Patterson on Siegelbaum, _Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile_

[eh.net-review at eh.net]

Published by EH.NET (August 2008)

Lewis H. Siegelbaum, _Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet 
Automobile_.  Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008. xvii + 309 pp. 
$40 (cloth), ISBN: 978-0-8014-4638-2.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Perry L. Patterson, Department of Economics, Wake 
Forest University.


Siegelbaum’s _Cars for Comrades_ takes the reader on a fascinating and 
extensively researched journey into the social and cultural history of 
the Soviet automobile.  Along the way, the author provides a wide new 
range of stories that illustrate the functioning (or dis-functioning) of 
the Soviet command economy, and that help explain occasionally puzzling 
cultural and economic phenomena associated with Soviet cars and roads. 
Siegelbaum also suggests that the problems associated with this sector 
were not isolated, but reflected general challenges to the formal 
economy and its political management.

Siegelbaum approaches his subject from several angles.  The first three 
chapters provide individual histories of three major producers:  ZIL 
(Moscow), founded in 1916; GAZ (Nizhni Novgorod), a company dating from 
the First Five-Year Plan in 1928; and VAZ (in Togliatti), a product of a 
1966 mega deal with Fiat that helped vastly expand the Soviet passenger 
car fleet in the nation’s final two decades.  A fourth chapter 
concentrates on the road and highway system; a fifth reflects on the 
ways in which the early Soviet state chose (in part due to military 
concerns) to promote the acquisition of driving skills; and a final 
major chapter analyzes the (sometimes grudging) post-WWII transition 
from trucks to cars and into something more of a consumer culture.

As incomes and economic complexity grew over time, the Soviet state 
found it necessary to produce more and more vehicles of all sorts, and 
private cars in particular.  But policymakers also discovered that the 
existence of cars generated additional demands for consumer services, 
and discontent when the economy could not provide them.  As Siegelbaum 
puts the matter, “cars, cars, and more cars seem to have played a 
particularly large and invidious role in popular disillusionment with 
Soviet socialism.” Worse perhaps for the Soviet state, private 
automobiles and the culture that grew up around them also opened up 
numerous ways for individuals to evade and undermine the official 
command economy.  For example, cars facilitated private conversions, 
private dealmaking, the generation of “unearned” income from taxi rides, 
and the unplanned movement of (sometimes stolen) goods.

_Cars for Comrades_ is a richly and eclectically documented volume.  In 
addition to a wealth of archival material, Siegelbaum considers a 
variety of pop-culture sources, ranging from propaganda posters to 
literature to the pages of the Soviet car aficionado magazine _Behind 
the Wheel_ [_Za rulëm_].  This approach provides a sustained and 
detailed picture of how cars and trucks fit into the Soviet economy and 
its cultural mindset, and how this “fit” varied over time.  For example, 
the regime sought early on to popularize car _driving_ via auto rallies, 
races and exhibitions, but at the same time made very few provisions 
(roads, service stations, garage space) to make private _ownership_ a 
“consumer-friendly” proposition.  As private cars ultimately became more 
available, the horror stories associated with such ownership seemed to 
multiply.  This book is replete with tales of bribery on the road and at 
the gas station, and of owners whose lives came to be consumed by the 
search for spare parts or by the constant need to prevent the theft of 
existing parts, such as windshield wiper blades.  The author has also 
documented well the rise of a macho car culture that seems to have 
stemmed in part from the frequent breakdowns that early Soviet vehicles 
incurred, along with early cultural assumptions that women were not 
“made for” professional (truck) driving.

For economists, Siegelbaum has captured in this microhistory of the car 
a wealth of truths about the Soviet economy more generally.  He 
masterfully illustrates many of the consequences of pervasive price 
controls, of state decisionmaking regarding the quantities and types of 
consumption goods, and of a world where property rights are not 
supported fully either by the state or by the populace.  He describes 
well why, despite attempts by the state, a collective rental market 
solution for the use of cars never seems to have flourished -- among 
other difficulties, stolen parts by both customers and rental agents 
seem to have been common.  Simultaneously, he reminds that, even at the 
height of political repressions, there existed semi-private clubs of 
hobbyists and amateurs -- in this case, car-enthusiasts, who would 
gather together for collective support and competition, and even to 
voice independent criticism of state policy, say, regarding road 
maintenance.  (The state, however, was not particularly responsive to 
such lobbying efforts.)

Written as a cultural history, _Cars for Comrades_ will leave economists 
wishing for more sustained and consistent time series data on auto 
production and ownership and on road construction, as well as on the 
efficiency aspects of output in this sector.  Most readers would benefit 
from more careful attention to adjustments for inflation, and to 
comparisons between car prices and typical incomes and accumulations of 
savings.  At times, the book becomes a bit overly detailed regarding the 
nomenclature and technical specifications of particular vehicles -- a 
distraction from the main story.  More detail would have been welcome, 
however, on the implications of the Soviet past for the future of the 
post-Soviet auto industry, the highway system, and car culture.  (As of 
2008, it appears that remaining Soviet-era car brands have been largely 
supplanted by new and used imports and locally-manufactured foreign brands.)

Despite the above limitations, many readers will relate to and learn 
from this very fine book with ease.  Siegelbaum’s occasional references 
to American car culture remind us of the importance of these vehicles in 
other settings, and help the reader to ask:  why exactly did certain 
features of the Soviet economy and society turn out as they did?  The 
book could thus readily serve as an introductory text designed to 
motivate undergraduate students to explore the Soviet (and other) 
command-style systems in a broader context.  It will provide an 
enjoyable and thought-provoking read for students and researchers from a 
wide variety of social science and humanities disciplines.


Perry L. Patterson is Professor of Economics, Lecturer in Russian, and a 
Core Faculty member in the program in Women’s and Gender Studies at Wake 
Forest University.  He has published on Soviet and post-Soviet financial 
markets and macroeconomic policy, and is currently working on a textbook 
entitled _Economics for a Multicultural Future._

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