(first posted 6/26/2016) Some time around 1955 as the campaign for country-wide construction of prefab concrete apartment blocks (‘Khruschev barracks’ as they became known ) picked up pace, the government leaders held close discussions about the future of Soviet city planning. One of the contested topics was whether the city should account for a proliferation of personal cars. Unfortunately, a rather short-sighted opinion prevailed. According to which, the people should mainly rely on public transportation, and in case they need a passenger car, stick with rental vehicles and taxis as needed. That would greatly simplify the infrastructure and cut costs, since there will be no need to accommodate wider roads with much heavier traffic, parking spaces and other infrastructure. Most properties would not have a single parking space, just a narrow access lane for emergency services and occasional taxis.
Despite all this the private car ownership continued to grow steadily, until positively exploding once AutoVAZ started baking Ladas in previously unseen volumes. So the main problem for the freshly minted proud (and that was not a figure of speech, people were indeed proud) owners of all these mobile treasures was where to keep them. In other words, they needed garages.
As mentioned before, difficulty to source parts and their pricing lead to a wide-spread petty theft of everything that could have been removed from a vehicle quickly and without special tools. If a vehicle appeared abandoned or apparently left unattended for more than a couple of weeks, parts would start to walk away off it, ultimately leaving just a bare carcass. It would eventually disappear too.
Wipers, wheels with tires, outside mirrors, external lights were the prime targets. I remember once our out-of-town relatives stayed at our place and had to leave their Moskvich-2140 overnight near our apartment block. The husband had to sleep in the car with a small ax clutched in his hand. My dad made security wheel lugs of his own design, ensuring the wheels would stay on the car.
The windshield wipers by default would be removed and tucked under the driver’s seat to only be mounted when it rained. In all other times pieces of vinyl pipes would be slid on the tips of wiper arms to prevent scratching the precious windshield in case you accidentally twisted the wiper knob.
Funnily, except for the property crimes, the streets were safe for everybody – even for young kids. I remember in summer leaving home together with my parents (they walked to work) and staying out till noon, when they’d return for lunch and to feed me, and then I’d be out again till 6. All we had was the sparsely placed public telephone booths for communication. And that seemed normal. I do not recall any horror stories, other than kids being especially stupid and inducing bodily harm to themselves. And that was a norm.
But I digress. Back to vehicle storage issues.
On some evenings, or on weekends, I’d join my Dad in my most favorite ritual back then. That was to “go to the garage”. The reason would have been to either pick up the car, to bring some stuff or food home or vice versa, to prep the car for some trip or to work on it. Or for something else, like sorting out mess on the workbench, cleaning or some such.
For people in the West it is difficult to comprehend what was so special in a simple act of walking across your backyard to a detached vehicle storage, or even just passing through one of the house doors to get into the attached one.
But garages in Soviet Russia were different. The closest analogy that comes to my mind is the storage depots here, ones that look like a long block divided into standard compartments, each with its own gate.
That was one of the most common solutions to a parking problem for the growing class of private car owners in the USSR. Most often, it would go like this: at a large factory, research institute (our case) or some such, an initiative group would approach the trade union bosses with a request. That would normally be backed up with several VIP signatures. The requesting party would engage the city/town administration about allocating some land, usually the least usable lots on the outskirts, where the factory would help the future owners build their “garage cooperatives”. All future owners would participate in the construction.
There would be always some other outsiders brought in too. One small group would be the “useful contacts” – like our garage neighbor, a towering elderly gentleman of impeccable appearance and great sense of humor, Uncle Tolya, as I called him. He was a director of a local road construction enterprise (no private firms or contractors, remember). He helped enormously with construction machinery, materials, etc. I doubt he paid anything for his garage, where he kept his grey and always shiny Volga GAZ-24. Another definite outsider that I vividly remember was the guy with a blue Izh exactly like ours. He was either from Police (Militia), OBHSS or even KGB. I only remember that his Izh haв always been very clean, he never used seat covers (a universal must have back then) and the guy was always positive and drove defensively.
Sometimes he would give us a ride home. The other group would be war veterans and distinguished elders. And of course whoever managed – through bribing or by association – to wriggle into the list of participants.
An average garage cooperative consisted of anywhere between several dozen and many hundreds of units. The whole area would have had one gated entry with a remote gate with several emergency gates that were normally closed. The main gate was controlled from the storozhka (the gate-house). In our coop it was a brick shack, that had several compartments and 2 rooms.
