I set out to write a book not so much about the varieties and comparative deficiencies of cars in the Soviet Union as what these objects meant to Soviet citizens. The structure and organizing principles of the book were among the first things to become clear. There would be three chapters on the “Soviet Detroits”—the places where automobiles were built, the people who built them, and how the cars and trucks they produced both embodied the state’s agendas and inspired popular identification.
I settled on Moscow’s AMO factory (later known as ZIS and still later ZIL) from where the first Soviet-made motor vehicles emanated in 1924; the Gor’kii Automobile Factory (GAZ) that began turning out Model A cars and trucks in the 1930s and later the Pobeda, Volga, and Chaika; and AvtoVAZ, the giant factory built on the banks of the Volga in the late 1960s and early 1970s to produce the Zhiguli, or as it became known abroad, the Lada.
These chapters would be followed by one on roads and their construction, the forms of labor relied upon to build and maintain them, and other dimensions of the struggle against “roadlessness.” The final two chapters would tell the story of how Soviet citizens experienced trucks and cars in their daily lives, how Communist ideology eventually accommodated the private automobile, but why cars required a lot of semi-legal or illegal activity to keep them on the road.
The book is structured around three axes: foreign and domestic, public and private, and continuity and change.
Contrary to Cold War-era assertions, the Soviet automobile industry was neither entirely dependent on nor completely autonomous from western technological developments. It did a lot of copying, mixing and matching, and innovating on the fly. In the 1930s, Soviet highway design and construction emulated Fascist Italy’s autostradas and Nazi Germany’s autobahns but for better or for worse otherwise depended on indigenous inspiration and approaches.
Foreign trucks and cars—the pre-revolutionary playthings of the aristocracy, the “Renochka” that the revolutionary poet Vladimir Maiakovskii bought as a gift for his mistress, the legendary Lend Lease Studebakers, the trophy cars that Red Army officers brought back from defeated Germany, Detroit’s finest on display at the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow—were icons of a world few Soviet citizens had seen. Yet, Soviet citizens took pride in “their own” luxury models (ZIS and ZIL limousines, Chaikas, etc.), thrilled to accounts of auto races and rallies in which Soviet drivers heroically overcame obstacles, and for the most part leapt at the opportunity to acquire even the most modest of Soviet models.
Actually, even the state’s property—trucks and, until the 1970s, the vast majority of cars—often was appropriated for private or personal purposes by drivers and officials in need of wheels. With the proliferation of privately owned cars in the 1970s and 80s, owners appropriated state supplies of parts and gasoline too. The mutuality of such relationships and the hybridity of forms they produced meant that occasional ruptures in the life of the Soviet automobile did not prevent the emergence over the long haul of a Soviet “automobility.” Many of its features survived the collapse of the USSR itself.
The book’s main argument is that the Soviet automobile had to adapt to Soviet circumstances as much as it provoked adaptation. If the particularities of Soviet socialism can better inform us about the history of cars and trucks, then the Soviet automobile can help teach us about Soviet socialism.
THE WIDE ANGLE
No contextual landscape for the book existed in the sense of a previous body of historical scholarship devoted to the subject. The Soviet automobile did figure in Cold War-era economists’ reckonings of the so-called “second economy.” And sociologists, anthropologists and historians have been producing an impressive number of articles and books on car and truck cultures in many parts of the world (although not the USSR or other former Soviet-bloc countries). But the twin inspirations for the writing the book came from elsewhere.
Visiting Moscow and other ex-Soviet cities during the 1990s, I could not help noticing the tremendous increase in the number of cars and the difficulties urban infrastructures had in accommodating their growth. This observation made me reflect on the intricate relationships among cars, cities, political systems and the choices they offered and constrained with respect to human mobility. It also made me start to notice the presence of cars and trucks in a lot of places previously hidden in full view—in Soviet novels, poetry, films, photographs, and songs, in the speeches by Soviet leaders, in memoirs and elsewhere. Soon my project was awash with material.
