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

The immediate post-war period was marked by territorial conflict and circles of influence. If, on the one hand, the capitalist countries feared that Stalin would employ the gigantic Red Army to advance toward the west, on the other hand, in Moscow the predominant view was that the USSR would be surrounded by enemies and needed to solidify a secure ruling field. The invention and use of nuclear weapons had put yet another ingredient of tension in the not-so-peaceful post-war atmosphere. Simultaneously to catch up in the arms race and to acquire their own nuclear bombs, the Soviets then began to invest in broadening their arc of alliances through peace movements that brought together various fronts, organizations and personalities distinct from communist purism.

Later, the “de-Stalinization” promised by Khrushchev's reformist ideology after Stalin's death was also marked by elements of continuity and rupture. With growing hostilities, the size of the aggressiveness was demonstrated at each crisis, which climbing rapidly in the face of the difficulty of solving it, reached the point of nuclear blackmail. The US, in the pole position of the nuclear race, used this tactic in other circumstances, threatening revolutionary China more than once. A defensive discourse was introduced in the Soviet view on the peace issue, which led to Khrushchev's “Peaceful Coexistence” policy, which wanted to relief the USSR from its military burden and to shift the competition with the West through the economy and not weapons. Khrushchev aimed to break out of the characteristic isolation of Stalin's day and to show the USSR as a friend and defender of peace by propagating the superiority of socialism in the field of material and human progress. Jeremy Friedman, Shadow Cold War. The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 28. The Global South in its dawn for independence and development was a fruitful terrain in which Soviet Union could spread its messages.

Figure 2 - Mothers of the World, by V. Koretsky

Source: La Mujer Soviйtica, 1954, nє 02, p. 04.

The women's movement and the other fronts that had the peace campaigns as their main focus did not emerge solely from Khrushchev's policy towards the Global South, many of which were created in 1945. They reflect an obvious tendency in Soviet politics to recognize that war politics could no longer be waged on the same ground. On the other hand, the fronts were and effective way for the USSR to broaden its range of allies outside its nearest borders, something desired by Stalin's successor, and to propagate its policy despite the extinction of the Comintern (1919-1943) and Cominform (1947-1956) afterwards.

The peace movement functioned as an efficient means of propagating the Soviet world view, because it was the opportunity to show the outside world what they called “the peaceful way of life of the Soviet people.” In the parades of the world peace congresses, of women or students that took place in the socialist East, it was not like the ones on May 9, that Katyushas, tanks and soldiers carrying AK-47s that marched past. No, there they showed the world the other side of the Soviet achievements, by parading students, pioneers, athletes and artists. Another type of products was displayed in them: the outcome of a society organized to provide the people their needs through the state. Moreover, the character of the Soviet leading organizations did not necessarily coincide with the Soviet state, considered as public organizations. Thus, foreign organizations could get the feeling that they were dealing with people in the USSR who were activists or militants like them, genuinely interested in the things they said.

The WIDF was founded in 1945 in Paris at the initiative of the Federation of French Women Orth, International Communist Front Organizations, 122.. At its founding congress, delegations from 41 different countries were brought together. The federation exists to the present day, although with the demise of the USSR and the socialist camp, as well as the advent of new feminist movements, it has significantly lost its social capillarity and mobilization capacity. According to its own description on its website “FDIM - Historia.”, the WIDF foundation brought together women: `all women determined to consecrate their efforts to build a new life, women who had decided to unite to protect their children, to enforce their rights, protect peace, strengthen their contribution to the strengthening of humanity, social progress, democracy and National Independence.'

In all the literature presented on the WIDF and other international organizations, there seems to be a consensus that they were led by communist organizations or at least sympathetic to the socialist camp and the USSR. It is possible that there was a significant Soviet underhanded apparatus that, while recognizing the autonomy of local movements, still gave the cards as it was in a privileged political and financial situation At least in the case of the international events, in fact, Brazilians, at least, had to rely on the financial support of the Soviets. When asking for plain tickets so their delegations could attend the World's congress, they used to write the SWC rather the WIDF. compared to the national movements of women suffering from persecution and acting illegally, as was the case with the Americans. However, it would be a mistake to overlook the internal nuances and contradictions. If the communist movement itself was already full of contradictions and divergences Friedman, Shadow Cold War. The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World, 27-40., despite Soviet hegemony, the democratic movements of women, youth, etc. would certainly not be free to coexist with multiple factions. Regarding this dominant paradigm in considering the communist movement and other organizations with leftist political leanings as a monolithic bloc in the service of the USSR, it is noteworthy that the systematization made by Yana Knopova Yana Knopova, “The Soviet Union and the International Domain of Women's Rights and Struggles: A Theoretical Framework and a Case Study of the Soviet Women's Committee (1941-1991)” (Central European University, 2011). within the feminine movement criticizes the notion of women as tools of the Party. In fact, as she writes, the relative autonomy of the women's movement could be seen through their active role while doing efforts to change aspects of domestic policies in Soviet Union, in the case of the Soviet Women's Committee. In my research I also have seen that complaints and demands were sent by individual Soviet women to the point that the SWC would try to resolve then, forwarding petitions to the respective government organs. These demands and their resolutions would be occasionally published in the magazine. This feature cannot be ignored while considering to what extent the Committee was tied to the Party's dominance.

