How liberal reformers destroyed Soviet electronics

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

If the aviation industry, auto industry and mechanical engineering at least survived the defeat of the "saints" of the nineties, then the domestic manufacturers of audio-video equipment were destroyed, as they say, at the root.

Destruction of domestic electronics is one of dozens of knockout blows that liberal reformers have launched on the country and people.

When liberals with the most arrogant expression on their faces tell us about how backward the USSR was, and about how lucky the country was after 1992, when the magic “hand of the market” began to run everyone, it is worth recalling that in terms of the number of brands of audio equipment alone, the USSR outnumbered any other country including Japan and the United States combined.

Let us emphasize - not in terms of quality, but in terms of quantity. We will return to quality a little later. If someone does not believe, then here is a list of brands of Soviet audio equipment:

The list of Soviet TV brands is even more impressive:

In terms of the number of television brands, the USSR EXCEEDED the rest of the world combined. Such an achievement today could not be surpassed even by such an economic monster as China.

And now the question is: could a backward country rivet so many brands of audio and video equipment? And if the USSR was considered backward, then what can be said about today's Russia, whose citizens in nine cases out of ten would hardly name at least one domestic TV? And many, most likely, will not understand at all what it is about.

Some statistics are worth adding to this. At the end of the eighties, every sixth Soviet TV was exported, and more than a million TV sets were sent abroad a year.

So much for the export of products with high added value, and foreign exchange earnings, which the current brilliant managers cannot achieve, for years calling to get off the oil needle, but at the same time devastating the country's bowels at Stakhanov's pace and building endless pipelines to Europe, Turkey and China.

If the USSR had stayed alive, all these brands would probably still exist, and the Soviet Union would have continued to be a country with a developed electronic industry. Even despite the Chinese economic miracle and the dominance of Chinese and Korean electronics. But … it turned out what happened.

Came the "saints" of the nineties, on the Kremlin throne settled a native Narzan-dependent king with the mentality of a father Duvalier, with extraordinary ease "reformed" the industry of his own country to a coma.

Here is a typical example of the reign of the Narzan Tsar: since 1932 in the city of Aleksandrov there was a radio plant No. 3, which produced both military and civilian products. It was in Aleksandrov that the production of the legendary TV set KVN began, and then, in 1957, the production of TV sets of the popular Record brand began there.

The Alexandrovsky Radio Plant was a city-forming enterprise, where every seventh citizen worked. In addition, thanks to the radio plant, 8 kindergartens, dwelling houses, a hostel, the Record stadium, a cultural center, a dispensary, a medical unit, and the Solnechny pioneer camp were built.

In 1993, "Record" TVs were the best-selling in Russia, due to their low prices, successfully competing with imported models. But due to the difficult economic situation in the country, which became a consequence of the Yeltsin-Gaidar "reforms", in 1994 the plant began to experience serious problems, and in 1997 it went bankrupt.

This is how, in four years, an enterprise that survived the war and had been successfully operating for almost sixty years was destroyed. Probably, it is not worth mentioning once again what has become of the workforce and infrastructure.

The consequences of Yeltsin's "reforms" can only be compared with the fascist air raid on Aleksandrov or the explosion in its center of a tactical nuclear weapon. But if, after the raid of the fascists, the Alexandrovsky Radio Plant would have been unambiguously restored, then Yeltsin's "reforms" did not provide for such a luxury. Died means dead, that's it, period. This was officially stated on February 16, 2006, when the Aleksandrovsky Radio Plant finally sunk into oblivion.

A similar final was awaited by the famous Berdsk production association "Vega". In 1941, the Kharkov plant No. 296 was evacuated to Berdsk, in 1947 the Berdsk radio plant began producing the first radio receivers, and in the 80s the Vega equipment was perhaps the most popular in the USSR. But what is there in the USSR - a number of Vega models were exported even to Great Britain, the European leader in Hi-Fi.

Cabinets for manual support operators in the "U" cockpit of the S-75 air defense missile system

Shopping center in the building of the former radio factory in Berdsk

It would seem that a cloudless future awaited Vega, but in the early nineties the plant had to face something much more terrible than the Nazis. They managed to save the Kharkov plant from the latter, but Vega had nowhere to evacuate from the Yeltsin-Gaidar "reformers". And as a result, there was a tenfold drop in production in 1995, staff layoffs, unpaid vacations and the natural ending - bankruptcy in 1998.

The 12,000-strong team was thrown out into the street, and the popular brand of equipment "Vega" in the shortest possible time became the property of history. To make it clearer what our country has lost, it is worth drawing direct parallels with such companies as Japanese Aiwa and Sanyo, West German Grundig, British NAD and Arcam, American Harman-Kardon.

