Socialist Volkswagen
Trabant, Lada, and Dacia in the Cold War
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
The automobilisation of Socialist countries serves as a lesson in the East-West conflict. It reflects the competition for a more efficient social order. It also shows how the Socialist states tried to follow the capitalist model of consumption in order to maintain their legitimacy. Because the mass production of automobiles in Romania and the Soviet Union was made possible only by the acquisition of Western licences, the automobilisation of the East is also an example of cooperation despite the Iron Curtain.
(Osteuropa 10/2009, pp. 167–184)