The International Federation had its board of directors, with one presidency and ten other vice-presidencies occupied by women from different countries. The French scientist Eugenie Cotton remained president from 1945 until 1967, the year of her death. Nina Popova held one of the vice-presidencies on behalf of the USSR. These women had often published articles and interviews in Soviet Woman magazine and its translation to other languages in a way that their discourse is closely connected to the Soviet messages that will be studied in this work. Members of the SWC, as stated by Nina Voronina, were even called to work for the WIDF. Nina Voronina and Vera Costamo, Nina Voronina: nasha inoproverochnaya baza proslavilas' na vsyu Moskvu, 2016, Unlike the structure of other international organizations, such as Comintern for example, the federative structure implied some level of autonomy to the federations of each country that were affiliated to the international federation. The Brazilian national organization affiliated to WIDF was the Federation of Brazilian Women (FMB), which will be discussed in the next chapter. The WIDF-affiliated organization of the USSR was the Soviet Women's Committee Anna Kadnikova, “The Women's International Democratic Federation World Congress of Women, Moscow, 1963: Women's Right and World Politicas during the Cold War” (Central European University, 2011), 04. to which the SW magazine and all its translations belonged.

The main argument here is to make explicit the fact that the socio-historical terrain on which this particular type of Soviet propaganda developed was distinct from government officialities, even if they were related to them. The peace movement and the women's movement figured as a propitious territory for the dispute of non-belligerent Cold War narratives, in which debates prevailed over the beneficial or harmful face of competing social systems. It was in this scenario that the Soviet message for social rights and state protection gained relevance.

2.2 The Soviet Women's Committee and its magazine

The Anti-Fascist Committee of Soviet Women - ACSW (Antifashistskiy Komitet Sovetskikh Zhenshchin), later called simply the Soviet Women's Committee - SWC (Komitet Sovetskikh Zhenshchin), was a public organization created in 1941 with the purpose of boosting women's movement in the struggle for peace and internationalism, and for women's rights. Nina Voronina and Vera Costamo, Nina Voronina: nasha inoproverochnaya baza proslavilas' na vsyu Moskvu, 2016, Within the historical timeframe in which this research is focused on, Nina Popova was the president of the Soviet Women's Committee (SWC), when in 1968 the famous cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova took over the leadership of the organization. Nina Popova was an active political leadership, with the WIDF vice-presidency a member of the Supreme Soviet, VOKS president, a member of the CPSU Central Committee. Knopova, “The Soviet Union and the International Domain of Women's Rights and Struggles: A Theoretical Framework and a Case Study of the Soviet Women's Committee (1941-1991),” 44-45.

The ACSW, later SWC (1945), was created precisely on the basis of the war and the fight against fascism and was managed together with other anti-fascist committees, such as youth, Jews, and Slavs. All of these committees were created under the control of the Soviet Informational Bureau (SIB) for the purpose of propagating the positions of the USSR in the context of war Knopova, 53-54.. At its own founding assembly, the SWC demonstrated a vocation for internationalism and connectivity by inserting in its inaugural document the call to women from all over the world, regardless of political position, religion or social status, for a commitment to the fight against fascism. Its self-proclaimed goals were to develop relationships with women's organizations abroad, to unite the world's women in the fight against fascism, for peace, for women's and children's rights, and for engagement in the socio-economic affairs of the state. Knopova, 55-56.

The SWC was considered as an “independent” and public organization from 1945 and approved its future plans from Assembly convened every 5 years to elect its Plenum. Knopova, 65-66. The Plenum met once a year to elect the Presidium, the organ that led the everyday work of the SWC. The Committee was made up of women from regions, republics, cities, youth organizations, labor unions, artists and professional associations. How the committee was funded for its domestic and international activities simultaneously remains without an accurate answer due to the closure of files from the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU), but some of the sources are known: its self-financing activities with the sale of their magazines and the Soviet Peace Fund.

