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Between National Tradition and Western Modernization: Soviet Woman and Representations of Socialist Gender Equality as a “Third Way” for Developing Countries, 1956–1964

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 November 2019

Christine Varga-Harris
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Abstract

This article analyzes Soviet Woman, the main publication of the Komitet Sovetskikh Zhenshchin (Committee of Soviet Women), during the 1950s and 1960s. Approaching it as a medium of international outreach, the article illustrates how the magazine reflected official Soviet strategies toward developing countries and propagated “peaceful coexistence.” Specifically, it delineates the ways in which Soviet Woman presented Soviet women (especially those in the “Soviet East”) as models of female emancipation so as to persuade women in the Third World of the potential of socialism to effect social and economic progress, and to sustain national liberation. Assessing also reception among readers of its messages about advancement, international friendship, and solidarity, it concludes that Soviet Woman provided women in decolonizing countries an alternative to a return to traditional modes or a shift to western ones by demonstrating the possibilities that the Soviet system held for realizing gender equality and modernization.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 78 , Issue 3 , Fall 2019 , pp. 758 - 781
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 2019 

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Footnotes

For their generous feedback on drafts of this article, I would like to thank Harriet Murav and my two anonymous reviewers; Betty Banks, Irina Gigova, Marjorie Hilton, Diane P. Koenker, and Alexis Peri; and participants of the Spring 2017 Midwest Russian History Workshop held at Northwestern University (Evanston, IL).

References

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2 Ibid.

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4 Menjeritsky, 2.

5 Ibid., 5.

6 Throughout, I use interchangeably for countries in Africa and South Asia the terms “developing countries” (razvivaiushcheisia strany) and “Third World” as they were employed in the 1950s and 1960s by scholars in the Soviet Union and the west, respectively. Rupprecht, Tobias, Soviet Internationalism after Stalin: Interaction and Exchange between the USSR and Latin America during the Cold War (Cambridge, Eng., 2015), 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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8 Hopf, Ted, Reconstructing the Cold War: The Early Years, 1945–1958 (Oxford, 2012), 238CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Non-European regions of the Soviet Union were not, of course, merely instruments of propaganda. Prominent figures in Central Asia plied state interest in projecting the progress of their republics abroad so as to negotiate economic development and gain provisions both to preserve their cultural heritage and to further their individual careers. Kalinovsky, “Not Some British Colony in Africa”: 191–222, and Kirasirova, “‘Sons of Muslims’ in Moscow”: 106–32.

9 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), fond (f.) R7928, opis΄ (op.) 2, delo (d.) 1823, list (l.) 94–99.

10 See for example, GARF, f. R7928, op. 4, d. 109, ll. 15–16.

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17 Bier, Laura, “Modernity and the Other Woman: Gender and National Identity in the Egyptian Women’s Press, 1952–1967,” Gender and History 16, no. 1 (April 2004): 111CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Similarly, members of the KSZh could be invested in both the Communist Party and a broader feminist agenda. See Yanna Knopova, “The Soviet Union and the International Domain of Women’s Rights and Struggles: A Theoretical Framework and a Case Study of the Soviet Women’s Committee (1941–1991)” (Master’s thesis, Central European University, 2011), 41–51.

18 Timothy Nunan makes a similar assertion about the KSZh for a different context, demonstrating that Soviet feminism served as an alternative to competing Islamist and secular options in Afghanistan following its April 1978 Revolution. Nunan, Timothy, “Under a Red Veil: Staging Afghan Emancipation in Moscow,” The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 38, no. 1 (2011): 40–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 On capitalist development narratives, see for example, Wilson, Kalpana, “The Gift of Agency: Gender and Race in Development Representations,” in Race, Racism and Development: Interrogating History, Discourse and Practice (London, 2012), 45–68Google Scholar.

20 On the development, conceptualization and usage of the terms “Soviet East” and “foreign East” in the Soviet Union, see Masha Kirasirova, “Introduction,” “The Eastern International,” 1–31.

