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.

The story of the Soviet Union’s cars has to be seen in the context of a planned society in which everything was planned well in advance, and 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.