In the Soviet Woman (SW) magazine itself, SWC appears as part of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions. However, there is no in-depth analysis in the works of Knopova Knopova, 72., Peri Peri, “New Soviet Woman: The Post-World War II Feminine Ideal at Home and Abroad,” 621., or Smeyukha V. V. Smeyukha, “Zhenskiye Zhurnaly SSSR v 1945--1991 Gg.: Tipologiya, Problematika, Obraznaya Transformatsiya,” Zhenshchina v Rossiyskom Obshchestve, no. 1 (2012): 56. on the relationship between the SWC and the Council.

The SW magazine emerged therefore from within an international situation of calamity. The tragedy of the World War brought to light the fragility of peace and a situation of great international inequality, and pushed the various nations involved into a deep scrutiny of living conditions and their influence on social life. The agents and protagonists, producers and products of these circumstances, were certainly not just the three men sitting on a bench during the Yalta Conference. The massive mobilization of all countries, the fraternization of the troops, that is the contact with the otherness, whether enemy or ally, impacted on the lives of their contemporaries. According to Alexis Peri Peri, “New Soviet Woman: The Post-World War II Feminine Ideal at Home and Abroad,” 621-22.:

Since World War II AKSZh [ACSW] had built a vast network of correspondents and subscribers abroad, a transnational community of women that cut across the Iron Curtain. These contacts shaped how the Committee imagined women in the West as well as how it promoted Soviet womanhood in its magazine. Soviet Woman was crafted in consultation with the USSR's capitalist enemies, women whom AKSZh tried to understand intimately and transform politically.

The importance of the SW magazine was not at all a small part of the SWC as it required its own staff and budget within the Committee. And it became more and more important over the years and as the USSR itself increased its relations with other countries and other social segments. First published in November-December 1945, it was translated into French, German and English, in addition to its Russian version Peri, 622., by the 1990s, SW was issued in 15 different languages Knopova, “The Soviet Union and the International Domain of Women's Rights and Struggles: A Theoretical Framework and a Case Study of the Soviet Women's Committee (1941-1991),” 67. (including Spanish and Portuguese).

For this reason, SW was a magazine significantly different from its “sisters” Rabotnitsa (The Woman Worker) and Krest'yanka (The Woman Peasant), as its content needed to address two very different types of audiences simultaneously, although thematically and structurally similar. Peri compares Rabotnitsa's circulation with that of SW within the USSR between 1945 and 1950: the circulation of the former amounted to only 20.000 copies, while Rabotnitsa ranged from 75.000 to 200.000 annually. Peri, “New Soviet Woman: The Post-World War II Feminine Ideal at Home and Abroad,” 623-24.

Throughout the period under review, the magazine's editor-in-chief was Maria Ovsiannikova, who played a distinctive role as secretary and editor of a newspaper with direct information from the front during the Second World War, and later in 1947 was named as editor-in-chief of the magazine.

Within the women's movement, the issue of social rights was gaining even greater significance internationally. First because women in many countries not only suffered from economic discrimination, with lower salaries and the impossibility of working in functions historically considered male, but also lacked basic civil liberties Quigley, Soviet Legal Innovation and the Law of the Western World, 103-14. (such as unilateral divorce, the right to dispose of oneself within marriage, to maintain one's nationality, one's own name and one's own paternal power over the offspring) that had already been introduced in the USSR since the time of the revolution.

For these reasons, the SWC was regarded by its international counterparts as a vanguard body, an example to be followed, and the life of women in the USSR, with all the aspects and their social rights achieved, were seen as objectives that should be pursued by women from other countries. During the second chapter, I will show how the power of the Soviet example in question of social rights was understood by different actors, in a variety of ways, sometimes seen in an idealized way, in others partially absorbed and in others in a rather orthodox way. Within these articulations network of the peace movement between the international democratic fronts, the SWC had become an important authority in matter of social rights, especially the rights of women and children.

This work is particularly focused on the Spanish language version of SW that circulated among the Brazilian public between 1950 and 1964. It was called La Mujer Soviйtica (MS). In the following section I will explain why my sources are based on Spanish if the language spoken in Brazil is Portuguese.

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

It is well known that after the dissolution of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1943, the exchange and influence of the socialist bloc in the post-war period was mainly through interstate, diplomat, trade and cultural relations. However, since internationalism was a socialist principle, the communist parties continuedto be pivoted for the defense of the USSR and Soviet socialism as a role model to a new global societal configuration, even though they were no longer considered as `national sections' of the Comintern. In Brazil, this change occurred through the controversy over the name change of the PCB, formerly called the Communist Party of Brazil Officially named Communist Party - Brazilian Section of the Communist International (PC-SBIC)., which came to be called the Brazilian Communist Party in 1960. The propaganda of the Soviet model therefore became one of the axes of action of the Communist Parties around the world, which after the end of the Russian Civil War had already assumed the defense of the Soviet state as a top priority in the theses of the Comintern.

