Paradise is just ahead: social rights in soviet propaganda to Brazil (1950-1964)

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2

FEDERAL STATE AUTONOMOUS EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION

FOR HIGHER PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

Saint Petersburg School of Arts and Humanities

Master's thesis

Paradise is just ahead: social rights in soviet propaganda to brazil (1950-1964)

Giovanny Simon Machado

Saint Petersburg 2020

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I want to thank my family and friends in Brazil who supported me and contributed materially, emotionally and intellectually with this work. Especially my brother Gabriel Simon.

I can't fail to honor all the individuals, known or not, who contributed to the crowdfunding campaign that allowed me to travel 12,000 kilometers and live for two years in Russia without difficulty. This thesis would not be possible without such contributions.

I want to thank all my classmates at HSE who have always been supportive and challenging, and more than colleagues, new friends. I also thank all the HSE staff for their professionalism and care during this period. To all the teachers who have taught me in these two years and awakened my desire to research history.

Nominally I want to thank Elena Kochetkova for the lessons and dedication in a year of temporary supervision; Marina Loskutova, to whom I owe very precise indications on how to navigate the Russian archival universe; my supervisor Tatiana Borisova for all the patience, academic support and encouragement, and for the precious criticism that challenged me to become better; my companion Anastasia Salikhova, for the love, affection and daily support in this journey that is coming to an end.

Table of contents

Introduction

1. Research question and research object delimitation

1.1 Research sources and chapter organization

1.2 Global History approach

1.3 On Soviet propaganda

1.4 On Soviet-Brazilian relations

2. Advertising social rights: how soviet propaganda helped to spread a different polity paradigm

2.1 The peace movement and the international women's movement during the Cold War

2.2 The Soviet Women's Committee and its magazine

2.3 Breaking the language curtain: Marxist and Soviet Literature in Brazil

2.4 The overall features of La Mujer Soviйtica (MS)

2.5 “Under the sun of our constitution”: Security and protection of socialist legislation

2.6 Forms of textual and visual discourse: a catalogue of social rights

3. Between syncretism and orthodoxy: how the Brazilian audience received the soviet messages

3.1 The Federation of Brazilian Women

3.2 The Brazilian reception to Soviet propaganda

3.3 One-way trip: peace movement and political pilgrimage (1950-1954)

3.4 The social rights technology complex

3.5 To love is to secure: social rights as conditions for love and happiness

3.6 Development, friendship and peace movement (1955-1960)

3.7 Friendship, social rights technology and analogical thinking

3.8 Syncretic ideals: Soviet atheists were the true Christians

3.9 The Brazilian dawn and Vostok's tense landing in Copacabana (1961-1964)

3.10 Re-establishment of diplomatic relations with a social rights regime

3.11 La Mujer Soviйtica and its connections in Brazil

Conclusion

Bibliography

Abstract

Introduction

In 1951 Dolores Ibarruri, also known as La Pasionaria, an important Basque-Spanish Communist leader, published an article in the January-February issue of La Mujer Soviйtica (Soviet Woman) magazine. In her article she stated in the first paragraph: `The Second World War, initiated by Hitlerism and ended victoriously thanks to the decisive action of the Soviet Union and its glorious Army, deeply moved the consciences of the peoples. [Their actions] promoted in the peoples waves of enthusiasm, waking up to the struggle for freedom to millions of people who had lived enslaved and oppressed. An impetuous democratic development began throughout the world...' Dolores Ibarruri, “Luchamos Por La Paz,” La Mujer Soviйtica, 1951.. On this occasion, Dolores was the vice-president of the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) and a persecuted in her home country. Spain was in the peculiar situation of being still ruled by fascism in the immediate postwar period. Franco remained in power until 1975, the year of his death, while Salazarism in the Iberian neighbor was defeated a year earlier in 1974.

When she wrote her article, she probably had no idea that Franco would remain in power for another twenty-four years, but her words surely expressed a common understanding of that time. The postwar period and the Cold War times coincided with a wave of intense transformations around the world. The Chinese Revolution of 1949, the torrent of independence movements across the African continent, the emergence of reformist governments in Latin America, are just a few but rather powerful examples. It seems evident that there was indeed something happening that might be similar to this “democratic consciousness” characterized in her article. Dolores argues, however, that this impact is internally linked to the Soviet victory in World War II.

The rise of the Global South did not accidentally coincide with the Cold War. Both processes influenced and modified each other. The leaderships of the Global South sometimes used the polarization of the superpowers to their advantage and adapted their discourses to their own agendas, while the superpowers moved discursively and politically seeking to gain allies for their expansionist purposes. The great challenge of how to win the Cold War involved shaping internal aspects of various parties in connection.

