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UC Davis. edu. edu. edu. find out more at 21st century dot ucdd ucdd u. this is 99% invisible I'm

Roman Mars my My friend Julia Barton,

That's me. Is in a New York City apartment with Michael Eideau.

My name is Michael Eidev and I'm the editor of Made in Russia, unsung icons of Soviet design.

And Lawrence, a parrot that sounds exactly like the building's door buzzer.

And no matter how hard we tried,

to cut out Lawrence.

His door-buzzer imitation cannot be denied.

But maybe that's okay, because Idov's new book on Soviet design is an homage to the stuff of ordinary Soviet life.

Cigarettes, drinking glasses, subway token machines, and it might be hard for outsiders

to see what this seemingly random collection of Soviet consumer goods have in common.

But Idov believes are something that unites them all.

To define this aesthetic, you first need to realize that most of these items were rip-offs of Western sources of varying qualities.

They are imitations, like the way Lawrence the Parrot is imitating the door buzzer.

Shut up, Lawrence.

One look at the items in this book, even though they are shameless imitations,

you'll see that the Soviet stuff is unmistakably Soviet.

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