The inks are out of register and the images misaligned, the contrast and focus is bad. The English language has been taken straight from a thesaurus. In short: It's Soviet-made
ELFA (The Production Association for Manufacture of Electric Motors, with the electrical engineering plant of the Order of the Red Banner) was a Soviet maker of electric motors, consumer electronics and household items in Vilnius, the capitol of Lithuania, a giant factory existing until a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union.
To show the products, this brochure was printed in 1987. My source of information has it that the tape recorders were very unreliable and wouldn't last for more than a few months before breaking. They were repaired on warranty, but wouldn't last more than a few more months before breaking again. The sales strategy was to dump the equipment far beyond the Ural, where they were used to even worse quality. The technicians used to joke about the fridges made by ELFA, that they could be sold as houses for the Eskimos, as they were slightly warmer than the surroundings.
But one must understand the ELFA workers. Working there must have been nerve wrecking, and a westerner can hardly imagine the situation. All offices had eavesdropping microphones, and all the phones were regularly monitored. As all other Soviet factories, ELFA had a KGB department, taking care of the political espionage on the employees. Terror for little nothings was common. If some employee had some unusual habit, such as being a vegetarian, or perhaps wanting to meditate after lunch, KGB would try to stop this as far as possible by listening in for the right moment to start the telephone terror. An official vegetarian could never hope for a promotion. That's how the working days went in the Soviet Union. One just had to get used to it. Or be destroyed. The result was, of course, lousy quality. But that didn't matter.
In the free economy, bankruptcy was soon declared, mostly because profitability and quality were never even considered, and because the managers often stole from the production, sometimes to give to the Police or other Party members, mostly to protect themselves from prosecution. The 6000 employees were fast out of a job.
Admire the perfect English. On page 7 the tape head is described as the “heart-motor” of the recorder, and on page 23, the workers can enjoy “serphing”.
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The grey colour is silver, which cannot be displayed on a computer screen. |
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The Japanese, automatic rotor winding machines. They would rather not show the Soviet-made machines. |
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The happy workers of the brigade, using stone-age equipment. |
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Here, tape heads are obviously hand-polished. |
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Motor or sinker? The quality of the products carries the thought towards “sinker”. |
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The lady's hat in combination with the fern above gives an impression of a witch. As does her make-up. The tape recorder design was pinched from a western magazine. |
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A cosy evening at home, but look out for the tape recorder. Can you read the text in the forest? I can't. |
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The company choir in the University Church, probably a thorn in the flesh of the KGB. |
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The shops on the premises, where happy workers buy high-quality products. |
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Some beautiful pictures from Lithuania's capitol Vilnius, in horrible colours. To the left the University yard, to the right the Church of St. Anne. |
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The worker's music club, that they built themselves. Probably the only fun they had. |
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Some pictures from the deserving workers holiday paradise around the Trakai Castle and the Palanga resort. With a green sky. |
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Last page. It even says who proofread (censored) it. |
The miracle life-size, download the PDF (3.3 MB). Enable Facing Pages.
ELFA of Lithuania (defunct) has nothing to do with the Swedish electronics supplier of the
same name!
