Masha Grab Your Gun: 1930s Images of Soviet Women and the Defense of Their Country

Masha Grab Your Gun

1930s Images of Soviet Women andthe Defense of Their Country

ALISON ROWLEY

Abstract: Drawing on images found in a number of Soviet media, this article analyzes the mes-sages presented to women concerning their role in the defense of the country in the 1930s. Thesubject is divided into four categories: the memory of nurses in the Civil War; the attentiongiven to female pilots; the vigilance of women combating internal enemies; and the defense-related aspects of the wives’ volunteer movement. Particular attention is also paid to the impli-cations of these materials for the scholarship devoted to Soviet masculinity.

Keywords: Soviet propaganda; nurses; female pilots; wives’ volunteermovement; masculinity

“Proletarian women will not be able to watch passively as the well-armed bour-geoisie shoots poorly armed or unarmed workers. They will take up arms.”—V. I. Lenin (quoted in Chirkov 1975, 103)

The diplomatic isolation of the Soviet Union in the late 1920s meant continuing securityworries for the Soviet leadership. In 1927, an incident with Britain led to the countries sev-ering diplomatic relations and the launching of a full-blown war scare in the Soviet press.In the 1930s, the USSR faced ominous situations in both the east and the west. The Japa-nese army occupied Manchuria in September 1931, and no sooner was this situation resolvedthan events in Europe began to appear threatening again. The 1930s saw, among other things,the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy, and Soviet involvement in the Spanish Civil War.In such a world it is not surprising that the Soviet leadership envisioned potential attacksfrom the country’s neighbors. Moreover, it was anticipated that the country would have tofight a different kind of warfare—a war between competing ideologies and economies aswell as armies. As David Stone has noted, by “the early 1920s, Soviet military theorists werealready arguing for the complete merging of state and military spheres to wage and winmodern war” (2000, 10). To be successful in such a conflict, it would be necessary to mobi-lize all elements of the population, even those not typically thought of by military planners,and that included Soviet women.

54 Minerva Journal of Women and War • Spring 2008

Alison Rowley is an assistant professor in the Department of History at Concordia University in Montreal,Canada. She is presently completing a book manuscript entitled More Than Just “Wish You Were Here”:The Picture Postcard and Russian Popular Culture, 1880–1939.

MinervaVolume 2, Number 1 / Spring 2008 / pp. 54–69ISSN 0736-718X (Print) / ISSN 1935-9209 (Online)DOI: 10.3172/Minerva.2.1.54 / © 2008 McFarland & Co.

Existing scholarship on Soviet women and war has focused on their participation in theSecond World War and has left the decade leading up to that conflict relatively ignored.However, throughout the 1930s, Soviet popular culture presented women with images thatassigned them a vital role in the defense of the country. Treatments of the Russian Civil War,for instance, memorialized nurses, who were not only present in the midst of the fighting,but who also picked up the weapons of fallen soldiers in order to fend off the enemy. Femalepilots occupied prominent positions in all Soviet media, and their achievements weredescribed in the same language as their male counterparts. Women were also entreatedactively to protect the country from internal enemies, even if that meant state needs wereprioritized over family life or personal safety. Even housewives who belonged to the “wives’volunteer” (obshchestvennitsa) movement were shown improving their military prepared-ness in order to become the “fighting comrades” of their husbands. As will become appar-ent in the following discussion, these images were found in a wide array of Soviet media.They do not represent a marginalized discourse limited, for example, to the pages of women’smagazines. Instead, it is apparent that Soviet women were the target of a deliberate, long-term campaign that encouraged them to acquire military and defense-related skills thatcould be useful in protecting the country from internal and external foes. An examinationof this narrative also presents a challenge to emerging theories of Soviet masculinity, sincethe images show women engaged in the very behaviors that some scholars assign as defin-ing characteristics of the New Soviet Man in the 1930s.

The Changing Image of the Russian Nurse:From Healing to Killing

A nurse lies dead in the snow (Figure 1). The caption printed to the right of the imagereads: “What for?” (Za chto?). A viewer, however, could also ask other questions that are

Masha Grab Your Gun 55

Figure ¡. World War I–era postcard by M. Malyshev (author’s collection).

pertinent to understanding the scene. Since there is no blood and the woman bears no out-ward physical wound, how did she die? Why is she completely alone and on a snowy moun-tainside? Why would she be killed when the front and the enemy are nowhere to be seen?All of these questions point to ways in which First World War images of Russian nurses weresanitized for the general public. Nurses were shown in settings that were largely removedfrom violence. They seldom appeared in actual physical contact with the wounded. Theywere more likely to be found at a soldier’s bedside reading to him rather than tending to hiswounds (Figure 2). The women offered comfort, but remained at a chaste distance from themen they helped. Their modesty was reinforced by their uniforms, which resembled thehabits of nuns, reminding viewers that they too were referred to as “sisters” in Russian.Nurses were certainly not shown wading through mud or covered in blood and gore. Theyremained what Hubertus Jahn has termed a “symbol of patriotic virtue” (1995, 42).

