Parading Myths: Imaging New Soviet Woman on Fizkul′turnik' s Day, July 1944

In this paper 1 I want to explore the " political physiology " 2 of the Soviet female body beautiful, as exemplified in two photographs by N. Volkova and L. Leonidova published on the front page of the weekly sports newspaper Krasnyi sport (Red Sport), 18 July 1944 [Figs 1 & 2]. Krasnyi sport, published in Moscow, was the official organ of the All-Union Committee for Physical Culture and Sports Affairs. This particular edition was dedicated to celebratory coverage of the All-Union Day of the Fizkul'turnik (participant in physical culture), Sunday 16 July 1944. The focus of the front page was the first sports parade to be held at Moscow's prestigious Dinamo stadium since the start of the war in 1941. The event had profound national significance. Dinamo, the largest sports complex in the USSR, with its own station on the new Moscow metro, was a monument to State promotion of a semi-militaristic national obsession with sport. It was also a symbol of state power and the preeminence of Moscow, the centre of government. 3 The reopening signified the removal of the recent threat to the capital posed by the advance of German troops, and was explicitly set in the context of the Soviet invasion of occupied Poland and Belorussia. Actions on the three Belorussian fronts and in Lithuania were reported triumphantly at the bottom of Krasnyi sport's front page. 4 Despite the apparent patriarchalism of both the newspaper and the Soviet state, and despite reportage of the ecstatic response of the crowd to the entrance of a column of male athletes from the Red Army, there were no soldiers and only two men shown in the front-page photographs of the event. Indeed, the layout of this front page suggested 1