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From brutalism to modernism, via futurism – the Socialist Hotel is a unique architectural and cultural phenomenon that is collectively documented in these stunning photographs for the first time.Would you check in to a Socialist Hotel from an era when hospitality came second to ideology? These state-constructed buildings were used by visiting government workers, ordinary citizens – and even the occasional capitalist guest from the West. Today they are a fascinating legacy of a Soviet architectural, social and cultural idiosyncrasy. This epic photographic project – spanning 153 hotels across 31 countries – chronicles the architecture of hospitality and leisure in Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet space. Many were built in imposing styles: brutalist and modernist structures emphasising scale, functionality and the power of the state. Quirkier constructions used mosaics, tiles and stained glass as cultural references, to reflect the traditions of individual countries. Collected here for the first time are an amazing range of examples, from the grand Socialist Realism and neoclassical details of the Stalinist era (such as the Interhotel, Georgia) and the Soviet Modernism that marked a shift away from excess towards austere, concrete structures (Hotel Traian, Romania) to the futuristic and gravity defying (Sevan Writers’ House, Armenia). As socialism waned the hotels became privatised, increasingly undergoing modernisation or even demolition, to be replaced with global brands. Socialist Hotels is a unique survey of a contemporary Soviet architectural diaspora, documenting remaining examples of this disappearing phenomenon.

These photographs of once top-secret institutes reveal both fantastical and futuristic technology, alongside crumbling and decrepit facilities, forming a unique document of the condition and situation of scientific research in the post-Soviet landscape. In Soviet Scientific Institutes photographer Eric Lusito takes us on a journey through time, space and science. Gigantic control panels, monumental telescopes, inexplicable machinery – the facilities he documents might be found in comic book and graphic novel fantasies or the science fiction of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. But why were these institutes built and what purposes do they serve today? The Soviets promoted science as a utopian ideal to replace religion and rapidly modernise the country. 'Big science' projects, primarily for Cold War military purposes, involved thousands of researchers working in complete secrecy. In the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, many institutes were left destitute, their sophisticated technology condemned to extinction. But some scientists persevered, adapting to the new landscape. Today, defying the odds, they persist – even in wartime – to continue their work. Lusito gained unique access to sites across former republics and satellites of the USSR – from a cosmic ray research centre in the remote Armenian mountains, to one of the world's largest radars located in Ukraine, which locals believed to be a climate-altering weapon. The first visual account of this once closed world, this awe-inspiring publication bears witness to our never-ending quest for knowledge.

Containing over 140 exclusive photographs – ranging from private homes to football stadia – across every region of the country, Brutalist Italy is the first publication to focus entirely on this subject. Best books of 2023 (Architecture and Design) - Financial Times ‘Brutalist Italian architecture enthusiasts and concrete completists will be spoilt for choice by Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego’s pictorial tour.’ - Wallpaper* What makes Italian Brutalist buildings different to their counterparts in other countries? Containing over 140 exclusive photographs – ranging from private homes to churches and cemeteries via football stadia – across every region of the country, Brutalist Italy is the first publication to focus entirely on this subject. Architectural photographers Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego (authors of Soviet Asia) have spent the past five years travelling over 20,000 kilometres documenting the monumental concrete structures of their native country. Brutalism – with its minimalist aesthetic, favouring raw materials and structural elements over decorative design – has a complex relationship with Italian history. After World War II, Italian architects were keen to distance themselves from fascism, without rejecting the architectural modernism that had flourished during that era. They developed a form of contemporary architecture that engaged with traditional methods and materials, drawing on uncontaminated historical references. This plurality of pasts assimilated into new constructions is a recurring feature of the country’s Brutalist buildings, imparting to them a unique identity. From the imposing social housing of Le Vele di Scampia to the celestial Our Lady of Tears Sanctuary, Syracuse – Brutalist Italy collects the most compelling examples of this extraordinary architecture for the first time in a single volume. The book is dual language, with texts in both English and Italian.

