Robert L. Eichelberger (1886-1961) was a U.S. military officer who was served in Eastern Siberia with the American Expeditionary Force during the Civil War.

Frank Whitson Fetter (1889-1992) was an economist who toured southern Russia in the summer of 1930 — the height of Stalin’s forced collectivization campaign.

I’ve only had time to scan the contents of the collection (which is freely available for use in teaching, research, and private study), but from what I’ve seen so far, it looks fantastic.

For the entrance to the collection, just click here.

–ScP

Here’s Dr. Nathan Wood on East Central Europe’s “Age of Speed”:

If East Central Europe is often considered backwards in comparison to its Western neighbors, what did this mean in an age of fast new forms of personal transportation? Could transportation technologies be seen as a way to “catch up” or even surpass the center? I will look at the mechanics and specialists who built and steered the machines, the avant garde and futurist artists and poets who rhapsodized about them, and the popular reception of these machines in the illustrated press.

In the four photos I have selected here, you can see something of the interconnectedness of these machines. The people who were interested in bicycles were also intrigued with automobiles and airplanes. Recall that Orville and Wilbur Wright had a bicycle shop and that Charles Howard, the owner of Seabiscuit, worked in a bicycle shop before specializing in cars. Moreover, to the public, his knowledge of bicycles meant that he should also know something about cars.

The inventors of the first plane in Cracow were a Czech and a Pole who worked in an auto garage. The Czech pioneers of motorcycles and autos, Václav Laurin and Václav Klement, were cycling specialists first and then they designed airplane engines. Ferdinand Porsche (yes, that Porsche) designed a revolutionary airplane engine, and BMW first built airplanes, before specializing in cars. In my research, I found that bicycling magazines soon had sections on automobiles, while car magazines, like Samochód (the Polish word for automobile) had sections on motorcycles, motorboats, and especially airplanes. The question on the cover of this issue, one frequently asked in the popular press, is: Who’s faster and defter? (The plane or the car)

There is also a sense of progressiveness connected to the new machines, especially for women. For a woman to ride a bicycle was at first scandalous, but of course it was also empowering, offering her freedom of movement otherwise impossible in an age when a respectable woman was expected to have an escort in public. Note that the girls in the top photo from the 1920s demurely pose sidesaddle for the picture, even if they did not ride that way.

The cover from Auto and Sport from 1928 seems so familiar to us today because we are accustomed to seeing pretty women and fast machines on the cover of specialty magazines almost exclusively for men. It is also telling that automobiles and sport are connected. Dunlop, the company that made the tires for 60% of the early automobile racers also made tennis racquets. The connection between cars and sport was natural. To play tennis, ride motorcycles, and drive cars was all part of being modern.

The final point, and this should come as no surprise, is the fact that much of the language regarding the new machines is readily recognizable in a variety of languages. Just as the driver in this last photo probably looks no different from a motorist in any other country at the time, so too, do many of the words look familiar. I suspect you had no trouble deducing what “Auto i Sport” is all about, or “Auto i Turysta”–especialy given the clue in the Polski Touring Klub’s title. The Polish word for bicycle, “rower,” came from an English invention, the Rover, the “safety bicycle” invented in 1885 that looks like the bicycles of today and gradually rendered the large front-wheeled “pennyfarthings” obsolete. Does this make everyone who used slight variants of the original word derivative, or are the terms simply evidence of the interconnectedness of the users of these new technologies in the Age of Speed? Well, that is something I still have to work out. . .

–NW

The song dates to Russia’s twentieth-century “Time of Troubles” — the period marked by Civil War and foreign interventions that fell during the years 1918-1921. In the midst of widespread political, military, and economic crises Bolshevik leaders routinely enlisted sympathetic artists, writers, and other “cultural workers” to produce propaganda materials that could be used to generate popular support for the Reds’ cause. With the re-capture of Kiev from Polish and Ukrainian troops in June 1920, Red Army commanders found themselves in possession of a small squadron of airplanes left behind by the fleeing Polish troops. The planes would soon be put to use in both training and reconnaissance missions. In the meantime, German and Khait were commissioned to produce a song about the bravery and heroism of pilots that might inspire the ranks and, perhaps, encourage a few individuals to volunteer for flight training. In an attempt to kindle the composers’ own creative efforts, the pair were taken out to the aerodrome where the planes were stored and treated to a series of flights. German and Khait delivered the new song the following day.

In subsequent years, “Ever Higher” (or, “Avia-march,” as it is also known) soared to widespread popularity. Throughout the 1920s, the song was prominently featured at public rallies, military displays, and aviation spectacles. In August 1933 the USSR’s Revolutionary Military Council (Revvoensovet) issued a decree establishing “Ever Higher” as the official anthem of the country’s Military Air Forces (VVS). To this day the song remains one of the most recognized and popular tunes from the Soviet period.

A recording of “Ever Higher” can be downloaded here from “Soviet Music” (“Советская музыка”) an excellent on-line repository containing more than 4,200 (!) audio clips of Soviet-era tunes.