Dolores also associated the Allied and specifically Soviet victory with a moment of democratic rise in the world. The Italian philosopher Domenico Losurdo also supports this thesis in his critique of the concept of totalitarianism, demonstrating that Nazism was an extreme version of an ideology strongly inspired by social Darwinism and that it employed colonialist Domenico Losurdo, Guerra e Revoluзгo. O Mundo Um Sйculo Apуs Outubro de 1917 (Sгo Paulo: Boitempo, 2017), 120. practices against other European countries, in particular the East Losurdo, 211-17., considering Hitler's known intentions to enslave Eastern European populations. He argues that such practices based on deep racial segregation and socio-biological hierarchy were widely used by Western countries and the US even before Hitler's rise. Thus, the Soviet victory in the war was a kind of world democratic revolution that defeated the colonial tradition that was reaffirmed in the form of Nazi-fascism.

The Cold War period was not just a period of warlike tension, space competition and territorial disputes. It was also a period of history marked by independence of former colonies and the struggle for civil rights and against racial discrimination in the U.S. and other countries. It was a time when women won more rights, welfare states were erected, and health, housing and work were seen as citizens' rights and state duties. To a greater or lesser extent, depending on the country, this way of seeing the world, born decades earlier, gained more space during those troubled times.

1. Research question and research object delimitation

It is not the purpose of this paper to analyze whether or not the USSR played a decisive role in this process. It is true, however, that the Soviet messages to the world, though sometimes contradictory to its practice, were anti-colonial, for instance. A relevant part of the Soviet discourse was certainly about modernization by the planned economy, the increase of productive forces and technological advances. But the object of this work is another, that which concerns social rights and the guarantees promoted by the state. My object of study is, therefore, how social rights in Soviet propaganda were transmitted and received to Brazil between 1950 and 1964. The main hypothesis is that the Soviet Union transmitted to the world a set of self-proclaimed democratic and progressive values, a different polity paradigm on how society should be organized with the needs of the individual provided by the state. Democracy, freedom and progress are still nowadays words in dispute and were part of the Cold War lexicon. Both antagonistic blocks and their leading superpowers made extensive use of this vocabulary by assigning completely different meanings to the very same words.

I believe that an in-depth study of this polity paradigm might clarify the meaning of some these concepts and, by contrast, show simultaneously similar and distinct worldviews. The concept of freedom does not necessarily coincide with personal choices, the idea of democracy cannot be summarized in multi-party elections, and progress can go beyond the realms of the economic sphere. My goal, therefore, is to analyze the content of the messages embedded in Soviet propaganda pieces, particularly the magazine Soviet Woman (SW) in its Spanish translation, the main sources of this work. Since no message is produced by a communicator without addressing it to any subject, it is critical to look for the impacts of such a message on its recipient. This is a case study of Soviet propaganda and its progressive message using the magazine Soviet Woman and its circulation abroad, specifically in Brazil, as objects of analysis.

The reasons behind the choice of Brazil to be analyzed as a receiver of the Soviet message relies on some features that define the relationship between the two countries. First, Brazil cannot be considered exactly as part of the Western world since it is a peripheral country, and, simultaneously, it is far from the more immediate Soviet influence, both in political or spatial terms. Therefore, in some ways, the dispute between US and USSR over their scope of influence in Brazil, even being strongly hegemonized by the Americans mostly after the 1964 military coup, required more effort from the Soviets. Also, it is the largest country in Latin America, a region of the world which became an intense Cold War battleground, especially after the Cuban Revolution of 1959.

The time delimitation of this period has to do with the important overlapping histories of two completely different countries in political, geographic and social terms. The year 1945, besides marking the end of the Great Patriotic War for the USSR, marked the end of a long political cycle in Brazilian politics, entitled `Estado Novo' (New State), which began in 1937 with the dictatorship of then-President Getъlio Vargas. He was pushed out of the office in 1945 and reelected in 1951 boosted by his own personality cult and popularity. After much pressure from elites, he committed suicide in 1954, stepping on the road to eternity and left life “to enter History”, in his own words. The end of the war pushed Brazil's internal situation to democratic and reformist demands, with developmentalist tendencies, but which reached their peak and moment of interruption in 1964, when a US-sponsored military coup destroyed this process. Coincidentally, with Stalin's death in 1953, a process of self-reform began in the USSR with the rise of Nikita Khrushchev to power and lasted until his failure and forced resignation in 1964. For these reasons, this period is significantly interesting to analyze the interrelationship of ideas and ideologies between the two countries.

In a general sense, the interlacing of meetings and connections between Brazil and the USSR can be summarized in three main forms: that of interstate diplomacy, the international communist movement and via public organizations of cultural, scientific, and civic character. In other words, the channels and flows through which the Soviet messages may have circulated, as well as the Brazilian replica, are multiple. Although inevitably they are related to and influenced each other, the focus of this work will be on the exchange carried out by the public organizations of the women's movement, whose claim was to be autonomous of states and broader than the ideological “purity” of communist parties. In the very nature of these organizations, which is the subject of the following sections, it may be possible to observe a unique interaction between different historical subjects. The contrast between the messages contained in Soviet Woman and the feedback from Brazilian women may provide a less biased, even if not completely free from it, view of state pragmatisms or party principles.

