Saving Soviet furniture from the dustbin of history

Associated media

John Varoli explains how a hitherto neglected aspect of Soviet cultural history is being rediscovered

The history of Soviet interior design is one of the least-researched aspects of the Soviet Union’s cultural legacy. This stands in stark contrast to the defunct empire’s contributions to art, architectural, literary, and cinema, all of which have been well researched by scholars.

Over the past two years a Russian gallery has taken up the task of shedding light on the little-known area of Soviet furniture design. Heritage Gallery of Moscow has run exhibitions at the past two editions of Design Miami/Basel.  Each exhibition required considerable detective work as gallery staff spent several years tracking down rare one-off furniture pieces made by leading designers of the period.

A large part of the problem in locating fine examples of Soviet furniture is because these items have been in such disfavour since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Most items have almost literally been left in the ‘dustbin of history’. After locating individual pieces, quite often in the personal collections of the designers' relatives, the gallery staff then spent months researching, restoring, and photographing them.

In 2012, the main theme of Heritage’s exhibition was the aesthetics of Khrushchev's Thaw period (mid 1950s to early 1960s). The main focus was on understanding how the ideas of Soviet designers of this period continued the trends established by the Russian avant-garde of the 1920s.

In the late 1950s the Soviet Union witnessed the beginning of rapid large-scale residential construction, and this demanded a fundamental change in attitudes toward living space. It was primarily the aesthetics of the 1920s Soviet avant-garde that were embraced by the young designers of the late 1950s and early 1960s. During the Stalinist period (1930–53) the avant-garde and all experimentation had been forbidden.

In the Thaw period, the Soviet furniture designer Yuri Sluchevsky made a valuable contribution in his search for a new model of furniture design. He was a professor at Moscow’s prominent Stroganov Academy, and he understood that the new small-sized Soviet apartments under construction were not well suited to the bulky furniture produced during previous decades. Sluchevsky worked out a modular system that calculated the optimal ratio of the furniture’s height versus its width, as adjusted to the average human height.

Before the Thaw, during the Stalinist period, Sluchevsky and other designers were severely limited by Soviet ideology. Despite such repression, Stalinist Russia most certainly had a prevailing aesthetic. At the most recent Design Miami/Basel in June, Heritage Gallery unveiled another pioneering exhibition dedicated to unique one-off interior items of the Soviet Empire style (1930–53).

When Stalin began to solidify his regime in 1930, the avant-garde style was replaced by a style oriented to the splendour and luxury of the new Soviet regime. The Soviet Empire style featured elements of Art Deco and the French Empire styles. There was a return to classical notions of beauty that became the hallmark of a powerful rising Soviet empire.

Components frequently used in the lining of a building’s external walls were now seen inside. These included composite-order columns, and ornate mouldings. Marble, expensive wood, bronze and representative paintings were widely used in the interiors.

 ‘The idea of both exhibitions was to explain to global audiences the extent of Soviet history's impact on design and everyday life’, said Christina Krasnyanskaya, art director of Heritage Gallery:

It's very important to show what was happening behind the Iron Curtain in a country closed to Western influence. Despite the isolation and detachment from the international art context, there was a continuous evolution in design and art in the USSR.