Naisekuju nõukogude ja eesti identiteedi kandjana.... 41

Images of Women as the Signifiers stituted a battleground of representation in the of the Soviet and National Identity hands of official visual propaganda. At the in Estonian Socialist Realist Painting same time, one has to pay attention to how and Graphic Art certain images of women continued to per- Katrin Kivimaa petuate – although to a lesser extent – old gen- Summary der ideologies which in Estonian context could be also read as pro-national and anti-Soviet. Abstract: This article will look at changes Socialist realism in Estonia is usually di- in post-Second-World-war Estonian vided into two different periods: the first lasts painting and graphic art, effected by the from 1944 to 1948 and is characterised by introduction of the socialist realist canon. moderate ideological and administrative pres- Predominantly, it poses questions about sure; the second period starts in 1948 when representational transformations designed the control and repression of cultural life in- to construct the new identity of the Soviet creased. This was the product of high Stalin- Estonian woman, using the examples of ism in the arts known as Zhdanovshchina1, the images of working women and of the usually dated from 1946-1956 when the Com- ethnographic image of the nation-as-a- munist Party attempted to gain total control woman. The discussion of those images over cultural life. In Estonia the era of cul- will concentrate on how different repre- tural repressions culminated in 1950, with sentations of femininity were utilised for the infamous VIII plenary of the Central Com- the purposes of official visual propaganda, mittee of the Estonian Communist Party, and first of all. At the same time, one has to continued almost unchanged for even a cou- pay attention to how certain images of ple of years after Stalin’s death.2 In local his- women continued to perpetuate – al- though to a lesser extent – old gender 1 This period in Soviet culture is named after Andrei Zhdanov, General Secretary of the Communist Party ideologies which in Estonian context could in Leningrad and the member of the Politburo, whose be also read as pro-national and anti-Soviet. speeches reconfirmed the central requirements of Soviet socialist realist culture and strongly criticised traces of ’formalism’ and foreign influences. The Keywords: Estonian socialist realist art, period was characterised by various campaigns representations of women, visualisation of against ’cosmopolitanism’, ’impressionism’, the national and Soviet identities ’formalism’, ’nationalism’, etc. in a culture which not only put artists’ professional activities, but also their lives, under threat. On Zhdanovshchina see, for This article will look at changes in post-Sec- example: M. C. Bown, Art under Stalin. Oxford: ond-World-war Estonian painting and graph- Phaidon, 1991, pp. 204–225. ic art, effected by the introduction of the so- 2 S. Helme, J. Kangilaski, Lühike eesti kunsti ajalugu. Tallinn: Kunst, 1999, p. 125, 136. Periods of cialist realist canon. Predominantly, it poses Estonian art of the early Soviet era are usually questions about representational transforma- divided as follows: 1940–1941 1st year of Soviet tions designed to construct the new identity occupation; 1941–1944 German occupation; 1944– 1948 legitimisation of Soviet power in art, propaga- of the Soviet Estonian woman. Using the tion of socialist realism; 1948–1955 the high period examples of the images of working women of Stalinism in arts; 1955 progressive changes, first and of the ethnographic image of the nation- in architecture followed slightly later in the visual arts (J. Kangilaski, Okupeeritud Eesti kunstiajaloo as-a-woman, I intend to demonstrate how periodiseermine. – J. Kangilaski, Kunstist, Eestist ja different representations of femininity con- eesti kunstist. Tartu: Ilmamaa, 2000, pp. 232–233). 42 Katrin Kivimaa torical narratives the accounts of the cultural women. One of the outcomes of this process production of the socialist realist period are of re-imagining the narrative structures and generally overshadowed by the repressions symbolic imagery used to represent Soviet that took place in society at large. Also the women during the 1930s was the creation of reception of the art of the period is shaped Soviet labour heroines, symbolic figures that by a history of institutional and representa- became central to the Stalinist discourse about tional restrictions imposed on art, as well as women.5 Women’s professional identity and by that of political repressions. participation in social production made them By the time socialist realism was intro- generally the most legitimate objects of rep- duced into Estonian art, it was a