Women, WWII and Thaw Cinema in the Soviet Union
The death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 was a crucial turning point in the social and cultural history of the Soviet Union, as his successor Nikita Khrushchev introduced significant social reforms. In particular, the period of the ‘Khrushchev Thaw’ precipitated a renaissance of Soviet cinema, with its allowance of an unprecedented amount of creative and narrative liberty to film directors. A major subject of late 1950s and early 1960s film was a retrospective look at the Second World War, or as it was quickly declared, the “Great Patriotic War”; under Stalin, public discussion of the war was strictly regulated, and the war was only represented in glorified terms. After Khrushchev’s public denunciation of Stalin in 1956, the content of WWII films offered greater insight into the spectrum of wartime experience, from young men fighting on the battlefront to those who remained at home. This resulted in open and honest representations of the experiences of Soviet citizens and genuine reflection on the human cost of war, and individuals were for the first time able to question their personal role in larger national and historical events. In particular, the lives of women during the war were represented in a meaningful capacity for the first time, as the genre of the Soviet melodrama gained traction during the Thaw.
However, despite the significant increase in cinematic freedom that came with liberalization, the state retained a heavily influential role in the content that was produced. A single studio, Mosfilm, dominated the filmmaking industry; the cinema, like all artistic endeavors in the Soviet Union, remained subject to review by the state arts council. While Stalin’s death ultimately precipitated much more artistic freedom, his conviction that the cinema was “the greatest means of mass agitation” remained influential.
Research Question
By focusing on three films made during the Thaw period, Ballad of a Soldier, The Cranes are Flying, and Ivan’s Childhood, I aim to shed greater light on three roles assigned to women in cinematic representations of the Second World War: the unfaithful ‘fallen’ woman, the patriotic mother, and the military nurse. What do these three figures reflect about how gendered experiences of war were remembered in the years after? And what can they tell us about gender norms and expectations during the 1950s and early 1960s?
By comparing the actual lived-experiences of Soviet women during the war with their representations in Thaw cinema, my project aims to answer the following questions: In what ways did cinematic representations of Soviet women serve as a departure from reality? What truths did it selectively adhere to? Ultimately, were these films reflective of the lives of women during the war, or did they instead speak to postwar, Thaw-era values?