11.2  
Journals link Search link Partners link Information link
April, 2006
Previous
Next
Environmental History

Table of Contents
List journal issues
Home
Get a printer-friendly version of this page
 
 
 

'correcting nature's mistakes': TRANSFORMING THE ENVIRONMENT AND SOVIET CHILDREN'S LITERATURE, 1928–1941

WILLIAM B. HUSBAND

 

ABSTRACT

As it sought to reconfigure the natural environment and simultaneously create new citizens in the USSR, Joseph Stalin's dictatorship strongly emphasized the conversion of children to socialism. Representations of nature in Stalinist children's literature encompassed not only crude propaganda, but also less adversarial, more scientific expressions of human entitlement vis-à-vis the environment as well as a small but significant number of apolitical celebrations of nature. In so doing, early Soviet children's literature demonstrated the limitations of dictatorial power as well as its extent.


"ELECTRICAL LIGHT AND energy are demonstrating how man is subordinating the forces of nature to himself, and this will be a mighty blow to age-old darkness and religious prejudices."1 This sweeping characterization of the conquest of nature in a 1932 work of Soviet children's literature was not at all exceptional. The Bolsheviks worked from their first days in power to begin molding Russian citizens for the socialist society of the future, and no topic was too serious or delicate for the sensibilities of children and adolescents.2 Mass propaganda systematically and routinely promoted applied science and technology to adults and children alike as the antidote for Russia's "backwardness," and from the outset Soviet pronouncements rejected bucolic representations of nature in favor of a planned, improved environment.3 When Joseph Stalin became Party leader in 1928 and began his consolidation of the Soviet dictatorship, the effort intensified.4 1
      This Stalinist campaign to "correct nature's mistakes" entailed more, however, than making the exploitation of the environment more efficient. Party pronouncements maintained that the subordination of natural systems would profoundly reshape the humans who carried it out, and the slogan "man, in transforming nature, transforms himself" came to underlie a series of projects that ranged from the benign to the benighted: on the one hand, the scientific improvement of the chronically anemic peasant agriculture, but on the other hand the environmentally calamitous attempts to reverse the flow of rivers and reconfigure regional biospheres.5 Three modes of children's literature mirrored these pronouncements and projects. One mode assertively promoted the conspicuously ambitious efforts of the regime. A second, more circumspect mode presented the natural environment in less adversarial terms, even though the authors affirmed a sense of human superiority and entitlement vis-à-vis the environment. A third mode survived as well. Even as the Stalinist dictatorship greatly increased its ability to silence criticism in the 1930s, a small but symbolically significant number of apolitical characterizations of nature still reached the young despite the official posture of the state. 2
      This essay explores the diversity of writing on the natural environment for Soviet children and adolescents from Stalin's rise to power to the Soviet entry into World War II (1928–1941). I argue that as much as children's literature promoted the radical transformation of nature—defined simplistically and largely by implication in mass propaganda as the physical environment plus its nonhuman inhabitants—it also strongly endorsed a scientific approach toward exploiting a resource that held the key to a better material life for humans.6 Despite the censorship, a small number of unabashed celebrations of the natural environment and animals also continued to appear: Some of these ultimately affirmed human superiority over nature but others stressed the human dependency on nature's greatness. 3
      Every society conveys its highest aspirations and ideals through the messages it creates for the young, and Stalinist children's literature communicated more than simple advocacy of the unbridled plunder of resources. Zealotry, scientific detachment, and circumspect nonconformity coexisted. 4
   

NATURE IN CHILDREN'S LITERATURE BEFORE STALIN

 
REPRESENTATIONS OF NATURE in Stalinist children's literature had their roots in the intellectually and politically turbulent nineteenth century of Tsarist Russia. Voices among the Russian intelligentsia—not all of whom supported revolution as the best solution to Russia's perceived political and economic backwardness—made nature and the popularization of science featured themes in writing for and about children. As they competed with the light entertainment, religious tales, and adventure fantasies that dominated the marketplace, the intelligentsia promoted the inculcation of critical thinking in the young and constructed stories around earthy topics such as factories. Writers framed their case in terms of fostering realism, but their creations were equally grounded in a belief that was as deterministic as it was hopeful: that the rationalism that underlay science would inculcate a more egalitarian society in Russia, in addition to improving its material existence. In this view, children's literature was a didactic tool in the service of modernization, and public taste and the market were unacceptable arbiters of quality. Leading figures in early Soviet children's literature, such as Nadezhda Krupskaia and Maxim Gorky, emerged from this tradition.7 5
