Model Soviet artillery tractor ChTZ S-65 with closed cabin - Trumpeter

Largely unknown, the Russian farm tractor industry, which later in the war shifted almost entirely to tank production, was established with massive American help in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Communist state urgently needed agricultural machinery. Thus, many Zavod Tractors were manufactured at the factory of the Chelyabinskii Traktornyi Zavod imeni Stalina ("ChTZ"). The "sons of Stalin" ("Stalinez") S-60 and S-65 produced during the 1930s were copies of the Caterpillar 60, equipped with gasoline or diesel engines. As the need for military tractors was at least as great as that of agricultural tractors, the 37,626 S-65s built from 1937 to 1941 naturally found their place in the arsenals of the Red Army. However,