UC Santa Cruz

This dissertation examines the ways that Soviet ideas about gender and the body were articulated, practiced, subverted, and altered to accommodate local conditions or personal circumstances among Communist operatives in the United States and Great Britain during the life of the Communist International (Comintern). Founded in 1919 to promote the formation of Communist parties outside of the new Soviet state, the Comintern also played a role in the international dissemination of literature and other cultural materials central to this study. Moreover, the twenty-four years of its existence represent the period of greatest experimentation in Soviet family policy and concomitant rhetorical constructions of proper Bolshevik corporeality. How did membership in the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) and the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) affect heterosexual intimacies, gender identities, and the ways that men and women thought about, related to, and interacted with their bodies and those of their comrades? Did British and American Communists adhere to local social norms, or did they attempt to emulate those promoted if not practiced in the emerging Soviet state?Through analysis of literature, correspondence, and visual culture produced by members of Communist Parties in the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, this dissertation shows how the commitment to this radical political organization shaped members’ bodies, both rhetorically and materially. Often emaciated from poverty and sometimes battered by anti-communist forces, the Communist body became the site for demonstrating one’s belief in socialism and its Bolshevik iteration at the most basic level. I argue that Communists disciplined their bodies through self-study and self-criticism, physically performed Communism through public speaking and participation in radical sports leagues, made reproductive choices that privileged the collective over individual desires, and labored for little or no pay with the expectation that they would physically suffer for their beliefs. Critical gender theories inform this analysis, especially the ways that Communist disciplinary regimens interacted with gender hierarchies in the early 20th century. While most studies of international Communism focus on its relative failures or successes in electoral politics, this study takes a transnational and social approach and posits that Communists embodied their dedication to the class struggle in ways distinct from mainstream and other radical political organizations.