The contrast be-tween these images andSoviet depictions ofnurses is striking. Goneare the long robes andsanitized scenes. They arereplaced by figures that,in terms of dress, are onlydistinguished from thesoldiers they care for byan armband with a redcross on it (Figure 3).Bolshevik nurses nor-mally appeared in themidst of the fightingrather than in a hospitalsetting far away fromdanger, and they wereexpected to pick up a gunif their male comradesfaltered.

The poster “Com-rades, to Me!” is a goodexample of how women’srole in the Civil War wasofficially remembered inSoviet popular culture adecade or so later. (Figure4) The poster has twofemale figures to note.The first, a nurse who isbandaging a bloody headwound as the fightingcontinues around her, is


Figure 2. World War I–era fundraising postcard. Published by theRed Cross (author’s collection).


Figure 3. 1931 postcard published by Narkompochtel’ (author’s collection).

Figure 4. Late 1920s–early 1930s Soviet poster published by Izdatel’stvo AKhR (author’s collection).

so close to the action that it appears as if a machine gun is being fired next to her. The sec-ond waves a pistol at the enemy and entreats the men forward. The red of her clothes marksher as the most ideologically correct figure in the composition and signifies her allegianceto the revolutionary cause. Another reading of the image could suggest that the woman is apersonification of the revolution itself. However, there is no such connotation in the textthat appears below the image. Instead, the text simply assigns this second woman a leader-ship role in the scene. At a key moment, she takes the initiative to rally the men and, as stan-zas three and four of the poem reveal, her actions are decisive in leading to victory:

But in the middle of us foughtA working woman–hero;Her voice rang out:“Comrades, to me!”

The whole regiment closed behind her,Like an uncontrollable squall,And a red victoryOur regiment won.

Some elements of the language used, particularly in the third stanza, deserve furthercomment. There is an inherent tension in the way the woman is described: she is identifiedas Rabotnitsa-geroi (Working woman–hero) and not as Rabotnitsa-geroina (Workingwoman–heroine). While she is physically gendered as a woman, she is one whose activitieshave also made her a “masculine” hero. Her behavior must have been acceptable, though,since the text emphasizes that it led to a positive outcome: a victory by the Red forces. Inaddition to this tension, the woman is shown to be a “comrade” to the men around her. Whatmakes this last point of particular interest is that scholars of Soviet masculinity have usu-ally argued that the glorified comradeship between Red Army soldiers helped to define theirmasculinity and to exclude women from achieving a similar heroic status. Karen Petrone,for instance, writes that “the unity of the masculine community of soldiers, commissars,and officers was the defining feature of the ideal Soviet army, setting it apart from all ‘impe-rialist’ armies” (2002, 187). Furthermore, Eliot Borenstein, in his study of Soviet literature,argues that “[c]omradeship becomes one of the standard tropes of revolutionary literature,one that fits in with the general privileging of rational, affiliative bonds based on dedicationto the ‘common cause’ rather than sentimental or familial feelings” (2000, 23). He goes onto posit that this replacement of family ties with comradeship was part of an attempted mas-culinization of society. Yet, if this is the case, where does it leave the “working woman–hero”of our poster?

The situation is further complicated when the 1935 film Girlfriends (Podrugi) is con-sidered alongside this discourse of masculinity, comradeship and violence. The film tells thestory of three young girls: Zoia, Asia and Natasha. They grow up surrounded by the grind-ing poverty of a workers’ settlement, a setting that is made even more desolate by the melan-choly, brooding music Dmitrii Shostakovich composed for the film’s score. After a chancemeeting with two revolutionaries, the girls become ideologically conscious and, by the timeof the Civil War, they are ardent Bolsheviks. They train as nurses and, in time, are sent tothe front. In several scenes, the film shows them caring for wounded soldiers even as bat-tles continue to rage around them. Yet there are also moments when the three must fightthe enemy themselves. For instance, in one scene, after loading some wounded Red Armysoldiers onto a train, the women are forced to defend it from an enemy attack. Zoia quickly


comes to the aid of a man firing a machine gun. She seems to know immediately how tofeed the bullets into the weapon correctly. During the scene, the camera zooms in for sev-eral close-ups. Zoia’s determined expression never wavers and she has no visible difficultywith killing the enemy. Her active participation in this battle completely blurs the linebetween combatant and noncombatant. Moreover, her behavior inverts what might be calleda normal description of combat: she assumes the traditional aggressive male role of defender,whereas the wounded soldiers become feminized beings who are unable to protect them-selves. Moreover, her actions were lauded in Pravda’s review of the film, where the authorwrote that the women showed “manliness and courage” in their dangerous face-to-face meet-ings with the enemy (Pravda 16 December 1935, 6).

