Is Poster a Mirror of Time or Reflection of Stereotypes? Female Images on Soviet Posters of the Great Patriotic War

Abstract

The paper explores female images of posters of the Second World War. It was important to find out how the world of images corresponded to the challenges of the time and how adequately it reflected this time. This approach reveals that the constructed world is not identical to reality — it does not reflect all the roles that women performed, especially in the USSR. The image of the Motherland was the main thing on Soviet posters for the front and less often — the reward for Victory and victims. The posters for the rear were dominated by the image of a working woman. Unlike American and British posters with young “female friends”, Soviet posters depicted women more realistically – and there are almost no women in military uniforms on Soviet ones, although posters of the second half of the 1930s often depicted women of “male” professions (scientists, doctors, pilots, etc.). During the war, such images disappeared completely. There are no images of pilots, snipers, radio operators on Soviet posters, although they are reflected in other types of art. The main reason is seemingly the fact that military propaganda created a masculine image of a warrior-defender, while women were assigned to the traditional gender roles of mother, faithful friend, keeper of the hearth or a symbol of the Motherland. The experience of World War II propaganda, which focused on visual images, may be valuable for modernity, despite the specifics of communications in the digital world.