Accommodating ‘design’: introducing the Western concept into Soviet art theory in the 1950s–60s

Abstract

This article investigates the background of Soviet industrial design in Soviet art theory. Instead of considering design's interconnection with technology and science, or with consumption and everyday life, the author traces its conceptualisation as a new artistic phenomenon. Using archival records of professional discussions, polemical articles in the art press and design projects, the author looks at how industrial design was incorporated into the Soviet order of things. She concludes that accommodation of the Western model was the way to reform the system of socialism from inside, typical for the Soviet intelligentsia of the 1960s.

Keywords:

• art theory
• industrial design
• applied art
• technical aesthetics
• mass production

Acknowledgements

The research for this article was partially sponsored by Central European University Foundation, Budapest. The author thanks John Harbord, Julia Gusarova and Oleksandr Nadtoka for their valuable comments and suggestions for this text.

Notes

  1. I am indebted to Mr Paperny for calling my attention to this article and cordially providing me with the text.

  2. Paperny, “Kak ia byl dizainerom” (How I Was a Designer), Iunost', 100–5. Here and further Russian quotes are translated by the author.

  3. The term “industrial design” was polyvalent in the capitalist countries in the 1950s and 1960s and even more problematic in the socialist bloc. For the sake of clarity, I base the definition of this term on the 1959 explanation of “industrial designer” by the ICSID (International Council of the Societies of Industrial Design): “An industrial designer is one who is qualified by training, technical knowledge, experience and visual sensibility to determine the materials, mechanisms, shape, colour, surface finishes and decoration of objects which are reproduced in quantity by industrial processes. The industrial designer may, at different times, be concerned with all or only some of these aspects of an industrially produced object” (The official website of ICSID. http://www.icsid.org/about/about/articles33.htm). Industrial design is then a creative activity aimed at determining “materials, mechanisms, shape, colour, surface finishes and decoration”, and, I should add, ergonomic qualities and exploitation/maintenance convenience of objects mass-produced by industry. Notably, it is only one type of the large and diverse sphere of design.

  4. de Jong, “The Principles of Stream,” 269–90, 282.

  5. te Velde, “Political Transfers: An Introduction,” 205.

  6. Hutchings, “The Weakening of Ideological Influences upon Soviet Design,” 71–81.

  7. Hutchings, Soviet Science, Technology, Design: Interaction and Convergence.

  8. Bailes, “Soviet Design: A Comment and an Alternative View,” 595–601; Senkevitch Jr., “Art, Architecture and Design: A Commentary,” 587–94.

  9. Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin; Parrot, Trade, Technology and Soviet-American Relations.

 10. Lavrentiev and Nasarov, Russian Design: Tradition and Experiment, 1920–1990. London: Academy Editions, 1995.

 11. Azrikan, “VNIITE, Dinosaur of Totalitarianism or Plato's Academy of Design?”, 45–77.

 12. Reid and Crowley, Style and Socialism: Modernity and Material Culture in Post-War Eastern Europe, 81–100; Buchli, An Archaeology of Socialism; Reid and Crowley, Socialist Spaces: Cites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc; Reid, “Khrushchev Modern: Agency and Modernization in the Soviet Home,” 227–68.

 13. Castillo, Cold War at the Home Front.

 14. Reid and Crowley, Pleasures in Socialism: Leisure and Luxury in the Eastern Bloc.

 15. Bartlett, FashionEast: The Spectre That Haunted Socialism.

 16. Harris, Communism on Tomorrow Street.

 17. Woodham, Twentieth-Century Design, 165–81.

 18. There are numerous definitions of design, and, of course, the choice of a definition conditions how one writes a history of design and the temporal point when one begins it. In this example, by “design broader defined” I mean any creative human activity of creating aesthetically expressive and practically useful objects, complexes of objects, or whole environments or systems. Not surprisingly, such definition allows tracing extending design history endlessly far back in time, but also geographically and socially. Thus, design historian Vladimir Aronov cites the Russian wooden-log hut (izba), peasant's stove, samovar, traditional baths (banya), the cut of a peasant's clothes and so on, as examples of “the classic of Russian design”. Aronov, “M. E. Gize i problemy izucheniia istorii dizaina v Rossii” (Marietta E. Gize and Problems of Studying history of Design in Russia), 7–37.

