Editing Socialist realism (section)

==== Stalin era ====
The style of socialist realism began to dominate the Soviet artistic community starting when Stalin rose to power in 1930, and the government took a more active role in regulating art creation.<ref name=":6">{{Cite journal|last=Reid|first=Susan E.|date=1998|title=All Stalin's Women: Gender and Power in Soviet Art of the 1930s|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2502056|journal=Slavic Review|volume=57|issue=1|pages=133–173|doi=10.2307/2502056|jstor=2502056|s2cid=163795609 |issn=0037-6779}}</ref> The [[Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia|AKhRR]] became more hierarchical and the association privileged realist style [[oil painting]]s, a field dominated by men, over posters and other mediums in which women had primarily worked.<ref name=":5" /><ref name=":6" /> The task of Soviet artists was to create visualisations of the "[[New Soviet man|New Soviet Man]]"{{Snd}}the idealized icon of humanity living under socialism. This heroic figure encapsulated both men and women, per the Russian word "chelovek", a masculine term meaning "person".<ref name=":4" /> While the new Soviet person could be male or female, the figure of man was often used to represent gender neutrality.<ref name=":7">{{Cite journal|last=Simpson|first=Pat|date=2004|title=Parading Myths: Imaging New Soviet Woman on Fizkul'turnik's Day, July 1944|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3664081|journal=The Russian Review|volume=63|issue=2|pages=187–211|doi=10.1111/j.1467-9434.2004.00313.x|jstor=3664081|hdl=2299/616|issn=0036-0341|hdl-access=free}}</ref>

Because the government had declared the "[[The woman question|woman question]]" resolved in 1930, there was little explicit discourse about how women should be uniquely created in art.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Simpson|first=Pat|date=1998|title=On the Margins of Discourse? Visions of New Soviet Woman in Socialist Realistic Painting 1949–50|journal=Art History|language=en|volume=21|issue=2|pages=247–267|doi=10.1111/1467-8365.00105|issn=1467-8365|doi-access=free}}</ref> Discussions of gender difference and sexuality were generally taboo and viewed as a distraction from the duties people had to the creation of socialism.<ref name=":2" /> Accordingly, nudes of both men and women were rare, and some art critics have pointed out that Socialist Realist paintings escaped the problem of women's [[sexual objectification]] commonly seen in capitalist forms of art production.<ref name=":2" /><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Quan|first=Hong|date=2019-12-01|title=The representation and/or repression of Chinese women: from a socialist aesthetics to commodity fetish|url=https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-019-00487-0|journal=Neohelicon|language=en|volume=46|issue=2|pages=717–737|doi=10.1007/s11059-019-00487-0|s2cid=189874839|issn=1588-2810}}</ref> But the declaration of women's equality also made it difficult to talk about the gender inequality that did exist; Stalin's government had simultaneously banned abortion and homosexuality, made divorce more difficult, and dismantled the women's associations in government ([[Zhenotdel]]s).<ref name=":2" /> The "New Soviet Woman" was often shown working in traditionally male jobs, such as aviation, engineering, tractor-driving, and politics.<ref name=":7" /> The point of this was to encourage women to join the workforce and show off the strides the USSR had made for women, especially in comparison with the United States.<ref name=":8">{{Cite book|last=Ghodsee|first=Kristen|title=Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism|publisher=Bold Type Books|year=2018|isbn=9781645036364|location=United States|pages=36}}</ref> Indeed, women had expanded opportunities to take up traditionally male jobs in comparison to the US. In 1950, women made up 51.8% of the Soviet labor force, compared to just 28.3% in North America.<ref name=":8" />

However, there were also many patriarchal depictions of women. Historian Susan Reid has argued that the [[cult of personality]] around male Soviet leaders created an entire atmosphere of patriarchy in Socialist Realist art, where both male and female workers often looked up to the "father" icon of Lenin and Stalin.<ref name=":6" /> Furthermore, the policies of the 1930s ended up forcing many women to be solely responsible for childcare, leaving them with the famous "double burden" of childcare and work duties.<ref name=":7" /> The government encouraged women to have children by creating portraits of the "housewife-activist"{{Snd}}wives and mothers who supported their husbands and the socialist state by taking on unpaid housework and childcare.<ref name=":6" /><ref name=":7" />

Women were also more often shown as peasants than workers, which some scholars see as evidence of their perceived inferiority.<ref name=":7" /> Art depicting peasant women in the Stalin era was far more positive than in the 1920s, and often explicitly pushed back against the "[[Baba Yaga|baba]]" stereotype.<ref name=":3" /> However, the peasantry, still living in [[Feudalism|feudal]] society, was generally seen as backwards, and did not hold the same status as the heroic status as the revolutionary urban proletariat.<ref name=":7" /> An example of the gender distinction of male proletariat and female peasantry is [[Vera Mukhina|Vera Muhkina]]'s statue ''[[Worker and Kolkhoz Woman]]'' (1937), where the worker is shown as male, while the collective farm worker is female.<ref name=":7" />