41 Images of Women As the Signifiers of the Soviet and National Identity In
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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 Stalins 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. 204225. 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: 19401941 1st year of Soviet tions designed to construct the new identity occupation; 19411944 German occupation; 1944 1948 legitimisation of Soviet power in art, propaga- of the Soviet Estonian woman. Using the tion of socialist realism; 19481955 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. 232233). 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 Womens 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 Tuulses 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. 3140). 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, 193039. 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 womens 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 Uutmaas 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 womens 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.