 19. There are numerous definitions of design, and, of course, the choice of a definition conditions how one writes a history of design and the temporal point when one begins it. In this example, by “design broader defined” I mean any creative human activity of creating aesthetically expressive and practically useful objects, complexes of objects, or whole environments or systems. Not surprisingly, such definition allows tracing extending design history endlessly far back in time, but also geographically and socially. Thus, design historian Vladimir Aronov cites the Russian wooden-log hut (izba), peasant's stove, samovar, traditional baths (banya), the cut of a peasant's clothes and so on, as examples of “the classic of Russian design”. Aronov, “M. E. Gize i problemy izucheniia istorii dizaina v Rossii” (Marietta E. Gize and Problems of Studying history of Design in Russia), 7–37

 20. Khan-Magomedov, Pionery sovetskogo dizaina (Pioneers of Soviet Design); Lavrentiev and Nasarov, Russian Design; Azrikan, “VNIITE.”

 21. Azrikan, “VNIITE,” 45.

 22. Lavrentiev and Nasarov, Russian Design, 48–61.

 23. Dmitry Azrikan, Interview for the Journal Projector, 23 September 2008 http://www.designet.ru/context/interview/?id = 37621.

 24. Azrikan, Interview for the Journal Projector.

 25. Azrikan, Interview for the Journal Projector

 26. Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond; Günther, “O krasote, kotoraia ne smogla spastic sotsializm” (On Beauty that could not Save Socialism), trans. from the German by A. Markov, Novoe Literaturnoe Obozreniie 101 (2010): http://magazines.russ.ru/nlo/2010/101/gu2.html.

 27. As evident from the issues of the only official art journal of this period, Iskusstvo; see also Paperny, Kul'tura Dva (Culture Two), 275–7.

 28. Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Council of Ministers of the USSR “On Liquidating Excesses in Planning and Building” from 4 November 1955. http://www.sovarch.ru/postanovlenie55/. See also Reid, “Khrushchev Modern,” 232–3.

 29. Mirzoian and Helmianov, Sankt-peterburgskaia shkola dizaina (St Petersburg School of Design), 255.

 30. As a leading Party ideologist Andrey Zhdanov formulated it at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in August of 1934, socialist realism in all arts is the method of portraying reality “in its revolutionary development”. Pervyi Vsesoiuznyi S”ezd sovetskikh pisatelei. Stenograficheskii otchet (First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers. Stenographic Record), 175. Quoted in Golomshtok, Totalitarnoe iskusstvo (Totalitarian Art), 86. In fact, the artists were expected create an aesthetic-ideological construct by means of depicting recognisable life forms in the desired composition. As a joke of late socialism has it, socialist realism meant “praising the power in the form that it is able to comprehend” (“pokhvala vlasti v dostupnoi dlia nee forme”).

 31. Vkhutemas (Higher Artistic-Technical Workshops) was established in Moscow 1920 by a decree of the Council of People's Commissars as a special institution aiming at preparing qualified artists for industry and instructors for professional technical education. It united several previously existing art institutions. In 1926 it was reorganised into Vkhutein – Higher Artistic-Technical Institute. Khan-Magomedov, Pionery sovetskogo dizaina (Pioneers of Soviet Design).

 32. Woodham, Twentieth-Century Design, 29.

 33. This opposition culminated in the famous 1914 debate between two leading figures of the Munich design society Deutscher Werkbund: Hermann Muthesius and Henry van de Velde. The first advocated the freedom of expression of an industrial artist and artistic patronage as the necessary condition of aesthetic quality in manufacture. The second, on the contrary, called for elaborating clear and restricted forms, compatible with mass production. Woodham, Twentieth-Century Design, 21.

