Soviet Automobile Industry — Part 1 of 2

Let us start with some sad news. Objec­tively, the auto­mo­bile indus­try in mod­ern Rus­sia is way behind the rest of the world, with a 10 to 15 year progress gap.  Lag­ging behind in tech­nol­ogy, low and incon­sis­tent qual­ity of parts and assem­bling are the actual prob­lems of all car plants in Rus­sia. But was it all the same back in the Soviet times? Today we are going to try and answer this question.

313 051 500x375 Soviet Automobile Industry   Part 1 of 2

Lada 1300/1.2 or VAZ 2101

Back in remote 1945, the year of the Vic­tory in Sec­ond World War, just one day before the Tri­umph Parade in Moscow the team of Soviet engi­neers intro­duced new model M-20 “Pobeda” (eng.: Vic­tory) to Stalin. Stalin was dis­sat­is­fied. “That is def­i­nitely not our best victory”, — he said with a frown. Nev­er­the­less in the fall of 1945 the car mass pro­duc­tion commenced.

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