Door Marcel
Als vervolg op het Letland avontuur, waar ik in beland ben door Juris, leek het me leuk om een stukje te plaatsen wat Juris ooit geschreven heeft over het restaureren en verzamelen van vintage motorfietsen tijdens de russische bezetting.
Confessions of an Iron Curtain collector: How i survived during the soviet regime.
By Juris Ramba 2008
Looking back on the bleak days in Latvia prior to collapse of the soviet regime in 1991, and how i survived them, we can now make yokes and laugh about it, but on would not laugh aloud at the time,
at least not while the authorities or anyone you did not know well was listning.
My
first ride on a two-wheeler was a moped that I rode into the sea at the age of
seven because I did not know how to stop the engine. My first encounter with a
proper vintage motorcycle was at the age of 11 when I rode pillion on a 1938
Royal Enfield Bullet.
The
impressions were so strong that I traced, found, and bought this very machine
when I was 23. This, I guess, was the moment when I can say I was bitten by the
vintage bug. I passed my riding test at the age of 16.
My
eldest brother had a V
jatka
scooter—a Russian copy of the Vespa—that he stripped down to parts so I could
not ride it while he was away serving in the Soviet Army.
What was I to do but reassemble it and start riding? When, in 1972, the police
would not let me ride my bitsa bike built from JAWA and Pannonia parts because
the handlebars were too wide, I took revenge by swapping it for a 1942 Harley-Davidson
WLA, which I rode as I pleased, except in the Kurland region where the Soviet's
SS20 nuclear rockets were deployed.
Ramba
in his shop during the Soviet years.
My next move was to swap the Harley for a 1935 CS1 Norton. This machine
had a very special appeal because I admired this legendary British company and
its products. I read everything I could find about motorcycling, and, as a
university graduate, I had access to Latvia's international library
services and could order books from all over
the
world. Because these books spent most of their allotted two weeks somewhere at the KGB
screening rooms, I could only have one or two days to read them. I soon
made an unofficial arrangement with friends at a photographic lab to have
the books copied cover to cover on photographic film so that I could
print them later and become a source of information and product
dating for me and my motorcycle club mates on almost any British or American
machine that could be found in Latvia.
Saying
a winter prayer over a 1928 Henderson
much in need of prayer.
There are lots of interesting stories about the ingenuity that was
required to survive and succeed as a motorcycle collector behind the Iron
Curtain. One such episode was when I made a Matchless Silver Hawk gear change
gate and wanted to send it to a friend who lives in Edenbridge in the United
Kin
gdom.
I proudly brought this part to the post office attendant and she asked,
"Wot is it?" "A motorcycle part," I said, naively. "No
way!” she said, “You are not allowed to send any motorcycle parts by post to capitalist
countries!" "What can I send?” I asked. "Sporting
inventory, fishing tackle, etc," she replied. So, the next day I went to
another post office with the same part bolted to a block of plywood. "What
is that?" asked the attendant. “It's a fishing rod holder,” I explained
with a straight face. The parcel was posted with no problem, and I can only
imagine the laughter on the other end when my friend received his “fishing rod
holder.” I received in return a kind letter from him, accompanied by a pair of
special Velocette fishing rod grip rubbers. These, it turned out, were so much
like footrest rubbers that I used them on my 1939 Mk VIII!
With
his son Robert and 1926 Norton in 2003.
There were some less successful cases prior to the fishing tackle
episode. A friend of mine from Weybridge wanted to send me a surprise gift for
Christmas. It was an original Brooklands can for one of my Nortons. It turned
out a nasty surprise for him when the parcel was returned unopened with a stamp
on it stating "CONTENTS PROHIBITED," and to make matters worse, he
had to pay 25 pounds return postage. I finally got that Brooklands can when I
first visited the U.K.
in 1989, and it now patiently awaits the restoration of my 1933 Norton
International.
At
the Pioneer Run on a 1903 Russia
in 2003.
Once I had several gear clusters made for 1920s and early ‘30s Sunbeams
that I wanted to trade for much-needed parts for some of my own machines.
