The following six answers reached H-ArtHist (some of them due to an x-post
at the Association for Women in Slavic Studies <AWSS-LH-NET.MSU.EDU>)

(1)
From: Joanna Kirkpatrick <jkirkspro.net>
Date: 23 Feb 2004

I suggest that one possibly useful source would be ancient Greek, Roman
etc coins. Female figures appear on these. If a human figure appears on a
coin it's almost a sure bet that it is emblematic of the state that mints
the coins. You could do a careful study of how the human form is handled.[…].

Joanna Kirkpatrick
Boise, Idaho, USA

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(2)
From: Lisa Rull <aaxlmrnottingham.ac.uk>
Date: 24 Feb 2004

Check out the following two texts:

Ann Hollander's "Seeing Through Clothes" (on the significance of clothing
as symbolic) Marina warner: Monuments & Maidens The allegory of the female
form, (London, l985) Vintage (paperback) UK; University of California
Press (paperback) reprinted,US, 2001 --- covers the female body, clothed
and unclothed as symbol of the state.

hope these help
Lisa Rull
University of Nottingham, UK

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(3)
From: Galina Schneider <archivolterols.com>
Date: 24 Feb 2004

It occurs to me that there are two examples from the 20th century that
might be appropriate to mention. First, for all those majority slavic
speaking countries, the fact that the name of countries often is in the
feminine lends itself to Mother [fill in name of coutnry with feminine
ending here] but is not so simple. With associated statuary and imagery,
the Mother image substituted for the local veneration of the Virgin Mary,
the ultimate link between God and man, and fully human in Orthodoxy,
almost raised to a goddess in Roman Catholicism. Here are a few images:.

1. Majka Bulgaria - This is often a statue in a central square, in even
small villages, representing Bulgaria as a woman. She is usually sturdy.

2. Majka celebration - similar - Czech Republic - The concept was
reintroduced as a method of raising ecological awareness. I quote here
from a report:

"Permalot: the Czech Republic
An area of about 10.5 Ha is being worked on. 8.5 Ha of this has been
converted into organic management. […] By doing this biodiversity is being
protected.They are trying to enhance public interest especially that of
the locals who are suspicious. This has been partially overcome through
the reintroduction of the Majka Celebration, and the restoring of the pond
found in the village.[…]"
(Minutes from YEE Annual Meeting, September 2002, Caparica, Portugal:
http://www.ecn.cz/yee/2002%20AM_Minutes.doc)

3. Modern version of mother figure, Song of the Mother God, for which see
http://www.titanicahoy.com/asfp/palikr.htm , by Fanya Paikruscheva, self
nicknamed Fanya da Stella, of Bulgaria. The artwork is both a sculpture
and a song […].

4. Mother as a concept - Majkati Macedonian teenagers and young women who
gathered up children caught in the Greek civil war and brought them to
safety in other countries. […]

5. Similar to the Majka Bulgaria concept, one historian has suggested
that Macedonia the word essentially means Mother Earth's Gift (Michael A.
Dimitri: Macedonia: The Mother's Gift, Macedonian Canadian News" - June
1993) […]

6. The concept Mother Russia is long standing and still used, even for
the name of a rock band. This concept has been developed in a book: Mother
Russia: The Feminine Myth in Russian Culture by Joanna Hubbs

Galina Schneider, Washington, DC

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(4)
From: "Elena Gapova" <e.gapovaworldnet.att.net
Date: 25 Feb 2004
To: Association for Women in Slavic Studies AWSS-LH-NET.MSU.EDU

Dear Cristina,

Women may bear "the burden of representation", though not of the state
(government apparatus), maybe, but rather of the nation, which is more
about "we the people". See "Gender and Nation" by Yuval-Davis (1997).
Powerful images of "mother of the nation" (Mother India, Mother Russia,
matka Polska - Polish mother etc.) have been strongly established in these
respective cultures. There is a book (which you probably know) by Marina
Warner "Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form". A very
powerful female image is the Motherland statue that towers over the city
of Volgograd, former Stalingrad, to commemorate a great battle of WWII.
You can see it at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2718529.stm (roll down
the page) .

She is also sometimes called Victory (compare to the Warsaw Nike, another
victorius symbol of WWII). You might find the work of Cynthia Paces, a US
scholar of Czech women's history, particular useful: she published a paper
on the monument to Jan Huss in Prague and the figure of the mother in it,
and now is working on "breastfeeding sculptures" (pacestcnj.edu) But I
would be very careful with any metaphors: under everyday circumstances,
female bodies "spring" from popular culture, and how this is related to
the state ideology is a question. And technological advances, like the
"discovery" of tights to substitute stockings and all the harness that
goes with them, certainly helped with making female bodies more liberated.

Elena Gapova
European Humanities University, Minsk, Belarus

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(5)
From: "Libora Oates-Indruchova" <liborapolicy.hu>
Date: 26 Feb 2004

Dear Cristina,

[… ]An interesting gender twist as the "majka" (the Maypole) - although
the word itself is of feminine gender - is, of course, a symbol of male
virility. In old village rituals, a young man would erect the Maypole in
front of the window of his beloved. He, then, had to guard it, because
other young men from the village sought to fell it. At least this is the
story I was told as a young girl and found it also in (I think) Bozena
Nemcova's novel Podhorska vesnice. […]

I have been using in class a text by the German scholar Silke Wenk on
women's bodies used as symbols of the State. Unfortunatelly, I don't have
it at hand now and have the title only of the Slovak translation, but I
did find two articles by the same person which could be either it or at
least something on the same topic:

Naturalizing the Female Representations of the Nation and the State: the
Debate of “Allegory or Symbol” circa 1800. In: Nationalismus und
Subjektivität. Mitteilungen des Zentrum zur Erforschung der Frühen
Neuzeit, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt a.M., Beiheft 2,
Frankfurt a.M. 1995, S. 277-237.

Gendered Representations of the Nation’s Past and Future. In: Ida Blom,
Karen Hagemann, Catherine Hall (Ed.): Gendered Nations. Nationalisms and
Gender Order in the long 19th Century. Berg Publishers, Oxford/New York
2000, S. 63-77

Hope this helps.

Libora

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Libora Oates-Indruchova, PhD
liborapolicy.hu

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