Cars for top officials: patriotism, prestige and safetyWhat unites Joseph Stalin's ZIS-110, ZILA limousines of various modifications from Nikita Khrushchev to Mikhail Gorbachev and Vladimir Putin's recently revealed "Aurus-Senate"?
"They are all armored," someone will say. And he won't be quite right. Because Khrushchev did not recognize "armored cars", loved convertibles, demonstrating closeness to the people (especially in Moscow). And Brezhnev, before the assassination attempt on him in 1969, traveled in bullet-pierced "member trucks".
All "auto No. 1" is united by the "top secret" stamp, which accompanied them from sketches on the drawing board to the embodiment in engines and bodies. Now, a number of promising cars (23 in number) and failed projects (more than 500) have been cleared of secrecy, and they can be seen in the museum of the Special Purpose Garage (GON) at VDNH.
The exhibition "Design classified as "secret", or Cars of power that did not exist" is dedicated to the 100-year history of the development of cars for the first persons of the USSR and Russia, since 1922. "It is shown in such a volume only once and exclusively in the RUT," emphasizes the collector and organizer of the exhibition Ilya Sorokin.
But not only the exhibits themselves are interesting. It is no less fascinating to learn about the approaches of the authorities and designers to the creation of this kind of piece cars.
"A BAD EXAMPLE TO SOVIET PEOPLE"Ilya Sorokin recalls that he was always annoyed when he saw on TV how Presidents Yeltsin, Putin and Medvedev drive long armored Mercedes.
Yes, and during foreign visits it looked unpatriotic.
There is no doubt that the German brand Mercedes-Benz Pullman S600 with reliable armor protection and its modifications is a decent car that has proven itself well over the years of its operation. It is used by the first persons of India, Kenya, Morocco, Poland, Singapore, Turkey, and the Philippines. The Pope moves on such a "armor"...
On February 9, 1998, an armored Mercedes-Benz W140 S600 saved the life of Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze. His car, which was traveling in a motorcade, was attacked on the embankment of the Kura with machine guns and grenade launchers. The first grenade exploded in front of the car on the asphalt, and the second landed in the hood, turning the engine compartment. But the main passenger escaped with only minor injuries. All this is true, but…
"The use of the German brand was seen as a humiliation of our country," says Ilya Sorokin, "and it's a blessing that since 2018 this has been in the past. I have always wanted the head of the Russian state to drive a domestic car. After all, since the mid-1930s, Soviet leaders almost always moved in domestic limousines. They say Stalin initiated it: he said at the Politburo that members of the government set a bad example to Soviet people when they drive cars of European and overseas production."
With the collapse of the USSR, our car industry collapsed and Yeltsin switched to a Mercedes. But even in these years, attempts were made to transfer the head of the country to our car. There were projects "Marusya", "Monomakh", something was done by "Russo-Balt" and "ZIL" - some of these developments are presented in layouts and sketches.
And back in 2002, "likhachevtsy" collected the last ZIL-41047 – for the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev. However, this car was not seen in the official motorcades. Auto experts believe that Nazarbayev bought it for his personal collection as a memory of the USSR.
MILITARY AND CIVILIANWe managed to grab God by the beard in 2012 – and at the expense of "Aurus" he found a new breath, survived.
NAMI is an abbreviated abbreviation of the Central Research Automotive and Automotive Institute – the leading one in the Russian Federation.
Machines for the USSR Armed Forces were also designed within its walls. For example, following the results of the Korean War, a floating mini-ROVER LuAZ-967 was designed by order of the Airborne Forces and was mass-produced in Lutsk until the mid-1970s. It was designed for the transportation of ammunition, light towing, evacuation of the wounded, and individual types of weapons could be installed on it.
A large sample is the heavy–duty KrAZ-250 (Kremenchug, years of production from 1978 to 1994), which was also used in the army. Heavy-weight "kung" workshops for repairing engine blocks, oxygen stations, airfield harvesting machines, cranes for loading and unloading rockets and pontoons were mounted on it.
