Automobiles in the Soviet Union - COLD WAR SPECIAL

[Music] I'm your host David and welcome to a special edition of the cold war Channel today I'm joined by our special guest Sergey Astakhov from the Hashanah show Sergey has been with us a couple of times now which has been fantastic very informative and entertaining and really fun for myself and we thought for today's episode that we've actually talked a little bit about something that I know a lot of people out there have a lot of interest in and that's automobiles cars and what cars were like in the Soviet Union and not just the cars themselves but the process of just getting a car of them owning a car and sort of what all of that entailed so sorry welcome to the show thank you very much for joining us here obviously like you know as someone who grew up in the West the idea of car ownership is something that's it's obvious I mean it's an candidate like you know it's everybody unless you live in like a really major urban center it's almost assumed that you have a car will have access to a car but that really wasn't the case especially in the Soviet Union having a car was something that you could get but it took a lot of time correct that's correct and of course it depends those away at several brands deliver not and most desirable car was Vaz Jubilee all they had a name Lada and in detail jiggly is like an Aryan Soviet Union and positive area but when they decided to export car to the foreign markets they realized as Julie sounds like gigolo so it's one of those cases when different languages the name is no good I remember reading something about similar situation was shaving Nova when they tried to sell in Mexico they couldn't sell because in spanish nova means no go right so buying a car so ditch come up with Lada as the expert named for the zhiguli otherwise always call them jiggly that's the everyday name for Vaz and every Soret brand you can sell filled branded with a factory so AZ and every name so always car called be like Valles jiggly so positive volga of the motives of what is a what is a factory so AZ always stands for autumn all the wood some chemical factories we have was jiggly that was the one that everyone wanted really then he had ZZ top erosion that ukrainian made car those we're not is popular but we had quite a few of them well there was a Soviet version of Porsche it was a rear-engine air-cooled car and that's pretty much when it ends really Porsche but those they were popular because government actually had a special program for military and veterans that were handicapped so they modified the deposits into a hand-operated shift there's a lot of people were getting for free ok quite often then they transfer their kids so like in the village I spent summers we had the guy who he wasn't missing limbs but I think he he got hurt during the wars of them in early eighties he got a car for free and I was the only guy knew that had a car in that area but busy so she coolly I my family never owned a car ok but my mother I remember one day when I was probably maybe like eight or nine grades she came from work and she was like very proud she like today I put you on the waiting list and it's like we're talking about like we have a waiting list for Ladas in in our place of work and it takes about nine years now for you to get your turn to buy a car so prices were pretty high some 80s rehgar zhiguli Carlotta was about nine thousand rubles we're talking average salary hundred fifty rubles a month a lot of money I actually tried to do math and if you compare what for example rush Soviet engineer was making hundred thirty rubles a month and he looked what American engineer makes so the price of zhiguli they'll be almost close to price of lamborghini so this is we're talking about waiting nine years and paying the price of lumber Guinea to get this basic car that was based on 1960s design of Fiat 124 I mean if I know a lot of people know that a lot of people don't but in this case Soviet Union decided why we waste our time and money design in the car who can just shop around and will purchase the whole factory and design so I think competition was between Ford and Fiat and Fiat won so they sold there at that time they were designing new generation they just sold the old generation equipment and the whole design to Soviets and this is how we got Ladas and there are those who may be interested Fiat stands for in this case I guess let's fix it again television tomorrow yes was Tony became became a tovarisch that's correct so nine years of waiting and then you have to pay nine thousand roubles to buy it so then so she said it's perfect plan we have enough time to save money at that time you'll finish college you probably get married they'll be your turn to buy a car and they'll be fantastic so it was a great plan but Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 that Liz disappeared and then just got flooded with cheap second-hand cars from Europe and people realized that ten-year-old Ford Scorpio or Ford Fiesta Opel cadet was better than brand-new Lada and it's yeah after that no one was on the waiting list for the laden's so what would happen if you your name gets put on the list and you have 10 years to save the money your name comes up next on the list and you don't have the money what what would happen in that situation well probably you can resell your rights to somebody who is desperate to buy