On Jan 9, 2008 2:06 AM, ternst wrote:
> Just as an aside to the Soviet - Italo connection.
> My wife and I spent a month in the old Soviet Union on vacation.
> Wanted to see if all the things we were being fed by our fearless leaders
> was really true.
> Besides it was like going to three continents at that time.
> The word at the bike tracks I visited was that The Italian Connection went
> back to the time Peter the Great was doing business with Italian and French
> architects while building St. Petersburg.
> Into our era, remember that there were many communists in Italy and the
> relationship to the unions and the expanding Soviets was constant.
> The Soviets had no quality items except some war stuff.
> The Italians had lots of nice stuff, including bikes, and seeing as the
> Soviets were doing quite well in those years in cycling, the Italian bike
> stuff was coveted.
> The Soviets had little hard cash to buy anything of consequence in the West,
> they were broke but ran a good con game on us, if our gov't knew about it we
> weren't told, but it was easy to see as we roamed around the countyside.
> The deal was Italian stuff was brought into the USSR, and the Soviets
> brought many Italians over for vacation and tourism for free stay and travel
> as a quid pro quo.
> Of course any money spent on bought souvenirs was paid for in Lire or other
> hard cash which is what the Soviets desperately needed.
> So lots of Italian bike stuff for the teams and clubs in the USSR,
> especially the national team and apparatchiks.
> End of history lesson.
> Did you know there was a 500 M. wood track built in the '20s/'30's in
> Irkutsk, Siberia? Look on the map and be surprised.
> I saw the track and have fotos.
> Ted Ernst
> Palos Verdes Estates
> CA USA
Really great stuff, Ted! First-hand reminiscences like this are the best part of the CR list for me.
Btw, to back you up, another and probably much larger example of such an Italian connection was between automakers Fiat and Lada (Autovaz.) The Soviets even changed the town containing the enormous factory from "Stavropol" to "Togliatti." This is not a traditional Russian surname. :-)
Lada cars never made it to the US but were heavily exported for hard currency to the UK, Canada, and elsewhere. (I'd still love to have a Lada Niva.)
Peace,
Tim Victor
Greensboro, NC, USA