The Soviet propaganda written in Portuguese is scarcer and later compared to Hispanic one. This is, in my view, due to two main reasons: first, the rate of comprehension of Spanish, which was and still is the official language of a greater number of nations and people; and the fact that Portuguese-speaking individuals should not find difficulties to understand and reading in Spanish, for their common Latin root and the lexical similarities owing to the Iberian proximity to Portuguese.

This is evidenced by the very circulation of Marxist literature in Brazil that began very late in Portuguese language. According to Lincoln Secco, the publisher Civilizaзгo Brasileira (Brazilian Civilization) was responsible only in 1960 for the publication of The Capital and the main economic works of Marx in Brazil Lincoln Secco, “Notas Para A Histуria Editorial De O Capital [Notes for a Publishing History of The Capital],” Novos Rumos, no. 37 (2002): 16.. Lenin's Complete works were also translated by Moscow's Progress Publishers, but only in Spanish language Secco, 17.. The same goes for other Marxist productions - such as Gramsci, Lukбcs, Lefebvre, Goldman, Heller, Althusser, Sweezy, Dobb, and Huberman - which began arriving in Brazil in the mid-1960s Netto, Ditadura E Serviзo Social: Uma Anбlise Do Serviзo Social No Brasil Pуs-64 [Dictatorship And Social Work: An Analizys Of Social Work In Brazil Post 1964], 78.. Yet, these publications seem to have been made through the efforts of the local intelligentsia. Facts like these corroborate with the hypothesis that translations of Marxist or Soviet writings were not a priority for Moscow because they could circulate the Spanish version.

2.4 The overall features of La Mujer Soviйtica (MS)

While comparing La Mujer Soviйtica (MS) with its Russian language version, it is easy to notice that they are practically the same in terms of content. They differ in their layout, in the order of the articles that vary so as not to interfere with the overall structure of the journal. It is not the object of this analysis, however, to investigate the methodology employed in translation, but a first impression that perhaps can be recorded is that in its early years during the 1950s, the translations from Russian into Spanish were very literal and even somewhat mechanical, while in the 1960s they became more adapted to the mind of the Hispanic-speaking reader.

It is important to note that from the November 1964 issue, the magazine began to support what was called special pages. Each idiomatic variation of the journal included a special article made specifically for that version, which did not appear in the others. This section was a summary that indicated what was the special article in each one of them. For example, the article En las pбginas especiales (On the special pages) in the aforementioned issue explained the following: the Spanish edition includes a M. Bezares' article on the economic and political struggle in Spain; the English edition has an account by Australian journalist Elfrida Morcom of her trip to the USSR; an article on the feat of Szabo Lajosne, who saved Soviet aviators during the Second World War, is the special part of the Hungarian version; the Chinese and Korean versions print an article on Marxism-Leninism of historian E. Pachuro; the German edition reports the acts of engineer Susana Borisova of a Soviet factory and her friendship ties with another factory in Germany, in Magdeburg; the Hindi version describes the visit of the then Indian president, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, to USSR; the delegates of the Japanese Socialist Party report the struggle of women in their country, in the special pages of the Japanese edition “En Las Pбginas Especiales,” La Mujer Soviйtica, 1964..

Maria Ovsiannikova remained editor-in-chief of the magazine, including its Spanish version. However, the journal had a specific editor for the Spanish version, and it was Emma Volf Unfortunetaly, for now, I could not find any information about her. who remained throughout 1950-1964. Additionally, the magazine had the functions of art editor and technical editor (only since March 1955) who were one, two and sometimes three different people. The employees of these functions varied according to the editions and even alternated between the different translations of the journal. The address of the editor's staff (Kusnetski Most, 22, Moscow) was the same for Spanish and English edition and remained unchanged throughout the whole period. But this address is not the same mentioned by Nina Voronina, while she referred to a building at Pushkinskaya Street in Moscow.The Soviet Women's Committe (SWC) was located in a building on the corner of Pushkinskaya Street and Pushkinskaya Square. Voronina and Costamo, Nina Voronina: nasha inoproverochnaya baza proslavilas' na vsyu Moskvu. The first mention to Kusnetski Most appeared in the November-December 1952 issue and again in 1955's February issue. From then on, this address became a permanent part of the technical sheet of every issue published. The correspondence analyzed in the second chapter of this work was mainly sent to Pushkinskaya Street, what led me to believe that this was the address of the SWC office, while Kusnetski Most was the address of the editors.

