Comradely objects

<p>The Russian avant-garde of the 1920s is broadly recognised to have been Russia's first truly original contribution to world culture. In contrast Soviet design of the post-war period is often dismissed as hack-work and plagiarism that resulted in a shabby world of commodities. This book offers a new perspective on the history of Soviet design by focusing on the notion of the comradely object as an agent of progressive social relations that state-sponsored Soviet design inherited from the avant-garde. It introduces a shared history of domestic objects hand-made as well as machine made mass-produced as well as unique utilitarian as well as challenging the conventional notion of utility. This is a study of post-avant-garde Russian productivism at the intersection of intellectual history social history and material culture studies an account attentive to the complexities and contradictions of Soviet design.<br><br>An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.</p>