The other source of inspiration was my own weariness with the narrative of Soviet history that emphasized tears, state oppression, and violence—a narrative especially prominent in and appropriate to accounts of the Stalin era. This was the period in which most of my previous scholarship was situated. I longed for a subject that was more capacious, that would enable me to trace its arc through the entirety of the Soviet Union’s existence, and found it in the odd coupling of the automobile and Soviet communism.
Of course I encountered tears and shed a few of my own as I struggled to master the vocabulary of auto mechanics. But among the unexpected pleasures of writing this book were several discoveries among the myriad of sources: film comedies from the Soviet 1950s and 60s about a driver and his boss in a case of mistaken identity, about a would-be ice skating princess who settles for becoming the best gas station attendant by filling up the tanks on roller skates; a Stalin-prize winning novel from 1950 in which a truck driver rhapsodizes about the joy of the open road; and Ilya Ehrenburg’s 1929 dystopic novel about the devastating effects of the automobile on labor, the environment and pedestrians. From the latter, I derived the subtitle for my book.
A CLOSE-UP
The spatial requirements and landscape consequences of the automobile age—the roads, oil and gas refineries and stations, garages, tire and parts stores and junk yards, billboards and flashing neon signs, suburban tracts and shopping malls—hardly made their presence felt in the USSR. “Consequently,” wrote a Dutch-born writer in the late 1960s “the Westerner in his own car …moves in an odd way back through time” to “how [our world] once looked, how it was supposed to look.”
Still, already in 1960, Krokodil, the Soviet humor magazine, could print a cartoon of makeshift sheds disfiguring the courtyard of a new apartment bloc, and residents in Leningrad soon were lodging complaints about garages getting “in the way of people’s everyday lives.” The proliferation of private automobiles also had temporal consequences as car owners required considerable amounts of time to maintain and repair their vehicles.
Hence, car owners and car parts suppliers (both of whom were overwhelmingly male) appropriated courtyards, alleys, roadsides and fields for the predominantly masculine activities of car work and car talk. Garages, furnished with old chairs and perhaps a heater and a cot became sites of celebration—places to drink vodka and consume sausage and pickles. They and the interiors of the cars themselves served as alternative living rooms for men seeking privacy and male companionship. The essentially private activities in which they engaged thanks to the car and the infrastructural inadequacies of the centrally planned economy were beyond the surveillance not only of their wives but of the state that inadvertently had fostered them.
All of this was a long way from the vision of Valerian Osinskii, a prominent Bolshevik who did more to give life to the Soviet automobile than anyone else. In a series of articles that Pravda published in 1927, Osinskii called upon his comrades to adopt the “American automobile” instead of the “Russian cart” and thereby put “every worker and peasant in a car within not more than ten to fifteen years.” Osinskii also dreamed of a future in which a car trip from Moscow to the provincial town of Voronezh would mean traveling on an asphalt highway so smooth that the only sound heard would be the swish of tires. Only since the collapse of the USSR have such journeys become possible, but at the same time, the post-Soviet landscape is now littered with the detritus of the automobile age.
LASTLY
In the late 1950s, Nikita Khrushchev, who never had been a fan of the private car, proposed a rental system as an alternative route to automotive modernity. “We will use cars more rationally than the Americans,” he assured an audience in Vladivostok. But even before his ouster in 1964, the system that had lacked funding and provoked innumerable complaints was phased out. With it went the chance for the USSR to take advantage of its relatively late entry into the automobile age and improve on the record of its predecessors.
Cars for Comrades is about more than cars. It is about the chimera of overcoming the gap in technology between the capitalist (First) and socialist (Second) world. Even as Soviet and American engineers were installing an assembly line to turn out Model A trucks and cars in the late 1920s, Soviet journalists were conjuring up visions of a technological utopia, not just a factory out of which would rumble identical machines one after the other, but an entire city, the “City of Socialism” lit by electricity, heated by steam, and with rectangles everywhere. But the capitalist world’s technology was a moving target. By the time the techno-utopian “Soviet Detroit” of the future was actually built—in the early 1970s in Togliatti to complement the AvtoVAZ factory—the real Detroit was definitely showing signs of stress and decay from which it would not recover.