In some issues, there are one or two pages reserved to promote subscriptions to the magazine abroad, with addresses of bookstores and establishments that were mediating with Moscow to distribute the magazine in each country. It is not an exact consequence of it, but we can see a trend towards the growing popularity of the magazine around the world. The following table can show some useful information:

Table nє 1 - Subscription calls for each country in different issues

Some turning points are worth commenting in this table. In 1951, the number of South American countries that had local subscription available were a total of six, while in 1952 and 1956 it reduced to five and finally to only two in 1956; it only began to rise again in 1958 with four and reached its peak in 1963 with a total of nine countries. Since 1958, there were no countries from the socialist camp because of what appears to be a change in policy on how to distribute the magazines to Soviet Union's closest allies. In 1963 the list of suppliers was reduced only to South American countries. These numbers might reflect the political situation of each country and its relation with the Soviet Union. One striking example is Italy which had eleven suppliers in 1952 and then two in 1956, 1957 and 1958. Since the 1950s the Italian Communist Party (PCI) had become a major force in Italian society reaching almost 23% of the votes in the general elections of 1953 and 1958. This might explain the general trend, but not the variation between eleven to two distributors.

The size of the magazine has varied little over the years. In general, the journal maintained a margin of 40 to 60 pages per issue. It is possible to observe large swings in three major time bands, and small swings within these major time bands. For example, from 1950 to 1953, the journal maintained a heterogeneous number of pages per number, around 62, 64 or 66 pages, with the exception of the special edition, dedicated to Stalin's death, of that year with 18 pages. Already between 1954 and 1960, the quantity was practically fixed at 50, while in 1961 it began to oscillate again between 42 and 48 pages. The three time periods can be seen in the following graph:

Graph nє 01 - Page number per issue

These variations may be related to major political changes and a cascading effect at lower political levels, as in the case of the SWC. Although there are no corroborative sources that declare an attempt to reformulate the journal, it does not seem a mere coincidence that one of the major changes in the format is exactly that of Stalin's death and the beginning of a new Soviet leadership. Another major change that happened in the following year after Stalin's death was the change in the frequency.

Until 1953 the magazine was bimonthly, with six issues a year. Since 1954 it became a monthly magazine, with 12 numbers per year. There may have been some kind of calculation to balance the increase in the number of issues with the reduction in the number of pages. Through a simple calculation, it is easy to observe that even reducing the number of pages to 50 or 42, it would not worthwhile in terms of keeping the same amount of work. The sum of 66 pages per issue in bimonthly format is 396 per year, while 50 pages of a monthly magazine is 600.

The magazine's circulation is another interesting parameter of analysis. In the technical sheet of each issue, it is possible to check the printing number of the magazine. Of course, print run does not necessarily mean that all the copies have been circulated. But this information can give us a certain notion of the magazine's popularity, even if we are not sure about the volume of sales and distribution. This is especially true from 1954 onwards. During Stalin's period the circulation had a much smaller variation ranging between 3.250 and 5.000 copies. Until January 1952, the circulation was fixed at 5000, while in February, March and April it was reduced to 4.500, in May it was 4100 and June 3250, then the circulation returned to 4.500 until the end of 1953. In January 1954 the variations changed on a monthly basis according to the following :

Graph nє 2 - Print run

What does this data show? First that during the period corresponding to the Stalin government, the printing of the magazines was much less susceptible to variation in demand. Under Khrushchev's leadership, this variation occurred visibly. The cause of such change, could not yet be verified. To make this analysis easier to be understood, I divided the whole period in three different phases:

First, after an abrupt fall with oscillation at each new edition, with timid growth throughout the year 1954. At the beginning of 1955 the printing number almost doubled and remained practically stable until April 1956, when it fell again, maintaining a depressive curve until February 1958;

Since the April 1958 issue, there was an abrupt growth of 4.4 times the 1957 average, when another depressive curve started until a sudden fall in July 1959;

Finally, when an ascension curve started from then on until stabilized, with one exception for the November 1959 issue which stands out from the pattern of the period.

Two different fields of hypotheses can be drawn to explain the variations in the printing number and correspondents of the magazine. And the most complicated thing is that they can all be valid in certain contexts, since they are countries with different situations and actors. The first has to do with the turbulence of Soviet internal politics and its impact on the international communist movement. The still small but significant increase in the printing quantities between 1954 and 1956 might be a result of a new policy towards disputing different countries other than Western European ones or the neighboring nations. The following depressing phase could be a disruptive effect of Khrushchev's secret report during the 20th CPSU congress, denouncing Stalin's crimes and causing divisions and controversy within the communist movement around the world, along with the Sino-Soviet split that was one of the reasons for the division between two Brazilian communist parties. The Brazilian communist, Clara Charf, even sent a letter to the SWC complaining that they should receive more material from Soviet Union because there was an `attack by the Chinese magazines.' Clearly this does not explain the whole trend, but might be a sign that in the field of printed propaganda there was a competition between Chinese and Soviet-oriented parties in different countries. Clara Charf, “Clara Charf to Fanny,” Letter, November 3, 1963, f. P7928 op. 3 d. 1084, l. 70-72, GARF. Another hypothesis concerns the political instability experienced by the Latin American countries that lived during the period of the Cold War a wave of fascist and anti-communist military coups sponsored by the United States. Between 1950 and 1964, there were at least 9 different coups in Latin America.

