Първенецът на първата петилетка: Азотноторовият завод в Димитровград между ентусиазма и плана
The champion of the first five – year plan: The Nitrogen fertilizer plan in Dimitrovgrad between the enthusiasm and plan

Summary/Abstract: The vicissitudes of the construction of the Fertilizer Plant in Dimitrovgrad (ATZ) outline the gamble, even the voluntarism, of the choice to design a gigantic enterprise on insufficiently studied and unsuitable raw materials. The forced and controversial choice ofWestern Maritza lignite predetermined the location of the ATZ and the entire new city that grew up around it. Not long after, however, the low quality of the local coal forced the management to abandon it, and after 1962 to rebase production on petrol. In 1980, in turn, petrol was replaced with natural gas. This seriously undermined the economic logic of the chosen location of the plant – in the immediate vicinity of the coal basin. The petrol-and-gas decades (from the mid‑1960s onwards) raise the question of whether it would not have been more logical for the Chemical Plant to be located near the large Black Sea ports – near Burgas, near Neftochim – or near Varna.

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