'An eerie record of disaster, absence, the power of nature and frozen time.' - Edwin Heathcote, in 'Best Books of 2020' Financial Times This photography-led book reveals the story of Chernobyl today, with unprecedented access to the Zone, it takes the reader into previously undocumented areas.Since the first atomic bomb was dropped, humankind has been haunted by the idea of nuclear apocalypse. That nightmare almost became reality in 1986, when an accident at the USSR’s Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant triggered the world’s worst radiological crisis. The events of that night are well documented – but history didn’t stop there. Chernobyl, as a place, remains very much alive today.In Chernobyl: A Stalkers’ Guide, researcher Darmon Richter journeys into the contemporary Exclusion Zone, venturing deeper than any previously published account. While thousands of foreign visitors congregate around a handful of curated sites, beyond the tourist hotspots lies a wild and mysterious land the size of a small country. In the forests of Chernobyl, historic village settlements and Soviet-era utopianism have lain abandoned since the time of the disaster – overshadowed by vast, unearthly mega-structures designed to win the Cold War.Richter combines photographs of discoveries made during his numerous visits to the Zone with the voices of those who witnessed history – engineers, scientists, police and evacuees. He explores evacuated regions in both Ukraine and Belarus, finding forgotten ghost towns and Soviet monuments lost deep in irradiated forests. He gains exclusive access inside the most secure areas of the power plant itself, and joins the ‘stalkers’ of Chernobyl as he sets out on a high-stakes illegal hike to the heart of the Exclusion Zone.

The first ever spomenik guidebook, with over 75 examples alongside map references and information on why they exist and who built them. Spomenik’ the Serbo-Croat/Slovenian word for ‘monument’ – refers to a series of memorials built in Tito’s Republic of Yugoslavia from the 1960s-1990s, marking the horror of the occupation and the defeat of Axis forces during World War II. Hundreds were built across the country, from coastal resorts to remote mountains. Through these imaginative forms of concrete and steel, a classless, forward–looking, socialist society, free of ethnic tensions, was envisaged. Instead of looking to the ideologically aligned Soviet Union for artistic inspiration, Tito turned to the west and works of abstract expressionism and minimalism. As a result, Yugoslavia was able to develop its own distinct identity through these brutal monuments, which were used as political tools to articulate Tito’s personal vision of a new tomorrow. Today, following the breakup of the country and the subsequent Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, some have been destroyed or abandoned. Many have suffered the consequences of ethnic tensions – once viewed as symbols of hope they are now the focus of resentment and anger. This book brings together the largest collection of spomeniks published to date. Each has been extensively photographed and researched by the author, to make this book the most comprehensive survey of this obscure and fascinating architectural phenomenon. A fold-out map on the reverse of the dust jacket shows the exact location of each spomenik using GPS coordinates.

Audio Erotica is a perfectly pitched visual anthem to home audio entertainment. Using sales brochures from the 1950-1980s, a symphony of graphic nostalgia tracks the technological progress of our listening pleasure. Remember roller-skating wearing your first Walkman? Or relaxing to easy-listening in your pure white Philips lounge? Or playing chess on your JVC tabletop radio? All these scenarios can be found in the geeky and rarefied world of the vintage hi-fi brochure, where graphic design and acoustic apparatus make magical music together. From austere post-war Britain to poppy pre-millennium Japan, Audio Erotica presents a nostalgic nirvana of the strangest and most significant period hi-fi brochures. Alphabetically listed, from Aiwa to Zenith, with Braun, JVC Nivico, Nakamichi, Sony and everything in between, this book will resonate with any music fan. Setting the tempo are the pipe-smoking, high-end separates (amplifiers, speakers, turntables) of the 1950s, followed by the swinging Dansette record players of the 1960s, the prog-brushed-metal music centres of the 1970s, and the sleek capitalist cabinet stack systems of the 1980s – not forgetting the aerobic stereo sound portability facilitated by the boom-box, and that final high-fidelity, hardware hurrah: the compact disc. All accompanied by questionable fashion decisions and acres of shag-pile carpet. The evocative brochures in Audio Erotica track the technological development of audio equipment before the digital download, while simultaneously revealing the way hi-fi was marketed to the listening public. With knobs on.

