Illustrations from the Soviet Children’s Book 'Your Name? Robot', by Mikhail Romadin

The Soviet Union may be long gone but for those who spent their childhood in its orbit, certain memories remain unusually vivid. Among these, few are as enduring or as evocative as the children’s books that shaped early imaginations. Vivid colours, bold compositions, and strikingly unusual perspectives were often the norm in Soviet picture books, especially in the 1970s and 1980s.

These books weren’t just read — they were absorbed. Now, thanks to a growing interest in archiving and digitising Soviet-era children’s literature, these enchanting, often surreal volumes are reaching new audiences around the world.

One such gem, now preserved for the digital age, is Your Name? Robot — a 1979 Soviet picture book that has resurfaced in design circles largely thanks to the efforts of websites like 50 Watts, which specialise in collecting and sharing unusual vintage book illustrations. The book’s true draw, however, lies in the unmistakable illustrations by Mikhail Romadin — a name already familiar to cinephiles and lovers of Soviet visual culture.

Soviet Childhoods and the Robots of Tomorrow

Your Name? Robot emerged during a time when both the Soviet Union and the United States were locked in what can only be described as a conceptual arms race: not just of weapons, but of ideas about the future. The technological dreams of the 20th century extended deep into the minds of artists, writers, and designers, who imagined a new age brought about by robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence. In both East and West, visions of the future were fuelled by utopian hopes and dystopian fears, and robots occupied a special role in those projections — as helpers, teachers, entertainers, and, sometimes, threats.

In the case of Your Name? Robot, the robots are playful, versatile, and curiously expressive. These are no soulless machines, but rather whimsical mechanical beings that paint pictures, play music, boil water, and spit out complicated calculations with ease. They radiate curiosity and capability, as if meant to serve not just as future tools but as aspirational companions for the children who read the book. Their design suggests high function, but also a certain dreamlike innocence — a future not yet touched by disillusionment.

The Art of Mikhail Romadin: From Solaris to Storybooks

The illustrations of Your Name? Robot are the work of Mikhail Romadin, a multifaceted Soviet artist who brought the same visionary design sensibility to children’s books that he had previously contributed to one of Soviet cinema’s most enduring science fiction films: Solaris (1972), directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. As the film’s production designer, Romadin helped create a visual future defined not by sleek predictability, but by complexity, contradiction, and layered detail.

Romadin’s visual imagination was one of intense intricacy. In Your Name? Robot, this emerges in hypnotic arrays of wires, circuit boards, control panels, and geometric shapes, giving each robot a unique internal anatomy. These illustrations feel alive with movement, yet their compositions are tightly structured — a balance between chaos and form that Tarkovsky himself once praised. Speaking of Romadin, the director said:

“Romadin’s character is hidden, forced deep inside. In his best works what often happens is that the outward characteristics of barely ordered dynamism and chaos that one perceives initially, melt imperceptibly into the appreciation of calm and noble form, silent and simple.”“Romadin’s character is hidden, forced deep inside. In his best works what often happens is that the outward characteristics of barely ordered dynamism and chaos that one perceives initially, melt imperceptibly into the appreciation of calm and noble form, silent and simple.”

This statement could just as easily be applied to the pages of Your Name? Robot as it could to the sets of Solaris. The robots of the book — while initially appearing busy, even frenetic — soon draw the viewer into a calm, controlled aesthetic that rewards closer inspection. They are designed not only to perform, but to be read, much like a language of the future rendered in brush and ink.

A Global Archive for Soviet Childhoods

Thanks to digital preservation efforts, these books are now more accessible than ever. Archival projects and online galleries, often maintained by private collectors and design historians, are making Soviet-era children’s books available in scanned form, sometimes with translation, but frequently without — a testament to the strength of their visual storytelling. These illustrations speak across language barriers, conveying ideas, moods, and dreams with remarkable clarity.

The resurgence of interest in books like Your Name? Robot isn’t just an exercise in nostalgia. It’s a recognition of a unique visual tradition that emerged under specific historical and political circumstances, yet still manages to speak to the universal human fascination with the future. And while the robots depicted in the book never quite came to pass in real life, their creators’ belief in technological progress as a force for good feels strikingly relevant today, as we navigate our own era of artificial intelligence, automation, and changing cultural horizons.

To leaf through Your Name? Robot today — whether digitally or, if you’re lucky, via an original copy — is to enter a vision of the future drawn from the past. It’s not a corporate future, nor a dystopian one. Rather, it’s a future imagined for children by artists and dreamers, in which machines exist to share knowledge, beauty, and joy. Mikhail Romadin’s robots may never have walked the streets of the USSR, but they have marched straight into the imaginations of those who encountered them — and, thanks to ongoing preservation, they may yet inspire generations to come.

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