Gender analysis of game material of the Soviet era on the example of children's magazines (1920-1980)

Journal for Educators, Teachers and Trainers JETT, Vol. 12 (2); ISSN: 1989-9572 37 ISSN 1989 – 9572 DOI: 10.47750/jett.2021.12.02.006 Gender analysis of game material of the Soviet era on the example of children's magazines (1920-1980) Marina Sazonenko1 Journal for Educators, Teachers and Trainers, Vol. 12 (2) https://jett.labosfor.com/ Date of reception: 10 Nov 2020 Date of revision: 09 Feb 2021 Date of acceptance: 08 May 2021 Marina Sazonenko (2021). Gender analysis of game material of the Soviet era on the example of children's magazines (1920-1980). Journal for Educators, Teachers and Trainers , Vol. 12(2). 37 – 42 . 1Graduate School of Art and Design, Higher School of Economics National Research University, Moscow, Russia Journal for Educators, Teachers and Trainers, Vol. 12 (2) ISSN 1989 – 9572 https://jett.labosfor.com/ Journal for Educators, Teachers and Trainers JETT, Vol. 12 (2); ISSN: 1989-9572 38 Gender analysis of game material of the Soviet era on the example of children's magazines (1920-1980) Marina Sazonenko1 1Graduate School of Art and Design, Higher School of Economics National Research University, Moscow, Russia Email ID: mk[email protected] ABSTRACT The work is devoted to the gender analysis of children's games and material for creativity of the Soviet period. The sources used were magazines for children published in the period from the 1920s to the 1980s, such as «Chizh», «Yezh», «Sverchok», «Murzilka», «Pioner», «Yunyy tekhnik» and «Veselyye kartinki». A comparative analysis of this material in different time periods was carried out, taking into account gender attitudes and based on the development of Soviet pedagogical thought. Keywords: gender order, children's magazines, games, creativity, pedagogy INTRODUCTION Against the background of social, cultural, political and economic changes taking place in the modern world, the content of gender roles is undergoing transformation. However, in many cultures, men and women are still perceived as having opposite personal and behavioral qualities. The process of socialization includes the assimilation of cultural norms and the development of social roles, including gender. For young children, this process is directly related to game culture, which takes an important place in a child's life. Through games and creative activity, a child can master many elements and types of human activity, including professional [6, p.43]. Game culture is an important part of the children's world, a smaller copy of the adult world from its various spheres - family, work, nature, technology, which helps in further socialization. It follows from this that gender separation in work activities and roles within the family also occurs in the process of game and creativity. Stereotypical notions of “male” or “female” occupations, including female unpaid domestic work and male paid work, are still present in a significant part of society. In this regard, the Soviet period is generally characterized by the division of the roles of a man as the breadwinner of the family, whose social status was determined by his position at work, and a woman who also works, but bears the main responsibility for the household. Gender identities of the Soviet era still have a significant impact on people's behavior [1, p.28-30]. During the Soviet period, the state placed a special emphasis on the upbringing of a new generation and it was in the child that it saw the builder of the future socialist state. Hence the close attention to the everyday life of children, in a certain order for children's toys. Meanwhile, if we talk about the Soviet period as a whole, then it is characterized rather by a utilitarian attitude to children's creativity, and game was seen as something inherent in the youngest children [5, p.222-243]. During the Soviet era, magazines and newspapers were the most accessible and popular source of information and propaganda for Soviet children. Children's game culture and materials for creativity, presented in all their diversity on the pages of children's magazines, were the most accessible source of games, toys, materials for creativity and development for children. Magazines for preschoolers and junior schoolchildren, such as «Chizh», «Murzilka», «Sverchok», «Veselyye kartinki» and others, printed a lot of game material, and also paid more attention to illustrations and drawn stories than text. Whereas magazines for middle and senior schoolchildren «Yezh», «Pioner», «Yunyy tekhnik», etc.) more often printed stories, informative articles, tasks and various practical material, accompanied by fewer illustrations. The gender order (a system of social interactions between the sexes, organized according to formal and informal rules) in Soviet Russia (1917-1991) was formed and imposed by the state, that is, it had a statocratic (from French etat - state) character. The creation of a "new woman" and a "new man", new relations between the sexes began in the early days of Soviet power and later followed the path of involving women in social production and political life, state regulation of the family, and the formation of discourses that interpret femininity and masculinity [3, p.332]. Based on the proposed by E. A. Zdravomyslova and A. A. Tyomkina [3, p. 334-340] periodization of the gender order in the USSR, we can conditionally distinguish three stages: Journal for Educators, Teachers and Trainers JETT, Vol. 12 (2); ISSN: 1989-9572 39 • the period of experimentation in the field of sexuality and family and marriage relations (1918-1930), or the period of political