The First Kharkiv Tractor – Alluring Kharkiv

The first Kharkiv tractor was not manufactured at the Kharkiv Tractor Plant (KhTZ) in 1931, but at the Locomotive Plant in 1924 (KhPZ, now the Malyshev Plant).

^{In the background of the photo featuring the model is the facade of the former Workshop No. 180 at the Kharkiv Malyshev Plant. Photo: Ivan Ponomarenko, 2015}

It was a heavy tracked vehicle, a modified copy of the German Hanomag WD Z 50.

After the Civil War, the Soviet Union’s oil refining industry was unable to produce gasoline on a large scale, so the engine had to be converted to run on kerosene, and the tractor was named the “Kommunar.”

For the most part, this tractor was used not in agriculture but as an artillery tractor.

Assembly of the “Kommunar” at the KhPZ workshops

From 1924 to 1931, the Kharkiv Tractor Plant produced about 2,000 tractors, and only then was the Kharkiv Tractor Plant (KhTZ) launched… which began manufacturing a different type of machine: lighter, modified versions of the American McCormick-Deering 15-30 tractor.