Eastern BLOC Engineering

After a six-year hunt for the right vehicle, Matteo Iannizzotto found this GAZ 69 AM

’Soviet military effort was to remain heavily reliant on Lend-Lease vehicles from the USA’

It was an extraordinary sight by any standards. In the middle distance, a medium-sized, fourwheel vehicle was approaching along a gravel road stirring up a plume of dust that hung in the warm air. Its advance was framed by dark ranks of conifer trees creating a scene that would not have been out of place in the forests of East Germany during the depths of the Cold War.

As the vehicle drew nearer, its canvas removed to accommodate the spring sunshine, two figures in the front seats could be discerned sitting erect and immaculate in identical Soviet officers field uniforms, the very epitome of socialist stoicism and resolve.

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