All Stalins Women

All Stalin's Women: Gender and Power in Soviet Art of the 1930s
Author(s): Susan E. Reid

Source: Slavic Review, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Spring, 1998), pp. 133-173
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All Stalin's Women: Gender and Power in Soviet Art
of the 1930s
Susan E. Reid
This article will examine how the representation of gender in Soviet

art during the second and third Five-Year Plans articulated relation-
ships of domination in Stalinist society. Using female characters to
stand for "the people" as a whole, painting and sculpture drew on
conventional gender codes and hierarchy to naturalize the subordi-
nation of society to the Stalinist state and legitimate the sacrifice of
women's needs to those of industrialization.' The prevalence of female
protagonists was closely connected with the promotion of the Stalin
cult: women modeled the ideal attitude of "love, honor, and obedi-
ence." As the triumph of conservative aesthetic hierarchies paralleled
the restoration of traditional gender roles, I ask how women artists
were to operate in these conditions.
If we are to draw any conclusions about how visual representations
functioned in Soviet society, it is essential to establish as precisely as
possible the conditions in which they were produced and made public.
My examples come primarily from work produced for two comple-
mentary exhibitions: Industryof Socialism,the most important art event
of the decade, which was sponsored by Sergo Ordzhonikidze and his
Commissariat for Heavy Industry; and its pendant, Food Industry,spon-
sored by Anastas Mikoian, commissar of Food Industries. In addition
I shall discuss the 1938 Exhibitionof WomenArtistsin order to examine
the positioning of female artists vis-a-visthe conventions, institutions,
and material circumstances that disadvantaged and subordinated
women.
I would like to thankDiane P. Koenker and Slavic Review's anonymous reviewers

for theircommentson this paper. My thanksalso go to the staffof the Russian State
Archiveof Literatureand Artand of the libraryof the Moscow Artists'Union fortheir
assistance.
1. The repr-esentationof women in Soviet visual culturehas been the subject of
severalstudies includingElizabeth Waters,"The Female Form in Soviet Political Icon-
ography,1917-32," in B. E. Clements,B. A. Engel, and C. D. Worobec, eds., Russia's
Women:Accommodation,Resistance, Transformation(Berkeley, 1991): 225-42; Victoria E.
Bonnell, "The Representationof Women in EarlySoviet Political Art,"RussianReview
50 (July1991): 267-88; Victoria E. Bonnell, "The Peasant Woman in StalinistPolitical
Artof the 1930s,"American HistoricalReview98, no. I (February1993): 55-82; Margarita
Tupitsyn,AfterPerestroika:Kitchenmaids or Stateswomen(New York, 1993); and Alison
Hilton,"Feminismand Gender Values in Soviet Art,"SlavicaTamperensia, 1993,99-116.
With the exception of Hilton, theyconcentrateprimarilyon posters and other mass-
produced imageryin the period fi-omthe revolutionto the firstFive-YearPlan. On
gender differenceas a means of articulatingpower relations,see Joan Wallach Scott,
Genderand thePolitics of History (New York, 1988), chap. 2.
SlavicReview57, no. I (Spring 1998)

134 Slavic Review
Industryof Socialism
Planning forIndustryofSocialismbegan in 1935. The exhibitionwas
due to open in November 1937 to celebrate the twentiethanniversary
of the revolution and the successfulcompletion of the second Five-
Year Plan. The preparation period coincided withthe show trials,the
foundationof the ArtsCommitteein January1936, and the purge of
"formalism"it oversaw.Despite the organizationaldisastersthese con-
ditions precipitated,the exhibition was hung on time. The doors re-
mained closed untilMarch 1939, however,mostprobablybecause many
workscelebratederstwhileheroes who,havingbeen unmaskedas "ene-
mies of the people," had to be erased.2At least two importantfigures
involved in the organization of the exhibition were purged early in
1937: Iurii Piatakov, Ordzhonikidze's deputy in the Commissariatof
Heavy Industry,and Iuvenalii Slavinskii,directorof the powerfulAll-
Union ArtCooperativeVsekokhudozhnik.3 Ordzhonikidzehimselfdied
under suspicious circumstances.
The commissioning,final selection, and hanging of Industry ofSo-
cialismestablished the iconographic and stylisticcanons of socialist
realism, which remained in place until at least the mid-1950s.This
exhibition restored the multifiguralthematiccomposition in oil on
canvas, or kartina,to the privilegedposition thathistorypainting had
enjoyed in the academic hierarchyof genres prior to the modernist
challenge. It also introduced the bureaucraticprocedures of planned
productioninto the once individualisticand unaccountable matterof
artisticcreation: artistsno longer conceived work independentlybut
were commissioned in advance to produce paintings and sculptures
according to an eighty-pageThematicPlan compiled by a committee.
Both in its emphasis on the illustrationof a theme and in its organi-
zational principle,IndustryofSocialismendorsed a conception of Soviet
art modeled on the practicesof the antimodernistAssociation of Art-
istsof RevolutionaryRussia (AKhRR) since 1922.4
2. Industryof Socialism opened 18 March 1939 in the Permanent Construction

Exhibition Pavilion on Frunzenskaia naberezhnaia. It included 1,015 works by 479
artists. G. Bandalin, ed., Vsesoiuznaia khudozhestvennaiavystavka "Industriia sotsializma":
Katalog (Moscow and Leningrad, 1939). Accounts vary as to which works were finally
displayed, perhaps because it was rehung within the firstyear and remained open into
1940. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva (RGALI), f. 962 (Arts Com-
imiittee),op. 6, ed. klir. 694 (stenogr-apher's r-epoirtof imieetin-g
with lhead of Fiine AIrt
Directorate of Arts Comimiittee concerninig rehanging of Industryof Socialism, 2() Feb-
I-rUai-y 1940).
3. Piatakov was purged along with Karl Radek in the second show trial,
January-February 1937. Slavinskii was one of the original memiibersof the presidium
of the committee appointed to organize IndustryofSocialism. On the purge of Slavinskii
and Vsekokhudozhnik, see RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr. 196 (on the work of Vseko-
khudozhnik, April 1937); and RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 126 (meeting of board of
Moscow Regional Artists' Union [MOSSKh], 19 September 1937).
4. The powerful Aleksandr Gerasimov, formerly of AKhRR, claimed the exhibi-
tion demonstrated the triumph of the thematic method. A. Gerasimov, "Pafos boev za

Genderand Power in SovietArt of the 1930s 135
As its title indicated, the exhibition's core theme was socialist in-
dustrialization.In the course of preparations,it also took on additional
and apparentlyincompatibleagendas. For example, the exhibitionwas
co-opted into promotingthe new Constitutionof 1936 as the "most
democratic in the world." At the same time,it fueled the cult of the
Constitution'salleged author, Stalin, while legitimatingthe ongoing
restorationof hierarchicalrelations of power and privilegeand con-
servativenotions of gender difference,known as the Great Retreat.
The exhibitionservedto resolve the contradictionsthatpertainedpar-
ticularlyto the position of women. Articles 122 and 137 of the Con-
stitutionclaimed to guarantee women equal rightsto vote,work and,
rest,as well as to provide for maternityleave and childcare.'iIndeed,
women's labor remainedjust as vital to effortsto increase productivity
duringthe second and thirdFive-YearPlans as it had been to the rapid
industrializationdriveof the first,and the centralauthoritieslaunched
repeated campaigns to encourage women to takeup traditionallymale
occupations and swell the industriallabor force.7Yet the regime had
demonstratedits failing commitmentto tackle the obstacles to wom-
en's advancement since 1930, when it closed the Zhenotdel and cur-
tailed furtherdiscussion of the "woman question," declaring that
women were already equal in Soviet society.8As state provision of
childcare and communal dining fell short of promnises, women were
expected to take responsibilityfor the traditionallyfemininedomain
of the home, and legislation and propaganda reinforcedthe nuclear
family.Women's "double burden" locked them into secondarystatus.
As Gail WarshofskyLapidus put it,"Economic policies restingon the
under-developmentof the service sector and social policies designed
industriiu,"Industriiasotsializma(single-issuebroadsheet,published by the exhibition

and printedby the press of the newspaper Industriia), June 1939.
5. The termGreatRetreatwas coined by Nicholas S. Timasheff,The GreatRetreat:
The Grozvthand Decline of Communismin Russia (New York, 1946). It lies beyond the
scope of this article to engage withthe scholarlydebates regardingthe pervasiveness
of the Great Retreat and whetherit was a imatterof deliberate regime policy or of
forces"fi-ombelow." See, for examiple,Roberta T. Manning, "Women in the Soviet
Countrysideon the Eve of World War II, 1935-1940," in Beatrice Farnswortlhand
Lynne Viola, eds., RussianPeasant Women(Oxford, 1992), 222-26.
6. A translationof the articlescan be found in W. P. Coates and Zelda K. Coates,
ecls.,Scenesfi-om Soviet Life (London, 1936).
7. Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workersand Stalinist Industrialization:The FormationofMod-
ern Soviet Production Relations, 1928-1941 (London, 1986), 144-47; and Manning,
"Woomenin the Soviet Countryside,"206-35.
8. The Zhenotdel (Zhenskiiotdel),the Women's Departmiient of the Commiiunist
Party,was founded in 1919. See Barbar-aEvans Clements, "The Utopianismiof the
Zhenotdel,"SlavicReviezv51, no. 3 (Fall 1992): 485-96. The so-called woman question
in the 1920s and 1930s has been the subject of extensiveresearch inl recent decades;
see, among others, Gail Warshofsky Lapidus, Womenin Soviet Society:Equality, Develolp-
ment,and Social Change (Berkeley, 1978); Farnsworth and Viola, eds., Russian Peasant
Clements,Engel, and Worobec, eds., Russia's Women;and Helena Goscilo and
Women;
Beth Holmgren, eds., Russia-Women-Culture (Bloomnington, 1996).

136 Slavic Review
to strengthenthe familyas a reproductiveand socializing institution

assigned a set of functionsand roles to women that in some respects
intensifiedthe sexual divisionof labor both in public arenas and within
the familyitself."6'
The Great Retreatdid not simplyremove women frompublic rep-
resentation.On the contrary,preciselybecause theywere a problem
and because the smoothfunctioningof the stateso depended on their
acquiescence, women and the opportunitiessocialism affordedthem
remained an importantthemeforfineart and mass media throughout
the 1930s. In posters,as Elizabeth Watersand VictoriaE. Bonnell have
observed,it was fromaround 1930-the verytime when commitment
to measuresrequired to bringabout women's equalitylapsed-that the
female formcame to the fore. Women figuredprominentlyin visual
propaganda promoting collectivization,not because they were its
staunchestsupporters in practice, but because theywere among the
most resistantto the disruption of traditional patternsof life.") As
mothers(or grandmothers)and educators,theywere the pillars of the
new Soviet order based on the family." l At the same time,the economic
imperativeto encourage women to swell the labor force made thema
prime targetfor persuasion. Even in 1936 when new legislation em-
phasized women's reproductiverole, Pravda still printedmore photo-
graphs of women engaged in nontraditionalpursuitsthan of women
as wivesand mothers.'2 It was the role of visual rhetoricto compensate
where realityfailed to match promises, to persuade women of their
importantcontributionto building socialism,while at the same time
shaping and containingtheiraspirationswithinbounds that,in many
ways,reinstatedtraditionalgender prescriptions.
Woman as a Sign forProgress

When Industry ofSocialismopened in 1939, a strikingproportionof
the paintingsand sculpturessingled out in press reportsand guided
tours presented women as central protagonists,seeming to confirm
theiremancipationand access to public activity.Such imageswere not
9. Lapidus, Womenin SovietSociety,103. See also Urie Bironfenbr-enner,

"Trhe
Changing Soviet Family," in Donald R. Brown, ed., The Role and Status of Womenin the
SovietUnion(New York, 1968), 98-125; and Robert W. Thurston,"The Soviet Family
duringthe Great Terror, 1935-1941," SovietStudies43, no. 3 (1991): 553-74.
10. Waters,"Female Form," 238, 242; Bonnell, "Representationof Women," 282;
Bonnell, "Peasant Woman," 65; and Lynne Viola, "Bab'i Buntyand Peasant Women's
ProtestduringCollectivization,"in Farnsworthand Viola, eds., RussianPeasantWomene,
189-205.
11. A 1939 publication on the familycited a remark Stalin allegedly made in
1923: "The femaleworkersand peasants are mothers,the educators [vospitatelPnitsami]
of our youth-the futureof our country.They can cripple the soul of a child or can
give us youthhealthyin spirit,capable of movingour countryforward."V. I. Svetlov,
Brak i sem'ia pri kapitalizme i sotsializme (Moscow, 1939), 136; cited in translation by
Thurston,"The Soviet Family,"562.
12. Manning,"Women in the Soviet Countryside,"211-12, fig.11.3.

about women alone, but representedSoviet society as a whole. The

transformnation of women's lives throughsocialistindustrializationwas
alreadyan establishedtrope for progress.Because the Bolshevikscon-
sidered women to have been the most backward and oppressed ele-
mentof prerevolutionarysociety,especiallyin the Russian countryside
and in the formertsaristcolonies of CentralAsia, femalefigurescould
mostvividlydemonstratethe contrastbetweenthe "old and thenew."13
In painting,the new woman had figuredprominentlysince the mid-
1920s,especially in the workof Iurii Pimenov and AleksandrDeineka,
both membersof the Society of Easel Painters (OST). In the second
Five-YearPlan, the figureof the new Soviet woman continued to stand
forthe emancipationand risinglivingstandardsof the workingpeople
as a whole.
The ThematicPlan for Industry of Socialismproposed such titlesas
"Woman Miner at the Controls" or "Cossack Woman Driver!" Listed
under the rubric "The CountryTransformed,"these themes drama-
tized progress by representingthe formerlybenighted and invisible
sex newly"mastering"technology,thus identifyingthe emancipation
ofwomenwithindustrializationand modernization.'4In thisvein,Iurii
Pimenov painted NewMoscowin 1937 forIndustry ofSocialism.The cin-
ematic immediacy of the composition locates us, the spectators,in the
of
rear seat a large car. At the wheel, facing into the painting,a fash-
ionable youngwoman conductsus along a broad boulevard lined with
high-risesinto the shimmeringmnirage of the modernized mnetropolis
promised by the 1935 "General Plan for the Reconstructionof Mos-
cow."15 A special newspaper issued to publicize the exhibition printed
a satiricalverse chastizingPimenov for "obscuring the whole of Mos-
cow with the back of a woman driver."'6 But the tour guide spoke
enthusiasticallyof the confidentyoung woman as a personificationof
the rejuvenationand progressof the countryas a whole.'7 Of course,
Pimenov's vision of the new Soviet woman enjoying the freedom of
the cityfrom the driver's seat, was as much a case of "realityin its
revolutionarydevelopment" as was the representationof female trac-
tor driversso common in the iconographyof the firstFive-YearPlan.
13. The conflation of the "woman- question" with that of the "backward nation-
alities of the Russian empire" had roots in tsarist ethlnography. See Catherine Clay,
"Russian Ethnographers in the Service of Empire, 1856-1862," Slavic Reviezv54, no. 1
(Spring 1995): 45-61; and M. Neuberger, "Difference Unveiled: Bulgarianl National
Imperatives and the Re-Dressinig of Muslim Women, 1878-1989," Nationalities PaPers
25, no. 1 (1997): 171.
I)lan vsesoiuznooi
14. Intdustriiasotsialirzma:Tematilcheskii vystavki(Mos-
khudozliestvennoi
cow, 1935), 48, 52.
15. On the motif of a shining path in Stalinist painting, see A. I. Morozov, Konets
utopii: Iz istoriiiskusstvav SSSR 1930-kh godov (Moscow, 1995), chap. 2.
16. Industriia sotsializma,June 1939, 6.
17. S. A. Zombe, comp., "Tekst besedy obzornoi ekskursii po vystavke Industriia
sotsializma,"' RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr. 948, 1. 45 (publicity materials andicscripts
of guided tours for Industryof Socialism).

