{"product_id":"brutal-bloc-postcards","title":"Brutal Bloc Postcards","description":"\u003cb\u003eA collection of previously unpublished postcards from the former  Eastern Bloc - sinister, funny, poignant and surreal, they depict the  social and architectural values of the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\u003c\/b\u003e.\n\nBrutal 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.\n\nIn 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.\n\nInstead, 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.","brand":"FUEL Design \u0026 Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42663730642980,"sku":"9780995745520","price":49.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0725\/9734\/0196\/files\/9780995745520.jpg?v=1780689094","url":"https:\/\/thamesandhudson.com.au\/products\/brutal-bloc-postcards","provider":"Thames \u0026 Hudson Australia","version":"1.0","type":"link"}