 34. Osip Brik, “V Proizvodstvo!” (Into Production!), LEF 1 (1923): 105.

 35. Boris Arvatov, “Utopia ili nauka?” (Utopia or Science?), LEF 4 (1923): 17.

 36. Here the term is used in the sense of “decorative design”, creating an appearance.

 37. Rodchenko and Lavrentiev, Varvara Stepanova: “Chelovek ne mozhet zhit' bez chuda” (Varvara Stepanova: “A Person Cannot Live Without a Miracle”), 265–90.

 38. Balashov, “Tvorcheskoe sodruzhestvo” (Creative Cooperation), Central State Archive of Literature and Art in St. Petersburg (TsGALI SPb), f. 78, op. 4, d. 23, “Statii dlia stengazety za 1953 g.” (“Articles for the Wallpaper from 1953”), l.128.

 39. Gusarova, Leningradskaia keramika kak fenomen otechestvennoi kul'tyry vtoroi poloviny XX veka (Leningrad Ceramics as the Phenomenon of National Culture of the Seconf Half of the 20^th Century), 38.

 40. Gusarova, Leningradskaia keramika kak fenomen otechestvennoi kul'tyry vtoroi poloviny XX veka (Leningrad Ceramics as the Phenomenon of National Culture of the Seconf Half of the 20^th Century), 43.

 41. Dunham, In Stalin's Time: Middle Class Values in Soviet Fiction.

 42. Gusarova, Leningradskaya keramika, 43.

 43. TsGALI SPb, f. 78, op. 4, d. 23, pp. 128–130; TsGALI SPb, f. 78, op. 4, d. 78, Stenographic Record of the Summarizing-Re-electing Gathering of the Section of Decorative-Applied Art of 23 February 1953.

 44. At least, according to archival materials, in 1948 a section with this name was created within the Moscow Department of the Union of Artists of the Russian Republic (MOSKh), and within Leningrad Union of Soviet Artists (LSSKh) the section of “decorative-applied art” was already functioning in 1951. RGALI, f. 2493, op. 1, p. 34; TsGALI SPb, f. 78, op. 4. ed. khr. 386.

 45. Alexander Saltykov, “O khudozhestvennom kachestve promyshlennykh tovarov” (On Artistic Quality of Industrial Commodities), Sovetskaia Torgovlia 9 (1954), 22–31; Alexander Saltykov, “Voprosy razvitiia dekorativno-prikladnogo iskusstva” (Problems of the Development of Decorative-Applied Art), Iskusstvo 2 (1955), 30–4.

 46. So far I found no information in the archival files, telling who officially sanctioned this term. In case of the sections' names, presumably it was agreed upon by the artists themselves and sanctioned by the Boards of Administration of regional and republican unions of artists where those sections belonged. When speaking about artistic matters, party officials could use both “decorative”, “applied” and “decorative-applied art” alike. Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), f. 556, op. 16, ed. khr. 84, ll. 60–69; 91–93. The journal title Decorative Art of the USSR, like all Soviet journal titles, was officially approved by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR. TsGALI SPb, f. 78, ed. khr. 398, l. 4.

 47. Author's interview with Olga Leonidovna Nekrasova-Karateeva (ceramic artist, Professor of Applied Arts). Recorded in St Petersburg 1 November 2010.

 48. RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 2550, ll. 39, 51, 71; TsGALI SPb, f. 78, op. 4, ed. khr. 389, ll. 10, 45; ed. khr. 398, l. 32.

 49. TsGALI SPb, f. 78, op. 4, ed. khr. 398, l. 32.

 50. Reid, “Khrushchev Modern,” 227.

 51. Castillo, Cold War at the Home Front, 130–6.

 52. Castillo, Cold War at the Home Front, 148–70; Hixson, Parting the Iron Curtain: Propaganda, culture and the Cold War, 151–215; Reid, “Who Will Beat Whom? Soviet Popular Reception of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959,” 855–903.

