Re: ZIS 110

Posted by Peter Hartmann On 2008/8/11 9:47:02

Here's an interesting side-note about trying to understand Russians and books about them... ! Who knows why there are no garages in Russia ?

Here's why I am suspicious of ANYTHING written about Russia, that uses Russian sources for info....!

Oh, sure, if you operated an automobile in Russia during the communist years, you could take it to any number of places for repair. But no garages. Seriously !

Here's why. The FRENCH language was the language of Russian "society" up to the communist take over. I read someplace that the Czar's kids spoke Russian badly, as a SECOND language to the household's use of French (this is understandable, as French, not English, was then the international language of diplomacy.) Good communists showed how "loyal" they were to the "new equality" under communism, by not using "imperialist" words!

Now - the Russian communists CLAIM Russians invented EVERYTHING - if you can read cyrillic, you can see that the Russian word for "telephone"..is in fact..TELEPHONE...as is the Russian word for "automobile"..yup....AUTOMOBILE.

Oh oh....comes the Russian Communist Revolution, and all things "capitalist" and "imperialst" are suspect. You do NOT want to be using French if you are pretending to be a good communist in communist Russia ! With all the paranoia, a one-way ticket to Lubianka Prison would be likely.

Now...what to do about those places called "garages" during the Czarist days, where you take those Russian cars in Russia, to be repaired...?

They were quickly changed to say, (in cyrillic, of course! ), M T S. Now...what is MTS ? Well...THAT's what they substitued for the word "garage". THAT is what good communists ( if they wanted to remain live good communists) started calling all their garages...!

I love to tease my Russian friends about their CLAIM that THEY invented all that technology. Ha ha..joke is on them-what greater example of their "problem" with precision of speech, then their having to give up the word "garage"...a WESTERN European word, and MANUFACTURING a goofy combination of words CLEARLY not Russian, in order not to use the hated French word "garage"....

MTS ? Stands for " MACHINE TRACTOR ( REPAIR ) STATION !