ABSTRACT
In the Soviet Union, state-sponsored iconography was replete with images of male industrial workers as the epitome of strong, healthy, dedicated men, worthy of respect and gratitude. Perhaps the most immediately recognizable and universally familiar embodiment of this ideal was the Stakhanovite worker of the Stalinist industrialization and construction drives, immortalized in so many socialist realist statues, paintings, films and stories (Kelly 2002: 132). The relative prosperity and emphasis on education, professionalization and cultural development of the post-Stalin era produced a broader range of role models. Yet whatever a man’s actual job might have entailed, positive examples of manhood, as presented through Soviet media and cultural discourses, continued to stress the importance of hard work, physical strength and fitness, and service to his profession as well as to the nation (Gilmour and Clements 2002: 211). Some authors have viewed this focus on work being the key to male identity, social contribution and self-esteem, as part of a deliberate policy of the Soviet regime: ‘Deprived of his patriarchal authority and his property, what role could the new Soviet man play? The authorities had a clear answer: work was the centre of the Soviet man’s life. This was to be his means of self-realisation’ (Kukhterin 2000: 80).