138 Slavic Review
IndustrialWorkers
One mightexpect thatan exhibitiondedicated to "the Industryof
Socialism" would be dominated by paintingsand sculpturesabout in-
dustriallabor, and that,given the urgencyof recruitingwomen into
theworkforce, positiveimages of femaleworkerswould be highlighted.
Sure enough,viewerstakingtheconductedtourof theexhibitionwould
pause before Petr Kotov's painting Red Sormovo(1937), which, they
would learn, was a group portraitof Stakhanoviteshipbuildersat the
Sormovo dockyards.'8A male workeris placed in the foreground,but
since he is cast in shadow and does not meet the spectator'sgaze, he
serves the primarilycompositional functionof a repoussoir, directing
attentionto the interactionbetweentwomuscularwomen shipbuilders
in the middle ground. Yet, while Kotov clearlyindicates thatthe man
is welding,he avoids specifyingtheprecise natureof thewomen's tasks.
Other artistsshowed figuresof individual laborers of either sex, no-
tably Sarra Lebedeva's bare-chested,male Miner (plaster, 1937) and
AleksandrSamokhvalov'sMichelangelesque superwomanin MetroCon-
structorwithDrill (1937). The latter is unusual for the power of her
physique,for her seminudity,and for the factthatshe is identifiedas
an underground worker handling heavy machinery.Even so, both
Samokhvalovand Lebedeva have chosen to depict theirworkersin a
momentof rest.')'Evasiveness concerningthe exertionsand processes
involvedin industrialproduction was characteristicof the exhibition
as a whole, at least as it was mediated in the press and guided tours.
The increasingreluctanceto depict workitselfparticularlyaffected
therepresentationof femaleindustrialworkers.2 " As a rule,iftheywere
depicted at all in Industry ofSocialism,it was as a passive spectacle, at
rest or between shifts.The bias against showing women doing what
was traditionallyconsidered men's work was predeterminedby the
1935 Thematic Plan. Admnittedly a fewof the titlesit proposed, such as
those cited above, specificallycalled for the representationof women
in nontraditionalroles,but on the whole the Plan assumnedthatindus-
trialworkerswere genericallymale, even thoughwomen had long con-
stituteda significantproportion of the industrialworkforce.It iden-
tifiedproletarianidentitywithpatrilinealitythroughthe topos of the
passing of labor skillsfromfatherto son, as realized by painter V. V.
Volkov in his imnageof print workers,Passingon Expertise(1937), one
18. Ibid., 1. 33. Kotov had a solo exhibition in spring 1937. RGALI, f. 2943, op.
1, ed. khr. 137 (exhibition of Petr Kotov).
19. Lebedeva's Miner was reproduced in Tvorchestvo,1939, no. 6:7. Emphasis also
shifted away from such anonymous figures or collective achievements to exceptional,
named individuals. See Victoria E. Bonnell, "The Iconography of the Worker in Soviet
Political Art," in Lewis H. Siegelbaum and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds., Making Workers
Soviet:Power,Class and Identity(Ithaca, 1994), 362. Onl the achievements of women metro
constructors, see M. Nevolina, "Pervomaiskii podarok," Rabotnitsa, 1938, no. 14 (May):
10-11.
20. Compare Bonnell "Peasant Woman," 75; and Bonnell, "Iconography of the
Worker," 372.

of the few exhibits to describe an industrialtask in any detail. Even

wherewomen workerswere to be depicted, the Plan's detailed instruc-
tions to artistsperpetuated the patriarchal conception of woman as
passive object of the male gaze. Thus theyemphasized attractivephys-
ical appearance, ratherthan actions and abilities: theyspecified,for
example, that a painting of female metalworkersshould show their
strongwhite teeth smniling out of work-smearedfaces, but they said
nothingabout how theirlabor should be represented.2'Painter Nina
Korotkovaexemplifiedthis treatm-ent of women workersin her In the
LunchBreak,Chirchikstroi (1937). This painting depicted a convivial,
sunlitgroup of youthfulwomen workersenjoyingtheirbreak against
the optimisticbackdrop of cranes constructingthe Chirchik hydro-
electriccomplex, "the industrialheart of Central Asia." While the ex-
cursion guide, addressing a lay audience, spoke of the painting in
termsthatidentifiedwomen's emnancipation withindustrializationand
urbanization,an editorial in the authoritativejournal Iskusstvo (Art)
discussed it solely in termns of the decorative and exotic spectacle
Korotkova'sUzbek girls presented in theirmixtureof boilersuitsand
colorfultraditionaldress.22
The representationof women in heavy industrypresented prob-
lems that appear to have been particularlyhard for the traditional,
fine art media to resolve. While graphic artistshad successfullypro-
duced a numberof models of the femaleproletarianin the early1930s,
and press photographerscontinued to provide them,23for painters
and sculptorsthe inertia of aestheticconventionscombined inextric-
ably with social anxieties and prejudices to render problematic the
conjunctionof the female image withheavy industriallabor and phys-
ical strength.The difficultywas partly one of finding suitable art-
historicalprototypesforrepresentingactivewomen.24Even in posters,
21. Industriia sotsializrma:Tematicheskiiplan, 65. For classic analyses of the gendered

power relations invested in looking, see Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema," Screen 16 (Autumn 1976): 6-18; and John Berger's formulation, "men act,
women appear," Ways of Seeing (Harmondsworth, Eng., 1972), 45.
22. Sc-ipt of guided tour, "Pod'em narodnoi kul'tury i narodnogo blagososto-
ianiia," RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr. 948, 1. 70; and Editorial, "Iskusstvo v strane
sotsializma," Iskusstvo, 1937, no. 6:7 (reproduction) and 31. This suggests that a dis-
tinction was drawn between lay and specialist audiences. Korotkova's painting was not
discussed or reproduced in the 1939 reviews of Industryof Socialism, although it was
featured on at least one tour itinerary: S. Fomina, comp., "Metod razrabotki, 'Pod'enm
narodnoi kul'tury i narodnogo blagosostoianiia,"' RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr. 948,
1. 70.
23. Valentina Kulagina designed a poster of a womani miner drilling (c. 1933)
reproduced in M. L'vovich, "Khudozhnitsy sovetskogo plakata," Tvorchestvo,1934, no.
8:6. Compare also Aleksandr Deineka's At the ConstructionSite of a Nezv Plant (1926),
depicting two barefoot women, one dragging a heavy wagon. Like Pravda, the working
women's magazine Rabotnitsa still regularly printed photographs of women working
in factories, as well as in a range of other roles, in the period 1936-39.
24. The proletariat was invariably represented as male in nineteenth- and early
twentieth-centurysocialist imagery. See Eric Hobsbawm, "Man and Woman in Socialist
Iconography," History WorkshopJournal(Autumn 1978): 121-38.

140 Slavic Review
the apparent ease withwhich artistsinventedan iconographyof male

labor immediatelyafterthe revolutioncontrastswiththe rarityof im-
ages of women workersuntil 1920, and even then,as Waters and Bon-
nell have noted, their heroic status depended on contiguitywith a
male: only in the firstFive-YearPlan did femaleworkers,industrialor
agricultural,become central and self-sufficient.25In fine art, the at-
temptsat that time to invent an iconography of women's industrial
labor, such as Tat'iana Smotrova's sculpture Women for theIndustrial-
izationof the USSR (c. 1933)-a massive,ungainly figureof a woman
worker,legs braced as she pours molten steel-bore littlefruit.It took
more than a rhetoricof equalityto wean artists,selectors,and viewers
alike fromthe entrenchedexpectations thatwomen should be objec-
tifiedas a passive, physicallyattractivespectacle.26The insertion of
female featuresinto traditionallymale poses and iconographysigni-
fyingstrengthand action was largelyavoided in realistpainting,seem-
inglybecause it was perceived as unnatural,ridiculous,or awkwardon
account of its incompatibilitywith conventional models of feminin-
ity.27Until tenacious gender stereotypes and prejudices against wom-
en's labor could be subjected to the necessarycritique,no amount of
rhetoriccould conjure women's equality.
In addition, artistsattemptingto representwomen's contribution
to the economy had to negotiate the controversiessurroundingwom-
en's employmentin heavy and dangerousjobs in the 1930s. Klavdiia
Kozlova, a rare artistwho specialized in the representationof women
workersfromthis time until her death in 1966, appears to have been
the only participantin the 1939 exhibition to representwomen's em-
ploymentin underground mining.28Apparently in response to the
25. Waters,"Female Form," 235; and Bonnell, "Representationof Women," 269,

282.
26. This stereotypepersistedthroughand beyond the Stalin period. In 1949 Ser-
gei Gerasimov was compelled to repaint the face of his Partisan'sMotherbecause it
departed too radicallyfromconventionalnotions of female beauty.See MatthewCul-
lerne Bown, ArtunderStalin (Oxford, 1991), 216. Similarly,in 1959 Gelii Korzhev's
painting Loverswas criticizedfor the lack of "charm" in the image of the woman,
althoughthewar-ravagedfeaturesof her male partnerwere praised as signsof strength
and honesty.B. loganson, "Novaia kartina,"Khudozhnik, 1959, no. 8:41.
27. G. Revzin argues that the perceived awkwardnessof such work as Samokh-
valov'sMetroConstructor did not simplyconsistin givingfemalecharacterstraditionally
masculine roles and attributesbut in the essentiallymasculine nature of the Nietz-
schean Superman on whom the ideal of the new Soviet person was based, and in the
artisticcontradictionthat resulted from the artists'appropriation of classical male
iconography(such as the kouros pose of antique sculpture)fortheirstrongwomen.G.
Revzin,"Devushka moei mechty,"Iskusstvo, 1990, no. 3:40. Revzin cites Vera Gertsen-
berg on SerafimaRiangina's depiction of a muscular woman mountingan electricity
pylon,Ever Higher(1934): "The heroes of this picture combine in the oddest way
somethingof Michelangelo's power withthe sweetnessof an old image on a chocolate
box." V. Gertsenberg,"S. V. Riangina: 'Vse vyshe,''Podstantsiia na Surallmskollm per-
1934, no. 4:145.
evale,"' Iskusstvo,
28. In 1959 Kozlova painted AftertheShift,and on her death in 1966 she was at
work on a painting of Moscow women constructionworkers."Pamiati tovarishcha,"
Moskovskii khudozhnik,25 November 1966, no. 47:4. On Kozlova, see E. S. Zernova,
Vospominaniia monumentalista (Moscow, 1985).

theme "Woman Miner at the Controls" proposed in the 1935 Plan,

Kozlova painted The New Shiftof MachineOperators(1937), in which
kerchiefedwomen prepare to descend the mineshaft.Iskusstvorepro-
duced The New Shiftin 1937 with the brief gloss, "these girls ... are
perceived as the masters[sic] of the mine, exchanging theiryouthful
leisure for tenacious, youthful work, full of creative fire."29But
Kozlova, too, avoided showing her female miners at work. Her title
alone identifies the job they are to do, carefully allaying any possible
fears lest it be heavy or dangerous, and emphasizing the impeccably
progressive point that women could now work machines. As Melanie
Ili'c has shown, women's work in underground mining was a contested
issue at this time. Article 129 of the 1922 Labor Code had barred
women from employment in a list of heavy and dangerous jobs, and
the ban was reinforced in subsequent decrees of 1925 and 1932.30 But
there were mixed feelings about whether women's equality implied
that they should simply undertake any job a man could do. Some
women resented protective legislation because they perceived it as a
way of containing women's advancement, ensuring their continued
inequality by confining them to the lower-paid jobs. Besides, the pro-
hibition was frequently ignored and women were increasingly em-
ployed in underground work, especially beginning in 1931. By 1939
when IndustryofSocialism opened to the public, the labor shortage and
problems of turnover and industrial discipline were such that it was
found necessary actively to recruit women to work in mines, especially
for temporary, seasonal work. A woman miner in the Donbass reported
in June 1939 that "two months have passed since housewives... re-
sponded to L. M. Kaganovich's summons to women miners to help their
husbandsin the fightfor coal." It is odd, but characteristic of the time,
that she refers throughout to women working in mines as "housewives"
or "wives of miners" assisting their husbands.3'
Food Industry: Mikoian's Cornucopia

More effortcould surely have been made to co-opt paintings like
Kozlova's to promote a positive image of women in heavy industry and
prepare public opinion for the removal of restrictions on their em-
ployment.32 However, the emphasis of Industryof Socialism appears to
29. Editorial, "Iskusstvo v strane sotsializma," 31.

30. Melanie Ilic, "Women- Workers in the Soviet Mininig Industry: A Case-Study
of Labour Protection," Euirope-AsiaStudies 48, no. 8 (1996): 1387-401.
31. Varvara Zubkova, "ZZhenshchiinyprishli na shakhty," Industriia, 26June 1939
(emphasis mine). Zubkova refers mostly to women's employment in surface jobs such
as sorting and quality control, and to their acquisition of technical skills aind employ-
ment as mashinistki.I am indebted to Melanie Ilic for sharing this source with me.
Another article by Zubkova in Rabotnitsa is more explicit that "miners' wives" were to
see themselves as a reserve workforce to be called up when needed. V. A. Zubkova,
"Pornozhem nashim inuzh'iam," Rabotnitsa, 1939, no. 16 (June): 7.
32. To this end a press campaign was launched later in 1939. Filtzer, Soviet Work-
ers, 145-46.

142 Slavic Review
have shiftedsignificantly in the four years fromits conception to its

in
opening 1939. The hanging and reception were dominated,not by
images of foundries,machines, and industrial processes as the title
would suggest,but by works that celebrated the fruitsof labor, agri-
culturalas well as industrial.33Contemporaryreviewerspaid most at-
tentionto such worksas Sergei Gerasimov'sCollective FarmFestivaland
ArkadiiPlastov's paintingof the same title.These were hung together
under Stalin's slogan "life has become happier," thusdirectlyharness-
ing the celebrationof the benefitsof socialistdevelopmentto the pro-
motion of the Stalin cult. The reasons for the critics'preferencewere
not purelyideological: theyalso appear to have found this section of
the exhibition the most aestheticallysatisfying.By 1939, as the art
worldemergedfromthepurges,authoritativeartcriticssuch as Nikolai
Shchekotovbegan to lament the proliferationof dull, naturalisticren-
deringsand to pay more attentionto "painterlyculture."34This section
included some of the more talented artistsand its subject matterwas
more traditionallypicturesque than images of factoriesand mines,
allowing for indulgence in color harmonies that the criticscould le-
gitimateas expressions ofjoy.
While womenfiguredleast of all in workson theexhibition'stitular
theme of heavy industriallabor, the categories of painting on which
the reviewersconcentrated in 1939-those vaunting the benefitsof
socialist industrializationin everydaylife-were preciselythe ones in
which women featuredmost prominently.Meanwhile, the art exhibi-
tion FoodIndustry, which opened as a branch of Industry ofSocialismin
Gor'kiiPark on 25July 1939, was entirelydedicated to the celebration
of abundance and consumption.There the viewer (perhaps takinga
break fromstandingin queues forscarce commodities)mightfeasther
eyes on the wonders of Soviet food processing and manufacturing.
The theme of food and consumer industries,entailing a greaterem-
phasis on everydaylife and agriculture,allowed for the lesser genres
of landscape, genre painting,and stilllife to predominate.There was
also a ceramics section consistingof tea servicesand figurines.35
33. Low attendance was blamed on a misconceptionthatIndustry ofSocialismwas

an exhibition of machineryor on the prejudice that pictures of industrymust be
"boring." It was thereforefound necessaryto interspersesuch workswithlandscapes
and still lifes,wlhilepromotional material for the exhibition stressed the theemeof
abundance and the rise in the standardof livingand culture:RGALI, f.962, op. 6, ed.
khr. 948. Shiftingprioritieswere reflectedin plans discussed in February 1940 to
rehan-gthe exhibition,de-emphasizingthe industrialtheme in favor of agriculture.
RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr.694, 11.6-16.
34. N. Shchekotov,"Vystavka'Industriia sotsializma': Zhivopis'," Iskusstvo,1939,
no. 4:59-84. An antinaturalisticline emphasizing aesthetic quality predominated in
the broadsheet Industriia sotsializma,June 1939.
35. Mikoian's proposal to include a food industrysection in Industry
ofSocialism
was announced June 1937. Originally this section was due to open afterthe main
display,in January1938, but its opening was also delayed. RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed.
khr. 124, 1. 8 (protocol of MOSSKh board meeting,22 June 1937). In the final Food
Industryexhibition,98 artistsshowed 149 works. An illustratedcatalogue was pub-
lished: Iu. Lobanova, cornip., Vsesoiuznaia khudozhestvennaiavystavkaPishchevaia indus-
triia. Otdel vystavki"Industriia sotsializma". Katalog (Moscow, 1939).

