The Socialist Car: Automobility in the Eastern Bloc

1. The Elusive People’s Car: Imagined Automobility and Productive Practices along the “Czechoslovak Road to Socialism” (1945–1968)

17 1 THE ELUSIVE PEOPLE’S CAR Imagined Automobility and Productive Practices along the “Czechoslovak Road to Socialism” (1945–1968) Valentina Fava In Czechoslovakia the automobile was not born socialist. After February 1948 the technicians who were involved in the development of the automobile industry had to take into account, on the one hand, the well-established productive practices that were the result of the complex, multilayered industrial history of Czechoslovakia and, on the other hand, the American model of mass production that at the time everyone considered the primary reference for the automobile industry.1 What is more, almost fifty years of “automobility” had created high expectations among both the experts in the sector and the common people regarding how and when mass motorization would come about. Finally, in this young, industrialized Central European republic, starting from the first half of the twentieth century, the automobile, which was destined for exportation and racing, had become one of the symbolic manufactured products of the Bohemian “industrial tradition.”2 This chapter examines the history of the automobile industry and of automobility in Czechoslovakia between 1945 and 1968, retracing the ideological and concrete development of the “people’s car.” It traces the changes in the organization of production that involved the main Czechoslovak auto producer, Ŝkoda Auto of Mladá Boleslav, renamed AZNP (Automobilové Závody, Národní Podnik—State EnterpriseAutomobile Factory) after its nationalization.Then,through an analysis of the technical and strategic debate that accompanied these changes, it explores the way technicians active in the sector related to the power of the Party and its policy choices regarding industry and transport.3 This documentation and some articles taken from the most important Czechoslovak automobile magazines, Auto and Svêt Motorû (The World of Motors),4 illustrate how technicians and planners Translated from Italian by Brenda Porster. VALENTINA FAVA 18 attempted to make“socialist”a product as greatly desired as it was potentially subversive of the ideals of February 1948. Indeed, between 1948 and 1968 the automobile represented for the Czechoslovak economic and technical bureaucracy a veritable Trojan horse, exposing planners and technicians to a close-up comparison with capitalism in regard to both the modes of organization and the product itself. As goods to be exchanged for hard currency, for the entire period under study Czechoslovak cars had great difficulty competing on the world market with products that were the fruit of Western automation technologies and with the increasingly aggressive marketing strategies used by capitalist competitors. As a product designed for domestic consumption, the people’s car recalled the splendors of the first period of Czechoslovak automobility in the interwar republic led by President Tomáŝ Masaryk; at the same time, it represented a promise that the planners were not able to keep, since they did not manage to achieve levels of productivity comparable to those of capitalist enterprises. The chapter explores four moments of particular significance in the history of Czechoslovak automobility: 1. The period between 1945 and 1948, including Alexander Taub’s consultancy (Taub was an American engineer who, along with Czechoslovak colleagues, created a project to realize a “people’s car for a people’s democracy” according to the American mass-production model). 2. The launch of the first five-year plan (1949–53), which brought about the marginalization of automobile production. 3. Starting from 1954, the relaunching of the automobile as a symbol of socialist technology.5 4. Finally, the period of reform (1963–68), when the difficulties of the planned economy in coordinating production of an item as complex as that of automobiles became more and more evident, as the gap between official discourse about the automobile on the one hand and the reality of Czechoslovak plants on the other grew exponentially, undermining the image of the national industry’s efficiency and confirming the criticisms of a technical-productive nature that were at the heart of the movement for political reform in the sixties.6 A People’s Car for a People’s Democracy: The Czechoslovak Road to Automobility and Its Rapid Abandonment (1946–1953) On January 10, 1946, the magazine Auto, official organ of the Autoclub of the Czechoslovak Republic, inaugurated the New Year with an article by Jaroslav Frei THE ELUSIVE PEOPLE’S CAR 19 entitled “What Will Be the Destiny of Our Automobile Industry?”7 Below the text there appeared a photograph of the latest model of the 1942 Ford. The war...