Automotive

As World War 2 drew to a close. Many of the more Westerly Eastern nations; notably Czechoslovakia and East Germany with well developed industrial and manufacturing plants found themselves aligned with the Soviet Union. 

In the early years of the Soviet Union, science, socialism and the general feeling of a bright new future saw the Soviet union launch the first satellite into space, the mechanisation of agriculture, the first lung transplants were performed and nuclear power plants became the power source of the future.

Czechoslovakia already had a fully fledged manufacturing base, full of innovation with leading names such as Skoda cars, Jawa motorcycles, CKD engineering works (trains, trams and tanks), Tatra heavy trucks and luxury cars, Liaz buses, Zetor tractors, Aero, Letov and Zlin aviation, Avia commercial vehicles and CZ weapons that became CZ motorcycles.

During the 1950's these industries flourished. But as communist doctrines increased these agile and enterprising companies began to flounder with quotas, government interference and a brain drain of the best minds to the west.

By the 1970's, after the brutal communist supression of the Prague spring in 1968, these previously world renown companies were reduced to manufacturing in it's most mundane form. Producing items for mass production and lacking the spirit of freedom and adventure that had driven  the early post war years.

In the 1980's Skoda were exporting cheap cars to Western Europe that were the brunt of many a joke. The motorcycle industry was in unstoppable decline and most manufacturers had to rely on the home grown market for sales. Few of these names survived past the 1989 dissolution of communism, with Skoda, Tatra and Aero aviation being notable exceptions.