The book’s larger significance is about the intersection of technology, ideology, and material culture. I argue that Soviet socialism exchanged the possibility of an alternative modernity for one much more entangled with the material culture of the western world.
This process was difficult to predict. For much of its existence, the Soviet Union was defined by its leaders as a more rationally organized and socially just polity than any in the capitalist world. The preponderance of trucks—those workhorses among motor vehicles—and the rare privately owned car was consistent with such difference. But eventually the comrades and other middle-echelon personnel wanted to enhance their personal mobility, flexibility, and status. They wanted the wealth within what had become a vast empire to be shared with them not only in the form of access to first-rate educational institutions, vacations abroad, family apartments, and domestic appliances but that most representative of twentieth-century material objects—the car.
In the end, they got their way, sort of.
Question: Cars like the ZIL were only available to the highest of high eschelon Soviet leaders. A car like the GAZ-21 Volga was available – as I understand it – to only 2% of the Soviet population.
I’m interested as to what possible explanation the Soviet government could have for producing luxury cars for the elite.
It is interesting that the Soviet Detroits are referred to. Even the “centralized” Soviets had the good sense not to centralize the auto industry in one town. Being centralized in Detroit is probably one of the biggest factors in the demise of the US auto industry. Neither Germany, Japan nor up-and-comer China have their entire auto industry centralized into one town.
Yes, there are silicon valley, Hollywood and Manhattan, but Microsoft, George Lucas and Warren Buffett do quite well outside of those clusters.
jmo:
Some pigs are more equal than others.
However, so this doesn’t go too far, Animal Farm was written by a democratic socialist.
The USSR was not a socialist country in either the classic, communism without violent revolution, or modern, mixed market economy, sense.
The socialism that people stay awake fearing today is what Marx called bourgeois socialism. It produces rather nice cars in Western Europe and Japan.
All luxury cars were government owned. So, in the perverse logic of Communist propaganda, “belonged to all people equally”. Obviosly, only the most equal ones were using them.
The (ZIL?) in the picture bears an obvious debt to a 56 Packard. Didn’t Boris and Natasha steal the plans for Stalin?
I lived in Moscow from 1992 to 1997 and bought a new Lada Zhiguli 06 for about $4,000. A one-year-old Lada was worth just as much as a new one as the owner had a year to fix everything that was wrong with the car when it left the factory.
Not a bad car. basically, a Fiat 128 — the best of Italian engineering combined with the best of Russian quality control. At least I did not get stopped buy the GAI as often as those driving western cars.
There was a popular joke going around at the time.
Boris has been working hard all his life and his dream is to own a car. He saved enough for a down payment and took it to the car factory. He ordered his car and gave the deposit to the plant manager. He then asked the manager when his car would be ready. The manager looked at his production schedule and replied: “Your car will be ready to be picked up in two years on April 23rd.” Boris thought for a moment and replied: “Two years, April 23rd — can I pick it up in the afternoon?” The manager responded: “Sure. Why do you ask?” Boris replied: “Because I have the plumber coming in the morning.”
Very nicely written piece – I think that Soviet ideology probably had tough fight on their hands, because there seems to be an almost instinctive love affair between people (especially men), and mechanical devices. When said machine also provides some measure of freedom, privacy and status (as well as being beautiful in extreme cases), there can exist a feeling (however misplaced) of “love” for the object.
The one thing that we had over the Soviets was the capitalistic push to create an auto-centric infrastructure that elevated the automobile to above all else. But the cost of that love affair (as we’re reluctantly discovering) is higher than we ever dreamed.
The (ZIL?) in the picture bears an obvious debt to a 56 Packard. Didn’t Boris and Natasha steal the plans for Stalin?
I’m pretty sure that’s a Chaika, and yes, the styling was copied from the ’56 Packard.
Santayana was right.
The west struggled for almost a century against Communism, only to start behaving like our old nemesis as soon as they were gone.
–chuck
My dad waited his whole life to be able to get a car of his own. He was able to buy one the same year I was born (’78). Only to be stuck with it until the Perestroika.
