Soviet material culture post: Ekranoplan

Soviet design and production is always interesting. Not only are they Russian--which is cool in a not Western but not quite fully Eastern kind of way--they also were conceived outside of market forces. Usually the central committee identified a need and dispatched some design bureaus to make it so. Of course, there might be competition between the design bureaus but the whole concept was generally conceived by the political body. Something like that.

Image source.

Anyway, the Soviets certainly did make some really cool stuff.