The AFU and Urban Legend Archive
Misc
 parts is parts




Date: Sun, 14 Apr 1996 20:29:00 +1300
From: "Steve Caskey (04)473-5544" <MANAGER@schools.minedu.govt.nz>
Subject: Re: The Urban Legends FAQ... (fwd)

Joe Chew writes:
>I'd upgrade it from F with extreme prejudice to just F on the
>strength of what he wrote, U if someone can produce the book,
>Tb or T only if the voracity of the book can be verified.

>From _The Russians_, by Hedrick Smith, ISBN 0-7221-7959-6, page 113 of the
Sphere paperback 1986 reprint: 

          The personal operation that intrigued me most of all, however, 
     involved an engineer who had swiped enough spare parts at a large 
     automobile plant to construct himself a complete camping trailer, an 
     unheard-of and practically non-existent luxury in Russia.  A balding 
     linguist, who knew the engineer personally, told me that this engineer 
     had assembled his trailer, piece by piece, right on the premises of the 
     Zil factory in Moscow which manufactures luxury limousines for the 
     Politburo.  Presumably, other workers were either in on the operation 
     or thought the trailer was being constructed for some VIP and 
     discretion required them to keep quiet about it.  Somehow it went 
     undiscovered but the engineer was not without his problems.
          "Several weeks ago I was talking with him and he was worried that 
     he was not going to be able to get the trailer out of the factory," the 
     linguist told me.  This is because each factory has guards and watchmen 
     checking against larceny of state property from the premises.  "The 
     engineer was worried that he would not be able to find the right guard 
     to bribe to let him get out of the plant with his trailer.  But a 
     couple of weeks later I saw him again and he told me that finally he 
     had gotten the trailer to his dacha.  He had found the right guy."

Hedrick Smith was the New York Times' correspondent in Moscow for three years, and is a Pulitzer Prize winner. On the plus side for this story's voracity we have the fact that it was not an actual car but a trailer, which is a far more plausible project for one person; and that the trailer was built on the premises and removed in one piece, requiring just one circumvention of gate security. On the minus side, while the story appears to be an F rather than an FOAF account, Smith offers no independent confirmation, and it appears the friend of the engineer had not seen the trailer himself at the time he related the story. However the story is reasonably fresh (a few weeks old) at that time.

I'd say Joe's instinct is correct, and on the strength of this passage alone, the story can't really rate better than "U". "Tb" might be pushing it a bit.

Steve "there was a piece on TB on BBC World this morning, actually" Caskey --
Just another mindless public servant at the Ministry of Education


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