      From the time they seized power in 1917 Bolshevik leaders strove to convert children to revolutionary thinking. As determined to reconfigure social myths and values as they were to transform the country politically and economically, the Bolsheviks made formulating an appropriately revolutionary pedagogy, eradicating illiteracy, and providing free universal elementary education three of their immediate goals. Within months the state then decreed the separation of school and church and the integration of labor training with academic instruction, and by mid-1919 the state publishing house, Gosizdat, and the Young Guard Press of the Communist Youth League (Komsomol) were producing didactic materials for Soviet children and adolescents.8 6
      It would, however, take more than issuing decrees to eradicate the legacy of the past: during the years of the New Economic Policy (NEP) from 1921 to 1928 the regime faced serious competition for the allegiance of youth. Teachers and parents were slow to warm to revolutionary pedagogy. Religion did not recede as easily as the Party anticipated, and the Bolsheviks disagreed sharply among themselves on how best to create a new society. Beyond this, the wide range of social and cultural experimentation that NEP set into motion, in conjunction with the reintroduction of limited market economics, provoked opposition from many rank-and-file Bolsheviks as well as the general public. In 1928, the year Stalin became the undisputed leader of the Party, not even the most dogmatic Bolshevik would have claimed that the state's scientific, materialistic worldview had effectively displaced pre-existing beliefs and values.9 7
      Amid this intellectual and economic turbulence, children's literature was not able to fulfill its didactic role well. During the civil war (1918–1921) the number of books and periodicals published for the young fell precipitously.10 The advent of NEP in 1921 rejuvenated book production, but it also made possible market competition, and a significant segment of the public preferred the more entertaining products of non-state publishers to those of Gosizdat and the Young Guard Press. Nor could Soviet writers and publishers agree on an overarching revolutionary identity for the genre. In 1923, with characteristic Bolshevik bravado, the Party resolved to "create literature for children under the careful supervision and leadership of the Party."11 The intent was that this literature "not be characterized by empty and elevated phraseology."12 Such resolutions, however, failed to resolve differences among artists and literary critics loyal to the revolution, who throughout the remainder of the 1920s hotly debated definitions of correct Communist methodology and content and even whether children's literature should serve didactic purposes.13 8
      In practice, children's literature produced during the first decade of Soviet rule replicated a significant array of key pre-revolutionary forms, even as it purported to supersede them. Soviet era histories of children's literature erroneously posited (and some uncritical Western works later accepted) both the originality of Bolshevik children's literature and its ongoing ideological consistency, but a closer reading of the content reveals that such was not the case.14 During the final two decades of the Tsarist regime, works designed to foster a greater integration of children (and childhood) with the modernizing West had coexisted with works intended to foster nationalism and patriotism among the young (and after 1914 support for the war effort). From 1917 to 1928, early Soviet creations simultaneously promoted internationalism as well as a "national triumphalism" that proclaimed the superiority of all things Soviet; but in so doing they were simply extending elements that predated the revolution.15 Writing for children during the 1920s, however, also featured elements that subsequently would change under Stalin. Political leaders, including Vladimir Lenin, for example, were represented as approachable human beings whom children were encouraged to address in ordinary ways. By contrast, portraits and photos of Stalin with children took on an iconic character in the 1930s.16 9
