Today in Technology History
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October 15
Technology and society sometimes interact unpredictably. Take, for example, the automobile. A feat of engineering, it gives people the mobility to move quickly from place to place. The broad social implications are obvious: modern society has been utterly transformed by cars. But technologies have unexpected social consequences, too. Who could have predicted that cars would become status symbols? For that matter, who could have predicted the massive traffic jams cars sometimes cause?
Sixty years ago, cars were certainly a status symbol in Soviet Russia: only the elites in that supposedly "classless" communist society actually owned cars. Thus, when attacking German troops came within 60 miles of Moscow, the wealthiest people in that city packed their belongings into their cars and fled east. On October 15, 1941, on the roads out of Moscow, Russia experienced the first traffic jam in that country's history. Never before did so many rich Russians have the desire to drive in the same direction, all at once.
Many of the people in that traffic jam were headed to Kuibyshev, some 600 miles east of Moscow. In centuries past, it had been used as a military stronghold, and now Stalin had a bunker there where he could hide eight stories underground. (It's a museum today.) Stalin made Kuibyshev into a secondary capital, and removed government offices and foreign embassies into the area.
What's more, Stalin had major wartime factories moved to Kuibyshev. The factories stayed there after the war, and the area became a major hub of the Russian technology sector. Today, it's known by its pre-Soviet name, Samara. Cars and rockets and spacecraft have all been built in Samara, and the energy and chemical industries are well represented there, too.
Related links:
Click here to read about the history of Samara.
Click here to read an outline of the battle between Russia and Germany.
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