If Zoia represents Soviet women’s ability to function well in combat situations, it is Asiawho becomes the symbol of the ultimate sacrifice for the nation, and whose death furtherquestions the universal applicability of some ideas concerning Soviet masculinity. Boren-stein found in his analysis of Soviet literature that, “[t]he death of a soldier in the arms ofhis comrade is the stuff of military legend, perhaps the most exalted intimacy among men”(2000, 110). Yet in Girlfriends it is not a male revolutionary or even the male friend of thethree heroines who is killed. Instead, in a scene where she and Zoia are attempting to escapefrom two White soldiers, Asia is shot. The film quickly focuses on the dying young woman.She is soon surrounded by her childhood friends as well as the two revolutionaries whointroduced her to Bolshevik ideas at the start of the film. One of them makes a speech overher body and the filmmakers employ several techniques to lend authority to his words: theactor turns to speak to the audience directly and he is shot in close-up. His speech tellsSoviet women not to forget the women who fought before and to be ready to shoulder anotherfight if the country has need of them. Women’s potential military importance is further sym-bolized in the final shots of the film for the heroines ride at the head of the victorious RedArmy, alongside rather than behind their male comrades.

Equality in the Skies? Soviet Women and Aviation

In The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual, a work considered seminal by historians of Russia,Katerina Clark includes a brief section entitled “The Aviation Hero as the Paradigmatic NewMan.” Clark writes as if all Soviet pilots of the Stalinist era were male and never addressesthe existence of female pilots (2000, 125). Following Clark’s example, a similar approach istaken by John Haynes in his study of Soviet film, New Soviet Man. The bulk of his analysisof Soviet pilots, whom he terms Stalin’s “model sons,” focuses on the 1941 film ValeriiChkalov, and he devotes only one sentence to the achievements of the era’s female pilots(Haynes 2003, 60). In the eyes of these scholars the attention paid to pilots was part of are-masculinization of Soviet culture in the late 1930s and the pilot emerged as the proto-type New Soviet Man. Only one article by Karen Petrone has deviated significantly from thisinterpretation (1999). Yet, as we will see, this exclusive emphasis on men ignores a compet-ing narrative from those years: that of the female pilot. The question must be asked: if apilot is meant to represent the New Soviet Man, what happens when the pilot is a woman?

Female pilots were among the most pervasive images presented to Soviet women by theend of the 1930s. The goal behind the publicity, according to the 1930 five-year plan for thecountry’s paramilitary organization, Osoaviakhim, was to get 20,000 women to join avia-


tion circles and be trained as pilots (Kokorina 1930, 31). Certainly many women did takeup aviation. Reina Pennington found that by 1941, between 25 and 33 percent of pilotstrained in Soviet air clubs were women, and that Soviet women had set more flying recordsthan the female pilots of any other country (2001, 10 and 13). In addition, in 1936, the first“women’s squadron” began training at pilot school. The women’s graduation two years laterwas publicized in the 1 May issue of Rabotnitsa (Working Woman) (Figure 5). The accom-

panying article stated that the women wouldjoin the ranks of the “proud eagles of ourhappy motherland,” and quite explicitlythat, despite being trained for civilian avia-tion, the women would join the ranks of theRed Army if the country was attacked by aforeign enemy (Rabotnitsa 1938 no. 12, 7).The exploits of these women were recountedwidely and all Soviet young girls wereencouraged to believe that they could growup to be pilots (sometimes like their moth-ers) (Figure 6). Over the course of thedecade the female pilot became a stock fig-ure, like the most famous shock workers andStakhanovites, on posters as well (Snopkov2001, 55 and 67). A female pilot was alsoone of the chosen sculptures for the All-Union Art Exhibition “Industry of Social-ism” that eventually opened in 1939 (Figure7). According to Susan Reid, “The ThematicPlan for Industry of Socialism proposedsuch titles as ‘Woman Miner at the Controls’and ‘Cossack Woman Driver!’ Listed under


Figure 5. Graduation photo of the first Soviet female aviation squadron. Rabotnitsa, no. 12 (April1938) (author’s collection).

Figure 6. 1938 sheet music for “Malenkaialetchitsa.” Published by Muzgiz (author’s collec-tion).

the rubric ‘The Country Transformed,’ thesethemes dramatized progress by representing theformerly benighted and invisible sex newly ‘mas-tering’ technology, thus identifying the emanci-pation of women with industrialization andmodernization” (2001, 196–97). As the campaigncontinued, these anonymous prototypes werereplaced with specified, named heroines who weremeant to inspire others to emulate them.