      Writings on the natural environment for Soviet children during the 1920s mixed pre-revolutionary standards with Soviet homiletics. A link between hunting and concern for nature, for example, long predated the revolution, and the topic appeared on all sides of the political spectrum.17 Vladimir Vasilevich Lebedev's Hunting, published by the premier private press Raduga (Rainbow), simply presented the many forms of hunting used by different cultures around the world.18 In a virtually identical spirit, Fox Collar, from the rival press Gosizdat, characterized hunting as an unremarkable facet of life. Grandfather catches a menacing fox in a trap, skins it with the help of his grandson, and in the final illustration grandmother combs the pelt.19 Works on other topics anthropomorphized animals in order to promote Soviet values overtly. About Many Four-Legged Creatures contrasts a child and a pig in support of teaching hygiene, a major state campaign at the time. Thus, "if you are not a suckling pig, throw off dirt and throw off laziness, and wash with soap every day." Nature, according to this story, contains both good and bad animals. Horses and oxen receive positive treatment for their usefulness to agriculture and the military, but the "sly" fox endears himself to barnyard creatures by dressing "like the old parish priest" and carrying an incense dispenser. The antireligious message is that roosters and chickens could have remained out of harm's way had they not come to be blessed by the fox/priest, who in the book's final illustration holds a chicken by the throat behind his back.20 "The Bear," which was published in a magazine for pre-school children in 1927, approaches animals with a similar ambivalence. A peasant leaves his 3-year-old son in a field while he works nearby. Soon a large bear first circles and then approaches the child, while the horrified father powerlessly watches. But when the child pets the bear's fur, the animal wanders away.21 In the end, nature (like the bear) could be alternately dangerous or salutary, and revolutionary lessons in Soviet children's literature from 1917 to 1928 ranged from transparent to hidden or even nonexistent. But when Stalin came to power, the attempt to utilize children's literature for instruction became more strident. 10
   

THE TRANSITION TO STALINISM

 
THE TRANSITION TO STALINISM in 1928 abruptly disrupted multiple spheres of Soviet life. The forced collectivization of agriculture and impracticable First Five-Year Plan for industry entailed a series of poorly coordinated mass mobilizations between 1928 and 1932 that produced widespread economic dislocation, a cavalier misuse of resources, and incalculable human suffering. At the same time, proletarian zealots unleashed a Cultural Revolution that penetrated every social and intellectual domain. Revolutionary dogmatists attacked non-Marxist professionals in universities, scientific laboratories, and cultural institutions in their effort to expunge "bourgeois" and "foreign" influences from Soviet life. This assault was particularly emotional in literature, where the anti-intellectualism of the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP) became so extreme that the Stalinist leadership, which began to place discipline above revolutionary enthusiasm, disbanded the group in 1932, with the approval of a significant segment of Soviet writers and critics.22 11
      Under these circumstances, creations for the young inevitably came under scrutiny. Amid an ambitious general examination of the care and education of children launched in the late 1920s, a Party resolution of July 23, 1928 damned by faint praise the efforts of Soviet-era publishers and writers to lower the price of books, improve their appearance, and raise the profile of state presses in the market. The resolution's true purpose lay in its enumeration of faults: books and periodicals were weak in providing Party education and in responding to the offspring of workers and peasants; state presses reached the countryside inadequately; the creative level of literature for the young was low; and Communist education needed to address children in more lively and attractive formats.23 During the same year, Nadezhda Krupskaia, whose career focused extensively on the education and welfare of the young, supported the use of literature for didactic purposes by attacking fairytales, which she characterized as escapist and frivolous and therefore "bourgeois nonsense."24 In these conditions, many of those responsible for children's literature found it easiest simply to restrict the circulation of offensive materials. They removed unsuitable books from shelves and sought ways to redirect, for example, children's fondness for fantasies and adventure stories.25 Pre-revolutionary standards such as Lydiia Charskaia's commercially successful stories for adolescent girls and the Nat Pinkerton detective stories widely disappeared at this time. 12
