ABSTRACT
This paper explores how politics are a part of a child’s life from the moment the
child is enrolled in the non-compulsory early childhood sector. Growing up in
socialist Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s, I was involved in daily
encounters with politics and with the production of political childhood
subjectivities. The scope of this paper is limited to one particular aspect of
mass culture in socialist Czechoslovakia, and to the attempted production of
desired political childhood subjectivities through texts in the government
supported children’s magazine Little Bee1. To analyse these stories, I use a
particular aspect of Havel’s political philosophy about power relations and the
production of citizens within a specific political context, as well as an
autobiographical and personal narrative. This analysis suggests that the
production of political and ideologically charged childhood subjectivities
was not unique to socialist Czechoslovakia, or other former socialist countries,
but that it can be seen as a global phenomenon exercised in a variety of
*Email: marektesar@yahoo.com
ideological contexts. The case of socialist Czechoslovakia illustrates how governing ideologies consider childhoods to be important, as evidenced in the investment in children’s magazines and literature.
