Rossman, Ella; (2025) ‘Humans Are Omnipotent and Beyond Their Destiny!’ Late Soviet Perspective on Girls’ Upbringing and the Female Self. Gender & History 10.1111/1468-0424.12842. (In press).

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Abstract

The article examines post-Stalinist Soviet expertise on girls’ education and upbringing, analysing texts for and about female adolescents created by specialists in pedagogical sciences, psychology, sociology, medicine as well as children's writers and journalists from different parts of the Union, including national republics. The text focuses on the feminine ideal developed in the expertise through specialised concepts and role models suggested for Soviet girls and young women. I contend that the ideology of girlhood, created in the expert texts, appeared to be internally inconsistent. It was highly affected by the Cold War confrontational narrative and exclusionary for many Soviet females, forming a set of rigid norms for girls and young women. However, the texts also present emancipatory ideas for female political participation and economic independence. Most importantly, they promote a powerful vision of female excellence and even a socially accepted version of female defiance, which was unusual for the girlhood cultures of that time.

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