'Ever more cosy and comfortable': Stalinism and the Soviet domestic interior, 1928-1938

Journal of Design History

Volumn 10, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 119-135

  Kettering, Karen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0039322381     PISSN: 09524649     EISSN: 17417279     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/jdh/10.2.119     Document Type: Review

References (68)

1. Materials for this paper were gathered as part of a larger study on Natalia Dan'ko, director of the sculptural workshop at Leningrad's Lomonosov State Porcelain Factory, and how her expensive, hand-painted statuettes were distributed, who might be able to purchase them and recommendations on how they might be displayed.
2. The statement was reported in a review of the exhibition published in the magazine Construction of Moscow. See G. N. , 'Sovetskii farfor', Stroitel'stvo Moskvy, 1927, no. 2, p. 3.
3. For example, when Rizzoli prepared a translation of V. P. Tol'stoi's survey of pre-war Soviet decorative arts (Sovetskoe dekorativnoe iskusstvo, 1917-1045, Iskusstvo, Moscow, 1984), editors chose to change the title and to cut most of the text in order to print numerous, full-page colour illustrations.
4. See Vladimir Tolstoy, Russian Decorative Arts, 1917-1937, Rizzoli, New York, 1990.
5. Selected media such as textile design, clothing, and porcelain have been the subject of translated Soviet monographs or Western exhibition catalogues. See Ian Wardropper et al. , News from a Radiant Future: Soviet Propaganda Porcelain in the Tuber Collection, Art Institute of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1992;
6. Lidija Zaletova (ed. ), Revolutionary Costume: Soviet Clothing and Textiles of the 1920s, Rizzoli, New York, 1989;
7. and, Art into Production: Soviet Textiles, Fashion and Ceramics, 1917-1935, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford in conjunction with the Crafts Council of England and Wales, 1984.
8. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Editor's Introduction, in Sheila Fitzpatrick (ed. ), Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1978, p. 1.
9. Alfred Kurella, The Five Year Plan and Cultural Revolution, Worker's Library, New York, 1930, p. 6.
10. V pokhod za kul'turu! Izd. Zlatoustovskogo okruzhnogo kul'tshtab, Zlatoust, 1929. For examples of Moscow organizations attempting to encourage personal hygiene and sobriety, see A. K. Toporkov, Kak stat' kul'turnym, Rabotnik prosveshcheniia, Moscow, 1929.
11. Bytovaia konferentsiia Vyborgskogo raiona, Kak peredelat' byt molodezhi (nakazy bytovoi konferentsii), Molodaia gvardiia, Moscow-Leningrad, 1929, pp. ii-vii.
12. On this phenomenon, see Anne Elizabeth Gorsuch, 'Enthusiasts, Bohemians, and delinquents: Soviet youth cultures, 1921-1928', unpublished Ph. D. thesis, University of Michigan, 1992, pp. 314-36.
13. Signatories to the original Oktiabr' declaration included Aleksandr and Viktor Vesnin, Aleksei Gan, Moisei Ginzburg, Aleksandr Deineka, Gustav Klutsis, Alfred Kurella, Ivan Matsa, Dmitrii Moor, Diego Rivera, Solomon Telingater, Esfir Shub, and Sergei Eisenstein. On the history of the Oktiabr' group, see Brandon Taylor, Art and Literature under the Bolsheviks, Volume Two: Authority and Revolution, 1924-1932, Pluto Press, London, 1992, pp. 111-23.
14. These are among the objects singled out in A. Kurella, 'V ataku!' Komsomolskaia pravda, 258 (1043), 4 November 1928, p. 3;
15. Peter Shlemil', 'Na shturm!' Komosomolskaia pravda, 174 (959), 28 July 1928, p. 3;
16. and, A. Cherviakova, 'Ochishchaite komnaty ot khlama', Komsomolskaia pravda, 258 (1043), 4 November 1928, p. 3.
17. A. B. , 'Chego my khotim ot tarelki?' Komsomolskaia pravda, 174 (959), 28 July 1928, p. 3.
18. Shlemil', op. cit. , p. 3;
19. and S. Telingater, 'Meshchanskaia "roskosh" ili nastoiashchaia krasota?' Komsomolskaia pravda, 174 (959), 28 July 1928, p. 3.
