The Soviet Union automobile industry in 1953

Various types of passenger cars and trucks. Photos from “The Soviet Union” magazine #37, 1953. The Soviet Union automobile industry
The Soviet Union automobile industry in 1953
The appearance of an article on various types of passenger cars and trucks that the USSR produced was welcomed by foreign readers of the magazine “The Soviet Union”. In particular, the article of the prominent Soviet scientist Academician E. Chudakov and several photographs showing the production.
The automobile industry of the USSR can rightfully be called the offspring of Soviet power. In tsarist Russia there was no automobile industry, except for attempts to organize the production of cars at the Russo-Baltic plant – an attempt that ended in failure: for 6 years this enterprise produced … 450 cars.
However, created in the Soviet Union a new branch of industry, the enterprises of which, for example, in 1937, produced more than 200,000 cars, overtaking England, France and Germany in truck production. In the same year 1937, the USSR’s road transport by tonnage of the cargo transported was ahead of the railway transport. The growth of road freight transportation continues at a very fast pace.
Noteworthy, the motorization of the Soviet Union was carried out in an extremely short time. In the first years after the Great October Socialist Revolution, the general state of industry made it impossible to seriously raise the question of automobile production on a scale corresponding to the needs of the national economy. First of all, there was no necessary metallurgical base. Nevertheless, a small production of cars started. And the Moscow plant AMO produced the first Soviet cars, the one-and-a-half-ton cargo brands AMO-F-15, in 1924.
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