The virtual battle between bikes and cars
From our UK edition
The role of the private car in Communist societies would make the subject of a lovely thesis. In brief: only Hoxha’s Albania managed to ban them completely, in a move judged too restrictive by Pyongyang and Beijing. In the ‘freer’ states in Eastern Europe, choice wasn’t great, but the car was seen, and advertised, as a symbol of liberty and the good life. And, even under the bleakest years of Stalinism, communist newspaper Pravda (or Izvestia) would recount how Ivan or Vladimir, having worthily toiled away in farm or factory, was now the proud possessor of his own Moskvich.
