Order of the Badge of Honor nr. 19099 was awarded by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of June 5, 1942 to Mikhail Adamovich Zinovkin, metalworker at Tank Factory nr. 183 in Nizhny Tagil.

Factory nr. 183 was established in Kharkov in 1896 as a manufacturing plant for locomotives. From 1932 onward, production shifted more and more to tanks, tank engines, and artillery tractors. In September 1941, a few months after the German invasion, the State Defense Committee decided to evacuate the entire plant to the city of Nizhny Tagil in the Ural Mountains. 43 trains full of people, equipment, machines, materials and semi-finished tanks were dispatched from Kharkov. The evacuation was completed in October, just before the Germans overran Kharkov.

Along with several other enterprises, the factory was set up on the premises of the Ural Railroad Car Plant (Uralvagonzavod), under the umbrella name of Ural Tank Factory (UTZ) nr. 183. It predominantly manufactured T-34 medium tanks, and by war's end 25,266 T-34 had rolled off the assembly lines - half of all T-34s ever produced.

In all, the June 5 Decree bestowed 29 Orders of Lenin, 92 Orders of the Red Banner of Labor, 124 Orders of the Red Star, 219 Orders of the Badge of Honor, 235 Medals for Labor Valor, and 250 Medals for Labor Distinction. Among the recipients of the Order of Lenin were Vyacheslav Malyshev, the People's Commissar of the Tank Industry; Isaak Zaltsman, the director of Tank Factory nr. 183 who would be promoted to People's Commissar of the Tank Industry a month later; and Sergei Manokhin, the deputy director and chief engineer of Tank Factory nr. 183.

Decree

Decree

On the bestowal of orders and medals to workers in the tank industry

For their excellent execution of Government-ordered tasks pertaining to the production of tanks, diesel engines for tanks, and armored hulls, the following are to be decorated:

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With the Order of the Badge of Honor

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Mikhail Adamovich Zinovkin, metalworker at Factory nr. 183 (Nizhny Tagil Railroad Car Plant)

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Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR
M. Kalinin

Secretary of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR
A. Gorkin

Kremlin, Moscow
June 5, 1942

Order of the Badge of Honor nr. 19099, obverse and reverse