Despite the borders of the USSR being closed to majority of its population, Soviet citizens were among the world’s most frequent flyers. Following the 1917 Revolution, Vladimir Lenin made the development of aviation a priority. Assisted by advertising campaigns by artists such as Alexander Rodchenko, Soviet society was mobilised to establish an air fleet – from the very beginning of the USSR through to its demise in 1991, Soviet aviation flew its own unique path.This book unfolds the story of Soviet air travel, from early carriers like Deruluft and Dobrolet, to the enigmatic Aeroflot. Organised like an Air Force, with a vast fleet of aircraft and helicopters, Aeroflot was the world’s biggest air carrier of passengers and cargo, responsible for a wider range of duties than any other airline.In an era when it was still common to smoke on board, the Aeroflot emblem appeared on cigarette packets, matchboxes and many other everyday goods. Aeroflot publicity alerted domestic passengers to new destinations or proudly presented the introduction of faster, more comfortable aircraft, while colourful advertising enticed Western travellers to use Aeroflot’s international services.Aeroflot – Fly Soviet uses this ephemera to illustrate a parallel aviation universe that existed for 70 years. It pays tribute to generations of aircraft engineers, designers, pilots, ticket sellers, flight dispatchers, air traffic controllers, ground handlers and flight attendants, who jointly created this remarkable chapter of Soviet civil aviation history.

Stunning photographs of Soviet Metro Stations from across the former states of the USSR and Russia itself, many of which have never previously been documented For us, said Nikita Khrushchev in his memoirs, ‘there was something supernatural about the Metro’. Visiting any of the dozen or so Metro networks built across the Soviet Union between the 1930s and 1980s, it is easy to see why. Rather than the straightforward systems of London, Paris or New York, these networks were used as a propaganda artwork – a fusion of sculpture, architecture and art, combining Byzantine, medieval, baroque and Constructivist ideas and infusing them with the notion that Communism would mean a ‘communal luxury’ for all. Today these astonishing spaces remain the closest realisation of a Soviet utopia.Following his best-selling quest for Soviet Bus Stops, Christopher Herwig has completed a subterranean expedition – photographing the stations of each Metro network of the former USSR. From extreme marble and chandelier opulence to brutal futuristic minimalist glory, Soviet Metro Stations documents this wealth of diverse architecture. Along the way Herwig captures individual elements that make up this singular Soviet experience: neon, concrete, escalators, signage, mosaics and relief sculptures all combine build an unforgettably vivid map of the Soviet Metro.The photographs are introduced by leading architecture, politics and culture author and journalist Owen Hatherley.

An incredible collection of images of chess players from the last 130 years, showcasing the unique relationship between chess and culture, featuring world famous actors, artists, politicians and musicians.You don’t have to play chess to appreciate Chess Players: from Charlie Chaplin to Wu-Tang Clan, but as Martin Amis asks in his illuminating essay: What are they playing at?’These evocative photographs transcend the chessboard, spanning 130 years – from a steamship crossing the Atlantic in 1888, to the zero-gravity of space – showcasing the diverse range of individuals who have embraced the game across continents and eras.Marcel Duchamp’s iconic quote, ‘All chess players are artists,' resonates through these pages. David Hockney likened the games strategic thinking to that of making art 'Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make.''Chess is war over the board', said Bobby Fischer (grand master and world chess champion) – but here John Lennon and Yoko Ono checkmate this notion, with their all-white, chess ‘peace’ set.Hollywood stars played chess on and off the screen – Humphrey Bogart deploys a Sicilian Defence against Lauren Bacall, while Faye Dunaway and Steve McQueen plot their next gambit in the iconic chess seduction scene from 'The Thomas Crown Affair' (1968).With an introduction by Dylan Loeb McClain, former chess columnist for The New York Times, the photographs in Chess Players help explain the enduring attraction of this cerebral game, from pawn to king, amateur to grandmaster.

