#soviet interior

[sovietpostsoviet]

[deviangread]

[randomroomsphotos]

#50

[rndmtrnnn]

Soviet IKEA

[kosmosesygis]

Выставка советского быта

[sovietinteriors]

Washing machine was sent to think about its behaviour.

[vasilinaorlova]

Glass Swan

But the reason why I dragged out of oblivion the lost interiors of our Dudarkov house is that in my Moscow apartment, which I shared with my brother, where he has been living for the last five years, all interiors are changed as well. I am a little more prepared for it, because I saw pictures. And when we lived there with our parents, before they moved to Podmoskovie, the living room had been a layering of sediments from different aeons, the 1990s strangely mingled with the 1980s, the 2000s and 2010s touching things in fragments.

One thing all post-Soviet interiors have, which was there, was a display case with porcelain and glass plates, brick-a-bracs, souvenirs from places. For decades, ever since the birth of the young Soviet Republic, many scattered, displaced people were hypnotized into the understanding that every urge to possess anything for your private enjoyment,–to collect plates, or accumulate pillows, or adorn shelves with grass figures of swans or elephants, or even to have a ficus tree in an orphaned corner of one’s apartment–is a shameful Philistinism, “rudiments of the past,” petty-bourgeois habits. Yet despite that, in the very heart of the Soviet society–the Soviet family–those glass cupboards with pretty objects reappeared time and again, and fragile glass swans resurfaced intact.

I liked to look at the sarcophagi of memory, which those cupboards were. Glass swans, having no utilitarian meaning, nor application, and plates, many of which were kept solely for decoration and were never used, represented a longing for a better life, which was either to arrive soon, or was arriving just right now.

Inexpensive porcelain plates and glass swans were symbols of abundance, of prosperity, of well-being. The absurd and irony of it was that swans were nearly identical across houses and houses. Somehow Soviet manufacture yielded to the Philistine demand for glass swans.

As a child I liked glass swans and played with the smallest, endangering it recklessly. These poor symbols of prosperity are still dear to me. It was not sooner than my brother paid some attention to what surrounds his full of adventures Moscow life, and decided to refurbish the apartment, that the swans were gone.

(I really hope he kept the souvenir which grandma Valya brought with her from Sochi, I think, or Kerch–a crab put in a piece of translucent plastic–with inscription “Happy Holidays! Sochi–or Kerch–1960-something.”)

[sarahfitzbart]