Koshkin, Mikhail Ilich

Born 1898; died Sept. 26, 1940, in Kharkov. Soviet tank designer. Member of the CPSU from 1919.

Koshkin volunteered for the Red Army in 1918, studied at the la. M. Sverdlov Communist University from 1921 to 1924, and then worked as a full-time party official in Viatka. In 1929 he was sent to study at the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. After graduating from the institute in 1934, he worked as a designer and deputy chief of the design bureau at the S. M. Kirov Plant in Leningrad. From 1937 he was chief designer of the tank design bureau at the Kharkov Comintern Plant. Koshkin directed work on the creation of the T-34 tank, which was adopted by the Soviet Army in 1940 and which was recognized as the best tank of World War II (1939-45). He was the recipient of the State Prize of the USSR (1942) and the Order of the Red Star.