quote:
Originally posted by Alfa2
I did not live in a FSU country too. 
But some rules in all communistic countries were the same.
Regarding FED 1126 there are almost no doubts this is "error" when engraving. The question is: why ?
Really hard to guess after 80 years. This could have been made by mistake or intentionally.
Maybe a worker had papers for FED 1126. So he has taken a camera from current production and gave number 1126 to it. He could say this is my camera I have papers for that.
In communistic countries papers were very important. Based on a paper you could have a car faster then others, you could buy a flat without waiting 20 years, you could buy even better radio which were not available in a shop.
Mentality of people were complitelly different.
Now if you work in e.d. Renault company you understand you cannot put a car part out ot the factory because it does not belong to you.
Communistic propaganda was telling that everything was common. So everybody was an owner of all factories and everything what was inside. So from formal piont of view I was owner of busses on a street, trains all industry and so on. Propaganda was telling: in capitalistic countries you don't owe all these goods. Here you have this all.
People in Poland realises we are governed by thiefs and they will officialy take for themselves almost all which was produced. So if you took a part from a factory it was not treated as thief.
alfa2, the picture that you are drawing of communist countries in many of our threads, doesn't match with my impressions. a part of my family lived in eastern germany and a part in former czechosloakia. we visited them quite often from the late 50s onwards and as it was family, we had quite some insight. we met in bulgaria each summer and I have been to russia several times with them in the 60s and 70s. my mother was a teacher in occupied poland in the 40s, she kept in touch with her pupils and we visited poland regularly as well.
there were well expensive products on display in stores, like cameras, that sat on the shelf because they were too expensive for ordinary people. it was not the case with cars, there you are right.
there was well a notion of theft. they were proud of owning the land and the industry in common, but your car was your car, your camera was your camera and common goods were common. there were strict controls at the factories and taking parts was regarded as theft and heavily fined. and don't forget: there were always spies around you that would report wrongdoing. I doubt your theory of whole cameras being brought out of the production line in numbers.
if you owned foreign currency, a lot of things were possible, but then again, it had its rules. you would get official papers, but these would be within the ordinary production and the ordinary numbering.
if you knew high officials, as I did, you would be able to get products out of the official production, but these had their own numbering, which was recognizable in itself. it would not be similar to old numbers, there were letters added to the numbers or no number at all.
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