They Don't Try Harder

When a Moscow resident named I. Parchamovsky decided to take his family for a drive in the country, he went to the state-owned Avtoprokat and rented a Russian-made Moskvich. Poor Parchamovsky.

As he writes in a recent issue of Izvestia, the speedometer stopped working when he headed home to pick up his family. Next the engine went thud-thud: a connecting rod had broken and the car had to be towed back to its garage. The tow-truck driver told Parchamovsky to keep his foot on the brake to maintain a safe distance between truck and car. But when the Moskvich's brakes began to smoke, Parchamovsky took his foot off the pedal. At that instant, the truck braked abruptly to avoid a pedestrian. Result: one crumpled Moskvich right fender. At the rental agency, Parchamovsky was told what the outing would cost:

> $11.10 (10 rubles) for the tow.

> $77.77 for the full 24-hour, 500-kilometer rental rate because the speedometer had broken, even though he had been gone for only an hour and traveled fewer than ten kilometers.

> $77.77 for a new fender plus the rental fee until the car was repaired and on the road again; because of notorious delays in delivery of spare parts, that might mean months and could amount to $777.70 or more.

Parchamovsky faced a total bill of at least $944.35, or 59% of the average Soviet annual wage. Fortunately for Parchamovsky, the agent knew a black-market garage where he could get a new fender installed immediately, so the repair cost a mere $166.65.

Parchamovsky's case was closed. But so, too, is the Soviet rent-a-car system, which was started by Nikita Khrushchev after his 1959 visit to the U.S. Foreign tourists may still rent cars for hard currency through Intourist, the official Soviet travel agency. But the domestic rent-a-car garages have gradually been phased out. Parchamovsky's account of his plight in Izvestia was, at least in part, an officially sanctioned attempt to persuade Russians that they are better off without such modern nuisances.

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