As commissarof Food Industries since 1934, the sponsor of this

vision of cornucopia, Anastas Mikoian, had dedicated himselfboth to
the urgent task of modernizing food-processingmethods and to
pioneering ways of advertising the benefits this would eventually
bring.36The use of fineartto legitimatediscerningconsumerismbegan
hard on the heels of the famine,withthe end of rationing,the resto-
ration of trade, and the second Five-Year Plan, which promised to
improvelivingstandardsthroughwage rises and increased investment
in manufacturedgoods and housing.37Jack Chen, an expatriateartist
who studied and worked in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s,
reported,
After1933itbecamethecustomto clearall theshopwindowson the
long GorkyStreetand fillthemwiththe best examplesof contem-
poraryartor modelsofnewand reconstructed homesand cities,thus
turningthe whole streetinto a vast public art gallery.... In 1933
advertisingcame to be morewidelyemployed.The Commissariat for
Food, for example,began to popularizemanynew foods,such as
rhubarband cornflakes, and thenewfactories of theFive-YearPlans
wereanxiousto buildup theprestigeof theirSovietTrade Marks.38
The exhibitionFoodIndustry opened in the wake of the Eighteenth
Party Congress in March 1939, which endorsed the third Five-Year
Plan. In the plan, Mikoian's Commissariatemphasized qualityand va-
riety,pledging itselfto "significantly
broaden the assortmentof prod-
ucts,especially of the highestand firstgrades,to increase the produc-
tion of condensed milk, vegetable and fruit conserves, ... frozen
vegetablesand fruits,factoryproduction of ice cream,the production
of beer, wine, and champagne."39 As if shortages were a thing of the
distant past, press reports sanctioned consumerism and a taste for
36. Mikoian saw to the publication of the firstSoviet governimenlt-sponlsor-ed cook-

ery book, Kniga o vkusnoi i zdorovoipishche,whose guiding principle was to encourlage
consumption of Soviet conserves ancd processecd foods. Under the seconcd Five-Year-
Plcan of 1933-37, Mikoian intr-oduced new processes andc improvemiien-ts in refriger-a-
tion, canninig, sugar production, baking, anld the manufacture of confectionery; see
Roy Medvedev, All Staliin'sMen, trans. Harold Shukmian (Garden City, N.Y., 1985), 37.
37. Other means to ecucacte the conIsuml1erincludecd ioclel dlep1artmen t stores,
expositions of commiiiioclities, press reports, aind advertisemnents.On the official tulrl1 to
consumlier-ismiand the campaign for culturecd triade,see Julie Hessler, "Cultul-e of Shor-t-
ages: A Social History of Soviet fradce, 1917-1953" (Ph.D. cliss., University of Chicago,
1996), chiap. 6; Sheila Fitzpatrick, "'Middle-Class Values' andc Soviet Life in the 1930s,"
in Tr.Thompson anid R. Sheldon, ecds.,Soviet Societyand Ciltrie: Essays in Ho tort(of Vera.
S. Dwnhanm (Boulder-, Colo., 1988), 20-38; A. Gucdilov, "Malen'kii fel'etoni,"Za itidustrial-
izatsiiuu, 26 September 1935, no. 222; and Kareni Ketterinig, "'Ever More Cosy and
Comfortable: StaliniisimianIIdC the Soviet DoI1estic Interioi-, 1928-1938," in SuIsaii E.
Reicd,ecd.,Design, Stalin and the Thaw, special issue of Journal of DesignlHistoty 10, n1o.2
(1997): 119-35. On supply and COllSUmllptiOnI Lp to 1935, see E. A. Osokina, Ierarkhiia
potreblenlia:0 zhizni lilulei v usloviiakh stalinskogosnabzheniia, 1928-1935 gg. (Moscow,
1993).
38. Jack Chen, Soviet Art and Artists (London, 1944), 36-37. For a discussion of
product advertising as a means to educate the consumei-, see Hessler, "Culture of
Shortages," 341-43.
39. "Tretii piatiletnii plan razvitiia nai-odnogo khoziaistva SSSR (1938-1942),"
Pravda, 21 March 1939.

144 Slavic Review
luxury.40The exhibition,likewise,celebratedepicureanismratherthan
subsistence.True to the tenets of socialist realism, still lifes such as
Boris Jakovlev'sSovietWinesand SovietConserves, and Petr Konchalov-
skii's Gameand Vegetables in a Window(1937-38), advertisedthe abun-
dance, variety,and quality promised by the plan as if these were ac-
complished facts.4'
Where Industryof Socialismsuppressed women's contributionto
heavyindustry, a numberof worksat FoodIndustry did representwomen
as producers,albeit in the lesser realm of consumer goods and food
processing.Perhaps because thesewere traditionallywomen's domain,
artistscould be more specificabout the precise tasks undertakenby
women. KonstantinDorokhov's In theStalin CanningFactorydepicted
the preparationof freshproduce for conservingas an entirelyfemale
occupation.42The responsiblejob of quality control-highlighted by
contemporarypress campaigns-was representedas man's work,how-
ever, worthyeven of the (male) leaders' close attention.43Thus, in
Vladimir Odintsov's In theStruggle for Quality(1939), a junior woman
workerin the Dukat tobacco factorypresents a box of cigars to her
senior,male colleagues fortheirinspection.The same divisionof labor
can be seen in Vera Orlova's Ball-Bearing Factory(1937).44Meanwhile,
in a painting by Nikolai Denisovskii, ComradesStalin,Molotov,Kagan-
ovichand MikoianInspectNewProductsofTEZHE (1939), the omniscient
Stalin passes his unerringjudgment on the quality of toiletriespro-
vided forSoviet women by the Commissariatof Food Industry's"Chief
Parfumier,"Tualetnoe zhenskoe (women's toiletries).A gendered di-
vision of labor operates also in Ol'ga Ianovskaia's MasterConfectioners
40. On "democratic luxury,"see Jukka Gronow, The Sociology of Taste (London,

1997), 49; Fitzpatrick,"'Middle-Class Values,"' 25-26; Hessler,"Culture of Shortages";
and forTrotskii'sindictmentof Mikoian's emphasis on luxurygoods forthe elite,see
Leon Trotsky,The RevolutionBetrayed:WhatIs theSovietUnionand WhereIs It Going?
(New York, 1970), 118.
41. As Pravdareported:"Our countrywill be completelysaturatedwithconsumer
goods, we will have an abundance of foodstuffs... the USSR will become a land of
plenty!"Pravda,19 March 1939. For details of the plan and the realitiesof the Soviet
economy in the years 1938-41, see Alec Nove, An EconomicHistoryoftheU.S.S.R.,rev.
ed. (Harmondsworth,Eng., 1982), 256-64. The theme of abundance received more
sustainedtreatmentin the pavilions of the All-UnionAgriculturalExhibitionfromthe
1930s to the early 1950s. Mukhina's Workerand Collective Farmerwas installed at its
entrance,and in 1952 Ekaterina Zernova produced a mural for the "Conserves" pa-
vilion.
42. Dorokhov's painting transposes into the conditions of socialist industrythe
traditionalrole of women in the Russian domesticeconomy to preservefoods and lay
in stores.See Darra Goldstein,"Domestic Porkbarrelingin Nineteenth-Century Russia,
oI Who Holds the Keys to the Larder?' in Goscilo and Holmgi-en,eds., Russia-Women-
Culture,125-51. Goldstein also discusses the 1953 edition of Mikoian's cookerybook,
I. K. Sivolap, et al., Kniga o vkusnoii zdorovoipisliclie(Moscow, 1953).
43. See, for example, Gudilov, "Malen'kii fel'eton."
44. A reproductionof this work,produced either for Industry ofSocialismor for
FoodIndustry, can be found in M. Banks, ed., TheAesthetic Arsenal:SocialistRealismunder
Stalin(New York, 1993), color pl. 19. A photographof the same factoryis featuredon
the frontcover of Rabotnitsa,1932, no. 28 (October).

Figure 1. 01'ga Ianovskaia, Ma-ster (1939). Oil on canvas (dim-en-

Confectioners
sions and location unavailable).
(1939) (figure 1), one of the most impressive tributes to Mikoian's con-
cern to "let the people eat cake."45 Even Ianovskaia's sticky world of
fondant is as hierarchical as a tiered wedding cake. Inevitably, the
" master confectioner" is a man. While his female assistant carries a
tray of lowly buns, he tools the monumental phallus of a gateau, trans-
substantiating food from animal necessity into cultural artefact.46
Other works shown at FoodIndustry invariably represented the pri-
mary beneficiaries of improvements in the standard of living as
women.Y7 Pimenov's In theStore(1938), a rare painting on the theme
of shopping, depicts women as consumers in circumstances reminis-
cent of prerevolutionary luxury.4"Pimenov may have been inspired by
the Eliseev grocery on Gor'kii Street which had reopened as a luxury
food store in 1934, along with the refurbished Moscow department
store Mostorg. As Sheila Fitzpatrick and Julie Hessler have detailed,
45. Ol'ga DmitrievnaIanovskaia, born 1900, studied with Il'ia Mashkov,joined

the Association of Artistsof the Revolution (AKhR) in 1929 and taughtpainting at
the SurikovInstitute,Moscow, in the 1930s.
46. See Claude Levi-Strauss,TheRaw and theCooked(New York, 1969).
47. The gendered address of the discourse of cultured consumerismshould not
be overstated,at least in regard to the early 1930s. See Kettering,"'Ever More Cosy."'
However,as Fitzpatrickhas argued, by the late 1930s, concern withmaterial posses-
sions, still respectable for women of the new "middle-class,"grew suspect for their
husbands. Fitzpatrick,"'Middle-Class Values,"' 31.
48. When FoodIndustry closed, some of the workswere incorporatedinto Industry
of Socialism.Pimenov's In theShop was hung near his New Moscow,discussed above,
whichlikewiseuses the figureof a woman to representthe gratificationof the Soviet
people. RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr.948,1. 45.

146 Slavic Review
the press welcomed the new shopping opportunitiesas portentsof the

abundance and culturedlifestyleon the horizon.4'3Nevertheless,there
was still much ambivalence about the ideological legitimacyof con-
sumerism.Pimenov's painting troubled prominentcriticOsip Beskin
forwhat he characterizedas "Central European prettinessor modish-
ness," by which he appears to have meant its somewhat bourgeois,
cosmopolitan urbanity.5"Whatever Central European references
Beskin mayhave had in mind,withits play of shimmeringsurfacesthe
painting certainly recalls French Impressionist representations of
bourgeois commercial leisure, in which woman featured so promi-
nently,both as consumer,and as a spectacle for consumption by the
male gaze. Like manySoviet artistsin the 1930s, Pimenov retained an
affectionfor the work of Renoir, even though the insidious influence
of Impressionismwas targetedin the antiformalistcampaign begun in
1936.51
An Unequal Alliance
Mikoian's name became synonymouswithgood housekeeping,tra-
ditionallythe female domain in the Russian household.52But in the
unequal marriage of food production and industry,Mikoian's Food
Industryplayed thesubordinate,"feminine"partnerto Ordzhonikidze's
"masculine"Industry ofSocialism.Regardless of the promisesof the sec-
ond and thirdFive-YearPlans, the Soviet economy continued to sac-
rifice the citizens' needs to the interestsof heavy industryand de-
fense.53For all but the elite, the "representation of reality in its
49. Fitzpatrick,"'Middle-Class Values,"' 25-26; and Hessler, "Culture of Short-

ages."
50. Osip Beskin, "Sredi obrazov izobiliia i radosti,"Tvorchestvo,
1939, no. 9:16.
51. Renoir's workcould stillbe seen at the State Museum of New WesternArt in
Moscow. On Pimenov's "French" femininetypesof the "new Soviet woman" and the
influenceof Renoir on Soviet artistsof the 1930s, see Morozov,Konetsutopii,184. By
the time the exhibition opened, Impressionism was beginning to be treated more
favorablyonce more. See the discussion of the Russian debt to French Impressionlism
and Paul Cezanne by painter AI-on Rzheznikov,"O zhivopisnykhtraditsiiakhfran-
tsuzskogopeizazha," 7vorchestvo, 1939, no. 7:back cover; and L. Rozental', "Vystavka
fraintsuzskogo peizazha v Muzee novogo zapadnogo iskusstva,"Tvorchestvo, 1939, no.
7:inside frontand back cover; and importantdiscussions of Impressionist"painterli-
ness," RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 1170 (stenographicrecord of conferenceon the
culture of painting,22 April 1940). On the significanceof French Impressionismin
Soviet art,see also my "Destalinization and the Remodernizationof Soviet Art:The
Search for a Contempoi-aryRealism" (Ph.D. diss., Universityof Pennsylvania,1996).
For the identification
of Impressioniststylewithfemininequalities,see Norma Broude,
Impressionism:A FeministReading(New York, 1991).
52. Lewis H. Siegelbaum cites a Stakhanovitepraisinghis wifeas "a real Mikoian"
on account of her able managementof the family'sfood budget.Lewis H. Siegelbaum,
Stakhanovism and thePoliticsofProductivity in the USSR, 1935-1941 (Cambridge, Eng.,
1988), 239. OIn control over the larder as a source of female power in nineteenth-
centuryRussia, see Goldstein,"Domestic Porkbarreling,"125-51.
53. Nove, EconomicHistory, 227-29.

revolutionarydevelopment" in socialist realist painting served,liter-

ally,as window dressing,takingthe place of actual products available
forpurchase.
Both the individual exhibits of Food Industryand the relationship
the exhibitionas a whole bore to Industry ofSocialismdemonstratethat
Stalinistvisual culturewas structuredby conventionallygendered as-
sociations and oppositions which aligned "woman" with a series of
ideologically subordinate terms implyinga lower level of conscious-
ness. Notwithstandingthe Stalin regime'sprotestationsof itsunfailing
commitmentto sexual equality, artisticimages identifiedman with
culture,woman withnature; man with consciousness and rationality,
woman withspontaneityand emotion; man withheavyindustrialpro-
duction,and woman withagriculture,food preparation,consumption,
and reproduction.Thus Sergei Gerasimov'sCollective FarmFestival,for
example,closelyassociateswomenwiththefecundityof thesun-washed,
agrarianlandscape. They figureas the providersof an abundant feast
harvestedfromthe land, while men operate at a higherlevel of con-
sciousness,makingspeeches thatarticulatethe ideological significance
of thisjoyous event for the world beyond the collectivefarm.To take
anotherwell-knownexample fromthisperiod, displayed in a different
context,Vera Mukhina's famous sculpturefor the 1937 Paris Interna-
tional Exhibition,Worker and Collective
Farmer,allegorized the unequal
bond betweenthe industrialproletariatand the collectivizedpeasantry
in the coupling of a man and a woman. While powerfullybuilt, the
female figurerepresentingfarm workersis slightlysmaller and lags
behind the male representativeof the "leading class.""4In the 1920s
artistshad consistentlyused a male figureto symbolizethe peasantry;
but with the collectivizationcampaign, the image of female kolkhoz
workersbecame prominent.Mukhina's returnto the classical tradition
of female allegorywas a matterof conscious choice. Waters has sug-
gested that she used a female figureto personifyagriculturebecause
collectivizationhad disempowered or "feminized"the peasantryboth
literallyand metaphorically." Mukhina drew on still prevalent as-
sumptionsabout the "natural"and time-honoredinequalityof thesexes
to legitimatethe subordinationof agricultureto the needs of industry.
54. Trhisis noted by a later Soviet account that contraststhe man's powerful
gestureto the woman's "more feminine"stance. R. Ia. Abolina, Sovetskoe
iskusstvo
per-
ioda razvernutogostroitel'stvasotsiaiizma (1933-1941) (Moscow, 1964), 52.
55. Waters,"Female Form," 240-41. See also Bonnell, "Peasant Woman," 79-81.
Collectivizationdeprived males of their traditional status as "master" of the rural
household and provided the catalystfor a disproportionateoutmigrationby meinto
industrialjobs in the city. Manning, "Women in the Soviet Countryside,"211-14.
Hilton assertsthatMukhina's monumenitand otherimages "affirma feministpresence
in Soviet societyand art," although she goes on to acknowledge the ambivalence of
the monument'streatmentof women. Hilton, "Feminismand Gender Values," 99. An
adequate account of the significanceof Mukhina's pair should locate themwithinthe
entire program of the exterior decoration of lofan's pavilion, which served as the
sculpture'spedestal.

