Russian Nickname for T34: Guardian of Moscow..?

[Andy_S]

Gents:

Recently came across a nickname for the T34, "The Guardian of Moscow."

Is this accurate? If not, did Russian troops have any other nickname for this machine?

Thanks in advance.

[ShAA]

Gents:

Recently came across a nickname for the T34, "The Guardian of Moscow."

Is this accurate? If not, did Russian troops have any other nickname for this machine?

Thanks in advance.

Never heard of it and it's hardly true - these tanks were all around the country, so why Moscow? Most probably it was an individual name for a tank. I haven't heard of any specific names for the T34 like "Suchka" for SU-76 or "Zveroboy" for (I)SU-152.

[DANNGOC]

trisatchetyri

[ShAA]

trisatchetyri

Uh, okay

[Scott Fraser]

The T-34 was referred to commonly as тридцатьчетвёрка, a diminutive name taken from the number 'thirty-four'.

tri-tsat-chet-VYOR-ka

Scott Fraser

[DANNGOC]

Agree Scott, in "Life and Fate" Vasily Grossman wrote the same, "trit-sat-chit-vi-or-ka"

[Erkki]

Tea salon, at least the Germans, according to Sven Hassel used that name.

[ShAA]

Agree Scott, in "Life and Fate" Vasily Grossman wrote the same, "trit-sat-chit-vi-or-ka"

It's not really a name, more like a "six-pounder" - "thirty-fourth-er". The suffix here hardly plays any diminuitive or affectionate role but serves to form a noun from the adjective "tridsat'chetvyortyi" or the numeral "tridtsat' chetyre".

[Andy_S]

Thanks gents. Probably an inaccurate reference then. Ah, the Interweb!

[Pilsudski]

Never really heard of this. Whats your source for this?

[Stryker 19K30]

Thanks gents. Probably an inaccurate reference then. Ah, the Interweb!

I can see how this could happen. Probably an individual tank with this painted on it, a photo caption reads "This T-34, nicknamed The Guardian of Moscow..." someone reads it and misunderstands it as the nickname of the T-34 line posts it on their website, people read it and start to post it on their own etc.

[Andrey]

The T-34 was referred to commonly as òðèäöàòü÷åòâ¸ðêà, a diminutive name taken from the number 'thirty-four'.

tri-tsat-chet-VYOR-ka

Scott Fraser

exactly

[MonsterZero]

trisatchetyri

More like Tridsat'chetvyorka.

The way you spelled that it sounds like "304".

I am from the Eastern Block (Poland) and I had years and years of Russian in Poland. We like the way Russian sounds and we pick it up very easily. Phonetically it has many similarities to Polish, although the alphabet cannot be understood without serious schooling.

Anyway, the reason I don't believe the T-34 was considered a "defender of Moscow" is because in 1941, out of 20,000 Soviet tanks in service, only several hundred were T-34s. By the time of Operation Typhoon, there have been very limited deliveries of new T-34 tanks because in the fall of 1941 the tank industries were being evacuated to the Urals. This caused a tremendous disruption in production that wasn't made good until 1942.

It wasn't until well into 1942 and 1943 that the Soviets had large numbers of T-34s that could make their presence visible and felt on the battlefield.

Moscow was defended primarily by hundreds of thousands of infantry, plus a few T-26 and BT light tanks, some KV heavy tanks, but there was very little heavy equipment in general. Results were achieved by throwing lightly armed Red Army men into the meat grinder.