1.1 Research sources and chapter organization

As mentioned earlier, the main source for analysing the Soviet propaganda will be a women's magazine called Soviet Woman. In this case study, I analyze the Spanish translation entitled La Mujer Soviйtica (MS), whose content is practically the same as the original Russian and other language versions. There are one hundred and fifty-two issues, from the last bimonthly issue of 1950 to the December 1964 issue. The magazine was written by the Soviet Women's Committee (SWC), based in Moscow, the same city where it was printed for almost the entire period of its existence in Pravda's printing press. All the editions analyzed are available at the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg.

In order to analyze the reception of Soviet propaganda about its public this work also focuses on a particular case: the Brazilian public. Naturally, the subjects' way of thinking and seeing something, their judgment, never derives exclusively from a single source of information, nor does it depend solely on a pre-existing consciousness. The mutability of individuals' views on the problems of their time makes the task of verifying such aspect of human interrelations very complex. In any case, if we can perceive some nuances and general tendencies expressed in documents of that time, this already seems to be something valuable. One of the sources of investigation about the reception of the Brazilian public to Soviet propaganda is the correspondence exchanged between Brazilian and Soviet women. They are available in the Russian State Archive in Moscow in the collection corresponding to the Soviet Women's Committee (P7289). The main flaw with these sources is that Brazilians, while writing to their pen-pals, might not be completely sincere and could abstain themselves on criticizing their peers. However, this is an issue of almost any research of this kind and to acknowledge this fact is the first step to avoind exagerated conclusions.

The correspondences are the closest sources available when reading the MS magazines but another set of sources used in this research are the travel logs. During the Cold War, political pilgrimage was a popular activity. Many from the Western countries and the Global South, sometimes doubtful of the mainstream press versions of what was happening in the other side of the Iron Curtain, were motivated to travel and see with their own eyes what was happening in the East. This very broad spectrum of curious people could vary from openly anti-communist, Soviet sympathizers, to members of their respective national Communist Parties. Many of them would after the visit write travel logs and reports of what they had seen in the Soviet Union and later publish them as books. Some of these would be mentioned in the pages of Soviet Woman, which would follow closely most of the visits made to the USSR. These visitors, while writing to the Brazilian public, would be often more candid in their remarks. But the main problem with these sources is that they were not written necessarily by MS magazine direct readers, because of this I decide to take into consideration only the travel logs of those who wrote to or who were mentioned in it.

As for the organization of the chapters, the first one is devoted to the analysis of the Soviet messages themselves, in which the main trends that appear in the pages of the La Mujer Soviйtica magazine are described and investigated, placing them in a broader context. The second chapter focuses on the reception of the message by Brazilian women, especially from the Federation of Brazilian Women (FMB), by investigating their correspondence with the Soviet Women's Committee (SWC), the mentions to Brazilians in the pages of the magazine, and travel reports made by Brazilian visitors to the Soviet Union.

1.2 Global History approach

This work also seeks to contribute to historiography through the Global History approach, specifically inspired by Sebastian Conrad's contribution in his book What is Global History. The author understands global history as an approach, not as an object of study, that `takes structured integration as a context, even when it is not the main topic. It also means that global historians pursue the question of causality up to a global level.' Conrad, 90. The focus on connections is a founding characteristic of globality, but it is not just about identifying connections, links or forms of exchange, but also qualifying such connections. It is necessary to understand which structures they moved through, their degree of intensity and their durability Conrad, 90.. The `connections need to be embedded in a process of structural transformation , and this on a global scale.' Conrad, 64-65. In this work, the main structure that was transformed during the post-war years was the form of social reproduction. Soviet Union was looking forward for a large scope of alliances and social rights were strong weapons to incite changes within other states. In other words, a process of integration between different polity paradigms was the outcome of sometimes opposing views on how society should be organized during the Cold War. Social rights guaranteed through the state, despite having fundamental divergences on their forms, were in the end the encompassing structure which integrated both capitalist and socialist societies.

Historiography

The interdisciplinary nature of this work has compelled carrying out a historiographical review which relates to different fields of research. There are three themes which overlap one another: the studies of Soviet propaganda; research on legal history; and relations between Brazil and the USSR during the Cold War. Thus, this historiographical review seeks to list some of the most relevant works, the discussions in these different fields and how they relate to this particular research.