148 Slavic Review
Leading Women: Delegates and AgriculturalStakhanovites

The theme of sociallyactive women retained its prominence from
the firstFive-YearPlan throughthe second and third,withmass media
and high culture continuing to profferrole models of outstanding
women delegates,Stakhanovites,or aviators."6A marked change took
place in the way theywere represented,however.This can be dem-
onstratedby comparingGeorgii Riazhskii'sKolkhozBrigadeLeader(fig-
ure 2) of 1932 withtwo workspainted in 1937 forIndustry ofSocialism:
lurii Pimenov's WomanDelegate(figure3); and GrigoriiShegal"s Leader,
Teacher,Friend(figure4).
In Riazhskii'spaintingfromthe end of the firstFive-YearPlan, the
femaleadministratoris self-assuredand authoritativein her own right.
She confidentlyfaces the viewerand possesses the centralverticalaxis
of the composition where she conducts her business with a woman
comrade, framedby male and female collectivefarmerswho labor in
harmonywithmodern machines to bring in the harvest.While dedi-
cated to her work for the party,whose red kerchiefshe wears, she is
subordinateto no individual,male or female.
The two later works also concern the opportunitiessocialism of-
feredto women to realize theirpotential in responsible,public roles.
Indeed, in the mid-1930sthe woman delegate, attendingconferences
to celebratevarious achievementsin the constructionof socialism,be-
came one of the mostcommon "positiveheroes" of painting,while the
genre of "delegates" was peopled almost entirelyby women. Thus the
female figuressupplanted the traditionalmale universal as represen-
tativesof the Soviet people as a whole. On one level, such images as
Pimenov's WomanDelegatecorroboratedthe Constitution'sclaims that
women in the Soviet Union already enjoyed equality.57 At the same
time,however,a varietyof narrativeand compositional devices repro-
duced their subjection to patriarchal authority,both specificallyas
women,and as representativesof "the people."
Rhetoricalclaims for sexual equality denied the discursiveas well
as materialfactorsthatensured women'scontinuedsubordination.The
"critical assimilation" of artistic models from the past, on which
socialistrealism was to be based, was less than criticalfromthe point
of view of gender. As we saw in the discussion of Korotkova's work,
female as well as male artistsperpetuated the art historicaltradition
of displayingwomen as a spectacle to delight the eye. Painted in a
56. Manning has argued that, notwithstanding measures to strengthen the family
and increase the birthrate, photographs of women involved in nontraditional pursuits
far outnumbered those portraying women primarily as mothers and wives. Manning's
useful table quantifying the types of images of women published in Pravda in 1936
lists 13 photographs of women as aviators and 99 of women Stakhanovites, but only
15 of women figuring primarily as mothers. Manning, "Women in the Soviet Coun-
tryside," 211-12, fig. 11.3.
57. The proportion of women in village soviets had grown between 1926 and
1934, but was declining by 1937 when a press campaign was launched to promote
women to responsible posts. Manning, "Women in the Soviet Countryside," 224.

Genderand Powerin SovietArtofthe1930s 149
__f
S.fi
.i
{VV~~~~~~~Tf
* F zi ifil| 11 ililh" S i | _ N .........................

< t. ...^.*;
t.......
XY . . ...............
Kolkhoz
Figure2. GeorgiiRiazhskii, Leader(1932).Oil on canvas,209
Brigade
X 164cm.StateTret'iakovGallery.
loose, impressionistbrushworkto convey freshnessand spontaneity,

Pimenov's glamorous,fashionablygroomed young women delegates
amidstabundant flowerswere once again clearlyindebted to Renoir's
female types.While insertingwomen into a new role at the level of
theme,Pimenov's WomanDelegate stilldefinedfemale identityin terms

150 SlavicReview
"feminine" allure. On the contrary,as the magazine Rabot-

preclude
StateMooo Pitr3Gley
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~-------
Pitur
StteMloo
| - ---- -------- -
Gallery.
--
of macln deire, resurn thaiwrta mncptoednt
ofmsuiE deie ressrn thviwrtatlmniaio ednt

alue nte otay th1,gzn
prcld"fmnie s Rbt
nis worin
nomditedrhpo
of.
th a~sDnsovki'
woe-n
pAitn
fimd-h
ledrhpisetn.aerasad
pat an.oenetwr dal ocmdwth
physical And
oftheperson."
development thismeant
that
"Soviet~~~~~~~~~~~
woanwhl
naeCnmliacee oilatviyutlant
preserve~ ~
heAeiiecutnneadtolo~ ~ ~ fe esl . h
and
her femininecountenance~~~~~~~~~~~~~~--
preserve --- to-
look--after--herself ...she.

Genderand Powerin SovietArtofthe1930s 151
S A .
Figure~~~~~~~~~
4L
Grgoi Shga. Ledr.ehr red(97.Olo avs 4
259cm tt TeaovGley

152 Slavic Review
should pay attentionto her appearance."58Deineka also took a com-

munityof fashionablewomen delegates as the subject of his painting
shown in the same section,At a Women'sMeeting(1937). One "woman
worker"commentedascerbicallyin the newspaperIndustry ofSocialism:
"Is this really a women's meeting rather than a women's fashion
atelier?"59
Shegal"s painting Leader, Teacher,Friend concerns, on the face of it,
the recognition of women's outstanding contribution to Soviet agri-
culture. Displayed for emulation, these politically conscious and so-
cially active women represent the vanguard of female agricultural
workers, attending the Second Congress of Kolkhoz Stakhanovites. The
dress of some of the delegates identifies them as Uzbeks. No doubt
(according to the custom of identifying each nationality with a single
main contribution to the Soviet economy) they work in cotton pro-
duction, an area in which women constituted the majority of Sta-
khanovites.'" Typically for its time, the narrative concerns a named
individual, one Fedotova. Her image was familiar from the press re-
ports which had provided the artist's inspiration. These told how com-
rade Stalin instructed her in the art of chairing a meeting. As a simple
peasant woman who has been rocketed into a leading role, she per-
sonifies the opportunities for advancement which the Soviet order
58. I. L. Belakhov, "Kul'tura tela i gigiena," Rabotnitsa,1937, nio. 2 (January).

Compar-eNadezhda Azhgikhinaand Helena Goscilo, "GettingunderT heir Skin: The
BeautySalon in Russian Women's Lives," in Goscilo and Holiigren, eds.,Russia-Women-
Cutlture,98. While I agree withtheirassertionthat"the Soviet ideological machine ...
dictatedeven the 'correct'formof female beauty,"theyoverstatethe hostilitytowarcl
perfumeand cosmeticsunder Stalin. While makeup may indeed have been a sign of
bourgeois decadence, beauty products aiding cleanliness and the preservationof a
youthfulappearance were still promoted.Women's magazines in the 1930s regular-ly
carried advertisementsfor perfunme and toiletries produced by TEZHE. One such
advertisementin Rabotnitsapoints to the sexual connotationsof the leadership's con-
cern withthe intimaciesof women's toilet.A young peasant woman flirtatiously calls
her sweetheartto buy her not ribbons but creams and toothpowder.Rabotnitsa,1939,
no. 4 (February):inside back cover. The scriptof the guided tour,"Pod'em narodnoi
kul'turyi narodnogo blagosostoianiia,"emphasized the youthof Pimenov's delegates,
citing a letterfromKrupskaia to Pioneers calling on them to "be helpers of adult
obshchestvenniki."RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr. 948, 1. 67. Attractiveyoung women
agriculturalStakhanoviteswere more often photographed to promote the campaign
than were older, less attractiveones. Manning, "Women in the Soviet Countryside,"
216.
59. "V knige otzyvov,"Industriiasotsializma,
June 1939, 6. Responses to Pinmenov's
and Deineka's paintingsreflectconcerns in the mid to late 1930s about the legitimacy
of "modishness,"whichwas almost synonymouswith"western"or "bourgeois" styles.
To counteractthe tendencyto identifycultured dressingwithbourgeois chic, profes-
sional debates were initiatedin 1935-36 to define a "Soviet style"of dress. RGALI, f.
2943, op. 1, ecl. khr.55 (stenographicrepor-tof meetingof representativesof textile
industrywithartists,25June 1935); and RGALI, f.2943, op. 1,ed. khr.89 (stenographic
reportofjoint meetingof Moscow artistswithworkersof lightindustryon questions
of textilesand everydaydress, 14 January1936).
60. Manning,"Women in the Soviet Countryside,"216.

provided and Stalin's constitutionallegedly guaranteed. This, osten-

sibly,is her occasion. Her face, in the center,catches the light,while
Stalin's head is shaded and barely raised above the others to indicate
thathe is firstamong equals."' But everyother aspect of the compo-
sitionbelies the leader's self-effacingcomportmentand reconfirmshis
ultimate,and apparently inevitable authority,even as he delegates.
Where Riazhskii's canvas was democraticallyarticulated into vertical
columnsby the femalefiguresin the foreground,Shegal"s composition
is hierarchicallystratifiedto figureascent. He uses the motifof the
podium to confine the action withinthe lower thirdof the composi-
tion,leaving the upper registeremptyapart fromthe ghostlystatueof
Lenin. The viewer,located in the stalls,findsher eye drawn upward
bythe intentgaze of those on the podium and the baro)quecontortions
of the Uzbek woman in the foreground,arrivingnot at Fedotova, but
directlyat Stalin, before proceeding upwards to Lenin. A series of
diagonals confirmsthe angle of Stalin's head, sto-)pingto instructher,
as thereal crux of the composition.The title,too,Leader,Teacher, Friend,
indicates that Fedotova's is no more than a supporting role. She is
thereto be taughtand led, malleable clay withwhich Stalin can dem-
onstratehow, as Shegal' allegedly conceived it, "reforgingpeople, he
leads them to the new life."';2The painting is concerned less withthe
empowermentof women than withStalin's wisdom and paternal con-
cern in lending the inexperienced female peasant the confidence to
chair the proceedings.Shown in relation to the male leader, she func-
tions as a sign of his authority."Stalin is offeredas the ultimaterefer-
ent for their effortand accomplishment,"as MargaritaTupitsynhas
argued withregard to posters fromthe same period.'"3Like the 1936
Constitutionitself,then,the paintingassertsthe new public roles avail-
able to women, only to circumscribe them within the reconfirmed
patriarchalorder.
61. Describing his conception of the painting,Shegal' related how he saw "Stalin,
[as] a simple Soviet person." G. Shegal', "Istochniknashego vdokhnoveniia,"Industriia
sotsializma,June 1939, 2. Compare H. Gassner and E. Gillen, "From Utopian Designs
for the New Order to the Ideology of Reconciliation," in Banks, ed., AestheticArsenal,
184.
62. S. Razumovskaia, "rvorchestvo G. M. Shegalia," Tvorchestvo, 1939, no. 7:12;
Mark Neiman, "Na vystavke'Stalin i liudi Sovetskoi strany v izobrazitel'nom is-
kusstve,"'Tvorchestvo, 1940, no. 2:6. According to Shchekotov,Shegal"s painting ex-
pressesthe idea of Stalin as the continuatorof Lenin's teachingand deeds. N. Shchek-
otov,"K otkrytiiuvystavki'lndustriiiasotsializma,"'Tvorchestvo, 1937, no. 11-12:9-10.
Press reports also referredto Shegal"s painting under the alternativetitle,C(omrade
Stalinin thePresidiumoftheCongress ofKolkhozShockWorkers.
63. Beginningwiththe second Five-YearPlan, mass-producedimagerybegan "the
process of subordinationof women's desires, which are investedin labor, to Stalin's
authority,"as Tupitsynargues. She cites Helene Cixious: "When a woman is asked to
take part in this representationshe is, of course, asked to represent man's desire."
MargaritaTupitsyn,"From the Politics of Montage to the Montage of Politics: Soviet
Practice 1919 through 1937," in MatthewTeitelbaum, ed., Montageand ModernLife,
1919-1942 (Cambridge,Mass., 1992), 20; and Tupitsyn,After Perestroika,11.

154 Slavic Review
Wives
From the mid-1930s,"wives" stepped into the limelight.The 1939
call to "wivesof miners"to assisttheirhusbands,whichI cited earlier,
was typicalof many public statementsfromthe time of the Constitu-
tion.Even women identifiedas sociallyactivewere frequentlyreferred
to as "wives" and offeredonly a vicarious route to social recognition
as supportersof theirhusbands' and sons' public activities.Thus when
honoringa Soviet hero, the press would also praise his exemplarywife,
foreven "the modest workof the housewifeis ... necessaryand useful
to the whole country."64 Similarly,the Plan for Industryof Socialism
called for a painting of a Red Armysoldier in the home of a (male)
worker(rabochii)whose wifewas to be depicted mending theirguest's
overcoat.65The birth of the Obshchestvennitsa or "housewife-activist"
movementat this time was both symptomaticof, and contributedto,
the reaffirmationof gender and class hierarchies. Sponsored by
Ordzhonikidze's Commissariatof Heavy Industry,Obshchestvennitsa
consolidated wivesof the higher-ranking managers,professionals,and
bureaucrats as a distinctsocial force. A similar organization united
wivesof Red Armycommanders.This social stratumwas distinguished
by the factthatthe man's earningswere sufficient to freehis wifefrom
the need for gainful employment.The Soviet housewife-activist was
expected to exemplifythose same domestic virtueswhich nineteenth-
centurybourgeois ideologyidentifiedwithmiddle-classfemininity. But
paradoxically,Obshchestvennitsawas a wayof transforming the "angel
in the house" into a public figure.66The good wife (liberated from
housework,not by communal facilitiesas promised in the 1920s, but
by domestic servants)was to place her traditionally"feminine" skills
as caregiver,educator,and homemakerat the serviceof Soviet society
as a whole. She was to devote herself-unpaid-to supportingher hus-
band'sworkby overseeingstandardsof hygiene,decency,and kul'turnost'
in the workplace.67
The honorable status of the good wife in Soviet society was the
64. F. G. Tret'iakov,"Domashniaia khoziaika,"Rabotnitsa,1939, no. 15 (May): 16.

