Gorlovka Machine Works

Gorlovka Machine Works 

(full name, S. M. Kirov Gorlovka Machine Works), the largest enterprise in the USSR for the building of coal-mining machinery, chief supplier of coal combines, graders, and spare parts. Located in the city of Gorlovka, Donets Oblast, Ukrainian SSR.

The basis of the Gorlovka Machine Works was formed in 1895, when a Belgian joint-stock company set up a workshop to manufacture steam pumps for mine shafts. On Dec. 9, 1905, the factory workers declared a strike, which grew into an uprising; they demanded the establishment of an eight-hour working day, higher wages, and an end to work dismissals. The workers of Iuzovka, Iasinovataia, Debal’tsevo, and Grishino responded to the call of the Gorlovka workers. The uprising was cruelly suppressed. At the beginning of World War I the factory was sold to a German, Becker, the owner of the Nikolaev Shipbuilding Yard, and became known as the Becker and Company Gorlovka Artillery Factory.

The Gorlovka Machine Works underwent radical modernization after the Great October Socialist Revolution. The plant began to manufacture drainage pumps in 1923; the first Soviet coal-cutting machine came off the testing bed in 1928; and the GTK-3 coal-cutting machine, as well as the S-24 cutter-loader for slightly inclined seams and the S-29 cutter-loader for steeply inclined seams, which were based on the GTK-3, went into series production in 1936. During the Great Patriotic War the plant was completely destroyed by the fascist German invaders. Restoration was begun in 1943. In the postwar years the plant developed new machinery designs for the mechanization of heavy and labor-intensive coal mining processes and began series production of the Donbas coal cutter-loader, the KKP-1 cutter-loader for steeply inclined seams, the GTK-35 coal-cutting machine, and the Gorniak, Shakhter, and UKR cutter-loaders. The 2K-52, 1K-101, and MK-67 narrow-web cutter-loaders occupy a special place among the units manufactured by the plant. The 1970 production level was four times that of 1940. The machine works was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor in 1945.

M. L. SHAPIRO