But the early Soviet and party elite still preferred "bourgeois" cars and were in no hurry to switch to domestic ones, which began to roll off the assembly line in the first five-year plan (1928-1932). Since the Civil War, Stalin became attached to the American Packard brand. And for a decade and a half, he changed one sample for another. And he traveled the whole war on a 12-cylinder armored Packard Twelve 14-series, presented to him by President Roosevelt back in 1935. By the way, the gift was white, but in Moscow it was immediately repainted in "government" black.
It was in this car that Stalin traveled to the conferences of the Allied countries in Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam, viewed Berlin from its windows in 1945. The "Father of Nations" was very reluctant to part with the things he was used to.
The same machines in the post-war years were assigned to members of the Politburo Andreev, Beria, Voroshilov, Zhdanov, Malenkov, Mikoyan and Molotov. And it was from this brand, at the wish of the leader, that the ZIL-110 was largely copied, to which Stalin and his entourage moved at the turn of 1950.
"Yes, in the memorable 1990s there was no time for expensive cars," agrees Yuri Chernenko, the chief designer of the Aurus project. – The understanding that the president of a country like ours should have a car of his own, Russian, came only in the 2010s. And now, when I see the head of our state on the "Aurus", I always feel proud that this is our very worthy car."
And on May 9, 2019, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu left the Kremlin gates for the first time to take the Victory Day parade on an Aurus convertible. And the general commanding the parade was also riding on an open "Aurus".
By the way, "the same as Putin's" Aurus Senat (length 6.63 m, weight 7.2 t), only not "coal", but "snow" color was acquired by the President of Turkmenistan Serdar Berdimuhamedov. He first used it during a visit to Russia on June 9, 2022. At that time, his administration told him that the limousine was protected by the highest class VPAM VR10: it withstands fire from a Kalashnikov assault rifle from a distance of 10 m and even a land mine explosion.
WELL FORGOTTENBefore this exhibition, many cars that did not go into circulation were seen, except by their creators, except by curators from law enforcement agencies.
Several times the "state acceptance" was carried out by Stalin himself, occasionally by other heads of the USSR and the Russian Federation. And those projects from which they "turned up their noses" turned into scrap metal.
Such a fate befell, for example, the experimental car developed in 1949 – early 1950s by NAMI-013, which was considered by experts as a breakthrough in the Soviet automotive industry. It was a rare case when our designers and designers created a novelty without looking at foreign models, as was practiced in the Stalin era. For example, the Leningrad-1 limousine (L-1) was a copy of the Buick-32–90; the pre-war ZiS–101 is a hybrid of Buick and Packard; the post-war ZIS-110 is close to the Packard 160 (although the body design of this symbol of the Stalin era was completely original, and the "American" clearly inferior to the Soviet design).
But back to NAMI-013. Several samples were made, which were tested in the conditions of Russian roads. The kids who watched these trips nicknamed the unusual novelty "Chita", noticing the similarity of her wide "mouth", convex headlights and sloping "forehead" with the heroine of the movie "Tarzan" that appeared on Soviet screens at that time, where a monkey with such a nickname appeared. And the creators decided to give this name to the car. According to the test results, "Chita" in most indicators surpassed the mass-produced representative novelties "Pobeda" and ZIM (the latter after Molotov's disgrace became GAZ-12).
The NAMI-013 "Chita" minivan made several runs around the country, according to the results of which it was radically improved three times. But it never reached mass production, and in 1954 the prototypes were written off and disposed of. The exhibition shows a miraculously preserved plasticine version on a scale of 1:5.
"The main working tool for many designers was kulman and their own imagination," explains the curator of the exhibition Ilya Sorokin. – And the trouble with NAMI-013 and many other projects is that they were ahead of their time. The authorities often continued to demand ambitious specialists to copy the appearance and designs of foreign cars that seemed more attractive, "more fashionable". And the rare samples that were not destroyed and their models would have been gathering dust in the far corners of the enterprises, if there were not enthusiasts who got permission to show them in the Museum of the GON."
FROM LENINGRAD TO MOSCOWThe L-1, also known as the "Red Putilovets", was manufactured in 1933 in the number of six cars, and on May 1 this sextet on wheels drove through the squares, streets and bridges of the "city of three revolutions".
Judging by the newspaper responses, I was impressed.
