Formation of images of the future in the USSR in the 1920s.

Abstract

The article is devoted to the trends in the formation of images of the future in the USSR in the 1920s. The subject of the study is the image of the future as an object of design during the formation of a new state of society, the search for guidelines and practices of social development. Design in a broad context is considered as an active creative activity to shape the image of the future. Design may imply certain deadlines for its implementation, or it may be based on approximate calculations, on some guidelines that do not have a strict time limit. The research methods were historical-analytical, historical-comparative, historical-genetic, system-analytical. The postulates of F. Polak and E. Bloch were adopted as the methodological basis for studying images of the future. The article identifies the subjects of designing images of the future in the period under study, among whom are the leaders and ideologists of the Communist Party, as well as representatives of the urban intelligentsia. The main factors in the formation of images of the future are identified, among which are noted: the “current present”, political programs and ideological attitudes of the power elite, ideological trends of previous decades, scientific achievements, value systems. Projecting images of the future by subjects in the 1920s, experiencing the influence of various factors, led to the formation of images of a predominantly utopian nature, defining the horizons of the “expected” or “possible” future. Given the schematic and vagueness of the political guidelines for communism and the diversity of its author’s figurative variants, the future society was presented in the general categories of collectivism, science-centrism, technocratism, the ideals of a new socially determined person, and the subordination of nature to society.