a car with people that money Soviet Union if you have money like cash in any society sooner or later there will be people who are gonna have money and who gonna have a lot of money soon and our kids Georgians people from Georgia not Georgia America Georgia Georgia you know the reason I'm saying that because when Russia had a conflict with Georgia several years ago when the American newspapers and TV announced that Russia attack Georgia all the neighboring states around Georgia they sold off all the weapons and ammunition and that's a true story we can check it out when I heard that Raja Tech Georgia I'm not good with American geography but whatever the states around there's a lot of people who freaked out and I ran to the local ammo stores and they bought old ammo to get ready for their state to be attacked by Russia Florida we're looking at you as possibility so Georgians they were doing really well because there was one of the Republic's that had a nice climate to grow oranges pomegranates and all the other exotic fruits which we could and Romans Ukraine or Russia so they kind of monopolize the market so if you want fresh orange or maybe cucumbers for the new year tomatoes is the only way you could buy it is to go to Bazaar so we have this open-air markets and they will sell it but you need to arm in the leg and another arm it was very expensive so they were making killing so I had no problem to overpay so you can actually sell your rights for people had no problem to pay if you've 15 or 12 thousand rubles or 15 thousand rubles for the nine thousand dollar car so they don't have to wait 90 years that was a quite a common occurrence that you you can just buy a car and turn around and resell it right away to somebody who wants it for more money but then at that point you'd be putting your name back on you go back to the bottom of the list I said if you want to yes that's correct or you can go for the other car that maybe not that desirable and less waiting list some of them I'm not sure how long must be some escritoire available right away but they were still like seven five seven thousand rubles still a lot of money so you can sell your rightful Lada and the money you made on the top of it is turn around buy less desirable car and a bit like a supporter Jets it's like a Ukrainian Porsche fun fact for anybody who's interested in you can google pictures of this the first car that Vladimir Putin ever owned was a separations that's right hey that guy that I said that big military invalid that had a supper was in the village he invited me for right quite often he always was driving around the villages to see who has vodka because you know maybe if our village our story's not a vodka but this next will be so people couldn't just you know be too hard to ride the bicycle 10 kilometers 20 kilometers so that was he is kind of project you just hop in the car like it kiddo you want to go for ride Shirin so he go stop there by something if it's available and cruise around and so I was one so what what type of status was attached to car ownership or was their status attached to car oh definitely I mean if you own Lamborghini you show your status if you paid cash for Lamborghini that's you know if a family has a car apartment and maybe Dodger this is pretty much top Soviet dream was it great life at Soviet Union it was a bit terrible so even people who lived in Soviet Union they have different opinions which is kind of strange to me but there are stories that people relative we had a special waiting list for special people so if you're a veteran of World War two they had a special waiting list was shorter so maybe instead of 90 years it's only two or three years okay maybe there's some jobs that they like if you're a military officer they have their military officers waiting list actually if you're a military officer and you serve like an East Germany Oh Hungary quite often they they would buy export variations of Lada cars and bring them back those were even more desirable because they had some bells and whistles that then come in a for the market in the Soviet Union so expert version if you bring him back that was the best because it had extra for the like spoilers next parts inside so those will be like they'll buy them better car than the regular Lada interesting so otherwise if you will look at the Soviet cars and like for the scale I would say we'll start with zzs opera versus that was the most basic I said air-cooled rear-engined for a while they were making model we called it Ostrosky so the one with the ears if you translate so it has air intakes on the side and it looked like ears so there was a szostak nickname because then they made more slim looking car I think was 968 m model so it has like a little just cutouts in the rear trunk for do care but then I ran a problem you know it's a rare so the cabin is like an airflow when you're driving so the car wasn't getting enough engine wasn't getting enough air to cool it off so they engines were overheating you have to park and wait so people actually started adding this little air intakes at it instead of years was just this homemade metal almost like exhaust for the you know for your stove but there is the hole just weld or screw in on the top to improve and it was kind of funny to see this almost like a snorkel and for the submarine about with this little air intake sticking out in the back for that car then from