Annotation: A new image of masculinity based on the figure of the soldier and the father – the latter being a figure almost never met in Soviet visual culture of the 1930s – began to be articulated on the pages of large-circulation Soviet publications in the early post-war years. A decisive factor in the formation of this new image was the catastrophic experience of World War II. The death, physical suffering, psychological trauma, and general absence of millions of men in the post-war period were realities too huge and too apparent to be completely ignored by official propaganda. McCallum argues it was the war – not the end of Stalinism – that informed the masculine ideal that would pervade the subsequent Thaw period. Although this masucline ideal was not always in line with the self-consciousness of actual Soviet men, it was still highly influential. McCallum draws on a wide range of visual materials to reconstruct the image of masculinity in the post-war Soviet Union.