One compartment was for the guard dogs (there were two of them, one called Kardan (Propshaft) and the other Krestovina (U-joint). Of the two rooms one was a meeting room where the coop governing board would gather once a month and the watchman could take a nap on a large sofa. The other compartment, facing the entrance, had a table with gate controls, a wood stove, a kitchenette, and a couple of tired armchairs. What I remember most vividly though is the smell. A heavy mix of old rags, dogs, tobacco smoke and fireplace. If you planned to return or leave during the night, you had to warn the watchman, so that he’d either stay awake or at least would set an alarm clock. Another option was to leave the car right in front of the gate-house if you were not sure about the time (or the watchman on duty was notorious to have a drink or two before going to sleep).
The standard size for the concrete walled unit varied, but would run at 5.0 – 5.5 meters in length (15-16.5 ft), . 3.5-4 meters wide (10 -12 ft), and 2.5 – 3.0 meters ceiling height (7.5 – 9 ft). A set of must have upgrades would immediately follow the construction: the inspection pit and the root cellar. One less popular, and subject to approval from the coop board of directors, was to raise the roof. Ours stood proud 2 or so feet taller than others’. It made for a lot of extra space to keep stuff and the precious car parts.
As would be natural with such scarcity of resources, every unit would quickly turn into Alibaba’s cave full of treasures that the owner would hoard given a slightest opportunity – tires, oils, body parts, and more. For many it would also serve as a remote storage of home stuff, like old clothes (very little would be thrown away back then), kids’ clothes and toys that they grew out of (boy I loved that box filled with toys of my elder sister and some relatives of ours), Xmas decorations and much more.
The root cellar would be filled with crates of potato, apples, carrots and other vegetables that could be stored there for winter. A set of shelves would contain endless glass containers with self-conserved food, jams, honey and whatnot. If you made your own booze (wine or moonshine), the ‘product’ would sit there too, just not in plain sight.
With this kind of wealth contained within, the swing gates would be either of heavy gauge steel or built from thick wooden blocks and covered with steel sheets. Nobody saved on additional security measures either. Interestingly, if break-in happened (very rarely in the 70’s, but became common from late 80’s, with the beginning of the “new post-Soviet order”), they would be through the roof. Ours had an extra layer of wood planks to prevent that.
Another important stock found in garages, was gas in steel or aluminum jerry cans.
Speaking of Gas… It was plentiful (relatively so for private car owners) and affordable, 1 liter costing around 0.07-0.1 rubles. The average monthly net wage then was 150-180 rubles. The quality was steady, but the gas was leaded and the octane rating low. Grades 66 and 72 (both MON) disappeared by the end of the 70’s, but 76 (would be octane rating 80 in the US money) remained as the most common well into the early 90’s. Grade 93 (same as ‘Regular’ here) only became more or less widely available from 1971 with Lada’s introduction.
I only remember one gas station with 6 or 8 dispensers for the whole town with the population of around 100,000. Considering the number of cars it was not too bad. The supply was not awfully consistent though, especially with 93-octane (once in a while you’d have to wait in a long line). So conversions of engines to run on 76 by inserting an extra-thick gasket under the cylinder head to lower the compression ratio were very popular (my dad built several for himself and a few for buddies). Additionally, people liked to have 40-60 liters (or more in later years, when shortages began in earnest) stored in their garages, most often in the coolness of the inspection pit.
Whereas the private commerce was no-no, barter economy of a sort flourished. Professional truck and bus drivers did not pay cash for gas when they filled their vehicles. Rather, if the fleet was large, a transport organization would have its own dispensers or would give drivers vouchers or coupons to hand over at the gas filling stations. The amount of fuel was calculated based on some averages and the usage controls were notoriously loose. That left a lot of room for slack, which would be sold off to owners of private cars. Oftentimes, instead of cash an alternative – the so called ‘liquid currency’ (vodka, pure alcohol or good moonshine)- would be used.
In the mid to late 80’s, when the Party tried to fight alcoholism and availability of vodka was greatly reduced, the going rate was a 20L of 76-octane for one 0.5L bottle of vodka.
This taxi guy in the photo ran out of gas and needs it real quick, so he offers double of what the average exchange rate would be.
Despite this gas hoarding, I do not recall any devastating fires – I only remember three or four cars that burnt outside because owners would start doing some welding work when drunk or with gas still in tank.