1.3 On Soviet propaganda

The problematic of Soviet propaganda is rather scattered studied. There is plenty of available literature fragmented into many different topics. I was able to find articles on the consumption of television programs in the USSR, the production of visual propagation in the period of Stalin, the reception of Soviet cinema in Iceland, the incorporation of Jews into Soviet agricultural life by propaganda and many other subjects. In order not to lose sight of the object of this work and not be swallowed up by an avalanche of other themes, I focus mainly on works that discuss Soviet propaganda through women's magazines similar to Soviet Woman and a few other that might assist in the approach to propaganda as primary sources. One article, by Sheril Tuttle Ross, conducts an epistemological discussion about art as propaganda and makes an effort to conceptualize propaganda not only as a message of mental manipulation and falsification of truth, but as an instrument of persuasion. Gerovitch's article Slava Gerovitch, “'New Soviet Man' Inside Machine: Human Engineering, Spacecraft Design, and the Construction of Communism,” Osiris 22, no. 1 (2007): 135-57. reconstructs the use of the Soviet space program for propagandistic purposes of the “new man” ideal, a feature that I found had some impact on Brazilian audience, but with some differences that will be later discussed.

Before discussing works on female magazines, I want to briefly discuss how to approach propaganda as a source, employing Ross' insights to it. What cautions should we take while analyzing propaganda? It was a trend in the old-fashioned and positivist study of history to consider what was written in documents as a given truth. Authenticity of documents soon became a major concern specially when dealing with nobility rights and religious doctrine polemics. The textual criticism appeared with the humanists and found its modern form of source criticism through the German school of historians. If it was common to take the written word as an absolute proof of truth, the situation today seems to have turned to the complete opposite side, at least for some contemporary scholarships or for researchers of some particular fields. For example, researchers of the Soviet Union period are constrained to have a chronic distrust in their sources. According to Ananich, for example “the press was under strict state control,” and other state classified documents, such as trial reports, are not trustworthy because of the risk of forged information Boris V. Ananich, “The Historian And The Source: Problems Of Reliability And Ethics,” in Archives, Documentation, And Institutions Of Social Memory: Essays From The Sawyer Seminar (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 490-96.. In general terms, I do not think that documents produced by the United States deserve greater trust than documents of the Soviet state.

However, since printed propaganda as the main source of the present research has a particularity: it was written with the very intention to express a positive image. According to Ross, in the past, `“propaganda” was understood to mean mere persuasive', and gradually became a synonym of falsification or manipulative discourse. After recovering some other definitions of what is propaganda, the author provides her own conclusion which seems like a good starting point to discuss the precautions the present research should take while analyzing Soviet propaganda to Brazil. She claims that propaganda is always a message propagated by a sender and received by a target, in which the source of the message has a clear intention of persuading its target. Ross, 17-18.The advantage of this definitions is that it does not assume propaganda as an automatically forged information or as a devious brainwashing narrative. Persuasion is not a neutral act while the intentions behind define its motivations. “Why the sender wants to persuade this target” must be a constant question during the analytical phase.

Even political propaganda is not always about lying but in intends to catch traces of reality and highlight them. No one can expect that the Soviet state would portray itself and the living conditions of its people leading to attention to the negative side. A reasonable spectator might find enough material about this on the American anti-communist propaganda. Propaganda is meant to advertise in favor or against something. However, it was most likely that the American propaganda in favor of the “free market economy” and capitalism did not highlight the same aspects of its society as the Soviets did.

Finally, in light of Ross' definition, this research must reinforce the skeptical approach to sources, but it is important to keep in mind that it does not seek to verify the authenticity of every particular event or information depicted in the sources. The main objective is to understand the general message in different topics and to distinct audiences. What was the purpose of the messages, what values they carried and why they had those particular format and content.

One of the works that discusses the role of women's magazines in Soviet propaganda is that of Natasha Tolstikova, Apparently this work was a shorter result of her PhD thesis which analyzed Rabotnista in comparisson to Western female magazines. Natasha Tolstikova, “Rabonitsa: The Paradoxical Sucess of a Soviet Women's Magazine,” Journalism History 30, no. 3 (Fall 2004): 131-40. who analyzed the first 50 years of Rabonitsa magazine. She sought to understand the reasons behind the magazine's popularity during that period.

This magazine was naturally different from Soviet Woman since its objective was to reach the domestic audience of the USSR. In terms of criticism, in my view its work assumes that freedom of the press in a liberal fashion is an axiom from which the Soviet press deviated. It starts from given conceptions of vigilance and party control over the magazine without discussing the distinction between the role the party fulfilled and still fulfils in some socialist societies. The women's agency in the magazine's editorial office seems to be reduced therefore. It takes some conclusions that seem exaggerated, for example, to consider that the magazine was “obedient” to the party because it never suffered any reprimand. Tolstikova, 138.

However, some trends that I observed in my research also seem to have had an impact in Rabonitsa. For example, Tolstikova stated that the Khrushchev period was marked by a change in writing style, with a more romantic or lyrical flavor. Tolstikova, 136. The organizing character of the magazine, which sought to engage women in public activities, Tolstikova, 138. as well as the role played by the magazine in mediating the demands of its readers with state organs, Tolstikova, 137. was something I also observed in Soviet Woman, demonstrating that it did not function solely and exclusively as an organ of ideological domination.

