Madame Washnik as illustrated in Reply 5 does not have a pearl necklace, or any jewelry aside from tiny earrings! Clearly the illustrator could never have had a career in the West.

The car in your illustration is a '60s Zil, which was the TOL Russion car, hand built for only the very top of the Party brass. As such, I'm sure those who were chauffeured had no laundry equipment of their own but rather had staff! Most likely said staff had imported laundry equipment, although I'm guessing on that one.

Zil has an interesting history, in that the first ones from the '40s (then called Zis rather than Zil) were built in the Soviet Union from equipment that came from Packard, and were virtual copies of prewar Senior Series Packards. Eventually they evolved on their own. I've seen the model illustrated and while it may look a bit like a '62 Caddy the scale is very odd: the hood is about the height of a Suburban hood so it looks rather like the '62 Caddy body was stretched over a Suburban chassis. I hate to think what a similar copy of an American automatic washer from the '60s would look like, but it sure wouldn't fit in any normal laundry!

It is worth remembering that while Soviet consumer goods lagged behind those from the West, there is a history of good engineering in Russia when there has been adequate budget and time, particularly in military aircraft. Too bad they couldn't have done some good automatics back in the day as it might have been very interesting.

Hi Jon Charles,

    Thank you for posting cyrillic brochures. I am 1/4 white Russian. My grandmother came from St. Petersburg BEFORE the revolution. My father spoke Russian and was raised in the Russian Orthodox Church. After my parents married, my mother's Massachusetts background predominated and we are all Episcopalian.  I have always wondered what Russian would have been like if there had been no revolution. What kind of washers would they have had? I am fascinated by Russia and someday hope to go. And here is a link to a Russian Twin Tub.

Ross

Ross

It is interesting that old-timers at Packard remembered large shipments to the Soviet Union during the '40s of car parts or equipment. I've always thought the story of Senior Series dies being sent to the Soviets was implausible, but there seems to be a lot of documentation on cooperation between Packard and the Russians before the start of the Cold War.

Somewhere I have an American magazine from the early '50s about cars of the world. There is a page on the Zis with a photo of one that was captured in North Korea by American forces. None of the GIs knew anything about Zis but plenty were motorheads and had driven or owned old Packards. They were utterly amazed to find this old pre-war Packard abandoned by fleeing North Korean forces, and even more amazed to find it wasn't actually a Packard but a Russian copy. According to the article, it was full of weird colors and textures, especially the plastics, but otherwise appeared to be just another old Packard.

Regarding the story of Ford and the Soviets in the '30s, it should never be forgotten that Ford asked for volunteers of Russian descent who spoke Russian to go the the Soviet Union and help set up some of the joint-venture factories. Some of these people were Russian born immigrants, others were born in the US to immigrant families. Most were skilled laborers who helped train their Russian counterparts. Once the factories were up and running the joint ventures were dissolved and the unfortunate volunteers were forgotten by both Ford and the US government. The Soviets did not want them going back to the US for many reasons and they were not allowed to contact any embassies or consulates or even to visit Moscow or a large city where they could possibly speak with foreigners. These poor people lived the rest of their lives in the Soviet Union even though they were legitimate US citizens.

I think we should now start a new thread in Super to continue these discussions, as they've gone rather overboard from vintage washers.