This book is dedicated to the Soviet Space Dogs, who played a crucial part in the Soviet Space programme. These homeless dogs, plucked from the streets of Moscow, were selected because they fitted the programme’s criteria: weighing no more than 7kg, measuring no more than 35cm in length, robust, photogenic and with a calm temperament. These characteristics enabled the dogs to withstand the extensive training that was needed to prepare them for suborbital, then for orbital space fights. On 3 November 1957, the dog Laika was the first Earth-born creature to enter space, making her instantly famous around the world. She did not return. Her death, a few hours after launching, transformed her into a legendary symbol of sacrifice. Two further strays, Belka and Strelka, were the first beings to make it back from space, and were swiftly immortalized in children’s books and cartoons. Images of the Space Dogs proliferated, reproduced on everyday goods across the Soviet Union: cigarette packets, tins of sweets, badges, stamps and postcards all bore their likeness. This book uses these unique items to illustrate the story (in fact and fiction) of how they became fairy-tale idols. Monuments now commemorate their pioneering role in conquering the ‘final frontier’: their heroism will never be forgotten.

The Russian Criminal Tattoo Archive presents highlights from FUEL’s singular collection of authentic material on this subject. Previously unpublished in its original form, this work comprises ink on paper drawings by Danzig Baldaev, the photographic albums of Arkady Bronnikov and prisoner portraits by Sergei Vasiliev. The selection is contextualised with insights from Mark Vincent PhD (author and academic specialising in the Soviet Gulag) and Alison Nordström (photography scholar, writer and curator).The meticulous depictions of tattoos by prison guard Danzig Baldaev are reproduced in facsimile, authenticated by his signature and stamp, alongside his handwritten notes on the reverse. The paper has yellowed with age, giving the exquisite drawings a visceral temporality – almost like skin.Sergei Vasiliev’s photographs portray inmates in startling intimacy. He achieves a remarkable level of trust within the closed criminal society, a strict hierarchy, where outsiders are viewed with hostile suspicion.Arkady Bronnikov’s collection of photographs are shown in the albums in which they were collected. Used exclusively to aid police in their investigations, they depict a motley line-up of assorted body parts.This unique book is the only publication of primary material on this subject, highlighting the pioneering methods of these three individuals used to document this unique phenomenon.

This vivid and fascinating collection of propaganda spans over a century – a visual feast illustrating how persuasion, manipulation and fear were used to influence populations around the world. Do you know what propaganda looks like? A mural showing Saddam Hussein on horseback. A colossal cut-out of Benito Mussolini mounted on Milan Cathedral. A film of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un parading an intercontinental ballistic missile. A Pakistani newspaper advertisement calling for ‘Jehad’ (sic). A soldier firing condoms from his gun in a Ugandan AIDS awareness and prevention campaign.A traditional Azerbaijani rug celebrating the achievements of Soviet space travel, with portraits of Gagarin, Tereshkova (and of course Lenin). Juxtaposing material from conflicting ideologies, Propagadopolis presents the broadest range of shocking, unusual and visually arresting images, encompassing all regions and eras of the modern age to demonstrate how propaganda has been wielded to evoke emotions, rally support or instill fear – to leave an indelible mark on the collective consciousness. Extended captions explain the fascinating stories behind this material, contextualising the strategies used by governments, agencies and individuals seeking to influence, deceive and demoralise through the use of propaganda. Containing many previously unpublished examples and with an enlightening introduction from Robert Peckham, author of Fear: An Alternative History of the World (2023), Propagandopolis is an essential visual guide to the enduring potency of the most pervasive, manipulative and persuading images of our time.