Another relevant work for this research is that of Alexis Peri Alexis Peri, “New Soviet Woman: The Post-World War II Feminine Ideal at Home and Abroad,” The Russian Review 77, no. 4 (October 2018): 621-44, https://doi.org/:10.1111/russ.12202., who analyzed the English language versions of Soviet Woman, as well as the correspondences between Soviet women and their British and American parts during the second post-war years. Unlike my focus on social rights, Peri analyzed the ideals of femininity present in the journal and came to the conclusion that some of the narratives expressed were not so different from those of the West. Unlike in the West, where women were pressured to leave their jobs and return to domestic work after the war, in the USSR the lack of a male workforce kept women working. Peri analysed how these visions of femininity, although contrasting in terms of economic equality, always returned to the same issue: the feminization of domestic labor. Although Soviet women were free to exercise a profession, they were also demanded in domestic work and maternity. The criticism of Western women was, according to Peri's description, a conservative criticism that put career and domestic life in opposition. Peri, 629. In fact, the discussion of the Soviet women as a work heroines and their merits, always appeared attached to what was considered essentially feminine. Peri, 631-32. Therefore, neither in the West nor in the USSR was the division of domestic work between men and women questioned. One of the most relevant issues observed by Peri for this work is the role that certain social rights played in the reproduction of this pattern of femininity. Soviet Woman's response to western criticism that work was detrimental to motherhood, for example, was answered with state guarantees of childcare by the state. Peri, 633.

This work, however, did not dedicate itself expressively to analyzing the typically propagandist forms of narrative, but rather to observing the images of femininity present in magazines simultaneously to analyze the exchanges between international correspondents. One of the works that uses the analysis of visual patterns of how women were represented in Rabonitsa magazine between 1970 and 2017, by Anastasiia Utiuzh, Anastasiia Utiuzh, “The Portrayal of Women in the Oldest Russian Women's Magazine `Rabotnitsa' From 1970-2017” (Master of Arts, Florida, University of South Florida, 2018). reinforces some of the conclusions already observed in other materials. In her master's thesis, Utiuzh analyzed the magazine's image patterns using Goffman's six categories of gender analysis. With some increase in the number of images that disseminated female stereotypes in the magazine's post-Soviet period, she concluded that the changes were slow, but that during the Soviet period women were represented more independently and through work. Utiuzh, 53-56. For my research, what draws attention in this work is mainly the technique used in visual analysis.

Employing textual and visual analysis, Maria Davidenko analyzed the issue of body care in Rabonitsa and Krest'yanka magazines between the years 1970 and 1990. Her most important conclusion is that at the end of the Soviet period and already in the 1990s, although with greater freedom to express nudity and sexuality, the prescription of these magazines on standards of beauty and body care was significantly individualized. Davidenko, 459. Meanwhile, in the Soviet period, the division between Slavic women and Eastern Soviet women marked the division between those considered attractive bodies, and those that should assume the burden of productive labor, maternity and domestic tasks. What is most relevant to my research is precisely how the emphasis of the responsibility for care in the Soviet period was on the state Davidenko, 452., which was to provide for all women indistinctly, but when it represented the educational, cultural and professional achievements of women who lived between labor and motherhood, it was the non-Slavic women predominantly portrayed; in the fashion and beauty sections, they were omitted.

On social rights

One of the most important characteristics of many works on sovietology is the recognition of the preponderant role that the State had in social life, sometimes understood as repressive, for its practices of providing means of living and social mobility to its population. In terms of legislation, the influence of the Russian Revolution and the prospect of a proletarian state in the territory of the former Russian Empire had widespread impacts on the Western world. This is the theme of John Quigley's book Soviet legal innovation and the law of the Western world. John Quigley, Soviet Legal Innovation and the Law of the Western World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). This work revealed a reality of legal asymmetry, in terms of social rights, and was therefore another frequent parameter of comparison between capitalism and socialism.

On labor issues, Quigley argues that the USSR imposed great challenges to the legality of the time, establishing work as a fundamental right (and duty) and effectively building a situation of full employment. This legislation was accompanied by the creation of health systems, social insurance including protection for the severely disabled, sick leave, maternity leave, compensation for dangerous and unhealthy work, and the prohibition of child labor. Quigley, 12-13. All these changes were not restricted to the internal environment. Soviet action in this field was answered by the creation of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and forced Western states to adopt reforms in their legislation, many of them under the direct or indirect influence of Soviet legislation. Quigley, 77-78.

Soviet legislation also challenged the status quo of the predominantly patriarchal relations of Western states. In many of them, women could not keep their own name, choose a profession, travel without the authorization of their husband, considered by law to be superior to their partners, divorce without proof of adultery, consensus between the parties or divorcing without losing their own citizenship. Quigley demonstrates how these changes had already begun to be expressed meaningfully with inspiration in the Family Code of 1918. Quigley, 103-7. Soviet legislation Quigley, 17-33. abolished formal inequality among men and women (even though it continued to exist in everyday life), created policies of positive discrimination, and gave ammunition to the international socialist and communist movements to pressure their governments against those inequalities that had remained intact since the time of democratic revolutions.