20. Boym has written about Komsomolskaia pravda's campaign in an excellent study of Russian mythologies of everyday life. However, Boym presents this as a typical view of the late 1920s, rather than the campaign of a single newspaper most probably influenced by the interests of one artistic group. See Svetlana Boym, Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1994, pp. 34-8. Her statement about women as the collectors of domestic trash appears on p. 36.
21. Had women been identified as the main culprits, it would undoubtedly have made more sense to reach them through magazines such as Rabotnitsa (Woman Worker), produced especially for a female readership, rather than a national newspaper for both sexes.
22. Elena Eikhengol'ts, 'Za prostor, svet i vozdukh', Komsomolskaia pravda, 285 (1070), 4 December 1928, p. 3.
23. Cherviakova, op. cit. , p. 3;
24. and V. Galkin, 'A chto vy nam dadite vmesto khlama?' Komsomolskaia pravda, 258 (1043), 4 November 1928, p. 3.
25. While the journalist did, at one point, refer to the potential ceramics buyer specifically as a homemaker (domashnaia khoziaika), he or she suggested that it was simply one of many types of consumers, rather than the typical sort. See A. B. , op. cit. , p. 3.
26. 'Chto sdelala redaktsiia "Komsomolskoi pravdy"!' Komsomolskaia pravda, 285 (1070), 4 December 1928, p. 3.
27. A. B. , op. cit. , p. 3; and Siliakov, op. cit. , p. 3.
28. 'Sotsial'nyi zakaz ili diktatura torgovogo apparata?' Komsomolskaia pravda, 245 (1030), 20 October 1928, p. 3.
29. In general, writers for Komsomolskaia pravda studiously avoided any discussion of the prices or availability of goods of which they approved. Because the economic demands of industrialization required that production of consumer goods be neglected in favour of directing resources to heavy industry, stores probably offered a small selection of goods; items of higher quality undoubtedly required that a household spend sometime saving before being able to make a purchase.
30. On the Spartakiadi, see Robert Edelman, Serious Fun: A History of Spectator Sports in the USSR, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1993, pp. 37-8.
31. Indeed, one author had reacted with distaste to an inexpensive contemporary print distributed by AKhRR in which the presence of a Young Pioneer girl's naked legs served to ruin a scene of children singing around a campfire. While such imagery was nominally 'revolutionary' in that it contained a scene of a contemporary political formation, it too fell into the trap of domestic trash. Shlemil', op. cit. , p. 3.
32. Aleksandrova, 'Za novyi byt', Nasha gazeta, 24 June 1930, p. 1.
33. E. Ia. Dan'ko, 'Zavod im. Lomonosova', in I. T. Rodin (ed. ), Khudozhestvennyi farfor: katalog, Iskusstvo, Leningrad, 1938, p. 36.
34. Brigada khudozhnikov was the organ of FOSKh, formed on 18 June 1930. Although members of October were included in this group, their programme did not dominate. On the history of FOSKh, see Taylor, op. cit. , pp. 169-71.
35. Natalia Sokolova, 'Obyvatel'skii buket (problemy massovoi posudy)', Brigada khudozhnikov, 1932, no. 1, p. 16.
36. See V. S. , 'Oformlenie byta. Proizvodstvennye organizatsii ne raskachalis", Iskusstvo v massy, 1930, no. 4, pp. 22-3.
37. Julie Hessler, 'Trade, consumption and Stalinist political culture', unpublished paper delivered at the Midwestern Russian History Colloquium, 1992. Hessler actually argues that this campaign was not started until after bread rationing ended in 1935, but the articles in Nashi dostizheniia suggest otherwise.
38. While Vera S. Dunham had originally traced these values only as they appeared in post-war Soviet novels, Sheila Fitzpatrick later built on her work by tracking similar interests in newspaper stories written in the 1930s. See Vera S. Dunham, In Stalin's Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction, revised version, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 1990
