WOMEN'S EXPERIENCE OF PARTICIPATION IN THE PROCESS OF THE SOVIETIZATION IN THE WESTERN REGIONS OF UKRAINE IN THE CONDITIONS OF STALIN’S REGIME

Abstract

The aim of the research is to show the ways and methods of the Bolshevik-Soviet authorities to involve women in the process of Sovietization of the western regions of Ukraine. The research proposed contains two storyline components: 1. Using the examples of women sent to western regions – the party and Soviet officials it is aimed to display the conditions of their work, life and regional leadership’s attitude to them; 2. Using the examples of local activists involved in party-public work by so-called «the Zhenotdely» of the relevant committees of the CP(B)U to trace the specification of their participation in the process of collectivization. The methodology of the research is based on several methodological approaches: 1. The determination of the Soviet political system of the Stalin’s period as a classical totalitarian model; 2. The investigation of women's experience in the post-war period in terms of manifestation of the gender policy by Soviet power at the micro level. The scientific novelty is that basing on archival sources the role of female officials sent to the western regions of Ukraine by the Central Committee of the CP(b)U in the process of Sovietization, as well as the conditions of their life and work is shown for the first time in historiography. The gender component of the Soviet policy of agricultural collectivization in the region is analyzed. Namely, the using of local women as propagandists in the collective farming system by party-Soviet authorities. Conclusions. The process of Sovietization of the western regions of Ukraine in the first years after the liberation of the region from the German invaders became a kind of mainstream for the implementation of the gender policy by the Bolshevik authorities. Under the leadership of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) «the Zhenotdely» were created. They were special bodies aimed to attract the women to active social and political life. The Party-Soviet authorities mobilized women's resources, on the one hand, as helpful workforce for the reconstruction of economic objects and, on the other, as a repeater of communist ideas and slogans. The image of a Soviet female worker, «stakhanovka», an ideological encourager for revolutionary transformations which was formed in the 1930s was actively exploited by the Bolshevik ideologists in the public propaganda discourse and used by them as one of the instruments of Sovietization of the region.