The importance of this work to my research is expressed precisely in the tension exerted from inside to outside the USSR as, in certain aspects, Soviet social rights came to be seen as a source of inspiration by those who fought against iniquities in their own countries, raising the range of possibilities for positive state interventions possible at the time. William Butler, a reviewer on Quigley's work, pointed that he might even have understated his conclusion, saying that parts of Asia, Latin America and Africa were under Soviet legal influence. William E. Butler, “Reviewed Work: Soviet Legal Innovation and the Law of the Western World by JOHN B. QUIGLEY, JR.,” The American Journal of Legal History 50, no. 2 (April 2008): 233.

The Italian philosopher argued that there was a line of continuity between the French Revolution and its project of modernity and the October Revolution. He argued that the 1917 Revolution and its successive phases, albeit with internal contradictions, marked a struggle against what he called the global three major discriminations: census discrimination, gender discrimination, and ethnic-racial discrimination. Domenico Losurdo, Guerra e Revoluзгo. O Mundo Um Sйculo Apуs Outubro de 1917 (Sгo Paulo: Boitempo, 2017), 136-39.

Soviet innovations in terms of legislation and the recognition of social rights and state duties constituted a powerful discourse that influenced the world as a whole, not only the western states of Europe where several welfare systems were built, but even the USA and the so-called “Third World.” Franklin Roosevelt, for instance, proposed a new Bill of Rights Quigley, Soviet Legal Innovation and the Law of the Western World, 79-80., incorporating in the principles of liberal freedom that were originated in the American Revolution, a broader understanding of freedom as “freedom from necessity.” Losurdo, Guerra e Revoluзгo. O Mundo Um Sйculo Apуs Outubro de 1917, 335. The idea that the citizen does not only have civil rights but also social rights that must be respected and provided is still deeply rooted in our contemporary mindsets, even if in permanent tension with neoliberal opposing views.

Finally, there is an unapparent connection between Conrad's proposed Global History approach, Quigley's effort to indicate the Soviet legislative influence on Western laws, and the present work. Conrad argued that it is necessary to go beyond the connections themselves, and to find out what global challenges motivate the connections and how and with what intensity these connections are transformed into integration by structures. Laws and legal paradigms are certainly important integration structures that were by no means the product of an internalist history, as Conrad criticized. Examples include the influence of Roman law in continental Europe, the worldwide influence of the Napoleonic Code, and the customary law spread throughout the former British Empire and Commonwealth countries. Quigley sought to argue that some laws that were first implemented in the USSR were gradually gaining adherence from Western states. Due to the generalist nature of his work, he does not delve into details of how this transfer occurred, but highlights two paths: the path of institutions such as the International Labor Organization, for example; and the path of socialist movements that acted within other states. My work is not about how this paradigm entered Brazilian law, because this was a later process, since the 1988 Constitution with the end of the military dictatorship. But it is about the USSR that influenced systematically and directly social movements in Brazil, beyond the communist tradition.

1.4 On Soviet-Brazilian relations

Most of the literature regarding the relations between Brazil and Soviet Union is closely connected with the history of the communist movement, specifically the international link between the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), the Communist International (Comintern) and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). There is a significant literature on the history of the Brazilian Communist Party and their main ideas can be summarized. One of the better recognized researchers in this field is the historian Anita Prestes, daughter of the Luiz Carlos Prestes, the most prominent communist leader in Brazil during the 20th century and general secretary of the PCB for 21 years. Anita Prestes has written several books on the biography of her father and the history of PCB, in which she explores how the Comintern and CPSU revolution theses were applied in Brazil by the local communists.

These studies are mostly divided in different periods. A particularly interesting is the one referring to the background and the consequences of the attempt to start an armed revolution in Brazil in 1935 led by Luiz Carlos Prestes and the National Liberation Alliance (ANL) with strong influence and support of the Soviet Union, financial aid and field agents of the Comintern in Brazilian soil.1¹ Anita Leocadia Prestes,Da Insurreic?aЮo Armada, 1935 AМ UniaЮo Nacional 1938-1945[From the Armed Uprising, 1935 to the National Union 1938-1945] (SaЮo Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2001) and Anita Leocaмdia Prestes,Luiz Carlos Prestes E A Alianc?a Nacional Libertadora(repr., SaЮo Paulo, SP: Editora Brasiliense, 2008). The author argues that the Brazilian communists were dogmatically following the Russian Revolution as a model that could be mechanically applied, and for this reason, the revolution attempt failed. This model, of a two-steps revolution, first the national and democratic one and later the proletarian-socialist, was the root of the mistake committed in 1935, which led to a long-term persecution, arrests and executions of many communist leaders. It is also worth noting the well documented and detailed biographical works of Anita Prestes and Fernando Morais about the German communist Olga Benбrio Prestes, who was Luiz Carlos spouse and got executed in a gas chamber after being illegally deported while pregnant.2² Fernando Morais,Olga(La Habana: Fondo Editorial Casa de Las Amйricas, 2005) and Anita Prestes,Olga Benario Prestes: Uma Comunista Nos Arquivos Da Gestapo(Sгo Paulo: Boitempo, 2017).

