This is a photo story of one armor repair base – from the times of its prosperity to its decay.
The base was decided to be built in 1936. Soon Repair Base 77 appeared in the Russian Far East, the city of Voroshilov (today it is called Ussuriysk).
Officially it was opened in May, 1940 to repair tanks, tractors and other equipment.
In 1953 the base turned into the armor repair plant.
Today the plant is bankrupt, some of its premises were sold to private companies.
These photos were taken in the mid of the 1980s.
This one belongs to the 2000s.
And these are the pictures taken this year.
How many places like this are in Russia?
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Russia’s main problem was that it always chose quantity over quality. Whereas the engineers did a initially good job, cutbacks on everything during the production process followed by poor maintenance made Soviet weapons useless after a very short period of exploitation. Therefore, today’s Russia is packed with rusting steel which could have been very much combat ready if it was properly taken care of.
Quantity over quality is actually pretty good in warfare. (Quality THROU quantity, as Stalin is alleged to have said).
Three less-fancy tanks is better than one really fancy tank.
That junk will remain until end of times.
That is true, but there was a reason for this. It did win WWII for them. The Pzkw V (panther) was a much better tank then the T34/85 and would win any duel hands down. But as one desillusioned Waffen-SS commander said. In the time it took to grind and polish the welds on the Panther the russians built two T34:s. And considering that the life-expactancy of a tank on the battle-field was an avarage of 30 minutes, perhaps it was not so terribly smart spending a day on finishing the welds.
It was a war of attrition on a very wide geographical front. The waffen won by punching through. If they had operated with a second phase of retreating and then gassing the advancing russians and then re-punching what was left then maybe just maybe they would have won. BTW I do not endorse any ideology from WW2.
Russia needs strong military AND good, well maintained equipment. During 1943-1945 Russia made the best tanks, and good fighter planes and practical rifles, guns of all types. It made me sad – and angry – to see these photos . Whose fault? Maybe now ANY country can just walk in to Russia and take over. (China?)
I doubt any country could just walk into Russia. It has been tried and it always turned into a war of attrition. Only the Mongols did it successfully. And that was viking era Russia. The Chinese know after witnessing Hiroshima that any proto-European country would not hesitate to use WMD.
Are you serious ? A bunch of surplus soviet tanks rusting in a factory, and for you it means russia is forceless, no army ? haha, china is leveled to the ground at the minute it tries anything into russia. Not only this, but also the army is now modern and have means of power, superior to the USSR times. Missile tchnology evolved a lot, so has planes and inteligence warfare… the T90 is superior to any chinese ground vehicule
Looks like the tanks have been stripped of parts. The engines are shot sitting out in weather, it all needs to be melted down.
exact, just surplus tanks ! built for a 5 milion men army, russia now has a much smaller army, and only uses the latest and modernised tanks, others are scraped, stocked, or made into spare parts.
Melt down and make into toys for children and new appliances for mothers.
I wish to see some toys made out of the armor-grade steel alloys
I tried to find the location on Google earth & I suspect this is it, but I could be wrong.
Latitude:43.772042°
Longitude:131.993008°
Romanian gypsies can clean the place in max. 1 year.Please contact them!!!
These are old generation tanks, Russian army is equipped with new tanks, they learned their lesson in 2008 war with Georgia. After that war Russians started renewing their armomentarium.
There is an early T-54, but there are some T-80U ! it was the most modern tank in USSR fall. What lesson did they learned ? No tank warfare in this war, all ennemy and russian tanks destroyed by RPG/airstrike. It is just the modernisation, russian tank army is now composed of T-72BA, T72BV, there are the oldest, but very good quality, T-80U, and T-80UM are the main tank force, T-80BV still used for training, and some in storage, and of course many regiments equiped with T-90 and T-90A
Polish scrap-collectors could clean all this area to the last piece of metal in a few weeks.