page_title: Moskvitch (Bulgaria)
section_title: The beginnings
hierarchical_section_title: Moskvitch (Bulgaria) / The beginnings
caption_attribution_description: English: Some rare slogans (see below) adorn the building which is surrounded by a wonderful array of eastern european autos. The Ш registration mark for Shumen has become obsolete as now only shared cyrillic - roman letters are allowed. The new Bulgarian registration mark for Shumen is H (i.e. N) . Other cyrillic litters, like the suffix г on the Skoda are also outlawed, along with black and yellow plates. History of Skoda in Bulgarian here The building is the railways station of Shumen and the slogan on it says "For the Fatherland - labor, creativity and inspiration" Български: Москвич и Шкода пред гарата в Шумен със социалистически лозунг „За родината - труд, творчество и вдъхновение“
context_page_description: The Moskvitch was a 20th-century Soviet/Bulgarian passenger car.
  Between 1966 and 1990, the Balkan factory in Lovech, Bulgaria, assembled the Soviet-designed Moskvitch 408 from complete knock down kits.
context_section_description: During the fall of 1965 the People's Republic of Bulgaria and the USSR signed an economic cooperation agreement for the period of 1966-1970, which contained a provision that by the end of 1968 the Balkan factory in Lovech would be completely tooled for the assembly of 15,000 Moskvitch 408 passenger cars annually.
  In January 1966, a group of 20 Bulgarian engineers were sent to the MZMA Moscow Factory for Compact Cars, later renamed to AZLK, or the Leninist Communist Youth League Automobile Factory. By the end of July 1966 a total of 90 people (in three groups of 30 people each) were sent to the MZMA for training. Soon after that, the head engineer responsible for the construction of the new factory in Bulgaria, Aleksey Tatarinov, visited the city of Lovech, and the work on the project began.
caption: Moskvitch-2138/40 (left) in Shumen.
exif: {"Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition 3.0", "Image DateTime": "2009:07:14 20:28:01"}