In May 1929 the Soviet Union signed an agreement with the Ford Motor Company . Under its terms , the Soviets agreed to purchase $ 13 million worth of automobiles and parts , while Ford agreed to give technical assistance until 1938 to construct an integrated automobile-manufacturing plant at Nizhny Novgorod . Many American engineers and skilled auto workers moved to the Soviet Union to work on the plant and its production lines , which was named '' Gorkovsky Avtomobilny Zavod '' ( GAZ ) , or Gorki Automotive Plant in 1932 . A few American workers stayed on after the plant 's completion , and eventually became victims of Stalin 's Great Terror , either shot or exiled to Soviet gulags . In 1933 , the Soviets completed construction on a production line for the Ford Model-A passenger car , called the '' GAZ-A '' , and a light truck , the '' GAZ-AA '' . Both these Ford models were immediately adopted for military use . By the late 1930s production at Gorki was 80,000-90,000 " Russian Ford " vehicles per year . With its original Ford-designed vehicles supplemented by imports and domestic copies of imported equipment , the Gorki operations eventually produced a range of automobiles , trucks , and military vehicles
Great Terror
Great Purge
History of Ford Motor Company