These garage coops formed the basis of a funny and unique subculture that formed around car ownership in the USSR. A garage was for many Soviet males a man cave, a happy home away from boring home (with wife and kids), a true men’s club.
Except with some issues getting fuel and parts, your story makes it seem like the USSR was a nice place. This is a very different view than the mainstream American media, which made the Soviet Union look like a miserable place, with all the evil empire talk. Having never been there, I wonder what it was really like.
I guess they were just regular people just trying to get by like everybody else.
I suppose it’s a historical thing too – Czarist Russia was basically a feudal nation so even if standards of living lagged the US and Western Europe they were improving pretty consistently from everything ever seen in Russia until the last decade or so of communism.
I’d say that you over-generalize and simplify. the realities of czarist Russia were rather complicated, and the country differed drastically. In US realities, it would be like judging the life of the whole country by looking at New York and its dwellers only.
Just like any country and social order, there were pros and cons. I guess the same Pareto rule applies – sort of – whereas 80% would be totally satisfied with the system, the remaining 20 actively opposed it.
Soviet media pictured the Western world in pretty gloomy colors as well – it was all part of the information war. War that imagination-free and toothless Soviet propaganda lost completely, long before the Cold war was over and Gorby handed over the country to the looters that came after him.
Just my impression, but an average middle class Westerner would not like the life of his peers in the USSR, I am certain. It was way different in too many ways and not too many people are good at adjusting that much.
We have at least one family friend who was kicked out of the USSR in the 1970s for being Jewish so there were other downsides.
Noone has ever been “kicked out”, with the exception of a few distinguished dissidents (Bykovsky, Solzhenitsin, Aksenov).
Others actually had to fight for the right to leave. They were not treated well once they went down that path, that is true. But everyone knew the hurdles.
Lucky he wasn’t gay.
Hombre,
This is a great look at a fascinating aspect of Soviet car ownership that I never even thought about, despite my many experiences with Soviet-made cars and periodic writing about them. Since I was never more than a visitor in Russia, as either a tourist or someone living in an American bubble, this aspect of Soviet/Russian car ownership was never visible to me.
I am very much looking forward to the next installment in this series, about the people of the garage coop subculture.
Thank you Sir, much appreciate your comments!
Interesting story. I imagine it was quite a journey to get a car storage area from idea to reality. The same is now true in the west with all the approvals, zoning issues, and not in my back yard attitude. Were there any forces of opposition to them in the USSR? I would suppose not being in the five year plan itself would be a big issue.
As I understand it, it was actually encouraged, if not officially so. It was a way of placating the masses, making life easier for them. The Soviets knew they couldn’t give their people everything, but they were smart enough to be very generous with things that actually didn’t cost any money. If a coop decided to build some shacks, the labour was free, the material donated, what was really the cost? And it gave more back to the community, or actually was what built a community in the first place, out of a group of people that perhaps hadn’t even socialized without it.
The same with the “dacha” lifestyle, the dream of having a small summerhouse out on the countryside. The state were very generous in allocating space for dachas, often in areas that otherwise would have gone to waste, like near railway lines or near power lines and so on. In that way, millions of city people could have a lot for their own use to farm potato and and cucumbers and whatnot. I’d guess everything stored in those root cellars was made by themselves from their own backyards.
In that way, there was a kind of informal lifestyle, people had access to the countryside, they had access to garage, they had access to the city. And if they had a garden, they could make as much food as they wanted. It was just a way to let people have some freedom doing their own stuff without interference. And I think that was a very smart move by the Soviet state, even if all of this evolved informally. This and all the cheap vodka was a major vent for a lot of people that perhaps didn’t have much else to chose from.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacha
All very true!
Very interesting point about the dachas. In my ignorance, I had assumed they were all left over from the czarist period. After all, some say in Europe that anything built in the last 100 years is still new.
I’ve known about a lot of this from Russian immigrants to Israel… Funny thing, we used to do the same thing with the wiper blades and for the same reason but also because Israeli sun would kill the rubber relatively quickly. It was never as bad as the USSR in so far as car ownership was concerned with, but it was a socialist (if not communist) country until the late 70s and many people did not have any car at all.
fascinating article. makes me feel nostalgic for the old ussr even though i have never been there.
My thoughts exactly. I suspect it’s due to the whole concept of basic vehicle maintenance being rather universal, regardless of the locale.
The more I meet and talk with born Calgarians of older age, the more I have an impression of deep spiritual similarities between Alberta of say 1960-80-s and my home country (modern Russia is rather alien to me, I should admit).
