The F-34 was designed before the start of World War II by P. Muraviev of Vasiliy Grabin's design bureau at Factory No. 92 in Gorky. The gun was superior to both contemporary 76.2 mm guns, Gorky's F-32 and the Leningrad Kirov Factory's L-11, but it was the latter that had already been approved for the new T-34 medium tank. The initial T-34 Model 1940 with L-11 was in production when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The F-34 was ready for production, but Marshal Grigory Kulik's high-handed interference with tank appropriation had made the relevant bureaucrats too frightened to approve the better gun.