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Soviet Cars: History of the Copy-and-Paste Industry — Part 3 of 3

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A good exam­ple of how the ideas to make a new car were born is the story of the fac­tory “Com­mu­nar”. The Min­is­ter of Car Man­u­fac­tur­ing made a call to the fac­tory where design­ers thought over the scheme of a new Ukrain­ian car and lit­er­ally said: “I heard you were going to make a spring sus­pen­sion from the “Volk­swa­gen” but I actu­ally like the Ital­ian Fiat-600”. Shortly the fac­tory com­menced the pro­duc­tion of ZAZ-965 –nearly the exact copy of the Fiat.

zaz9651 500x248 Soviet Cars: History of the Copy and Paste Industry Part 3 of 3

ZAZ-965

By the way, the next model of ZAZ was the replica of Ger­man NSU Prinz 4. This car was remem­bered by the nick­names “Soap Box” and “Big-eared”.

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Soviet Cars: History of the Copy-and-Paste Industry — Part 2 of 3

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In early 1930s with­out any licens­ing arrange­ments the Soviet engi­neers copied the first lim­ou­sine car  for the Com­mu­nist party exec­u­tives. In 1932 six lim­ou­sines were copied off the Amer­i­can Buick 90L. How­ever,  later the fac­tory pro­duc­tion line was switched to pro­duc­ing cater­pil­lar tractors,so the lim­ou­sine busi­ness was shifted to Moscow Stalin Factory.

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ZIS-101

The car, based on the engine of the Buick and the body copied off the Cadil­lac, was given another non-poetic name, ZIS — 101.  It also had Buick radi­a­tor bars.

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Picturing the Soviet Republics: Ukraine

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This time we are trav­el­ing to Kiev, the cap­i­tal of one of the most sig­nif­i­cant Soviet states — the Ukraine. Below you will find pic­tures from a book called “Ama­teur Pho­tog­ra­phers”, pub­lished in Kiev in 1986.

If you would like to clar­ify what is on the pho­tos  —  do not hes­i­tate to ask.  Click on the mag­ni­fy­ing glass icon for a more detailed view of the full sized images. Please fol­low us on Twit­ter and stay tuned. Thank you.

7 500x379 Picturing the Soviet Republics: Ukraine

An Encounter. (L. Sidorsky).

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Soviet Cars: History of the Copy-and-Paste Industry — Part 1 of 3

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Once some music com­poser said  that “There are only seven notes which com­pose all the music in the world.  No wod­ner some songs sound alike”.  Undoubt­edly,  all cars  have got four wheels, so pla­gia­rism in the auto­mo­bile indus­try is hard to pinch.  In this arti­cle we delib­er­ately ignore a pop­u­lar Soviet point of view that a steam loco­mo­tive, an air­plane and the radio were not invented in Rus­sia.  All we attempt here is to make a small digres­sion into the his­tory of Soviet auto­mo­bile indus­try in order to iden­tify its ori­gins and its development.

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ZIS-110

A Russ­ian  philoso­pher Vasiliy Rosanov once noted that in Rus­sia every sin­gle case of wealth orig­i­nates from theft or extor­tion.  His­tor­i­cally, the econ­omy of the Russ­ian Empire before the 1917 was so deeply inte­grated into the Euro­pean econ­omy that the exchange of ideas, some­thing, which now would have been hugely copy­righted, was very com­mon.  Like, in 1901 in St Peters­burg the car­riage fac­tory Freze and the Riga bicy­cle fac­tory Leit­ner suc­cess­fully assem­bled the French oil engines De Dion Buton as part of Russ­ian car­riages. Another fac­tory Aksai in Rostov-on-Don pur­chased the license for the pro­duc­tion of the Amer­i­can Oldsmo­bile Carved Dash.  In 1906 a Russ­ian engi­neer Boris Lut­skoy organ­ised the assem­bling of  Mer­cedes cars for the Russ­ian mar­ket. At last, the main pride of Rus­sia – the auto­mo­bile Russo-Balt — was made from for­eign parts – the chas­sis with four-cylinder engine was adopted from a Bel­gian com­pany with a Swiss name Fondu.

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Soviet Brands: The Scent Of Communism. Part 1 of 2

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The great short­age of almost every­thing required for nor­mal well being was one of the most dis­tin­guished fea­tures of the Soviet econ­omy. Surely, there was food, clothes and some cos­metic goods in the Soviet shops in 1950s-1970s but the vari­ety was incred­i­bly poor.

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How­ever, the phi­los­o­phy was that the Soviet peo­ple were used to com­par­ing their life stan­dards with the ones of the Sec­ond World War – so any small-time lux­ury was very warmly wel­comed. Being a nation of plain tastes, the Soviet peo­ple were happy to be buy­ing things made in the USSR – they under­stood that even not so long before, it was impossible.

Many peo­ple still asso­ciate the fra­grance “Red Moscow” with their child­hood. All women, espe­cially those who wanted to be ele­gant, were in love with this per­fume.  “Red Moscow”, cre­ated exclu­sively for the Russ­ian Empress Maria Feodor­ovna, in 1913, had quickly become a tremen­dous suc­cess both in Rus­sia and abroad. Henri Bro­card, the owner of the largest Russ­ian fac­tory of pomades, per­fumes and soaps before the Rev­o­lu­tion; had cre­ated the per­fume “The Empress’s Favourite Bou­quet”. When in 1917 his fac­tory was nation­alised and renamed into the “Zamoskvoret­skiy Soap Fac­tory No 5”, the per­fume was also renamed as “Red Moscow”.

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The Very First Miss USSR

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The very though of women com­pet­ing for the title of the most beau­ti­ful was a fairly adver­sar­ial con­cept for the Soviet ide­ol­ogy. A woman, first and fore­most, was a worker, an achiever, a mother and a wife, and nobody would con­sider judg­ing one on the phys­i­cal attrac­tive­ness — let alone allow women spend the valu­able time and money on point­less fash­ion, cos­met­ics and hair styling.

fashion4 The Very First Miss USSR

A uni­form parade was the clos­est thing to a beauty pageant in the USSR. It was an hon­our to par­tic­i­pate in one.

That’s why, when across the globe beauty con­tests became pop­u­lar and wide­spread after the Sec­ond World War, the USSR had its ban on such events. Until 1989, when the very first beauty con­test took place in Moscow — try­ing to find the pret­ti­est of them all.

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