Word: elektrosila
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...giant factory in the heart of Leningrad looks more like a Rust Belt relic than a showplace of new industrial ideas. The Elektrosila power-equipment plant is an aging labyrinth of concrete buildings and connecting tunnels. Nearly half its creaky machine tools and other equipment was built in the 1960s. Yet this factory is the Soviet Union's largest producer of turbine generators for hydroelectric plants and nuclear power stations. Moreover, Elektrosila stands at the forefront of Mikhail Gorbachev's campaign to rejuvenate Soviet industry by freeing factories from the total, stifling control of government bureaucracies...
Because the Committee for State Planning controls only 30% of Elektrosila's production, the factory's managers have extraordinary freedom to plan, manufacture and sell the rest of the plant's output as they see fit (total annual production value: 162 million rubles, or $260 million at the official Soviet conversion rate). Elektrosila has boosted its foreign sales from less than 15% of its production a few years ago to about one-fourth of its current output. "We are now the masters of our own castle," says Valentina Murinas, 50, the factory's chief economist. Elektrosila's new spirit...