It was just a different world – slower, not as filled with information, which you had to really dig, but at the same time kinder, more natural and humane.
Terrific up close look into normal life in the USSR .
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I can’t wait to read more stories .
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You’d be surprised at how many Rural areas in the U.S.A. had no garages with the housing making a simple box to work in , very dear indeed .
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60 years late I still work out side , now I have a slab of Concrete to work on a an awning to shade me…..
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-Nate
Well, I do not know of more northern states, but at least you had the option of going to all those Midases, Iffy Lubes and whatnots in case your ride needed attention. In the USSR you had to rely on your own resourcefulness first and foremost.
No , we didn’t ~ in those days there were no chain stores Anywhere near the rural Farming areas .
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Most Farmers were appallingly poor .
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Your stories are very good and I await more .
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As you said , in the older days people often stood to gether and helped out , bringing in crops , helping raise barns , dig water wells and outhouse pits etc ….
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Most Americans do not realize that more people in America had a telephone than did flush toilets well into the 1960’s.
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-Nate
“Most Americans do not realize that more people in America had a telephone than did flush toilets well into the 1960’s.”
Funny, from mid-60’s USSR/Russia was exactly opposite, and the trend stayed well into the late 90s.
I just returned from a trip to visit family in Altai Krai (Southern/central Siberian part of Russia). In smaller villages, outhouses are the norm, but everyone has a cellphone. Hot water is typically not found inside of the house, bathing is done in the banya (sauna) out back. My cousin has the gas tank of a Zil truck rigged up with a tap and shower head as a makeshift summer shower outside. This is probably the poorest of the poor as far as what you’ll see in rural Russia. Most of the population lives in more urban environs.
That’s kinda slick that if you left a car unattended long enough the whole carcass would disappear. I knew a guy who had a ‘dead’ VW Rabbit and for whatever reason decided to cut it up with a sawzall and throw the pieces in dumpsters at apartment complexes. He said it took a couple of days and 10 blades, but he got it done.
In hindsight, I suspect he didn’t have a title so salvage guys didn’t want it.
My parents are taking a Baltic cruise in a couple of weeks, and are visiting St. Petersburg…they have never been to Russia, but I suspect it’s a VERY different place than it was several decades ago.
Wish your parents good luck with the weather, which is wildly unpredictable there. And the so called White nights in Saint Pete are fascinating, if they make it there before they end (10 July or so according to this year’s forecast).
Here is some Saint Pete views from the mid-70s from a Soviet-Japanese movie “Melodies of White Nights”.
Thank you for the interesting info and good writing. The piece illuminates interactions I had with Soviets in NYC concerning vehicles, much obliged.
I remember hearing lots of tales of NYC blizzards, when the only taxis you could still fetch, were driven by ex-Soviets, who did not fear the snow and cold. Dunno if true or not.
Interesting feature on an aspect of life in the USSR we never knew about. Brings back memories of visiting Poland in 1973 for six weeks with my folks. Those who could afford cars certainly cherished them. I also recall Car owners were very careful not to drive drunk as they did not want to lose the freedom to drive. Penalties were severe and the luxury of being able to travel where every you wanted was greatly cherished.
Car ownership in Eastern Europe was certainly an exercise in patience back then. As the feature pointed out, parts were hard to come by unless you were involved in some thievery during the night. Thankfully it all began to change for the better after 1990.
Drunk driving in both USSR and Russia is epidemic. Always was, still is.
Which is sad. I met lots of rural folks who started their day with 100 grams of vodka during breakfast and then would proceed with driving a truck, a tractor or a combine.
Well, just saying what I observed in northeastern Poland. Perhaps those people I met whether family or friends of family weren’t so foolish back then to drink and drive. They really feared being jail or worse having their vehicle seized after working hard and waiting to purchase a car.
Very cool. Very jealous of anyone with a grease pit! The stories of hoarding of parts and liquids has its parallel for Westerners in the 1970s… but mostly in the old car hobby, before the net, when it took a lot of research and sometimes a payoff or two to get a rare part before someone else did. When you went to a house or a flea market and the vendor unwrapped the old newspaper from some sort of gem, you immediately made plans to tell the story to your buddies.
This isn’t meant to compare that situation with the shortages in The Union, but the human way that people got around them seems very similar.
Life under communism sucks. Period.
