The Treatment of Women in Stalinist Propaganda

The Treatment of Women in Stalinist Propaganda
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The chronological account of events of the Soviet Union under the reign of the socialist dictator Stalin features violent repression and oppression leading to the killing of millions of people and the exiling of tens of thousands of people in search of political asylum from the ruthless regime. Stalin’s regime was also characteristic of a prevalent system of forced labor, police controls, indiscriminate imprisonment of individuals and groups, and widespread restrictions assembly, organization, and all kinds of public speech. The one-party communist system dictated over the diverse aspects of the social, political, and economic domains of the Soviet society. The dictator’s communist party oversaw the development and implementation of policies and key decisions pertaining to foreign relations, political appointments, and even cultural activities. Stalin’s demand for unquestionable loyalty reigned supreme among both the political elite and the peasant populations in the country sides. The ruthless dictator’s reign of fear and terror allowed him unrestricted access instruments and tools of consolidating his power, such as the diverse media channels. For instance, Stalin embarked on widespread use of iconography as the key medium for promulgating his communist ideals and perceived milestones of his government in fostering the country’s social, political, and economic development. The often misleading interpretations of communist teachings, ideas, and political opinions were integrated with country’s socialist ideologies defining the social, political, and economic domains of the Soviet Union. It suffices, therefore, that Stalin embraced propagandist approach in convincing and instructing the masses on his repressive and utterly oppressive regime coined as Stalinism. Through government control over every media including film, literature, journalism, and art or iconography, the Soviet government embraced diverse propaganda techniques to consolidate its power and oppressive dominion over the people. This paper provides explores the treatment of women in Stalinist propaganda highlighting the different roles of women in the Soviet Union state’s propaganda techniques from 1925-1953.[Liu, C. 2019. "Stalin's "New Soviet Woman"." Socialogy Mind 247-257.] [Reid, S. E. 1998. "All Stalin's Women: Gender and Power in Soviet Art of the 1930s." Slavic Review 133-173.]
Background
The widespread use of equally diverse propagandist techniques thrived on the fact that most of the post-Revolution Soviet population was illiterate. The post-Revolution Bolshevik regime was characteristic of widespread use of visual propaganda to communicate the new government’s ideals to the Russian population. Among such propagandist techniques embraced by the Bolshevik government was the allegorical depictions of women around 1917-1920. However, in the early 1920s the visual propagandist representations of women took a new direction with new depictions of women as peasants and workers. The shift towards propagandist representations of peasant women from the 1920s was a result ...