Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This study of Russian design and literature of the 1920s and 1930s emphasizes continuity with the preceding futurist years, and explores the development of graphic design and photomontage in books and journals about theatre and architecture, as well as collections of avant-garde writing.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

By the mid-1930s the idealism and energy of Russia's 1917 revolution had been crushed, and the dreary conformity that ruled official Russian arts to the mid-1980s had become policy. Censorship dictated form as well as content, by and large holding Soviet artists to 19th-century realistic norms. In this sequel to her survey of earlier avant-garde book design, The World Backwards: Russian Futuristic Books 1912-16 (British Museum Pubs., 1979), Compton again uses the British Library's extensive collection to trace the illustration and format of books on Russian literature and theater. She lucidly outlines groups, traces individual careers, and explores the graphic arts' uneasy pact with the state. The book, if not exactly avant-garde in design, is admirably organized, and the illustrations serve as a delightful reminder of the rich heritage the new Russia can now choose to utilize.-- Mary F. Zirin, Altadena, Cal. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.