      Such strategies, however, failed to produce the entertaining and instructive fare the Party leadership sought. Her attack on "bourgeois nonsense" notwithstanding, Krupskaia energetically campaigned for balanced books that were positive and fresh as well as instructive, accessible, and realistic. Literature should not preach to the young, she maintained, but impart knowledge, love of reading, and the foundation of emotional life. Illustrations should depict people as helpful and socially useful, with women receiving equal treatment and status.26 But producing works that were simultaneously didactic, culturally enriching, and entertaining was a goal more easily pronounced than achieved. The predictable closure of private presses during the Cultural Revolution led not to a unity of purpose in the genre, but to a replication of pre-existing divisions—only now the divisions existed solely inside state publishing houses. Gifted writers and artists went to work for Gosizdat and, in smaller numbers, for the Young Guard Press. They made accommodations for their new employers, to be sure, and the content of a large number new works for children reflected the propaganda priorities of the state. Nevertheless, by 1932 Soviet children's literature had achieved neither a monolithic viewpoint nor a consensus.27 13
      The Soviet master narrative, which formed the backdrop to all Soviet works, linked the transformation of nature to that of humans. The Cultural Revolution characterized the precept that nature and science placed objective limits on human achievement as an invention of the "class enemy." Building on the Bolshevik axiom that the enlightened utilization of science would enable the Soviet Union to overcome its lack of economic and cultural development, the regime maintained that the socialist spirit made potential progress boundless because Marxist science was redefining the realm of the possible. In practice, Stalinist scientific materialism elevated applied technology above theory or research that had no demonstrable short-term economic application, and "science for science's sake" became a term of derision.28 14
      In this schema, as Douglas Weiner has shown, nature was a resource that lacked intrinsic value beyond its exploitation by humans. The general public and the political leadership shared the misperception that the resources of the USSR were essentially infinite, and ecological doctrines that highlighted the maximum levels to which humans could safely exploit and manipulate the natural environment became politically suspect and dangerous to those who professed them. A combination of fear and ambition therefore drove the wanton misuse of resources during the Five-Year Plan and at the same time inspired proposals to enlarge the pool of natural assets by altering regional biospheres ("correcting nature's mistakes"). Making the conquest of nature a higher priority than its protection, the argument ran, not only made economic sense, but also acted as a learning experience for those who participated. It was in this context that Maxim Gorky, the revolution's leading novelist who had a strong interest in children's literature, coined the slogan "man, in transforming nature, transforms himself."29 15
      The most tendentious stories for children during the period from 1928 to 1932 could scarcely be distinguished from the crudest propaganda directed to their parents. As it celebrated the construction of one of the largest metallurgical factories in the world, the story Kuznetskstroi, the Socialist Giant schematically linked the conquest of nature through industrialization to the eradication of religion in the country. On the first page, the young reader encountered explanations of the natural resources in the region of the Ural Mountains, the importance of cast iron and steel for industry and transport, the subversive efforts of the clergy, and the leading role of the Communist Party in creating socialism. Subsequent pages then cited statistics on the annual smelting capacity of the factory furnace and the output of the adjacent electrical station, and lauded the importance of shock brigades and collective farm peasants in construction. But children also learned that many peasants were insufficiently transformed: A large number still observed religious traditions, and "on church holidays they sometimes don't come to work." The links among the subordination of nature, promotion of industrialization, and eradication of religion were treated as self-evident.30 16
      Similarly, in Commotion: A Winter Tale, nature constituted no more than an obstacle for humans to overcome. Winter was neither majestic nor beautiful, but crippling and oppressive, as its ice closed schools, caused electrical cables to overheat, halted trolleys, and darkened streetlights. The accompanying illustrations underscored the point by presenting not photographic likenesses of the city, but the opposite: action against a dark background that resembled a photo negative. When light finally broke through near the end of the tale, the source was not a natural thaw but the restoration of electricity. Even when nature held the upper hand early in the story, the problem was a failure of human agency rather than the triumph of natural forces.31 17