All these numbers are very consistent with the data from Table 1. Starting with the general trend, the turning points with the largest increase in the number of prints coincide with a larger number of countries with distributors (1958 and early 1960s). And if we compare these historical movements, we can see some cases that are quite possibly the real causes of the observed variation. Cuba, for example, suffered a coup in 1952 when Fulgкncio Batista took power. The distributor in Cuba disappeared from the list of 1956, 1957 and 1958, and it reappeared in 1963, not only in the magazine's subscription lists, but in countless articles that demonstrated the intense exchange that was inaugurated with the Caribbean island under Fidel Castro's leadership. It is important to remember that Fidel only openly declared the socialist character of the Cuban Revolution in December 1961, which is coherent with the rise in the printing numbers these very same years. Although, checking if all these variations depended on these two hypotheses would require an extensive archival research that is out of the scope of this research.

The most significant conclusion on these aspects mentioned is not so much about the details and the small variations that the journal had undergone over the period under review, but rather the more general trends. The main argument here is that the magazine received an increase in the number of impressions per issue precisely in the historical period that coincides with the emergence of reformist, nationalist and independence movements in the Global South and especially in Latin America. Therefore, it is not only about a change in Soviet politics, but also about other agents who were looking for support and inspiration for the social changes they were seeking in their home countries. The pre-existing struggle for social rights and for ensuring better living conditions, and not necessarily led by communists as we will see in the second chapter, found support in the Soviet propaganda.

In the next section I will start to analyze the MS text itself. Of course, among the seven thousand four hundred and eighty-two pages of La Mujer Soviйtica, not everything has enough value to be exposed here. Therefore, only a few emblematic articles that I evaluate to be representatives of certain patterns found will be properly cited, remarking that many other examples could be mentioned were left out, in order not to make this work a simple a comprehensive list of evidence.

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

When investigating the MS texts and their treatment of the issue of social rights, one of the aspects which stands out was the use of laws as a form of propaganda. This characteristic is not new and dates back to the Soviet revolutionary period when the law itself had a propaganda format. Here, what we see is the law being used as a propagandistic artifice to affirm the positivity of the Soviet system. In the article El Sanatorio 'La Madre y lo ninх' (The Sanatorium `The Mother and the Child'), for example, the report was on the operation of a sanatorium in the Kirov Islands, which was visited by Lenin in the past. This sanatorium, called 'The mother and the child', guaranteed specialized treatment for mothers who had recently given birth and their newborns. In this article, the right to maternity leave guaranteed 'by the Stalinian constitution to all pregnant women' was highlighted.

Another example is in the text intended to recall the twenty-seventh anniversary of Lenin's death entitled Las ideas de Lenin y Stalin (The Ideas of Lenin and Stalin). `We don't know the exploitation of man by man. We do not know the sinister shadow of forced unemployment, of insecurity in the future, of sad old age. Under the sun of the Stalinist Constitution, the Soviet people, relying on the power of their socialist economy, work inspired and freely with their happiness.' In both cases, although in quite different forms, the same idea is promoted: the idea that associates not only the Soviet constitution of 1937, but the Soviet law as a source of security, stability, joy and happiness. The choice of the sun as a metaphorical mirror is noteworthy, taking into account that the illumination of the sun is one of the most stable and 'safe' presence natural phenomena in human life.

The appeal to legality also appeared in the reference to other countries of the socialist field in which the Constitution is taken as a benchmark of social emancipation. This was the case of the article Las Mujeres de la Mongolia Socialista (The Women from Socialist Mongolia) Sambu Zhamsranguin, “Las Mujeres de La Mongolia Socialista,” La Mujer Soviйtica, 1964, 28., written by a Mongolian representative of the Grand People's Assembly of the Mongolian Popular Republic, Sambu Zhamsranguin. The same occurred in the case of the Romanian writer Maria Rosetti, who characterized the constitution of the Romanian People's Republic as a 'fundamental law of life'. She stated Maria Rosetti, “El Papel de La Mujer En La Sociedad Contemporanea,” La Mujer Soviйtica, 1963, 03.: `And it's because the role of women in our society is completely different, it's changed completely. This change was long ago endorsed by the Fundamental Law of our life: the Constitution of the Romanian People's Republic.' This vision, therefore, appears charged with an internal contradiction to the extent that at the same time that the constitution founded a new situation because it is described as fundamental, it was also the one that endorses a pre-existing condition. From this point of view, socialist law seemed to coexist with aspects of legal positivism. In another text discussing the Soviet elections, M. Kartashova stated that the Soviet achievements of abolishing exploitation and national contradictions were endorsed by the constitution: M. Kartashova, “Elecciones Autenticamente Populares,” La Mujer Soviйtica, 1951, 7. `These great achievements of the workers of the Country of the Soviets have been endorsed by our Constitution, to which the people have lovingly given the name of Stalinist Constitution, Stalinist law for all the people. In our country the elections are carried out in strict accordance with this law.'

