EXPANSION OF SOVIET SYNTHETIC RUBBER

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5303, 16 January 1947, Page 3

EXPANSION OF SOVIET SYNTHETIC RUBBER

GIVEN NEW IMPETUS BY STALIN ! PLAN j I GENEVA. — The Expansion of j Russia's synthetic-ruhber industry, j pride of Soviet scientists and tech- j nicians, is expected to receive new impetus when Stalin's Fourth FiveYear Plan is put into effect. The Third Plan. beg-un in 1938, prcvided for huilding a dozen new synthetic-rubber plants, about half of which were in Russia and the i Ukraine, and the rest, in the Urals, J Caucusus, Siberia and the Far East. i Although some of the Russian and j Ukrainian plants were destroyed by | the Germans, the bulk of their ma- , chinery was saved and shipped behind ! the Urals. To-day, synthetic-ruhber production is being stepped up, not only in the Urals, but also in Siberia and the Caucusus. A recent announcement disclosed that one of' the new plants near Baku, closed in 1941, had reopened in 1944. This plant is manufacturing a product known as "pyrolyse," made from petroleum. Far from laggihg behind Germany and the United States in the development of synthetic rubber, the Soviet Union was the first country in the world to produce it in usable quantities. As earlv as 1926, prompted by the experiments that were in progress elsewhere, the Soviet Government organised a competition amongRussian chemists, designed to provide a satisfactory formula. The following year, Serg-e Vasilievitch Lebedev, Professor of Chemistry at the Military Academy of Medicine, submitted to the judges of the competition a sample of synthetic rubber and the formula by which it had been produced. An experimental factory was opened in Leningrad in 1930. In 1931 it produced the first Russian synthetic rubber, known as "SK." In 1932 the factory was taken over by the Asbestos and Rubber Kombinat, and Profesor Lebedev was made a member of the Academy of Sciences. s Professor Lebedev died in 1934, but his cc-llaborators and students •continued his work provided with adequate funds. New syntheticruhber processes were developed and applied industrially. Although at the end of the First ■Five-Year Plan in 1933 Soviet syn-thetic-rubber production could supply orlly 4.4 per cent. of the country 's indxistrial requirements, by 1938 it was supply ing 58 per cent. and imports of natural rubber into the Soviet Union had virtually stopped. As early as 1932, t£ie first big factory for automobiie and aeroplane tyres and inner tuhes was started at Yaroslavl. It was designed principally for equipping the motor-cars manufactured there and at Gorki (Nijni-Novgorod) .