See also the self-effacing
statementsby threewivesof outstandingpilots,0. Chkalova,
Evgeniia Baidiukova, and AntoninaBeliakova, about how theysupporttheirhusbands
in theirworkbyencouragingthemto rest,cooking themnourishingmeals,etc.Pravda,
24 July1936, 4. And see Jamesvon Geldern, "The Centre and the Periphery:Cultural
and Social Geographyin the Mass Culture of the 1930s," in Stephen White,ed., New
Directionsin SovietHistory(Cambridge,Eng., 1992), 74.
65. Industriiasotsializma:Tematicheskii
plan, 12.
66. As Vera S. Dunham observed in regard to the revaluation of domestic hap-
piness under Stalin, "wherever possible, private values were converted into public
values." Vera S. Dunham, In Stalin'sTime:MiddleclassValuesin SovietFiction(Cambridge,
Eng., 1976), 18.
67. On Obshchestvennitsa,see Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism, 241-42; Fitzpatrick,
"'Middle-ClassValues,"' 20-38; and MaryBuckley,"The Untold Storyof the Obshchest-
vennitsain the 1930s," Europe-AsiaStudies48, no. 4 (1996): 569-86. For the diverse
activitiesof the Red ArmyWives, see Rabotnitsa,1937, no. 1 (January).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~..
.. .-.....
Figure5. VasiliiEfanov,An Unforgettable (1937).Oil on canvas,270 X

Meeting
391 cm. State Tret.iakovGallery.
themeof Vasilii Efanov'sAn UnforgettableMeeting(1937; figure5), which

he painted forIndustry ofSocialism.Depicting the 1936 All-UnionCon-
ference of Wives of Managers and Engineers of Heavy Industry,the
paintingdemonstratedthe highestdistinctionto whichthe model wife,
or obshchestvennitsa,mightaspire.68The conferencewas also the sub-
ject of a sketchby graphic artistPetr Staronosov,ComradeStalinat the
All-UnionConference of Obshchestvennitsy
of Heavy Industry.The propa-
ganda purpose of such meetings, and of the publicitysurrounding
them,was to emphasize the emotional bond between the leaders and
the people and to arouse fanaticismamong those sectorsof the pop-
ulation considered most prone to irrationalenthusiasms,women and
young people.69 Althoughboth these worksrepresentedthe endorse-
mentof the Obshchestvennitsamovementand made a spectacle of its
femalemembers,theirsocial activitieswere apparentlyconsidered un-
worthyof depiction. The guided tour of the exhibitioncontextualized
Efanov'spaintingby referringto the emancipation of women,empha-
sizing the equality guaranteed them by Article 122 of the Stalin Con-
68. Mark Neiman, "Novye portretytovarishchaStalina," Iskusstvo, 1937, no. 6:65;

A. I. Zotov,"Khudozhestvennaiavystavka'Industriia sotsializma,"'RGALI, f. 962, op.
6, ed. khr.624, 1.2 (draftof article,1939); and RGALI, f.962, op. 6, ed. khr.948, 1. 72.
The Conferenceof Wives is recorded in Soveshchanie zhenkhoziaistvennikov i inzhenero-
tekhnicheskikh
rabotnikov tiazheloipromyshlennosti(Moscow, 1936).
69. Compare Sarah Davies, Popular Opinionin Stalin'sRussia: Terror,Propaganda,
and Dissent,1934-1941 (Cambridge,Eng., 1997), 150.

156 Slavic Review
stitution, and highlighting their active role in the construction of

socialism.7" The "active role" this painting offered to women was a
limited and subordinate one, however.
As I demonstrated in regard to Shegal"s Leader, Teacher,Friend,the
representation of social hierarchies through gender difference was
reinforced by comnpositionand spatial metaphor in Stalinist painting.
In Staronosov's sketch, a swarming throng of fanatic women surges
upwards, while the charismatic male leaders, Stalin and Ordzhoni-
kidze, condescend to them. Similarly, in a large painting predating
Industryof Socialism,Aleksandr Samokhvalov's Kirov Greetinga SportPa-
rade (1935), young women break ranks as if in a spontaneous burst of
exuberant love, to leap up towards Kirov high above them on the
podium. Efanov's An Unforgettable Meetingis structured,albeit obliquely,
by a similar set of oppositions that identify woman with a lower stage
in the dialectical ascent of consciousness: aspiring female to conde-
scending male, unnamed masses to individual leaders, emotion and
spontaneity to order and authority.71
Witnessed by the applauding Politburo, the respectably fashionable
representative of wives, one Klavdiia Surovtseva, has stepped into a
pool of light in the center to receive, on behalf of all her sister ob-
shchestvennitsy, Stalin's thanks for their support work. The "wife's
side" on the left is relatively volatile and consists primarily of women,
with the exception of the patron Ordzhonikidze, who is depicted in
profile to convey at once the humility of a donor and his aspiration
to a place in heaven. Stalin's side on the right, occupied primarily by
portraits of the all-male Politburo, is visually more stable, anchored in
the seated figures of President Kalinin and Nadezhda Krupskaia. The
latter's presence as the sole woman on this side owes more to her
vicarious status as Lenin's widow than to her own work in championing
women's emancipation.72
The topos of a transformative encounter with the Father of the
People, in which the subject is firstreduced to infantile helplessness
70. The guide quoted from Comrade Shvernik's speech to the Conference of
Wives of Managers of Heavy Industry oI1 10 May 1936. Thanks to the party's concern
for her, "the free and happy woman of the Land of the Soviets is included more and
more in the ranks of the active constructors of socialist society. In this lies the fun-
damental difference between the situation of working women in the Soviet land fi-o
that of women in capitalist countr-ies." RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr. 948, 11. 71-72.
71. On the Leninist dialectics of historical developmen-t through the conflict be-
tween forces of spontaneity and consciousn-ess, see Katerina Clark, "Utopian Antlhro-
pology as a Context for Stalinist Literature," in Robert C. Tucker, ed., Stalinism:Essays
in HistoricalInterpretation(New York, 1977), 188. For the Bolshevik association of women
with the spontaneous, subrational, unconscious, and elemen-tal, see Viola, "Bab'i
bunty," 190. For the identification of stikhiinost'with ster-eotypicallyfeminin-equalities,
such as sentimentality, which must be overcome, see Robert A. Feldmnesser in discus-
sion of Mark G. Field, "Workers (and Mothers): Soviet Women Today," in Brown, ed.,
Role and Status of Women,55.
72. Krupskaia voiced concern at the conference that the obshchestvennitsy would
become divorced from working women's concerns. Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism,242.

before rising to a state of grace in Stalin's presence, was not unique

to women. It appeared routinelyin the memoirs of Stakhanovites.73
Aleksei Stakhanovrecalled: "When Sergo announced Comrade Stalin,
myheart began to beat deafeningly... Comrade Stalin turnedto me.
When I saw his fatherlylook, I felt as free as at home in the mine
among my comrades."74Other Stakhanovitesgave similaraccounts of
how Stalin returnedtheirawed gaze by "looking down on us withthe
eyes of a fatherand teacher." 75 Surovtseva'sspeech, as quoted by the
guide, followsthe same pattern.She had been nervous about meeting
Stalin, she confessed, "But when I came onto the stage, when I saw
You, so simple, kind and dear ... I calmed down."7'3 These accounts,
premised on the unequal relationship between child and patriarch,
bear out Katerina Clark's observation that the horizontal, fraternal
kinship model of the firstFive-Year Plan gave way in the mid-1930s to
a vertical one: the well-ordered state was envisaged as a disciplined
and hierarchical family,with the people as Stalin's dutiful and loving
children.77 Thus, as Hubertus Gassner and Eckhart Gillen have noted,
in An UnforgettableMeeting,"The depth of their [Stalin and Surovtseva's]
gaze contrasts with the excited interest of the 'people['] and reminds
one of the relationship between father and daughter."7' The tour guide
identified Efanov's Stalin with the Father of the People, pointing out
how the leader presses Surovtseva's little hand in both of his "with
paternal fondness."79
At the same time, by choosing a female figure to represent the
people, Efanov could reinforce the generational authority of father
over child by simultaneously alluding to the gendered power and erot-
ically charged relationship of husband and wife. Thus Surovtseva is
characterized in relation to Stalin the patriarch in two subordinate
roles at once: child and blushing bride. As the guide's account made
clear, her infantilization in the leader's presence takes on the stereo-
typically feminine form of becoming modesty and willing submission.
Suffused by the intoxicating scent of lilac, the exchange of gazes is not
only that between father and daughter but the communion of lovers.
The image is even constructed as a kind of wedding portrait: Molotov,
as head of government, presides over the union, the climax of the
woman's life, which is marked by the libidinal burst of crimson blooms
73. Clark, "Utopian Anthlropology," 187.

74. A. G. Stakhanov, Rasskaz o nmoeizhizni (Moscow, 1937); cited by HubertuLS
Gassner an-d Eckhart Gillen, "Sozdainiia utopicheskogo poriadka k icleologii unirot-
voreniia v svete esteticheskoi deistvitel'nosti," in N. Shabalina, ed., Agitatsiia za shchast'e:
Sovetskoeiskusstvostalinskoiepokhi(St. Petersburg, 1994), 55. Also cited in English trans-
lation in Gassner and Gillen, "From Utopian Designs," 184.
75. I. Gudov, Put' stakhanovtsa:Rasskaz o moei zhizni (Moscow, 1938), 59; cited by
Clark, "Utopian Anthropology," 187.
76. RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr. 948, 1. 72.
77. Clark, "Utopian Anthropology," 180-87.
78. Gassner and Gillen, "From Utopian Designs," 184.
79. RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr. 948, 1. 72; ancd Mark Neiman, "Novye portrety
tovarishcha Stalina," Iskusstvo,1937, no. 6:64.

158 Slavic Review
in the center.80AleksandrBalashov has argued that thejoined hands

in
raised above the bride echo the figureof ascension (voskhozhdenie)
the ancient Byzantine iconographyof the Bogomater' Oranty,the pro-
tectorof newlyweds.8" The conjoining of Stalin withthe obshchestven-
nitsa or exemplarywife at the center of this bifurcatedcomposition
maybe read, then,as a symbolicmarriagebetween two unequal part-
ners,partyleadership and the feminizedmasses.82
"Wives of Artists"
Not only in the managementof heavy industrywere women rele-
gated to the auxiliaryrole of "socially active wives" and denied their
own achievements.Artistswere affectedno less than other privileged
social groups by the restorationof patriarchal gender relations, to-
getherwithotheraspects of the Great Retreat.83In the 1920s the Soviet
art world could boast an unusually high proportion of successful
women artists.In the 1930s women's prominence as objects of repre-
sentation was accompanied by their marginalizationas artists.The
Soviet display at the 1937 Paris Exposition may be best remembered
for Mukhina's Workerand CollectiveFarmer,but only seven of the
hundred or so artistschosen to representthe USSR to the world there
were women (admittedly,a better showing than other participating
countries)."4Similarly,only two women, Mukhina and monumental
painter Ekaterina Zernova, benefitedfrom the trips paid for by the
80. A connubial and erotic subtext is suggested by Dragan Kunjundzic's descrip-

tion of the abundant flowers in Efanov's painting as a "libidinal frame to the scene."
Dragan Kunjundzic, "The Ghost of Representation, or the Masque of the Red Death,"
ArtJournal49, no. 1 (Spring 1990): 54. The tour guide noted how the crimson bouquet
conveys the festive atmosphere. Script of tour-"Pod'em narodnoi kul'tury i narodnogo
blagosostoianiia," RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr. 948, 11.71-72.
81. Aleksandr Balashov, "O0 nekotor-ykh osobennostiakh kompozitsii proizved-
eniia V. P. Efanova 'Nezabyvaemaia vstreclia,"' Tvorchestvo,1991, no. 10:31-33. Perhaps
inadvertently, the artist has even made a pun that points to the nuptial subtext: the
arched hands "crown" her Stalin's consort (the Russian venchat'means both "to crown"
and "to marry").
82. Efanov recalls the tradition of representing the relationship between heaven
and earth as the marriage between Christ and his church. As Margarita fupitsyn notes
in regard to posters at this time, "women's place vis-a-visthe leader took on a simiilarity
to the position, in the Christian tradition, of women as Christ's brides." Tupitsyn, After
Perestroika,1 1.
83. The restoration of traditional gender roles applied primarily to the higher
strata of Soviet society. Working and peasant women were still encouraged to engage
in productive, paid labor and addressed with the message of women's emancipation.
See issues of Rabotnitsa for this period; and Fitzpatrick, "'Middle-Class Values,"' 33-34.
84. Although the painting section was the largest, only one woman painter,
Ianovskaia, was included. Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva was the sole female graphic
artist. Woimen sculptors were best represented, including, in addition to Mukhina,
Sarra Lebedeva, 0l'ga Kvinikhidze, Beatris Iu. Sandomirskaia, and A. Lavrova. RGALI,
f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr. 154,11. 49-52. In addition, Mukhina's two assistants were womeln:
N. Zelenskaia and Z. Ivanova. Dariia Shpirkan, "Skul'ptor s mnirovoislavoi," Rabotnitsa,
1937, no. 30 (October): 30.

Commissariat of Heavy Industryto enable artiststo research their

topics for Industryof Socialism.85Zernova-who studied at the
Vysshie gosudarstvennyekhudozhestvenno-tekhnicheskie masterskie
(VKhUTEMAS) alongside Varvara Armand-the daughter of former
Zhenotdelleader Inessa Armand,appears to have developed a feminist
consciousness. She complained in 1937 that although women consti-
tuted 30 percent of the Moscow Regional Union of Soviet Artists,
MOSSKh, only 56 of the 812 commissionsfor the Industry ofSocialism
were grantedto female artists-"a disgracefulpercentage"of 7.86 The
exhibition'sadministrator,cartoonistIsaak Abramskii,confessedhim-
selfquite unprepared for Zernova's objection, but he promised to in-
vestigatewhetherany "major women artists"had been inadvertently
omitted.87
The exclusion of women artistsfromIndustry ofSocialism,however,
was no accidental oversightthatcould be easily remedied. The causes
were much more complex and deep-seated.They included, alongside
the general loss of commitment to women's equality, factors specific
to the art institutions and aesthetic discourse. The brief ascendance of
women artists in the 1920s had been supported by the constructivist
demystification of creativity,the critique of the notion of genius, and
the leveling of the class and gender-based hierarchy of fine and utili-
tarian arts, all of which, in the bourgeois art world, sustained male
85. Ekaterina Sergeevna Zernova, born 19900,was an associate of Aleksaildr Dei-

neka and Iurii Pimenov anid a mem-iberof OST fromii 1928. For an accouLnt of her
ko'mandirovki to the Donbass and Magniitogorsk for Industr-ofSocialismti, see her miemiioirs:
Zernova, Vospominaniiamonurnentalista, 77-84; anid see I. Abriaimiskii,
"Vystavka 'Indus-
triia sotsializima,'' Iskusstvo, 1962, no. 7:26. With only two exceptions, all the pr-izes
went to men: MUkhina receivecl a prize for her-allegory of fertilityin the inevitable
female form-l, Bread, shown in the Food Ind'ust'y branch, aniIaclovskaia was giveni an
awar-d for In the Shock Workers'Box at the Bolshoi Theatre,cliscussed below.
86. RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 124,1. 16. According to a different account, 63
out of 816 commissions for Industryof Socialism went to women, whereas for the 1938
ExhibitionoftheRed Armyand Fleet they received only 18 out of 270 commissions. RGALI,
f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr. 172, 1. 14 (plan for jubilee exhibition for 8 March, MOSSKh,
1937-38). The final number of female exhibitors at Industry of Socialism expanded
slightly over that for the Paris Exposition and included the painters Ianovskaia, Zer-
nova, Korotkova, Kozlova, Serafima Riangina (Lumberjacks[PeopleofSovietKarelia], 1937),
Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Evgeniia Georgieva, Kseniia Kupetsio, Aleksandra Pe-
trova, Liudmila Protopopova, Vera Orlova, Zinaida Rakitina; the sculptors Antonina
Romodanovskaia, Marina Ryndziunskaia, Tat'iana Smotrova, Sarra Shor; the cerami-
cist Natal'ia Dan'ko; and others. RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr. 513 (annual accounts
for exhibition IndustryofSocialism, 1939); and V. G. Azarkovich, et al., Vystavkisovetskogo
izobrazitelUnogo iskusstva,vol. 2, 1933-1940 gg. (Moscow, 1966), 280. An article published
the year before the exhibition opened included Lidiia Litvinenko among the exhibi-
tors. D[ariia] Sh[pirkan], "Khudozhnitsy," Rabotnitsa, 1938, no. 5-6 (February): 21. Fe-
male participants in the Food Industrybranch, in addition to those whose works are
discussed in the text, included the painters Irina Efimovna Vilkovir (b. 1903), Ol'ga
Sergeevna Zhurochko (b. 1892, who showed still lifes), Ol'ga Sergeevna Maliutina
(b. 1894, who showed still lifes), and the porcelain artist Natal'ia Dan'ko. Mukhina
showed Bread.
87. RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 124,1. 25.

