Soviet Woman as an Agent of Government in a Family in the Period of Anti-Alcohol Policy
Elena Bolotova
The article is devoted to the image of a woman constructed by the government discourse in the early Soviet period. The government’s propaganda imposed the social role of a woman as a social controller in addition to the social role of a worker, a social activist and a mother. In particular, this study is dedicated to the transformation of a female image in the anti-alcohol policy. The author uses content analysis investigating this complex image and the ways of its reflection in the mass literature. The sources of the study were articles showing the editorial Board ideas and “the reader’s letters” published in the “Rabotnitsa” magazine dated from 1925 to 1936, the articles from “Revolution and Culture” magazine dated from 1928 to 1930 and the propaganda brochures.
The study showed that soviet propaganda began to change their messages recipients during realization of “cultural alcohol-drinking program”. This anti-alcohol propaganda turned its attention from the men’s to the women’s audience. The anti-alcohol articles’ characters appeared as innocent victims of their alcoholic husbands. But at the same time the propaganda stressed the idea that women had great potential to fight against alcoholism. Gradually, the woman’s image began to acquire more and more positive features. Often female fates stories evoked compassion and pity or even admiration. Along with this tendency their husbands’ images turned more and more pathetic, helpless and infantile.
The governmental discourse of the 30-s strived to transfer the family responsibility and social control to women considering them to be a reliable support for the propaganda projects implementation. Consequently, the constructed working and mothering woman’s image was enriched with socio-educational and socio-regulating functions. Thus, anti-alcohol propaganda caused the change of the previously existing gender order when a man played a dominant role in a family and put a woman to the priority position implying that she is more conscious than a man.