Strange Examples of Soviet Design (2011)

Made in Russia: Unsung Icons of Soviet Design

edited by Michael Idov.

The book is rather small and consists of just pictures of products or designs along with a few paragraphs explaining their context, use, production, etc. The boiling wand is not the oddest example.

I found the book fascinating as a mechanical engineer, because it just shows how much a designer's constraints often affect the final product (good, fast, cheap --- pick two, as they say). Soviet society was defined by scarcity, and many of the designs were highly influenced by scarcity one way or another. They were quite adverse to disposable products, like paper cups, etc. The designs had to be reasonably permanent to not waste resources (at least in theory). There are many examples of this in the book: the communal soda fountains with a single shared cup, the portable and collapsible cups, and fish net shopping bags (avosha). In each of these situations, Western designers picked disposable solutions: soda cans, paper cups, and plastic bags. Such choices were considered wasteful to the Soviets. Note that the last two designs (collapsible cups and net bags) could be pocketed and carried around and used at a moment's notice. This is an important design consideration when living under severe shortages, since you may only have a short time to get certain products when they suddenly become available. The book does note, however, that plastic bags did become increasingly available in the 1980s, but that people tended to wash them and hang them on clothes lines for reuse (they did not understand they were supposed to be disposable).