This series of columns and tubes was large, taller than several men and wider as well. It was painted white with a multitude of tubes and chambers coming from it. Yet Comrade Stalin insisted that this was hardly even a fraction of the size of what would be necessary for an "industrial scale plant". What this was was a cryogenic air separator, and coming from the experimental plant was 99.5% pure liquid oxygen, 99.995% pure nitrogen, and 93% pure argon. In other words, this was an invention that would completely revolutionize industry, and it was taking up a small park in Tsaritsyn State University. The output of this machine alone was more than enough to pump the oxygen through a large amount of steel, enough to prove its use to practically the whole country. High quality low-carbon steel that can easily be made and shaped and formed and welded would, if all goes well, soon become the norm in the Union.
The construction of this plant had begun in late 1918, part of Stalin's many experiments in Tsaritsyn, the city where he led a force to encircle and destroy a rather counter-revolutionary militia based on Cossacks and reactionary peasants that had come from the Ukraine and Caucasus. There was a special connection between Tsaritsyn and Stalin, for one reason or another, and he even requested many scientific personnel from Moscow and Petrograd relocate to the city for work there. It seemed to be where the new innovations were happening, and so many accepted the offer, though very few knew the extent to which Stalin was informing these new innovations. From this plant to machine shops where new designs were tested to light emitting arrays to chemical and biological experiments (the latter being far less Stalin-led, though records would later reveal a massive amount of suggestions from the Commissar to scientists in that field), it seemed as if the entire center of the city was gradually being filled by engineers and physicists and chemists. If only they had had more time before the Westward Offensive, they might have been able to help the Red Army make it all the way to the Atlantic.