It was a yellow ZAZ-968, air cooled, basically the Beetle of the USSR. The worst and the cheapest. The next morning someone already vandalized it, out of envy. Hand – repainted different shade of yellow for the rest of it’s long life.
We lived in Moscow, and even back then traffic was so bad that we only used the car to get out of town in the summer, only for the car to be parked for the winter. After long sitting it needed basically a complete rebuild.
It is interesting that the Soviet Detroits are referred to. Even the “centralized” Soviets had the good sense not to centralize the auto industry in one town. Being centralized in Detroit is probably one of the biggest factors in the demise of the US auto industry. Neither Germany, Japan nor up-and-comer China have their entire auto industry centralized into one town.
Detroit didn’t start out as the focal center of the automobile industry. Even in Michigan, Detroit wasn’t the only major automobile town. GM started in Flint, and Ransom E. Olds made cars in Lansing. AMC was headquartered in Kenosha, Wisconsin until the late 1970s. Jeep has been closely tied to Toledo since Kaiser was around.
Also, while they obviously had a lot of facilities in SEMI, the Big 3 had assembly plants all over North America. Here in Detroit, towns like Oshawa, Lordstown, Wilmington, Fremont, and Van Nuys are known because they’ve had assy plants and local strikes there would be news here in Detroit.
Bigger cities like Chicago, Atlanta and St. Louis also have or have had Big 3 assy facilities.
Those are just the final assy plants. Add engine plants and other component facilities and there’s no question that the domestic auto industry extends far beyond Detroit.
I think part of the perception has to do with how oversize the car companies are. If the car companies were not huge employers here, Michigan would be perceived as having a fairly diversified economy. It’s a major agricultural state, producing a lot of fruit, soybeans, silage corn and dairy. Pharma is still significant here, though there have been cutbacks. Parke-Davis, now owned by Pfizer, was based in Michigan, and theere are some major generic pharma companies here. Whirlpool is in Benton Harbor. Battle Creek is deservedly called Cereal City. It’s just that compared to all those industries, the car biz is so huge that all else looks small by comparison.
The reason why Detroit became the Motor City has to do with lumber, mining and stoves. Michigan at one time was almost all forest and swamp. Most of the timber you see, even in the wilds of the Upper Peninsula, is second or third growth. A lot of money was made cutting down those trees. So there was capital here. There was also copper and iron mining in the UP. The copper mined in the UP from the time Douglas Houghton discovered it, until the labor strike of 1913 permanently crippled UP mining, was worth more than all the Forty Niners’ gold mined in California. (Unlike the lumber money, most of the copper money went to financiers back east. Calumet, in the heart of Copper Country, had a Paine-Webber office in the 1800s.) There’s still an active iron mine south of Marquette.
With ready fuel and iron ore a relatively short boat ride away, it’s not surprising that Detroit became an important location of foundries. Before Detroit was known for cars it was known for stoves. As a matter of fact, for decades a huge wooden replica of a wood stove sat at the foot of Woodward and later at the State Fair Grounds (where it eventually succumbed to rot). [Click here for a history of stoves in Detroit, the giant stove, and the giant Uniroyal tire on I-94 that was once a ferris wheel at the NY World’s Fair] The foundries and steel mills also made Detroit an important producer of railroad equipment, rails and rolling stock. The Pullman sleeper car was developed and built in Detroit. So were refrigerated cars.
With that kind of industrial and engineering infrastructure in place it’s not surprising that regional entrepreneurs like Ford, Buick, Olds, the Chevrolet brothers and Wm Durant had advantages over automotive pioneers in other cities. Then, once there was a supplier base established, Detroit’s success as the center of the car biz was self-reinforcing.
BTW, this continues till today. Tesla still has an engineering shop in suburban Detroit and even though VW officially moved their HQ back east, they still have about 400 people working in Auburn Hills. I feel confident in saying that every car company or supplier that does business in North America has some kind of office, sales, engineering or production facility in SEMI.
Yes, there are silicon valley, Hollywood and Manhattan, but Microsoft, George Lucas and Warren Buffett do quite well outside of those clusters.