ZZ the Pirotta so probably will say AZ okay now that this is hard because it's the name of the aft ambulance of what work once again I'm easy if don't even use the board but that LK it's it oh it's some leader okay now come up you guys can look it out but it's a Koopa shell or you mean likhachov a-- maybe Salif I chose it so one of the leaders of the Soviet Union so that musk which was produced in Moscow and that factory shut down now it's not existing anymore it's a shopping center or some development there so that car was a Soviet design wasn't as bad as the peruses note wasn't as good as lot of course my cousin on one of those and I know it was councilor working on it so it was always some kind of repairs lots of home home repairs to yes and actually some people are asking me like if you visit Soviet Union now it's changing but Soviet Union right after and collapse if you go in any big city you'll see a lot of this ugly metal buildings rows of them a rose like any empty areas you'll see this garages it's what it is so when you buy a car for the price of lumber Guinea you don't want to have it parked on the street by your building right right so that's a but while you're waiting on the waiting list to buy a car or if you bought a car is the next project right away you need to find a spot for garage and of course in Soviet Union government wasn't interested in a manufacturing garages they all look random weird so you just go and find buddies who work with metal and they will borrow from the factory some sheets of metal and was just weld some kind of basic almost look like metal tent was the door big enough to fit car in there and that's so it was always still a lot of it around but now that property became so value like in Moscow the night of the long s where arms because at night they'll bring excavators and they'll just start destroying this garages because now that property like in serra moscow we have this acre of this ugly garages that suddenly worth millions of dollars and of course during a circuit you can own properties so like it's your garage on the soviet property see don't really there's no local ownership to the land yes so it's pretty much once they wait if they came to make people agree they like to battle bought this land so which is gonna bring excavator and at night did you start destroying all this and quite often there's not a new cultural phenomena in post-soviet cities is so-called garage mines like here in america maybe in Canada have barn finds some old farmer passed away he open the barn and there is some unique cars from way back covered with that much dust and yeah chicken poop and stuff like that right well in Soviet Union now they have this term garage find because they come in to destroy garage and they open it you know to break the locks and owner died thirty years ago twenty years ago and grandma forgot about it and this car was sitting there sometimes was like ten thousand kilometers on it or less still has original license plate from Soviet Union so they pulled them out and there's a now it's cool again okay they're closing circles right so in beginning of nighties no one wanted Soviet law does everyone wanted to use BMW or Mercedes now that's not cool if you have a Soviet Lada that you can fix and make it look original and we make a lowrider I mean they do everything there now is cars like here they customize they chop them down they lower them it's insane so they go after this garage mines it's a big things grandpa's garage and you find this car its original so many miles and license plate in this summer I guess will be some modification they made only this year so many of these cars but then they realize they don't have that part anymore because factory in Hungary could make in them right so this is unique so almost like I never knew we have this type of situation so yeah this is what's going on right now in Moscow Kiev all big cities they this is like this garages and they got these garage clients so if we keep on moving on the list we have talked about Lada another detail about Ladas we can look at the technical specs that don't remember there's not a lot of horsepower on that car I mean it's car from 60s from Italy right but it was a new kind of design for the Soviet drivers it was they called fish tank was the taller cabin with large glass so what it did it people started crashing a lot in those cars comes we drive a little car with little windows with the loud engine it makes you feel like you go super fast now we have a car that drives way quieter with big windows so you have this speed factor disappear you like your you don't look at speedometer you just feel the speed and people just overestimate their speed they think they go way slower and then the sharp turn and they go in the ditch see that was a I remember reading first issue problem with the ladders they were too good because they were too quiet and they made this false perception of your speed and a lot of people died in a car accidents because they were just giving way over to fast and roads weren't designed for smooth turns so there was a lot of crashes from that as someone who's written in quite a number of different Ladas I find it actually really remarkable to say that anybody would thought it was too good but right well it's got long as a shift from Soviet you and my my wife's father was a proud owner of a Lada here ended up here in Toronto during