The list of enterprises destroyed since 1992 can be continued indefinitely, and if you describe the fate of each of them, then the material will be typed for the publication of a whole book. However, it is enough just to look at the lists of Soviet audio-video brands to understand what colossal work has been done and how much effort has been invested in their creation.

Consumer electronics were produced throughout the USSR, from Vladivostok to the Baltic States, and with rare exceptions, all these dozens of enterprises were destroyed. And those who miraculously survived resemble very, very pale shadows of their former selves. And it’s scary to think about what happened to the former employees of these enterprises.

Ruins of the Southern Radio Plant in Zheltye Vody

Even in the territories occupied during the war, the Nazis needed workers and working factories. The Germans were well aware of the value of the captured production facilities, for which, among other things, they paid with the lives of their soldiers.

But in the "holy" nineties, enterprises went bankrupt and closed with amazing ease, and engineers and workers, many of whom had the highest qualifications, were simply thrown out into the street, where they had a simple choice - either to retrain as merchants, shuttles, security guards or bandits, either sleep or die of hunger. Truly - a free and democratic choice, completely in the spirit of the new Russia.

It is worth noting that the destruction of domestic electronics is only one of dozens of knockout blows that liberal reformers have brought down on the country and people. Even Germany, twice defeated in world wars, did not know such de-industrialization, which the country experienced after 1992. Nor did I know Japan, on which the Americans rained bombs and against which atomic weapons were used.

After the beginning of Yeltsin's "reforms", the Russian industrial landscape very quickly took on the appearance of Stalingrad, with lifeless, smoking ruins and completely lost, disoriented people who do not know where to run or how to live on. And this is in peacetime, without any war.

The colossal efforts of the entire country, which managed to build dozens of factories after the hardest war, were promptly, and somewhere with lightning speed, "zeroed" in just a couple of years. Moreover, they were zeroed so thoroughly that it will never be possible to restore what was lost in those years.

Unless our brilliant managers suddenly make a 180-degree turn and try to follow the Chinese path. But rather, an expensive bronze idol imitating Peter the Great will float along the Moskva River in saplings than the Chinese path will be chosen as a reference point.

Therefore, one can only remember the times when dozens of brands of equipment existed in the country with nostalgia. And in a few years, it will be possible to tell the children about this that, they say, there was such a country in which almost fifty brands of televisions were produced.

Let us recall the bloody October 1993, and then the even more bloody establishment of "constitutional order" in Chechnya. Therefore, the bankruptcy and closure of radio factories worried the Russian ruler no more than last year's snow.

Cabinets of manual support operators in the "U" cockpit of the S-75M3-OP "Volkhov" air defense missile system

And finally, it's worth talking about the quality of Soviet audio-video equipment. Of course, among the overwhelming abundance of television brands there were televisions, the quality of which was lame, but there were also those that worked and have been working for decades. But for some reason, it is customary for us to scold with the last words ALL televisions of Soviet production.

Although for their time they were no worse, and in some ways even better than their foreign counterparts. And if you approach this issue with an open mind, not stick out your lip contemptuously, a priori scolding everything that was produced in the "scoop", it turns out that Soviet televisions were quite competitive.

An even more interesting picture with Soviet H-Fi. Liberals, of course, focus on primitive tape recorders such as "Electronics-302", completely oblivious to the equipment, the index of which started from zero, that is, the highest class. And this equipment was truly top-class world-class.

Here it is worth paying attention to the following point. Audio equipment itself is very conservative, as any audiophile will attest. And even a music lover. For example, tube amplifiers and turntables are still highly rated. The reel-to-reel tape recorder and vinyl turntable are unambiguously a sign of the owner's sophisticated taste.

Some speaker models have not changed since the fifties, and this is not surprising - once found the optimal sound, only a fool will degrade and "optimize".

Therefore, when some liberally tinted gentlemen insist that the "scoop" equipment was of terrible quality and sound, the first thing that comes to mind is a doubt about their adequacy and sanity.

The USSR produced audio equipment of a level that such companies as Philips, Kenwood, Grundig, JVC, Aiwa and many others had never reached in their history. And it is absolutely certain that the country would still be proud of such equipment if the Russian analogue of the Haitian dad Duvalier, exhausted by Narzan, had not climbed onto the Kremlin throne. Who destroyed all this, hiding behind a leaky fig leaf of the "democratic path of development."

The only thing that pleases is that in the sickening turbidity of Yeltsin's "saints" of the nineties and subsequent years of anecdotal "getting up from his knees" in an energy superpower importing socks, clothespins and paper clips from China and carrots from Australia, the brand of domestic TVs "Rubin ". Which, although it was thrown out of its historical buildings, where Gorbushkin Dvor is now settled, but nevertheless survived and continues to produce televisions. And even if in distant Kaliningrad, and not in Moscow, the brand is still alive.

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