Technological Equipment of Light Alloy Processing Plants and its Representation in the Public Sphere of the USSR (1940s–1980s)

This paper examines the history of the largest units of the aviation materials industry (processing of light alloys), i.e. heavy-duty hydraulic presses with a power of more than 15,000 tons, which became the basis of the global aviation industry in the 1960s. The author traces the emergence of these units in the US and the USSR and describes the main centers of their deployment. Based on extensive materials from the media, the author scrutinizes the positioning of the technological equipment of the industry for the processing of light alloys in the public sphere of the USSR. The article demonstrates that in the 1950s, press-building was in the focus of attention of the Soviet public sphere as one of the key areas of scientific and technological development. However, starting with the late 1950s, materials on equipping enterprises for the processing of light alloys almost disappeared from the public domain. The second wave of public interest in the machines of the light alloy industry occurred in the late 1960s; it was associated with a general change in approaches to the positioning of the aviation industry of the USSR, and with the important international contract for the construction of a heavy-duty press in France. At this stage, the Novokramatorsk Heavy Machine-Building Plant turned out to be in the spotlight, while the Ural manufacturers and users of such machines continued to remain under a kind of veil of silence. Therefore, the unique equipment of light alloy processing enterprises in Verkhnyaya Salda and Kamensk-Uralsky, as well as the experience of the Ural Heavy Machine-Building Plant in designing and producing such equipment, did not get a place in the industrial mythology of the region, which makes it difficult to position them as valuable elements of the historical and cultural heritage of the Urals.