My previous life and reading this just confirm it. Where I came from, my friend who is a mechanic (and very good at that) has told me horror tales of what it takes now to buy a new battery. Something that was readily available before, the only step needed to buy it was to show up at the store with the cash.
I won’t even go into the difficulties (as in lines, rationing, ridiculous prices) my mom or my in-laws have to go to get food. Their lives are miserable and I’m glad we took the decision to move to this beautiful country. People is losing weight due to the massive food shortages. You don’t need to hoard food when it is readily available at the local store.
Your stories are fascinating because of that. At least for me, they confirm what I experienced in real life. Communism doesn’t work, will never work and the sooner people wakes up to that idea the better. Unfortunately, and looking at the comments here, we seem to be going in the opposite direction.
I can only guess what would have happened to whoever pissed off the cop guy there. Instant “expropiation” (or more properly theft, as the police would very likely distribute the loot between them) of the garage content anyone?
You seem to throwing around -isms without researching the matter first. Even the official Party line was that the USSR managed to build “a developed socialism”, whatever it was. Communism was a distant future that noone believed in.
Also, I would suggest you being very careful with any self-proclaimed -ism, as in many cases the contents do not match the label even remotely (e.g. Chinese “communist” party and state)
Hombre, with all due respect, I don’t care what the official line of the communist party was. As in not a single iota. Sorry.
A spade is still a spade. Whether you call it “developed socialism”, “Socialismo del siglo XXI”, marxism-leninism, maoism, Castro-communism or sugar coat it however you want, the truth of the matter is, and will always be, the whole idea doesn’t work. Period.
I find your writings inmensely interesting because it shows how people lived in the Soviet Union back then. Your pieces and pictures are so good I can read between the lines how awful is living in those conditions. To boot:
1) No access to decent cars. Although they are certainly interesting, what is portrayed here are shitboxes compared to what Europe or the US were cranking out their factories during a similar period. Don’t get me wrong, I love cars and think the Niva is one really cool 4×4. Now, keeping them on the road was likely hard work because among other, road conditions were likely bad and parts were not readily available for fixing. The fact that you had to store the wiper blades, $20 in parts tops, so they didn’t get stolen is telling. Not to mention the tale of your relative having to sleep in the car to protect it. You mention fuel hoarding. Why would you need to hoard fuel if the supply is steady?
2) Food hoarding. Right there you are showing there were issues with food supply. To which degree, I cannot tell. Again, no need to hoard that level of food if you can easily access it.
3) There was an intel man in the coop. He for sure knew what was going on there… and by extension his bosses. What you reckon would have happened if someone pissed him off or had an altercation with him? You know, and very well, what happened to the enemies of the state.
I come from a country where this rubbish system of government and economical management was chosen by the people, via elections, to be installed. The Comandante Intergalactico, now dead, never lied to anybody, he said clearly where he wanted to take the country; something to which I am eternally grateful. 17 years later, what could have been an oil producing power with much improved quality of life for all its inhabitants, is now a massive slum. Literally. Which is incredibly sad. Here, I see everyday what it could have been… and will never ever be.
Currently people is scrambling to eat, making massive lines to be able to buy a couple of basic food staples. The government with its policies basically DESTROYED the whole agricultural supply chain. Now the raw materials to produce food is mostly imported.
A car battery? something I would buy straight from the counter needs nowadays: an appointment – to check the car effectively needs a new one. Another appointment to go and buy the new battery. And mind you, if you don’t hand over the old one, they don’t give you the new one, so care has to be taken to avoid getting the stuffed part to be stolen. We can both agree the whole process is ridiculous, but what used to be plentiful is now scarse and rationed.
No offense, Athos, but your comments are more than a bit unfair, not just to Hombre Calgarian, but to Paul as well, who has done a credible job in keeping CC free of the political vitriol that seems to infect other automotive forums like a cancerous plague.
I’ve read both articles that Hombre Calgarian has posted about the automotive culture of the USSR. In both accounts, he neither condones nor condemns communism, to say nothing of western values such as capitalism or democracy. The articles simply serve as a medium for him to try to convey the stark reality of what it was like to own a car in the Soviet Union, to an audience unfamiliar with the topic. As the author actually lived in the Soviet Union during this period, I would say his opinion does carry some weight…
I get that you’re upset about the tumultuous state of internal affairs in Venezuela, but perhaps a more effective means of proving your point would be for you to write your own article about that country’s automotive culture, or maybe how it changed and evolved during the Chavez reign. You certainly write well enough to do the topic justice, and I for one would enjoy reading what you have to say.