The new type of publicity reached a cre-scendo with the flight of the Rodina in 1938. In thefall of that year, three well-known female aviators(Marina Raskova, Polina Osipenko and ValentinaGrizodubova) attempted to set a new long-dis-tance flight record by flying without refueling fromMoscow to the Far East. In addition to extensivedaily newspaper coverage, the exploits of thewomen were commemorated in book form (inboth Russian and English), as well as with a spe-cial postcard, a documentary film, and a series ofthree postage stamps (Brontman and Khvat 1938;Belitskii and Glezer 1986, 55; Petrone 1999, 23)(Figure 8). A poster was issued showing thewomen in flight helmets and wearing their mili-tary uniforms, complete with decorations (HooverInstitution Archives, Poster Collection, CatalogueNo. RU/SU 1816). As part of the composition, theposter reprinted the text of telegrams exchangedbetween the women and high-ranking Commu-

nist Party officials in the course of their return to Moscow. On the left-hand side of the image,Stalin appears, drawn at least twice as large as the women he looks toward. The inclusion ofStalin, as well as the Kremlin clock tower behind him and the telegrams, demonstrates thesanction that the Soviet leadership gave to women’s aviation at the very highest levels.


Figure 7. 1940 postcard of “Devushka —pilot” sculpture by V.V. Ellonen. The post-card is part of a series showing the worksthat were exhibited at the 1939 All-UnionArt Exhibition “Industry of Socialism”(author’s collection).

Figure 8. 1939 postage stamps commemorating the Rodina flight (author’s collection).

That is not all, for the three women were lionized by the country’s leading women’s mag-azines as well. Between 1936 and 1939, Rabotnitsa made reference to at least one of thewomen in more than 10 percent of its total issues. They appeared on the cover four times,and the magazine included the announcement of the award of Orders of Lenin to the womenfor their accomplishments (Rabotnitsa 1938 no. 17, no. 21, no. 29, no. 32; Rabotnitsa 1938no. 32, 2). Krest’ianka (Peasant Woman) began by publicizing an earlier flight from Sevastopolto Archangel by Raskova, Osipenko and Vera Lomako. In a fashion similar to the poster thatwould be issued after the Rodina flight, the initial article in Krest’ianka reprinted the women’stelegrams to and from party leaders, and contained a photograph of each one in her flightgear (Krest’ianka 1938 no. 15, 17). The next three issues all contained copious images devotedto women and aviation: two of the three covers depicted female pilots; the commendationawarding the Order of Lenin to Raskova, Osipenko and Lomako was reprinted; and a vari-ety of other articles and photographs were published. Only five issues later, the Rodina flightcoverage began in Krest’ianka, and it continued into the next year.

The fame of Raskova, Grizodubova and Osipenko rivaled that of the greatest male pilotsof the day and calls into question the notion that aviation was solely a hotbed of Soviethyper-masculinity. Two other points reinforce this question. First, aviation cannot be thesole preserve of men if women’s magazines such as Rabotnitsa and Krest’ianka, and even theRostov-on-Don magazine Khleborobka (Female Grain Worker) at the regional level, ranappeals to build or buy aircraft in the name of their readers (Khleborobka 1929 no. 19, 10;Novikova 1964, 239–45). Rabotnitsa certainly mounted an effective mass campaign to doso. The advertisements calling for donations ran on the magazine’s back cover nineteen timesin 1933 and five times in 1934. Once the plane was bought, the magazine proudly ran anarticle about it (Rabotnitsa 1934 no. 23, 8–9). The money had been raised through dona-tions from the magazine’s female readership across the country, and the article went on spe-cifically to mention the involvement of working women, the wives of workers, housewives,and the wives of Red Army commanders in the campaign. Unlike lottery tickets or govern-ment bonds, which were often purchased under duress after people had been subjected topressure at work, these contributions would have been private, voluntary affairs. They indi-cate that there must have been a sizeable and serious interest in aviation on the part of Sovietwomen since a total of 100,000 rubles was ultimately raised. The magazine also emphasizedthat this should not be viewed as an isolated event. Instead, a mass movement of womeninto aviation was envisaged. A heading, printed entirely in capital letters, ran above themain article. It read: “There must not be one plant or collective farm, not one factory, wherethere are not aviation, glider and parachuting circles, where youth does not master the heightsof aviation culture” (Rabotnitsa 1934 no. 23, 8–9).

The second point concerns the publicity given to Polina Osipenko when she and fel-low pilot Anatolii Serov were killed in an aviation accident in May 1939. In a sign of gen-der equality, the two pilots were given a joint funeral. The details of the day underscore themagnitude of the event. As was the case when famous pilot Valerii Chkalov was killed a yearearlier, the most important Communist Party officials were actively involved. Osipenko andSerov’s pallbearers included Stalin, Andreev, Shevchenko and Molotov. The ashes of thepilots were interned in the Kremlin Wall. The significance of this location cannot be over-estimated: it was a sacred space in Soviet culture and marked one of the highest honors thatcould be granted to someone, since it meant that the person was immortalized alongside themost heroic figures of the Bolshevik Party, and in close proximity to Lenin’s mausoleum.