 53. Castillo, Cold War at the Home Front, 163.

 54. Reid, “Khrushchev Modern.”

 55. RGALI, f. 2493, op. 1, ed. khr. 2514. Theses of the report of the Head of the decorative-applied arts subsection of MOSKh M. F. Ladur from 24 Dec. 1957.

 56. RGALI, f. 2493, op. 1, ed. khr. 2475. Characteristics of the members of the section of decorative-applied art, 1953–6; Karl Kantor's interview for the journal DI 3–4 (2003): http://www.di.mmoma.ru/history/articles/fragment_zapisi_vospominanij_karla_kantora/.

 57. Karl Kantor's interview for the journal DI.

 58. “Krasoru v zhizh'” (Beauty into Life), DI SSSR 1 (1957): 1–4. “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts”, published in Russian only in 1956, soon became popular among and applied artists and art theorists of the “thaw” generation.

 59. “Krasoru v zhizh',” 4.

 60. Kos'kov, Predmetnoe tvorchestvo (Object Creativity), Part VI.

 61. Saltykov, “Massovost' i unikalnost'” (Mass Production and Uniqueness), DI SSSR 3 (March 1958), 1–5.

 62. Cf., for example: Osip Brik, “Ot kartiny k sittsu” (“From a Painting to a Printed Cotton Fabric”), LEF 2 (6) (1924): 27–30.

 63. Saltykov, “Massovost' i unikalnost'.”

 64. TsGALI SPb, f. 78, op. 4, ed. khr. 287. Stenographic record of the meeting, devoted to the discussion of the exhibition of Estonian applied art 16 April 1954; Yaglova, Nina and Kh. Kuma. “Dekorativno-prikladnoe iskusstvo sovetskoi Estonii” (Decorative-Applied Art of Soviet Estonia), Iskusstvo 4 (1955): 54–7; Saltykov, “Prikladnoe iskusstvo trekh respublik” (Applied Art of the Tree Republics), Iskusstvo 6 (1955): 12–18.

 65. The treatment of “national forms” in Soviet applied art and industrial design is a special topic, which I consider elsewhere. See Karpova, “‘Kholodil’nik s ornamentom: k problem ‘natsional’noi formy v sovetskom prikladnom iskusstve i promyshlennom dizaine v poslestalinskii period” (Refrigerator with Ornament: On the Issue of “National Form” in Soviet Applied Art and Industrial Design in Post-Stalin Period), Neprikosnovennyi Zapas 78 (2011): 300–18.

 66. Kiaer, Imagine No Possessions, 198–200.

 67. RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 2477, 2554; TsGALI SPb, f. 78, op. 4, ed. khr. 389, 390, 517.

 68. Reid, “The Exhibition Art of Socialist Countries, Moscow 1958–59, and the Contemporary Style of Painting,” 101–32; Gusarova, Leningradskaia keramika, 23.

 69. Siefert, “From Cold War to the Wary Peace: American Culture in the USSR and Russia,” 185–217.

 70. RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 2550, Stenogramma zasedaniia sektsii dekorativno-prikladnogo iskustva po obsuzhdeniiu doklad a Chekalova A. K. “Osobennosti otrazheniia zhizhni v khudozhestvenno-promyshlennykh proizvedeniiakh.” Further references to this text are given in square parentheses (list numbers).

 71. RGALI, f. 2493, op. 1, d. 2550. Section of applied-decorative arts. Session on the discussion of Chekalov's lecture “The Peculiarities of Life Reflection in Artistic-Industrial Products,” l. 21.

 72. RGALI, f. 2493, op. 1, d. 2550. Section of applied-decorative arts. Session on the discussion of Chekalov's lecture “The Peculiarities of Life Reflection in Artistic-Industrial Products,”, 48, 57, 68–9.

