The Birth of the Soviet Woman: The Worker, the Peasant, the Pilot, the “Former Person,” and Other Women in Art, 1917–1939

The Birth of the Soviet Woman provides a detailed art historical analysis of the range of “new woman” types constructed by the Soviet authorities in the 1920s and 1930s. The author reveals how closely propaganda and political agitation were intertwined with social change and innovation in art, while also suggesting that we should look at early Soviet gender reform as the basis for this variety of artistic solutions.

Nadezhda Plungian (b. 1983, Moscow) is an art historian, curator, critic, and writer specializing in Soviet and contemporary art. She is a Candidate of Sciences in Art History and is the author of numerous books and articles. From 2009 to 2019, she was a Senior Research Fellow at the State Institute for Art Studies, and from 2017 to 2021 she edited the Art section of Colta.ru. Since 2007, she has been a member of New Moscow, an independent association of scholars of Soviet art. She was the lead curator of Modernism Without a Manifesto: The Roman Babichev Collection (Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 2017–2018) and the academic editor of the accompanying book series. She curated Wandering Stars: Soviet Jewry in Prewar Art (2021) and co-curated the research exhibitions Surrealism in the Land of the Bolsheviks (2017), Soviet Antiquity (2018), and Beetles and Caterpillars: Insect Culture in the 1920s–1940s (2021) at Shabolovka Gallery. She also co-curated VKhUTEMAS 100: The School of the Avant-Garde (Museum of Moscow, 2020) and co-authored the project The Feminist Pencil (2011, 2013). Since 2019, she has taught in  the School of History at the Higher School of Economics, Moscow. She lives and works in Moscow.