@Eric
No offense at all. I agree with you in that he has done a god job describing the auto scene and providing context on how life was back then.
Cannot agree with you on the other part of your comment.
Regarding other websites, I rarely post anymore in many of them. No civility, fun police, rampant PC, far too much BS…
Lastly, I stopped being upset about Venezuela’s state of affairs a long time ago. What I feel is inmense sadness. Such a waste, so many opportunities lost.
@safe as milk
During the 80’s lots of people had to do the chain+paddock to avoid having their batteries stolen.
Another common modification was to use Chrysler key barrels for the boot latch of GM cars – they were more robust and harder to tamper.
your ordeal with the car battery reminds me of something that happened to me here in new york about 30 years ago. i left work at 2 am on the west side of manhattan in what was then an area where the junkies and drunks went to sleep. my dart wouldn’t start. it tuned out that someone had stolen the battery. i walked around the neighborhood until i found an all night service station that mostly worked on taxis and bought what appeared to be my own battery back from them for $50. capitilism after that, i invested in a padlock and chain for the hood. capitalism at it’s finest.
So are secure engine compartments a more recent thing? In all the cars I’ve owned, the hood release was inside the car, making it pretty impossible to open the hood from outside (unless you could jimmy it through the grille, but you’d probably have to break or remove the grille to do that). And in all the cars I remember of my childhood, I can only think of one that you could open the hood from outside–the ’79 Fairmont. I always figured that was kind of an outlier, since the ’79 Malibu used an inside release.
Very interesting indeed. Somehow it remembers me the 60’s here in Colombia because the government closed all imports (to protect the precaurious internal industry) so the lack of parts and new cars converted all the unattended cars in “spare parts deposits”. Was exactly the same with the wipers blades…always inside the cars and the scratched panoramic windshield was a common issue. As in Cuba we grew with pre 1958’s cars until they finally opened imports during 1969. Thaks for your part 1 story. 🙂
THANK YOU Mr. Calgarian ! I cherish the international aspect to this online community, which shows us our similarities through automobiles, trucks, and motorcycles, and simultaneously reminds me of the things I take for granted.
Love this series! Such a great opportunity to be shown into a previously hidden world. I echo the comments of 79 Mark V and appreciate the insights shared by this author. Thanks so much!
no political comments. it’s just heartening to read about people anywhere overcoming obstacles and gathering to pursue a common passion or meet a need. i admire the resolve of the Russian people and it shows that good ol’ know how and ingenuity isn’t exclusively American. and i can’t say these scenes are much more rustic than some of the back alley garages that still barely stand in my rust belt town.
I see many Russian dashcam videos where drivers are confronted by unyielding oncoming vehicles in narrow driveways of apartment blocks much like the one shown in the first photo. The encounters sometimes turn into nasty confrontations and this revelatory posting gave me some context behind the narrow driveways.
I’m loving this series and your writing is excellent! Keep up the amazing work!
There is a classic Russian comedy film called “The Garage”, from 1980, which satirizes the situation with garage co-ops and all the difficulties one faced in the process of finagling a garage space. Most Russian speakers know this film very well. Some recent DVDs of it do have English subtitles.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079193/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Yes indeed, but to fully understand and appreciate all the layers of irony and sarcasm (suppression of free speech in the USSR, anybody?) one had to be intimately familiar with the realities. Even younger Russians born in the late 80’s have trouble getting it.
Hombre, you paint a picture so well with these postings. An automotive culture so alien to me, yet I feel totally immersed in your recollections. CC is the ideal venue for your work. Thanks
A topic near and dear to my heart!
My family still has our old ’71 ZAZ 966B, kept in our garage in Akademgorodok. It has stainless steel mufflers welded up from scrap steel left over from the construction of the particle accelerator where my dad worked as a physicist. Lots and lots of stories of having to find spare parts or motor oil for it, or standing in line for tires.
what an amazing photo!
With a largest-in-the-country aviation research and test flight facilities in town our loot came from their scrap yards. Stainless steel mufflers – yeah, certainly. Our Izh had one and it lasted 25 years, until the car was sold.
The best find was the 1.5m3 titanium water tank from a strategic bomber. We used it for outdoors shower at our dacha. Painted black, it would heat up just nicely during the day.