"But this attempt to make the first Soviet executive class car failed," says Sorokin. – There is an opinion that it was a scam: they bought American Buicks-32–90 and presented them as "their own", assembled at the Krasny Putilovets plant (at that time he was famous for Fordzon-Putilovets tractors, which people called "Fedor Petrovich"). Perhaps that is why the actual production did not begin, although the ambition was rolled out for as many as 20 thousand cars. They showed Stalin and said that 2.9 million foreign currency money was needed to rebuild the tractor shop into an automobile one. Stalin decided to save money and ordered to transfer the technical task to Moscow to a factory named after him – and in 1936, the ZIS-101 appeared. It is based on the same "American", but there were already some of their own developments.
In 1949, a 25-year-old front-line student Vladimir Aryamov (studied at the Moscow Automobile Mechanics Institute, later worked at NAMI) sketched an extraordinary idea of a limousine "Moscow". At that time, there was a demand for the car layout of the car (the driver and passenger are sitting in the extreme front position, and there is no hood in front of them). A young designer was trying to cross a limousine with a tourist bus, whose engine was located at the back. He was obviously inspired by both Western models and the domestic ZIS-154 bus that appeared in 1947. He probably also knew about the projects of the future legendary ZIS-127 and ZIS-129. The illustrations of Aryamov's "bugrovoz" give a clear idea of the stated idea, and it is a pity that the project did not even reach the state of the layout.
"MISHA WITH PARADISE" AND DESIGNER OUTRAGEThe model range of the turn of the 1960s is also curious.
Not a single limousine was left of him – except for plasticine models. But what were the design developments! They reflected the beginning of the era of jet passenger aviation (1956) and space exploration (1957), the echo of the Moscow Festival of Youth and Students (1957) and Nikita Khrushchev's first visit to the USA (1959), Yuri Gagarin's flight (1961) and the spirit of the "thaw".
"Although the ghost of the Cold War was already in the air, the dove of peace, which appeared in 1949, still hovered over the earth. And under the shadow of his wings, sketches of the Mir model were created in the USSR," says Ilya Sorokin. – Those were fascinating open–top cars with their beauty - convertibles. Airy and spacious, they would facilitate confidential negotiations on the burning problems of world politics in them. And perhaps the heads of the nuclear powers would make very peaceful decisions in such cars, if they were created. But no. They got into black limousines and drove each with their "only correct" opinion. And what solutions can come to mind in black armored vehicles? So the Caribbean crisis has arisen!"
The "promising passenger car of the highest class" ZIL-4102, created in running performance in 1988, is demonstrated not in traditional black, but in an unusual light color. But, it turns out, there was also a copy of the "elite black color": it was the car of the last Soviet Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev. His wife, Raisa Maksimovna, was supposed to drive around in a light limousine.
From the inside, these machines were equipped with many innovations. The factory workers nicknamed the "resin" sedan "Misha", and the golden one – "Paradise". When working on them, the socio-political situation in the country was taken into account. Therefore, "Misha" and "Paradise" were not booked. And in general, they were executed in such a way as not to irritate the masses of the people, who ardently supported the party's course to fight against privileges. But they overdid it with giving the limousines "modesty": neither Gorbachev nor his wife liked the new ZIL. As a result, horns and legs remained from "Misha", and "Paradise" miraculously survived.
The theses of novice designers presented at the exhibition are also of great interest. Their senior colleague Yuri Chernenko told us that there are also such people in our team. "They have that, in a good sense, recklessness in creative search, which is often already absent from experienced specialists with many years of experience. But, working hand in hand, in a team, together, everyone often finds unique, non-standard solutions."
The stand of the graduates shows that they are inventing not only their own, but also trying to give a new vision to the lost legendary government brands – "ZIL", "Chaika", "Russo-Balta".
"Yes," Sorokin comments, "these projects look outrageous and absolutely unrealistic, even taking into account modern technologies, thanks to which they could be implemented. But – "early, untimely, overly ambitious." However, who knows – what if they are also ahead of our time and will be appreciated in the future? Therefore, it is very good that such projects exist – even if only in drawings."
Igor Plugatarev
Columnist of the Independent Military ReviewIgor Vitalievich Plugatarev is a military journalist, a retired colonel.
