Anti-service: Personal Automobile and its Maintenance in the USSR (1960s — 1980s)

Abstract

Article is devoted to questions of repair and maintenance of privately owned vehicles in the USSR in 1960th — 1980th. The author used legislative documents, office work, and statistical materials, sources of personal origin, periodicals. A part of documents (for example, from funds of the State Archive of Russian Federation) is for the first time introduced for scientific use. Three stages of formation of a system of domestic car service are allocated, measures of the state for the creation of the network of car repair shops (the general profile and specialized) and problems at stages of their construction and input in a system are investigated. Also, difficulties which motorists had to face on service stations (low-quality repair, red tape, and fraud of workers) are analyzed. It is shown that car owners were forced involuntarily “to raise own commercial crop”, because conditions of car service in the USSR were bad. Data on the cost of maintenance and service of the car are provided. Long time the system service stations allowed to satisfy requirements on repair and maintenance of cars of individual owners only for 30–40 %, only by the end of the 1980th have approached 80 %. The branch, new to the USSR, — auto servicing — stepped from semi-handicraft repair shops to the equipped specialized car-centers only in two decades (since the end of the 1960th until the end of the 1980th). The author draws a conclusion that the lack of the high-quality market of services in car service in the USSR was explained by the specific character of the planned economy and by “growth disease”: a creation of the network of service stations was not in time behind rates of increase in the personal vehicle fleet.