Revolution of the Heart: The Alternative New Woman in Early Soviet Media

Abstract

The early Soviet government of the 1910s and 1920s was one of the first countries in the world to grant women equal rights with men. Among the Bolshevik Party members was a belief that so-called “new people” would come into being through the material and economic changes that the Revolution accomplished. For women and their representation in fictional narrative arts, this change in political and economic systems provided them with new opportunities for self-determination. State propaganda campaigns sought to bolster and harness women’s empowerment for political goals. Against this, a variety of authors of the 1920s instead explored a more individual-focused application of new opportunities for women. The authors analyzed in this project are Aleksandra Kollontai, the noted Bolshevik advocate for women’s rights, author Evgeni Zamyatin, avant-garde playwright Sergei Tret’yakov and Abram Room, filmmaker. I identify a fictional construct in works by these four artists which I call the “Alternative New Woman” through a feminist-informed close reading of key fictional works by these authors. Vasilisa Malygina by Kollontai, We by Zamyatin, I Want a Baby! by Tret’yakov, and Bed and Sofa by Room all feature a female protagonist who pursues her own desires (rather than conforming to societal expectations) throughout her narrative arc, which forms the basis for my definition of the Alternative Woman. The Alternative New Woman challenges both traditional and Bolshevik understandings of gender, femininity, and individuality. The Alternative New Woman of the 1920s also explores the changing social and material conditions of everyday life during the New Economic Policy (NEP), especially on topics that are traditionally understood as part of the feminine domain: family, marriage, sexuality, and reproduction.Slavic Languages and Literature