The Soviet woman as an artistic project in Soviet painting of the 1920s–1950s

Abstract

This article examines the image of the Soviet woman as an artistic project in Russian painting of the 1920s–1950s, focusing on the mechanisms of cultural policy that shaped the portrayal of women within the context of socialist mythology and the ideological agenda of the Soviet state. The study is based on the understanding of the mythologized nature of Soviet “socialist con struction,” in which ideology serves as a projective tool for cultural policy and establishes norma tive scenarios of social behavior. The creation of the female image is examined in relation to both the state’s political and economic objectives and the formation of a coherent visual canon that communicates the social ideal. Special attention is given to painting as an art form that can convey ideological meanings through its plastic language. The article discusses artistic strategies for portraying the social ideal, including the typification of characters, compositional arrangement, rhythmic structure, emphasis on the functionality of gestures and the purposefulness of movements, as well as the impersonal nature of the heroines as a result of their inclusion in the production process. The study uses works by A. N. Samokhvalov and A. A. Deineka as examples to analyze female figures that serve as carriers of ideological messages and symbols of the “new woman”. The article concludes that the image of the Soviet woman has a dual nature: it is both an ar tistic phenomenon and a tool for the symbolic reinforcement of ideological normativity.