Battle of Stalingrad, part 1

On pages 44 and 319, I refer to the Battle of Stalingrad (July 1942 to February 1943) because "a part of this bloody campaign took place in and around a colossal grain elevator built on the banks of the Voga River." Other pictures from this era show that the building was damaged by mortar attacks and gun-fire, but unlike everything else it hadn't been flattened or knocked down. Indeed, it still stands today.

Because it is located in Volgograd (also known as the birthplace of Joseph Stalin), and because Tsaritsyn (the city's name before 1925) is not listed as one of the cities in which grain elevators were built in the 1910s, I conclude that this particular grain elevator was probably built in the early 1930s and in the context of Stalin's "collectization" of the farms and his transformation of Volgograd into a transshipping center. In any case, it was built in the "American style," that is to say, using freestanding cylindrical tanks made out of reinforced concrete.