160 Slavic Review
dominance. As conservativetendencies prevailed and the easel paint-

ing in oil regained its cult status in the mid-1930s,the Stalinist art
discourse returnedto a gendered conception of art-makinginherited
from the romantic mythologythat identifiedartisticcreativitywith
masculinity:the artistwas genericallymale, while his passive object of
representation-the nature which he was to raise to the higher level
of culture-was female.88Thus, Ordzhonikidzeexhortedartiststo treat
their subject matter,"the remarkable Soviet people, masteringtech-
nology,"withcommitmentand passion: "The artistmustlove his theme
as ardentlyas a bridegroomloveshisbride,"he declared. "Only in thisway
can a vivid workbe born to him."89
Of course, a number of women artistsremained prominentin the
late 1930s, including Mukhina, Lebedeva, Zernova, Ianovskaia, and
SerafimaRiangina. Even in 1938, 137 of MOSSKh's 800 memberswere
women.But, as some objected, the same handfulof names was repeat-
edly cited as a token of the opportunitiesaffordedto women artists.
They were increasinglypositioned as anomalies or "honorarymen" as
the identity"artist"was reconfirmedas an essentiallymasculine one.:'
Even Mukhina's Worker Farmerwas praised for its "mas-
and Collective
culine" qualities.':
In the light of the new Constitution,a public statementin 1936
specificallyaddressed "wivesof artists,"summoningthem to become
88. On the idea of art as the transformationof raw,"feminin-'e"nature or matter

into a higher"male" state of order, transcendentbeauty,and Apollonian reason, see
David Summers,"Form and Gender," in N. Bryson,M. A. Holly, and K. Moxey,eds.,
VisualCulture:Imagesand Interpretations(London, 1994), 381-412. The literatureon the
identificationof creativitywiththe masculine,nature withthe feminineis too exten-
sive to list in a footnote.Landmarks include SherryB. Ortner,"Is Female to Male as
Nature Is to Culture?" in M. Z. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere, eds., Woman,Cultureand
Society(Stanford,1974), 67-88; Carol P. MacCormack and Marilyn Strathern,eds.,
Nature,Cultureand Gender(Cambridge,Eng., 1980); and R. Parker and G. Pollock, Old
Mistresses: Women, Art,and Ideology
(London, 1981).
89. Cited by I. Abraimiskii,"Vystavka 'Industriia sotsializIlla,"' Iskusstvo,1962, Iio.
7:25 (emphasis mline).C0omparethe way the paradigimiatic romanticgenius of Honore
de Balzac's The Unknozvn Masterpiece(1831) describes the artist'srelationship to his
work as that of "father,lover, God, towards a beloved woman." See Lynda Nead,
"Seductive Canvases: Visual Mythologiesof the Artistand ArtisticCreativity,"Oxford
ArtJournal 118, no. 2, (1995): 59-69.
90. In 1938 the number of female members in each section of MOSSKh was as
follows: painting, 51; graphics, 42; textiles,19; designers, 15; decorators, 5; poster
artists,5. RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr. 172,1. 14. For complaints about tokenism,see
RGALI, f.2943, op. 1, ed. khr.173,11.22-23 (stenographicreportof meetingof artists
of MOSSKh and Vsekokhudozhnikto discuss exhibitionof women artistsfor8 March
1938, 31 March 1938). For an example of how these artistswere cited as evidence of
the opportunitiesforwomen artistsunder socialism,see Sh[pirkan],"Khudozhnitsy,"
20-21; and Shpirkan,"Skul'ptor s mirovoi slavoi," 30-31.
91. A contemporarycriticcontrastedMukhina's "masculine" treatmentof mon-
umental sculptureto Sarra Lebedeva's "delicate" and "feminine" small-scalefigures:
Paul Ettinger,"Three Women Sculptors," in The Studio 113, no. 528 (March 1937):
171-72. See also Hilton, "Feminism and Gender Values," 102.

"theirhusbands' helpers in their struggleon the ideological front."592

A group of so-calledartists'wivesdutifullywroteto Stalin vowingthat,
"By takingon ourselves the main concerns of servicingthe family...
and educating children,we want to free up our husbands' energyso
thattheycan occupy themselveswithcreativeworkwithgreatsuccess."
They promised to devote them-selves to raisingthe culturallevel of the
masses (a traditionallyupper-classfemale preoccupation) by organiz-
ing women's brigades to popularize fine art and combat bad taste in
the homes of workers and peasants.93 For, as the Constitution conde-
scendinglyaffirmed, women represented"a huge civilizingforce" and
had much to contributeto the harmoniousdevelopmentof the integral
human personality.'4
The message to women was clear: only by promotingkul'turnost'
in daily life-and not throughany independent artisticcontribution
to kul'tura-mighttheyhope, one day, to attain their own "unforget-
table meeting"with the great "Leader, Teacher and Friend." The in-
creasingregulationof artisticlife throughthe Union and other insti-
tutions formalized the division between professional artist and
dilettanteto the detrimentof manywomen.Women's workwas closely
associated in the press with amateur painting and handicrafts.Thus
Rabotnitsareported an exhibitionof work by "housewives" at the end
of August 1937, at which artificialflowerstook pride of place in a
displaythatalso included embroidery,lacemaking,and cookery.t'3 The
wivesof Red Armycommanders,like Soviet Penelopes, expressed their
devotion not only to theirown husbands but to Stalin and Voroshilov
by collectivelyembroideringa picture of The Red Fleetat Rest,which
theyexhibitedalong withotherexamples of theirhandiworkpresented
to the leaders at their 1937 Congress.:6
Even in the rare cases where women held officein the art admin-
istration,theywere consigned to traditionallyfemininespheres of re-
sponsibilityhaving to do with the organization and beautificationof
byt.Thus, as a secretaryof the board of MOSSKh elected after the
purge in 1938, Riangina was given the portfolio of "social-everyday
functions."The only otherwoman on the thirty-four-strong board was
textile artist Mariia Nazarevskaia who represented the increasingly
marginaldecorative-appliedarts.Meanwhile,painterNikolai Denisov-
skii, formerhead of OBMOKhU (the Society of Young Artists),was
responsibleforMOSSKh's constructionprojects.Since access to newly
92. "Obrashchenie k zhenam sovetskikhkhudozhnikov i skul'ptorov,"[1936],

RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. kwr.75 (documeintsof general meetiing of Moscow artistsin
connection withacceptance of USSR Constitution).
93. Ibid., 11.10, 12, 21.
94. Ibid., 1. 1.
95. I. Lavrova, "Vstrecha-vystavka,"Rabotnitsa,1937, no. 26 (September): 12.
96. A. Ashmarina,"Vystavkatalaintlivykhrabot," Rabotnitsa, 1937, no. 1 (January):
19.

162 Slavic Review
built studios and apartmentswas the focus of strifeand mnachinations

in the midstof the Terror,thiswas a position of considerable power.:97
Gender discriminationwas deeply enmeshed with other factors
thatcontributedto the displacement of both female and male artists
in the purges,rangingfromtheirchoice of medium and artisticaffil-
iation,to ethnicity,personal vendettas,and professionaljealousies. In
the decorative and applied arts, such as textiles,ceramics, and chil-
dren's book illustration,where women were traditionallybetterrep-
resented or had come to the fore in the 1920s, they maintained a
relativelyhigh profile.But these areas of artisticproduction were de-
valued as new relations of power took shape in the art world and as
domestic life was relegated once more to a private,inconsequential,
and feminineaffair.9'3 Along with children's art education, the deco-
rative and applied arts were condescendinglyregarded as a natural
sphere for women who, even in the gloom of old Russia knew how
to beautifydaily life, as graphic artist Dmitrii Moor put it.'` With
the exception of figurativeceramics,in which Ordzhonikidze took a
personal interest,""'(the so-called minor arts were excluded fromthe
mostprestigiousartexhibitionsof the 1930s whichdefinedthe param-
eters of socialist realist practice. True, there were some attemptsto
resistthe constrictionof the definitionof realistart and to defend the
rightsof citizenshipof applied art forms,althoughfigurationwas ac-
cepted as mandatoryeven for the decorative arts.In June 1937, only
fivemonthsbeforeIndustry ofSocialism was due to open, Mariia Nazar-
evskaia and Evgenii Katsman objected that if porcelain was to be in-
cluded, then so should decorative textiles. For, Katsman argued, they,
too, "are rich in figurative rneans."""' The same case might have been
made for photography and photomontage, which a number of women
poster artists, including Valentina Kulagina and Nataliia Pinus, had
used to great effectin posters promoting the firstFive-Year Plan. Nei-
ther textiles, nor any new technological media were included in Indus-
97. "Perevyborypravleniia MOSSKh," Iskusstvo,1938, no. 4:178. For informlation

on Nazarevskaia,a graduate of the Vysshiigosudarstvennyikhudozhestveinino-tekhnli-
cheskii institut(VKhUTEIN), and for examples of her work,see Charlotte Douglas,
"Russian Fabric Design," in The GreatUtopia(New York, 1992): 635-48; and I. Yasin-
skaya, Soviet Textile Design of the RevolutionaryPeriod (London, 1983). For strife over
allocation of studios etc., see RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 76 (protocol of closed
meetingof MOSSKh board, 11 January1936).
98. OI1 the Stalinist retreat fi-oImi
the domestic sphere, see Victor Buchli, "Khlu-
shchev,Modernisimi, Consciousness in the Soviet
aind the Fight against Petit-bou)rgeois
Home," in Susan E. Reid, ed., Design, Stalin and the Thaw, special issue of Journal of
Design,History10, no. 2 (1997): 165-66, 174; Thurston,"The Soviet Family,"563; and
Beth Holmgren, Women's Worksin Stalin's Time (Bloomington, 1993), 2, 9-10.
99. RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 173,1. 17.
100. Lomonosovets, 21 March 1935, no. 12:1. I am indebted to Karen Ketteringfor
alertiingme to thissource and to Ordzhonikidze'ssupportof theLomnonosovPorcelain
Factory.Personal conmmunication, May 1995. Even concei-ningthe inclusion of the
porcelain section,no finaldecision had been announced as late asJune 1937: RGALI,
f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 124, 1. 26.
101. RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 124,11. 10-11, 21-22.

tryofSocialism,however,nor was any poster section planned: therewas

only a section of satirical work in traditional media, including Old
Masters,a series of oil paintingsby the cartoonisttrio Kukryniksy.102
The exclusion of applied graphics from Industryof Socialism
did not preventcertain artistsassociated withposter design and illus-
tration,such as Klavdiia Kozlova and Evgeniia Georgieva,frompartic-
ipating.But theydid so in the medium of paintingor easel graphics.'03
As the doctrineof socialist realism was elaborated in practice and
criticaldiscourse,and as its antithesiswas defined throughthe purge
of "formalist" tendencies, "realism" became identified with naturalis-
tic, thematic easel painting such as AKhRR had promoted from 1922
to the year of its demise. In 1938, AKhRR's former rival, Oktiabr'
(October, founded 1928), which had pursued the constructivist project
by promoting new, technological media, was denounced as a
"Bukharinite-Trotskyite Organization. "14 One of its mnembers,photo-
montage pioneer Gustav Klutsis, was arrested and shot at this timne,
allegedly for Latvian nationalismn. Guilt by association mnaybe one
reason why his wife Kulagina and his collaborator Pinus were excluded
from Industryof Socialism. In addition, their close identification with
the use of photomontage in poster design placed themnout of step with
the times. A special issue of Tvorchestvoin 1934 devoted to "our Womnen
Artists" welcomed a reorientation in the work of Kulagina and Pinus
away fromitechnological media towards greater emnphasison drawing
and painting. Although it implied that this was a natural and voluntary
development, motivated by the artists' own dissatisfaction with the
"limitations" of photoniontage,'105 they were certainly under pressure
to conform with the return to traditional ways of making art. The samne
pressures were felt by their male colleagues: Klutsis hinmselfalso made
greater uiseof sketches from 1932 on, apparently in response to mnount-
ing censorship.")6 The promninentgraphic and monumental artist Vla-
dimnirFavorskii also found himiselfdangerously sidelined from prep-
arations for Industry ofSocialism.At a mneetingof MOSSKh in June 1937,
102. Ibid., 11.10-11.

103. Georgieva showed a lithographportraitof N. S. Khrushchev(1937). RGALI,
f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr.513,1. 34.
Revo-
104. On Oktiabr', see Hubertus Gassner and EckhartGillen, eds., Zzvischen.
lutionskunstund SozialistischenRealismus: Dokumenteund Kommentare(Cologne, 1979). On
the purge of Oktiabr' and Vsekokhudozhnik,see RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr.200-5
(recordsof meetingof MOSSKh, 5-19 May 1937); and RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr.
126.
105. M. L'vovich, "Khudozhnitsy sovetskogo plakata: K nature, k zhivopisi," TVor-
chestvo,1934, no. 8:8.
106. M. Tupitsyn,"From Factographyto Mythography:The Final Phase of the
Arsenal,110-11. Photomon-
Soviet PhotographicAvant-Garde,"in Banks, ed., Aesthetic
tage enjoyed its heydayaround 1931. The shiftfollowed the centralizationof poster
production in 1931 under IZOGIZ (State Publishing House), which was directlyre-
sponsible to the Central Committee.On the restorationof the cult of painting, see
Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, "From Faktura to Factography,"October, Ino. 30 (Fall 1984):
83-119; and MargaritaTupitsyn,TheSovietPhotograph, 1924-1937 (New Haven, 1996),
chap. 5.

