The formation of Soviet industrial cooperation as an integral part of the USSR military-industrial complex at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s

This article examines the formalization of the concept of using Soviet industrial cooperation enterprises for military-industrial production and highlights some practical steps taken by the Soviet party and government leadership in this direction. By incorporating previously neglected records of the Military Department, the All-Russian Union of Industrial Cooperation, and the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR from the collections of the State Archives of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Archive of Economics, and the Russian State Military Archive into scholarly research, an attempt is made to characterize the main trends in the process of integrating the cooperative industry into the USSR military-industrial complex. The purpose of studying the process of engaging industrial cooperation in national defense is achieved by identifying the main forms of military production, as well as identifying the specifics of this production in the case of kustokpromkooperativnykh artels. The study is based on a historical and descriptive method; during the study, the author applied GIS mapping using the QGIS software package to visualize the information found in the documents. The author's analysis suggests that Soviet industrial cooperation was comparable to state industry in terms of the legal and regulatory framework governing military-industrial production, including labor reservations at enterprises, food supplies for workers in industrial cooperative workshops producing military goods, and the easing of taxes on government goods and services. However, documents indicate that already in the late 1920s and early 1930s, industrial cooperation faced the problem of a lack of raw materials and semi-finished products for high-quality and timely production for the army and navy. While the state formally promised to expedite the delivery of these raw materials, it failed to do so, which negatively impacted military production.

Soviet industrial cooperation, handcraft-industrial cooperation, cooperatives, cooperative industry, military-industrial complex, VPK, military alert, mobilization, mobilization's plans, military orders