A monument to a curious old tractor can be found on the grounds of the State University of Biotechnology (Heroes of Kharkiv Avemue, 45).

The “Universal” tractor was manufactured from 1934 to 1940 in Leningrad at the “Krasny Putilovets” plant and from 1944 to 1955 at the Vladimir Tractor Plant.

The “Universal” was a modified copy of the Farmall Regular series of American tractors; between 1924 and 1931, 134,000 of these tractors were produced. Initially, they were designed to replace motor cultivators but later became versatile machines and successfully competed with Fordson tractors.

The original Farmall tractors were manufactured by International Harvester, which also provided the USSR with the McCormick-Deering 15-30 model as the prototype for the first KhTZ tractor. A mockup of the latter can be seen in Traktorozavodsky Park.

This “Universal” is not a mockup; it is the real one and looks quite unusual, in a “Dieselpunk” style. Particular attention should be paid to the all-metal wheels without tires (similar ones were used on the SKhTZ 15/30) and the drive shaft, which runs externally over the tractor’s hood and connects to the wheels via a gear. The tractor’s engine produced 22 hp.

A total of 211,500 of these tractors were produced in the USSR in four different models. There were tractors with narrow and wide front wheel tracks designed for cultivating different types of crops.