbreak of the war between the Soviet Union and the axis powers, the factory was quickly evacuated to the Russian city of Perm
in the Ural mountains
far away from hostilities. The factory buildings in Kiev suffered heavy damages from German bombings. The relocated "Arsenal" continued to play a major role in the arming of the Nazi
-fighting Red Army
.
company named Zavod Arsenal (while the other, smaller, part remained an unremarkable military
repairing facility under a different name). Since that time, the name Arsenal is mostly associated with the larger company rather than with the military one (occupying the oldest building of old arsenal). During the Cold War
arms race
, Arsenal developed dramatically, becoming an important manufacturer of the military-related products and employing tens of thousands of people. The factory mainly specialized in optical components for the Soviet military and space programs
. The factory also produced the professional grade photographic cameras "Kiev"
but civil production played only a minor role in factory output. Tens of thousands of people where employed at the "Arsenal"
, military orders dropped drastically and the Arsenal factory fell into a crisis which is still ongoing. The management attempted to convert the factory by concentrating more on consumer optics and other civil products, but these attempts did little to help the factory to emerge from the crisis. Comparatively insignificant figures of civil production sales could not support the employment of military-specialized workers in such numbers and maintain the gigantic premises.
After the beginning of Kiev's economic growth in the mid-1990s, the company found itself a significant real estate
holder in an elite commercial and administrative district. The company's real estate, rather than largely deteriorated equipment and expertise, became its major asset. However, industrial activities (both civil and arms-related) continue to this day. The modern day military equipment produced at the Arsenal is mostly imported by Russia
for its military and space program needs. The factory civil production includes consumer optics, medical and banking equipment, gauges for the natural gas
and optical diode
-based traffic lights.
and art philanthropist
Viktor Pinchuk
suggested to establish a modern art
gallery in the oldest 19th century building of the Arsenal. This large fortress-like brick
structure, situated on the Tsytadel'na Street and recognized as architectural monument, now belongs to the Ukrainian military and is poorly maintained. Later, Viktor Yushchenko
, the President of Ukraine
, expressed his support to the museum idea but suggested that the museum had to be state-run and dominated by more traditional art pieces in order to become a "Ukrainian Hermitage
". The process of converting the building to a civil use is underway while the nature of the museum is still being discussed.
Industry
Industry refers to the production of an economic good or service within an economy.-Industrial sectors:There are four key industrial economic sectors: the primary sector, largely raw material extraction industries such as mining and farming; the secondary sector, involving refining, construction,...
factories
Factory
A factory or manufacturing plant is an industrial building where laborers manufacture goods or supervise machines processing one product into another. Most modern factories have large warehouses or warehouse-like facilities that contain heavy equipment used for assembly line production...
of the Ukrainian
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
capital Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
.
Pre-1918
Started in 1764 as a repair and production facility of the Russian army, the factory was initially based in a Kiev fortressKiev fortress
Kiev fortress , also known as the Pechersk Fortress, is a generic name for the 19th century fortification buildings situated in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, that once belonged to a system of western Russian fortresses. These structures were built in the Pechersk and neighbourhoods by the Russian army...
compound in the Pechersk
Pechersk
Pechersk Raion is a larger administrative district of the city which lies majorly within the historical neighborhood, while also including some other historical areas. Pechersk neighborhood is located on the hills adjoining the right bank of the Dnieper River. The two geographic entities are...
(Печерськ) district of the city. It is now a large state-owned company. Workers at the factory included sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko
Lyudmila Pavlichenko
Lyudmila Mykhailivna Pavlichenko was a Soviet sniper during World War II, credited with 309 kills, and is regarded as the most successful female sniper in history.-Early life:...
, who worked as a grinder
Grinding machine
A grinding machine, often shortened to grinder, is a machine tool used for grinding, which is a type of machining using an abrasive wheel as the cutting tool...
at the factory prior to 1941.
The Revolution and World War II events
On January 29, 1918, the workers of the factory organized an armed pro-BolshevikBolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
mutiny known as a Kiev Arsenal mutiny or a January Rebellion against Tsentral'na Rada, the Ukrainian assembly that declared the independence of Ukraine. To commemorate the event, the Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
authorities preserved the historic defensive wall bearing the traces of shelling (situated on the city's Moskovs'ka Street near the Arsenal'na metro
Kiev Metro
The Kiev Metro is a metro system that is the mainstay of Kiev's public transport. It was the first rapid transit system in Ukraine and the third one built in the USSR . It now has three lines with a total length of 63.7 kilometres and 49 stations...
station).
While the civil production lines were added to the factory starting from 1918, the factory produced mostly the military related products throughout its history. In the 1920s, 1930s and during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
the factory mainly produced the artillery
Artillery
Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...
, anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns. In summer 1941, immediately after the outbreak of the war between the Soviet Union and the axis powers, the factory was quickly evacuated to the Russian city of Perm
Perm
Perm is a city and the administrative center of Perm Krai, Russia, located on the banks of the Kama River, in the European part of Russia near the Ural Mountains. From 1940 to 1957 it was named Molotov ....
in the Ural mountains
Ural Mountains
The Ural Mountains , or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the Ural River and northwestern Kazakhstan. Their eastern side is usually considered the natural boundary between Europe and Asia...
far away from hostilities. The factory buildings in Kiev suffered heavy damages from German bombings. The relocated "Arsenal" continued to play a major role in the arming of the Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
-fighting Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
.