21 Bier, “Modernity and the Other Woman,” 101.

22 Galkina, Komitet Sovetskikh Zhenshchin, 16.

23 Unsigned, “October Revolution Anniversary,” SW, No. 10 (1964), inner front cover.

24 Engerman, David C., “The Second World’s Third World,” Kritika 12, no 1 (Winter 2011): 183–211Google Scholar. For varying insights into imaginings of “the other” within the context of Second-Third World relations see Gorsuch, Anne E., “‘Cuba, My Love’: The Romance of Revolutionary Cuba in the Soviet Sixties,” American Historical Review 120, no. 2 (April 2015): 497–526CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Slobodian, Quinn, ed., Comrades of Color: East Germany in the Cold War World (New York, 2015)Google Scholar.

25 The general information cited throughout on the activities of the KSZh and the distribution of Soviet Woman is gleaned from its institutional archives, housed in GARF, f. R7928.

26 See, for example, Guillory, Sean, “Culture Clash in the Socialist Paradise: Soviet Patronage and African Students’ Urbanity in the Soviet Union, 1960–1965,” Diplomatic History 38, no. 2 (2014): 271–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wishon, Jeremiah, “Soviet Globalization: Indo-Soviet Public Diplomacy and Cold War Cultural Spheres,” The Global Studies Journal 5, no. 2 (2013): 103–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Matusevich, Maxim, “Probing the Limits of Internationalism: African Students Confront Soviet Ritual,” Anthropology of East Europe Review 27, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 19–39Google Scholar; and Hessler, Julie, “Death of an African Student in Moscow: Race, Politics and the Cold War,” Cahiers du Monde russe 47, nos. 1–2 (January to June 2006): 33–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Galkina, 248.

28 GARF, f. R7928, op. 3, d. 1295, l. 57 and l. 140.

29 Ibid., op. 2, d. 1935, l. 57 and l. 62.

30 See, for example, Ibid., op. 3, d. 1107, l. 70.

31 To nevertheless offer a quantitative sense of circulation, from 1956 through 1962, the number of copies of Soviet Woman published expanded from 190,000 to 450,000. Ibid., op. 4, d. 101, l. 15 and op. 4, d. 152, l. 32.

32 Ibid., op. 3, d. 102, l. 105 and op. 3, d. 278, l. 96.

33 Ibid., op. 2, d. 1823, l. 60.

34 See, for example, “Talks on Communism,” SW, No. 4 (1960), 30.

35 Unsigned, “Our Lives and Our Work,” SW, No. 10 (1961), 4–13.

36 Suggesting the breadth of the reach of the magazine, this report stated that the number of letters it received had increased from 3,000 in 1961 to 3,500 in 1962. GARF, f. R7928, op. 4, d. 152, l. 31.

37 Ibid., op. 2, d. 1823, l. 9. Reflecting the dearth of commentary on editorial decisions, the 1963 plan for Soviet Woman mapped out at a meeting of the Presidium of the KSZh listed pieces to be included and subjects to be covered in Nos. 7, 8, and 9, but provided no rationale. Instead, it merely cited general concerns like the literary quality of published material. Ibid., op. 3, d. 945, ll. 45–47.

38 For indications of the typicality of the subjects covered in Soviet Woman, see the following works on the two dominant women’s magazines produced for domestic consumption in the Soviet Union, Rabotnitsa and Krest΄ ianka: Attwood, Lynne, Creating the New Soviet Woman: Women’s Magazines as Engineers of Female Identity, 1922–1953 (New York, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Natalia I. Tolstikova, “Reading Rabotnitsa: Ideals, Aspirations, and Consumption Choices for Soviet Women, 1914–1964” (PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2001). Taken together, the following works suggest parallels in terms of content categories in magazines aimed at women across the so-called First, Second and Third Worlds: Susan Elaine Dawson, “A Blueprint for Cold War Citizenship: Upper Class Women in the U.S. Foreign Policy, 1945–1963” (PhD diss., The Ohio State University, 2009); Popa, Raluca Maria, “Communist Women Speaking Internationally: A Revision of the ‘East’/‘West’ Divide?,” in Bidwell-Steiner, Marlen and Wozonig, Karin S., eds., A Canon of Our Own? Kanonkritik und Kanonbildung in den Gender Studies (Innsbruck, 2006), 175–88Google Scholar (on Romania); and the afore-cited article by Laura Bier (on Egypt).

