A lifetime with one single car (Lada Riva in Soviet Union - USSR - and Russia)

Nicolay Lebedev in 2015 completed 38 years with the same car, in this case, the VAZ-21011 model, launched in 1974 and which is a variant of the first model launched by the Volga Automobile Factory in 1970, the VAZ-2101, affectionately nicknamed the Kopeika ("cent" in literal translation from Russian to English) and based on the Fiat 124. According to Lebedev, his intention was to buy a newer model, the VAZ-2106, but the cars were unfortunately already reserved for other buyers. He was content with his VAZ-21011, which he proudly presents and differentiates from the previous version.

This is the first translation of a real Russian video on our channel. I had been thinking about translating it for a long time, as it reflects the mentality of the Soviet man, often critically dubbed "homo sovieticus", as in the works of Aleksandr Zinoviev and Svetlana Aleksievich. A mentality formed by Soviet education: little consumerist, very technical, parsimonious, as well as disciplined and committed to the socialist state and society. Was Lebedev an example of a communist man? Or would the countless deviations and corruptions of the history of the USSR, and inevitably of all other socialist experiments, ever be able to produce such a man? In the latter case, would Lebedev be the communist man possible? Regardless of the countless answers that these questions may provoke, this mentality is in the past and is increasingly inaccessible with the change of paradigms, accelerated by the market and mainly by decentralized and distributed information, by the ease and abundance of a society increasingly focused on mass consumption and entertainment.

An interesting fact of the translation process is that a common word for "car" in Russian is "mashina", in the feminine gender. During the presentation, we get the impression that Lebedev presented the car as if he were referring to a woman, something that someone who reads the translation does not easily understand.

Видео A lifetime with one single car (Lada Riva in Soviet Union - USSR - and Russia) канала Автоэкспорт СССР