      In another doctrinaire work of the Cultural Revolution, Nikolai Fedorovich Denisovskii's Gold, the conquest of nature was seen as a prerequisite to the liberation of humans. Just as capitalists formerly waged war in Africa as much for the plunder of forests, oil, coal, and ore as for trade and colonial slaves, the old regime in Russia once exploited Siberia and the Far East. Now, under Soviet power, horses were doing the work of men, and "with each passing year the electric dredge conquers the taiga."32 Above all, Siberia's gold could provide a better life for all Soviet citizens. With it the regime would purchase the most advanced machinery abroad, construct heavy industry and hydro-electric plants for the electrification of the country, produce laboratories for scientific research more quickly, and supply collective farms with tractors. Better breeds of swine were to be imported from abroad and milk cows improved. With unabashed irony the story concluded: "We need gold in order to accelerate the building of socialism, in order to catch and surpass the capitalist countries more quickly, in order to lift the workers of the whole world from under the power of gold."33 Thus it was not the exploitation of nature that mattered, but the class character of the process. What was reprehensible when carried out by capitalists became a positive benefit when done by socialists for human material improvement. 18
      The second mode of writing for children enmeshed nature with other Stalinist objectives in ways that were more intellectual and less heavy-handed. During the Cultural Revolution, Christmas trees were unambiguously bourgeois (the Stalinist regime would not "rehabilitate" them until 1935). The prominent antireligious propagandist, Nikolai K. Amosov, addressed the issue in his Against the Christmas Tree in 1930 with an argument that was as ecological as it was ideological. Framing his story with a sentimental scene of anticipation of Christmas—presents, candles, a tree—the author abruptly turned his focus to the environmental cost of such a celebration:
But is this really so good? Do you know what benefit the forest brings? The forest cleans the air that we breathe, from which we become so rosy and healthy. The forest preserves the rivers from growing shallow and even drying out. On our little river, where we always swim, the forest was cut down, after which it was twice as small. If the forest grows in the sand and they cut it down, then this sand rises up and, driven by the wind, covers whole forests, [and] because of this many people die. In the forests there are many berries and mushrooms that people gather; many various animals which people hunt. Tar [and] pitch are distilled from the stumps of birch and pine trees. The forest saves the state in other ways. And do you know how many people live exclusively by hunting, the gathering of berries and mushrooms? Very many. And these people also have children, our comrades. By cutting down a forest for such a stupid business as the creation of Christmas trees, we lessen its general quantity, and the matter might reach the point at which our comrades will actually starve. This is not good.34
 In this instance, situational conservationism in the service of combating religion overrode the usual message of harnessing nature.		 19
      Other stories fostered the view that nature was a beneficent resource if domesticated. Domestic Birds, for pre-school children, showed fowl being fed, nurtured, and living as families. As the story develops, however, the text and illustrations (one of the Incubator Building) make clear that such is possible only because these birds are part of a state egg-production cooperative. The tone is matter-of-fact rather than partisan, but the unmistakable message is that chickens are principally a source of eggs.35 Nature, when harnessed to human purposes, is still nature, but in an "improved" form. Similarly, in 1930 Gosizdat published two different versions of How A Shirt Grew in the Field, which demystified nature through the education of Little Tania. When it is explained to the girl that her father is sowing flax, she cannot comprehend how a flaxen shirt can emerge from a field. When little grass shoots emerge two weeks later, Tania's mother and two sisters promise her a fine shirt. During the following weeks, the grass grows higher and flowers appear. In due course, the child and the female members of her family chop the plants and process the flax by cleaning, spinning, weaving, carding, and then drying it in the sun. In December, Tania's sisters sew the materials and give Tania and her brother Vasia new shirts "as white as snow." The story makes its point more with its unvarnished presentation than through any explicit proselytizing in the text, and in this portrayal nature is a useful but ultimately unremarkable resource. Indeed, the greatest emotion in the story derives from receiving the new shirt!36 In the same spirit, N. Vengrov's "October," a contribution to Vladimir Maiakovsky's highly acclaimed collection Flags on Bayonets, treats nature, industrialization, and revolution as categories without boundaries. Towns and forests, collective farms and marshes, rivers and factories, everywhere blend under the unassailable goal of construction. What stands out is that this prose poem fully integrates nature into the message yet makes no overt appeal for its conquest.37 20