mobilization of women; • period of totalitarian androgyny (1930s - mid 1950s), or the period of economic mobilization of women; • period of liberalization of gender policy (mid-1950s - late 1980s). At each of these stages, changes in gender attitudes were reflected in the world of childhood, which can be found by analyzing children's game culture. The development of the educational system in the USSR also had a special influence on children's games and creativity, which went through a difficult path, starting with various experiments in the early 1920s, the unification of the 1930s, the crisis of the post-war years and subsequent various reforms and new forms of school and extracurricular education. The visual component of children's magazines, although it had its own specific features, was also influenced by general trends in book illustration - from the avant-garde of the early Soviet period, the caricature style of the "Krokodilovtsev" artists and illustrations by the "Moscow Conceptualism" artists in the late Soviet period. Experimental period (1918 - early 1930s) This period is characterized by Bolshevik experimentation in the field of sexuality and marital relations. At this stage, the women's issue was resolved through defamilization and political mobilization of women. In 1918, the state legally recognized civil marriage. To replace the religious institutions that registered marriages, registry offices were introduced, and this was followed by the elimination of the status of illegitimate children, thereby the state declared their rights equal to those of legitimate children. In the same year, the divorce procedure was facilitated, and in 1920 the first practice of legalizing abortion in European history made the USSR the leading state in the issue of gender equality of rights [3, p.335]. Women began to acquire the rights that the Bolsheviks talked about during the period of preparation for the revolution, but in reality these measures were aimed at the political mobilization of the female population, strengthening state power by including an increasing population of the country in the political struggle. Experiments in the field of gender also took place in the sphere of children's game culture, for example, in the 1930s, when the realization of gender equality took place through the use of dolls in the games of boys in the kindergartens of the People's Commissariat for Education [5, p. 233]. (Fig. 1). Board games, which are supplements to children's periodicals and which have become widespread due to their accessibility to the general reader, are of undoubted interest in this regard for the analysis of the policy of the new state. Most of these games had an ideological or industrial orientation, expressed already in the names themselves: "Revolution", "Red and White", "Electrification", "Let's Give Raw Materials to Factories", "Airplane Travel in the USSR", etc. There are also games of hygienic content such as "For a healthy life", "New hygienic game", which were a reflection of the changes that not only the state structure and social institutions were subjected to, but also the body. The person had to “work on the body” and acquire social hygiene skills. Consolidation of "hygienic" rules in the body was one of the important mechanisms of the formation of a Soviet person and, at the same time, control over him [8, p. 251]. Meanwhile, the magazine "Murzilka" and, later, the magazine "Chizh", which began to be published in 1936, publish board games for the most part of entertainment and general educational content, such as "Zoological Lotto", "Under the Water", "Fruit Picking", etc. In the 1920s, the People's Commissariat of Education organized programmatic and methodological work, and the results of this work were the programs and plans of a general education school, drawn up on the basis of the principles of an integrated structure of educational material (by topics and directions, and not by academic subjects and disciplines). In these comprehensive programs, there were attempts to link learning with the surrounding life, resist the formalism of the traditional school, and encourage the cognitive activity of students through the so-called active methods (active labor, research, laboratory, excursion). These innovations can be found in the example of special supplements to the magazine "Murzilka", which are sheets for cutting with a large number of figures and elements, united by one theme, such as: "Circus", "Theater", "Cinema", "In the village", "At the dacha", "Village herd", "Cooperative", "May Day demonstration", etc. (Fig. 2) The experimentation of the Soviet state in the first decade after the revolution had a significant impact on the content of gender roles, especially these changes affected women. During this period, a new woman was formed - a citizen of the Soviet state, ideologically enlightened and maximally involved in public life and politics. Soviet children, on the other hand, were viewed as a special category of new citizens, future builders of communism, and their upbringing and development was treated with great responsibility. Analyzing the game component of children's magazines published from the 1920s to the 1930s, two types can be distinguished: board games and cutting toys. Board games (industrial, anti-religious or hygienic) in this context often performed tasks of an ideological nature to some extent. Many children's prints of the early period produced paper toys for cutting, which were often multi-figured sheets on a specific topic, thereby reflecting the experiments of that time in the field of school education, the introduction of active teaching methods. In