20 Temmuz 2025

Anatoly Chernyaev’s 1972 diary (3)

The Soviet automotive industry through the eyes of a Renault executive

In his diary entry dated 21 April 1972, Anatoly Chernyaev recounts a striking anecdote. During a meeting with Alexei Kosygin, the then Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union, a senior Renault executive offered the following remarkable assessment of the country’s automotive industry:

“Excuse me, but the cars manufactured by ‘Moskvich’ and in Izhevsk are at the level of cars that we produced 15 years ago.”

[The Moskvich was a car brand manufactured in the Soviet Union from the 1940s onwards and widely used across the Eastern Bloc. Izhevsk, located in the Udmurtia region, was a major industrial city where both passenger cars and military vehicles were produced. The Moskvich 412 was also manufactured at the car plant in this city.]

Moskvich 408 – Soviet automobile advertisement photo, 1970s.
These remarks, of course, went far beyond a mere technical comparison between cars produced in France and the Soviet Union. Embedded in the Renault executive’s assessment was a tacit scorn for all the Soviet Union’s claims, rooted in its bureaucratically planned economic system, concerning technological and industrial advancement.

Some car models manufactured in the Soviet Union -much like many other supposedly advanced products of the period- appeared on paper to meet contemporary specifications: OHC engines, disc brakes, and export-grade safety certifications. [*] Yet models such as the Moskvich 412 consistently fell short of their Western counterparts in terms of production consistency, material quality, and overall driving experience.

In 1972, when the Renault executive made these remarks, the Stalinist regime was still capable -despite its failure to achieve quality in the automotive sector- of imitating form. From an outsider’s perspective, cars produced in the Soviet Union -some of which resulted from cooperation with Fiat- did not appear significantly inferior in design to those manufactured in advanced capitalist countries. Yet the gulf between them never closed, despite the vast resources channelled into the sector, especially during the 1970s. By the 1980s, for instance, the Lada Samara (VAZ-2108) was still being fitted with carburettor engines, while car manufacturers in advanced capitalist nations had long since adopted fuel injection technology.

Thus, by the latter half of the 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Soviet cars came to represent more than just a means of transport. They became mobile symbols - enduring reminders of both the system’s deepening internal contradictions and the groundlessness of the Stalinist bureaucracy’s claim that, by pursuing national autarky within the capitalist world economy, it could swiftly outpace the imperialist nations.

[*] A clear double standard characterised Soviet automobile production: while efforts were made to maintain higher quality for export-bound vehicles, markedly lower standards were applied to those intended for the domestic market.

See also: 

Anatoly Chernyaev’s 1972 diary (1): The poverty of bureaucratic planning

Anatoly Chernyaev’s 1972 diary (2): Selling off Siberia to the imperialist powers

Anatoly Chernyaev’s 1972 diary (4): Famine, cholera, and the summer retreats of the Stalinist bureaucracy

Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Production Complex: A microcosm of the structural problems of Soviet industry

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