What kind of Izh did you have? My grandpa had an ’87 IZh 2125 “Kombi” in baby blue that he got new in ’87, with some good seniority near retirement. Perfect for hauling chicken feed from the market and potatoes from the Dacha down the dirt roads near Biysk. I agree, Moskvitch was the better fit for rural use. Leaf springs for better payload, and from what I recall him telling me, a higher mounted distributor for water crossings. As a kid I thought the Izh interior was pretty luxurious, with that perforated “leather” shift boot and the shift knob with the engraved-metal looking pattern. Cool removable radio with batteries and antenna for easy picnic listening. My great uncle bought a tangerine colored ’87 Izh 412 Moskvitch sedan at around the same time.
This Russian (modern) review captures the essence of Moskvitches rather well:
Ours was ’77 as well. The video surely brings a lot of memories. But the presenter is mighty annoying.
Ha! The radio was also notable (the presenter is too young and ignorant to know that) for several short wave ranges that made it a breeze to listen to Radio Liberty, Voice of America, BBC and other “enemy voices”.
“With a largest-in-the-country aviation research and test flight facilities in town our loot came from their scrap yards. Stainless steel mufflers – yeah, certainly. Our Izh had one and it lasted 25 years, until the car was sold.
The best find was the 1.5m3 titanium water tank from a strategic bomber. We used it for outdoors shower at our dacha. Painted black, it would heat up just nicely during the day.”
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You would have made a good American Farmer…..
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-Nate
Thank you, Nate. I will keep this in mind if I decide to drastically change my lifestyle. 🙂
Please ~
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Do _not_ think I’d ever suggest being a Farmer to anyone , I didn’t hate it per se , I just discovered I liked being a Mechanic far better and living in Town was more to my liking too =8-) .
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-Nate
Interesting articles from the days of the Soviet Union, thank you! I grew up in 70’s Poland before emigrating to Canada. There are of course a lot of parallels. The housing complex I lived in was designed with something like 1 parking space for every 10 residences. At the same time, Poland had an explosion of private vehicles, mostly the Fiat 126 during that decade. Parking lots and garages were set up anywhere there was empty space, all around the neighborhood. Those “trips” to the garages were a familiar event.
The one political thing I will say is that the worst thing about Communism was lack of hope for the future. People were aware that unless one is “connected” to the ruling elites, their entire life will be a sort of static existence. By the time you retire, regardless of your capabilities, you will be lucky to have a basic apartment, a color TV, a telephone and if you are really lucky, a shitty car. People became demotivated, apathetic. Very few cared about the work they do, and did the minimum just to stay out of trouble. Such a system is destined to ultimately fail.
It was not really the predictability of the described future, rather the fact that whatever you do and however hard or well you work, you would not jump over this limit that much – same as an always drunk, semi-conscious neighbor or a lazy colleague. This kind of forced equality and the fact that the basic needs were kind of met (food, shelter, basic health care) and people then could want more.
The West was able to answer that desire with consumerism, social lift (opportunities for careers and own business) and the open borders, while the Soviets could not and would not, dispensing cheap vodka instead. Sad.
Interesting window into a setting that I expect has evolved but not passed. It reminded me in a way of the lockup garage complexes you see in the UK, I wonder if our UK readers could say if they arrived in the same way or rather were more predominate in areas that were built before cars were around?
Like so many commenters above, I’d just like to express my appreciation for your articles. Sometimes we don’t stop to think how the mundane details of daily life can differ so much from place to place and over time. I find it utterly fascinating! If anyone out there reading CC lives (or has lived) somewhere where the car ownership experience is/was very different from what we take for granted in North America, perhaps they could submit something similar to Hombre’s articles and make this an ongoing series (I recall there is already somewhat of a precedent with Matthew Streeter’s COAL articles about buying/owning cars in Japan). I’d certainly read eagerly!
Thank you, will follow with the next part, hope it will not take too long!
I wonder if texting/cellphone usage while driving in the former Soviet Union is as rampant as it is in the US today.
I’d guess it is somewhat close. Although road conditions and the pace at which situation changes in traffic is so much higher there. And AT only became popular in most recent years, with MT still being the king (Ladas do not make an auto to this day, AFAIK).
The great difference I notice every time is the disdain for safety belts, which is rather surprising.
A fascinating look into a culture and a time gone by. Looking forward to the next one!
Interesting story about a different time in a different place.
Curiously around the first of the year, when the drums of war were starting to beat, but it hadn’t yet started, I bought a computer from a guy with an accent. He was proud to be from Ukraine, although happily now living in the US. He specifically mentioned that the old Soviet Union while lacking, wasn’t all bad, and crime was what he mentioned. He said for whatever failings it had, there was no crime.
