Space hoovers. From utopian promises to everyday shortages

Probably the most famous example of 1960s Lithuanian technology and modernity was the iconic Saturnas vacuum cleaner, created by Lithuanian designers and engineers who were inspired by space-age aesthetics. Production began in 1962 at the Vilnius Electric Welding Equipment Factory. The stylish spherical appliance was brightly colored and ergonomically shaped. It weighed almost seven kilograms but had three small wheels to make everyday housework easer, aiming to realize Khrushchev’s promise in the famous 1959 ‘Kitchen Debate’ to ‘overtake and surpass America’. Alas, in Soviet reality, the design found in private spaces was more depressing than promising, and the acquisition of new, well-functioning, appealing, useful products like this was a utopian pipedream.
The Soviet economy’s poverty and constant shortages are also reflected in the transformation of vacuum cleaners into modernist lamps, in a design created by the architect Edmundas Čekanauskas when he adapted the hulls of the aforementioned Saturnas for the Composers’ Union House in Vilnius. While this was a public space, what the architect tried to convey was the home comforts he perceived in Finnish architecture, something so lacking in Soviet everyday life.
The story of the artificial aorta also exemplifies the paradoxical nature of Soviet design, in which the most innovative design projects remained unfulfilled or were realized in only limited editions. First manufactured at the Kaunas Kaspinas factory in 1960, this artificial aorta was a prosthesis for the human body’s largest blood vessel. It was woven using a ribbon-weaving machine from pre-war Germany, which was remodelled to solve the problem of the blood vessel’s branching. These woven blood vessels were an innovation that proved very useful for surgical applications. However, their production ended after just four years, when Moscow perceived a threat to production from factories in Leningrad and Ukraine. The artificial blood vessels were sold at such low prices (actually set by the cost of sock production at the time) that it was simply not worth producing them.