Bobrov, N. N. and B. Ridiger, artist.

[PHOTO BOOK ABOUT SOVIET AVIATION] TsAGI [The Central Aerodynamic Institute].

Moscow: OGIZ Molodaia gvardiia, 1933. Octavo (21.3 × 15 cm). Original blue cloth stamped in silver; photo-montage endpapers, both designed by B. Ridiger; 315, [4] pp. Lacking the dust jacket, else very good. Item #52639

Very fine photo-book summarizing the life, work, and accomplishments of the main Soviet aviation research institute, TsAGI. Edited by B. Ia. Kuznetsov and with an introduction by N. M. Kharlamov. Overall design, wrapper, binding, and endpapers by B. Ridiger. At the time of the publication in 1933, TsAGI celebrated fifteen years of its existence. Against the background of rapid industrialization, and with the second five-year plan for the development of the national economy in full swing, the book conjures a hopeful literary narrative of the advancement of Soviet science.

It establishes the mythology of TsAGI as an institution born and strengthened in the “whirl of the civil war.” But its history goes back to the early twentieth century, when its founder, Nikolai Zhukovsky, a professor at the Imperial Technical Institute and Moscow State University, first coordinated the construction of wind tunnels in research laboratories near Moscow. By the time of the Revolution, Zhukovsky was leading laboratories with a close circle of scientists enthusiastic about aero-construction, which the newly established Bolshevik government was eager to preserve. Years of research of aero-, hydro- and flight dynamics at TsAGI followed, resulting in the construction of the most pivotal models of Soviet airplanes of the interwar period.

Nikolai Bobrov (1898–1952), the author of this account, was a Soviet writer who focused on aviation and the main figures of its development, such as Nikolai Zhukovsky, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Valery Chkalov, and others. “TsAGI” offers a series of striking accounts of a writer, who joins the life of the research institute to learn about its people and work. He wanders from laboratory to laboratory, crawls into the wind tunnels, jumps with a parachute, and climbs to the top of the wind-testing towers. On the way, he interviews workers and scientists he meets, providing the reader with insight into how the new research spaces operate. The language used to describe the Institute is remarkable, combining the descriptions of the industrial and scientific developments with an often emotional register filled with with vivid, unexpected metaphors. The book is thus exemplary of the state-ordered implementation of the Socialist Realist literary style just a year prior in 1932.

The stories are supplied with a large number of photographs by the TsAGI cinema-photo laboratory and photographer Mikhail Prekhner. While some are straightforward portraits of the important members of TsAGI, many photographs depict the research environment of the institute with the visual sensitivities of Soviet avant-garde photography; they explore unfamiliar vantage points and reveal the dynamism of the geometry of buildings and industrial spaces.

Prekhner was a Soviet photographer who started as a photojournalist for USSR in Construction, a journal designed by Rodchenko and El Lissitsky. He later came to be widely appreciated and was chosen as a Soviet representative for international exhibitions in the 1930s. After his premature death at the beginning of WWII, he was largely forgotten, but has recently been enjoying a revival, resulting in a personal retrospective in the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow in 2013.

As of October 2024, KVK, OCLC show only the copy at the British Library.

Price: €2,000.00

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