Barter was about the only way to obtain rare parts, because one Pound Sterling was worth 200
Russian Roubles, which was a month's salary for a factory worker at the
time. There was no way I could earn enough to buy precious motorcycle parts
in the U.K.,
so I resorted to making parts to trade. I put these gears through the stickiest
grease I could find and brought them to the main customs office in Riga with a
receipt I had obtained previously from a motorcycle spares shop. I explained
that I had bought these Russian motorcycle gears to send to som
eone
in the U.K.
who had a few Russian bikes and badly needed the parts. My postage document was duly stamped, and I could proceed with posting the
prohibited items. I knew that the Soviet customs authorities never liked
grease, so when I offered to open the package and scatter the gears on the
table for their inspection, the answer was, “No! Do not open it!"
Even if they had required me to show these Sunbeam gears, I am sure nobody
could tell that they were not from a Russian ISH 350 gearbox. In fact, nobody
really cared what kind of gears they were. These were just stupid laws invented
by the authorities to make life harder for those who aspired for change or
something better in their lives.
On his 1937 Harley Knucklehead, a nine-year restoration.
Another silly episode took place with four tins of rather expensive
Royal Blue cellulose paint that one of my Norwegian friends sent me for my 1928
Henderson De Luxe (It is pictured above prior to restoration). I received the
parcel in an opened state. All the tins had been opened and someone had
inspected the contents, probably by stirring trough it. One of the lids had not
been replaced properly and as the parcel was turned ove
r at
the post office in Riga,
the dark blue paint seeped out and painted the shelf and all the accompanying parcels as
well. Fortunately, the official post office colour was blue at the time (today
it is yellow). My Norwegian friend had put 20 plastic shopping bags into
the parcel as packing material and to safeguard against leaks. Most of these
bags were now smothered with blue paint, and the most amusing thing happened
when I had to pay the customs duty for the parcel. Instead of paying duty on
the paint, I was told I had to pay the amazing amount of 10 Russian Roubles duty
on each of the 20 plastic bags, which, at the
time, were regarded a status symbol and were retailing at around 10 Russian
Roubles each on the black market! I had to pay this duty regardless of the fact
that most of the bags were now painted blue and quite unusable as “status
symbols.”
At
the docks at Liverpool in 2007, on the way to the Isle of
Man with his 1913 Rex-JAP
and his son Robert.
I learned my hardest lesson when someone sent me Ervin Tragatch's
motorcycle encyclopaedia and added a Vogue
fashion magazine for the wife. I never received that parcel, maybe because the Vogue was forbidden material or it was just
pinched as very desirable. I never again mentioned anything in my letters
except information about the black art and magic of vintage motorcycles, which
was a subject of no interest to the inspectors at the Russian post office. Just
imagine that in these days all of the parcels I received from the West went
first to Moscow then back to Latvia. But I
had my happiest days when I found a fellow in the U.K.
who was interested in trading old motorcycling books in the Russian language
for recently published U.K.
books about vintage motorcycles. The man was collecting information for the
purpose of writing a story of the Russian motorcycle, but as far as I know he
never finished it. At any rate, that was the start of my library, which has
grown o
ver the
years, and may now be one of the biggest private libraries about vintage
motorcycles
in the Baltic countries.
Restoring
his "grandfather's
lathe."
How, you might ask, were we able to restore vintage motorcycles when we
were not allowed to own any machine tools? In fact, it was a criminal act for a
private person to buy a modern lathe or milling machine. These were only
available to factories under the control of "the proletariat
dictatorship." My solution to this problem was to find a genuine 1937 VEF
lathe. This was the famous collet lathe on which the VEF Minox spy camera
parts were machined in Riga
before the war. I rebuilt this lathe to its original pristine condition, the
difficulty of which probably few people can understand. It took me the whole
winter to scrape 0.5 mm away to get the lathe bed straight and like new again
(pictured above). I will not dwell on all the other technicalities of how to
rebuild a vintage lathe because it could go on for pages, but I can tell you
that the job took two full years to accomplish before I became the proud owner
of "my grandfather's lathe," which, as a vintage tool, would not be confiscated by the authorities. I even built my own enamelling stove,
which I am still using today for baking enamel on frames, forks, and other
parts. I built from scratch a sandblasting cabinet and a bead blasting cabinet,
both with extrusion cyclones and dust separators. A piston compressor was
replaced by a 30-year-old screw compressor which is still going strong after
all those years.