39. and Sheila Fitzpatrick, 'Becoming cultured: Socialist Realism and the representation of privilege and taste', in Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 1992, pp. 216-37.
40. Sheila Fitzpatrick, 'Introduction: on power and culture', in The Cultural Front, p. 9.
41. Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity in the USSR, 1935-41, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988, pp. 213-14, 228.
42. Fitzpatrick, 'Becoming cultured', in The Cultural Front, p. 224.
43. See the short features on wristwatches, p. 57; movie cameras, p. 58; children's phonographs, p. 93; shoes, p. 94; electric teapots, p. 119; and fountain pen nibs, p. 120.
44. V. Lebedev, 'Krasivaia veshch", Nashi dostizheniia, 1934, no. 6, pp. 101-2.
45. G. Geronskii, 'Chelovek ukrashaet zhilishche', Nashi dostizheniia, 1934, no. 6, p. 113.
46. Pavel Nilin, 'O roskoshnoi zhizni', Nashi dostizheniia, 1934, no. 6, pp. 56-61.
47. I. Rudin, 'Pokupatel' mebeli', Nashi dostizheniia, 1934, no. 6, pp. 83-9.
48. Those interviewed included I. Gorbunov, salesman at the Arbat market; P. A. Aleksandrov, whose profession was described as 'rationalizer'; Red Army commander M. Popov; Maria Gorshkova, a worker; Nikanor Maslov, a worker; M. Vatulia, a construction foreman; V. I. Puetin, a worker at the Anilkhim factory; K. Shishkin, a member of the factory committee at Shoe Factory no. 3; Agrafena Churkina, a worker; S. Balkin, a collective farm worker; and, Natasha Savina of the AMO factory.
49. N. Kal'ma, 'Novyi pokupatel", Nashi dostizheniia, 1934, no. 6, p. 103.
50. Siegelbaum, op. cit. , p. 232.
51. B. Olenin, 'Babushkin sunduk i zerkal'nyi shkaf, Obshchestvennitsa, 1937, no. 1, p. 28.
52. K. Kravchenko, 'O kartinakh i reprodutsiakh', Obshchestvennitsa, 1937, no. 15, pp. 17-19.
53. K. Kravchenko, 'Ob uiute', Obshchestvennitsa, 1937, no. 17-18, pp. 30-2.
54. The author's selection of goods produced in Slavic regions seems especially strange in light of the long tradition of craft production in many of the Soviet Republics. Kravchenko could easily have cited carpets originating from the Caucasus or Soviet Central Asia, typically hung on the walls of Soviet apartments. On the reinvigoration of an ethnically Russian identity at the expense of a multinational, internationalist, and Soviet identity, see my 'Domesticating Uzbeks: Central Asians in Soviet decorative arts of the twenties and thirties', in Tim Barringer & Tom Flynn (eds. ), Colonialism and the Object, Routledge, London, forthcoming.
55. A sample of the reproductions includes I. Brodskii, Voroshilov on Skis in the February 1938 issue;
56. A. Gerasimov, Comrade I. V. Stalin (1938, no. 4);
57. V. Vasil'ev, A Son was Born (1938, no. 6);
58. Iu. Pimenov, Woman Delegate (1938, no. 9);
59. A. Moravov, In a Loge of the Bol'shoi Theatre (1938, no. 10);
60. G. Shegal, Leader, Teacher, Friend (Comrade Stalin in the Presidium of the Congress of Collective Farm Shockworkers) (1938, no. 10);
61. Photoportrait of V. P. Chkalov (1938, no. 12);
62. I. Brodskii, Lenin's Speech to the Red Army Leaving for the Polish Front (1939, no. 1);
63. A. Plastov, Harvest Festival in a Kolkhoz (1939, no. 3);
64. T. Gaponenko, To the Mothers at Lunchtime (1939, no. 5);
65. and, I. Brodskii kii, Portrait of Maxim Gorky (1939, no. 6).
66. See Sheila Fitzpatrick, 'The great departure: rural-urban migration in the Soviet Union, 1929-1933', in William G. Rosenberg & Lewis H. Siegelbaum (eds. ), Social Dimensions of Soviet Industrialization, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1993, pp. 15-40
67. and Stephen Kotkin, 'Peopling Magnitostroi: the politics of demography', pp. 63-104 in the same volume.
68. See documents relating to the creation of the Commissariat of Heavy Industry in Industrializatsiia SSSR, 1929-32gg. , dokumenty i materialy, Nauka, Moscow, 1970.