Packard Forum Index » ZIS, ZIL, and other Packard Cousins!

Howard, this way to the listing.

That's the place. For their ZIS/ZIL seatcovers:

For the bus covers, a picture and diagram of a GM bus is probably their guide. For the price, I'd still bet it was paper thin.

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Howard, beautiful women will help us to change the topic.

This rumor will come to us in a 3-episode series and will become more popular due to its contrasting juxtaposition of Soviet women in the 1950s resp. 1990s. Let's see how I'll find back to ZIS and ZIL.


...to be continued...



[picture source: "gallery Glas"]

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So what do we see here? The first pic below shows a Soviet woman, bemedalled like Napoleon. She collected several Orders of Lenin for outstanding services rendered to the State, the Order of the Red Banner of Labour*, had been honored even as Hero of the Soviet Union for her heroic feats in service to the Soviet state and society and received last but not least 1946 the Stalin Prize (third class). Perhaps tin toys to your eyes but attended with a great deal of money. I picked up her scent after a friend showed me a picture in the magazine "Советский Союз" from October 1955, showing that woman and her daughter sitting in a ZIS convertible, which gives rise to all sorts of speculation. This has led us to the question on how she was able to achieve so much.
It might easily go wrong but now would be the right moment to venture a guess.





* BTW "...Mikhail Gorbachev received the Order of the Red Banner of Labour for harvesting a record crop on his family's collective farm in 1947 at age 16, an honour which was very rare for someone so young. To date, he is one of the Order's youngest recipients..." [wikipedia]

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Hmmmm... the 2nd pic girl's not bad but the "departure in the 1990s" one can "render services to the state" anytime... I may be old, but I'm not THAT old.

Roger, that's an interesting idea. Unfortunately she was a woman of the (Soviet) old school. Let me show you another photograph of that friendly looking woman, pictured in post #34. I am positive that'll take your mind off things. It conveys the impression that she preferred the hard way.



[picture source: Pravda]

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Word has it that the communism is a sociopolitical movement that aims for the abolition of private property. But why the recipients of the Stalin Prize have gotten such an amount of money?




The medals of 1st, 2nd and 3rd degrees have been accompanied with 150,000, 100,000 resp. 50,000 rubles, whereas the monthly average income in the U.S.S.R. in 1955 was 76.3 rubles. An average citizen would have to work more than 54 years to earn 50.000 rubles.

The official exchange rate between the Soviet ruble and the US dollar in that year was 4:1. Depending on the degree of the medal the prize money ranged from $12,500 up to $37,500.

The above pictured woman collected a lot of money. And her trick?

She drove tractor! She started in 1929, later on she organized all-female tractor teams and about ten years later she was hitting the mark of more than hundred thousand female tractor drivers, was made an official celebrity, glorified and depicted on propaganda posters, even in the walled part of Germany, I lived in.
In an abandoned Soviet spystation on an ice floe amidst the Arctic Ocean a propaganda film has been found, starring that woman. But that's another story ...

In 1959 she drunk herself to death.

The End

[picture source: Советский Союз]

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Was the car part of the prize or just the money. Would guess some better housing might also be included but if not, could an average Soviet citizen take care of a car like that if awarded. I guess though, winning the medal means she is no longer an average citizen and now a member of the elite.

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Howard, often times I only know about the "superheroes", which had more medals than space on their dress uniforms. The most of them drove ZIS.



So my knowledge is superficial, sometimes I just echo their life-lies and I'm barely qualified to serve as expert on Soviet matters. As far as I can judge there haven't been a direct connection between the Stalin Prize and endowed material prizes like cars, dachas (weekend houses), lifetime tickets for public transit and so forth.

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That prize even established a sub elite, comparable in structure with the segregation concept of other medals to separate top performers from base wallahs.
I believe it has been inadvisable to touch a car of a Stalin Prize awardee - and what to do with a stolen ZIS part? But I agree that at least a rain shelter has been needed.


[picture source: www.trueknowledge.com]

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Today an ultrashort film clip of an Austrian newsreel. What may JFK have imagined five years after the end of Packard?

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