"Kharkovchanka" - The Colossal Soviet Antarctic Cruisers
July 2, 2020 8:27 AM   Subscribe

"Kharkovchanka" were giant snow tracked vehicles built by the soviets for use in Antarctic exploration from the 1950s onwards. They were designed and assembled (in 3 months) to act in the manner of a giant tracked spaceships - housing crew and towing supplies. Following a successful initial overland journey to the South Pole they have been in successful deployment for decades since. Youtuber Calum tells their story.

He also made a video about the gigantic American Snow Cruiser, designed way back in 1939, abandoned at the start of WW2 and which acted as an inspiration for the Russians.
posted by rongorongo (17 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is fascinating and I'm looking forward to watching these vids after my workday ends. If anyone else can't quite get to these yet, I found this cross-section illustration and I can't wait to learn more.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:04 AM on July 2, 2020 [1 favorite]


I dig the institutional wood-panel decor in the cross-section. At that scale, it no longer looks like you're on a vehicle such as a bus or aeroplane, but rather in a prefabricated regional office of some sort.
posted by acb at 10:23 AM on July 2, 2020


That was awesome. Hopefully his video gets some traction and he is able to contact primary sources who can can verify current disposition.
posted by Mitheral at 11:54 AM on July 2, 2020


How does one say Snowpiercer in Russian?

Google translate says "Сквозь снег" but I'm sure that basically means "I don't understand Russian" to a native speaker.
posted by lon_star at 12:05 PM on July 2, 2020


Calum mentions the 1976 Russian film "72 Celsius degrees below zero" (IMDB and also available on Youtube) - which appears to feature a lot of footage of the Kharkovchanka vehicles in Antarctica. I'm sure the film has a fascinating "making of" story - but it would take an informed Russian speaker to tell it, I think.
posted by rongorongo at 2:13 PM on July 2, 2020


This sounds like something Hubertus Bigend would buy, after he got tired of playing with his Ekranoplan.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:48 PM on July 2, 2020 [5 favorites]


This was fascinating, thank you!
posted by carter at 4:09 PM on July 2, 2020


After spending most of our time in our tiny apartment these past few months, my family kinda feels like we've been living in something like one of these.
posted by technodelic at 5:16 PM on July 2, 2020


This is a great video, but it's rather jarring to hear the narrator consistently pronounce "Kharkov" as "Charkov". He does address this at the end!
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 5:07 AM on July 3, 2020 [1 favorite]


I saw this on BoingBoing first thing this morning and really loved it. One aspect he touches on I could’ve used a deeper dive on was the degree to which 1940s-1950s Soviet tech was more reliable than cutting edge in a global sense, and how this led to absurd longevity.

You see this in other famous bits of mid-century Soviet tech, most notably the AK-47, which looks and feels like something anybody with a simple machine shop could cobble together (and that’s not entirely wrong). But it works, and it keeps working, which is why it’s ubiquitous in Eurasia now. The American counterpart was the M-16, which required a number of iterations before it reached the reliable and stable version in use today — and even then, it’s nowhere nearly the “bury it in the sand and it’ll still work” level of robustness the AK has. The AK is less accurate, but it seems like a reasonable trade off.
posted by uberchet at 9:39 AM on July 3, 2020 [3 favorites]


What a fun video! And what an ambitious design.

Kinda reminds me of the land cruiser in Lost in Space.
posted by doctornemo at 1:31 PM on July 3, 2020


Jalopnik has a sort of writeup of this video.
posted by box at 2:04 PM on July 3, 2020


this is now my second-favorite soviet vehicle

(the trabant holds and will forever hold the #1 place in my heart, and the minute i’m living somewhere where parking is feasible i’m going to buy and restore one. i hear it is possible to make liberal modifications — i.e. replacing the 2-stroke engine with something that doesn’t plume filthy smoke — without damaging its true bolshevik soul.)
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 2:17 PM on July 3, 2020 [1 favorite]


RNTP: ahem, the Trabant isn't Soviet.

(That'd be like calling the Morris Minor "American".)
posted by cstross at 1:45 PM on July 4, 2020 [1 favorite]


RNTP: ahem, the Trabant isn't Soviet.

On the other hand, an electric Trabant might be more practical than an Ekranoplan - or a ... whatever this thing is.
posted by rongorongo at 12:13 AM on July 5, 2020


It's a knockoff Armstead Snow Motor [vimeo] (CW: animal abuse 3:12-3:55)
posted by Mitheral at 9:08 AM on July 5, 2020


In terms of odd Communist motor vehicles, there were also Hungarian microcars. The COMECON treaty partitioned manufacturing industries between countries to reduce duplication, and Poland and Czechoslovakia ended up with the role of car manufacturers, with Hungary left out. So Hungary bent the rules by manufacturing a car so diminutive that they could claim that it can be classified as a motorscooter, which they were entitled to manufacture.
posted by acb at 12:21 PM on July 7, 2020 [1 favorite]


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