Here’s an English translation of the Russian lyrics:¹

We were born to make fairy tales come true,
To conquer vast distance and space,
Our reason has made steel wings for our hands,
And throbbing engines our hearts have replaced.

[Refrain]:

Ever higher, higher, and higher
We aim the flight of our birds
The tranquility of our borders
Breathes in each propeller.

Throwing our willing planes to the heavens,
Or making unprecedented flights,
We feel our air force is growing stronger,
Our world’s first, proletarian fleet.

[Refrain]

Our keen glance pierces every atom,
And resolution clads every nerve,
Believe us: to every ultimatum
Our air force is prepared to respond

[Refrain]

ScP

1. Adapted from the translation found in James von Geldern and Richard Stites, Mass Culture in Soviet Russia: Tales, Poems, Songs, Movies, Plays, and Folklore, 1917-1953 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995), 257-258

I have a short film clip … silent … black and white … it shows a large single-engined monoplane and biplane and crews with locals at Urga, Mongolia and “Pekin” China.

While it wasn’t much to go on, I knew right away what the subject was. It’s some rare footage documenting the USSR’s first major international aerial expedition: a 4,000-mile journey between Moscow and Peking that Soviet propagandists dubbed “The Great Flight.”

“The Great Flight” (Великий перелет) was flown by a squadron of six airplanes: two German Junkers F-13s, an AK-1, a Polikarpov R-2, and two Polikarpov R-1s. According to the officials who organized the flight what made these airplanes unique was the fact that each had been manufactured “either in whole or in part by Soviet factories.”

By contemporary Soviet standards the Great Flight was an immensely ambitious undertaking. Only two years removed from the founding of the Soviet aviation program in 1923, the Great Flight was intended to demonstrate how “Bolshevik audacity and the persistence of Soviet workers” had enabled the USSR to overcome the “principal difficulties that lay in the way of conquering the aerial elements.”

The six airplanes left Moscow on 10 June 1925. They were accompanied by military spokesmen and journalists from major newspapers as well as a representative from the State Telegraph Agency (Rosta). The journalists went along to monitor the progress of the Great Flight and to compose the feature stories that appeared daily in the country’s press. Two cameramen also flew aboard the aircraft in order to provide a visual record of the expedition. At each designated landing site, these representatives organized rallies, delivered speeches, orchestrated tours of the airplanes, and disseminated the large amount of propaganda material carried aboard the aircraft.

The flight came to an end on 13 July 1925 when four of the original six planes landed in Peking.

The Great Flight was, in fact, much more than an “expedition” organized to test the abilities of Soviet air crews and airplanes. It was the USSR’s first “prestige flight” — the precursor and model for the European tours of the late 1920s and the far more famous trans-polar flights of the 1930s.

Jim graciously agreed to upload the clip to his YouTube channel (where you can find a large collection of other aviation videos, too).

Here it is:

The first part of the clip shows the 4 July 1925 arrival of Soviet airplanes in Ulan Bator, Mongolia [AKA "Urga"]. The monoplanes that you see are the Junkers F-13s. The biplane is an R-1. In the last portion we see footage of the reception the fliers received following their landing in Peking. Incidentally, the Junkers F-13 appearing at the beginning of the clip didn’t make it to the finish line. It crashed five days after arriving in Ulan Bator.

I discuss the Great Flight in more detail in Chapter 6 of Dictatorship of the Air.

ScP

The site, called Made in the USSR: Treasures from the Soviet Atlantis, contains over 500 images and photos of items produced in the Soviet Union.

It’s a rather eclectic collection that includes everything from journals and posters to cigarette cases, matchbook covers, and Christmas ornaments. Unfortunately, the images are not accompanied by explanatory text, so folks who aren’t already well-versed in Soviet history and culture may not grasp the significance of what they’re seeing. Still, it’s a terrific idea for a website.

The collection includes more than a few items directly related to aviation. (Several can be found by following the “Early Soviet Stuff” link at the bottom of the home page). My favorite is this one:

It’s a pin for “Dobrolet,” the syndicate established in 1923 to oversee the development of the Soviet civil aviation system. The airplane logo (which also appeared on Dobrolet’s official stationary, rubber stamps, and other items) was designed by Aleksandr Rodchenko. Last time I checked, pins like this were fetching around $500 in Moscow flea markets.

Incidentally, the very first item that shows up in the site’s “Early Soviet Stuff” collection also has a tangential tie to aviation. The item is an early edition of “The Terrible Cockroach” (Тараканище) a poem-story by the famed children’s author Kornei Chukovsky in which the eponymous insect wrecks terror on the animal kingdom. In 1927, the film studio Sovkino made an animated version of “The Terrible Cockroach.” At the end of the Sovkino cartoon an Osoaviakhim airplane arrived and sprayed insecticide on the bug.

ScP

It turns out that the Nationalist leader (and at least one of his subordinates) was “obsessed” with airplanes and viewed the development of Chinese aviation as a means for transforming his countrymen and unifying the nation. Baumler speculates that Chiang’s air-minded interests mirrored the widespread European fascination with flight in the inter-War period, particularly in 1930s Nazi Germany.