the eighties and I believe the universal reaction to him bring a lot of home was why really I know I'm in Great Britain than advertised why would you buy and you can buy a new car for the price of used one if you buy a Lada so that was yeah that's interesting so now we move up the ladder so max we're talking about Gaz gas Volga so Volga you couldn't really buy it to have it privately the world weighs only if it was decommissioned so for example that was usually all the Soviet bureaucracy if you were made director of the factory if you communist leader not the highest level yeah middle level it comes with lot with Volga usually black we like black it's solid it means like respectable color so then of course after so many kilometers on the car it might say ok it's time to retire the Commission and then of course the people be waiting to buy that if you have competition for like you know right so otherwise like to go and other people ask me so did you have dealership is like you know understanding the whole concept there's no dealership we have this receiving centre that just the shipment comes from factory and uses stages on a phone like a que comrade iranoff petramco and they're they're on a list from numbers from 1952 they can show up and they need to go bring their take the cash go to the bank pay the cash take the paperwork that they paid the cash go to another company registered they bought the car didn't come with those papers to us and get their car so that was the process so Volga daivam didn't have at all because there'll be leaders and then also workers were used for taxi service okay that was that because it was roomy big they had this funky yellow color usually so you see it's taxi and there could be a separate video about the taxi drivers because those were one of the richest people in the country there were taxi drivers they could make in one day pretty much with the Soviet engineer makes in a month but since the Texas service they put a lot of kilometers on them so then once again there'll be the Commission and then people will snatch those up and the top of the chain will be Zeile chaka and that's we're talking about big guys party party leader if the party leaders like we're talking republic level Republican level old like Moscow top leaders that will be Czech said like Central Committee members that's correct yeah or they also provided some for rent for the weddings so if you really can pull some strings and find they can rent check of because I remember there will be checkers those will be white of course party leaders will have black right but the white one will be like the color of the wedding dress for them right so they'll be part of this driving together to zags so when you're marrying Soviet Union you don't go to church it's a no-no but you have to go to zags and it says official agency when you register your marriage then you sign your witnesses sign as official presentation that's what you get together you drive to Zach's you make it official sandpapers then you go and celebrate have a party and then if you're religious then quietly maybe months later you sneak in some small church and you just quietly do your blessing but otherwise it was not good thing and so this is how the cars worked who's up our budget must give each Lada Volgin check and then of course we had a specialty car : Velika and that's worse than Trabant or maybe a level of the bond it's just a little lawnmower engine to cycle on one cycle a half cycle I don't know and that was the car giving away for handicapped people was specifically designed just for that purposes a tiny car little tiny two-seater and all manual controls on the steering wheel and there was just pretty much like somebody welded a couple piece of metal stock the engine like a find those you could hear them from far away because they were just horrible sounded miracle to chop on to keep a Miller with job on to hear them in Spelvin probably yes oh yeah Gaia Doyle and his guests existed exactly speaking of Trabant for those who may not know trabant was the notorious east german designed vehicle that literally had a two-stroke almost like a lawnmower engine in it and it has been dubbed the worst car ever made was it at all possible that you could see turbines or Basia or Skoda's brought in from other Eastern Bloc countries but surprisingly that we didn't import any like if you see some car like you mentioned there maybe be some choice definitely robots could make that far away so we never saw those at all and I think their body was like made out of plastic - I mean was coke der I think it's Duralast it's only hot cotton and it's laminated cotton sheet so yeah we then import any cars from a social social countries and with import any foreign cars to later they made some exclusions like Vysotsky famous singer nickel Zimbardo so he plays guitar and sings alone songs they left him brain Somerset is I think he long the very first Mercedes like privately in the Soviet Union they might had some import cars for movies like we have to make a movie about America so you gotta have some cars that you know shows America then of course comrade Leonid Brezhnev was a big fan of powerful American cars I think they made exclusion there so he had a couple cars but otherwise no imports and we had only our own cars no like bosses and everything else we import some of those like he comes from Villa was hungry and those are