Soviet Women's Magazines of the Khrushchev Era, 1955-1964

Abstract

Marxist theory considers human personality and behaviours as a result of social constructions, which are formed through interaction with the social environment and therefore possible to reformulate and reconstruct. To create a new type of person willing to put the interests of the society above their own personal desires became the most fundamental pre-requisites for Bolsheviks when the world’s first Socialist state began to develop upon their seizure of power in October, 1917. However, this task proved to be neither quick nor easy because the visionary attributes of the ideal “New Soviet Man” but especially the “New Soviet Woman” underwent continuous redefinition and reconstruction during the decades that followed the Russian Revolution of 1917.

In formulating these new Soviet personalities, the print media as the main communication channel between the Party and the people played a decisive role. Women's magazines, such as Rabotnitsa (The Woman Worker) and Krest'yanka (The Peasant Woman) attempted to take dual roles. They not only functioned as an arm of the Party, they also supported and guided female readers through their multiple difficulties and troubles. These journals provided a discourse regarding the adjustment and construction of the new Soviet persona, while disseminating uniform values to the female population. The journals, from the beginning of their existence up until the collapse of the Soviet Union, inculcated particular models of behaviour, promoted specific methods of thought, and generally advertised the Party's continuously changing desires in modelling the features of the “New Soviet Woman”.

The intention of this Thesis is to identify these distinct features and how these journals promoted the particular qualities for the new Soviet woman; to find out the models of the world which the magazines sought to plant in women's consciousness and to reflect the new hopes, opportunities and roles that the post-Stalin period of the “Thaw” or the “Russian spring” - how the decade of Khrushchev’s leadership is often referred – promoted.

This Master’s Thesis begins in the late Stalin years, but focuses on the 1950s and 1960s – the decades of massive political and cultural transformation known as the “Thaw”.

The findings of this Master's Thesis reflect the contradictory messages that were sent by the women's magazines in order to shape women's attitudes and behaviour according to the new Khrushchevian standards. However, the confusion what might have been caused by those contradictory signals is not in the focus of this work.