general, children's games of 1920-1930 did not have pronounced gender characteristics and set themselves rather didactic and ideological tasks. Journal for Educators, Teachers and Trainers JETT, Vol. 12 (2); ISSN: 1989-9572 40 Period of totalitarian androgyny (1930s - mid 1950s) Given the criticism of the concept of "totalitarian" in relation to the period of Stalin's rule in Soviet Russia, it may be more appropriate to designate it as a period of uniforms or sports and labor education. This time represents an attempt on the part of the state to create a sexless Soviet person. And if the early period is characterized by the political mobilization of women, then here we observe industrial mobilization in relation to the women's issue, when the image of "working mother" dominates. The beginning of this period corresponds to the first five-year plans for industrialization, and then the official declaration, which announced that the women's question in the Soviet Union was resolved. At the same stage, a “great turning point” of the gender order takes place, which corresponds to the traditionalist rollback in the policy of family and marriage relations: an increase in the status of marriage, a ban on abortion, social support for motherhood, and a ban on registering the paternity of children born out of wedlock. In connection with these changes, the gender image of a woman is strengthened, having two social roles: a worker and a mother [3, p.338]. The state is also forming a movement for the mastering of male professions by women (tractor driver, pilot, public transport driver), that is, the sphere of non-female - in the traditional concept - labor. During this period, women worked as combine operators in the countryside, as builders and railroad workers, as tram and truck drivers, and as crane operators. New changes in the gender order also affected the school by introducing separate education in 1943 to replace the joint education of children of both sexes, adopted by the People's Commissariat for Education in 1918 [4, p. 430-435]. This reform reflected the processes primarily associated with the revision of the official approach to the legacy of the pre-revolutionary era. If in the early Soviet period it was fundamentally important for the state to demonstrate its distance from everything that was associated with the pre-revolutionary regime, then since the late 1930s, the authorities' willingness to borrow much from the past has been gradually increasing. It was assumed that the correct organization of educational work requires taking into account the peculiarities of the physical nature and development of girls, in accordance with which the preparation of boys and girls for work and practical activity should be carried out. In addition, the authors of the reform believed that separate education would promote discipline and eliminate "not always healthy relationships" between opposite sexes [2]. It is possible that this step was introduced for a more effective introduction of military-patriotic education for boys, which became relevant by the end of the 1930s. In general, the pedagogy of this period is characterized by the struggle against the above-mentioned complex teaching method and the introduction of the subject distribution of educational material. An orientation toward the socially useful work of students prevails, and education at this stage generally follows the pattern: knowledge - skills. An indicative moment for this approach is the emergence of the Timurov movement, which had a greater impact on the children's subculture of the following decades. With regard to game culture, the policy of the Soviet state during this period was mainly focused on making games for the child real tools in order to instill labor skills, and this was caused, among other things, by the low availability of toys for most of the population. The number of magazines issued has significantly decreased, and in those that have existed, we will not find games or materials for the creativity of boys or girls separately. In the magazines of this period, there are no colorful applications for cutting and board games, and the "game", if I may say so, the material of the 1930s - early 1950s is practical instructions for creating household items: "Sewing kits", "The easiest compass", "Let's decorate the tree ourselves", etc. Also, children's magazines are replete with useful practical advice, such as “darning a stocking firmly,” “how to make ski boots waterproof,” or “how to glue rubber,” etc. The focus on physical and sports education led to the emergence of permanent headings with gymnastic exercises, as well as with chess problems, which subsequently existed for many decades until the end of the Soviet period. During this period, a lot of material appears in children's magazines for the development of logic and thinking in a playful way: puzzles, crosswords, "confusion", labyrinths, riddles and stories in pictures, which are the main component in modern periodicals for children. Among the game material of the "uniform" period, of particular interest are the drawn problems that appeared in the late 1930s, developing both logic and attention and obviously having the potential for the development of the spy qualities of an intelligence officer, which is rooms ", or" Find on the map ", or" Mysterious pictures ". (Fig. 3) Although the period of totalitarian androgyny is characterized by the creation of a “sexless” Soviet person, a worker and comrade, at the same time there is a traditionalist rollback in the politics of family and marriage relations and now the image of a “working mother” dominates the women's issue. At this