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Article: Ukraine on the brink. (demise of industrial productivity since achieving independence)
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- December 28, 1992
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1992 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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YUZHMASH is the factory Nikita Khrushchev had in mind when he said that the Soviet Union was "making missiles like sausages." Behind a grim perimeter fence at Yuzhmash, in the city of Dnepropetrovsk in southern Ukraine, fifty thousand workers produced all the Soviet strategic missiles, from the SS-4 of the Cuban Missile Crisis to the giant SS-18 with its ten independent nuclear warheads.
With demand for strategic missiles slack of late, the factory has tried to diversify. Satellites for civilian use are still assembled here, but the vast hall in which the missiles were assembled now houses an assembly line for trolleybuses. When each trolleybus is completed, a ...