Siegelbaum, Lewis H Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile Siegelbaum, Lewis The Faustian Bargain of the Soviet Automobile (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 363 not really enough to rectify this structural tension. But this is an impressive book that has the merit of making the history of Soviet intelligence accessible to a wider scholarly audience. It will be very helpful to teachers and students alike, and also of interest to the more specialist general reader. School of History, University of Kent Philip Boobbyer Siegelbaum, Lewis H. Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2008. xvii + 309 pp. Glossary. Maps. Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Index. $39.95: £20.50. Siegelbaum, Lewis. The Faustian Bargain of the Soviet Automobile. Trondheim Studies on East European Cultures and Societies, 24. The Program on East European Cultures and Societies, Norwegian University of Sciences and Technology, Trondheim, 2008. 32 pp. Notes. NOK39.00 (paperback). These two titles — a full-length academic monograph covering the entire history of the Soviet automobile and an occasional paper focusing on the late Soviet period — offer a welcome fresh perspective on Communist society. Lewis H. Siegelbaumbeginsthelongerbookbyidentifyingatheoreticaltensionbetweenthe collectivist ethos of Soviet ideology and the car as ‘an object of individual desire, a mobile private space’ (p. ix). Indeed, we learn that Stalin preferred to distribute personal cars to Soviet notables, while Khrushchev promised the Soviet people an abundance of taxis and rental cars, rather than privately-owned vehicles. The Soviet automobile revolution came late, in the 1970s, and in connection with the Brezhnev regime’s focus on consumer goods. For decades the Soviet automobile industry served first of all the state-run economy by producing trucks; 1972 was the first year that it churned out more cars than trucks. Professor Siegelbaum brought to this project his considerable expertise in the social and labour history of the Soviet Union. The monograph’s chapters offer as much information on the construction of car factories, their workforce, and the drivers of their cars as they do on the cars themselves. The book is organized thematically rather than chronologically. The first three chapters are devoted to three major car factories: ZIS (later ZIL) in Moscow, GAZ in Gor´kii, and VAZ in Togliatti. There is inevitably some repetition across the chapters, because the first two factories were constructed during the First Five-Year Plan and all three faced similar challenges during the post-Soviet period. At the same time, the cars they produced marked different periods and different social trends in Soviet history. In Siegelbaum’s apt phrase, ZIS limousines represented ‘the Soviet state on wheels’ (p. 27). Originally based on Packard, they were produced using imported American presses and cutting and stamping machines, as well as the slave labour in a Gulag camp that specialized in leather upholstery. These large SEER, 94, 2, APRIL 2016 364 and heavy luxury cars served the top Soviet brass. Stalin was driven around in an armour-plated seven-ton ZIS-115; he also recommended a change in the insignia on the grill for the entire ZIS series, thereby perhaps underscoring his symbolic ownership of the brand. After all, ZIS stood for the Stalin Factory. The car factory built in the city of Gor´kii was the first attempt at establishing a Soviet Detroit. The largest automobile plant in Europe when it was completed in 1932, it was the result of Soviet cooperation with the Ford Company. The famous M-1 model, or ‘Emka’, in Soviet parlance, was copied from the 1933 Ford V8 Model 40, but supplied with a four-cylinder engine. After the war GAZ made the first Soviet car that ordinary consumers could purchase, the M-20 Pobeda (‘Victory’). The later Volga models, the M-21 and M-24, were the preferred means of transportation for mid-ranking bureaucrats and successful Soviet writers. It was the Togliatti project that propelled the Soviet Union into the age of mass car production. A mega-deal with Fiat in 1966 resulted in the construction of an integrated car factory in the new city conveniently renamed after an Italian Communist leader. The factory marked Lenin’s 100th birthday in 1970 by producing the first VAZ-2101 Zhiguli cars (based on the Fiat-124 and exported under the name Lada). By 1974 the factory was producing 660,000...