The most successful Soviet camera designs were to one degree or another rip offs of stuff Zeiss was doing before the war; the LTM cameras in the FED and I think ZORKI series, the folder I have that is near on a dead copy with the opposite handedness of the current Zeiss folder in 1930 (speculation is that someone copied the blueprints upside down), the various Kievs. Almost all of these are very close, visually, to what Zeiss was doing before the war, which would make a lot of sense given what the Soviets did with Zeiss (viz. basically relocating everything they could and calling it "Kiev"; this operation is now known as Arsenal, I think, and did and still does do some high quality work). I suspect the reason why Soviet ergonomics doesn't come up more often in these discussions is because people who own Soviet cameras are usually so delighted to find one that e.g. had the flocking painted on the inside or has the right gears in or generally works that they will put up with the generally Brutalist visual styling.

Which is not to say that they're not perfectly servicable cameras; other than being mirror-reversed that folder I have is one of the most sophisticated of its type ever made, with a coupled rangefinder, a coated (!) Tessar-type lens and different masks in case you were mad enough to want more than 8 shots to a roll of 120. But what design aesthetics are present are almost the same as 1930s Zeiss cameras with perhaps some corners cut for manufacturing.

Sounds interesting. Link?

The Soviet aesthetic can sometimes look retro-cool but you have to admit it's not much of a hit with Western consumers.

An anecdote does not data make. In general, 'Soviet' or 'communist' design is ugly, why do we need to sugar-coat it? Not just consumer electronics, but cars, architecture, ... For example 1990's East Berlin - come on, that place looked well ghetto (and it was, but it looked the part, too).

Besides, it's not like the lomo is a beauty to look at, either. It gets its cult status from being niche and having a low barrier to entry, not from its good looks.