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Soviet-Era Industrial Design

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Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design

#31

Post by mseebach »

baybal2 wrote: post #6

Eastern bloc design is what American fifties-early-sixties were, back when Khrushev was trying to make USSR a semblance of a normal nation. To many here, it will may sound surprising, but Khrushev kept quite high opinion of the Western society, and looked up to it. After Khrushev was kicked out of the politbureau, all things got stuck in that era till the moment USSR kicked the bucket.

There's a book by Francis Spufford, "Red Plenty", which is a fictionalised (but, according to the author, trying very hard to track the true story as much as possible) about this era, and Krushhev features heavily. Highly recommended if you find history and economics interesting.

Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design

#32

Post by c-smile »

pilsetnieks wrote: post #28
c-smile wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Пояс" here means geographical area of accessibility: on the north and Siberia prices were higher but salaries were also higher. So the price included delivery cost taxes. As of "at 13% humidity level": Pasta is highly hygroscopic and being packaged in paper box can absorb a lot of moister increasing its weight significantly. Fair remark, isn't it? For that matter: all devices sold in USSR were coming with principal…

> For that matter: all devices sold in USSR were coming with principal schemas so anyone can repair and reproduce. Repairability was an absolute necessity for Soviet tech. There simply wasn't enough production capacity to adequately supply most households with even one of a certain item, not to mention replacement items for those that broke down. Appliance repair was an everyday necessity and it was seen as a somewha…

"golden hands" etc.

has nothing special with Soviets. It was the same at tsars times. The culture started by tsar Peter the Great who was quite good as a locksmith. He has several rooms in his palace with lathes and other tools.

Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design

#33

Post by p2t2p »

pandaman wrote: post #25
onemanstartup wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it doesn't. It is not ladas, it's lada and it's from a type of ship - https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9B%D0%B0%D0%B4%D1%8C%D1%8F... You can see logo of lada and there is a ship there

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/%D0%9B%D... You have no idea what are you talking about.

This is logo of the car - https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Файл:Lada_Logo.jpeg, this is a monument for the ship type in the city near by to the factory - https://goo.gl/images/Dod837, this is a picture of the ship type from an artist - https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Nic... and last but not least, the wikipedia article about ship type in russian - https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ладья_(судно). Greece, yeah.

Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design

#34

Post by digi_owl »

tjr225 wrote: post #26

As a huge synth geek the soviet era synthesizers are sought after and also produce unique sounds. Here's a comparison of Moog(US) and Polivoks(USSR): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbdyMP_CiIY Also! They look cool.

Gets me thinking of my musician friend that had a few soviet made vacuum tubes laying around for his guitar amp.

Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design

#35

Post by vageli »

p2t2p wrote: post #33
pandaman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/%D0%9B%D... You have no idea what are you talking about.

This is logo of the car - https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Файл:Lada_Logo.jpeg , this is a monument for the ship type in the city near by to the factory - https://goo.gl/images/Dod837 , this is a picture of the ship type from an artist - https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Nic... and last but not least, the wikipedia article about ship type in russian - https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ладья_(судно)…

I think when OP was mentioning ladas they were talking about razor blades, not cars.

Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design

#36

Post by pandaman »

p2t2p wrote: post #33
pandaman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/%D0%9B%D... You have no idea what are you talking about.

This is logo of the car - https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Файл:Lada_Logo.jpeg , this is a monument for the ship type in the city near by to the factory - https://goo.gl/images/Dod837 , this is a picture of the ship type from an artist - https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Nic... and last but not least, the wikipedia article about ship type in russian - https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ладья_(судно)…

Ok, in case you do not understand Russian: the picture I posted is the Soviet packaging of these razor blades, they are ones on top with the picture of a running man in style of ancient Greek paintings and inscription of "Ladas" (Ладас) in Russian. Fun fact - adding "s" at the end of the word makes no sense in Russian so it's not a form of "Lada" (Лада) but an entirely different word. Judging by the fact that Ladas is the name of an ancient Greek athlete, which is also spelled as Ладас in Russian and the picture of some Greek athlete on the packaging it's not a huge of leap to conclude that the blades are named, in fact, after the aforementioned athlete and not ships, cars or goddesses with different name.

Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design

#37

Post by rdtsc »

Moscow Design Museum has some more examples too http://moscowdesignmuseum.ru/en/exhibitions/1/. Those that grew up in Soviet Union will recognize familiar objects. I recognized the phones, the "basketball" game, and the portable checkers game. Well and of course the Moskvitch 408 car.

I don't remember really thinking about design back then. Maybe because we didn't have many choices. You wanted a tape player you picked between 4 models, cars - same thing, and so on. And there is probably an effect here of finding the best stuff and displaying it. But that wasn't the average. Most of the stuff remember being unreliable and needing repair. Electronic equipment came with nice diagrams of how everything worked, but it wasn't from the goodness of their hearts, environmental concerns, or trying to foster a "maker" culture, it was because it would actually be unreliable and break down quite often.

Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design

#38

Post by pilsetnieks »

c-smile wrote: post #32
pilsetnieks wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For that matter: all devices sold in USSR were coming with principal schemas so anyone can repair and reproduce. Repairability was an absolute necessity for Soviet tech. There simply wasn't enough production capacity to adequately supply most households with even one of a certain item, not to mention replacement items for those that broke down. Appliance repair was an everyday necessity and it was seen as a somewha…

"golden hands" etc. has nothing special with Soviets. It was the same at tsars times. The culture started by tsar Peter the Great who was quite good as a locksmith. He has several rooms in his palace with lathes and other tools.

Yes, and the lathe was also Prince Bolkonsky's hobby.

I wasn't talking about hobbies, I was talking about necessities of ordinary people.

Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design

#39

Post by digi_owl »

baybal2 wrote: post #6

Eastern bloc design is what American fifties-early-sixties were, back when Khrushev was trying to make USSR a semblance of a normal nation. To many here, it will may sound surprising, but Khrushev kept quite high opinion of the Western society, and looked up to it. After Khrushev was kicked out of the politbureau, all things got stuck in that era till the moment USSR kicked the bucket.

Whenever this comes up i wonder what the outcome would have been had Gorbachev been allowed to complete his reforms.
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