ABSTRACT
Gender, militarism, and the modern nation have been inextricably intertwined throughout Russian history. Military conscription nationalized masculinity in Russia, the Soviet Union, and post-Soviet Russia, constructing a modern masculine ideal through military service and forging a strong and lasting connection between manliness and patriotism. These states constructed soldierly masculinity amidst a dramatic backdrop of war and revolution that challenged, destroyed, and then rebuilt the foundations of the state and society as well as of masculinity and femininity. Although the enduring soldierly ideal seems natural in its embodiment both of ideal masculinity and ideal devotion to the nation, there is nothing at all natural about the hegemonic soldier or his ideally feminine civilian counterpart. They both require constant constructing and reconstructing, making and remaking in order to endure. These ideals may be challenged during wartime and in periods of revolutionary upheaval, but they can also serve as anchors for post-revolutionary and postwar retrenchment. This chapter demonstrates the power of the soldierly ideal in Russia and the Soviet Union, as it has reemerged again and again in the 20th and 21st centuries, articulating a particular kind of hegemonic and national masculinity, reasserting masculine and Russian/Soviet superiority, and also reshaping understandings of idealized femininity.