They can only do well outside of those clusters because those clusters exist. Microsoft has plenty of employees in Silicon Valley, Industrial Light & Magic would not exist if Hollywood wasn’t there, and Berkshire Hathaway does most of its business on Wall Street.
The analogous car companies to your ‘outsiders’ would be Toyota, BMW, Hyundai etc.
Bollywood may make a lot of money but I’d be willing to bet that successful Bollywood firms have offices in LA as well.
The USSR was not a socialist country in either the classic, communism without violent revolution, or modern, mixed market economy, sense.
That’s a variation on the “no true Scotsman” argument.
The socialism that people stay awake fearing today is what Marx called bourgeois socialism. It produces rather nice cars in Western Europe and Japan.
As P.J. O’Rourke has pointed out, socialism only works in rich countries that have enough capitalism that wealth is created and taxed to pay for it all. Companies like Ikea, ABB and Husqvarna are very profitable.
From the author:
The book’s larger significance is about the intersection of technology, ideology, and material culture. I argue that Soviet socialism exchanged the possibility of an alternative modernity for one much more entangled with the material culture of the western world.
This process was difficult to predict. For much of its existence, the Soviet Union was defined by its leaders as a more rationally organized and socially just polity than any in the capitalist world.
It’s true, the Soviets were initially sincere when they tried to create a society based on fraternity and equality rather than the individualism and free markets. But humans aren’t a collective species like ants or bees. Human collectivism can only work at the family or perhaps extended family level; no higher. Western Europe and Japan are free-market republics with a larger welfare state than the US. They can be described as “socialist” only in the most minimum sense of the word.
The author’s inference that the Soviet government collapsed because of the lack of consumer goods is shallow. There’s a saying about socialism/communism: “Build it and they will leave.” That’s what started happening in the USSR. Citizens started leaving and the government was forced to turn the country into a prison. People tried to leave because they were prisoners, not because they couldn’t buy a ’59 Bonneville or a Kenmore washing machine.
Cool read!
Cars for Comrades 1917 – Present.
Cars for the People 1908 – 4 Nov 2008.
Cars for the Progressives 4 Nov 2008 – Present.
Voted by the People.
The car in the picture is not ZIL, it’s GAZ-13 Chaika (Seagull in English). Produced 1959-1981.
GAZ-13:
5.52-liter V8. 195hp, 3-speed auto.
Max speed 160km/h (100mph).
Length 5600 mm (~18′ 4″)
Width 2000 mm (~6′ 7″)
Height 1620 mm (~5’4″).
Weight 2100 kg (~4626 lbs)
G. weight 2625 kg (~5782 lbs).
Produced as 4-door sedan, 5-door ambulance and a 4-door phaeton (Convertible) with hydraulically operated roof. Has power steering and power brakes. Body was installed onto 16 rubber mounts onto X-shaped frame. Interior had three rows of seats.
“It is interesting that the Soviet Detroits are referred to. Even the “centralized” Soviets had the good sense not to centralize the auto industry in one town. Being centralized in Detroit is probably one of the biggest factors in the demise of the US auto industry. Neither Germany, Japan nor up-and-comer China have their entire auto industry centralized into one town. ”
There were also assembly plants on the coasts.
General Motors Corporation’s Van Nuys plant closed in about 1992. In the 1960’s, G.M. had a second Los Angeles-area factory, building Buicks, Pontiacs and Oldsmobiles in South Gate. Nearby, Fords were built in Pico Rivera, Chryslers in Commerce.
Ford closed an assembly plan in Mahwah, NJ in the early 1980’s.
GM had an assembly plant in Tarrytown, NY, a Fisher body plant in Syracuse and other operations in Rochester and the Buffalo (Harrison) area. Chrysler had a transmission factory in Syracuse.
Back to mid-America, my Tahoe was made in Janesville, WI. It recently closed although I understand it had better quality statistics than the surviving SUV plant in Texas.
My 69 Firebird was made in Lordstown, OH.
The U.S. auto industry in the 60’s and 70’s was more decentralized than it is today.
That paragon of equality and fraternity, Comrade Lenin, was very partial to Rolls-Royce cars. Stalin was more of a Packard man. By the way, I once had a chance to examine a GAZ-13 Chaika, I was very impressed. It seemed to be a very fine motor car.
