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Soviet-Era Industrial Design
41–50 of 134 posts
Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design
#42As 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.
And as a huge tube amplifier geek I'd like to point out you can in fact still buy sovtek tubes! https://www.tubedepot.com/t/brands/sovtek?gclid=Cj0KCQjwzcbW...
Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design
#43Moscow 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 pick…
there's a whole genre of art defined in the west as "soviet futurism". Lots of the early space race era public propaganda posters and such fall into this category.
https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&hs=n9w&channel=f...
https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&hs=y9w&channel=f...
Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm grinning. That does make much more sense.
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
VAZ, the manufacturer who produced Ladas was/is situated on the Volga river, and based on my understanding (I lived in a city nearby), the word Lada came from word Lad'ya which is a type of ship that sailed on Volga river. At least that's how I remember it.
Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design
#45I always will wonder if, suppose we hadn't bothered with a "cold war" and the mutual antipathy & fear, the Soviet system would be ticking along well.
So, I always find the bits of Soviet thought fascinating. In large part, I think it is because it is both modern and alien. A different road was taken and a different perspective was built in so many things. Even when I work with people who grew up in that world, they have a variant viewpoint versus people from other worlds.
I would love to see a volume translating the key developments of Soviet computer science & programming languages. There's drabs of translated information, but not a coherent narrative & a solid compare & contrast.
Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design
#46On a related note, you can find lots of Soviet era (as well as modern) things and curious facts on this wonderful site http://englishrussia.com/
Russian watches are a good gateway drug to watch collecting without having to spend a lot of money. There are so many unique editions and designs and (here in Germany) they can often be found on flea markets for unter 20€.
Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design
#47These look so familiar - my family had quite a few of these everyday objects when I was growing up in Ukraine. I am no fan of USSR or the state of Russia today, but I do feel a sense of nostalgia when I hear or see descriptions of objects, apartment layouts, etc from those days.
Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
The system (obviously) did not encourage free market competition, and there were issues in supply and demand. Therefore things like re-design and re-styling, which happened naturally in a highly competitive marketplace didn't happen. But, on the other hand, having worked out a reasonably functional, stylish design for a coffeepot there was no need to invest pointless money re-styling it, to try and capture market sha…
When you have dumb rules then rational decision lead to bad effects. That's why you should have good systems of rules. Instiutional economics 101.
Any system of rules will have a utility monster. Be it the Politburo, or Wall Street.
Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design
#49I always will wonder if, suppose we hadn't bothered with a "cold war" and the mutual antipathy & fear, the Soviet system would be ticking along well. So, I always find the bits of Soviet thought fascinating. In large part, I think it is because it is both modern and alien . A different road was taken and a different perspective was built in so many things. Even when I work with people who grew up in that world, they…
Communists considered Soviet Union just a bridgehead for the World Revolution. It primary goal was to serve as a resource base for spreading the fire all over the world. I just checked and it looks like English version of “the Internationale” is mild, the Russian lyrics explicitly state “this world of oppression we’ll reduce to rubble and will use that rubble to build our new world” - and I can guarantee you, USSR was really looking forward to destroy the capitalist world.
The industrial design showcased in this article is nice. But the reality was that most “nice things” were replicas, authorized or otherwise, of the things developed in the first world. I remember in 1980s looking throw the mail catalogues people brought from abroad and being amazed on how many nice things there were in the world. Obviously, I was mostly interested in the toys section back then - but those toys were decades ahead of what we had in USSR.
Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design
#50I always will wonder if, suppose we hadn't bothered with a "cold war" and the mutual antipathy & fear, the Soviet system would be ticking along well. So, I always find the bits of Soviet thought fascinating. In large part, I think it is because it is both modern and alien . A different road was taken and a different perspective was built in so many things. Even when I work with people who grew up in that world, they…
Communists considered Soviet Union just a bridgehead for the World Revolution. It primary goal was to serve as a resource base for spreading the fire all over the world. I just checked and it looks like English version of “the Internationale” is mild, the Russian lyrics explicitly state “this world of oppression we’ll reduce to rubble and will use that rubble to build our new world” - and I can guarantee you, USSR wa…
Who knows perhaps they will succeed after all? But not a tiniest bit in the way the communists envisioned!
Inequality will be stopped from growing indefinitively because somewhere must be a limit. What if the one percent owning ninety nine percent of global wealth is not enough for them? When will the rest of the world stop being sheeple and how will they change this? I hope in a peaceful way.
Communism is dead. It's a stillborn ideology. I experienced Communism during a trip to the German Democratic Republic 1986. I found it dodgy and full of internal inconsistency.
However the problems Communism tried to solve are real and as of today even more pressing than ever.