With
the restored stars for the Freedom Monument of Latvia.
The
top of the Freedom
Monument, over 42 meters
high
When Latvia
became independent in 1991, I could finally start buying proper machine tools,
and my workshop started really flourishing and expanding. It is still expanding
due to my cylinder head rebuilding business, which is constantly growing. New
modern technologies and tooling are added every year and only
those
"who have been there" can really appreciate what this newly-found
freedom feels like. Think of it, the freedom to work with one's own tools!
Because I so much appreciate this freedom, perhaps my proudest accomplishment
is that I was chosen in 2001 to do the restoration and bronze welding of the
stars on the famous Freedom Monument (pictured above) in preparation for the
800th Anniversary of the City of Riga.
For welding and brazing, I used my Henrob torch, the only oxyacetylene torch of
its kind in Latvia
at the time. Not only is this Freedom Monument (pictured here) important to me as a true
patriot of Latvia,
but it symbolizes my lifelong quest for the right tools for the right jobs.
This was never easy under a system that questioned the actions and motives for
everything we did, even when it only involved trying to restore the old
motorcycles we loved.
Ramba
today on his Rex-JAP.
Born in 1951, Juris Ramba
became Chairman of the Vintage Motorcycle Section of the Antique Automobile Cub
of Latvia at the age of 27, the same year he became the only member of the
Vintage Motor Cycle Club of Great Britain from the Soviet
Union. From 1989 to 1992, he served as President of the Antique
Automobile Club of Latvia, and in that capacity attended the First World Motor
Museum Congress in Great
Britain in 1989. Between 1985 and 1992, he
organized a series of rallies for the Riga Motormuseum, and he acquired many
rare motorcycles for the Museum, including a Vostok Grand Prix road
racer. In 1990, he became a delegate to the Federation International de
Motocyclisme where he served until 1994. After Latvia declared its independence in
1991, Ramba formed his own engineering company, Ramoto Ltd. From 1999 to
2003, he served as the Vice-Chairman of the European Motorcycle Union Vintage
Working Group. From 2003 through 2007, he founded and organized the Round
Kurland Rally for vintage motorcycles. He has a private collection of a
dozen rare motorcycles, mostly of British and American brands. He has written
for Motohistory on several occasions, and is pictured here on his 1913 Rex-JAP,
a restoration previously described on this web site (see Motohistory News &
Views 2/15/2007).
Receiving the Harry Mack
Trophy in April 2008.
Editor's comment:
I was on the Management Council of the
International Motorcycle Federation (FIM)
during the Soviet era and when The Wall came down in 1989. Immediately
following the collapse of the Soviet Union, new faces began to arrive at the
FIM, from Belarus, Estonia, Ukraine,
Latvia, Lithuania, and other former members of the Union. One of the first of these newcomers I met was
Juris Ramba, and I learned immediately that we shared an interest in antique
motorcycles and motorcycle history. Ramba's dedication to the movement, under
the conditions described in his account above, is hard for most of us to
comprehend. Now that he is free to travel and communicate openly with other
enthusiasts, he has become one of the leading lights for vintage motorcycling
throughout Europe. He is a member of the
European Chapter of the Antique Motorcycle Club of America, he has visited
meets in the United States and made many friends, some of whom have travelled
to Latvia to attend his Round Kurland Rally. Even when restoring bikes under
difficult circumstances, his workmanship is exquisite. In 2007, he received the
prestigious Footman James Cup with his 1913 Rex/JAP at the Castletown Vintage
Rally held on the Isle of Man during TT week.
And, on the 6th of this month he was awarded the Harry Mack Trophy (pictured
above) by the Vintage Motorcycle Club of Great Britain. About these top
awards, Ramba says, “These are the light at the end of the tunnel of my bleak
times behind the Iron Curtain.” Juris Ramba is a man I feel honored to know. He
should be an inspiration to us all.