39 This is not to discount variations in discourse. The following content analysis of Soviet Woman and Sovetskaia Zhenshchina for the immediate postwar years reveals that the English version presented a model of womanhood that would be more palatable to Western audiences: Peri, Alexis, “New Soviet Woman: The Post-World War II Feminine Ideal at Home and Abroad,” The Russian Review 77, no. 4 (October 2018): 621–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 See, for example, Alla Trubnikova, “The Ivory Broach,” SW, No. 3 (1959), 15–17.

41 On similar narratives from the 1920s and 1930s, see Northrop, Douglas, Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia (Ithaca, 2004)Google Scholar, and on ones from the 1950s, see Meek, Dorothea L., ed. and trans., Soviet Youth: Some Achievements and Problems: Excerpts from the Soviet Press (London, UK, 1957), 232–39Google Scholar.

42 On the use of this tactic in Central Asia and the far northern regions of the Soviet Union, see, respectively, Massell, Gregory, The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia, 1919–1929 (Princeton, 1974)Google Scholar and Slezkine, Yuri, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Ithaca, 1994)Google Scholar.

43 This term is borrowed from Massell (see above).

44 A paranja is a heavy cotton robe that covers the body and holds in place a face screen of woven horsehair known as the chachvon. Northrop, Veiled Empire, 19 and 51–52. For similarities and variations in veiling customs throughout Central Asia, see Northrop, Veiled Empire, 19; Edgar, Adrienne Lynn, Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan (Princeton, 2004), 221Google Scholar; and Igmen, Ali, Speaking Soviet with an Accent: Culture and Power in Kyrgyzstan (Pittsburgh, 2012), 122–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Yanchuk, Marta, “Tajik Women,” SW, No. 9 (1960), 28–29Google Scholar.

46 Mirza-Akhmedova, Clara, “We Are Builders,” SW, No. 10 (1964), 2–3Google Scholar.

47 Tuva became part of the Soviet Union in 1944, and an autonomous republic in 1961.

48 Khadakhane, Maria, “From Shepherdess to President,” SW, No. 12 (1963), 18Google Scholar.

49 Gavrilov, N., “In Independent Guinea,” SW, No. 8 (1960), 35Google Scholar.

50 Ibid., 34–35.

51 Ovezov, Ene, “There can be no freedom where women do not enjoy equality,” SW, No. 2 (1964), 8–10Google Scholar.

52 See Kirasirova, “The Eastern International,” and Kanet, Roger E., “African Youth: The Target of Soviet African Policy,” Russian Review 27, no. 2 (April 1968): 161–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 Stronski, 245.

54 Ibid.

55 GARF, f. R7928, op. 3, d. 363, ll. 127–31.

56 Ibid., op. 3, d. 363, l. 129.

57 Unpublished letters from women in developing countries who had visited the Soviet Union also exhibited feelings of kinship with the peoples of Central Asia. See, for example, Ibid., op. 3, d. 492, l. 46.

58 Unsigned, “Our Visitors,” SW, No. 1 (1964), 3. These quotations were excerpts from her letter reproduced in the magazine.

59 Malik, N. Adam, “Our Deeds and Dreams,” SW, No. 3 (1962), 27Google Scholar.

60 Camara, Aoua Keita, “I Have Faith in My People,” SW, No. 8 (1961), 10Google Scholar. These published impressions were underpinned by warm correspondence between Camara and the KSZh. GARF, f. R7928, op. 3, d. 711, l. 12 and ll. 14–15.