      Still other children's books utilized anthropomorphization to demystify and explain the conquest of nature. Sofia Fedorchenko's How the Machine Alarmed the Wild Animals simultaneously placed mechanization above nature and promoted the reasoned transformation of social attitudes. In this story, the first train to speed through the forest terrifies and confuses the animals. A fox and rodent run away, and the rabbit hides behind a bush. Once the train has passed, various animals begin to accommodate the new reality in their own ways. The bear fantasizes about his potential to conquer all the other animals if only he had the train's speed, while the wolf and the badger openly articulate envy. The squirrel expresses false bravado before taking refuge in a hollow tree. The fox treats the occasion as an object lesson for her young, and each forest creature eventually voices an opinion. Yet in the end the animals reach a consensus worthy of a Soviet political meeting: because of this mechanized innovation they will not be able to live as before, but ultimately almost no one cares to continue in the old way. In a concluding point whose meaning cannot possibly be misinterpreted, only the magpie dissents.38 N. I. Leonov's About Winter is even less sentimental, even though it was clearly intended for an audience of very young children. The opening selection, "Autumn," takes a pessimistic approach to the inevitable passage of the seasons and the life-death phenomenon. By the later stages of the piece the author anthropomorphizes Time: "the year is dying" and we are left with "dead tundra." Leonov's final selection in the book contains graphic illustrations of hunting polar bears. The message: Nature is unexceptional, and its conquest by humans is the normal, expected outcome.39 21
      A third mode of children's literature eschewed ideological advocacy altogether and even at times expressed a deep respect for nature—an approach that was wholly out of step with the predominant mood of the times. In 1930, for instance, the journal The Little Spark regaled pre-schoolers with a straightforward celebration of the seasons entitled "Golden Autumn."40 In 1931, Zateinik, a journal directed principally to those who organized activities for children, devoted attention to co-opting pre-revolutionary traditions rather than eradicating them. While it reflexively promoted activities such as skiing in its "Winter Club" section, any overt mention of the conquest of nature was conspicuous by its absence.41 A few stories, such as Andreika on the Raft, continued to manifest respect for nature as a regulator of life and even human mood. Set in a remote area of Arkangelsk province in the north, it describes how an 8-year-old boy has his first serious encounter with overcoming a river that is frozen for prolonged periods. Eventually spring brings longer days, the river melts, and happier times ensue. By the conclusion of the story the thaw in nature is linked metaphorically to a human thaw: a Red Corner now exists where people can read politically instructive books and newspapers or play chess. The book ultimately falls far short of presenting the lively and entertaining fare that the Party resolution of 1928 and Krupskaia advocated—and it would be difficult to discern what level of child-reader the author had in mind—but the work shows respect for nature and none of the crass rhetoric regarding its conquest. Characters depended upon the natural surroundings and their lives were directly regulated by them, but this made them neither resentful nor antagonistic toward nature.42 22
   

THE DICTATORSHIP OF A HAPPY LIFE

 
"THANK YOU, OUR STALIN, for a happy childhood," intoned a propaganda slogan in wide circulation by 1936. At a time when chronic shortages plagued the economy and the political police terrorized society, the regime worked intensively to present a facade of plenitude and harmony. In a November 1935 speech to exemplary production workers, Stalin himself offered that "life has become better, comrades; life has become more cheerful, and when you are living cheerfully, work turns out well." In actuality, however, from the end of the Cultural Revolution to the outbreak of World War II the disparity between observed experience and politically constructed reality in the Soviet Union widened. The regime compensated in part by vigorously pursuing the allegiance of children, the hope for the future. 23
      The emerging dictatorship tried to increase socio-political obedience between 1932 and 1941 and further its long-term economic goals simultaneously, even though the two objectives could not always be reconciled. The ultimate Communist ideal was one of universal benefit, but for now Party axioms continued to place urbanization above the improvement of rural life, centralized industrialization above incremental reconstruction, and social modernization above established morés. Moreover, Stalin and his leadership cadre sacrificed consistency when they increasingly relied on coercion. Initiative suffered during the 1930s as today's dogmas became tomorrow's deviations: a renewed discipline and rigor in education replaced revolutionary pedagogy; a reemphasis on the nuclear family and motherhood displaced social experimentation; the resurrection of traditional forms such as a folklore transcended artistic eccentricity; and negative bourgeois acquisitiveness became the legitimate consumerism of the emerging Soviet managerial elite. Above all, the Great Terror of 1937–1938 failed to differentiate between real and manufactured enemies.43 24
