Public images for political ideals

The manipulation of women to fulfil the roles which suit a current political goal is by no means a new phenomenon in Russia. In fact, the promotion of a given ‘ideal’ of womanhood was a constant feature of the Soviet era. Whether as zealous revolutionaries, shock workers, tractor drivers or heroine mothers, Russia's women have always had a ‘great mission’, a vital role to play in the future development of their nation. The present exhortations to women to return to the home, to reclaim their femininity and, above all, to bear children can be seen as a direct and, perhaps, logical progression from what has gone before. In the 1970s, Brezhnev's pro-natalist policies and the promotion of theories on biologically determined sex differentiation gave official and theoretical backing to a policy of gender-defined upbringing and a division of roles, expectations and character traits along gender lines. In the 1980s, glasnost revealed the terrible weight of the double burden imposed on women by a party line which ascribed to them full responsibility for the vast majority of domestic and family duties, without ‘relieving’ them of the obligation to engage in paid employment. None the less, Marxist–Leninist ideology, which then still held sway, combined with the economic imperatives imposed by the policy of restructuring, ensured that women continued, in that period, to form a high proportion of the labour force.