Binding: Hardcover
Description: A collection of previously unpublished postcards from the former Eastern Bloc sinister funny poignant and surreal they depict the social and architectural values of the period. Brutal concrete hotels futurist TV towers heroic worker statues this collection of Soviet era postcards documents the uncompromising landscape of the Eastern Bloc through its buildings and monuments. They are interspersed with quotes from prominent figures of the time that both support and confound the ideologies presented in the images. In contrast to the photographs of a ruined and abandoned Soviet empire we are accustomed to seeing today the scenes depicted here publicise the bright future of communism: social housing blocks Palaces of Culture and monuments to Comradeship. Dating from the 1960s to the 1980s they offer a nostalgic yet revealing insight into social and architectural values of the time acting as a window through which we can examine cars people and of course buildings. These postcards sanctioned by the authorities intended to show the world what living in communism looked like. Instead this postcard propaganda inadvertently communicates other messages: outside the House of Political Enlightenment in Yerevan the flowerbed reads Glory to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union ; in Novopolotsk art school pupils paint plein air their subject is a housing estate; at the Irkutsk Polytechnic Institute students stroll past a five metre tall concrete hammer and sickle.
Title: Brutal Bloc Postcards Soviet Era Postcards From The Eastern Bloc
Author(s): Sorrell Stephen
Publisher: Fuel Publishing
Barcode: 9780995745520
Pages: 192 Pages, Illustrated In Colour Throughout
Publication Date: 8/28/2018
Category: Marxism & Communism