Holiday Exotica is the first ever visual guide to how we once satisfied our wanderlust. This globetrotting tour of nostalgic travel brochures voyages alphabetically from Africa to Yugoslavia, reflecting our shifting attitudes to tourism. Going anywhere nice? By coach, cruise or even Concorde? Holiday Exotica will take you on a globetrotting tour of vintage holiday brochures. This first ever visual guide to how we once satisfied our wanderlust, both at home and abroad, travels alphabetically from Africa and Australia to the United States and Yugoslavia, with excursions to Bognor Regis, Belfast and all points in between.Exchanging everyday drizzle and drudgery for exotic cocktails and beach loungers, these rare, nostalgic brochures reflect our shifting attitudes to tourism in the pre-internet era, when travellers were lured by designs promising a jet-set paradise with perfect weather.Discover how holidays were marketed to an eager post-war public – where Berlin is ‘worth a trip’ and the clouds look curiously ominous at the Hotel New Hiroshima in Japan. Jump in the car and take a groovy 1960s motoring vacation across Italy, where cosmopolitan ancient civilisations might broaden your mind. Or relax at a 1970s Pontins, alongside hundreds of your fellow sunworshippers and their kids.So, pack your suitcase because you’re booked for two weeks of all-inclusive sun (catching rays in Benidorm), sand (between your toes in Jamaica) and seasickness (a day trip to France on a Sealink ferry).With Holiday Exotica, you can travel without leaving your deckchair.

The most comprehensive photographic document of the London council estate, with fascinating images from every London borough and the City, featuring some 300 estates built between 1947 and 1981. Why are some London council estates considered notorious, while others are arguably the most desirable places to live in the capital? As the most comprehensive photographic document of the London council estate, this book provides an insight, featuring some 300 estates from every borough and the City. London Estates features the first post-war housing in Paddington, Islington and Romford; the Modernist schemes in Finsbury, Bethnal Green, Poplar, Wandsworth, Camberwell and the Cities of London and Westminster; the acclaimed 1960s estates of Camden and Lambeth; and the lesser-known 1970s estates of Kingston, Haringey, Havering, Hillingdon and Tower Hamlets. There are designs from a broad range of architects including Denys Lasdun (Keeling House, Trevelyan House); Chamberlin, Powell & Bon (Golden Lane Estate), Erno Goldfinger (Balfron Tower, Trellick Tower); Basil Spence (Stock Orchard Estate, Tustin Estate), and Kate Macintosh (Dawson’s Heights). A huge range of architectural styles are represented – from prefabricated and ‘self-built’ schemes, to Modernist and brutalist designs, including over 30 protected historic buildings. This book celebrates London council estates in all their diversity, championing the neglected alongside the distinguished, honouring their immeasurable contribution to the social and architectural fabric of the capital.

A colourful photography book on this visually stunning vernacular artform, the images painted onto these trucks and tuks are a phenomenon, giving a unique insight into the rich cultural traditions of the Indian subcontinent.White stallions and exotic birds frolic around a waterfall, glamorous Bollywood stars sing, a sunset-silhouetted couple bathe in the ocean – such are the images that adorn the trucks and tuks of the Indian subcontinent. These utilitarian vehicles provide a fertile canvas for the vernacular artists whose colour-saturated creativity covers every spare surface. Over four years, photographer Christopher Herwig (author of the Soviet Bus Stops series and Soviet Metro Stations) travelled 10,000 kilometres in his quest to record this overlooked artform. He has documented the characteristics of each region – from Pakistan in the north, where intricately painted trucks often have a curved wooden peak at the front, symbolizing a princess’ tiara; to Sri Lanka in the south, where tuk tuks might equally be painted with holy deities or the Joker from Batman. The designs reflect a driver’s identity, faith and aspirations and span a bewildering range of themes: ideals of masculinity might be intertwined with expressions of love and longing, while bold typography urges drivers to blow their horns or promotes a campaign for the education of girls. Sadly, as a result of government directives, alongside the proliferation of cheap, mass-produced decorations, this vibrant cultural expression is in decline, making this project all the more vital.

