A Soviet design aesthetic, in my opinion (and I lived in and used products from that time), is a pathological design aesthetic in a planned economy where there is no functioning feedback loop from the consumer to the designer.
It leads to un-appealing design, that consumers don't like. Products are bought simply because there is not alternative (say as a consumer, you really hate the spoons and forks they have at the store, but they only make one model, so you buy what they have or you don't have anything to eat with).
Designers sort of work and train a vacuum. Products (and thus design decisions) never compete and never pass consumer acceptance and feedback. For example, I remember really funky looking cassette tape players, they were ugly and broke a lot. I remember TVs that looked crappy compared to the Western models. It isn't that they didn't work, they did, but their looks and the overall aesthetic was ugly. Cars (all 5 types of them) were ugly compared to Western cars.
I suppose a designer got a job at one of the state owned factories. That factory was told to produce x number of widgets. The designer got to work, showed the prototype to some people in the bureaucratic chain of command, and then x widgets were made and put on the shelves. That designer probably never got to hear how much their work sucked. They just got another order and so it went on and on.
It leads to un-appealing design, that consumers don't like. Products are bought simply because there is not alternative (say as a consumer, you really hate the spoons and forks they have at the store, but they only make one model, so you buy what they have or you don't have anything to eat with).
Designers sort of work and train a vacuum. Products (and thus design decisions) never compete and never pass consumer acceptance and feedback. For example, I remember really funky looking cassette tape players, they were ugly and broke a lot. I remember TVs that looked crappy compared to the Western models. It isn't that they didn't work, they did, but their looks and the overall aesthetic was ugly. Cars (all 5 types of them) were ugly compared to Western cars.
I suppose a designer got a job at one of the state owned factories. That factory was told to produce x number of widgets. The designer got to work, showed the prototype to some people in the bureaucratic chain of command, and then x widgets were made and put on the shelves. That designer probably never got to hear how much their work sucked. They just got another order and so it went on and on.