 73. RGALI, f. 2493, op. 1, d. 2550. Section of applied-decorative arts. Session on the discussion of Chekalov's lecture “The Peculiarities of Life Reflection in Artistic-Industrial Products,”, 23–7.

 74. RGALI, f. 2493, op. 1, d. 2550. Section of applied-decorative arts. Session on the discussion of Chekalov's lecture “The Peculiarities of Life Reflection in Artistic-Industrial Products,”, 10.

 75. RGALI, f. 2493, op. 1, d. 2550, l. 28.

 76. RGALI, f. 2493, op. 1, d. 2550, ll. 31–2.

 77. Azrikan, “VNIITE,” 48.

 78. Thus Soloviev had access to Western clothes and other commodities; not surprisingly, he was “well-known fashion admirer” and black marketer of Western goods, which could well have been stimulating for his interest in design. Author's interview with Mikhail Alexeevich Kos'kov (industrial designer and design theorist), recorded in St. Petersburg 16 April 2011; Azrikan, “VNIITE”; Paperny, “Vospominaniia o futurologii” (Recollections about Futurology), 70.

 79. Woodham, A Dictionary of Modern Design, 395.

 80. “Soloviev! 90 let patriarkhu rossiiskogo dizaina!” (Soloviev! The Patriarch of Russian Design Turns Ninety!) Interview with Yuri Soloviev, the webpage of the Union of Designers of Russia, 1 Nov. 2010, 11:43:53. http://www.design-union.ru/index.php?option = com_content&view = article&id = 482:soloviov90&catid = 40:world&Itemid = 238.

 81. RGALI, f. 2082, op. 2, ed. khr. 2192, l. 10.

 82. RGALI, f. 2082, op. 2, ed. khr. 2192, l. 10

 83. Azrikan, “VNIITE,” 48.

 84. See the comments on the review of Soloviev's 2004 autobiography: http://kak.ru/columns/designet/a1517/

 85. Matsa, “Mozhet li mashina byt’ proizvedeniiem iskusstva?” (Can the Machine be a Work of Art?) DI SSS 3 (1961): 14–16.

 86. For example: Gorpenko “Iskusstvo i tekhnika” (Art and Technics), DI SSSR 4 (1961): 20–2; Shragin, “Protiv privyshnykh predstavlenii” (Against Customary Beliefs), DI SSSR 5 (1961): 26–8.

 87. Kantor, “Gde zhe granitsa prikladnogo iskusstva?” (Where Is the Border of Applied Art?), DI SSSR 6 (1961): 21–3.

 88. “Soloviev! 90 let patriarkhu rossiiskogo dizaina!”

 89. RGALI, f. 2082, op. 2, d. 2171, 3.

 90. TsGALI, f. 266 (Leningrad Higher Artistic-Industrial College named after Vera I. Mukhina), op. 1 d. 636. Record of the consultation of the higher institution teachers on the question of introducing the course “artistic engineering”.

 91. VNIITE branches were in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Kharkov, Vilnius, Minsk, Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), Khabarovsk, Tbilisi, Yerevan and Baku (Azrikan, “VNIITE,” 61). All these bodies were subordinated to the State Committee on Science and Technology. RGALI, f. 2082, op. 2, d. 2171, 15–16, Union of Artists' project of the organization of the state system of artistic engineering, directed to the Central Committee of CPSU.

 92. Azrikan, “VNIITE,” 55.

 93. Soloviev, “O tekhnicheskoi estetike” (On Technical Aesthetics), Tekhnicheskaia Estetika, 1 (1964), 1.

 94. Soloviev, “O tekhnicheskoi estetike” (On Technical Aesthetics), Tekhnicheskaia Estetika, 1 (1964), 1

 95. Azrikan, “VNIITE,” 48–9.

 96. Zhadova, “O terminogogii i poniatiakh v sfere promyshlennogo iskusstva” (On Terminology and Concepts in the Sphere of Industrial Art), Tekhnicheskaia Estetika 7 (1964), 14–17.

