Rodniki Bolshevik Melange Combine

Rodniki Bol’shevik Mélange Combine 

a major textile enterprise of the USSR, located in the city of Rodniki, Ivanovo Oblast. It has spinning, weaving, and dyeing-and-fin-ishing facilities.

The combine was founded in 1820 as the Society of the Manufactory of the Krasil’shchikovs. In 1913 it ran 40,000 spindles and 3,117 mechanical looms for the production of heavy cloths and shirt and dress fabrics. The mill workers played an active role in the revolutionary struggle (the first strike occurred in May 1897); M. V. Frunze and N. R. Shagov numbered among the leaders. In 1918 the enterprise was nationalized and renamed the Rodniki Bol’shevik Textile Mill; it received its present name in 1928. During the Great Patriotic War, the combine supplied clothing to the Red Army.

In the postwar period, the combine was reequipped, and production and working conditions were improved. Between 1965 and 1974 the combine’s technical-economic indicators improved as follows: product output volume rose 35 percent, labor productivity per worker increased 59.1 percent, and the number of industrial-production personnel decreased 15.2 percent. In 1974 the enterprise had 100,000 spindles, with an average annual output of 19,200 tons of yarn, and 2,460 automatic looms, with an average annual output of 63.5 million linear meters of gray fabric. Dyeing-and-finishing production yielded more than 30 types of fabrics, including industrial fabrics, fabrics for special clothing, and special-purpose fabrics. The combine’s annual output was 145 million linear meters of finished fabric.

The combine has been awarded the Order of Lenin (1944) and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1970).

L. S. SIMONOV