Rabotnitsa’s announcement of Osipenko’s death, and its coverage of the funeral, pres-ents a rather contradictory and imbalanced picture, though (Rabotnitsa 1939 no. 15, 6–7).The first page shows portraits of Osipenko and Serov outlined with a thick black border aswas typical in Soviet obituaries in the 1930s. Serov’s photograph captures him in militaryuniform with his awards prominently displayed and with a serious expression on his face.On the other hand, no reference is made to Osipenko’s military rank (she was a major at thetime of her death) since she is shown in civilian clothes and in an informal setting. If thesehad been the only photographs used, it would appear to the viewer that Serov symbolizedthe determined defender of the country while Osipenko might not have been a pilot at all.However, there is an additional photograph of Osipenko on the next page. She is shown infull flight gear about to climb into her plane. The photograph conveys a sense of action andcompetence, and is jarringly different from the very static image of Serov that is presentedto the viewer.

The text of Rabotnitsa’s obituary also contains some imbalanced elements. The overallnarrative structure of the article describes the lives of the pilots in a similar fashion: theirbackgrounds are briefly mentioned, the reader is then informed about how both came to bepilots, and about their achievements in aviation. Patriotism and love of country are empha-sized throughout. There are some noticeable differences, however, in the way that the twopilots are written about. The section on Osipenko conveys a more exalted tone and uses asizeable number of superlatives. For instance, the opening paragraph reads: “And who doesnot know the wonderful daughter of the people Polina Osipenko?! It seems as if only yes-terday her courageous [muzhestvennye] voice sounded forward to new victories.” The heav-ily emotive style is also visible in the use of punctuation in the above passage. A similaremphatic style appears towards the end of the obituary. It says: “Heavy loss! Great grief ofthe Soviet people! Yet at this sorrowful hour we know that in the country where Osipenkogrew up, there are hundreds of thousands of women growing up who will follow the won-derful, brilliant example of Polina.” The prose used to describe the achievements of Serov,on the other hand, is more muted and appears without exclamation marks.

As one can see from the passages just quoted, the obituary assigns an inspirational roleto Osipenko. The same message is given in a letter that is also included on the two-pagespread. The letter is from three young women and they refer to Osipenko as an “example ofcourage [muzhestvo] and heroism,” both in the title and in the body of the letter. In it, theyfurther describe Osipenko as “one of the best of Stalin’s falcons.” This widely used expres-sion has been picked up by scholars who write about Soviet aviation history and is usuallyapplied to the outstanding male pilots. For example, Von Hardesty, in his introduction toBaidukov’s memoir of Valerii Chkalov, writes, “Soviet aviators, trumpeted by the Sovietmedia as ‘Stalin’s Falcons,’ became the object of public adulation. Their image in official prop-aganda was invariantly positive, as embodiments of the ‘New Soviet Man.’ The public quicklycame to view them as exemplars of modernity and heroism” (Hardesty 1991, 3). The threewomen conclude by saying that they dream of being like Osipenko: “Her shining examplewill be for us a symbol of courage [muzhestvo], heroism, struggle and victory.” This lettertangibly links Osipenko with inspiration of a mass movement of women in aviation and sug-gests that she lives on in spirit to guide other women. No such role is assigned to Serovaccording to the Rabotnitsa coverage. The letter from the three women does not even men-tion him and the magazine does not print another devoted to him. He becomes simply theman killed in a crash with Osipenko.


Soviet Women Defend against Internal Enemies

Since threats to the country did not necessarily have to come from abroad, it was deemedimportant for Soviet women to be on the lookout for potential trouble closer to home aswell. One strain of visual materials in the 1930s had Soviet women defending against all kindsof domestic enemies. This theme was particularly noticeable in Soviet films: at least fourfemale-driven films contained scenes where the heroine was instrumental in preventing sab-otage with little assistance from men. Given Stalin’s close supervision of the Soviet filmindustry and its products, it can be inferred that members of the regime at the very highestlevel approved of these messages and sought to encourage the vigilance of Soviet women(Alliluyeva 1967, 144–45; Alliluyeva 1969, 413; Mar’iamov 1992). Moreover, Soviet films fol-lowed the pattern established on political posters, since they only showed this role for women,meaning of course that films did not present storylines with women cast as the primary vil-lains (Bonnell 1997, 191). Sheila Fitzpatrick argues, with respect to the countryside, that theabsence of female villains had to do with the power structure in the villages: because menwere seen to be more powerful, they were obviously more of a threat to the regime (1994,183). By mobilizing women to counter these male threats, however, such depictions are, infact, inverting that very power structure. Women become the most important ally of the newstate and neutralize the power of men to disrupt its plans.

