Buryat-Mongolian Olympia: iconography of afoot-ski march Ulan-Ude – Moscow, 1936–1937 (on the visual materials of the local mass media)

Abstract

One of the less developed or well known approaches to shedding light of the Soviet period is through the analysis of visual materials, the basis of much of the era’s propaganda. This article analyses the visual and ideological discourse in the printed materials of the Buryat-Mongolian ASSR over the years 1936-37. The research question concerns the uncovering of the genealogies in the various visual forms used by those in power and authority, with reference to Foucault’s ideas on subjective power relations. This entails considering the influence of the total character of the ‘eye of power’ on individuals. The construction of ‘social supervision’ and ‘social spectacles’ is traced, particularly in relation to the representation of women. This is done with reference to the specific case of record-breaking female skiers from the Buryat-Mongolian autonomous republic, who were lionised as the ‘fearless daughters of the republic’. Newspaper texts and photographs are studied as the visual markers of the era, while documentary and diary materials allow us to define the representations of the ‘Soviet woman’. This exposes the mechanisms used by the authorities to construct a visual gender canon, making sense of the record-breakers and bringing their achievement under the ‘supervision’ of the ‘eye of power’. The reconstruction of the Soviet power model in this region, in keeping with the concepts of Foucault, are analysed as panoptic; functioning on all levels of social institutions and systems, including the political and visual language of propaganda. This is also considered to be a political advertisement for Soviet nationalities policy; showing the non-Russian youth the success of national autonomies in the Soviet era and attacking fascist propaganda regarding racial differences. The codes of power, constructed in print, maps and mass culture, embodied the visual technology used in the construction of a collective identity from an ideological viewpoint.