Вестник Самарского университета: История, педагогика, филология (Oct 2022)
Causes and consequences of truck production predominance in the Soviet automotive industry in the first half of the XX century
Abstract
A significant predominance of the number of produced trucks over the number of passenger cars was a feature of domestic automotive industry development until the 70-ies of the XX century. This fact did not correspond to the global vector of automotive industry development. The paper analyses the causes and consequences of this phenomenon by involving mainly a corpus of statistical sources of Russian and foreign origin. The socialist foundation of the political structure of the state and the focus on the development of heavy industry in the economy are identified as the fundamental factors that determined the specifics of Russian automotive industry strategy. By comparing the volumes of freight turnover of railway, river and road transport, the length of communication routes of various types both within the USSR and with the corresponding indicators of foreign countries, the author picks out the features of the Russian transport system that determined the containment of the USSR automotive industry development as a whole and the passenger car industry in particular. The paper denotes poverty and low level of education going with it to be among the social phenomena that prevented the mass distribution of passenger cars in the USSR and did not allow to form consumers of passenger car industry products in the country. Based on domestic and foreign data sources, the article concludes about the stability, regularity and validity of the predominance of produced trucks over passenger cars in the economic development of the country in comparison with the pan-European ones. It is noted that among others the result of this sectoral strategy is the contribution of truck production to the industrial breakthrough of the USSR in the 30-ies and the victory over Nazi Germany and Japan in 19411945 as well as a complex of diverse phenomena that exhibited in various sectors of social and economic life of the Soviet Union. The author claims that the change in the ratio of manufactured trucks and passenger cars in favour of the latter occurred in the 70-ies of the XX century as a result of the victory in the inter-party struggle of the concept of peaceful coexistence. The use of new data allowed the author to identify the influence of politics in the Soviet socialist state on the development strategy of the automotive industry as one of the key sectors of the economy
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