It is not difficult to find in different cultures in different ways the association between the sun and sunlight with the presence of life. Here, the sun is used as a metaphor to describe the Soviet legal system and its constitution which are considered as “fundamental law of life.” The sun is a phenomenon of stable cycles and is always illuminating, always providing humanity as a source of life. The constitution, therefore, provides all the needs of its citizens. In this view, personal freedom does not appear. But security. This idea, whether conscious or not, was discreetly placed between different layers of propagandistic statements and can be found even in the discourse of non-Soviet officials. Dolores Ibarruri, a Spanish communist leadership said in in one her texts published in MS Ibarruri, “Luchamos Por La Paz,” 47.: `Soviet women, who brought to the women of all countries their healthy joy, their strength and their firmness; their faith in the free future of peoples; their experience of women living in the freest country on earth, protected by the Stalinian Constitution.' Here three aspects need to be noted: first is that the Stalinian Constitution lights were “shinning” beyond the Soviet Union boundaries and its vehicle were the Soviet Women; the second, was the association between freedom and protection; and third, how the propaganda of Soviet social rights and the provision by the state aimed to respond to a global challenge. According to this idea, the freest country in the world is the one who have the Stalinian Constitution, which provided protection.

The Soviet Union was not the inventor of the social rights guaranteed by a state that provided material guarantees to its citizens, but was its bulwark. As Conrad Conrad, What Is Global History, 66. said, more than the origins, the synchronicity of historical events is one of the most important features of the Global History approach. And as argued by John Quigley, Quigley, Soviet Legal Innovation and the Law of the Western World. the Soviets challenged the West with social rights and this objectively resulted in a new situation in which capitalist states began to invest heavily in social policies. The global challenge of which social system could provide a better life for its citizens was one of the most important facettes of the Cold War. Social rights and the role of the state in this field were given great prominence in the Soviet narrative that sought to respond to the problem on its terms, while some especially in Western Europe, seemed to have sought intermediate solutions.

It was through this structure of idea transfer that a polity paradigm opposed to the liberal had affirmed itself in a systematic and global way, connecting different actors around the globe. This work, which focuses on a specific case, that of how this paradigm traveled to Brazil, discusses with greater emphasis the reception of these ideas in the following chapter.

At this point, it is probably obvious to say that the concept of freedom in Soviet ideology does not coincide with the liberal idea of freedom of choice. In this sense, the idea of freedom is more associated with the notion of social protection, provision, and security. While perhaps the liberal idea of protection has a negative meaning, of what the State should not do against the individual or its property, in the USSR protection and freedom had a different and contrasting paradigm behind these concepts. As the philosopher Gyцrgy Lukбcs Gyцrgy Lukбcs, Socialismo E Democratizaзгo: Escritos Polнticos 1956-1971 [Socialism And Democratization: Political Writings 1956-197] (Rio de Janeiro: Editora da UFRJ, 2011), 112-13. discussed, Soviet propaganda was in a way based on a concept of freedom from necessity, in which true freedom was achieved only to the extent that the material and inherent needs of any human being were satisfied.

For all intents and purposes, including the evidence discussed later in this paper, the constitution fulfilled the same role as the state in Soviet propaganda. Any scholar in the legal field would disagree with this statement, in the sense that in a certain way the Soviet state preceded the constitution in several ways, and therefore there was no ontological correspondence between the two. But in the narrative explored in this work, both concepts play the same role: of protector and provider, understood in the same sense.

Social rights technology

The already mentioned tendency of the USSR to use its technical and scientific achievements as an element of propaganda was something that, although observable, is not the subject of analysis of this work. Virtually every issue of MS was accompanied by an article on science, on some report on the construction of a power plant somewhere or the use of a new type of machinery or production method. Raising the productive forces, developing the economy, and even overtaking the U.S. in terms of production was one of the Soviets' openly stated major objectives. This particular section is devoted to another type of technology little explored in analyses of the Soviet Cold War narrative.