very popular in the world really good bosses who occurs I think what's the occurs yes a comes yeah that's I when I lived in Hungary I spent an awful lot of time riding on dickerers buses so I mean there is some positives of public transportation too like I never worry about snowstorms or anything like that because you just walk at the bus station that's a drivers problem you know candle in the weather here you know like oh my goodness this roads gonna be bad like I never had that problem before because I walk to school like wanna do what my kids complain about school I always like okay need to remember did your father went to school every Saturday and I walk to school every single day and never like week I never seen anyone delivering kids in cars cars were so special that you don't do that for this errands maybe if you go down to Crimea for vacation maybe go to your dodge like a lot of car owners if winter comes those in the garage because salt on the roads you don't want them get rusty you want your car last 10 20 30 years so it's only summer you know good weather card winter comes they'll go back it's public transportation they park their cars in garages like a muffin now what was what was do you recall with the experience of trying to like to perform maintenance okay were there garages where their farts were apparently since I never owned a car my family we never I never care about gas prices or parts but there's a question so pictures Soviet Highway cars driving some visit there's another beauty about Soviet Union we're done we didn't have a traffic jams anything like that it was no morning Rock traffic cross or anything like that if you look at pictures of Soviet Union big cities in a Moscow like downtown it's like hardly any vehicles it's always empty so it tells you there not many people in the cars right but there'll be really interesting situations so like cars drive and suddenly rain started coming down so what do you think Soviet driver would do when the rains start coming down whoa okay what Canadian will do it you drive your car let's start raining what would you do put my windshield wipers on and keep driving like what do you mean you put your winter wipers on well I in my car because I Drive a Japanese car I just handle on the stick and I turn them on right absolutely well socket driver first need to pull off the side of the road then you need to remove his wipers out of his glove compartment put them on then he puts them on because if you leave your wipers on your car they'll get stolen almost instantly because one of the shortages was even wipers so if you look very closely at the pictures of the Soviet cars if you see them close you'll see they all missing it will be just the fingers over ever that part is called will be no wipers cuz no driver would have a wipers on because they'll get snatched away instantly so that's now so that's kind of like if you see movie about Soviet Union and you know serene the old turn the wiper like no you need to pull over for the wipers or no wipers on the car and actually I read the story about one taxi driver he just became a taxi driver and as his first day on the job and it started raining and of course it's no cellphones and he couldn't drive because there was no wipers on the car and then when finally made back to the park with all the taxi drivers she's like where's the wipers like that's in the glove compartment he's like what like yeah you don't want to get stolen you put the moment it's raining that's so fun so parts were really in short supply so people did a lot of repairs themselves and it's pretty much this term capital ad want capital repairs so it's pretty much you take a car apart you work the engine you work transmission here no one does it because it's cheaper to buy a new car for the cost of labor over there was a classic you three or 50,000 kilometers you break your car take it all apart you work the cylinders you work everything put it all together meaning good it go for another 50,000 maybe I don't even think I could even possibly begin to know where to start time so and in another detail like what is the problem right now because we still have a Soviet built housing right in cities I need to find out more because Soviet architects probably had some kind of formula so you have this 16th storey high apartment building bought 10 apartments on each level so we're talking hundred sixty apartments they have a parking spot with like maybe six cars so there was a formula how many Soviet citizens will own the car and that's how they'll be the parking so now since almost everyone has a car or a lot of people it's a horrible shortage of parking because now cars are not that expensive not that valuable so people don't mind to leave them parked by the house but there is nowhere to park so you will see they occupy any where they can find spot on the sidewalks on the grass it's it's really parking situation now which is because all this heritage of Soviet right no car ownership - everyone has a car so it's a quite a challenge with people and of course then garages get demolished because of this values of property the land so it's it's a challenge now - but definitely way more people encourage them back in the Soviet Union interesting do you recall and your family didn't have a car themselves but do you recall what the process of getting a driver's license was like ah I know a little bit about it because