ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the question of how myths and representations of Mother Russia can be interpreted in a wider context of nationhood myths in Europe. It shows how the Mother Russia myth possesses the power, not so much to reveal Russia's 'essential' self, as to fool people into believing that a single image can represent the cultural diversity that exists within that vast country. To many millions of Russians, brought up in the countryside, the peasant mother was familiar too, in unsentimentalised form, in their own lives. While embodying many of the virtues of the ideal Soviet mother, she also evokes an older tradition, a peasant world rather than the industrialised and technologically advanced world of the Soviet Utopian future. The recruiting poster itself was issued on the very day of the German invasion and remains one of the best known images created in the Soviet period.