ready-made resentation in visualisations of Soviet femi- product with a clearly defined artistic style ninity. The ’New Soviet Woman’ was evoked and repertoire of imagery. Consequently, the as ’a liberated, reconstructed persona who process of transformation of Estonian art symbolised progress’.6 culture was meant to transport both the sty- In Estonian art of the socialist realist pe- listic devices and iconography of Russian riod, normative representations of working socialist realism into an Estonian context. women were introduced in three major gen- The re-orientation of cultural and ideologi- res: firstly, representations of women en- cal influences was made most explicit in rep- gaged in the working process; secondly, as resentations of a new, Soviet identity organ- portrait imagery of the exemplary or so-call- ised around the concept of class. These rep- ed ’front-rank’ workers; and finally, as indi- resentations included a whole array of iconic vidualised portraits, usually of the representa- images of working-class women, a tradition tives of other professions, most often intel- that had been practically non-existent in the lectuals. Women were sometimes included pre-war Estonian art.3 in the scenes of industrial production, al- The basic premises of representations of though the industrial sphere was predomi- Soviet women were modelled, firstly, on the nantly occupied by male bodies. Since the class structure of the Soviet state, and sec- ondly, on the notion of the equality of the 3 Armin Tuulse’s overview about representations of sexes. Naturally, these two coordinates of labour in Estonian art does not name a single image of a female industrial worker although working representation interacted and reinforced each women appear in scenes of agricultural or domestic other but it was class, not gender, that sup- labour (A. Tuulse, Töö eesti kunstis. – Looming plied the fundamental conceptual framework.4 1941, no. 1, pp. 31–40). Under the conditions of socialism, seen as a 4 V. E. Bonnell, The Representation of Women in Early Soviet Political Art. – Russian Review 1991, transitory social formation, part of the pro- Vol. 50, p. 287. This essay demonstrates how gender gression towards a communist society, the was subordinated to class from the onset of Soviet class structure of the USSR was divided into visual art. Even though Bonnell distinguishes three: the leading classes of the proletariat between propaganda art of the pre-1930s and that of the 1930s, one could generalise and say that the and the peasantry, with an inner hierarchy notion of class defined the framework for most of the between them, and a third class, the service- Soviet art. providers, i.e. the white-collar sector, doc- 5 C. Chatterjee, Soviet Heroines and the Language tors, intellectuals, teachers, etc. These class of Modernity, 1930–39. – Women in the Stalin Era. Ed. M. Ilic. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001, p. 49. divisions and professional identities became 6 C. Chatterjee, Soviet Heroines and the Language increasingly important in representations of of Modernity, p. 52. Naisekuju nõukogude ja eesti identiteedi kandjana.... 43 early period of socialist realism, the artists heroic or exemplary participant in the proc- often continued to pursue the iconographic ess of socialist labour. traditions of pre-war art, the earliest exam- However, the large compositions of indus- ples of working women did not differ much trial production or mechanisation of agricul- from traditional depictions of female partici- ture made use of mostly male bodies and pation in rural labour. there are almost no examples of heroic work- In 1945, one of the leading ideologues of ing woman in Estonian art. The emancipa- the new order, the writer Johannes Semper tory promise Soviet ideology offered for wom- complained in his article that it was difficult en and women’s changing realities was first to recognise what precisely would differen- expressed in works of lesser importance, such tiate a contemporary work of art, such as the as portraits or genre painting which depicted representation of a harvest from a similar female industrial workers. Current Estonian picture from ten years before.7 His criticism art history tends to interpret those images of could be well applied to such works as Ri- women workers, or women collective farm- chard Uutmaa’s ’Rye-Cutters’ (1941). This ers for historical reasons as purely propagan- painting, which shows the peasant women distic. In this context, it is rather difficult to working on the field during late-summer har- ask the question as to what effect this offi- vesting, was produced during the first year cially directed process of visualising Soviet of Soviet occupation. Although trying