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 has a Candidate of Art History degree and is an art historian, independent curator, critic, and author of books and articles on Soviet and contemporary art. From 2009 to 2019 she was a senior researcher at the State Institute for Art Studies, Moscow, and from 2017 to 2021 editor of the «Art» section on the site Colta.ru. Since 2017 she has been part New Moscow, the free association of historians of Soviet art. She was lead curator of the project Modernism Without Manifestos. The Roman Babichev Collection (Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 2017–2018) and editor of the eponymous book series. She curated the exhibition Wandering Stars: Soviet Jewry in Prewar Art (2021) and was co-curator of the research-based exhibitions Surrealism in the Land of the Bolsheviks (2017), Soviet Antiquity (2018), and Beetles and Caterpillars. Insect Culture, 1920–1940s (2021) at Na Shabolovke Gallery. She was co-curator of the project VKhUTEMAS 100. The School of the Avant-Garde at the Museum of Moscow (2020) and co-author of the project The Feminist Pencil (2011, 2013). Since 2019 she has taught at the School of Historical Sciences of the Higher School of Economics. She lives and works in Moscow.
