Cars of the Soviet Union: The Definitive History

The story of the Soviet Union’s cars has to be seen in the context of a planned society in a vast, relatively undeveloped territory in which everything was planned well in advance, in which consumer items were not a priority until well after the Second World War when the country had developed the necessary heavy industry to be in a position to develop consumer products. This extraordinarily detailed study charts the history of Soviet cars from the birth of the Soviet Union in 1917 until its demise in 1990, with a conclusion about the post-Soviet era. It is the story of an insular, state-run car industry in which the carefully thought-out ideas of ministerial planners, rather than fickle customers in a free market, determined what cars were made in a country where the open road was often a 300-mile track across a windswept steppe. This is a fascinating book, full of rarely seen photographs and illustrations, largely in color, that will interest all car enthusiasts.