164 Slavic Review
when the Union was still reeling from the review of its nmembership
and the purge of the "Oktiabr' platform,"Favorskiipleaded his prob-
lems in a tone of panic. The way the commissionsfor the exhibition
were conceived, emphasizingthematiceasel painting,had forcedhim
to undertakework to which his expertise as a printmakerand monu-
mental artistwas ill-suited.It was senseless to produce an engraving
for a one-offexhibition piece, he objected. To make mattersworse,
when he tried to produce a group portrait of senior workers in a
machine tool factoryhe had encountered misunderstandingswiththe
factorymanagementwho told him he had better draw the new ma-
chinery.Despairing of this, he had hoped instead to participate in
Industry ofSocialismas a mural painter: indeed, he had noted that the
Vesnin brothers' original plans for a purpose-builtpavilion for the
exhibitionincluded provision for murals.UnfortunatelyforFavorskii
and other monumentalists,plans for the pavilion were abandoned,
deprivingthem of a surface on which to demonstratetheir commit-
ment to building communism.This was not mere bad luck but symp-
tomaticof the declining support for mural painting,with its specific
conventionsand flattenedpictorial space, whose heydayhad been the
firstFive-YearPlan. In its place the panneaubecame the characteristic
formof Stalinistmonumentalart-a self-containedpainting in oil on
canvas, operating withinthe traditionalconventionsof the easel pic-
ture,merelyamplifiedto mammothscale. Favorskii'sexclusion meant
not only a loss of remunerationand prestige but, in the context of
Terror, laid him open to politicallyloaded accusations of un-Soviet
behavior.107
As Favorskii'scase demonstrates,it would be inaccurate to suggest
thatthe elevationof naturalisticeasel paintingand the panneau to the
favored paradigm of socialist realism was a conspiracy expresslyto
exclude women. Nevertheless,this shiftcombined with other factors
to diminishwomen's chances of recognition.One problem was ano-
nymity:panneaux were painted by brigades which were invariably
headed by a male artistbut mightinvolvewomen's labor. For example,
therewere fourwomen among the seven artistswho executed the pan-
neau SportParade for the Soviet pavilion at the New York World Ex-
hibitionof 1939, but authorshipwas attributedto brigade-leaderJurii
Pimenov. Zernova records the division of labor in her memoirs: she
researchedthe flagsand did the underpaintingforthe figures,Kseniia
Kupetsio painted the sky,while Pimenov, as "master,"conceived the
overall design and added the final touches.''8
107. RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 124,11. 11-12; and RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed.
khr. 126, 11. 70-73. Exhibition administrator Abramskii accused Favorskii of failing to
manifest the persever-ance required of a true Soviet artist. Pressure was also put on
Lev Bruni who, according to Favorskii, found himself in the same position.
108. Zernova, Vospominaniia monutmentalista, 85-87. It is notable that although
women were numerically equal in Pimenov's brigade, which was based on the formller
OST, the AKhRR-based brigade under Efanov, which produced a panneau The Best
People of the Soviet Union for the same exhibition, consisted entir-elyof men.

In easel painting,women had historicallybeen betterrepresented

as producers of the "lesser" genres than of the prestigiousthematic
composition.They continued to practice the more intimateformsof
painting,such as stilllife,landscape, and domesticportraiture.But, as
the kartinawas restoredto dominance, it became increasinglydifficult
to make a reputationon the basis of "chamber" work,whichwas even
regardedas an inadmissibleand potentiallysubversivewithdrawalfrom
public statements.""(9Partlybecause of theirconcentrationon thelesser
genres and applied art forms,manywomen artistswere not accepted
into the Artists'Union, MOSSKh, but eitherbelonged to the less pres-
tigious City Committee of Artists(Gorkom) or had no professional
affiliationat all. Classed as amateurs, they had to struggleto work
withoutmaterial or moral support."0 In the absence of alternative
sources of patronage, the systemof state support of art became an
effectivemechanism of control. Inclusion in the systemof state con-
tractsor kontraktatsiia (according to which artistsreceived a monthly
wage in exchange forturningout an annual quota of works)was much
sought after.For less well known painters, including many women,
who could not depend on major commissions and purchases from
exhibitions,kontraktatsiiawas a vitalmeans of survival.Yet manycom-
plained to MOSSKh thatVsekokhudozhnik'smanagementof the sys-
tem was discriminatory, and in 1938 women pointed out thata mere
18 of the 199 artistscontractedwith the cooperative were women."'
These accusations may have been incited to legitimatethe purge of
Vsekokhudozhnik'sleadership:furtherresearchis required to establish
preciselyhow gender impingedon the administrationof contractsand
commissions.For example, painter Aleksandra Jakushevareportedto
MOSSKh, in extremedistress,the humiliationsshe sufferedfromthe
administratorsin tryingto secure a commission for Industry ofSocial-
ism.I"2One factor in lakusheva's omission from the exhibition may
have been thather worktended to intimate,painterlystudies.' Even
109. Further research is requir-ed on the extent to which the division between
public, exhibition genres and "chaml-ber"work was gendered through the association
of the latter-with the feminiine domain of the home. Holmgren argues that the Stalii ist
state never fully colonized the domestic sphere: the home and the chamber- genres of
writing associated with it remiiained a potential site of resistance to official values.
Holmgr-en, Women's Works,2, 9-10. Miucla Iablonskaia, likewise, suggests that the "in-
timate" or chamiiber- painting of Nadezhcla Udal'tsova, Antonina Sofi-onova, an-d other-s
repr-esen-teda "counter-movemiient to the "general trenid towar-dsSocialist Realismii."
M. N. Yablonskaya, WomenArtistsof Russia'5 NewvAge (London, 1990), 171, 174.
110. RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 173, 1. 12.
111. Ibid., l. 22; RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 1163 (Petitions to MOSSKh);
RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr. 172, 1. 14; reports by N. Denisovskii ancl A. Gerasilmlov,
RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 126, ll. 21-23; and N. Nikolaev, "Koiltraktatsiia kli-
dozhnikov 1935 g.," Tvorchestvo,1936, no. 7:6-19. Discontents over kon-tr-aktatsiia
fuelled
the camiipaign to discredit an-d purge the leadership of Vsekokhudozhnlik in 1936-37.
112. RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 127, II. 34-38 (protocol of MOSSKh board
meeting, 22 September 1937).
113. Tvorchestvotried to counter this view of lakusheva by insisting that she was
more interested in kartiny than in still lifes and by publishing a photograph of her-at

166 Slavic Review
ifthe sex of the artistwas not a directconsideration,gendered criteria

contributedto women's exclusion.
It was particularlyhard for women to compete with their male
colleagues on the ground of the kartina.True, lack of access to nude
models, which in the heydayof the European Academies had barred
women fromthe prestigiouspracticeof historypainting(on whichthe
Soviet kartinawas modeled), was no longer a problem."4 At Soviet art
schools women could studythe nude alongside men, and, besides, the
nude had littlestatusin Soviet art and a solid grasp of anatomywas
no longer essential to success. As women artistscomplained, however,
theywere stillheld back fromreceivingart education and were often
denied the recognitiondue them."' Even those who graduated from
art school on a par with their male comrades often failed to make
careers as artists.Many of the material and ideological factorswhich,
in the past, had excluded them from consideration as professional
artistsstill pertained, contraryto protestationsof women's equality.
Lack of recognitionplaced women in a vicious circle: withoutaccess
to commissionstheydid not have the resources to embark on major
compositions. Only a handful of well-knownwomen artistshad stu-
dios-Zernova, Ianovskaia, Riangina, and a few sculptors.' "' Mean-
while, at home, a woman rarelyhad access to "a room of her own"
where she mightconcentrateon producing a major work of art. The
main factor,as women at the time identifiedit, was that it was still
women who had to deal with the problems of byt and who bore the
brunt of the state's failingson this front.In 1938 one woman spoke
for the bitterexperience of many:"It is hard for us women artiststo
work, especially if we have families. We have no kindergartensor
creches,and there are many single women who are literallystarving.
They cannot earn a livingbecause thereis nobody to leave the children
with,and theycan't affordto hire a nanny.... Not only do we have
no studios, but we do not even have normal living conditions.""117 All
the talk of life getting better was just so many empty words as far as
women artists were concerned, another bravely declared.'"18 Given the
failure of the Soviet state to deliver on its promises to liberate women
from enslavement to domestic chores, women had to paint between
"attending to husband, children, and stove." For as one put it, "Women
are not only artists but active obshchestvennitsy. They are wives, moth-
work on a kartina. Kuril'tseva, "Smena," Tvorchestvo,1934, no. 8:10. See Elena Alek-
sandrova, comp., A. Iakusheva. Zhivopis',graftka:Katalog vystavki(Moscow, 1986).
114. For seminal analyses of the causes of women's exclusion from the history of
art, see Linda Nochlin, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" in T. B.
Hess and E. C. Baker, eds., Art and Sexual Politics (New York, 1971); Germaine Greer,
The Obstacle Race: The Fortunesof WomenPainters and Sculptorsfrom theRenaissance to the
TwentiethCentury(Montclair, N.J., 1978); and Parker and Pollock, Old Mistresses.
115. RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr. 172,1. 14.
116. RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 173,1. 22.
117. Ibid., ll. 23-24, 58.
118. Ibid., 1. 47.

ers, and often housewives. All this takes up so much time and en-
ergy."''9) In such conditions, women found, the sustained, concentrated
work demanded by a kartina was impossible.'20
The Exhibition of Women Artists, 1938

These complaints concerning the problems specifically preventing
female artists from realizing their potential were voiced on the occa-
sion of the firstmajor Exhibitionof WomenArtistsin March 1938. Even
at the height of the purges, not all women were prepared to accept in
silence their reduction to the adjuncts of men. That such a separatist
gesture as a professional women-only exhibition should even be con-
templated, let alone realized at this time might corroborate revisionist
arguments that the Great Retreat was neither total nor consistent. The
outcome, however, merely confirmed the hegemony of patriarchal
values.
Already the previous spring a small exhibition of women artists
had taken place under the auspices of the Arts Committee, but it was
thrown together at the last moment, hung haphazardly, and lasted only
a few days. Receiving no serious critical consideration, it did little for
the status of women artists.'2' The proposal to hold a more ambitious
women's exhibition the following year, addressed to the head of the
Arts Committee Platon Kerzhentsev in 1937, was framed strategically
in terms of women's grateful acknowledgment of the rights guaranteed
them in the new Constitution. The moving force behind the initiative,
an "Aktiv of Women Artists of MOSSKh," included some of the best-
known women artists: Zernova, Riangina, Janovskaia, Kozlova, Korot-
kova, Mukhina, and festival designer Anna Magidson. It was originally
conceived as an international affair to celebrate International Wom-
en's Day, embracing "all women artists of all countries, including rev-
olutionary artists in the West."'22
Behind the declared purpose of celebrating women's emancipation
under socialism lay a second, more sectarian aim. "Comrades! Until
now our labor has not been organized," the Aktiv announced. "Each
of us works in isolation. Many have to waste almost all their time on
earning a living not connected with creative work. Until now not one
social organization has really helped the creative and sociopolitical
growth of women artists nor addressed the question in all its
breadth."''23 The exhibition was to consolidate women artists, raise
their profile, and highlight their problems in order to demand greater
119. Ibid., ll. 30-31.

120. Ibid., li. 9-10, 23-24.
121. Ibid., 1. 43, and RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr. 172, 1. 14. Both seem to refer
to the same exhibitionof 1937 in the ArtsCommittee's"klub KOR."
122. A letterinvited"women workersin fine art abroad" to participate:RGALI,
f.962, op. 6, ed. khr.172; and RGALI, f.962, op. 6, ed. khr.302,1. 7 (estimatedbudget
for planned 1938 exhibition-of women artists).
123. RGALI, f. 962, op., 6, ed. khr. 172,1. 8.

168 Slavic Review
recognitionand support fromthe artisticorganizations.To this end,

it was intended to give the broadest possible showingof women's ar-
tisticproduction,including not only painting and sculpture,but also
the areas in which women were acknowledged to be strongest:poster
graphics,children'sbook illustration,textiles,theater,and interiorand
festival design.' 24
Sadly, the ambitious and inclusive plans came to little.The exhi-
bition thattook place consistedonly of painting,sculpture,and graph-
ics by Moscow artists.12' Even for this modest show,the only premises
the organizerscould secure were too small to display more than one
or two works by each participant.Until the last minute it was not
certainthe show would go on at all and, perhaps as a result,the hang-
ing was reportedlychaotic.'26The press all but ignored the women's
showand reproduced onlya handfulof the exhibits,a factthathinders
anyindependenthistoricalassessmentof itsmerits.Even Zernova made
no mentionof it in her memoirs,in spite of her active involvementin
it.Judged by the dominant criteriaof the time,the exhibition was a
failure.
There were a number of reasons for this. It is probable that the
involvementof Vsekokhudozhnikin the exhibitionadverselyaffected
its organization and reception, since the cooperative was in disgrace
as a nest of "enemies of the people."'27 More directly,plans for the
exhibition had encountered resistance from various quarters. Somne
ill-wishershad allegedly"ridiculed thisexhibition,calling it a 'feminist
caprice.""28Others-women as well as men-opposed the idea on the
grounds thatsince women had already attained equality in the Soviet
Union there was no need for special, sectarian measures to promote
theirwork,nor should theybe assessed by different criteria.A separate
women's exhibition,forwhich the gender of the artistratherthan the
intrinsicqualityof her workwas the criterionforinclusion,could only
compromiseartisticstandards,theyargued.I2'9Althoughsome promi-
nent women artistssuch as Zernova were among the initiatorsof the
exhibition,and othersincludingMukhina and Janovskaiaparticipated,
124. Ibid.; and RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr.302.

125. The exhibition,consistingof 357 worksof painting,graphics,and sculpture
by 196 artists,opened 8 March 1938 in the galleryof Vsekokhudozhnik.It is not clear
whether"graphics" included posters,book illustrations,etc. or solely"easel graphics."
The original plans did envisage postersby Ku-lagina,Pinus, and others.RGALI, f. 962,
op. 6, ed. khr. 172, 1. 7. Kulagina was not listed among participantsin the catalogue
(not surprisingly,since her husband Klutsis had been shot the month before), but
Pinus was listed as a painter,as was the designer Magidson. L. V. Rozental', comp., 8
Marta: Katalog vystavkizhivopisi,grafikii skul'ptury(Moscow and Leningrad, 1938).
126. RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 173,11.12-13.
127. Edel'son, who succeeded the purged Slavinskiias leader of Vsekokhudozhnik
in 1937, was himselfpurged almost immediately.See RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr.
124; and RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 126.
128. RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 173,1. 62.
129. Ibid., ll. 9, 16, 57.

manypreferredto save theirthunderforIndustry ofSocialism,

contrib-
uting only minor works or studies to the women's exhibition.They
apparentlyfeared that to take part in a women-onlyevent would de-
mean them. As one put it, "I work on the same level as men and
thereforeon principle I shall not exhibit."'
30
Dominated by genres and art formstraditionallyregarded as fem-

inine and inferior-watercolors and sketches,pictures of children,
landscapes, and flowers-the resultingexhibitionseemed only to bear
out such misgivings and reconfirm condescending stereotypes of
''women's art." Because a central purpose was to bring to light the
work of many women who were not members of any professional or-
ganization, the selectors adopted a democratic principle, including
amateurs alongside professionals, rather than rigorously prioritizing
on the basis of quality or reputation. This decision was understandable,
given that the distinction between professional and amateur was one
of the most insidious mechanisms through which gender hierarchies
were reproduced. Lacking an unambiguously professional status, how-
ever, the exhibition could be consigned to critical oblivion along with
such other displays of "women's work" as the exhibitions of handicraft
and artificial flowers by Red Army wives and "housewives." The un-
evenness and incoherence of the display was identified in retrospect
as a major problem any future women's event must avoid.'il
Criticism focused above all on the paucity of kartiny. At a post-
mortem of the exhibition, women artists blamed its failure in this
regard on their working and living conditions and their lack of ma-
terial and institutional support. The organizers had in fact worked out
a thematic plan which could, in principle, have lent the show coher-
ence and ideological significance by the standards of the day. But with-
out funding it was impossible to commission works. As a result the
thematic plan had to be abandoned and the exhibition was put to-
gether on the basis of whatever artists happened to have available,
often intimate studies never intended for public display.'"2
While leaving the dominant criteria that disadvantaged them un-
challenged, women artists took the opportunity to draw attention to
their hardships and turned the criticisms of their failings against the
creative organizations. MOSSKh, Vsekokhudozhnik, and the Arts Comn-
mittee failed to recruit womien or to attend to their problemis, they
130. Ibid., 1. 59; "Plan iubileinoi vystavki 8-e marta," RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr.
172; L. Rozental', "Vystavka zhenskogo tvorchestva," Tvorchestvo,1938, no. 6:15-18;
and [Serafiml-a]Riangina, "Pervaia vystavka zhenshchiii-khudozhnlits," Rabotruitsa,1938,
no. 10 (April): 17. Riangina did not participate, according to the catalogue, although
she was included in the original plan and was a member of the "Aktiv of Women
Artists of MOSSKh." Rozental', comp., 8 Marta: Katalog vystavki.
131. This "democratic" selection policy was allegedly adopted tunder "pressure
from the women's committees." RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 173,1. 35.
132. Ibid., 1. 2; RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr. 172; and Riangina, "Pervaia vystavka,"
17.