Post-war
After the war, the Arsenal factory was reestablished anew at its Kiev location and partly converted into a civilCivilian
A civilian under international humanitarian law is a person who is not a member of his or her country's armed forces or other militia. Civilians are distinct from combatants. They are afforded a degree of legal protection from the effects of war and military occupation...
company named Zavod Arsenal (while the other, smaller, part remained an unremarkable military
Military
A military is an organization authorized by its greater society to use lethal force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or perceived threats. The military may have additional functions of use to its greater society, such as advancing a political agenda e.g...
repairing facility under a different name). Since that time, the name Arsenal is mostly associated with the larger company rather than with the military one (occupying the oldest building of old arsenal). During the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
arms race
Arms race
The term arms race, in its original usage, describes a competition between two or more parties for the best armed forces. Each party competes to produce larger numbers of weapons, greater armies, or superior military technology in a technological escalation...
, Arsenal developed dramatically, becoming an important manufacturer of the military-related products and employing tens of thousands of people. The factory mainly specialized in optical components for the Soviet military and space programs
Soviet space program
The Soviet space program is the rocketry and space exploration programs conducted by the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from the 1930s until its dissolution in 1991...
. The factory also produced the professional grade photographic cameras "Kiev"
Kiev-Arsenal (photo camera)
Kiev is a Soviet brand of photographic equipment including cameras manufactured by the Arsenal Factory in Kiev, Ukraine. The camera nameplates show the name "KIEV", with older cameras using "КИЕВ" or "КИЇВ" in the cyrillic alphabet.At the end of November 2009 Gevorg Vartanyan of Arax, a Ukrainian...
but civil production played only a minor role in factory output. Tens of thousands of people where employed at the "Arsenal"
Perestroika and independence
After the beginning of perestroikaPerestroika
Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...
, military orders dropped drastically and the Arsenal factory fell into a crisis which is still ongoing. The management attempted to convert the factory by concentrating more on consumer optics and other civil products, but these attempts did little to help the factory to emerge from the crisis. Comparatively insignificant figures of civil production sales could not support the employment of military-specialized workers in such numbers and maintain the gigantic premises.
After the beginning of Kiev's economic growth in the mid-1990s, the company found itself a significant real estate
Real estate
In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...
holder in an elite commercial and administrative district. The company's real estate, rather than largely deteriorated equipment and expertise, became its major asset. However, industrial activities (both civil and arms-related) continue to this day. The modern day military equipment produced at the Arsenal is mostly imported by Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
for its military and space program needs. The factory civil production includes consumer optics, medical and banking equipment, gauges for the natural gas
Natural gas
Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...
and optical diode
Light-emitting diode
A light-emitting diode is a semiconductor light source. LEDs are used as indicator lamps in many devices and are increasingly used for other lighting...
-based traffic lights.
Art museum project
In 2004, a Ukrainian oligarchBusiness oligarch
Business oligarch is a near-synonym of the term "business magnate", borrowed by the English speaking and western media from post-Soviet parlance to describe the huge, fast-acquired wealth of some businessmen of the former Soviet republics during the privatization in Russia and other post-Soviet...
and art philanthropist
Philanthropist
A philanthropist is someone who engages in philanthropy; that is, someone who donates his or her time, money, and/or reputation to charitable causes...
Viktor Pinchuk
Viktor Pinchuk
Victor Pinchuk is a Jewish-Ukrainian businessman and philanthropist. Forbes ranked him # 336 on the list of the wealthiest people in the world, with a fortune of $3.3 billion...
suggested to establish a modern art
Modern art
Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...
gallery in the oldest 19th century building of the Arsenal. This large fortress-like brick
Brick
A brick is a block of ceramic material used in masonry construction, usually laid using various kinds of mortar. It has been regarded as one of the longest lasting and strongest building materials used throughout history.-History:...
structure, situated on the Tsytadel'na Street and recognized as architectural monument, now belongs to the Ukrainian military and is poorly maintained. Later, Viktor Yushchenko
Viktor Yushchenko
Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko is a former President of Ukraine. He took office on January 23, 2005, following a period of popular unrest known as the Orange Revolution...
, the President of Ukraine
President of Ukraine
Prior to the formation of the modern Ukrainian presidency, the previous Ukrainian head of state office was officially established in exile by Andriy Livytskyi. At first the de facto leader of nation was the president of the Central Rada at early years of the Ukrainian People's Republic, while the...
, expressed his support to the museum idea but suggested that the museum had to be state-run and dominated by more traditional art pieces in order to become a "Ukrainian Hermitage
Hermitage Museum
The State Hermitage is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the largest and oldest museums of the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been opened to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display,...
". The process of converting the building to a civil use is underway while the nature of the museum is still being discussed.
External links
- zavodarsenal.kiev.ua - Official website //
- archunion.com.ua - Plans for the construction of an art museum