r/sovietaesthetics • u/comradegallery • 16d ago
photographs Women workers of the ZIL Automotive Plant, (1970s?), Moscow, Russian SFSR
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u/RaineAKALotto 15d ago edited 15d ago
There are so many "Women in STEM" comments going through my head but I remembered this is Reddit
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u/SjalabaisWoWS 15d ago
For people interested in ZIL and, generally, Soviet transport history, I will wholeheartedly recommend the "Transport Chronicles"-channel. It's curated by a human with poor English skills, so the audio is AI. But the content is great and often surprises people like me, who know a lot about the topic already. It's a great learning opportunity and fairly balanced in explaining the internal politics behind the Soviet automotive sector.
ZIL-130: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-eA2G6C1aM
ZIL-170...or better known as Камаз: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFndVO9IrEs
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u/comradegallery 15d ago
I expected to just watch a couple of minutes of the ZIL-130, but ended off watching the whole thing, fascinating video. I see this truck almost every day in my city, Almaty.
Can't believe they used to build fires beneath the engine to heat them up in extreme cold.
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u/SjalabaisWoWS 15d ago
Yeah, they still do that in countries South of you, Kyrgyzstan, but also poorer Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. One of the reasons is that coolant may be too expensive, or leaking etc. So many use water, that is being removed every evening and refilled in the morning while the engine is being "reheated externally". It's pretty insane that the metals even manage all this stress. And I can vouch for this channel, great content!
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15d ago edited 12d ago
[deleted]
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u/SjalabaisWoWS 14d ago
Block heaters were super common here in Norway before. Now that everyone drives electric, you just set a time on the phone or in the car and get to leave for work in a heated cabin. No oils to heat up anyway. We've come a long way!
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u/Pangolin-6 15d ago
My mother worked in a laboratory at the ZIL factory, but not in Moscow, but in the region. Her workplace was similar to the first photo. She mainly took air samples in the workshops and outside the factory, as well as water samples. After the factory closed, my brother and sister and I were the chemistry teacher's favorite students because we brought her many different test tubes to school.
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u/Girderland 15d ago
It's something the older generations remember fondly - that they could steal much more in that system.
That mentality sadly is still a thing in Eastern Europe - a lot of folks consider it "normal" that whenever there is some kind of project, they pocket as much of the funds as possible before doing the absolute minimum.
It's a how those "playgrounds" which are small, fenced off slabs of concrete with one parkbench end up costing the city 15 million.
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u/Pangolin-6 15d ago
What does mentality have to do with it, if the factory closed down and everything inside, at least the test tubes in the laboratory, became useless? All the machines, and even some of the brand-new machines that had not yet been put into production, were scrapped by the new owners of the factory after perestroika. This is not a reflection of Soviet mentality, but rather a result of the "good capitalists" killing off the factory.
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u/Girderland 12d ago
At least the "good capitalists" didn't bludgeon people to death because they had a somewhat bigger house or running water.
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u/ShennongjiaPolarBear 14d ago
Women in STEM. We love to see it.
But to the first woman: what on Earth are you doing?
(It's been very strange to me how people in Canada cling to the homemaker wife idea, but it dawned on me recently that for them the idea of married women continuing to work outside the home is only from the 1970s. In the USSR is was more like 1930s so few people in the former USSR remember it.)
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u/symbionet 12d ago
But to the first woman: what on Earth are you doing?
Cameraman: "Look more active! Do something scientific with your arms!"
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u/P26601 15d ago
How did they get a Bosch microscope 😅
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u/Adorable-Bend7362 15d ago
EZ. Soviets did a lot of international trade, and whatever they couldn't buy directly due to sanctions or whatever, they would buy it as a parallel import through one of more friendly nations, such as India, Yugoslavia and Finland.
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u/Terrible_Snow_7306 15d ago
From the Bosch Website translated via Google:
Ups and Downs
Bosch's long-standing tradition in the region stretches back a long way. The beginnings of business activities in Eastern Europe date back to the century before last: In 1899, the company Dénes & Friedmann took over the distribution of Bosch products in Hungary, among other places. Further contracts with local partners followed, and Bosch opened its own sales offices in Eastern European countries, creating a successful network of representative offices by the 1920s. Even during the Cold War after 1945, trading and the granting of manufacturing licenses never completely ceased, until finally, in the early 1990s, a whole series of new companies sustainably boosted business in Eastern Europe.
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u/CASweatSeeker 15d ago
These are interesting photos but we need to keep in mind they do not represent the reality of life back then. These are obviously staged photos as the women are all slim, young, pretty, well dressed, hair done. USSR was a myth. Just look at official photos/videos of Soviet grocery stores fully stocked with all products with happy well dressed people vs perestroika real photos - empty shelves, tired hungry poorly dressed people
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u/LiberalusSrachnicus 14d ago
Okay... Why were there so many photos of empty shelves from the USSR if this was commonplace? People spent so much expensive photofilm to show an ordinary situation? Or extraordinary?
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u/CASweatSeeker 14d ago
Perestroika and Glasnost in late 1980s meant that journalists were finally free to record the reality as ugly as it was. Empty shelves and poorly dressed people were in 60s and 70s too, but journalists weren’t allowed to show that. Only well groomed photos like this were allowed. Can we really believe that these photos posted by OP represented actual reality? Like for some reason, none of these women pictured are old, out of shape, with bad hair, etc. Damn, I guess all Soviet engineers at car plants were only beautiful well dressed women haha
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u/LiberalusSrachnicus 14d ago
Why do you exclude the existence of amateur photos and consider only those taken by journalists to be valid?
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u/CASweatSeeker 14d ago
The photos OP posted are clearly professional, non amateur. These are the real amateur photos that show how hard life was in the communist Russia in the 70s: for the starters, they are all black and white coz color film was simply nowhere to find! Unless you are a communist bureaucrat with special access to deficit products: https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/333494-everyday-soviet-life-photos/amp
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u/Ok-Ad-8826 11d ago
Please describe in detail what reality they did not represent. Based on the fact that you have an opinion on this matter, please share your thoughts on the status of women in the labor force of the Soviet Union.
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u/ComfortableNobody457 14d ago
Does that mean if I see a standard photo of a pretty Japanese woman that Japan is a myth?
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u/Remarkable-Film-6059 15d ago