“No” crime is still a relative term.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Chikatilo
regrets but i have zero interest at present in reading anything to do with the ussr or its subsequent political guises. maybe in a few months, but not right now.
I missed these two articles first time around, so glad to get to read them now.
HombreCalgarian, if you’re still on the site, I’d love to hear how you came from living in the USSR to being a Canuck. Based on your writing skills, I’d guess you have been in the West for quite a long time. Thanks for writing these, very interesting to read about mundane, everyday car life behind the old Iron Curtain.
I had to divert to other things so my muse left me for a while. But just yesterday I was looking for some info on one of the GM deadly sins to reference to a friend and noticed the repost of my old write-up. I am mightily surprised somebody would be still interested in these tales of the country long gone.
I started learning English while in school and then gradually progressed through the years. I’ve been in Canada for 17 years now, although still cannot consider myself fully canadized, so to speak. Still somewhere in between.
CC is fundamentally a history site, so automotive related history from any time or place is going to be of at least some interest. And given the general lack of inside info from Soviet-era Russia and that it was the U.S.’s Cold War enemy, I’m not surprised at all that it sparked interest in 2016 or today.
These articles were great. I would love to see you do more writing here and not necessarily just on Russian topics.
I agree 100%. Somehow I don’t recall this series when it first ran here, and it’s wonderful to read it now.
My grandparents emigrated from the Soviet Union, and my parents traveled back there in the 1970s, so Soviet life has long fascinated me. I remember as a kid looking at my parents’ pictures of Moscow, Kiev and other cities with wide, empty streets and hardly any cars, and being utterly amazed. When I was in middle school, I used to show my folks’ slides of Russian cities to my history class, and everyone was amazed, since pictures of everyday Soviet life were almost impossible to obtain in the US back then.
Thanks for your article which answers some of the questions raised by the first article. Your description of static street theft is reminiscent of the fate of Iraqi cars under impoundment. What was the motivation for car ownership in urban areas given the situation description.
The motivation, aside from prestige, was dead simple – freedom to travel. Even though travelling beyond state borders was unavailable for 99% of the population, we still had 1/6 of the Earth’s land mass to explore. Even if you deduct the uninhabitable North and add scarcity of paved roads and (in Soviet times) near zero road facilities, there were still tons of places you could drive to. Before they had my sister and me, my parents in the early 1960s have traveled regularly. (Now get the map 🙂 From Moscow they drove all over the Russian South (Crimea, Ukraine, the Baltic republics (now all separate countries), visited relatives in Siberia, some 4000 kms away, and so on. All in their Moskvich-407. I do not have pics of that car, but here’s one that is exactly the same,
Until recently, most Westerners couldn’t find Ukraine on a map. Not so now, so I guess the geography lesson is one small silver lining to the tragedy there. If USSR citizens had freedom to travel, provided they had the car, within the Soviet satellite countries that would be a lot of interesting potential destinations. I imagine once one got a taste for roadtrips, it would be painful knowing that going further afield and touring western Europe wouldn’t be possible.
Thanks Hombre for your universal motorhead documentary. First person narratives are my preferred way of learning about a country and it’s culture. I feel too much gets in the way via traditional media channels. What I noticed most are the many positive aspects regarding the value you learned to place on material resources and community collaboration. That is something very much lacking here in the US. The neighborhood I live in has good diversity and skews towards lower income. When ones resources are significantly limited you learn quickly to share and that sharing is often more efficient than owning.
Your family car with it’s custom fabricated titanium exhaust system from a particle accelerator allows for some serious bragging rights. I’m looking forward to any new stories or reposts.
Like Fahrvergnugen I have absolutely no interest in anything relating to Russia anymore, I know this is a hobby site but cannot overlook what they are doing, murdering Ukrainians and threatening to nuke the EU and Britain on their TV news, its the 21st century for Christ’s sake.
They call themselves communists but I don’t think communism as Marx described has ever existed, they are just another form of dictatorship like the Nazi
I have watched Russian TV shows such as the Method and Better than Us , enjoyed them and was intrigued enough to consider visiting the country but I cannot put aside the politics of what is happening now and stomach the nostalgic reminisces of car culture over there.
The only reason for reading this article was to see the response from others, surprised by what I have read, a European would be considered very ignorant if they could not point to Ukraine on a map and Europeans significantly outnumber the USA