Grigorii Aleksandrov’s The Bright Path (Svetlyi put’, 1940) contains arguably the mostgratuitous of these scenes. In the film, the heroine, played by Soviet screen legend Liubov’Orlova, helps to capture an arsonist who sets fire to a factory on New Year’s Eve. She notonly argues with him, but engages him in a physical fight as well. By restraining him untilthe authorities can arrive, Orlova’s character has literally, as well as symbolically, defeatedthe enemy in combat, and reversed the outcome that one would most likely expect in a fightbetween a man and a woman. Since Fedya the arsonist was not mentioned or seen in thefilm until this point, it appears that the scene was introduced for the sole purpose of empha-sizing the vigilance of the heroine.

A similar scene in Girl with Character (Devushka s kharakterom, 1939) is also jarringlydisjointed from the rest of the film’s narrative. In this instance, the film opens with the hero-ine, a state farm worker, capturing a bandit in her loft and marching him at gunpoint tothe authorities. When he attempts to escape, the heroine pushes him into a stream, and bythe time the policemen finally arrive they find the heroine bobbing the bandit up and downin the water by his hair. Once the scene ends, the film’s main storylines begin and no fur-ther reference is made to Katya’s heroics. However, the scene’s importance in the eyes of theauthorities is underscored by the fact that the poster used to publicize the film made refer-ence to it and not to any other elements of the plot (Snopkov 2001, 65). The poster featureda close-up of the heroine’s face and the text reads: “The film shows the life and work of oneof the many millions of our young women–patriots of the motherland. Katya Ivanova, statefarm worker, persistently and heroically fights with saboteurs and wreckers, [and] achievesthe unmasking of base enemies.” What the poster does not reveal to the viewer is that thisincident has little to do with the narrative of the film, which is about a woman from the FarEast who journeys to Moscow where she succeeds in a number of jobs before meeting anotherwoman who inspires her to return to the Far East. The woman who inspires Katya to returnhome is undoubtedly meant to represent Valentina Khetagurova. Khetagurova became thefigurehead of a 1930s campaign to address the massive gender imbalance in the Far East.


Thousands of young, unmarried Soviet women were encouraged to move eastward, both tohelp build new socialist outposts and potentially find husbands (Shulman 2003).

Peasant women were not overlooked either. They too were presented with an on-screenrole model who battles subversive elements. This choice of story was not unique for, as ChoiChatterjee writes in her analysis of Soviet heroines of the 1930s: “This basic theme of thelone heroine pitted against a foolish and improvident village formed the principal narrativefor the biographies of Soviet [agricultural] heroines” (2001, 55). The fight against the kulak(more prosperous peasants, portrayed by the regime as greedy and grasping and as opposedto Soviet values) is at the very heart of The Peasants (Krest’iane, 1934) since the heroine,Varvara Nechaeva, has to struggle constantly against their influence. By the end of the filmshe has paid a high price for her devotion to the Soviet state since her marriage has beendestroyed and she has been killed by her husband (who turns out to be a kulak). In life, Var-vara is depicted as a vocal opponent of any ideas that undermine the new collective farm.For instance, she is shown resisting a kulak-inspired plan to reduce the size of the collectivefarm’s herd of pigs, and her protests are so vehement that she is threatened with expulsionfrom the very collective that she is trying to protect. With this behavior, Varvara defies tra-ditional Russian gender roles for peasant women by publicly arguing with male authorityfigures at a meeting of the collective. In reality, peasant women faced tremendous hostility,in the form of curses and ridicule, if they tried to speak out at such meetings (Buckley 2006;McDermid and Hillyar 1998, 192). Moreover, the film also diverges from reality simply bypresenting a woman as such an ardent supporter of the collective. As Tracy McDonald notesin her analysis of a peasant rebellion during collectivization, “Peasant women were at theforefront of protest in Pitelinskii, just as they were across the rest of the Soviet Union dur-ing collectivization. Peasant men and women took advantage of the traditional view of womenas less threatening and less politically responsible than men. Men were much more likely tobe arrested for protest than women and tended to stay on the sidelines unless the womenwere threatened” (2002, 101). The film suggests instead that Soviet women were firm back-ers of the state, and they could be called upon to behave in radically new ways in order tofight threats from internal enemies.

After Varvara has been murdered, her fight against the kulak moves into the purelyinspirational realm, but she continues to thwart enemies of the state from beyond the grave.The head of the political department uses the opportunity to point out that Varvara was rightto fight the plan to reduce the size of the collective’s herd of pigs. The film then cuts to ascene showing the villagers working to clear virgin lands so that the farm will generateenough feed for all of the pigs and there will be no more talk of reducing the size of the herd.Furthermore, in a gesture that seals Varvara’s symbolic leadership role, the collective farmis renamed after her.

