This book explores the Soviet attempt to propagandise the 'new Soviet woman' through the magazines Rabotnitsa and Krest'yanka from the 1920s to the end of the Stalin era. Balancing work and family did not prove easy in a climate of shifting economic and demographic priorities, and the book charts the periodic changes made to the model.

Introduction PART I: THE WOMEN'S MAGAZINES IN THE ERA OF THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY Work Versus Family Marriage, Divorce, and Unwanted Pregnancy The Promotion of New Gender Relations Variations in the 'New Woman' PART II: THE STALIN ERA Women's Experience of Industrialisation and Collectivisation Overfulfilling the Plan Home Life Compulsory Motherhood: the 1936 Abortion Law Gender Confusion in the Stalin Era: 'Completely New People', or Traditional Wives and Mothers? Women in the Great Patriotic War The Postwar Era Conclusion References Bibliography Index

LYNNE ATTWOOD is Lecturer in Russian Studies at the University of Manchester. She is the author of The New Soviet Man and Woman: Sex-Role Socialisation in the USSR and editor of Red Women in the Silver Screen: Soviet Women and Cinema from the Beginning to the End of the Communist Era.