Perhaps. It seems to me though that it isn’t necessary to travel that far West in search of precedents to Chiang’s aerial obsession. In fact, it may be possible to identify the origins of Chiang’s fascination with flight without even leaving China.

On 13 July 1925 four Soviet airplanes landed in the Chinese capital. They were the remnants of a larger squadron that had departed Moscow six weeks earlier with the goal of demonstrating the USSR’s “sympathy and friendship for the Chinese people” by flying to Peking. Known as the “Great Flight” (Великий перелет), the mission was history’s first premeditated attempt to promote international goodwill through the use of aviation. [I discuss the details of the Great Flight in Chapter Six of DotA.]

While I have no way of measuring Chinese responses to the Soviet propaganda mission, given the high-level diplomatic negotiations that took place in advance, the audacious scope of the enterprise, and the widespread media coverage devoted to the event (journalists, cameramen, and a film crew flew along to document everything for the Bolshevik state), it seems reasonable to conclude that the Great Flight would have attracted the attention of interested officials and military leaders like Chiang. Perhaps it even inspired his original interest in aviation?

The “Russian connection” seems all the more plausible given the marked similarity of Chiang’s ideas to those advanced by Bolshevik Party propagandists during their 1923 Campaign to Build the Red Air Fleet. [Chiang's reported ideas bear an uncanny similarity to those first expressed in Leon Trotsky's pamphlet Aviation: Instrument of the Future (1923).] Likewise, while the Nationalists’ efforts to raise money through public donations can be traced to the national subscription campaigns popular in Western Europe and Imperial Russia prior to 1914, the practice of allowing enterprises and organizations to sponsor airplanes by donating the funds for their construction was first adopted by ODVF and Dobrolet. Not coincidentally (perhaps), several of these “factory-built” Soviet aircraft participated in the Great Flight.

Although the USSR more frequently followed than led when it came to the development of breakthrough aviation technologies, the country was often at the forefront in devising innovative ways of popularizing that technology. Ironically, it may well be that Russian Communists inspired the air-minded notions of China’s ill-fated Nationalist leader.

Whatever the case, I’d love to learn about the Chinese reaction to the arrival of the Great Flight squadron. The event would serve as a terrific vehicle for undertaking an article or essay on the origins of Chinese airmindedness.

Someone should get to work on this. Professor Baumler?

ScP

From the very beginning of their Campaign to Build the Red Air Fleet in the spring of 1923, Bolshevik Party officials oversaw the creation of propagandistic media aimed at inspiring citizens to join the voluntary society “Friends of the Air Fleet” (ODVF) and to contribute money toward the construction of airplanes. Posters, of course, played an important part of the state’s campaign but so, too, did written works including short stories, rhymes, and poems.

Most of the literary texts created to support ODVF have long since been forgotten, even by Russians. Very few (if any!) have been published in English translation. Nevertheless, these items are important for what they reveal about Soviet leaders’ intent and visions regarding the USSR’s emerging aviation culture.

The poem “Aero-verses” is a characteristic example. It was first published in 1925 by the short-lived journal Give Us Motors. High art it ain’t. But it reflects well two of the principal themes associated with ODVF’s initial campaign: that citizens should replace their faith in God with faith in technology, and that citizens’ should recognize as their duty participation in building aviation.

Here’s the English translation, followed by the Russian original:

“Aero-verses” (1925)

We no longer consider ourselves worthless dust.
Who taught us the narcotic of faith?
Skyward we launch the aero-squadron.
Our religion is the airplane.

Hey, wake up you blind and deaf ones,
Attend to the path of life,
We wrest power from the hands of nature
In establishing the air fleet.

Look upward, friend of the air fleet,
Let pride constrain your thoughts
That aerial flock is, after all your work.
The propellers were fastened by your dues.

Higher, comrade, lift your head.
Eyes wider with an intense glance,
See how they splendidly fly,
The steel children of the laboring mass.

Listen, the propeller whirling,
The aero ever higher climbs.
Adroitly moving through the sky,
Friends, it is our airplane.

*****

“Аэро-стихи”

[Даешь мотор, но. 5 (1925), ст. 30]

Довольно считать себя никчемною пылью.
Чему научил нас религии дурман?
В небо запустим аэро-эскадрилью.
Наша религия–аэроплан.

Эй, проснитесь, слепцы, глухие,
Слушайте жизни ход,
Вырвем власть из рук стихи,
Создавая воздушный флот.

Вверх гляди, друг воздухо-флота,
Гордостью мысли свои стреножь,
В стае воздушной твоя, ведь, работа,
Винтиком ввернут твой членский грош.

Выше, товарищ голову.
Шире зрачки напряженных глаз,
Видишь, как летят здорово,
Дети стальные трудящихся масс.

Слышишь, пропеллeр дыжится,
Аэро выше гляди берет.
Ловко по воздуху движется,
Наш, друзья, самолет.

*****

ScP