Book Reviews

I still keep old issues of America magazine at my summer house -a Russianlanguage version from mid-1970-s to the early 1980s.They still haven't lost the glossy look.I remember vividly that for us, Moscow schoolgirls, these magazines were a window on the world beyond the Iron Curtain, a way to look in on life in a far off mystical land that we knew and loved -but only through writers like Dreiser, and Faulkner, and Doctorow.A mysterious and appealing country that seemed so much like our own -and yet, at the same time, was so very, very, different.The skyscrapers of New York and Detroit, the lights of Los Angeles and California, incredible science advances and amazing roads -and cars, also amazing.Being girls, we were especially interested in the images of women.Always with perfect make-up, always fit, with a Hollywood smile -they lived in the incredible world of fantastic comfort and great customer service.We looked at coffee machines and kitchen appliances that helped them take care of everyday chores, at the make-up that helped them create their glamorous looks, and tried to find something even remotely similar on the black market in Moscow and Leningrad.Many years later, in the 1990s, when I tried to explain to my American colleagues why the gender agenda was not included in the mainstream changes during Russia's period of democratization, I remembered, that neither Voice of America, nor Radio Liberty -the stations that anyone interested in alternative information sources listened to, -never spoke about women's movements or feminism in the USA.And Russian immigrants mentioned feminists only in a negative light.And so, a colossal resource of democratic change -the women's resourcewas ignored by perestroika's architects.This is a fact that we still have to rethink and redefine in the future.And the official American propaganda of the Cold War years certainly played an important role in the process.Diana Cucuz' book supports this theory.Her detailed research of American mass media over the course of a few decades allows us to follow the development of basic trends and gender stereotypes of opposite ideologies.But not only that.She explores an important issue -the gender aspect of cultural diplomacy, the "soft power" of the Cold War years.This is pioneering research that explores new facets of reassessing the Cold War experience and its consequences.The issues raised in the book go beyond purely historical research and give food for thought to those interested in a modern discussion on this topic.There is no doubt that images of women have always been the most vivid means of both influencing the audience and transmitting the basic cultural code.Soviet magazines meant for both Soviet and foreign audiences (Rabotnitsa (The Female Worker), Krestianka (The Female Peasant), the main propaganda illustrated journal Ogonyok, Soviet Woman -which was aimed at foreign audiences) pushed the message of female happiness in a socialist country -a country that gives women all possible rights and opportunities.A lot has been written on this topic -and an equal lot on the hypocrisy of this approach.Diana Cucuz' book analyzes the nature and practice of the gender component of ideological opposition and its transformation by using American magazines (first and foremost, America, aimed at Soviet audiences) as examples.In the first part of the book, "Shaping Women, Gender and the Communist Threat through the Ladies' Home Journal" the author analyzes the formation and confirmation of the main gender concepts as far as they relate to how both Soviet and American women were presented.She notes that beginning in the 1920's, "reflecting that either positive or negative commentary depended on the fragile state of US-Soviet relations"( p 91) , but after World War II, the overall message became purposely detailed -and that included gender detailing.The vital formulas used by the magazine in question after World War II are analyzed -formulas that subsequently became deeply developed within the framework of official American propaganda and published discourse up until the 1990s.These formulas include Modern woman, Happy Hmemaker, Special privileges of American Women, and, of course, the female variant of the American Dream.Sustainable concepts, such as the Babushka or Special Hardships of Russian Womanhood also appeared at this time.What we have here is brilliant historical research that allows one to recreate the gender ideologeme construction step-by-step.The analysis of how John Steinbeck's and Robert Capa's famous USSR trip in 1947 was reflected by a woman's magazine is worthy of note.The goal of that trip, undertaken by two war buddies, was to show that "Russians are people too."The magazine published a large collection of photos and texts entitled "Women and Children of the USSR," which had a huge effect on the audience.Both the authors, and subsequently, the readers were taken aback by how hard Soviet women worked, by how difficult their daily lives were.Steinbeck and Capa also wrote about how interested Russian women were in the lives of their American counterparts and how much they wished to get to know American women better.America project creators then used this idea to create one of "soft power's" most efficient constructs.The second part of the book, Selling Women, Gender and Consimer Culture , is about the gender component of the Cold War, concept work done by the White