The works3³ Anita Leocaмdia Prestes,Os Comunistas Brasileiros (1945-1956/58) [The Brazilian Communists (1945-56-58)](SaЮo Paulo, SP: Editora Brasiliense, 2010). It is algo relevant Anita Leocadia Prestes,Luiz Carlos Prestes: O Combate Por Um Partido Revolucionбrio (1958-1990)[Luiz Carlos Prestes: The Battle for a Revolutionary Party] (SaЮo Paulo: Ed. ExpressaЮo Popular, 2013). and Anita Leocadia Prestes,Luiz Carlos Prestes: Um Comunista Brasileiro [Luiz Carlos Prestes: A Brazilian Communist], 1st ed. (Sгo Paulo: Boitempo, 2015). of Anita Prestes referring to the later period in the history of the Brazilian communists are focused on interpreting the different political tactics adopted by the PCB. The author lays emphasis on the idea that the Brazilian Communists were making a strategic mistake in treating Brazil as a country that needed to pass through a bourgeois-democratic stage of the Revolution, as was the case in Russia. According to her, this misguided strategy led the PCB to promote alliances with the national capitalist class that supposedly had an interest in developing the national economy and producing an autonomous capitalism in Brazil. This appreciation is only important for this research because it indicates, in general terms, the way in which the communist intelligentsia applied uncritically the indications of the Soviets: as a recipe that should be followed even if the national circumstances of Brazil were completely different from the Russian Empire in the dawn of the October Revolution.

It is also possible to analyze the relations between the USSR and Brazil from the state perspective. The field is not adequately research though. In general, there are comprehensive descriptions of the trade and technological relations maintained by Brazilian governments with the Soviet power. A recent article by Gerhard4⁴ Philipp R. L. Gerhard, "Oportunismo Ideolуgico? As Relaзхes Econфmicas Entre A Uniгo Soviйtica E A Ditadura Militar" [Ideological Oportunism? The economical relations between Soviet Union and the Military Dictatorship],Revista Espaзo Acadкmico, no. 175 (2015): 39-47. summarizes the permanence of Soviet-Brazilian relations even after the military coup of 1964 that established an anticommunist dictatorship and aligned with the United States for 21 years. The author demonstrates that, unlike in the Cuban case, the relations with the USSR were never cut by the Brazilian military governments and, in some cases, were intensified. Even with completely opposing political and ideological orientations, the material needs of trade and technological exchange prevailed.

However, I argue that he did not satisfactorily address the reasons that would motivate the USSR to maintain such relations with the military dictatorship in Brazil, something that seems to be similar to the case of Soviet trade with Western Europe and the policy of 'peaceful coexistence.' At the same time, the characterization of the different military governments by Gerhard is too dichotomous between liberalism and developmentalist statism, leaving the privatizing face that remained alive shady even in the 'times of lead', which cost the indebtedness and the financial serious crisis of the 1980s.

One of the most complete works on this subject is a chapter in a book written by Tobias Rupprecht.5⁵ Tobias Rupprecht, "Globalisation And Internationalism Beyond The North Atlantic: Soviet-Brazilian Encounters And Interactions During The Cold War", inInternationalism, Imperialism And The Formation Of The Contemporary World, 1st ed. (Cambridge and Oxford: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 327-352. In this chapter the author gives an overview of the relations between Brazil and the Soviet Union starting from the immediate postwar period and through the period of the military dictatorship. It covers not only political and economic diplomacy but also various expressions of cultural exchange. It is in this work that I found the first mention of the Soviet magazines circulating in Brazil, especially Soviet Woman and New Times. In this mention the author affirms that the Brazilian communist leaderships complained about the apolitical content of these periodicals. His general conclusion is that the USSR made a change of stance which he calls 'Post-Stalinist Internationalism', in which the Soviet State seeks to represent itself no longer as the 'cradle of communism', but as a model of development and overcoming the backwardness through its economic, technological and social prowess. The author retrieves numerous accounts of Brazilians, both right-wing and communists, who were impressed by the high level reached by the Soviets.

Although Rupprecht makes exaggerated generalizations and forced comparisons between the two countries with completely different realities and history. He tried to homogenize the two countries by the concept of “authoritarianism” emphasizing some aspects and underestimating others. In my view, he underestimated the alignment with the United States and was very attached to some specific reports by politicians and authorities that did not represent the essence of Brazilian foreign and domestic policy, as current historiography on the theme can support. At the same time, it does not effectively connect Soviet diplomacy with the political strategy of 'peaceful coexistence' to understand the reasons for the pragmatic exchange between the two countries.