61 Camara, 10.

62 Unsigned, “African People Seek Knowledge,” SW, No. 12 (1962), 3.

63 Ibid.

64 GARF, f. R7928, op. 2, d. 1823.

65 See, for example, Edgar, “Emancipation of the Unveiled: Turkmen Women under Soviet Rule,” in Tribal Nation, 221–60; Northrop, Veiled Empire; and Rorlich, Azade-Ayse, “The ‘Äli Bayramov’ Club, the Journal Shärg Gadïnï and the Socialization of Azeri Women: 1920–1930,” Central Asian Survey 5, no. 3/4 (September 1986): 221–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The journal that is the focus of the latter, Women of the East, followed a similar approach to that of Soviet Woman. For example, it published articles on Muslim women from Central Asia, Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan that were imbued with female solidarity “enhanced by an affinity of culture,” in this case, related to the role of Islam in shaping their histories. It also encouraged and publicized female initiatives. For the quotation, see Rorlich: 235.

66 The following provides a quantitative assessment of progress for Central Asian women in numerous aspects of life since the Revolution: Vasil΄eva, G.P., “Zhenshchiny respublik Sredney Azii i Kazakhstana i ikh rol΄ v preobrazovanii byta sel΄skogo naseleniia,” Sovetskaia etnografiia, no. 6 (1975): 17–27Google Scholar. For a brief scholarly treatment of some of these advances, see Constantine, Elizabeth A., “Practical Consequences of Soviet Policy and Ideology for Gender in Central Asia and Contemporary Reversal,” in Sahadeo, Jeff and Zanca, Russell, eds., Everyday Life in Central Asia: Past and Present (Bloomington, 2007), 115–26Google Scholar.

67 This is shown in the chapters by Marianne Kamp and Elizabeth Constantine in Everyday Life in Central Asia.

68 Stronski, Chapters 4 and 7, and Northrop, Veiled Empire, 347–52. Of course, the transformation of gender relations among Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, and Tajiks—like customs, economic structures, and religious practices—varied. This is illuminated in Meltem Sancak and Peter Finke, “Konstitutsiya Buzildi! Gender Relations in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan,” in Everyday Life in Central Asia, 160–77. In addition, abandoning traditional ways could have negative outcomes, while customs could persevere, at times creating a blend of old and new ways. On continuity and change under Soviet rule, and on the hybridity that it could produce, see, respectively, Edgar, “Everyday Life among the Turkmen Nomads,” in Everyday Life in Central Asia, 37–44, and Speaking Soviet with an Accent.

69 Knopova, 78.

70 Ovezov, 8–10.

71 Hirsch, Francine, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca, 2005)Google Scholar; Martin, Terry, Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Slezkine, Yuri, “The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism,” Slavic Review 53, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 414–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Even leaving aside instances of persecution, not all nationalities were treated equally, and some did have to advocate for themselves. See, for example, Goff, Krista A., “‘Why Not Love Our Language and Our Culture?’ National Rights and Citizenship in Khrushchev’s Soviet Union,” Nationalities Papers 43, no. 1 (January 2015): 27–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72 Yuriev, M., “The Land of Heavenly Mountains,” SW, No. 5 (1962), 36Google Scholar. The Soviet regime contributed not only to the restoration, but also to the construction and even invention of national tradition, a process in which indigenous actors too played a role. See, for example, Igmen.

