Nikolay Alexandrovich Astrov (1906–1992) was a designer at GAZ.
Nikolay Astrov dated the beginning of his working career at the Gorky Automobile Plant from mid-August 1941, when he arrived in City of Gorky from Moscow at the controls of a T-60 tank, with two barrels of gasoline strapped to the armor with cables. Since 1934, Astrov had served as chief designer at a Moscow plant that manufactured tanks. With the outbreak of war, however, the State Defense Committee designated five enterprises to produce the T-60 tracked armored vehicle; GAZ was named the lead factory. The thirty-five-year-old specialist was tasked with launching tank production in City of Gorky.
Still in his tanker's coveralls, helmet in hand, Astrov walked into the office of chief designer Lipgart and handed over a package containing the order appointing him deputy chief designer of the Gorky Automobile Plant for tanks. By early October 1941, several T-60 tanks produced at GAZ had already passed trials at a test ground. The vehicles were deemed fit for service and dispatched to the front, where they received their baptism of fire in the Battle of Moscow. Meanwhile, in the plant's design and experimental department, Lipgart and Astrov were already working on a new armored vehicle — the light tank T-70. The deadlines were tight, as befits wartime. On 15 February 1942, the designers presented the T-70 to Stalin at the Moscow Kremlin. The Chairman of the State Defense Committee signed a resolution on the mass production of the new tank and its adoption into the Red Army's arsenal. It is worth noting that the meeting with Stalin was not Astrov's first. In 1975, at a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the great Victory held at the GAZ Palace of Culture, Nikolay Alexandrovich mentioned that he had had occasion to meet Stalin nine times. And not once after their very first encounter — which had taken place in the autumn of 1933 at a demonstration of Astrov's amphibious tank, the PT-1 — did the Leader, upon catching sight of Nikolay Alexandrovich, fail to make a point of saying: "Comrade Astrov, I remember you!" Astrov believed that a single word from Stalin — "Continue," spoken in 1933 as a directive that set the course for a long period of work on a diesel tank engine — had shielded him from repression during the harsh pre-war years. And yet the designer's biography was, by the standards of those times, far from unblemished. To begin with, he came from the family of a disgraced professor at the Moscow Higher Technical School, which under Soviet rule bore the name of the revolutionary Bauman, killed in 1905. In 1919, his father and brother were charged with participation in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy and were shot. Nikolay and his mother were exiled from Moscow. Nevertheless, in 1929, after graduating from a private electrical engineering institute, Nikolay Alexandrovich found himself in a sharashka (a prison design bureau) attached to Butyrka Prison, where he proved himself a promising designer capable of making a major contribution to the Red Army's defense capability. He justified those hopes. Thanks to him, the army was soon equipped with small amphibious tanks: the PT-1 (1933), followed by the T-38 (1935) and the T-40 (1939). During a Kremlin conference at the end of December 1939, at which the problem of improving tank mobility was being discussed, Astrov ran over his allotted three minutes, and the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, Molotov, cut him off: "Enough, sit down!" But at that point Stalin rose from his seat, walked up to the lectern where Astrov was standing, and said quietly: "Let him speak, let him finish…" "But briefly!" Molotov attempted to recover his composure. He would have done better to stay silent. Stalin cast a disapproving glance at him and, even more quietly, almost in a whisper, repeated: "Let him finish… Why briefly?" Astrov spoke for another half hour or so. Stalin put questions to him — questions from which one could conclude that Stalin was remarkably well-informed and capable of discussing complex technical problems at a designer's level of expertise. In 1943, at the Gorky Automobile Plant, Astrov developed the light tank T-80, and mass production of it began. It is precisely this tank that stands in the memorial square with the Eternal Flame in Avtozavodsky District of Nizhny Novgorod. After the war, tracked high-mobility tractors were developed under Astrov's supervision, and a dedicated branch of GAZ was established for their production — a plant in the new city of Zavolzhye, which grew up across the river from the ancient town of Gorodets. For the record, Astrov is the author of twenty-six types of tracked and wheeled armored vehicles. He was awarded the Stalin Prize three times and the State Prize of the USSR, and was conferred the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.