2. Advertising social rights: how soviet propaganda helped to spread a different polity paradigm

This chapter aims to analyze the set of values imbued in the Soviet messages present in the propaganda destined to the foreigner, in particular, having as a specific case, the Soviet Women magazine. I analyze here how the Soviets, in seeking to show the world their way of life and how things worked in their country, propagated a specific type of mentality, a paradigm that should govern society beyond the republics of the union, or even the socialist camp. It is not necessarily a question of identifying this paradigm with socialism. That would be an over-simplistic answer to the problem. This paradigm, while preceding the rise of the socialist states in Eastern Europe and Asia, established an alternative or even opposite view to the liberal one in respect to the connotation of concepts such as freedom, security, progress, and peace. It was a polity paradigm because the state had a fundamental role in its societal prescriptions.

The imperative that individuals should not be left to their own fate but should be protected by the state that guaranteed positive social rights for its citizens was understood as a precondition for peace. The post-war peace movement was a fruitful scenario for the spread of this paradigm. And for this reason, the first sections of this chapter aim to sketch out some general lines about the peace movement and the women's movement, and how Soviet Woman circulated through this scenario, by whom it was created, and for what purpose. The later sections analyze some general characteristics of the magazine and the historical context that led it to Brazil. The final ones correspond to the analysis of the texts themselves, revealing the most recurrent aspects of the Soviet narrative.

2.1 The peace movement and the international women's movement during the Cold War

In order to understand these messages and the magazine itself, it is necessary to understand its purpose of existence and to which organs it was linked during its period of existence. Key parts of this story, therefore, are the Soviet Women's Committee (Komitet sovetskikh zhenshchin) and the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF). The WIDF was created with the purpose to unite women from different countries, even the US Jacqueline Castledine, Cold War Progressives. Women's Interracial Organizing for Peace and Freedom (Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 46., in their struggle for peace and equality. As an international federation, WIDF was composed of several sub-organizations of a national character that were affiliated to the world organization. Among them, the Soviet Women's Committee (SWC) and the Federation of Brazilian Women (FMB). The first will be discussed in more detail in the next section of this chapter, while the second will be the subject for the second chapter of this dissertation. Therefore, WIDF served as a means and arena of contact between women's movements in different countries. WIDF even maintained an international magazine entitled Women of the whole world, which was first edited in Paris, but then moved to the German Democratic Republic because of the repression suffered by the French government.

Together with the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY), the WIFD and other associations, which I will term as international democratic front organizations, were created by socialists, communists and social-democratic organizations to organize some key social segments internationally. Robert Orth, International Communist Front Organizations (Mьnchen: Pfaffenhofen/Ilm, 1964). At the end of the Second World War, a great demand arose for peace and to prevent the continuation of the conflict that was then outlined between the USSR and the other allied powers. In this way, agitation and campaigning for peace was visibly one of the most important themes of the magazine, employing not only political texts and resolutions, but also artistic forms and correspondence with people, institutions and movements that were repeatedly called 'partisans of peace'. The painting by three Soviet artists below portray the American musician Paul Robenson. It was made for the II Congress of Partisans for Peace in which the black musician could not attend while he was forbidden to leave the US Here, peace appear also related to social rights, while the author attaches the demand for peace to dignity of the black people, oppressed by the segreggation regime in US. Lyubov Kosmodemianskaya, “Canciones de La Paz,” La Mujer Soviйtica, 1951, 44..

Figure 1- The Song for Peace, painting of V. Poliakov, I. Radoman and J. Shats

Source: La Mujer Soviйtica, 1951, nє 02, pp. 44-45.

The geopolitical situation in which the Soviet Union was situated immediately after the war is well known: a context of increasing mutual threats, proofs of power and reciprocal aggression between the two main Cold War superpowers. Rising hostilities and nuclear blackmail marked the period when the US, directed by Truman's doctrine, was invoking its policy of “containment”, engaging to action wherever the USSR might be acting to pursue influence George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 116.. In domestic affairs, one of the impacts of the anti-Soviet Truman doctrine was to persecute the Communist Party of the United States, but not only the “reds”, even other non-communist movements opposing the American warmongering politics were accused of “subversive activities” and shut down. It is worth mentioning the WIDF member, Congress of American Women (CAW), which had been accused of being a tool of Soviet politics Castledine, Cold War Progressives. Women's Interracial Organizing for Peace and Freedom, 48. and `a specialized arm of Soviet political warfare in the current `peace' campaign to disarm and demobilize the United States and democratic nations generally, in order to render them helpless in face of the Communist drive for world conquest' Kate Weigand, Red Feminism. American Communism and the Making of Women's Liberation (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 2001), 63..