Questions for the author: why was the Moskvich left out? At one time, these were sold in Belgium with a (Scaldia?) Diesel engine. What about the (to me, at least) interesting Zaporozhets?
It’s true, the Soviets were initially sincere when they tried to create a society based on fraternity and equality rather than the individualism and free markets. But humans aren’t a collective species like ants or bees. Human collectivism can only work at the family or perhaps extended family level; no higher.
This is what happens when the undereducated try to do science. The lack of inquisitive thoughts is a terrible thing.
Why do societies inevitably form in the presence of people? Why are greed and selfishness consider universal vices? Why are even the wingers always talking about patriotism and other commonly held virtues?
—
The author’s inference that the Soviet government collapsed because of the lack of consumer goods is shallow.
And yet mostly true. The corruption in the apparatus and excess internal politics made just about every venture ineffective and people stopped feeling that society was working for their sake. The compensation for labor doesn’t need to be only money per se, but some form of recompense is necessary to satisfy general human desires.
You know what’s really shallow? Ignorant abstract ideals that don’t mean anything.
As P.J. O’Rourke has pointed out, socialism only works in rich countries that have enough capitalism that wealth is created and taxed to pay for it all.
Largely true. The flip side is that capitalism only works where there’s a decent system of law, tax and regulation to keep it from running rampant.
It comes down to this: democratic socialism sucks, but works better than it’s more ideologically pure competition because it actually takes into account that we’re dealing with humans governing humans, and not prefect little Marxist/Randian entities.
Roader: The author’s inference that the Soviet government collapsed because of the lack of consumer goods is shallow. There’s a saying about socialism/communism: “Build it and they will leave.” That’s what started happening in the USSR. Citizens started leaving and the government was forced to turn the country into a prison. People tried to leave because they were prisoners, not because they couldn’t buy a ‘59 Bonneville or a Kenmore washing machine.
Not so much. When the kids have to live with the parents in a tiny apartment after they get married, because there simply isn’t enough housing, when the merchandise sucks (I used to be a bicycle nut, and Soviet bicycles sucked), and when there’s never enough of what you need, because the centralized system doesn’t allocate resources properly, people are not going to be very happy. There’s an old Russian joke, where at the annual festival at the collective farm, the head tells everyone they are doing so well taht they’ll all have (I’m shortening here) bicycles in 5 years, cars in 10 years, and private planes in 15 years, and everyone is ecstatic. Then Shapiro, a mathematician, raises his hand: why do we need private planes, he asks. Well, says the head of the collective farm, if they have shoes in Moscow, you can fly up and be the first in line.
(Disclosure: my father, Frank Holzman, was one of the foremost scholars on the Soviet Union.)
The reason for the leprous spread of makeshift garages: there were *no* parts and thus the inevitable five-finger discount, the midnight auto parts. Leave a car for a few hours and the wipers would disappear. Leave it overnight and the tires might be gone. So you *had* to have a garage to protect your precious functioning car.
In the mid-90s I briefly had a Russian roommate. He was a scientist (by their standards not ours) that was brought over by an Ag school to learn new agricultural methods and technologies to take back home. Anyway, he had never learned to drive a car and did so for the first time while here in the States. As he stated, even with his state job and being a good standing socialist party member, he couldn’t afford a car (don’t tell Obama about this idea).
Now even though he had a wife and two sons back home, he didn’t want to return home in large part that he felt he had no that would care about what he was learning, let alone he would miss our grocery stores and cars. It was very educational to get to know him.
In the mid-90s I briefly had a Russian roommate. He was a scientist (by their standards not ours) that was brought over by an Ag school to learn new agricultural methods and technologies to take back home. Anyway, he had never learned to drive a car and did so for the first time while here in the States. As he stated, even with his state job and being a good standing socialist party member, he couldn’t afford a car (don’t tell Obama about this idea).
Now even though he had a wife and two sons back home, he didn’t want to return home in large part that he felt he had no that would care about what he was learning, let alone he would miss our grocery stores and cars. It was very educational to get to know him.
