Developing Design Discourse in Soviet Print Media: A Case Study Comparing Estonia and Lithuania, 1959–1968

Abstract

This essay analyzes the different serial publications that disseminated design knowledge in the Baltic States between 1959 and 1968, in order to understand the mediation of “design” as a developing discipline in local print media. The essay compares two Soviet peripheral states, Estonia and Lithuania, for a better understanding of the variations and similarities between different and local design cultures. It demonstrates that, although the two states had their own distinctive design systems, which manifested in the structure of the publications, these design publications mirrored similar structures of modernization. Relevant information was presented in ways dependent on their intended audiences. For specialists, Western information was presented in a balanced and direct manner, whereas in articles written for the general public, modernism was mediated either via abstract guidelines that referred to the need to be “contemporary” or through references to European Socialist material culture.

Keywords:

• industrial design
• media
• Soviet Union
• Baltic countries
• cold war

Note

Acknowledgments

My gratitude goes to my supervisor, Professor Virginija Jurėnienė, colleague Dovilė Balevičienė, the Research Council of Lithuania, and the helpful staff of all the consulted collections.

Notes

1 In 1955, during the Baltic Applied Arts Exhibition, the three Artists’ Unions of Baltic states drafted a resolution praising modernism in the industrial production of commodities. Instead of Western examples, the mentioned exhibition of Chinese applied arts were referred to as positive examples of beautiful and functional objects with little ornament. ERA.R-1665.2.159.

Additional information

Funding

This project has received funding from European Social Fund (project No 09.3.3-LMT-K-712-08-0001) under grant agreement with the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT). The research was carried out at Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania, Kaunas County Public Library, Tallinn University Academic Library, and the Estonian National Archives.

Notes on contributors

Triin Jerlei

Dr Jerlei is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at Vilnius University and funded by the Lithuanian Research Council. Her research interests include internationalization within late, socialist industrial design, local design in Soviet Estonia, and the history of factory glass. Dr Jerlei received her Ph.D. from the University of Brighton in 2016 for her dissertation “Industrial Designers Within the Soviet Estonian Design Ideology of the Late Socialist Period, 1965–1988.” She previously worked as a Lecturer at the Estonian Academy of Arts. [email protected]