<TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText>The Socialist Car</TitleText> <TitlePrefix>The</TitlePrefix> <TitleWithoutPrefix>Socialist Car</TitleWithoutPrefix> <Subtitle>Automobility in the Eastern Bloc</Subtitle>

Cornell University Press cornell@onixsuite.com 20130525 eng

COM.ONIXSUITE.9780801477386 03 01 Cornell University Press 01 GCOI 80140100143060 02 0801477387 03 9780801477386 15 9780801477386 59 BC <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText>The Socialist Car</TitleText> <TitlePrefix>The</TitlePrefix> <TitleWithoutPrefix>Socialist Car</TitleWithoutPrefix> <Subtitle>Automobility in the Eastern Bloc</Subtitle> 1 B01 Siegelbaum, Lewis H. Lewis H. Siegelbaum Lewis H. Siegelbaum is Professor of History at Michigan State University. He is the author of several books, including Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile and the editor of The Socialist Car: Automobility in the Eastern Bloc, both from Cornell. 01 eng 256 00 256 03 30 HIS032000 10 HIS010010 10 TRA001050 24 Internet Urban Studies 24 Internet Slavic and Eurasian Studies 24 Internet History / Russia and the Former USSR 24 Internet History / Science and Technology 01 01 01 Across the Soviet Bloc, from the 1960s until the collapse of communism, the automobile exemplified the tension between the ideological imperatives of political authorities and the aspirations of ordinary citizens. For the latter, the automobile was the ticket to personal freedom and a piece of the imagined consumer paradise of the West. For the authorities, the personal car was a private, mobile space that challenged the most basic assumptions of the collectivity. The "socialist car"—and the car culture that built up around it—was the result of an always unstable compromise between official ideology, available resources, and the desires of an increasingly restless citizenry. In The Socialist Car, eleven scholars from Europe and North America explore in vivid detail the interface between the motorcar and the state socialist countries of Eastern Europe, including the USSR. In addition to the metal, glass, upholstery, and plastic from which the Ladas, Dacias, Trabants, and other still extant but aging models were fabricated, the socialist car embodied East Europeans' longings and compromises, hopes and disappointments. The socialist car represented both aspirations of overcoming the technological gap between the capitalist first and socialist second worlds and dreams of enhancing personal mobility and status. Certain features of automobility—shortages and privileges, waiting lists and lack of readily available credit, the inadequacy of streets and highways—prevailed across the Soviet Bloc. In this collective history, the authors put aside both ridicule and nostalgia in the interest of trying to understand the socialist car in its own context. Contributors: Elke Beyer, Swiss Institute of Technology; Valentina Fava, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies and University of Helsinki; Luminita Gatejel, European University Institute, Florence; Mariusz Jastrzab, Kozminski University; Corinna Kuhr-Korolev, University of Bochum; Brigitte Le Normand, Indiana University Southeast; Esther Meier, University of the Federal Armed Forces, Hamburg; Kurt Möser, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology; György Péteri, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim; Eli Rubin, Western Michigan University; Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Michigan State University 02 In The Socialist Car, eleven scholars from Europe and North America explore in vivid detail the interface between the motorcar and the state socialist countries of Eastern Europe, including the USSR. 04 Introduction by Lewis H. Siegelbaum Part One: Socialist Cars and Systems of Production, Distribution, and Consumption 1. The Elusive People's Car: Imagined Automobility and Productive Practices along the "Czechoslovak Road to Socialism" (1945–1968) by Valentina Fava 2. Cars as Favors in People’s Poland by Mariusz Jastrząb 3. Alternative Modernity? Everyday Practices of Elite Mobility in Communist Hungary, 1956–1980 by György Péteri Part Two: Mobility and Socialist Cities 4. Planning for Mobility: Designing City Centers and New Towns in the USSR and the GDR in the 1960s by Elke Beyer 5. Automobility in Yugoslavia between Urban Planner, Market, and Motorist: The Case of Belgrade, 1945–1972 by Brigitte Le Normand 6. On the Streets of a Truck-Building City: Naberezhnye Chelny in the Brezhnev Era by Esther Meier 7. Understanding a Car in the Context of a System: Trabants, Marzahn, and East German Socialism by Eli Rubin Part Three: Socialist Car Cultures and Automobility 8. The Common Heritage of the Socialist Car Culture by Luminita Gatejel 9. Autobasteln: Modifying, Maintaining, and Repairing Private Cars in the GDR, 1970–1990 by Kurt Möser 10. “Little Tsars of the Road”: Soviet Truck Drivers and Automobility, 1920s–1980s by Lewis H. Siegelbaum 11. Women and Cars in Soviet and Russian Society by Corinna Kuhr-Korolev Notes Notes on Contributors Index 08 "In this exemplary volume, the seemingly narrow topic of automobility in the Eastern Bloc becomes a window into aspects of history as varied as factory production, Communist Party politics, urban planning, and the domestic lives of women. . . . The everyday experiences of European socialism really come alive in these pages as the singular attention to the car allows the era's larger social, economic, and political issues to be highlighted and interrogated in multiple, convincing ways."—Kimberly Elman Zarecor, Technology and Culture (January 2013) 08 "Automobility is by definition no observer of national boundaries, and you simply cannot make sense of it without international and transnational contexts. It is clear, as Lewis H. Siegelbaum notes, that the socialist bloc gave rise to an 'alternative modernity,' a specifically socialist take on consumerism and individual mobility. That is not to say, however, that a Soviet model was blithely adopted in Czechoslovakia or Poland. Far from it: this book shows how we need to remain attentive to national cultures and economies when we tell the story of the adoption of personal car use and ownership."—Stephen Lovell, King's College London, author of Summerfolk 08 "With its careful analyses of how official ideologies, production regimes, and private desires shaped Socialist car cultures, this book opensup fascinating perspectives on the history of the automobile. Broadly and imaginatively conceived, The Socialist Car addresses concerns that lie at the heart of twentieth-century consumer society across the globe."—Bernhard Rieger, University College London, author of Technology and the Culture of Modernity in Britain and Germany, 1890–1945 08 "In this rich and varied collection the nature of the socialist car, socialist car culture, and automobility are explored from a range of disciplinary perspectives. Covering topics from tinkering to trucking, it brings fresh insights to the nature of Eastern Bloc consumption and society."—Susan E. Reid, University of Sheffield, coeditor of Pleasures in Socialism: Leisure and Luxury in the Eastern Bloc 08 "Mass-scale house building and motorization transformed the face of Eastern Europe after World War II. With his consideration of the consumer revolution, Lewis H. Siegelbaum has brought to light a hidden side of Communism, beyond the Stalinist terror."—Thomas M. Bohn, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, author of Minsk 08 "These fine essays show that a clash of civilizations can play out in the everyday commodities such as cars. Automobility as it manifested under Socialism proves to be an incredibly rich subject, reaching from the design of vast metropolitan areas down to ways the average car owner cared for their vehicle. Luminita Gatejel's essay on Socialist car culture describes the 'ambiguous amalgam of Socialist superiority and the painful awareness of backwardness' that the car caused the Eastern Bloc and USSR to feel."—Mike Pursley, PopMatters (3 October 2011) 04 03 72 01 http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/resources/titles/80140100143060/images/80140100143060L.jpg 07 03 72 01 http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/resources/titles/80140100143060/images/80140100143060S.jpg http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100143060 Cornell University Press 01 02 2021862 Cornell University Press Ithaca US 04 20110908 01 WORLD 01 9.25 in 02 6.13 in 08 13 oz 07 2021862 CUP Services http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu 02 CA MX US BV AL AD AM AU AT AZ BY BA BG HR CY CZ DK EE FO FI GE DE GI GR HM HU IS IE MK IT PS KZ LV LI LT LU UM MT MC ME NL NZ NO PG PL PT RO RU SM AX SK SI ES SJ SE CH TR UA GB VA 02 Y 21 44 01 02 s 24.95 USD 06 5013546051314 NBN International http://www.nbninternational.com 02 BV AL AD AM AT AZ BY BE BA BG HR CY CZ DK EE FO FI FR GE DE GI GR HM HU IS IE MK IT PS KZ LV LI LT UM MT MD MC ME NL NO PL PT RO RU SM AX SK SI ES SJ SE CH TR UA GB VA AU CA JP MX US NZ PG 02 Y 20 20110908 44 01 02 s 02 15.50 GBP