when I was in the ninth of ten grade who had so-called labor training okay so one day we would live the school and go to a special now I'll say company but there was a training facility and you could take what professions you want to learn and of course everyone wanted to be a driver because this is the way you could get driver's license like way early but of course no one was a shortage not you know if you have hundreds of kids the older one everyone was to be a driver so I have mental mental work which is whatever was available but it was it was way more intense you have to know how the car works ok not just just the driving rules you know drivin like you need to know what terms mean how transmission works like they will have a question here I need to ask all this they ask you all these questions like mechanics besides and knowledge you know what you do if you're in this Lane and if this cars coming days and this light is long so it was way way more complicated you have to attend courses and sit in class get through that so it's pretty intense interesting do you feel that it this is a maybe a bias is OK in this question do you feel that Soviet drivers were better drivers as a result it's possibility because definitely you don't have and better could be they were younger notice so it was safer and somewhat because Soviet drivers will be people who managed to get money managed to get a car so you don't have a you know crazy teenagers they just drive like you don't have cars without drivers like my first impression coming to America I see this Buicks or Jam Cadillacs they have no drivers like I see empty car because this old person driving behind the steering wheel you don't see him would I have all people driving so they will say from that part but because roads only mostly two-lane roads it was a lot of car crashes because people trying to pass other people and all this so it's dangerous and of course drinking drunk-driving was a pretty bad issue but for example in Soviet Union if you tried to buckle up you kind of hurt feelings of the driver because you sent him a message you're bad driver than trust you sold buck a lot and this is still quite a bit ahead because I come home and tried to buckle up and they're looking at me like what are you doing like if you think it's done beep don't worry about I have a special the plug so they actually can purchase special vlogs and some of them has like a religious saying says God is watching over me and you just click in your belt connectors to car things to the bar without rights and you just drive or they just cut what's on the back completely at one time I remember me and my wife she's American we're trying to buckle up on the back cities like what I do I cut them off a long time ago this is on the way and and here you have it yeah well Syria thank you very much for joining us today this has been a really interesting talk on something that I know a lot of people out in YouTube world have a lot of interest in it's something that I am interested in myself I think it's quite interesting to see how the automotive not just the automotive industry but just how the process of getting a car in the Soviet Union what was involved sort of even after you had a car there's different levels it's it's quite a bit fascinating and interesting topic so thank you very much for joining us today do it so I'm I'm your host David this has been the cold war Channel special special edition with our friend Sergey splitting up from the hunka she'll make sure to check out his show on YouTube he's got quite a number of videos out there that are fascinating more aligns along this type of information and commentary about life in the Soviet Union so thank you very much and keep watching

Channel: The Cold War

Views: 381,441

Keywords: Ushanka Show, Chernobyl, Pripyat, Disaster, Cold War, Kings and Generals, Ukraine, RUssia, communists, capitalists, Cars, World War II, world war, Potsdam, 1945, USSR, US, America, Europe, Asia, Japan, Germany, Kings and generals, sovietization, capitalism, poland, west, east, us, ussr, un, nuclear, paperclip, atom, weapon, race, operation paperclip, operation unthinkable, cold war, Red scare, McCarthyism, japan, indonesia, sukarno, Indonesian War of Independence, west germany, east germany, partisans, anti-soviet

Id: fAqNhB3qDq0

Length: 35min 54sec (2154 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 22 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/COMPUTER1313]

TIL that the USSR would simply buy the design and the entire factory's worth of equipment for car models. For their Vaz 2101 model (exported as the Lada brand), it was heavily based on the Fiat 124 after Fiat beat out Ford in selling those designs/equipment. Fiat was switching to a new car generation at the time so they had no use for the Fiat 124's manufacturing machinery.

They also discussed how the price of the automobiles in the USSR were effectively as expensive as Lamborghinis when the wages were taken in account. And there was a nearly decade-long list. One of the exemptions was wounded veterans could be eligible for a free car.

[u/Darkfire757]

A man in the Soviet Union goes to buy a car. The salesman informs him he can order it, but there is a 10 year wait for delivery. “Morning or afternoon?” The man asks. “It’s 10 years, why does it matter?” The salesman says. “Because the plumber is coming in the morning” the man replies.