ABSTRACT

Soviet literature in general and Soviet children’s literature in particular have often been labeled by Western and post-Soviet Russian scholars and critics as propaganda. Below the surface, however, Soviet children’s literature and culture allowed its creators greater experimental and creative freedom than did the socialist realist culture for adults. This volume explores the importance of children’s culture, from literature to comics to theater to film, in the formation of Soviet social identity and in connection with broader Russian culture, history, and society.

part |39 pages

Introduction: Reading Soviet and Post-Soviet Children's Culture—Contexts and Challenges

chapter 1|16 pages

Creativity Through Restraint

The Beginnings of Soviet Children's Literature 1

chapter 2|22 pages

From Character-Building to Criminal Pursuits

Russian Children's Literature in Transition 1

part 1|85 pages

Ideology, Literature, and Culture: Genres, Themes, and Issues

chapter 4|24 pages

Between Sputnik and Gagarin

Space Flight, Children's Periodicals, and the Circle of Imagination

chapter 5|22 pages

Crafting the Self

Narratives of Prerevolutionary Childhood in Soviet Literature 1

part 2|87 pages

Popular Children's Entertainment

chapter 7|24 pages

Arresting Development

A Brief History of Soviet Cinema for Children and Adolescents 1

chapter 9|20 pages

Juggernaut in Drag

Theater for Stalin's Children

chapter 10|22 pages

“Nice, Instructive Stories Their Psychology Can Grasp”

How to Read Post-Soviet Russian Children's Comics

part 3|127 pages

Authors and Texts

chapter 11|24 pages

Samuil Marshak

Yesterday and Today

chapter 12|22 pages

Lev Kassil

Childhood as Religion and Ideology

chapter 13|22 pages

Pavel Bazhov's Skazy

Discovering the Soviet Uncanny

chapter 14|22 pages

A Traditionalist in the Land of Innovators

The Paradoxes of Sergei Mikhalkov

chapter 15|18 pages

Evgenii Shvarts's Fairy Tale Dramas

Theater, Power, and the Naked Truth

chapter 16|18 pages

Invitation to a Subversion

The Playful Literature of Grigorii Oster