OREANDA-NEWS. Immediately after liberation of Zaporozhye restoration of metallurgical enterprises begun. First in the list, of course, was Zaporizhstal. The fascists tried to damage the enterprises as much as possible to exceed the restoration process of the metallurgical industry. Due to pure rage because of their retreat, they destroyed as much as they could. But the Soviet people surprised the world with their heroism on the labour front, which was equal to their heroism on the battle front.

In 1947 Zaporizhstal was announced a shock-work construction site, though, actually, it was not construction but restoration that was taking place. Specialists say, that it is more difficult to rebuild than to build. Construction was done on ruins. The shops were built with the material that was brought back from the evacuation but some things were lost, some things were remodeled, some things did not match… There was quite a lot of such discrepancy during restoration of such a large enterprise. It is impossible to do without that. In spite of the fact that there were not a lot of specialists after the war because the war took away millions of lives, including the home front, the Government set deadline terms for restoration of cold rolling sheet production at Zaporizhstal. The final commissioning of the first production stage of the Works was set for the third quarter of 1947. Together with production problems Zaporizhstal workers paid great attention to housing problems. To rebuild houses a special construction department was organized. To work well a roof over ones head is needed. At that time Zaporizhstal workers developed and introduced obligatory technical rules and rapid-flow methods of construction, which helped to reduce 3 times the terms for handing over the buildings. By the way, in 1947 55 thousand m2 of housing was commissioned.

On September 27th in cold-rolling shop No. 1 the first tons of post-war rolled products were produced and delivered to the Moscow car-building industry. This became a significant event in the life of not only the Works, the city, but the whole country, too.

20 000 people took part in a festive meeting held in the shop. A steam locomotive stood before the rostrum. It was supposed to deliver the platforms with Zaporozhye sheet to Moscow. Participants of the meeting mentioned a lot of record figures. It appears that during the restoration period a million m2 of soil and rubbles were removed, 85 000 m2 of concrete was placed, 29 000 tons of equipment was erected, 2600 motors were installed, 110 000 m2 of housing was built and restored. Soon after that the Works was awarded a worthy tribute — Order of Lenin.

Leafing over an old note book…

The Chief of Cold-Rolling Shop No.1, Andrey Georgievich Nikolenko, tremblingly shows me a small discolored note-book with figures dated 1949. Economists in those days noted all the indices in different columns, each of which shows the production of cold-rolled and hot-rolled products, work of the mill “Tandem” and other sections. These notes testified how his Honesty Plan was fulfilled. For example, the plan in 1948 was fulfilled by 116,7%. It’s hard to say what the consequences would have been if it had not been fulfilled. Times were rough. But already in 1949 it was possible to fulfill the plan by 98.9%. On the other hand 115.4% was fulfilled in December. That same month 25405 tons of cold-rolled sheets were produced. At present almost the same amount of cold-rolled sheets were produced exceeding the plan. But we won’t draw a parallel because the times and equipment were different, though the names were about the same. The work of a large number of scientists, specialists, workers and managers of all levels, busy with the production of metal, improves the technology and introduces new equipment.