Give Us the Automobile! From the History of Soviet Motorisation 1920s–1930s

As elsewhere in the world, the story of Soviet motorisation began with what the press described in the 1920s as a “conflict with the horse”: horse-drawn carriages were reluctant to yield to motorised vehicles, “the bow-legged horse clinging tightly to the pavement”. Thus far the competition was weak, since there was a catastrophic shortage of cars. While France had over 890,000 cars in operation, the UK over a million and the US over 22 million, the USSR had just 20,600. The Soviet automobile fleet was a “museum on wheels”, consisting primarily of old, pre-revolutionary vehicles. To them Viktor Shklovsky dedicated his 1928 article “Moving Junk”, and the leading automobile magazine Behind the Wheel called them “pathetic invalids only nominally considered to be cars”.

The need to develop domestic car production was obvious. By that time the USSR already had an automobile plant, the AMO (Moscow Automobile Corporation). It was at this plant that Alexander Rodchenko shot his acclaimed series of Constructivist photos for the magazine Dayesh. Soviet specialists studied the experience of Europe and the United States in order to transfer advanced technologies to Soviet soil, and by the early 1930s AMO already had, as noted in Behind the Wheel, “improvements that Ford doesn’t have”. At the same time they set a course to free themselves from import dependence: Behind the Wheel magazine published articles one after the other with headlines like “Liberating Ourselves from Foreign Dependence”, “We Make Ourselves What Used to Be Bought from Bosch”, etc.

Over time the number of vehicles in the cities grew, but along with the cars came chaos. Ilf and Petrov wrote in “The Golden Calf”: “In our vast country the ordinary automobile… has assumed the menacing features of a fratricidal projectile. It destroys entire ranks of trade union members and their families”. The statistics of those years are staggering: in 1927 there were 72 accidents for every 100 vehicles, and in 1933 the number of accidents exceeded the number of cars (122 accidents per 100 vehicles). Reportage photographs of accidents and magazine articles are also featured in the exhibition.

New traffic regulations were needed. “The need to regulate and eliminate the incomparable chaos on Moscow streets is beyond doubt. No wonder foreigners consider Moscow drivers the most reckless worldwide,” commented a writer in 1930. As a result the 1930s became a period for the development of traffic regulations, many of them still in effect today. A separate section of the exhibition shows propaganda posters explaining the rules and urging compliance.

In addition to mayhem on the roads, drivers faced other challenges: a shortage of garages, making the rental fees for car ownership ruinous; endless lines at petrol stations, where only one out of two pumps was operational and petrol was delivered by horse-drawn carriages; the road construction that had turned Moscow into a “city hit by an earthquake”, and so on. A body was required to oversee resolution of all these problems and “set as its goal the motorisation of the country and the improvement of roads”. So in 1927 the Avtodor society was founded; it existed until 1935, and its history is outlined in the exhibition.

Avtodor introduced children as well as adults to automobile culture, organising clubs and thematic lessons. Under the society’s guidance a “two-million-strong army of children” was involved in “the great work of road construction”. The era of motorisation notably influenced children’s literature — cars were the heroes of many books, with illustrations by Vera Ermolaeva, Vladimir Tambi, Olga and Galina Chichagov, and other prominent artists of the Russian avant-garde (these publications are shown in the exhibition).

The apotheosis of Avtodor’s activities was the car rallies it organised, which became a cultural phenomenon. They were used to test vehicles, but also as an instrument for automobile promotion and political propaganda. The most famous and important rally, which tested the “performance of all components and parts” of Soviet cars, took place in 1933 and followed the Moscow-Karakum-Moscow route. The events of this extremely long and dangerous race are recorded in newsreels by the remarkable director Roman Karmen and photographs by iconic Russian photographer Max Prekhner, whose works from the MAMM and Mardjani Foundation collections feature in the exhibition. Decades later, the motifs of the Karakum rally inspired the packaging of the famous Kara-Kum confectionery, which is still produced today.

In addition the exhibition includes materials dedicated to the first women’s car rally (1936), as well as a children’s 110-kilometre race on homemade pedal cars (1934). An original GAZ pedal car from the 1930s is on display. Motorcycle rallies were also held. On show is the first mass-produced Soviet motorcycle, the L-300, from the collection of the Polytechnic Museum. This model participated in the 1931 test run and was ridden by Timur in the film “Timur and His Team”.

Another smaller part of the exhibition is dedicated to experimental developments of the 1920s and 1930s, including aero-sleds developed by legendary aircraft designer Andrei Tupolev, as well as gas-powered cars that dispensed with petrol.

The exhibition will be accompanied by an educational programme for adults and children, and for the younger participants MAMM will host a pedal car rally. Special tours and workshops will be organised for children of all ages, where they can draw, sculpt and computer-model the transport of the future. Every child who attends the exhibition will receive the gift of a Kara-Kum candy, with wrapper design inspired by the Karakum rally.

MAMM is grateful to the following for providing exhibits:

State Tretyakov Gallery;
Tsaritsyno State Historical, Architectural, Art and Landscape Museum-Reserve;
State Historical Museum;
V. V. Mayakovsky State Museum;
V. I. Dal State Museum of the History of Russian Literature;
State Central Museum of Contemporary History of Russia;
State Central Museum of Cinema;
D. G. Burylin Ivanovo State Museum of History and Local Lore;
Museum of Moscow;
Professor N. E. Zhukovsky Scientific Memorial Museum, a branch of the K. E. Tsiolkovsky State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics in Moscow
Mosfilm Cinema Concern;
Russia Today International Information Agency;
Moscow Transport Museum;
Polytechnic Museum;
Vologda State Historical, Architectural and Art Museum-Reserve;
A. N. Kosygin Russian State University;
Russian State Library;
Russian State Children’s Library;
N. A. Nekrasov Central Universal Scientific Library;
Archive of Lilia Ryazanova;
Archive of Ninel Ustinova;
Archive of Rodchenko-Stepanova, and personally Alexander Lavrentiev;
MYRA collection;
Mardjani Foundation, and personally Rustam Suleimanov;
Vadim Kunin.