      Nowhere did the state undercut long-term objectives more heedlessly than in its approach to resources, where centralized state planning further disfigured inherently flawed designs to transform nature. Burdened with artificial quotas and held politically responsible for economic and production shortfalls, officials resorted to expediency. The Commissariat of Agriculture responded to pressure to increase output by trying to bring additional land under cultivation and clearing what was already in its control for mechanized, large-scale agriculture, without regard to environmental consequences. Similarly, the country's massive construction requirements in combination with the state's desire to export lumber drove the Commissariat of Forestry to plunder existing resources and to covet nature preserves outside its jurisdiction. Under these circumstances, in which the regime dismissed rational objections from responsible managers and scientists as pessimism or political disloyalty, charlatans and opportunists flourished. The greatest of these was Trofim Lysenko. By manipulating small scientific samples and utilizing techniques already discredited in the West, the notorious Lysenko made unrealistic promises to improve agriculture. Beyond this, his attacks on officials in charge of research in nature preserves, who opposed his proposals to transport flora and fauna in order to fill "unused spaces" left by nature, similarly lacked merit, but his political cunning earned Stalin's protection for his burgeoning career. Many other projects, of which building a canal from the Volga River to Moscow was only one example, often utilized the labor of political prisoners who would ostensibly themselves be "reforged" by the experience and reclaimed by society as productive citizens.44 25
      Yet as the Stalinist regime was extending its dictatorial reach, inconsistency, uncertainty, and contradiction undercut even its most draconian policies and actions. Rather than a steady, ineluctable establishment of authoritarian hegemony, the Party made a series of false starts, equivocated even on large issues, and reversed itself with surprising frequency. Long-term objectives remained remarkably constant, even as the strategies and policies employed to achieve them changed dramatically and often. Understanding the Soviet dictatorship between the end of the Cultural Revolution and World War II therefore entails not a smooth chronological progression of policies, but manifold episodes whose dynamics appeared as disjointed to contemporaries as they are to students of the past. Existing scholarship on the USSR in the 1930s is rich with examples of extemporization over planning and a surprising lack of consistent policies even on primary goals of long standing. Neither the eradication of religion, the attitude of the Soviet leadership toward foreign Communists, nor even the road to the Great Terror—to cite only a few well documented examples—appeared to follow any preconceived master plan.45 26
      In this environment, the state instituted the doctrine of Socialist Realism in the arts to project its version of reality. The tenets of Socialist Realism, as Katerina Clark has shown, long predated the use of the term. However, Stalin signaled that a more formal definition of artistic license was in the offing when he lectured a gathering of writers on artistic truth in October 1932, just months after the regime disbanded RAPP. By the time the state created a politically malleable Union of Soviet Writers in August 1934, Gorky and other leading writers had elaborated on Stalin's basic message. The Party's daily newspaper Pravda declared: "Socialist realism, the basic method of Soviet artistic literature and literary criticism, demands truthfulness from the artist and a historically concrete portrayal of reality in its revolutionary development. Under these conditions, truthfulness and historical concreteness of artistic portrayal ought to be combined with the task of the ideological remaking and education of working people in the spirit of socialism." In short, truthful portrayal was imperative in creativity, but, a priori, truth always portrayed revolutionary progress. Art was above all an instrument of political education, in this case by presenting aspirations for the future as present accomplishments.46 27
