IMPORTANCE OF KHARKOV

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 May 1942, Page 7

IMPORTANCE OF KHARKOV

JUNCTION OF RAILWAYS

Equally in its industrial resources and in its value as a focal point of rail transport. Kharkov is of enormous importance. With a population of over 840,000, it was, in Lime of peace, one of the most productive centres of heavy industry in the Ukraine, the whole of which was rapidly being developed along industrial lines.

In Kharkov there was a large tractor plant which, like a similar plant at Stalingrad, on the Volga, had in recent years been reorganised for the mass production of caterpillar tractors, which had not only agricultural, but also military value. Another of its many factories made electric generators in sizes up to a unit capacity of 180.000 kilowatts. Its production included large numbers of -Icctric motors of all types. From its locomotive works came a large conribution to the motive power of the Soviet railways. Other industries included various classes of metallury and smelting, coal distillation, ropes, chemicals, and wooden ware.

The whole of the Ukrainian administration was centred on Kharkov. Eight lines of railway radiate from it—three of them important through routes, serving the Donetz coalfields and the Krivoi Rog iron district. Six services formerly ran from Kharkov to Moscow, Kiev, and Odessa, via Gronzny and-Baku to Teheran; and via Batum and Tiflis to Baku. The town was founded in 1654 as a tort of the Free Ukraine and was an outpost of Moscow in its struggle with the Poles. The faithfulness of the Kharkov Cossacks to the Czar won the town many privileges. It boomed during the industrial exploitation of the Ukraine's resources in the latter hglf of the nineteeth century, but its'* progress was interrupted by war conditions from 1914 onwards, and especially by the civil war of 1917-20, when it was successively occupied by the Germans, the Ukrainian Nationalists, the Red Army, and Denikin's troops. It was finally captured by the Red Army in 1920.

Soviet industrial engineers excel at the rapid restoration of industry, and should Russian forces succeed in reoccupying Kharkov, a great effort would probably be made to set its manufacturing capacity in operation again. In any case, the possession of such a dominating railway junction would greatly strengthen the whole Soviet tactical position in the Ukraine.