The article examines the formation of the Soviet public industrial discourse in the 1920s – 1930s. Its main source were various texts, written by the political elite members. It notes that an expediency of the Soviet industrial project based on objectives of the military-industrial complex. The «besieged fortress sense» became an additional factor of the «industrial consensus» in that period. As a result the author makes the conclusion that the industrial discourse contributed to the mobilization of the Soviet economy during the great Patriotic war (1941—1945).