Forming domestic ergonomics and ergodesign in the soviet period

The 60s-80s of the last century are characterized by emerging a number of theoretical and methodological works devoted to new understanding of design as a person’s interaction with his objective world. These are the works of designers (Fedorov M.V., Minervin G.B. and others), philosophers (Kantor K.M., Shchedrovitsky G.P., Yudin E.G.) and psychologists (Zinchenko V.P., Munipov V.M., Chainova L.D. and others). Common positions were noted in a variety of interpretations; these positions are interdisciplinarity and project-based design. Intensive development of technical means of labour activity determined the need to have an integral system of ideas about a working person, his labour activity, his relationship with the machine and with the environment, his ergonomics. Thanks to the research and development of prominent Russian philosophers, engineers and psychologists, ergonomics received the status of an interdisciplinary, scientific and design discipline of a new type, based on a systemic methodology and an activity approach. On the basis of the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Technical Aesthetics, founded in 1962, a productive integration of design and ergonomics tools was fulfilled; a direction was formed, which would later be called ergodesign. Special interdisciplinary research, projects and developments were organized where specialists from different fields of knowledge studying the human nature participated. In the process of these events the ideas of various disciplines were synthesized. A significant part of the research in the field of ergodesign in the period of 1960s-1980s was carried out within the framework of a closed problem in the field of space ergonomics and defence technology. Some of the solutions in the field of space ergonomics and defence technology related to the developments conversion in the post-Soviet period are discussed in this article.

THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF UNDERSTANDING OF THE SYSTEM OBJECT IN DESIGN

The article is devoted to the analysis of the system object from the point of view of design from design, sociocultural and philosophical positions. The authors systematize the definitions of a system object of design proposed in the 1960–1980s by theorists and practitioners, art historians, cultural experts and philosophers from different countries, including Russia, which allows a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon of design culture. This article is devoted to the characteristic properties of the system object in design. They were considered and analyzed on the example of the «Absheron» design-program when designing of agricultural village). This concept was developed at the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Technical Aesthetics (VNIITE) in 1983. Using the same example, the features of the approach to designing a system object in design was observed not only as a separate product, but as a sociocultural situation that constantly changes at each design stage.

Scientist, mentor, teacher (for the 90th anniversary of Aleksandr Solomonovich Mikhlin’s birth) [16.02.1930–30.10.2007]

This article is dedicated to the memory of ScD (Law), Professor, Honored scientist of the RSFSR Aleksandr Solomonovich Mikhlin and to the 90th anniversary of his birth. Aleksandr Solomonovich Mikhlin was born in Moscow on February 16, 1930. In 1951, he graduated from the Moscow law Institute, after which he worked as a legal adviser in the system of the Ministry of Railways. In 1954, he entered the full-time postgraduate course of the All-Union Institute of Legal Sciences of the Ministry of Justice of the USSR. In 1959, he defended his PhD thesis on the topic “Consequences of crime in Soviet criminal law” (under the scientific supervision of a well-known scientist in the field of criminal and correctional labor law, ScD (Law), Professor B. S. Utevskiy). After the defense, he worked for some time as a legal adviser, and in 1962–1965 as a scientific Secretary of the Research Institute of Technology and Chemistry. In 1965 he joined the All-Union Scientific-Research Institute of public order protection at the Ministry of public order of the RSFSR, which later was reorganized into All-Union Scientific Research Institute of the MIA of the USSR (all-Russian Research Institute of the MIA of Russia), where he worked the rest of his life. Since the end of the 60s (with the participation and also under the leadership of A. S. Mikhlin) for 30 years (in 1970, 1975, 1979, 1989, 1994, 1999) the work to prepare and conduct special censuses of convicts was carried out. A huge amount of unique information was obtained on persons sentenced to various punishments, as well as on suspects and accused for committing crimes in custody. Based on the materials of a special census in the late 60s, A. S. Mikhlin began working on his ScD thesis, which was defended in 1974 on the topic “The Identity of convicts sentenced to imprisonment and the problems of their correction and re-education”. After 1997 A. S. Mikhlin became involved in interpretation and explanation of newly adopted legal acts. Under his scientific supervision and direct participation, scientific and practical comments of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, the Penal Code of the Russian Federation, the Federal law on detention of suspects and accused for committing crimes, and the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation were prepared and published. Thematic judicial collections of current decisions of the Plenums of the Supreme Courts of the USSR, the RSFSR, and the Russian Federation, as well as textbooks on criminal law, penal law, and criminal procedure, were very popular. Three editions of the monograph on the death penalty were also published (in Moscow in 1997 and 2000, and in London in 1999, in English). In total, Professor A. S. Mikhlin published more than 550 scientific papers, more than 1000 printed pages, including more than 100 monographs, textbooks, commentaries, manuals on criminal and correctional labor (penal) law in various publications in Russia, the former Soviet Union Republics, as well as in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Belgium, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Germany, and Bulgaria.