Soviet beauties: how the artists of socialist realism saw women

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Over the 70 years of its existence, the Soviet system has created a lot: total control and specific art, highly developed industry, urban planning and the space industry, as well as special people: strong-willed, purposeful, energetic, healthy in mind and body. And today we will talk about images Soviet women in art, in particular in painting. After all, the female theme in all epochs attracted artists, and the Soviet era was no exception.

Before the artists, as well as before other figures of culture and art, the government of the Land of Soviets was tasked with showing the whole world the image of the “new woman” through cinema, theater, painting, in the light of socialist realism. And to replace the gentle, refined and refined, new heroines came - strong and strong-willed with a steel character, nurtured and brought up by the new time. All this was part of an ambitious nationwide project to create a "new Soviet man."

General concepts of a Soviet woman

And certainly these women did not appear out of nowhere. They came from a generation born in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, many of whom were revolutionaries, activists, and rebellions. It was they who led the masses, and were an example to follow. The struggle for equality played a special role in the formation of Soviet women. Running away from home, going into exile and participating in the expropriation, they did their best to push the patriarchal system of the former empire in order to get equal rights with men.

And in fairness, it should be noted that, in comparison with tsarist Russia, the new government gave girls and women much more rights: you could disobey your parents, marry whoever you want, still work wherever they take, and study wherever you can. And women with all their souls reached out to everything that the country of the Soviets offered, went to study, went in for sports, mastered everything that they had no access to before.

But there was one oppressive "but" … The young country, which survived the hungry years after the revolution and civil war, lived very poorly. And most of the female population dressed simply and without frills, even actresses, up to the most famous. And the foreigners who then came to the USSR were unimaginably shocked. Where could they understand that the reason for this was the banal widespread poverty. People simply had nothing to eat, so there was no time to think about fashion or beauty. And when women in developed European countries, thanks to feminism, received the right to work and became slimmer due to a more mobile lifestyle, Soviet women emaciated due to hunger.

Time passed … And with the restoration of the economy in the 30s, the fashion for a healthy peasant corpulence came in the Soviet state, finally it was possible to eat as much as possible and not count the crumbs of bread. Thinness at that time in the minds of society looked like a sign of illness and was considered unattractive. Men were simply thrilled by the busty, appetizing women, with open kind faces.

However, a terrible war soon broke out, and everything changed radically. During World War II and in the post-war period, women were forced to turn into men for some time, that is, to take on the lion's share of male responsibilities in production and in agriculture. They went to factories, went down into mines. Many got the front line: medical instructors, radio operators, pilots, snipers, and some partisans. On the fronts, still very young girls fought on a par with adult men, bringing the long-awaited victory closer day after day.

The female population of the country of that terrible era was able to do the main thing: to survive and withstand. And those who went through these trials remained optimists to the end of their days, immensely in love with life.

And what is interesting, in the post-war decade, the situation repeated itself as after the revolution. Devastation and hunger made women thin and haggard. It was extremely difficult to gain a couple of extra pounds. However, the most global problem of the post-war period was the catastrophic shortage of men, and Soviet women had to fight for their personal happiness, literally pushing their rivals with their elbows. And men, taking advantage of their special position, became very picky and began to often change wives. The number of divorces in those years just went off scale.

With the restoration of production and agriculture by the end of the 50s, the cult of a strong worker-peasant female body again became fashionable in the country. And, curiously, the standard of female beauty in the USSR for a long time was formed under the influence of the political and especially the economic situation, and not fashionable canons. This is precisely the reason that in Europe and the United States for a long time, a Soviet woman was considered too fat and tastelessly dressed.

Read also: From Khrushcheva to Putin: What the first ladies of the USSR and Russia wore.

And in the Union itself, the image of a woman, which was cultivated in the mass consciousness, carried all sorts of parameters, but not an orientation towards appearance. There was no talk of any style, sexuality, even physical beauty. Woman-mother, Woman-Stakhanovite, Collective farmer-leader, Komsomolskaya Pravda activist, Valentina Tereshkova and so on and so forth.

But already in the 60s and 70s, slender girls began to appear in the Soviet Union. Such beauties were admired by men, but women did not imitate them. The Soviet government slightly eased the ideological pressure and let the light trend of Western life into the country. And fashion began to seep into the union, and women, without any extremes, began to pay much more attention to their appearance. At that time, Western clothing began to appear in fashion magazines, and imported items could be purchased through specialty stores.

All these aspects of the life of the Land of the Soviets, as historical facts, were very vividly reflected in the work of artists who worked during the Soviet era. Their paintings have remained for the present generation as a memory of those heroic and legendary times when a woman was an example of motherhood, heroism and patriotism. They are a vivid historical evidence of the existence of the common Soviet people and forever entered the treasury of world art.

Peering into the naturally beautiful tanned faces and burning eyes of women of the Soviet period, the viewer literally receives a powerful charge of energy and positive, which gushes from almost every canvas. And no matter what clothes the representatives of that time are wearing, something else is important - their spiritual impulse and enthusiasm, their meaningful look into the future, their desire for creation and confidence in the future.

Summing up the above, I would like to draw the line. A radical change in the stereotypes of Soviet women took place on the eve of the collapse of the USSR, namely in the 80s, when the magazine "Burda-Moden" appeared in the union for the first time, bringing with it new standards. In 1988, the first beauty contest in the Union was held in Moscow. Since that period, the country has been swept by the race for harmony and for fashionable clothes.

And the standard of beauty has become a tall, graceful and long-legged beauty - the complete opposite of a woman who was glorified by Soviet propaganda in past years. Well, what can you say - times are changing, and morals are changing too. It has always been, is and will be.

How modern artists see modern women can be seen in the review: "There are never too many women": Expressive portraits of the contemporary artist Mstislav Pavlov.