"Boy Engineers" and "Girl Housewives": Gender Roles in Late Soviet Russia

Magazines in the Soviet period were the most accessible and popular source of literary works, educational articles, games, creative and developmental materials for children. In the period from the mid-1950s to the 1980s, such children's magazines as Murzilka, Vesyolye Kartinki, Pioneer, Kostyor, etc. were published. The magazine for schoolchildren, Yuny Tekhnik, was part of a special group of publications aimed at developing children's technical creativity and was very popular with Soviet boys. Subscribing to magazines, receiving them every month, and reading them was an important part of everyday life for Soviet children. Adults and children received their magazines or newspapers, read and saved clippings and headings from them, usually fastening them into a selection on a certain topic, be it headings on home economics, repair and construction, or gardening, etc., and children certainly cut out paper toys or played board games from magazines.

In terms of gender policy, by the end of the 1950s, active labor mobilization of women had ended, and the state's attention switched to the birth rate, which was alarming in those years. Now reproduction was considered a woman's main duty, more important than work and social activities. During that period, as well as later in the post-Soviet era, women constantly experienced role conflict, balancing between everyday life, children and work. In addition, such external factors as Western cinema, international exhibitions, and foreign magazines influenced the idea in Soviet society of what an attractive woman should look like, which undoubtedly required efforts in conditions of shortages and limited time. As for men, the 1970s and 1980s can be described as a crisis of "masculinity." This crisis was characterized by early mortality of men, their poor adaptability to life's difficulties, high levels of illness and the prevalence of bad habits and, of course, alcoholism [2]. All this is clearly demonstrated by cartoons from the magazine "Crocodile".

It is worth adding to the above that during the Thaw, communal apartments were actively being resettled, and young families were given separate housing. This provided new opportunities for arranging their personal lives. From that moment on, the family became an autonomous unit, and everyday intimate relationships, the organization of everyday life, and the upbringing of children were less controlled by society and the state [4]. Thanks to this, children had personal space for study, creativity, and play. In communal apartments, it was difficult to create a “children's corner” for a child, and things were usually stored in a box, sideboard, cabinet, or secretary. In the late 1950s, children's magazines began to feature sections on interior design, advice on arranging your space in an apartment, and instructions on creating furniture and household items.

The period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s is characterized by a diversity of genres in children's literature. New ones, paying great attention to social and developmental psychology, have been added to old ideological and revolutionary themes. The main themes of magazines now include space, science, culture and production, and the constant heroes of stories and columns are children, pioneers, October children, Timurovites, their leisure and study at school, at home, and at a children's camp. The theme of war and weapons remained popular until the 1980s. If in previous years the model of masculinity was a military man and a war hero, then at this time a new image of masculinity appeared - a pilot-cosmonaut. The embodiment of this image in children's magazines was Yuri Gagarin - the ideal boy who was physically strong, studied well, loved physics, mathematics and technology. The space flight of the first female cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova (1963), although with less excitement than Gagarin's flight, was also covered in children's magazines. After this event, we can often see a girl participating in a space expedition in illustrations.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, creative work on creating devices, models, and various technical devices became popular in schools and extracurricular institutions. With the support of children's publications, including the newspaper "Pionerskaya Pravda", magazines "Young Technician", "Modelist-Constructor", "Knowledge is Power" and "Technology for the Youth", technical creativity gained popularity among many Soviet boys. The publications contained scientific articles on chemistry, physics, and economics. They also talked about various branches of industry, agriculture, and transport.

On the pages of the publications we find instructions on assembling various scale models of aircraft, automobile and water transport. It is obvious that these publications were not only intended to foster interest in technical sciences and the education of scientific and technical personnel, but also to reflect the state's successes in space exploration, the development of science and technology, and to demonstrate an optimistic vision of the future, an atmosphere of readiness for defense and large-scale construction [3]. The general trend was supported by other magazines, including those for the very young: paper models of equipment for cutting out were published, as well as board games on the theme of space, tourism and geology.

The late Soviet period is characterized by the fact that female characters played secondary roles in illustrations. They were assigned traditional female roles typical of a patriarchal society. The images of boys demonstrated a more active, eventful life, but they were also stereotypical. In Soviet magazines, boys' activities were often associated with technical activities. Girls were depicted as passive, quiet, caring.

