After 3 years of WWI October 25,1917 the so called Great October Socialist Revolution took place. Bolsheviks seized power and the old system was quickly done away with. “Demonic” women, noble ladies together with wives of rich businessmen disappeared. Sixty years old baroness M. Wrangell ran to work in leaky boots, tied with string, the sister of His Serene Highness Prince Menshikov was selling soap on the market, and the widow of General Svinyin embroidered children’s dresses. Everywhere there were searches and arrests. Workers, soldiers and sailors became masters, and they just took away any precious things that they found in wealthy homes (ill. 44).
But the expropriation of private property was not the final goal of new government. They wanted to create a totally new human race, which will build the new socialist society. Evidently a new woman had absolutely no need of any jewelry (ill. 53). Women who despite everything put on some jewelry, were cruelly derided. For example, in the magazine “Working Woman” (1923) a story was published about a worker and his wife, who bought at first earrings and afterwards icons. The husband condemned her for backwardness and burned the earrings together with icons. Then the wife repented and went to study at the technical school.
Nevertheless this propaganda was in vain. Women wanted to be beautiful in spite of everything. The few remaining magazines published the latest fashions, and co-operative associations of artisans tried to make modern jewelry. The most popular were of course pearls (N1.45, 45a). Women of fashion wore also very long beads of bone, glass or plastic (ill. 47, 48, 50, 51). Some wove themselves dog collars of “rocailles” or seed beads, which were very fashionable at this time (ill. 46). In the photos 50, 51 the women wore necklaces together with cameos (probably of plastic). One of them depicting Worker and Peasant could serve as a symbol of Soviet jewelry of the 1920s (ill. 52).
Some of the “former” ladies managed to save the long amber necklaces that had been highly fashionable before the Revolution (ill. 54, 56, 56a). On the photo 54 are my grand-parents with my father.
In the mid-1920s a new style became fashionable known as “art deco” so-called from the name of the Paris exhibition of applied art (Arts Decoratifs) and modern industry (1925). In the Soviet pavilion at this exhibition the dresses developed by the outstanding fashion designer Nadezhda Lamanova in cooperation with the famous sculptor Vera Mukhina were presented. Because of the lack of textiles in the Soviet country they were made of folk embroidered towels, and decorated with beads made of cockleshells, stones or bread (ill. 57). These models received the Grand Prix “for the costume based on national art”. At that time the painter Tagrina was active, who made interesting brooches with painted enamel (ill. 58).