The form and content of the early Soviet book: a study through the country's publishing industry institutions of the 1920s and 1930s

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My PhD research is an inquiry into how Soviet artists, including those from outside the Constructivist camp, generally seen in Western scholarship as its exclusive innovators, have approached the topic of early Soviet book design. I will explore how the artists of varied theoretical and stylistic affiliations contributed to the issue of interrelation between form and content within the early Soviet book, in view of its multiple function as a tool of enlightenment, an instrument of agitation and a promoter of the Soviet regime's reputation abroad. The investigation will be carried out through a study of major institutions related to the country's burgeoning publishing industry. These will include the editorial processes within major publishing houses of Moscow and Petrograd/Leningrad, including The State Publishing House (Gosizdat), World Literature (Vsemirnaia literatura) and Academia; the international activity of the publishing branch of the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS); and the teaching of graphic art and book design at The Higher Art and Technical Studios (VKhuTEMAS) and its successor, VKhuTEIN, both in Moscow and Leningrad.One of the artists, whose work will be reassessed in light of this research, is Vladimir Favorskii, a Soviet wood engraver, book artist and professor of the VKhUTEMAS's polygraphic faculty, who has been almost entirely overlooked in Western scholarship, and whose book-related activity throughout the 1920s was in many ways a lot closer to that of the Constructivists, than has generally been considered.