The fate of a new person. Representation and reconstruction of masculinity in Soviet visual culture

In the first post-war years, on the pages of many-type Soviet publications (from the “light” to the almanacs of fine art), a new image of masculinity was clearly based on the ideals of a soldier and father (figures that almost never met in the visual culture of the USSR of the 1930s) The decisive factor in the formation of such an image was the catastrophic experience of the Second World War. The death, physical and psychological injuries of millions of men, their lack in the post -war period, although they were obscured in socialist culture, were too great and visible so that they could completely ignore official propaganda. It was the war, and not the end of the era of Stalinism, that determined the male ideal characteristic of the period of the thaw. Although he did not always coincide with the real self -awareness of Soviet men, they were considered to be and equal to him. Reconstructing the image of masculinity in the post -war USSR, the author attracts extensive illustrative material. Claire I. McColluum is a British historian, a teacher at the University of Exeter (Great Britain)