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Alongside bargain retailers, cheap restaurants, debt collectors and bankruptcy lawyers, a midsize factory in Siberia is promoting a product that it hopes is just the thing for hard times. Employees here call it the “anti-democracy truck,” a modified fire truck fitted with a water cannon and designed to quell riots. “We look at this as a product with a market,” Vladimir N. Kazakov, the factory director, said in an interview in his office.
“We don’t mind who buys them. We would be happy to sell them to Israel, America or France.”
Mr. Kazakov said he expected two or three purchases of the roughly half-million dollar vehicles this year. The Russian Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, has asked the plant to be ready to re-outfit the assembly line to produce many quickly, if needed. But no solid orders have come in yet, he said.
“If the order comes, we will fulfill it on time, and well,” he said.
The truck is sold under the brand names Avalanche-Hurricane and, for a smaller model, the Storm. Shrouded in steel armor, it comes standard with brick- and cobblestone-resistant window grilles, sprinklers attached to a tank of chemical irritant like pepper spray, speakers that can emit ear-splitting noise and, of course, a powerful, joystick-operated water cannon. The cannon can topple protesters from dozens of yards away.
Economically related social unrest has already arisen throughout the lands of the former Soviet Union. Used-car dealers have taken to the streets in Vladivostok to protest tariffs. In Ukraine, where tens of thousands of steel workers are newly unemployed, protesters gathered on the central square in Kiev. Most recently, in Moldova, an angry crowd stormed the Parliament building and hurled furniture out the windows. Among the protesters were unemployed young people with little prospect of finding jobs in Moldova.
The plant’s fortunes followed the trajectory of the Russian economy as a whole; it flourished in the late Soviet period, producing 3,000 fire trucks a year and selling them to 27 countries, including Mongolia, Tanzania and Vietnam. In those days it had branched out into tank trucks for milk, and even produced a model called the spirtovoz, or spirit carrier, designed to transport vodka in bulk. A faded Communist-era mural that says “Glory to the Working Class!” still adorns a building here. In the current crisis, the plant is struggling. Production of fire trucks fell to 35 trucks in February from 70 in December.
Anton Y. Sinagnoyev, a laid-off construction worker, said he supported the factory’s new product, even if it was used against other laid-off workers like himself. He said he was happy that the plant had prospects. “If we didn’t make them, somebody else would,” he said.
Factory managers said they hoped that police departments in Russia and elsewhere would trade up to customized crowd-control vehicles for the financial crisis. The trucks are far more effective in safely dispersing large, hostile groups than standard fire trucks, mounted police officers or lines of police officers with shields are, Mr. Kazakov said.
But for now, though, the new business strategy remains just that. Even if the company manages to sell the two or three water cannon trucks it hopes to sell this year, that will not begin to make up for the lost revenues from fire trucks, Mr. Kazakov conceded. “The situation in the country is not at that point,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/wo...r=1&ref=europe
“We don’t mind who buys them. We would be happy to sell them to Israel, America or France.”
Mr. Kazakov said he expected two or three purchases of the roughly half-million dollar vehicles this year. The Russian Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, has asked the plant to be ready to re-outfit the assembly line to produce many quickly, if needed. But no solid orders have come in yet, he said.
“If the order comes, we will fulfill it on time, and well,” he said.
The truck is sold under the brand names Avalanche-Hurricane and, for a smaller model, the Storm. Shrouded in steel armor, it comes standard with brick- and cobblestone-resistant window grilles, sprinklers attached to a tank of chemical irritant like pepper spray, speakers that can emit ear-splitting noise and, of course, a powerful, joystick-operated water cannon. The cannon can topple protesters from dozens of yards away.
Economically related social unrest has already arisen throughout the lands of the former Soviet Union. Used-car dealers have taken to the streets in Vladivostok to protest tariffs. In Ukraine, where tens of thousands of steel workers are newly unemployed, protesters gathered on the central square in Kiev. Most recently, in Moldova, an angry crowd stormed the Parliament building and hurled furniture out the windows. Among the protesters were unemployed young people with little prospect of finding jobs in Moldova.
The plant’s fortunes followed the trajectory of the Russian economy as a whole; it flourished in the late Soviet period, producing 3,000 fire trucks a year and selling them to 27 countries, including Mongolia, Tanzania and Vietnam. In those days it had branched out into tank trucks for milk, and even produced a model called the spirtovoz, or spirit carrier, designed to transport vodka in bulk. A faded Communist-era mural that says “Glory to the Working Class!” still adorns a building here. In the current crisis, the plant is struggling. Production of fire trucks fell to 35 trucks in February from 70 in December.
Anton Y. Sinagnoyev, a laid-off construction worker, said he supported the factory’s new product, even if it was used against other laid-off workers like himself. He said he was happy that the plant had prospects. “If we didn’t make them, somebody else would,” he said.
Factory managers said they hoped that police departments in Russia and elsewhere would trade up to customized crowd-control vehicles for the financial crisis. The trucks are far more effective in safely dispersing large, hostile groups than standard fire trucks, mounted police officers or lines of police officers with shields are, Mr. Kazakov said.
But for now, though, the new business strategy remains just that. Even if the company manages to sell the two or three water cannon trucks it hopes to sell this year, that will not begin to make up for the lost revenues from fire trucks, Mr. Kazakov conceded. “The situation in the country is not at that point,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/wo...r=1&ref=europe
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