"WW II Soviet power & telephone grid, etc.?" Topic

I'm planning some 15mm terrain for WW II Eastern Front gaming, and was wondering about WW II Soviet power and telephone lines. One might suspect that electrification was rare in rural areas, but what was the extent of the Soviet power and telephone grid? At the very least, were Soviet railway lines equipped with telephone or telegraph communications?

Regardless, what design(s) of telephone / power pole did the Soviets use? I've seen a photograph of some Germans beside a pole with no crossbar and only two insulators, but have no idea if it was German work, or if the Russians had already set it up.

Cheers,

Skeptic

I live in rural Illinois and we still have utility poles that are just a pole with 2 insulators. One for power the other for telephone. Sounds like a standard world-wide design.

Skeptic, I have a book consisting of Russian/Soviet news agency pics from the 1852-1930 period. Strangely enough, only two pics show telephone poles, once in a rural main street, once at an oil field. In neither pics the poles have crossbars.

I also noticed that there were absolutely no poles in major cities, probably meaning that most municipal lines were underground from an early date on.

I have not yet found enough railroad pics to be able to say anything about their telegraph system.

Just quickly flicking through Bruce Quarrie's "Panzer's in Russia 1941-43" I notice about four different types at least:

Ones with two wires and no crossbars.

Ones with four crossbars, with four wires on each one.

Quite weird-looking ones with no crossbars but about eighteen wires, all one above the other, staggered on either side of the pole. These ones are along a railway line and there is a row of them on either side of the track.

An urban one consisting of two poles. A vertical with a leaning diagonal pole supporting it, forming a kind of "A" shape. This one has two small crossbars, with a bunch of wires on each one.

These are all on wooden poles. I've not seen any of the concrete types you see in France.

Judging by this amount of diversity, I would say pretty much anything goes...

Gungnir, I suspect that, if Stalinist Russia was anything like Maoist China, the Communist Party would probably not have wanted telephones to be very widely distributed for political reasons. They probably weren't much of an economic priority, either.

You're probably right about electrical power in cities, although I'm still wondering about how many villages were electrified. Again, I would suspect that not many were, since Soviet agriculture probably did not need much in the way of electricity.

I'll have to hit the WW II books, looking for utility poles, lol!

Thanks,

Skeptic

Thanks, Polynikes!

Skeptic

That should be "Panzers in Russia". I have no idea how that stupid apostrophe got in there!

Shameless plug for my dissertation advisor's own (published & revised) dissertation: Jonathan Coopersmith, The Electrification of Russia, 1880-1926 (Cornell, 1992).

It should have some info re both urban and rural electrification.

Thanks, OilHistorian! I'll check the local universities' libraries. I see that there is also an IEEE paper.

Cheers,

Skeptic

Rural Russia in fact got electified in the thirties, so at least power lines wouldn't be a very uncommon sight during the war. (Allright, the extent of the electrification campaigns may be blown up a bit by the propaganda)

Model railroaders often pay attention to such details. You might try some of their publications/newsgroups.

I should know as I've suffered some friendly barbs from a very good railroader friend. He noted that my telephone poles were not appropriate for 1944 France, that a civilian car half buried in rubble and completely covered in dust was American 1950s vintage, that my disabled tractor would not have been used in France (design was based on some unique requirement of corn rows), and that my windmill was of strictly American design!

Tim

Not sure about the 1940s, but in Ukraine, even in the sticks, they seem to have electricity with no problem. They are generally overhead cables and run to every house. It seems to be a Ukrainian right to have electricity.

It's mains water and sewer drainage they are generally lacking :-)

Geoff