Rationality versus Romanticism: Representations of Women in the Stalinist Press

Abstract

If the ‘new Soviet man’ of the Stalin era was presented as the very embodiment of human capability, at least his feats of overfulfilment were confined to one setting, the workplace. The new Soviet woman had a more complex set of tasks. She was expected to be an exemplary performer both at work and at home, and to embody the different and often contradictory qualities and traits which were supposedly appro­priate to each of these spheres. This chapter will explore the ways in which these demands were propagandized to women through the magazines Rabotnitsa (The Woman Worker) and Krest’yanka (The Peasant Woman). These publications have been chosen as they were aimed at ordinary women (the so-called ‘female mass’), rather than at activists, and they were the only such publications available throughout the country and throughout the span of the Stalin era (appearing weekly until the end of the war and monthly thereafter).