It's a small nitpick but the Saturnas vacuum, the first product featured, was actually Lithuanian. The most obvious clue - the name is written in Latin alphabet, not Cyrillic. Of course, with centralized economy, most of these designs probably had to be approved by Moscow but it doesn't mean that it was the seat of all creativity and innovation.
Well, Lithuania was occupied and a part of Soviet sphere at the time. Although it's always nice when other parts of USSR get individual mentioning rather than just Soviet=Russian.
Soviet-Era Industrial Design
81–90 of 134 posts
Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plenty of countries had to catch up with the UK. And Russian empire was not that much backwards. Their economy was agriculture-based. But they had quite a few smart people. The only lacking thing was push from the government to industrialize. Let alone they were far from catching up with the West by the time WW2 started or at any other point in their history. It’s impressive in the same way that holocaust is impressi…
> And Russian empire was not that much backwards. Their economy was agriculture-based That's quite an understatement, the Russian empire did not do any industrial revolution at all, it was a mostly undeveloped agricultural wasteland. > Plenty of countries had to catch up with the UK. But none of them succeeded to the extent of the Soviet Union at that time. One of the main argument of the communists at that time was…
They did have factories. In fact, factories in Petrograd were one of the hotbeds of revolutionary mind. Railroad in more densely populated areas. Electric power plants did exist here and there. St Petersburg or Moscow were rather similar to cities of similar size in the West. Countryside was just too sparsely populated to do anything with it.
> But none of them succeeded to the extent of the Soviet Union at that time
Succeeded by what measure? GDP? Satisfaction of citizens? Soviet Union had abnormally large amount of people working in agriculture all the way till the fall. Consumer industry never even came close to West. Sure, if you focus on military alone and put oppressive state apparatus behind it, with a lot of natural resources, you can have a damn sweet army. But the rest will crumble. And it did.
> transform it into a global superpower
Russia was already a super power. Purely by sheer size and manpower. They had some great minds in science in arts as well.
The 19th century super powers fell in first half of 20th century thanks to the raise of national identities and human rights. Making vast colonies too expensive to maintain in all sorts of ways. This gave birth to 2 superpowers that ruled the world in 2nd half of 20th century. USA avoided the fall because they were built on freedom and humanity (to certain extent, obviously) to begin with. USSR just avoided all of that thanks to totalitarian regime.
Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
When the Soviet Union was formed Russia was a pre-industrial feudal monarchy. It recapitulated roughly two hundred years of Western industrial development in less than fifty, mostly under the leadership of a murderous quasi-feudal dictator who purged all the brightest and most interesting people. And it still survived WWII to become a competitive space-faring superpower. I don’t particularly like Russia, but I think…
Catching up is kinda easy when you can just copy. USSR failed badly once it was time to go forward. Especially on electronics and computers. We shouldn't underestimate what focused dictatorships are capable of. They're bloody effective.
Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design
#84Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Yeah, today it's hard to kill every person with signs of intellect as in Cambodia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Crimes_against_hum...
Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
All countries in the world was pre-industrial monarchies just 150 years ago. Please point to your point. Moreover, in WWW2, USSR lost about 1/6 of population. It's hard to name such losses as "win". Western Allies, which is also at war with Germany, provided continuous aid to that "superpower" in addition to their own soldiers at war.
>Western Allies, which is also at war with Germany, provided continuous aid to that "superpower" in addition to their own soldiers at war. On D-day the nazis were on the run, pushed back to Poland. The USSR did more than 90% of the winning and much of it before anyone else invaded. This thinking that the UK, US, etc. did anything near the winning that the USSR did is getting old. Of course we helped but it was a tiny…
About polls: lies are quick to spread. In 1940, USSR was major enemy to France after Germany. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pike .
Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, today it's hard to kill every person with signs of intellect as in Cambodia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Crimes_against_hum...
The US-backed Khmer Rouge was propped up to defeat the communist movement in Cambodia. They certainly weren't communists by any post-1848 definition.
Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design
#88Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing always strikes me in terms of design when I'm in Latvia (USSR republic in 1940 and 1945-1990). It is how modular, repairable, and in that way "simple" things that have survived from the Soviet era look. Ingeniously built wooden ironing boards for example, the older generations of trams of Riga, the "Minsk" folding bicycles that you still see around very often, the trains (no new ones since 1991!), even many…
> older generations of trams of Riga A quick google search confirmed what I had already suspected, that is that those trams are Tatra trams, built in former Czechoslovakia. I’m a big fan of them, I think they are the main reason why I immediately became a tram-lover as a student almost 20 years ago when I moved to Bucharest in order to study. Of course, the newer trams look and are often times a lot more comfortable,…
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=gm+new+look+bus&t=ffab&atb=v112-4&...