Abstract ▼ AI-Helper

During the Second World War the Soviet Union was quite seriously damaged by the German armies, and yet it turned the tide of the war and eventually defeated Germany. The fact that the Soviet Union succeeded in waging total war even more efficiently than the enemy accounts for its miraculous victory ...

During the Second World War the Soviet Union was quite seriously damaged by the German armies, and yet it turned the tide of the war and eventually defeated Germany. The fact that the Soviet Union succeeded in waging total war even more efficiently than the enemy accounts for its miraculous victory over Germany. The total war on the part of the Soviet Union can be characterized by the mobilization of women and arts for the war effort. To be sure, other belligerent nations made attempts for total war like the Soviet Union. But their attempts for total war did not reach the level of the total war waged by the Soviet Union. The unprecedented extent and depth with which the Soviet Union mobilized women and arts for its war effort were reflected in the fact that the Soviet women appeared frequently on the wartime posters on which a great deal of stress was put by the wartime leadership. Images of the Soviet women in posters can be classified into four the categories: 1) women as allegory of “Mother Russia”, 2) women as war victims, 3) women as workforce in the rear, and 4) women as soldiers. The various roles played by the Soviet women during the Great Patriotic War were reflected more or less fairly in wartime posters. But the Soviet wartime posters had a tendency to distort the important reality that the Soviet women do their part in war effort as combatants for the whole period of the war. Quite interestingly, women combatants were not depicted in virtually all the posters. Such a phenomenon can be explained by the dichotomous conception of gender roles: men as warriors and women as peace-keepers. The images of active women combatants attacking enemy ran counter unfailingly to those of passive women conceived by male Soviet soldiers and citizens.

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