The closure of archival documents for free scientific analysis and the mythologization of historical memory created a situation in the USSR when it was impossible to generalize and study the negative experience of the results of Soviet industrial development. This, in turn, led to the appearance of the illusion of the success of "Stalinist" industrialization and an overestimation of its significance for the outcome of the war. In this paper, the author, on the basis of a wide range of sources, analyzes the work of the domestic tank industry on the eve and during the Great Patriotic War.The study details the results of the development of the tank industry by the middle of the war period, when the regular disruption of production programs forced tank builders to look for way out of the current situation. The refusal of the country's leadership to reduce the overestimated plans for the production of armored vehicles in the face of an increasing shortage of production resources forced tank builders to follow the path of modernizing production, relying mainly on their own capabilities.