170 SlavicReview
charged: 50 percent of the two hundred exhibitors had no professional

affiliation,only six were contracted, and at most fifteen had received
commissions.133 Some women, adopting the language of the purges,
directed their attacks against unnamed vrediteli.Others specifically
named the Arts Committee and its recently purged leader Platon Ker-
zhentsev for failing to support them, alleging that the state body had
ignored repeated requests for financial support for the exhibition. The
Arts Committee, they objected, showed no interest in women artists,
nor even in art at all: it had not even managed to spend its budget! Its
representative, art historian Aleksandr Zamoshkin, had not bothered
to turn up to the discussion.'34 Like the criticisms of Vsekokhudozh-
nik's mismanagement, such charges must be seen in the light of the
1937-38 purge of the Arts Committee."' But whether or not they were
instigated to fuel a case against individual art administrators and in-
stitutions, this does not deprive them of their substance.
If women's art was to improve, they demanded, the state must look
into the living and working conditions of women artists and invest in
their development by providing studios, regular commissions, and con-
tracts.Women's exhibitions must become an annual event: a system of
commissions to prepare for them would guarantee women the steady
support they needed to prove themselves. Future shows should include
decorative arts, carpets, ceramics, wood, and other media in which
women were acknowledged to be strong."3")
A sequel was indeed organized by MOSSKh in 1939, but without,
it seems, the necessary steps being taken to ameliorate the situation of
women artists. In the end it, too, included only painting, sculpture,
and graphics. The press ignored it apart from a small note concerning
the need to improve the organization of exhibitions and criticizing the
women, once again, for apathy in failing to show kartiny.137 A smaller
exhibition of women architects, painters, graphic artists,and designers,
including Zernova, Georgieva, Riangina, and others, opened on
8 March 1940, in the Moscow House of Architects.'38 But far from
gaining momentum, the women's exhibitions declined after the first
optimistic effort.Although they continued to be organized sporadic-
ally, they were modest affairs which attracted little attention and were
133. Ibid., 11.23-24, 33.

134. Ibid., 11.75-76.
135. Andrei Zhdanov criticizedPlaton Kerzhentsev'sleadership of the ArtsCom-
mitteein January1938. Banks, ed., Aesthetic Arsenal,226. Similar-problems apparently
beset preparationsforIndustry ofSocialism,which all but collapsed into chaos. See, for
example, RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 124.
136. RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 173,11.3, 24, 33.
137. N. Baburin, "Uluchshit' organizatsiiu vystavok,"and list of exhibitors,
"Khroinikamoskovskikhvystavok,"both in Tvorchestvo, 1939, no. 6:back cover. One of
the few worksshown at the 1939 exhibition to tackle the prestigiousgenl-re of state
portraiture,Anna Motornaia's Voting(1938), was illustratedin a differentcontext.
"Vpered k komim-unizmu," 1939, no. 4:5.
Tvorchestvo,
138. Azarkovich,et al., Vystavki,350.

dominated by traditionallyfemininegenresand themessuch as happy

childhood.'39
Given the conditions of the Terror and Great Retreat,it is hardly
surprisingthat,by the mid-1930s,those women artistswho received
regular opportunitiesto exhibit did little to challenge the dominant
culturalstereotypesin theirwork.The theme of the 1938 Exhibition of
Women Artistswas intended to be women's emancipation,yetnone of
the works that can be identifiedunambiguouslypromoted women's
equality.At best, as Mukhina's Worker and CollectiveFarmerhad done
(a model of which was shown there and illustratedon the cover of its
catalogue) they asserted women's strength while simultaneously rein-
scribing them into a secondary and ancillary status in Soviet society.
This had not always been the case: during the first Five-Year Plan,
women artists had exercised their visual imaginations in support of
campaigns urging women into public life. In the early 1930s Riangina's
painting To a New Life incited women to slough off their reactionary
husbands and seize the new opportunities for their self-realization. But
even when she painted Ever Higher in 1934, Riangina implied that for
all the woman's physical strength,she ascends only thanks to her mnale
comrade's condescension. Nina Korotkova, whose treatment of woinen
workers as an exotic spectacle has already been discussed, had dealt,
in her earlier work, with one of the stock emancipatory topoi of the
firstFive-Year Plan, Central Asian women casting off the veil.140 In
1938 she contributed a genre painting of three women of various eth-
nicities playing with a child in a domestic space that opens out onto
a serene southern landscape. Under the topical title WivesofRed Army
Commanders,it reproduced the dominant identification of women with
the role of wives and mothers, and the association of femininity with
the natural and spontaneous.
The discussion held after the 1938 women's exhibition demon-
strates female artists' acute consciousness of their interests at this time.
But, given the pressures and obstacles that particularly affected them,
and their struggles to be taken seriously as artists, they were forced to
collude in their own marginalization as women. The official precepts
that women were already equal and that "there is no such thing as
masculine and feminine art" meant that their success and very survival
as artists depended on proving their capacity to conform to masculine
norms. Even had they been able to step outside the dominant codes,
to do so was potentially fatal. At best it would exclude them from
opportunities for exhibitions and commissions and from serious crit-
ical consideration.
139. After a lapse during the war, Moscow women's exhibitions were held an-
nually from 1948 to 1953. Exhibits in 1953 included E. Pribylovskaia, In the Pioneer
Camp, and L. Rybchenkova, Little Sisters. "Vystavka rabot zhenshchin-khudozhnits,"
Sovetskoeiskusstvo,22 April 1953. Perhaps surprisingly, only one women's exhibition
was held in the Khrushchev period, in 1960. A further women's show was held in
1968. Zernova, Vospominaniia monumentalista,131-33.
140. Kuril'tseva, "Smena," 8.

172 SlavicReview
A Female Constituency?
I want to end by raising some questions about the nature of spec-
tatorship and the imagined audience for Stalinist art, problems which
must remain an agenda for future investigation. Two works by Ol'ga
Ianovskaia are concerned precisely with spectatorship. The painting
she showed at Industry In theShockWorkers'
ofSocialism, Box at theBolshoi
Theatre(1937), paralleled contemporary mass media reports in repre-
senting women as the exemplary audience and chief beneficiaries of
expanded access to education and high culture. The guided tour of
the exhibition used Ianovskaia's painting to illustrate Stalin's recent
proclamation that "Culture and prosperity [dovol'stvo]have entered the
life of the working family," while the artist herself spoke of her wish
to represent the new Soviet spectator, "full of deep understanding and
41 The theater audience is mixed, but the conmposition
love for art."1
focuses on a group of three women, their rapt faces lit by reflected
light from the stage. As the headscarf of the older woman indicates,
and the title confirms, these are no ladies of leisure but upwardly
mobile shockworkers using their well-earned free time to cultivate
themselves.'42(A similar composition, In theBox [1937], was also painted
for Industry of Socialism by Zinaida Kovalevskaia, depicting Uzbek
women in the audience at the Bolshoi.) At the 1938 women's exhibi-
tion, Ianovskaia showed a 1937 study which bears a close relation to
and may have been a preparatory work for her painting of the new
theater audience. The study was exhibited, however, under the title
Listening to Comrade Stalin's Speech and was hung so that the women
appeared to look directly towards a portrait of Stalin placed above
them to the left.'43 Thus the attentive women were transposed from
the theater to the forum of political power. It is no longer a play that
enthralls them, but the figure of Stalin, located beyond the canvas.
Ianovskaia has inverted the gendered power relations of observer and
observed that are conventional in the western artistic tradition. Far
from spectatorship being an exercise of control, here it is represented
as willing submission, a conventionally feminine stance with which the
viewer of the painting-whether female or male-is invited to identify.
I would propose, then, that the audience for images directly pro-
moting the Stalin cult was imagined as female, and spectatorship was
construed as an act of "feminine" identification and submission.'44 The
141. Stalin, Report to Eighteenth Party Congress, as cited in script of tour, "Pod'em
narodnoi kul'tury i narodnogo blagosostoianiia," RGALI, f. 962, op. 6, ed. khr. 948, 1.
66; and Sh[pirkan], "Khudozhnitsy," 20.
142. On efforts to "make Stakhanovites cultured" (and on the involvement of
obshchestvennitsy in this project), see Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism,223-42.
143. It was illustrated under this title in Rozental', "Vystavka zlhenskogo tvor-
chestva," 17. Its position can be seen in the installation view in Riangina, "Pervaia
vystavka," 17. The title is given there as "Listening to a Report." Riangina confirmls
that it is a study for In the Shock Workers'Box.
144. The central place the Stalin cult occupied among all the available means of
social integration may be explained by considering the way the public was gendered.

personificationof the power and beneficenceof the Soviet statein the

formof the charismaticmale leader aimed ultimatelyto cast the entire
Soviet people in the conventionallyfemale role of devoted obedience.
But in the firstinstance, it courted the loyaltyand love of women,
stereotypedas low in political consciousness yet most susceptible to
persuasion, and most given to unquestioning fanatic thraldom.'45To
test this hypothesisrequires furtherresearch on the popularization
and receptionof theartof theStalin cultamong different social groups.
The elite women's magazine Obshchestvennitsa (published by the Com-
missariatof Heavy Industrybeginningin 1936), forexample,was active
in popularizing workproduced forIndustry ofSocialism.Rabotnitsaalso
urged its workingwomen readers to visit the exhibition,but its cov-
erage of contemporaryart was verylimited.'4"Can we distinguishany
systematicdifferencesin the iconography,style,and display of art ac-
cording to the gender and social status of specificintended publics?
Were there exhibition tours that expresslytargetedwomen viewers?
In the end, notwithstandingtheir importantdifferences,did Stalin's
propagandistsshare the view attributedto Hitler,that:"In politicsone
musthave the support of women, men will followby themselves"?'47
Conversely, the feminization of spectatorship might account for the striking rarity of
the female nude in Stalinist painting, an important topic beyond the scope of this
article. On the genre of the nude as alien to the Russian tradition, see V. S., "'Nadia
v shubke,' ili kratkaia entsiklopedia sovetskogo 'niu,"' Moskovskii
khudozhnik, 1965, no.
11-12 (22 March 1995).
145. To claim that women were the targetaudience is to take issue with Beth
Holmgren's thesis that women's unacknowledged secondary status in Stalinist society
exempted them to some extent from the party's regime of approval or censure. Holm-
gren, Women'sWorks,10. There may be a case that, rather than paying less attention
to the control of women, the party adopted a differentiated
approach to male and female
regulation and persuasion. Regarding women as politically underdeveloped, it aimed
at bonding them to it emotionally. Compare Davies, PopularOpinion,61, 150.
146. Sh[pirkan], "Khudozhnitsy," 21. For discussion of art reproductions in
Obshchestvennitsa,see Kettering, "'Ever More Cosy,"' 130-31; and K. Kravchenko, "O
kartinakh i reproduktsiakh," Obshchestvennitsa, 1937, no. 15:17-19. A thorough com-
parative study of the art coverage in these and other magazines addressed to both
women and men would be enlightening.
147. Maria-Antonietta Macciocchi, "Les femmes et la traverse du fascisme," Ele-
mentspour une analysediifascisme(Paris, 1976), 1:157; cited in tran-slation in Barbar-a
Spackman, "The Fascist Rhetoricof Virility," Stanford ItalianReview8, no. 1-2 (1990):
83.


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All Stalin's Women: Gender and Power in Soviet Art of the 1930s

Author(s): Susan E. Reid

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 20 Dec 2014 13:52:22 PM

This article will examine how the representation of gender in Soviet

I would like to thankDiane P. Koenker and Slavic Review's anonymous reviewers

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2. Industryof Socialism opened 18 March 1939 in the Permanent Construction

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industriiu,"Industriiasotsializma(single-issuebroadsheet,published by the exhibition

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to strengthenthe familyas a reproductiveand socializing institution

Woman as a Sign forProgress

9. Lapidus, Womenin SovietSociety,103. See also Urie Bironfenbr-enner,

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about women alone, but representedSoviet society as a whole. The

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 20 Dec 2014 13:52:22 PM

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 20 Dec 2014 13:52:22 PM

of the few exhibits to describe an industrialtask in any detail. Even

21. Industriia sotsializrma:Tematicheskiiplan, 65. For classic analyses of the gendered

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the apparent ease withwhich artistsinventedan iconographyof male

25. Waters,"Female Form," 235; and Bonnell, "Representationof Women," 269,

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theme "Woman Miner at the Controls" proposed in the 1935 Plan,

Food Industry: Mikoian's Cornucopia

29. Editorial, "Iskusstvo v strane sotsializma," 31.

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have shiftedsignificantly in the four years fromits conception to its

33. Low attendance was blamed on a misconceptionthatIndustry ofSocialismwas

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As commissarof Food Industries since 1934, the sponsor of this

36. Mikoian saw to the publication of the firstSoviet governimenlt-sponlsor-ed cook-

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40. On "democratic luxury,"see Jukka Gronow, The Sociology of Taste (London,

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Figure 1. 01'ga Ianovskaia, Ma-ster (1939). Oil on canvas (dim-en-

45. Ol'ga DmitrievnaIanovskaia, born 1900, studied with Il'ia Mashkov,joined

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the press welcomed the new shopping opportunitiesas portentsof the

49. Fitzpatrick,"'Middle-Class Values,"' 25-26; and Hessler, "Culture of Short-

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revolutionarydevelopment" in socialist realist painting served,liter-

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 20 Dec 2014 13:52:22 PM

Leading Women: Delegates and AgriculturalStakhanovites

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* F zi ifil| 11 ililh" S i | _ N .........................

loose, impressionistbrushworkto convey freshnessand spontaneity,

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"feminine" allure. On the contrary,as the magazine Rabot-

of macln deire, resurn thaiwrta mncptoednt

ofmsuiE deie ressrn thviwrtatlmniaio ednt

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should pay attentionto her appearance."58Deineka also took a com-

58. I. L. Belakhov, "Kul'tura tela i gigiena," Rabotnitsa,1937, nio. 2 (January).

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provided and Stalin's constitutionallegedly guaranteed. This, osten-

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 20 Dec 2014 13:52:22 PM

64. F. G. Tret'iakov,"Domashniaia khoziaika,"Rabotnitsa,1939, no. 15 (May): 16.

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Figure5. VasiliiEfanov,An Unforgettable (1937).Oil on canvas,270 X

themeof Vasilii Efanov'sAn UnforgettableMeeting(1937; figure5), which