The cultural code of the constructivist book cover in the era of the “Great 1920s”

Abstract

The article is devoted to an analysis of the graphic language of Soviet book covers of the early 1920s in the context of the emergence of Constructivism and post-revolutionary ideology. Considering the book cover not as a merely decorative element but as an autonomous visual statement, the authors examine its role in shaping a new type of consciousness and transforming the cultural field. The central concept of the study is that of the “schema”, understood not as a sign but as a projective and cognitive instrument that enables not only interpretation, but also the construction of meaning. The research methodology is grounded in the intersection of Aleksei Gan’s constructivist theory, Vadim Rozin’s conception of the schema, and the notion of the creolized text — whose semiotic foundations were laid by Yu. M. Lotman as early as 1981 — as formalized by E. F. Tarasov. Particular attention is paid to the interaction between verbal and non-verbal (iconic) components of the book cover, as well as to the three fundamental disciplines of constructivist aesthetics—tectonics, faktura, and construction. Through the analysis of poetry collections, manifestos, periodicals, and “production” books intended for children, the article demonstrates that the visual solutions of book covers perform not an illustrative, but a projective and schematic function. The article introduces a distinction between primary and secondary schemas as levels of cultural interpretation and the appropriation of ideas, and highlights the continuity between Constructivist practices and the subsequent development of polycodes forms in the visual culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It concludes that the experimental strategies of the avant-garde, originally conceived as an instrument of utopian social transformation, laid the foundations of contemporary visual thinking, regardless of the extent to which their initial ideological goals were realized.