73 Russov, Anatoli, “Zoya, Daughter of a Chuvash Peasant,” SW, No. 1 (1963), 9Google Scholar.

74 Khadakhane, Maria, “From Shepherdess to President,” SW, No. 12 (1963), 19Google Scholar.

75 Mogilevskaya, Galina, “Indonesia’s Independence Day,” SW, No. 11 (1964), 13Google Scholar.

76 Unsigned, “Margaret Martei Says . . .,” SW, No. 8 (1964), 36.

77 Attwood, Lynne, “Celebrating the ‘Frail-Figured Welder’: Gender Confusion in Women’s Magazines of the Khrushchev Era,” Slavonica 8, no. 2 (2002): 159–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 Bier, “Modernity and the Other Woman,” 106. As Bier demonstrates, not only were depictions of women abroad also utilized by the Egyptian press to navigate through concerns about female emancipation and the welfare of the nation; those of Soviet women from republics with high Muslim populations (e.g. Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan), in particular, were presented to Egyptian women as models for combining personal and national liberation, and for preserving cultural values amid modernization. Bier, “Modernity and the Other Woman,” 106–8.

79 Bandaranaike, Sirimavo R. D., “We Must Get to Know Each Other Better,” SW, No. 12 (1963), 15Google Scholar. The published quotations were excerpts from her letter.

80 For examples, see, Unsigned, “Readers Comment on ‘Soviet Woman’ Magazine,” SW, No. 12 (1962), 21, and GARF, f. R7928, op. 4, d. 152, l. 31.

81 For blatant disdain for the magazine, see GARF, f. R7928, op. 3, d. 102, l. 6 and Ibid., op. 3, d. 681, l. 121.

82 Respectively, Ibid., op. 3, d. 864, l. 46 and op. 3, d. 864, l. 57.

83 Ibid., op. 3, d. 1118, l. 214.

84 Ibid., op. 3, d. 1118, l. 150. There are also instances of readers approaching members of the KSZh to have their writing (including works of fiction and reports on their activities) published in Soviet Woman or in translation in Sovetskaia Zhenshchina. Such requests further indicate a perception of the magazine as a forum for all women. See, for example, GARF, f. R7928, op. 3, d. 1295, l. 171, and Ibid., op. 3, d. 489, l. 14 and l. 18.

85 Ibid., op. 3, d. 280, l. 20.

86 Ibid., op. 3, d. 280, ll. 24–25.

87 See, for example, Ibid., op. 4, d. 101, l. 14 and op. 3, d. 201, l. 69.

88 Ibid., op. 3, d. 395, ll. 3–6 and ll. 133–142.

89 Ibid., op. 3, d. 395, ll. 157–170.

90 See, for example, Ibid., op. 3, d. 668, ll. 30–31.

91 Ibid., op. 3, d. 864, l. 22.

92 Paisley, Fiona, Glamour in the Pacific: Cultural Internationalism and Race Politics in the Women’s Pan-Pacific (Honolulu, 2009), 27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

93 Unsigned, “Distinguished Guest from India,” SW, No. 10 (1963), 26.

94 Unsigned, “The Life Everyone Would Like to Live,” SW, No. 5 (1962), 31.

95 Ibid.

96 Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham, 2003), 19, 49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97 Ibid., 19.

98 For more on referentiality, see Jabri, Vivienne and O’Gorman, Eleanor, “Locating Difference in Feminist International Relations,” in Jabri, Vivienne and O’Gorman, Eleanor, eds., Women, Culture, and International Relations (Boulder, 1999), 1–15Google Scholar.

99 Although it displayed some continuity with Russian imperial visions, the Tashkent model differed in one notable way that might resonate with peoples in decolonizing countries: it aimed to make residents (Soviet) citizens. Stronski, 1–2, 16–45, 230–31, and 245.

100 Khalid, Adeeb, “The Soviet Union as an Imperial Formation,” in Stoler, Ann Laura, McGranahan, Carole, and Perdue, Peter C., eds., Imperial Formations (Santa Fe, 2003), 113–39Google Scholar.

101 Klein, Christina, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961 (Berkeley, 2003), 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

102 See footnote 16.

103 GARF, f. R7928 op. 3, d. 594, l. 27.

104 Ibid.

105 Ibid., op. 3, d. 594, l. 25.