Labor Mobilization of Woman in the USA and the USSR During the Second World War: Its Visual Representation and Their Socio-cultural Meaning

In this paper I compared the main features of visual propaganda in two countries, which were involved in the World War II, - the Soviet Union and the United States. In the center of my attention were the American and Soviet posters and women's magazines (1941-1945), agitating women to work hardly in different fields, including the fields, which were occupied exclusively by men before the war. In the paper I compared images in the sources and identified a number of visual political strategies, which allowed the governments, organizing the propaganda machine, to mobilize women for work, not shifting dramatically the system of ideas about men and women as well as gender relations, existed in the two societies and supported at the state level. Based on the analysis of sources I have come to the conclusion that one of the important techniques in the promotion of the two countries was the creating of a single image of a female "ideal worker", which was to encourage women to work. This image was very different in the sources of two countries. At the same time in a single visual propaganda system in the United States and the Soviet Union other images of women coexisted with the main character types, and they were contrary to the main type, designed for the female audience.