 97. Lavrentiev and Nasarov, Russian Design, 172.

 98. Apparently, not many designers really had this belief: Azrican asserts that most VNIITE employees had no illusions about the compatibility of design with state socialism and invented the link between the two only for obtaining the authorities' approval (Azrikan, “VNIITE,” 48). Yet I suppose not everybody was sceptical and cynical: in the 1960s, there was still a belief in reforming state socialism, and industrial design was seen as one of its means; this hypothesis is central for my PhD dissertation in progress. From my interview with Prof. Mikhail Alekseevich Kos'kov, who worked in Leningrad branch of VNIITE for almost 30 years, it is clear that he kept a Marxist approach to design, believing in overcoming commodity fetishism through creating harmonious material environments (Author's interview with Mikhail Alexeevich Kos'kov Recorded in St. Petersburg 16 April 2011).

 99. Marx, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts,” 303.

100. Karl, “Vozroyhdennyi Bauhaus” (Restored Bauhaus), DI SSSR 7 (1964): 24.

101. I use this term referring to the concept of “Good design”, which started taking shape in the late 1930s in the United States and in 1944–56 was popularized by a series of exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, cosponsored by the MoMA and the Chicago Merchandise Mart. “Good design” was, first of all, about bringing modern art into daily life through functional commodities of simple shapes. Castillo, Cold War at the Home Front, 38–9.

102. Dolmatovsky, “Novyi tip avtomobilia-taksi” (The New Type of Taxi-Cab), Tekhnicheskaia Estetika 1 (1966): 10.

103. Russian State Archive of Scientific-Technical Documentation (RGANTD), f. 281 (VNIITE) op. 1–10; ed. khr. 209.

104. Dolmatovsky, “Novyi tip avtomobilia-taksi”; “Obsuzhdeniie novogo avtomobilia rabotnikami taksomotornogo transporta” (Discussion of the New Car by the Workers of Motor Transportation), Tekhnicheskaia Estetika 1 (1966): 15.

105. Azrikan, “VNIITE,” 50.

106. Azrikan, “VNIITE,” 50.

107. Dolmatovsky, “Novyi tip avtomobilia-taksi,” 10.

108. Central State Archive of Scientific-Technical Documentation of St. Petersburg (TsGANTD SPb), f. 146. op. 2-1, ed. khr. 47.

109. Central State Archive of Scientific-Technical Documentation of St. Petersburg (TsGANTD SPb), f. 146. op. 2-1, ed. khr. 47, l. 3.

110. Central State Archive of Scientific-Technical Documentation of St. Petersburg (TsGANTD SPb), f. 146. op. 2-1, ed. khr. 47, l. 5.

111. Kos'kov, Predmetnoe tvorchestvo.

112. Ladur, “Zametki redaktora,” (Editorial), DI SSSR 1 (1965): 1.

113. Ladur, “Zametki redaktora,” DI SSSR 1 (1965): 1.

114. Ladur, “Zametki redaktora,” DI SSSR 8 (1965): 1.

115. Study of consumer demand was, to a limited extent, already practised by shop and trade organisations in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. See Randall, The Soviet Dream World. In 1950s it attracted more attention and interest as a tool of planning; see Reid, Khrushchev Modern, 49–50.

116. Kos'kov, Predmetoe tvorchestvo, 65–77.

117. Shragin, “Za desiat' let,” 44.

118. Ladur, “Redaktsionnye zametki” (Editorial), DI SSSR 11 (1966): 1.

119. Shragin, “Za desiat' let,” 45.

120. RGALI, f. 2082, op. 1, d. 2197, 2209.

121. This is clear from the publications and illustrations in DI SSSR from the second half of the 1960s. See also Gusarova, Leningradskaia keramika, 94–5.

122. RGALI, f. 2082, op. 6. ed. khr. 1422, ll. 6–14.

123. Azrikan, “VNIITE”; Kos'kov, Predmetnoe tvorchestvo.

124. Zubok, Zhivago's Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia.