e city before the Holocaust, but soon after the Nazis conquered the city on 12 October 1941, 11,000 were shot; in the end only 15 Jews of Dnipropetrovsk survived at the end of the war.
During the past century, the economic activity of the city has defined its political importance. Dnipropetrovsk and the surrounding oblast are the birthplace of the "Dnipropetrovsk Faction", an influential informal political group inside the CPSU, members of which were the industrial and party elite. Leonid Brezhnev, a native of the nearby city of Dniprodzerzhyns'k and later the Communist Party General Secretary, assured members of this group of a prominent place in Soviet society and politics. Members of this group are believed by many political scientists to have ruled not only the Ukrainian SSR but also the entire Soviet Union up to the accession of Mikhail Gorbachev to the position of CPSU General Secretary and President of the Soviet Union.
1944�1987: as a closed city in the Soviet Union
As early as July 1944, the State Committee of Defense in Moscow decided to build a large military machine-building factory in Dnipropetrovsk on the location of the pre-war aircraft plant. In December 1945, thousands of German prisoners of war began construction and built the first sections and shops in the new factory. This was the foundation of the Dnipropetrovsk Automobile Factory. In 1947 and 1948 this factory produced the first cars and special military automobiles. However, on May 9, 1951 the USSR Council of Ministers decided to transform the main shops and sectors of this factory into a secret enterprise, which included not only special military vehicles but also powerful rocket engines and different modern military aircraft. The former Dnipropetrovsk Automobile Factory was transferred to the Ministry of Armament of the USSR and it received a new name � the State Union Plant #586. Joseph Stalin suggested special secret training for highly qualified engineers and
