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 a Candidate of Art History, art historian, independent curator, critic, and author of a number of books and articles on Soviet and contemporary art. From 2009 to 2019, she was a senior research fellow at the State Institute of Art Studies, and from 2017 to 2021, the editor of the «Art» section at Colta.ru. Since 2007, she has been a member of the New Moscow free association of historians of Soviet art. She was lead curator of the project Modernism Without a Manifesto. The Collection of Roman Babichev (Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 2017–2018) and scientific editor of the eponymous book series. She curated the exhibition Wandering Stars. Soviet Jewry in Pre-War Art (2021) and was co-curator of the research exhibitions Surrealism in the Land of the Bolsheviks (2017), Soviet Antiquity (2018), and Bugs and Caterpillars. Insect Culture in the 1920–1940s (2021) at the Gallery on Shabolovka. She co-curated the exhibition VKhUTEMAS 100. School of the Avant-Garde at the Museum of Moscow (2020) and was co-author of the project Feminist Pencil (2011, 2013). Since 2019, Plungian has been teaching in the School of History at the Higher School of Economics. She lives and works in Moscow.
