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Women in the Home

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Women in the Khrushchev Era

Part of the book series: Studies in Russian and East European History and Society ((SREEHS))

Abstract

In a painting of 1952, Aleksandr Laktionov depicted a ‘typical’ (that is, exemplary) Soviet family Moving in to a New Flat (Figure 8.1). The new occupants are surrounded by their belongings — a radio, a plant, a globe, posters and piles of books — all of which speak of the family’s attention to culture and education. Yet before these attributes can be unpacked and put in their places the first question that has to be resolved is where to hang the photo-portrait of Stalin, who, as the personification of the Soviet state, is the provider of this bounty. The flat is large and well appointed, with a high ceiling, double glass doors, quality wallpaper and a parquet floor. The lucky head of household who has received this blessing is a woman. While the absence of a father reflects post-war demographic reality — women outnumbered men by 20 million — it is also symbolic. His rightful place next to mother and son is taken by Stalin’s portrait. The composition is structured on the relation between this focal point and the columnar figure of the woman, who occupies the central, vertical axis of the painting.

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Notes

  1. See J. Guldberg, ‘Socialist Realism as Institutional Practice: Observations on the Interpretation of the Works of Art of the Stalin Period’, in H. Gunther (ed.), The Culture of the Stalin Period (Basingstoke, 1990), pp. 169–70; S. Boym, Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life (Cambridge, Mass., 1994); and V. Dunham, In Stalin’s Time: Middle-Class Values in Soviet Fiction (Cambridge, 1976), ch. 3. 2 Foreign visitors to the Soviet Union in the 1950s remarked on the incongruous persistence of a bourgeois ideal of comfort in actual Soviet interiors, public and private. See S. R. Rau, My Russian Journey (New York, 1959), p. 5. 3 Dunham, op. cit., p. 41. 4 Ibid., p. 42. 5 On kul’turnost’ - literally ‘culturedness’ — see ibid.; C. Kelly and D. Volkov, ‘Directed Desires: Kul’turnost’ and Consumption’, pp. 22–3, in C. Kelly and D. Shepherd (eds), Constructing Russian Culture (Oxford, 1998), pp. 291–313; Boym, op. cit.; S. Fitzpatrick, ‘Becoming Cultured: Socialist Realism and the Representation of Privilege and Taste’, in The Cultural Front (Ithaca, 1992), pp. 216–37, and Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism (New York, 1999), ch. 4. 6 Dunham, op. cit., p. 42. 7 See, for example, Henry Art Gallery (Seattle), Art into Life: Russian Constructivism, 1914–1932, exh. cat. (Seattle, 1990); N. Lebina, Povsednevnaya zhizn’ sovetskogo goroda: normy i anomalii. 1920/1930 gody (St Petersburg, 1999); A. Gorsuch, Youth in Revolutionary Russia: Enthusiasts, Bohemians, Delinquents (Bloomington, 2000); and O. Matich, ‘Remaking the Bed: Utopia in Daily Life’, in J. Bowlt and O. Matich (eds), Laboratory of Dreams (Stanford, 1996), pp. 59–78. 8 See K. Kettering, “Ever more Cosy and Comfortable”: Stalinism and the Soviet Domestic Interior, 1928–1938’, Journal of Design History, vol. 10, no. 2, 1997, pp. 119–36; V. Buchli, An Archaeology of Socialism (Oxford, 1999), pp. 177–8; and Boym, op. cit., pp. 35–40. 9 RGALI, f. 2943, op. 1, ed. khr. 173, 1. 17. See S. Reid, ‘All Stalin’s Women: Gender and Power in Soviet Art of the 1930s’, Slavic Review, vol. 57, no. 1, 1998, pp. 133–73.

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  1. Susan E. Reid
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Gloucestershire, UK

    Melanie Ilič

  2. The University of Birmingham, UK

    Melanie Ilič

  3. University of Sheffield, UK

    Susan E. Reid

  4. University of Manchester, UK

    Lynne Attwood

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© 2004 Melanie Ilič, Susan E. Reid & Lynne Attwood

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Reid, S.E. (2004). Women in the Home. In: Ilič, M., Reid, S.E., Attwood, L. (eds) Women in the Khrushchev Era. Studies in Russian and East European History and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523432_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523432_9

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