I’ve never taken a deep dive into Soviet raw material procurement during WWII. I know enough about modern supply chains to know that behind each part is a story of how it was produced and procured. The stories can sometimes be rather unusual, involving many far-flung locations. I can only imagine the crazy lengths Soviet communists went to get the stuff that they were tasked with getting under the conditions they found themselves in.
I also know enough about geography to know that the Soviets had an abundance of most key raw materials during WWII. This also means that the Russians still control a lot of those materials. They did then, as they do now, move much of these key raw materials by rail.
“Materials needed” encompasses nearly everything for a war effort, and the USA and other Allies definitely provided a lot of key materials that helped stave off Operation Barbarossa and eventually crush the Nazi invaders. But the Soviets made a whole helluva lot of stuff to go out and smash the enemy, and they did so on mind-boggling scales.
The Soviet Union was a manufacturing force to be reckoned with, not because of communism, but in spite of it. This is largely due to their abundance of resources. The dirty commies also had a couple of good designs.
“Central planning” is a good term to describe the allocation method for Soviet resources during the 1940’s. The right people, chosen by the right people, were calling all of the shots. And if you don’t like it, you can visit gulag.
You can be the judge of whether or not that’s worked out well for them.
Ahh okay. I’m thinking of a fun summer project to work on to get myself motivated to learn more about operations research and programming. The idea is to model the problem of factory relocation
This is the basic idea:
In each period
gov needs to determine allocations of materials
government needs to figure out how to allocate train cars to deliver factories their machinery for relocation and their allocations of material
factories need to determine strategy find their machinery and get their allocation of material from common supply depots (possibility of other factories taking their stuff)- lots of uncertainty (train cars marked with chalk ><). This will have some game theory
Complications
budget and train car constraint for government changes each period
promised allocation might NOT = actual allocation
…… the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht exist
The ideal is to solve for strategy (material and train allocation) that minimises the number of periods needed to reach a certain production threshold
The more realistic thing is to just solve 1 period
They had absolutely brilliant mathematicians. A lot of the foundations of modern probability theory can be attributed to Russian/soviet mathematicians (e.g., Kolmogorov)
I played the first Resident Evil on the original PlayStation. Fun game.
Nowadays I like playing Paradox games like Hearts of Iron 4, where you can play as the Soviets and actually move your tank production across the Urals and managing your rail network is very important.
Paradox games are all basically Spreadsheet: The Game set in different historical periods.
Oh I’m also finally in Act II of Baldurs Gate 3, which is just the bees knees.
@anna_5588 Don’t forget that the trains moving equipment east were also moving troops west at the same time. It’s an interesting problem you’re trying to tackle for sure. Good luck!
You would probably enjoy Paradox games once you have the time to tackle the learning curve. They do a really incredible job of getting so much right historically, modeling the important dynamics of the period and still delivering a really enjoyable gaming experience.
That’s why there’s every civilization in Afro-Eurasia in Crusader Kings 3 except for east Asia, where the map ends at Mongolia, Siberia, Tibet and Bangladesh.
Trying to fit China into the same game model from the years 867-1450 doesn’t work, or at least they haven’t figured it out yet. They don’t get the Mongols right either but the rest of the medieval world works great. I managed to forge a dynasty of inbred Englishmen that originated in Scandinavia and adopted a new religion that legalized witchcraft and marrying your family.
I missed a few months in your diary. What is the purpose of this program? Are you going to a powerlifting competition or something?
Iit was really easier when you wrote the weights in kg.
, rest of it was fine, enjoyed the short conditioning piece
