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294 Oleg Riabov American Femininity in Soviet Films during the Early Cold War (1946-1955) “Greta Garbo Wins Elections’, proclaimed a conservative newspaper commenting on the defeat of the Italian Communist Party in the parliamentary elections of 1948 (Shaw 2007: 26). The results of the vote were one of the turning points of the Cold War in stopping the spread of Communism to the West. The re-release of Ernst Lubitch’s Ninotchka (1939) starring Garbo was among the efforts made by the CIA during the election campaign—at the same time, it could be seen as nothing but a love story between a Western man and a Soviet woman. This fact immediately allows us to suppose that gender discourse served as an effective weapon in the Cold War, which was used actively in cinema. ‘The intersections of gender and national discourses in American cinema during the Cold War have been intensively explored over the last two decades. This research shows the mutual influence of collective identity and gender rhetoric, investigates the role of the cinematic representations of the two superpowers’ gender orders in constructing the Soviet enemy, in creating Americanness, and in legitimising and delegitimising social order in the US (Jackson 2000; Heller 2005; Kackman 2005; Laville 2006). As for Soviet cinema, its study has a long history, and some remarkable works are devoted to films of the Early Cold War (Kenez 1992; Turovskaya 1993; Gillespie 2002; Dobrenko 2008; Rollberg 2008; Norris & Torlone 2008; Beumers 2009; Fedorov 2010, and others). Several researchers have analysed how the films created images of Soviet gender order (Haynes 2003; Steans 2010; Shaw & Youngblood 2010; Riabov 2012). However the exploration of cinematic representations of American femininity is just beginning. ‘The present chapter concentrates on some questions which are yet to receive attention. How did Soviet cinema represent American femininity? What means were exploited to represent its specific traits? How did these images relate to cinematic representations of Soviet femininity? The first section of the study is devoted to clarifying the methodological approaches used to research gender discourse as a Cold War weapon employed by cinema. The next section deals with cinematic images of American women as victims of capitalist society. Then the study focuses on representations of women as part of the enemy's world. Finally, the chapter demonstrates how these representations of American women varied depending on characteristics of their class, race, and political beliefs. Four Soviet films, which centred on picturing the American way of life, form the main material of this study.
