Dedicated to Soviet Science This is a groovy one. And excitingly designed by El Lissitsky! The inside cover features this list of German scientists repressed by the Nazi state. Soviet culture from this period seems in retrospect, and for the most part, crass and cynical. Particularly so when we look at the Stalin cult. But […]
Read more "USSR in Construction, No 6, 1934"The Far Eastern Region Similar to the 1938 issue for May and June, 5-6, posted here. Featuring some of the same themes. This issue, however, has a long photo essay on Birobijan. Birobijan is part of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, established by Stalin in 1934, to give Jews from the former Pale of Settlement the […]
Read more "USSR in Construction, No 3-4, 1935"Soviet Railways This issue is dedicated to celebration of Soviet traindom, another ‘progress’ trope of the Leninist and Stalinist eras. This locomotive’s name is Joseph Stalin. This is a four-page fold out. These full-figure photos of Lenin and Stalin fold out to reveal: five locomotives (two of them named after Stalin) and a heroic railwayman. […]
Read more "USSR in Construction, No 7, 1938"The ‘Maxim Gorki’ Agitational Air Squadron I read somewhere that this issue of the magazine shipped with some kind of aluminum decoration, I’m unclear on what that means, but there’s no aluminum with my copy. Regardless this is a great cover, very graphic. A nice cut-away diagram. In the centre is People’s Commissar of Defense […]
Read more "USSR in Construction, No 1, 1935"Soviet Food Industry This issue is devoted to a classic Stalinist trope: abundance. The much-repeated theme of socialist cornucopia of overflowing with goods was a standard image during the era of the five year plan. This issue is a survey of abundance brought to the Soviet people by A Mikoyan, who came up under Lenin, […]
Read more "USSR in Construction, No 8, 1938"Tadjik Soviet Socialist Republic A beautiful cover on this one. A kind of report from the periphery of the empire. Titles of photos essays like ‘Girls Unveiled’, and the like. During the period this magazine was made the ‘stans and south Asian republics were a popular refuge for artists who fell afoul of the conventions […]
Read more "USSR in Construction, No. 2, 1937"Far Eastern Territory This was the first USSR in Construction I came across, in the back room of a used book and magazine shop on what was then Vancouver’s skid row. It had no cover but was otherwise in pretty good shape. This issue was designed by El Lissitsky and Sophie Kuppers. This montage and […]
Read more "USSR in Construction, No. 5-6, 1938"Soviet Cinema From the XXI year of the great socialist revolution, 1938 to you and me. There are 32 pictures of Stalin in the montage. But is it enough?
Read more "USSR in Construction, No 1, 1938"The Moscow Metro From the eighteenth year of the revolution, or 1935 to you and me, the opening of the extraordinary, amazing Moscow Metro. The cover done up in faux marble, to evoke the materials of the Metro. Krushchev and Bulganin top left! On the top right, the fellow with the white hair, moustache and […]
Read more "USSR in Construction, No 8, 1935"Watches, Bicycles and Gramaphones I have just added a number of issues of USSR in Construction to my collection. This is very exciting, because they are beautiful and as well as rare on the ground. Famous as a hideout for avant-garde artists sidelined by the Stalinist establishment, USSR in Construction wre designed and featured photomontages […]
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I Collect Soviet Books 