ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book constitutes a cinematic study of the women who featured in Soviet cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. It illuminates and explores through a wide range of cinematic and cultural perspectives the visual representation of femininity and the cinematic roles assigned to women in both mainstream and auteur cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. For one, women's rights in the Soviet Union had to go hand in hand with rather traditional notions of female domesticity. Throughout the Soviet period, moreover, women saw their social status fluctuate considerably, as political winds shaped the country's attitudes toward the sexes in society and in the home. The book demonstrates that ideology in the post-thaw era would be unable to rein in the transformation of femininity that occurred on Soviet screens.