stage, women are involved in all spheres of work, including traditionally male ones, which is reflected in children's game culture, where there has been a shift towards activities and games that develop masculinity. New tendencies in pedagogy, based on the principle of "knowledge-skills", have brought a significant didactic and utilitarian component to children's periodicals. Also, it is worth noting that in most of the popular at that time, drawn stories already from the mid-1930s, the theme of war, weapons and sports prevailed, and images of boys predominate among the characters, while women are more often found in the role of a mother or grandmother or play a secondary role (Fig. 4) Journal for Educators, Teachers and Trainers JETT, Vol. 12 (2); ISSN: 1989-9572 41 Gender policy liberalization period (mid-1950s - late 1980s) By the end of the 1950s, the active labor mobilization of women was completed, and the attention of the state was completely shifted to the birth rate, which during those years was causing concern. A tendency developed back in the post-war years, when reproduction began to be viewed as the main duty of a woman, more important than work and social activities. The gender image of a Soviet woman at this time looks rather contradictory: on the one hand, a "woman-mother" with a set of feminine, feminine qualities, on the other, a "woman-worker", which also implied the presence of masculine qualities. During this period, and also further in the post-Soviet period, the woman constantly experienced role conflict, balancing between everyday life, children and work. As for men, in the late Soviet decades (1970s-1980s) the evolution of the gender order led to a situation that can be characterized as a crisis of masculinity [3, pp. 444-446]. During this period, the party-ideological pressure on pedagogical science gradually weakened and, although the dominance of the collective over the individual and the public over the personal was still present, the emphasis nevertheless shifted towards the individual. This contributed to the restoration of former humanist traditions and the emergence of the communard movement in the 60s. In connection with these trends, in the late 1950s, various forms of extracurricular work appeared: palaces and houses of pioneers, stations for young technicians and young naturalists, music, art and sports schools. Some changes are also taking place in school education, so in the 50s a new subject was included in the curriculum of a general education school - labor training and by the 80s in the middle grades labor education was carried out differentially: boys were engaged in training workshops, and girls in service labor. The actualization of the image of the woman-mother, the keeper of the hearth, which takes place after the war and intensifies by the late Soviet period, is reflected in children's game culture as well. On the pages of children's magazines of this period, we often find cut-out paper dolls and clothes for them, which become very popular with Soviet girls. (Fig.5) There are also published patterns of clothes, soft toys, recipes, fashionable and practical advice on home economics. Special headings on sewing and various types of needlework appear in magazines, such as, for example, in the magazines “Pioneer”, “Brave Tailors”, “Academy of House Wizards”, etc. In the late 1950s - early 1960s. in schools and out-of-school institutions, creative work on the creation of instruments, models and various technical devices has been widely developed. With the support of many children's publications, including the newspaper “Pionerskaya Pravda”, the magazines “Yuniy Tekhnik”, “Modelist-Constructor”, “Znanie – Sila”, and “Tekhnika – Youth”, technical creativity gained popularity among a large number of Soviet boys. On the pages of these publications, we find instructions for assembling various scale models of aircraft, automobile and water transport (Fig. 6 and Fig. 7). Obviously, these publications were supposed not only to contribute to instilling interest in technical sciences and the education of scientific and technical personnel, but also to reflect the success of the state in the field of space exploration, the development of science and technology and demonstrate an optimistic vision of the future, an atmosphere of defense and a large construction site [7, p. 64]. The period of liberalization of gender policy is characterized by a return to the traditional content of the concepts of gender roles, which undoubtedly affected children's everyday life. Already from the beginning of the 60s and on until the end of the Soviet era, there is a clear division of games into those played by girls and those games played by boys in the gaming culture. To all of the above, it should be added that during the thaw period, private life is restored, when communal apartments are settled and young families receive their own housing, as a result of which the child has his own personal intimate space for study, creativity and games. In conclusion, we can say that children's periodicals occupied an important place in the children's everyday life of a Soviet child, and the game component of children's magazines was very popular among children. For a long time, children's periodicals were one of the few mass media, a kind of social field where children, their parents and peers meet. The materials for games and creativity presented on the pages of children's periodicals reflected the gender attitudes that prevailed in Soviet society, from experiments in the field of gender and ending with a return to their traditional content. 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