Cold War: USSR Inventions (Teletanks, Children's Railway)

Here we have another article about the inventions of the USSR and unique innovations by one side of the Cold War. One of these creations in a remote controlled tank and another is a series of railways used to educate children:

• Teletanks were a series of wireless remotely controlled unmanned tanks produced in the USSR in the 1930s and the early 1940s. They were developed by the All-Union State Institute of Telemechanics, Telecommunications Institute and the Electromechanical Research Institute. The point for creating these tanks was to reduce combat risk for Soviet soldiers. These unique tanks first saw use in the Winter War at the start of World War II. These tanks, like the TT-26 model tank, were controlled by radio from a distance of 500 meters to 1500 meters. Some teletanks were equipped with DT machine guns, flamethrowers, and smoke canisters. Control teams were instructed to prevent these tanks from falling into enemy hands by detonating the tanks if they fell into enemy hands. During the Winter War, 2 battalions of teletanks were deployed. However, unlike modern drones, teletanks could not relay sound/audio to the human operators and it was hard for these robotic tanks to move on uneven terrain. While impressive technology since the teletanks were the first attempt by a nation to send robotic ground forces into battle, they were costly to make and, as mention before, needed decent terrain to operate. Afterwards, production was halted and was not reintroduced during the Cold War.

  

• Children's railways were invented in the Soviet Union. These where extracurricular educational institutions where children got to ride small locomotives while learning railway professions. The first one of these organizations was Gorky Park in Moscow, Soviet Russia in 1932. These railways were mostly staffed by 10 to 14 years old under adult supervision. The children who were members of the Young Pioneers movement of the Soviet Union were the ones who used to learn in the Children's railways. However, many of these railways are still being operated by children in multiple post-Soviet states and socialist republics to this day such as the Children's railway in Minsk, Belarus; the Baku Children's Railway in Baku, Azerbaijan; and the Yerevan Children's railway in Yerevan, Armenia.