The social rights technology, as I aim to explain, was a material demonstration of a generic idea and a legal principle which are linked to the particular meaning of modernity and progress in Soviet context. What I call social rights technology was a narrative resource, rather than a real thing I do believe that the structure of social reproduction in Soviet Union was fundamentally different from the capitalist West, but that is not what I am arguing here.. It was how the Soviet propaganda tried to materialize the paradigm of a how society and the state should provide for and protect the individual. Of course, any argument about the superiority of a system seeks to provide real proof of its functioning. In this regard, the approaches within the material are not novel. This characterization of the material demonstrations of social rights in the Soviet propaganda as forms of technology is entirely mine. In my view, such characterization is significantly fair when we think that the USSR employed planning and intervention under the forms of large-scale social reproduction. It is beyond the reach of this research to study the law-making techniques Tatiana Borisova, “The Emergence of the Legality Tradition in Russia, 1800-1918” (Academic Dissertation, Turku, University of Turku, 2016), 01-35. that characterize the operationalization of social rights in Soviet Russia. Solely, as it presented itself and advertised a particular technology of guaranteeing social rights through devices and institutions. The singularity of these devices was presented as if they were created for this purpose, maintained by the state, promoters of a supposedly high and universal culture, free of charge, with civilizing and emancipatory purpose. In the following sections, I present a few cases that demonstrate this set of characteristics that compose the design of Soviet social rights technology.

The idea of social rights has a necessarily positive character, different from natural rights as essentialists and immutable parts of human nature that negatively affect state action. In this way, different societies found different ways to make real a right that needs to be positivized. This sometimes requires the use of a range of instruments, often understood as social policies. The Brazilian social work literature, for example, predominantly interprets social policies as a result of class contradictions and the claims of working classes to guarantee their rights. The existence by itself of the USSR understood and self-proclaimed as a proletarian state, therefore free from class contradiction, As stated in article 4 of the Constitution of 1937, at least legally, the abolition of the exploitation of man by man is one of the fundamental economic principles of the USSR. puts into question the idea that there existed in that country things understood as social policies.

For now, the idea adopted to support the existence of such thing called social rights technology may be summarized in the discoursive that too advocated the combination of certain elements, such as institutions, social devices, legal guarantees and mechanisms that are put together in order to produce two things: socially emancipated and multi-purposed individuals and a new kind of civilization. This argument might be more clear in the following discussion on some concrete examples of how they were presented in the Soviet discourse

As shown in the magazine, what I call here the technology of social rights were often directly linked to labor and the technologies themselves productors of material wealth. For example, in the article Collaboracion creadora (Creative collaboration) by Tatiana Yachmeneva, explained how engineers and Stakhanovist workers collaborated to expand production and research new productive methods. How workers could acquire specialized knowledge and prepare for entry into higher education, or even study at the factory library. She said: Tatiana Yachmeneva, “Colaboraciуn Creadora,” La Mujer Soviйtica, 1950, 12. `Each Soviet factory is a university that provides the most diverse knowledge, which gives workers the possibility of catching up with people engaged in intellectual work.' The factory was presented as a space at the same time for the production of consumer goods necessary to meet social needs, but also for the self-production of a subject considered to be improved, or who had access to education by this means. This technology, however, needed certain devices or tools. The library and the courses can be considered as tools for the realization of a right.

The same case appeared in the article En nuestra fбbrica... (In our factory…) of Ekaterina Fomina, but in this case, there was an institution mediating the exercise of a right and the subject: the union. The article began by highlighting the successes of a factory in achieving the goals of the five-year plan, when it goes on to its denotative statements expressing the role of the union in the manufacturing organization: Ekaterina Fomina, “En Nuestra Fabrica...,” La Mujer Soviйtica, 1951, 22. `The trade union organization of the factory, which with great solicitude is concerned with creating the best working, living and resting conditions for the workers, without forgetting their cultural development, has notoriously contributed to these successes.'

The article then enumerated the various services that each worker had at his or her disposal in the factory. Thousands of workers studied in the secondary school next to the factory; numerous dwellings were built to the point that already house eighty working families, constituting part of the urbanization project planned up by the union; 'Whoever works well, rests well', because permits were provided to attend the sanatoriums and there was also the rest home built by the union; the concern with health included a polyclinic with a dentist, electrotherapy, hydrotherapy, gym, X-ray machines, assistance from other medical centers with balneotherapy, diet therapy, and physiotherapy; the library had fifty-six thousand volumes, with works by Lenin, Stalin, Gorki, Shakespeare, Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Turguenev; the House of Culture owned by the union promoted plays, exhibitions, displayed films, conferences, and concerts.