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Kiev Motorcycle Factory
in the glory years  Kiev Motorcycle Factory (Kyivskyi Mototsykletnyi Zavod or KMZ) -- an immense industrial facility in the center of the city. During peak production years the factory produced as many as 400 motorcycles a day. Production slowed in the 1990s and eventually ceased. Many of the buildings have been converted to other uses.
Although Dnepr military motorcycles have logbooks, those merely record the acceptance dates, daily usage and service data that is found in military logbooks around the world, but nothing about their early days at the factory. Somewhere that history still exists -- those archives certainly exist -- and could form the basis of a fascinating historical study of a unique, sadly extinct military-industrial marvel.
The many urban legends associated with the "Dnepr story" begin shortly after the end of World War II -- the Great Patriotic War. The standard version of how the Dnepr motorcycle came to be produced in Kiev is that the factory was converted from an armored vehicle maintenance center to motorcycle production when the BMW motorcycle factory fell into Soviet hands at war's end. Kiev Auto Zavod developed into a
massive center for maintaining and refurbishing armored
vehicles following the November 1943 liberation of the Ukrainian capitol.
One vehicle serviced at KMZ was the massive
SU-152 Self Propelled Gun, known as "Conquering Beast" or "Animal
Killer" for its ability to defeat the late-war German Tiger, Panther and
Elephant armored fighting vehicles.
At the end of The Great Patriotic War eastern Germany was occupied by the victorious Soviet forces. Almost immediately there began a massive transfer of technology from Germany to the Soviet Union. According to the "Dnepr Urban Legend," one of the hundreds of industrial facilities that was taken
from Germany was the BMW motorcycle factory at Eisenach. For decades, KMZ manufactured motorcycles in this huge facility, supplying military, police and civilian models throughout the Soviet Union. At the same time, the "Ural" motorcycle was being produced in Irbit, Russia. Following the demise of the Soviet Union state-owned facilities throughout the empire suddenly found themselves with a new economic reality. Many state facilities were privatized (like the Ural factory in Russia) while others were left to survive on their own (like KMZ in Ukraine). KMZ continued to produce motorcycles but without adequate financing the factory began a slow, sad decline. Production quality became increasingly poor, dooming export sales and resulting in the loss of most of the skilled workforce. Very few new machines were produced and those were of questionable quality. Today the factory has ceased production and the overhead assembly line has been cut up and sold for scrap. Kiev is undergoing an economic boom and there is a growing demand for warehouse space around the city. Many of the KMZ buildings are now used as warehouses for grocery distributors and other commercial interests. The future of the Dnepr motorcycle marque is uncertain.
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Dnepr motorcycle advertisement
from the 1960s.
