Scorched by the Fire of War: Masculinity, War Wounds and Disability in Soviet Visual Culture, 1941-65

Abstract

Drawing on images reproduced in both professional and popular publications, this article charts the changing representation of the war-damaged man in Soviet visual culture from the outbreak of war in 1941 until the reinstatement of Victory Day as a public holiday in 1965. Through such images it is shown that art followed a very different trajectory than literature or film when it came to dealing with such problematic aspects of the war experience, a disjunction that is attributed to the inherent nature of the various cultural genres. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the most dramatic shift in the depiction of the damaged man came — not in the Thaw as we might expect — but in the mid 1960s as part of a wider reassessment of the War and its legacy in Soviet visual culture.