The Socialist Car: Automobility in the Eastern Bloc

Acknowledgments

vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Socialist Car was put into gear thanks to the willingness of the Berliner Kolleg für Vergleichende Geschichte Europas (BKVGE) at the Freie Universität Berlin and its managing director, Dr. Arnd Bauerkämper, to host the conference from which this book emanated. Luminita Gatejel, then a graduate student at BKVGE, deserves special acknowledgment and thanks for having served as local organizer. Corinna Kuhr-Korolev, another contributor, always responded promptly and with sound advice to all my e-mailed queries and expressions of anxiety, thereby becoming a closer friend. The other contributors are to be thanked for their cooperativeness at every stage of the writing and revision process. I also express my appreciation to Mark Aaron Keck-Szajbel, Leslie Page Moch, Gijs Mom, Nordica Nettleton, and Sergei Zhuravlev for their various contributions at the conference; to Mark Kornbluh and Walter Hawthorne, successive chairpersons of the Department of History at Michigan State University, who provided key support; to Tatiana Gushchina at the Lumiere Brothers Photogallery for granting permission to use the photograph on the book cover; and to Candace Akins and Jamie Fuller for agreeing to copyedit and doing such a splendid job. Finally, thanks again to John Ackerman for sticking with the Socialist Car. THE SOCIALIST CAR ...