Comradely objects : : Design and material culture in Soviet Russia, 1960s-80s / / Yulia Karpova.

• VerfasserIn: Karpova, Yulia,
• Place / Publishing House: Manchester : : Manchester University Press, , [2020]; ©2020
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Series: Studies in Design and Material Culture
• Physical Description: 1 electronic resource (232 p.)

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. The Russian avant-garde of the 1920s is broadly recognised to have been Russia's first truly original contribution to world culture. In contrast, Soviet design of the post-war period is often dismissed as hack-work and plagiarism that resulted in a shabby world of commodities. This book offers a new perspective on the history of Soviet design by focusing on the notion of the comradely object as an agent of progressive social relations that state-sponsored Soviet design inherited from the avant-garde. It introduces a shared history of domestic objects, hand-made as well as machine made, mass-produced as well as unique, utilitarian as well as challenging the conventional notion of utility. This is a study of post-avant-garde Russian productivism at the intersection of intellectual history, social history and material culture studies, an account attentive to the complexities and contradictions of Soviet design.