'A unique social document recording a now disappearing sub-culture. The criminals inhabit as desperate a nether world as you are likely to come across. A hipnotic aspect of art and words. ' - Index This second volume of the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia is an essential companion to the critically acclaimed first volume. It features previously unpublished drawings and photographs from the extraordinary archives of Danzig Baldaev and Sergei Vasiliev. During his lifetime as a guard in St Petersburg's notorious Kresty Prison, Baldaev diligently recorded over 3,000 criminals' tattoos and their coded meanings. His drawings form a unique gallery; a passport into a hidden world of shovel-faced politicians, fornicating devils, messages tangled in barbed wire. Tattoos on hands, feet, legs, torsos, foreheads, eyelids, buttocks and genitals all take their place in this fascinating document of a rapidly disappearing criminal society, where history, status and even sexual preference are indelibly etched on the body. Introduction by Anne Applebaum, winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize.

'This is not solely an addendum to the previous volumes, but stands well on its own. The book's physical and emotional core lies in the Baldaev drawings, which are ethnographic, artistic, and surprisingly moving. His unflinching documentation reveals a world of systematic brutality and violence, where prisoners flaunted their savagery on their skin and punished their adversaries, poseurs, and the weak by etching humiliations into them.' - Alarm This is the final volume of drawings and photographs from Danzig Baldaev and Sergei Vasiliev, which completes the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia trilogy. Danzig Baldaev documented over three thousand tattoos during a lifetime working as a prison guard. His recording of this esoteric world was reported to the KGB who unexpectedly supported him, realising the importance of being able to establish facts about convicts by reading the images on their bodies. The motifs depicted represent the uncensored lives of the criminal classes, ranging from violence and pornography to politics and alcohol. The illustrated criminals of Russia tell the tale of their closed society. With an introduction by historian Alexander Sidorov, exploring the origin of Russian criminal tattoos and their meaning today.

Following the success of his first novel The Marriage of Reason and Squalor, artist Jake Chapman now focuses his malice on the calloused underbelly of literature itself. In Memoirs of MyWriter’s Block, Chapman haunts the shady world of the professional ghostwriter, posing as fragile amateur scribbler Christabel Ludd whose broken attempts at completing her first novel are frustrated by an unshakable writer’s block. In desperation she commissions a ragged collection of self-proclaimed professionals to transform the rudimentary tale into a compelling page-turner – with breathtaking results. The book follows the crushing and often bizarre process of having to get your novel written by someone else. The author, wracked with creative energy, resorts to poetry in a desperate attempt to relieve the tension built up over months of waiting for other – apparently more accomplished – writers to finish her story.

This beautifully produced boxed set of 53 postcards contains stunning images from the best-selling Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia series of books. These hugely popular and influential books document the Russian criminal tattoo, revealing their hidden meanings. The motifs depicted represent the uncensored lives of the criminal classes; their tattoos were a secret tribal language, a method of showing status within the prison system. By turn they are extraordinary, artful, explicit or just strange, reflecting the lives and traditions of this previously hidden world. The box features 25 original sheet drawings by Danzig Baldaev and 25 photographs by Sergei Vasiliev. Each has a detailed description of the meaning of each tattoo on the reverse. Also included is a postcard of each of the three book covers. The drawings printed on the postcards are facsimiles of Baldaev’s original sheets, reproduced directly from the Russian Criminal Tattoo Archive.

Soviets features unpublished drawings from the archive of Danzig Baldaev. They satirize the Communist Party system, exposing the absurdities of Soviet life from drinking (Alcoholics and Shirkers) to the Afghan war (The Shady Enterprise), via dissent (Censorship, Paranoia and Suspicion) and religion (Atheism as an Ideology). Baldaev reveals the cracks in the crumbling socialist structure, detailing the increasing hardships tolerated by a population whose leaders are in pursuit of an ideal that will never arrive. Dating from 1950s to the period immediately before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, his caricatures depict communism’s winners and losers: the corruption of its politicians, the stagnation of the system, and the effect of this on the ordinary soviet citizen. Baldaev’s drawings are contrasted with classic propaganda style photographs taken by Sergei Vasiliev for the newspaper Vercherny Chelyabinsk. These photographs portray a world the Party leaders dreamed of: where workers fulfilled their five-year plans as parades of soldiers and weapons rumbled through Red Square. This book examines – both broadly and in minute detail – the official fiction and the austere, bleak reality, of living under such a system.

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.