to fit Estonian femininity had on women’s lives. with requirements of realism and represen- Within the context of Soviet colonisation tation of labour, it continued a tradition of that was linked to the importation of an in- idealising rural lifestyle and village environ- dustrial labour force, it is not surprising that ment that was widespread in pre-war Esto- images of industrial women gradually be- nian art. It also evoked a traditional, rural, came understood as the signifiers par excel- and non-progressive image of femininity that lence of a colonising Soviet regime. In the did not convey the specificity of the Soviet collective memory of ethnic Estonians they New Woman. became aligned with the state, and with So- The painting by Voldemar Väli ’A. Oade, viet ideology. By extension, the ideals of a Exemplary Worker of the Fishermen’s Col- gender equality that the images of working lective Farm ’Soviet Partisan” (1951) presents women were designed to represent were seen the viewer with a radically different type of as essentially Soviet, i.e. non-Estonian. Only rural femininity. The painting itself is in per- recently, as feminist discourse has filtered fect agreement with the requirements of so- into Estonian art history, has it been made cialist realism: the image of a happy, smil- possible to address the imagery of women ing working woman can be seen as ’typical’ workers as signs or figures of women’s eman- since it constructs Soviet Estonian feminin- cipation in the public sphere whilst also at- ity through class signifiers and in an entirely tending to the limitations of a normative con- positive way. Using the ’typical’ and ’con- struction of Soviet Estonian femininity. temporary’ characteristics as defined by so- For instance, during the conference on the cialist realism in the portrayal of the figure, Estonian graphic artist Aino Bach (1901– the painting produces an entirely new iden- tity in Estonian art: that of an individually 7 J. Semper, Eesti nõukogude kunst sotsialistliku recognised, yet, typical, Soviet woman, a realismi teel. – Sirp ja Vasar 26 May 1945, pp. 1–2. 44 Katrin Kivimaa

1980), the art historian Eha Komissarov point- ings by Evald Okas. I will concentrate on two ed out that any positive interpretation of Bach’s representations of the ’liberation’ of Estonia female workers has been foreclosed by the by the Soviet troops. In paintings ’The Esto- dominant understanding of representations nian Guards Rifle Corps Arriving in Tallinn of industrial female labour as a central com- on 22 September 1944’ (1945) and ’Libera- ponent of the imagery of Soviet propaganda. tion’ (1956) the pictorial space is divided be- Komissarov argued that given Bach’s life- tween the images of homecoming soldiers long and genuine dedication to leftist ideol- (in the case of the first picture native Estoni- ogy, one that preceded and overreached the ans who had been fighting on the Soviet time limits of the Soviet era, these images side11), and the greeting crowd consisting need to be re-assessed as icons of the repre- mostly of younger and older women. All the sentational regime that enabled the artist to women who appear in the paintings are wear- depict women’s participation in the public ing traditional folk costumes. sphere and labour.8 Bach’s works produced The ways in which the element of Esto- during the period of socialist realism ask for nian-ness is conveyed in these works are the a re-interpretation based on her political views, perfect illustration of how the ’national form’ her involvement in the art administration of appeared in the art of socialist realism and the early Soviet period, and no less signifi- how it could not be divorced from its ’so- cantly, on her active participation in secur- cialist content’. The latter aspect of the paint- ing equality for women artists in the art in- stitutions of the pre-war Estonian Republic.9 8 E. Komissarov, Naiskunstnik sotsialistlikus ühis- konnas: kuristik idaalide ja tegelikkuse vahel. Unpub- Last examples of this article will engage lished paper presented during a day-conference in with the issue of national identity within the Adamson-Eric Museum, Estonian Art Museum, Tal- general Soviet identity construction. Stalin’s linn, April 2003. approach to the question of how to embrace 9 Bach was one of these women artists who were responsible for the eventual inclusion of women in the temporary situation of co-existence be- the central art organisation of that period, namely, the tween different languages and cultural tradi- art society ’Pallas’ which was a major professional tions within one state was most famously institution promoting careers of artists after graduat- articulated in his central formula for Soviet ing from the art college