Business: Ivan Behind The Wheel

More cars for the comrades, but the road ahead is bumpy

To Marxist purists, there is nothing quite so socially corrupting as that ultimate expression of status and self-indulgence, the automobile. If so, the Soviet Union's guardians of socialist virtue need to keep on their toes, because the chariots of decadence are popping up on roads all over the land. The U.S.S.R. is entering the auto age, and neither the state-owned companies that make cars nor the customers who buy them know quite what to make of the transition.

As a result of an...

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