It was originally developed as a "socialist city" (sotsgorod) to house the workers of the newly built Kharkiv Tractor Plant (KhTZ).

In advance of the Germans, most of the industrial plant, including the KhTZ, had been dismantled and moved east or rendered inoperative.

On 14 December, the German Stadtkommandant ordered the Jewish population to be concentrated in a hut settlement near the KhTZ.

[7] According to a Feb. 28, 2022, report from Agroportal24h, the Kharkiv Tractor Plant, was destroyed and “engulfed in fire” by “massive shelling” from Russian forces.

The rights group—which noted the "inherently indiscriminate nature of cluster munitions and their foreseeable effects on civilians"—based its assessment on interviews and an analyses of 40 videos and photographs.