The early-morning sky was as brown as the snow blanketing the yards of Moscow's leading steel factory, Serp i Molot. Ash from the tall, belching smokestacks mingled with snowflakes and fell steadily over the thousands of workers who streamed through the front gates. The factory, with its sprawling array of redbrick and wooden buildings, blast furnaces, rolling mills, outlying yards, and loading docks, along with its spur railroad, covered dozens of square blocks within the southeastern section of the city. Pushing past the jostling crowd of sleepy workers, Aleksandr Somov made his way briskly through the dark yards and into the factory. He passed a group of workers from the open hearth furnace, one of the most dangerous shops. Their dirty padded jackets, pocked with burn holes, bore mute witness to the wild sparks produced by the furnace, in which steel was smelted and poured. As head of Serp i Molot's party committee in early March 1937, Somov knew hundreds of the factory's employees, from the workers of the open hearth up to the director himself.