In the film Komsomol’sk (1938), Soviet women’s alliance with the state extends to thesecret police. The end of the film focuses on the plots and activities of a group of saboteurs.By then the other major storylines have concluded: the new city of Komsomol’sk-na-Amurein Siberia has been built, the heroine has reconciled with her husband and she has retreatedinto a comfortable domestic life. This idyll is disturbed during a tea party. Natasha, the film’sheroine, has gone to check on her son when she discovers one of the saboteurs in her apart-ment. He has had a falling out with his comrades and turns to Natasha for assistance. Sheresponds by returning her child to his crib and leaving him to the care of her guests. Shealso telephones the secret police (NKVD) before leaving to track down the arch-villain in a


nearby forest. This moment is a telling onesince the heroine does not pause to look upthe number for the NKVD or ask the oper-ator to connect her. The film instead makesit seem that phoning the NKVD is an every-day occurrence, and thereby suggests thatthe heroine may have existing ties to thesecret police and that she certainly possessesa degree of comfort in dealing with its rep-resentatives. This aspect of the film is not asfar-fetched as it might seem. Recent work byV. I. Berezhkov and S. V. Pekhtereva has pro-vided information about women whoworked for the Soviet secret police (Berezh-kov and Pekhtereva 2003). More generally,Orlando Figes’ latest book considers thedecision-making process of everyday Sovietcitizens who decided to denounce or informon others. Figes also demonstrates that thesephenomena were quite widespread, althoughprecise statistics are still lacking (Figes2007). In terms of Soviet-era propaganda,the cover from a 1927 issue of Revets maga-zine also suggests that women were expectedto play a significant role in this side of Sovietlife (Figure 9). The image clearly assigns Soviet women a role in the secret police, and nota marginalized one at that. The woman in the illustration is armed with the same rifle as themen and her facial expression is in no way different from theirs. The men are not protect-ing a helpless female. Rather the illustration is one of equals.

To return to Komsomol’sk, the film proceeds to show Natasha hiking up her dress, wad-ing through water and struggling with dense foliage as she determinedly chases her prey.Again a screen heroine has to subdue the enemy physically. This fight scene, however, ismore serious than comic since, unlike in The Bright Path or Girl with Character, it culmi-nates with Natasha shooting the saboteur. This section of the film’s narrative underscoresthe alliance between Soviet women and the state: Soviet women could be called upon at anytime if they were needed and might have to behave in extraordinary new ways to protecttheir “joyous” new way of life. Moreover, these films can be seen as just one way that Sovietofficials attempted, in the words of Sarah Ashwin, “to construct a particular set of genderrelations—a triangular set of relations in which the primary relationship of individual menand women was to the state rather than to each other” (2000, 1–2).

A Final Attack on Masculinity? Militarizing Housewives

The state’s intrusion into the domestic sphere at the end of Komsomol’sk is less startlingwhen it is seen alongside a discussion of military preparedness and the “wives’ volunteer”movement. By the end of the film, Natasha is focused on domestic concerns and her life epit-


Figure 9. July 1927 cover of Revets magazineencouraging viewers to join the secret police(author’s collection).

omizes the cultured lifestyle that the wives were encouraged to promote to the rest of thepopulation. Yet domesticity was not equated with passivity, despite the fact that some schol-ars have chosen to see the movement as the culmination of a drive to refeminize Sovietwomen or to turn them into symbolic mothers of the whole country (Schrand 2002; Hoff-mann 2003; Balmas Neary 1999). An examination of Obshchestvennitsa (Socially-ActiveWoman), the periodical created for the movement in August 1936, suggests that it provideda variety of roles for the women and not all of those roles would have been considered tra-ditionally feminine. Alongside images of women beautifying factories or establishing crèchesare found a large number of photographs celebrating women workers, particularlyStakhanovites, and women who are participating in defense-related activities. It is the lat-ter images that are germane for our current discussion.

The coverage of Soviet women and defense was rather muted the first year thatObshchestvennitsa was published, with only one issue containing any suggestion that womenshould acquire military skills (Obshchestvennitsa 1936 nos. 7–8, 13–15, 33, and 34–35). Thefollowing year, however, saw an explosion of such images. Eleven of eighteen issues featuredat least one item linking women to defense-related skills. Photographs depicted womenlearning to wear gas masks, using all kinds of firearms, parachuting and flying airplanes.Several issues also ran more in-depth articles. For instance, in February, the issue celebrat-ing Red Army Day not only contained a general article on women in the armed forces, buta feature on Margarita Leshchinskaia, a combat engineer and recipient of the Order of theRed Banner of Labor (Obshchestvennitsa 1937 no. 4, 5–6 and 24–25). Other issues told thestory of a female sea captain, Anna Shchetinina, and contained an article by Polina Osipenko,which made sure to mention her then military rank of lieutenant and included a photographof her in her military uniform (Obshchestvennitsa 1937 no. 12, 16–17; no. 14, 18–19).