of the same name. 10 J. Kangilaski, Okupeeritud Eesti kunstiajaloo socialist culture – ’socialist in content, national periodiseerimine, p. 233. in form’. Transported into an Estonian con- 11 The Estonian corps was formed from the survi- text, this formulation produced a number of vors of 1941 Soviet conscription, who were initially socialist realist works of an ethnographic na- sent to labour camps, and from war prisoners who had been fighting on the German side. The Estonian ture which served to give visual form and rec- corps served a symbolic use in the reoccupation of ognition to what was defined as the specifi- Estonia. However, in the interval between the German city of locally different national cultures. The troops retreating and the Soviets arriving, an under- forms of cultural nationalism developed dur- ground organisation The Republic National Commit- tee managed to announce the installation of a provi- ing the mid- and late nineteenth century were sional government supported by Estonian units of the especially incorporated into the concept of the German and Finnish troops. It meant that at least ’the blossoming of national cultures in the USSR. symbolic point was made: the Soviet occupation forc- Among the best examples of socialist re- es did not ”liberate” Tallinn from the Germans, but seized it from the Estonians’ (R. Taagepera, Estonia: alism’s use of what has been called ’pseudo- Return to Independence. Boulder, Colo.: Westview ethnographic national form’10 are several paint- Press, 1993, p. 71). Naisekuju nõukogude ja eesti identiteedi kandjana.... 45 ings was embodied in the figures of male shaped by socio-political and cultural trans- soldiers: even if we presume that the fight- formations launched as part of the process ers represented belonged to Estonian corps of Sovietisation of Estonian society and cul- of the Soviet Red Army, there is no visible ture. This project included the propagation sign of their national identity that the viewer of new types of individual, Soviet men and would recognise. The figures of the women women, which generated new types of visual in folk costumes, on the other hand, are rep- imagery in art, especially regarding women’s resented as carriers of visible signs of na- professional identities. The imagery of na- tional belonging. In this sense, the imagery tion-as-a-woman, on the other hand, demon- of the feminine continued to be used in so- strated that the ways in which socialist real- cialist realism as a signifier of tradition, be- ism functioned in newly acquired territories longing and national continuity in a similar such as Estonia were more complex than it way it had been in the discourses and repre- appears and did not just serve to radically sentational regimes of the nineteenth-century and violently transform previous artistic cul- national awakening movement. However, the ture. Since the principles of socialist realism meaning of these images within the logic of and later of ’socialist culture’, formulated in the construct of ’socialist content in national accordance with the official ideology of the form’ exceeds the usual implications of the multinational Soviet state, had to address the figure of nation-as-a-woman. Now it is in- issue of the national, they paradoxically pro- separable from its ’socialist’ or ’Soviet’ con- vided a limited support to national senti- tent, represented by male figures, i.e. Soviet ments. Thus, one might say that at least on soldiers: the meaning of the ethnographic the level of interpretation a ’national form’ figure of nation-as-a-woman is to guarantee could have been deployed to strengthen the the recognition of the Soviet soldiers as Es- feeling of national identity in opposition to tonians. Simultaneously, the visible Soviet- attempts to assimilate a distinct national dif- ness of the male figures endows the figures ference into the homogeneous Soviet identity. of women with ’socialist content’. Together they give visual form to a new construct of national identity, based on a common Soviet (i.e. transnational) ideology. However, was this the only possible in- terpretation of such imagery? Opposing the view that ethnographic images were purely decorative and entirely in the service of So- viet propaganda, it has been suggested that the postulate ’socialist in content, national in form’ offered a sort of ’loophole’ for Es- tonian art and artists. Art historian Mai Levin even claimed that the use of ’national form’ was beneficial for maintaining a sort of spirit of national romanticism in general.12 12 M. Levin, Sotsialistliku realismi uurimisproblee- As we have seen, the changes in repre- me. – Kunstiteaduslikke uurimusi 7. Tallinn: Kunst, sentation in Estonian art after 1945 were 1994, p. 204.