Women and Martyrdom in Soviet War Cinema of the Stalin Era

Abstract

The thesis examines representations of women and martyrdom in Soviet war cinema of the Stalin era through an analysis of eight fictional films made between 1941-1953, that is from the German invasion of Soviet territory to the end of the Stalinist regime. This research draws a comprehensive picture of the evolution of the cinematic imagery of women and martyrdom in Stalinist war cinema through the examination of the primary sources which provide a spectrum of cinematic heroines from different generations with different social, cultural, economic and educational backgrounds and different functions in war. Drawing on the Althusserian theory of Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) as well as post-1970s psychoanalytic film theory, this thesis examines the female and martyrdom theme as mediator between, on the one hand, ideal female heroism and patriotic duties, and on the other hand, everyday citizen and family responsibilities. The clash between Soviet planning and social reality resulted in a gap between the intentions of the Soviet leadership and their consequences. Accordingly, the interrelationship between Soviet planning and reality merits consideration within Soviet scholarship. This thesis, hence, studies the impact of Russian cultural heritage on the Stalinist ISAs, which reveals strong connections between Russian particularism and Soviet universalism. This thesis provides the first book-length study of representations of the female in Soviet war cinema. It sheds new light on the employment of pre-revolutionary Russian cultural heritage in the creation of representations of the female in Stalinist war cinema. This study identifies the cinematic images of women and martyrdom as representing suffering mothers, sisters and wives of the male warriors, as well as symbolic suffering mothers and sisters of the Great Soviet Family. It demonstrates that Soviet women in Stalinist war cinema were deprived of the privilege of becoming martyrs for the Motherland while fulfilling functions of an ideal female Orthodox believer. This thesis challenges the widespread belief in the compatibility of femininity and combat under Stalinism, which claims that within Stalinist political culture traditional gender differences were radically undone, and new forms devised and run for different generations and social groups of Soviet women. Having identified the main features of cinematic representations of women and martyrdom in Stalinist war cinema, and shown them as derived from the expectations of an ideal female Orthodox believer, the thesis at once examines the two-way nexus of (a) Stalinist Socialist Realist war cinema and the submission of the Soviet people to national Bolshevik ideology; (b) national Bolshevism and Russian religious-traditional heritage. In other words, the thesis studies how Russian religious-cultural heritage was adopted to secure the imagination of the Soviet people in relation to their real conditions of existence and their submission to the dominant/national Bolshevik ideology. Examining this imaginary transposition of reality by Soviet Socialist Realist art, whose aim was to ensure the submission of the people to national Bolshevism and the long-term stability of the Stalinist state, this thesis reveals the adoption of Russian religious-cultural heritage on a broader scale, in the service of Stalinist collective identity-building policies and state-citizen relations. As a result, the theoretical approach of this thesis and its findings innovatively contribute to a range of fields within Russian Studies, including gender studies, Soviet cinema studies and the study of Russian/Soviet identity-building and state-citizen relations.

Date of Award	20 Sept 2019
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Cathy Gelbin (Co Supervisor) & Rachel Platonov (Main Supervisor)