Comments by "MacIn173" (@MacIn173) on "Doug DeMuro" channel.

I have owned several of these (1977-1978 years of production). Still my favourite Soviet car. It is outdated, but nowhere near to "bad".
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Well, the second, left-side grill is obviously needed for engine compartment cooling. It is rather standard solution to have one intake feeding the engine and other venting the engine bay.
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@bobdinitto well, just like any car of that period...
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"the top trim black ones would belong only to the special services (KGB), high ranking military, and communist party officials" it is not true. Balck color was for any officials - including last small factory's director. Often used for local city council governonrs etc. I had black 24' in 2000s, bought it from ex-director of furniture factory (he bought his service car when retiring).
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"Lack of food, clothes, heating, power blackouts and toilet paper did all that. " ok - fancy clothes - right, toilet paper in some areas - ok, but... heating problems and power blackouts? In USSR? Whaaaaat? That's really not true. "and buying one was as big of a financial effort as buying a house" that's almost true: buying previous model, GAZ-21 in 60s would cost same money as buying decent 2 room flat (yes, those couldn't be bought, but they could be built in cooperation, so Volga's price is your investment in apartment building enough for getting 2 room flat (1 living, 1 bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, toilet, corridor). "The seatbelts in the back are missing because there wasn't much reason to have any while driving on a dirt road at low speed" actually, this is not entirely accurate. Typically, seatbelts in the back were provided with a car, but not mounted on the factory (case with Lada, for example). "difficult and very tiring to get from Moscow to the Black Sea" well, you didn't need that since you had affordable plane tickets back then :-/ Nevertheless, my family used to travel from Baltics to Crimea on Moskvich, there was no problem with roads whatsoever, also in 80s it was not such a problem to find spot for a rest.
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@JohnyJKLV " But not about this supposedly high class luxury car which was the best Soviet car people could theoretically buy back then." nope, his point is still correct: imagine, even most rich persons could buy only somewhat slightly better than average - because the income was distributed much, much more even. And yes, it is not a luxury car, neither it supposed to be one, it is a "business class" car. Luxury is Gaz-14 and ZlL 41047. But yes, this is the best usual guy could buy.
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@jeroenjansen2709 "and drove a bit nicer than a Lada or Moskvitch" it is actually arguable. For example, Moskvich or Lada 1500 would outperform Volga and would steer much better.
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@JohnyJKLV "were outrightly banned from being privately owned by ordinary citizens." you wouldn't be able to afford it anyway, judging by the price.
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@BearFish112 "This car had near zero reliability even compared with Lada cars of the day." that's simply not true. I have had several Volgas, never had problems with them.
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@JohnyJKLV "And by supposedly I mean how an ordinary, average Soviet citizen viewed this car back in the day." it is just a matter of subjective perception, hence not an interesting topic to discuss. "Most people in USSR could just dream of owning this car." no idea. My grandad had 2 cars (Moskvich and Lada), was planning to buy Volga instead of Moskvich, but then preferred to invest into a flat. He was a locksmith in the kolhoz, nowhere near top-figure. "the main problem was constant shortage of consumer goods to buy" deficite and inflation are two sides of the same coin. Amount of goods person can have depends only on production figures, nothing more. Not enough goods - 2 options: either fixed prices, deficite, and first N persons get stuff, or floating prices - inflation and N most wealthy ones get stuff.
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@JohnyJKLV " Is that an excuse to forbid people an incentive for something to work for?" you should better quote what you're replying to, otherwise it is hard to track several conversations. "no incentives for people to work better and more efficient to reap better fruits of their labour" that's not true, because beating the planned figures always resulted in monetary bonus. Whole Kosygin's economics reform of 60's was directed towards honoring initiative enterprises. WRT to incentive for working better: labour union sponsored vacation trips, getting a flat sooner (or getting a lot of land for building your house + infrastructure for it), monetary bonuses of various kinds; movement of "rationalizers" allowed to get additional monetary bonus from "economical effect" caused by more efficient production methods proposed by "rationalizer", non-monetary bonuses (for example, getting a one room bigger flat that person could pretend to etc). My granddad was such rationalizer, one of his inventions allowed factory to save enough money so he got basically "13th salary" for 6 years in a row as a bonus + SU patent for his invention. You could work in harder conditions and get more - for example, BAM builders (truck drivers to be precise) would get flat and car certificates (voucher for getting flat/car w/o any additional payment) w/o usual limitation, not talking about salaries several times bigger than standard.
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@JohnyJKLV "And like you said - grandad invested into a flat instead of buying Volga." well, he, being a mechanic, preferred Lada as more progressive by tech design, and he didn't want to keep several cars at the same time - no need. "but he surely had connections or privileges to be able to do that" nope. He was a mechanic/locksmith in local kolkhoz garage, no any powerful friends or something. "You contradict yourself." I don't. Physical ability to re-plan prices is technically limited merely by computational power of Gosplan computer centers. In reality it is limited by political decision, but it doesn't anyhow negate my point: in any economy deficite&inflation are two sides of same coin. It is up to collective agreement what to choose: disperse goods by queue or by wealthiness. In USSR it was decided to fix prices, and if they'd chosen floating prices, deficite would disappear in several days.
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@JohnyJKLV "Lada wasn't really a Soviet car since it was licensed copy of Italian FIAT with only minor changes originally" it's an arguable point. Icould say that Fiat Polski is a licensed copy of Fiat with small modifications, but not Lada. In general there're thousands of changes, many of which are not minor. We can begin with engine that was reworked from OHV to OHC by demand of NAMI/AZLK engineers participating in Turin "trip" or rear suspension/brakes etc. If you need more info than rumors about initial steps in Lada production, you should read "Высокой мысли пламень" series, first book. "So he was far from being an example of an average Soviet citizen with no patents or revolutionary breakthroughs" well, but the main point you're trying to push through "there was no motivation for better working whatsoever". There was. You couldn't monetarize patent in western kind of way - that's true, but still there was enough motivation. Although motivation problem of some kind on state level existed for sure, because otherwise there wouldn't be need in Kosygin's reforms, that unfortunatelly, were left half-done - USSR would need to have market of means of production for it to work out properly. "But about deficit I meant that it was because Gosplan made poor decisions what to produce" the main problem of Soviet Gorplan is not the planning as such, but lack of authority. Gosplan produced well-enough balanced plans, in the 80s backed up with computer modelling. But plan doesn't worth a lot, when "Ivan Ivanych", minister of checmical industry can ring a phone and push through his industry demands, crossing the state plan and neglecting actual needs. Memouries of Gosplan leaders are quite self-speaking in this term. "were made only 5 or more years later, quite often when already irrelevant" well, with the help of computer modelling, I assume, if USSR didn't collapse, we would have had plans correctible on per-day basis w/o many issues. I could recommend Aleksey Safronov's lectures (in russian) about Soviet planning, if you're interested in the area. "But you didn't tell me which Soviet republic you're from?" I didn't get my hands on replying to your second comment, where you have asked that. Russia/Baltics.
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"considering how confident he acts about the subject." this is a stnadard blogger's "success recipe" - you can tell whatever nonsense, just make poker face and pretend to be sure about the subject.
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