For example, we can take Vladimir Suteev's illustration in the magazine No. 10 "Veselye kartinki" for 1959. We see that the boys in this illustration are actively engaged in something: building, launching boats, drawing and even reading newspapers. The girls either help the boys or watch them. Some clean, water flowers, take care of dolls, etc., that is, they play service roles.

When talking about the magazine "Veselye kartinki", which began to be published in 1956, it is impossible not to remember the heroine Thumbelina. She got into the "Club of Merry Men" in 1959, before that it was an all-male company. Thumbelina appeared on the cover of the sixth issue of 1959 and immediately in the image of a little assistant who mends Cipollino's pants. During the late Soviet period, the image of Thumbelina changed, but her role as an inconspicuous, secondary character was always preserved. Her main activities were sewing, cooking, helping the members of the "Club of Merry Men" or watching others.

This period is distinguished from previous illustrations of the family and the presence of grandparents, which symbolizes the improving connection between generations, which was destroyed in the first decades after the Revolution. In the late Soviet period, mothers were often depicted in an apron, and her clothes were not home clothes, but rather weekend or work clothes, which suggests that, most likely, she came during her lunch break or in the evening after work and cooks for the whole family. One of the normative models was the cult image of a man of the previous generation - a participant in the industrialization of the country and the Great Patriotic War [1]. In the late Soviet period, the image of the father changed dramatically and lost the classic attributes of masculinity: elegantly dressed, he appears in illustrations in a relaxed pose, a model haircut evokes an association with the scientific and technological revolution. In the illustrations, the father usually stands away from the rest of the family.

The actualization of the image of a woman-mother and "keeper of the hearth" in Soviet society in the period mid-1950 - mid-1980 undoubtedly affected games and children's creativity. On the pages of children's magazines of this period we often come across cut-out paper dolls and clothes for them, which became very popular among Soviet girls.

It is especially interesting that among the cut-out dolls of the late Soviet period, there are paper dolls of boys with a set of uniforms of different troops and professions, as well as "transformer dolls" with a gender-neutral appearance, which, through the wardrobe, can be either a boy or a girl. The names of the transforming dolls are usually gender-neutral - they can belong to either a boy or a girl [7]. For example, in the description of the doll "Outfits for Sashenka" it is said: "Sashenka is only five years old, nevertheless he (or she? You decide for yourself) loves to dress up." Or we can find similar paper transforming dolls to demonstrate the costumes of different socialist republics (a very popular theme of this period), for example, the costumes of the peoples of Central Asia: both female and male.

The magazines of this period also published patterns of clothes, soft toys, recipes, fashion and practical advice on housekeeping. Special sections appeared, for example, in the magazine "Pioneer" - "Brave tailors", "100 tips for Cinderella", "Domovenok and company", "Academy of home wizards". In the magazine "Koster" the section on housekeeping is called "Advice from Masha the Craftswoman", and in the magazine for preschoolers "Murzilka" - "Advice from Murzilka". All these sections were carefully collected by mothers and girls in one file and used for years. Today, on many women's forums dedicated to home, motherhood and handicrafts, users are nostalgic and exchange similar clippings from Soviet magazines.

The practical result of the above observations was the exhibition "Gender/Scissors/Paper" in its permanent placement in the museum "Enter and Allow" and in a traveling form, which was shown not only in Moscow schools, libraries and galleries, but also in other cities. The exhibition demonstrates the gradual evolution of gender policy using the example of illustrations and paper games in children's magazines of the Soviet period. Also, paper games from magazines served as material for a series of master classes for children, which demonstrated equal interest in technical creativity on the part of boys and girls. However, the cut-out dolls were mostly interesting to girls, but even more so to their mothers.

Having analyzed the illustrations in Soviet children's magazines, we can conclude that, starting in the mid-1950s, there was a return to the traditional understanding of gender roles, when boys were active creators and builders, and girls had secondary roles, including service, care, and concern. Games and creative sections in magazines were also divided into those intended for girls, designed to develop femininity and housewife skills, and those for boys, stimulating interest in science and technology.