The demands of defense continued to be an important and consistent theme in Obshch-estvennitsa as the war approached. Often pieces were quite explicit in linking women withdefense. The headline of a 1938 article read “Be Ready to Defend the Motherland” and, ifthat was not obvious enough, a photograph of women with rifles was used to illustrate it(Obshchestvennitsa 1938 no. 2, 33). The following year, the head of the air force, V.S. Molokov,contributed an article entitled “What We Expect from Obshchestvennitsy in 1939” (Obshch-estvennitsa 1939 no. 2, 17–18). Items such as these indicate that the women involved in the“wives’ volunteer movement” were expected to concern themselves with more than justdomestic affairs.

The coverage in Obshchestvennitsa was only part of an overall campaign to identify thewives’ volunteer movement with the defense of the country. Another example was Boevyepodrugi, the volume prepared to commemorate the activities of the wives of Red Army com-manders. The book was published in 1936, long before historian Sheila Fitzpatrick suggeststhat a shift in the emphasis of the movement took place (Fitzpatrick 1999, 160). The book’stitle alone is suggestive, since the adjective boevoi carries connotations of “fighting,” “bat-tle,” “militant,” “determined” and “unyielding” in Russian—qualities that are usually asso-ciated with masculinity. Since podrugi refers to “female friends,” there is an internal tensionbetween the words in the title. A “masculine” adjective qualifies a “feminine” noun. More-over, this is not the only instance in the book of such usage. For example, in a section detail-ing mountain-climbing expeditions undertaken by the wives, the women are referred to inthe same way as the female pilots discussed earlier. They are called “manly [muzhestvennye],remarkable women” and “bold [smelye], manly [muzhestvennye] and strong people” (Boevye


podrugi 1936, 97). A few pages later a group of women caught in a storm during a boatingexcursion are said to acquire the characteristics of “valor [muzhestvo],” “boldness [smelost’]”and “hardiness [vynoslivost’]” (Boevye podrugi 1936, 100).

Other aspects of the book add to the mixed messages imparted by this use of language.For instance, it should be noted that the first chapter of the book does not deal with activ-ities that are commonly associated with the “wives’ volunteer movement.” Instead, the open-ing section is entitled “school of manliness” (shkola muzhestva) and the reader is presentedwith descriptions of wives who fought alongside their husbands during the Civil War. Later,in the chapter devoted to women and the defense of the country, the sketch describing thefemale mountain climbers mentioned above opens with a reference to guarding the coun-try’s borders against enemy attacks. One of the climbers says: “Together with them [theirhusbands] we want to participate actively in the defense of the country. We know: a thirdof Soviet borders are mountainous borders. We need cadres of mountain climbers, moun-tain guides and scouts [razvedchikov]” (Boevye podrugi 1936, 96). According to Haynes’sstudy of masculinity and Soviet film, the border guard was a key symbol of masculinity atthe time and it has been co-opted here by women who are supposed to be the most femi-nine of all (2003, 71 and 182). The women themselves appear to have been aware that theywere transgressing gender norms with their behavior. Vera Fedorova, a world record holderin parachuting whose exploits are also recounted in the volume, describes the local reactionto her record-setting jump: “The first to see me were the children. They surrounded me.The collective farmers came running. Everyone thought that I was a man. And when theyrealized that I was a woman, they were astonished and complimented me. They said: mis-chievous woman [bedovaia baba]” (Boevye podrugi 1936, 90).

Conclusion

The 1930s images discussed in this paper all give Soviet women an active role in the defenseof their country. Soviet women’s participation in Civil War battles was memorialized andheld up as behavior that might be needed again in the future. They were expected to taketo the skies alongside the nation’s male pilots and the hunt for internal enemies alsodemanded their attention. Finally, since even the “wives’ volunteer movement” containedsuch images, it becomes clear that defense was to be undertaken by all Soviet women. Becausethe examples in this article are drawn from a wide array of media, they suggest that imagesof women defending the USSR, or obtaining the skills necessary to do so, were presentedconsistently throughout the decade. The images call into question the universal applicabil-ity of some theories of Soviet masculinity as well. If pilots, Civil War soldiers and borderguards were meant to epitomize the New Soviet Man and to embody key characteristics suchas muzhestvo, then the situation becomes more complicated when a rival narrative has thesepositions held by women and uses the same language to describe them.

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Masha Grab Your Gun: 1930s Images of Soviet Women and the Defense of Their Country

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