Mid 90s, that would be after the Perestroika and the fall of the Iron Curtain. By that time you could buy anything you wanted in Russia (provided you had the money). Probably he did not had that much as a researcher/scientist.
Also by that time being in Communist (is that what you meant?) party would not bring you any advantages (on a contrary)
We’ve had a Moskvitch IZH Combi. Not a bad car, certainly technically outdated at the time of purchase (April 1991). Very practical, reasonable gas consumption for a carburetor engine, but the motor could be a bit more powerful. I still fondly remember taking the battery from home to the garage, wrapped in a goose-down, in -25C siberian winter.
Moskvitch must definitely have a separate dedicated chapter in the book – it was the Corolla of the former Soviet Union.
Mid 90s, that would be after the Perestroika and the fall of the Iron Curtain. By that time you could buy anything you wanted in Russia (provided you had the money).
You could buy anything you want, provided you had money, around late-80s.
You could buy anything you want, provided you had money, around late-80s.
80s I remember standing in line for 5 hours to buy sneakers or a jacket. Or making sure to get to the grocery store early in the morning, or all the food would be sold out. At least that’s how it was in Moscow. Remember – Perestroika just started in the late 80s which brought huge deficit of products.
In Novosibirsk we used to have general food scarcity and poor choice since forever, so the 80s were not really that unique, except for the overnight disappearance of sugar and soap. However, the private enterprises and agriculture started to develop, sure it used to cost three times of what you could get standing in lines, but it was there. In 1991 (or was it 1992?) when prices were allowed to float, scarcity disappeared that same day.
I found this quote, from the DETNEWS site, amusing:
After the fair, the mammoth 86-foot tire was dismantled and shipped by rail to Detroit, where it was reassembled outside a Uniroyal sales office…
…the tire weighs more than 100 tons and took 130 days to rebuild. The tire, described as “the largest ever built,” is designed to withstand hurricane force winds, and certainly blowouts.
Nice. :)
I remember driving past it years ago. I think it was refurbished to look like a big off-road truck tire. I wonder, is the tire still there?
Ronnie Schreiber:
You beat me to the punch with your historical recounting of the history of Detroit for industry. In this age, it’s easy for people to forget (assuming that they were ever taught in the first place!) that the Great Lakes were (and still are) a huge shipping corridor for everything industry needed from fuel to ore to lumber and other construction materials.
We are woefully ignorant about just how much more can be economically shipped on the water (compared to truck or rail).
In the 1990’s I saw some of the barge traffic on the Ohio River. Barge capacity is truly amazing.
Ronnie Schreiber: “…socialism only works in rich countries that have enough capitalism that wealth is created and taxed to pay for it all. Companies like Ikea, ABB and Husqvarna are very profitable.”
Look deeper into IKEA, and you will find that it is owned by an old Nazi, who left Sweden for Switzerland (less personal tax) who by cleverly setting-up foundations around the world, is able to cheat the tax-man just about everywhere, because the foundations are controlled by him and his offspring, and do nothing for society (unlike famous foundations like ZF, Bosch, etc).
Ingvar Kamprad’s actions here were so egregous that even Economist Magazine (no liberal rag) did a piece on his stinginess.
There was also a Russian motorbike industry. I remember Urals (copies of 50s-era BMWs) being on sale in Britain in the early 1970s. They were heavy and primitive, but had a reputation for ruggedness.
40% of GDP in the Soviet Union supported the military. The largest army in the world. The most tanks. The government did not want the masses to have luxuries. The entire economy was geared to support a massive nuclear armed military. If more Russians owned cars, there would be less oil for export. So as consumers, the Russians were screwed. My understanding is the Russian economy has now developed, at least in Moscow, where people have a decent standard of living.
You can buy Urals now in the USA. Back when I was looking to buy one (still want one, just not as serious now) the URALoA would import them and rebuild them. Apparently the quality has really improved over the past ten years. I want the 30s style sidecar Ural – the Ural “Tourist”.
There is a website called EnglishRussia that offers an amazing look into the daily life of citizens today in Russia and offers a peek into the rusting relics of the Soviet era.