      Even before Socialist Realism reached full form, the Party markedly intensified its efforts to configure children's literature. In a declaration published on August 15, 1931, the Central Committee made clear its displeasure with all aspects of circulating the printed word. It declared that presses that produced artistic and political materials as well as periodicals, literary criticism, and bibliographies were in need of qualitative and quantitative improvement. Even the country's paper shortage and book distribution practices received scrutiny.47 On December 29, 1931, the Party leadership singled out the Komsomol's Young Guard Press for noncompliance with this mandate. Administrators, editors, authors, and artists were all guilty of providing inadequate ideological leadership, and the output of Young Guard was both artistically and politically substandard. Children's literature, the resolution continued, was an endeavor that should attract the very best writers and artists to blend ideology and creativity. "The child's book must be hearty in a Bolshevik way, issuing a call to struggle and victory. In clear and graphic forms, books for children must show the socialist adaptation of the country and the people and educate children in the spirit of proletarian internationalism."48 28
      As a measure of the leaders' seriousness, in September 1933 the state created its first publishing house exclusively for works for children, called Detgiz. Soon thereafter, Samuil Marshak, a protégé of Gorky, delivered a list of priorities for children's literature at the founding meeting of the Union of Soviet Writers in August 1934: depictions of reality should be heroic, labor was to be the basis of the life of Soviet society, the brotherhood of peoples in the USSR would be an emphasized theme, and the current generation should be educated in folklore and the Russian classics. Then, in 1935, the Communist Youth League was named the Party's voice in the genre, and throughout the remainder of the decade the Komsomol sponsored conferences and worked to designate the direction that publications for the young would take. Finally, the prominent literary critics A. S. Makarenko and L. Panteleev published widely circulated articles on how to use humor and heroics in place of slogans and political platitudes to present a Socialist Realist point of view to children.49 29
      Socialist Realism and children's literature became inextricably but incompletely linked, sometimes in unexpected ways. As they strove to present future ideals as present realities, practitioners of Socialist Realism altered not only well-established literary conventions, but even earlier Soviet dicta. The Union of Soviet Writers "rehabilitated" fairy tales in 1934, for example, transforming them from "bourgeois nonsense" into vehicles for education (as they had been prior to the revolution).50 In analyzing these developments, some specialists on Soviet writing for the young interpret Socialist Realism in terms of the dynamics of totalitarianism.51 Others, however, pointedly note that children's literature—its indisputable propaganda functions notwithstanding—was consistently more frank and free than works for adult audiences.52 30
      There was no shortage of authors who articulated their obedience to Party directives by delivering crude caricatures of revolutionary thinking. Young readers of the Komsomol monthly Zateinik encountered the following in February 1939, on the eve of the Eighteenth All-Union Congress of the Communist Party: "Pioneers and school children—the young patriots of our country—must also greet the eighteenth congress of the Party in a fitting manner. The very best present that you, kids, can give the eighteenth congress will be distinguished progress in your studies in the third quarter of the academic year. Organize competitions for the best progress between sections [of youth organizations], teams, classes, separate participants; help the backward comrades." References to "the great Stalin" and "the Bolshevik Party and its leader and teacher, Comrade Stalin" abounded in this issue of the journal; and as the country prepared for war, allusions to military themes came in the form of Aesopian references to Russia's war with Napoleon in 1812 and to heroic feats of the 1930s.53 31
      Writings on the transformation of nature fully incorporated this approach. It Can't Be!, directed to pre-school children, presented a straightforward object lesson on the benefits of Soviet industrialization. In this story, the peasant child Ivan Kuz'mich marvels at things he never thought possible, such as tomatoes growing in winter through the miracle of electricity.54 Marshak, whose work in the 1920s had avoided blatant propagandizing, mixed military and industrial metaphors in his War on the Dnieper. "Man says to the Dnieper: 'I will dam you up. You will jump from the summit, you will move machines."' 'No,' answered the water, 'never that' ... And war, war, war was declared on the river. Enter the battle the crane ... Where yesterday small boats rocked, winches worked. Where river reeds made noise, little train engines crossed. Where yesterday fish splashed, dynamite exploded clods of earth. ... Every hammer, every derrick, every crowbar, and every crane fulfill the [state financial plan] ... Days and nights, days and nights, the workers carry on the battle with the Dnieper."55 The conquest of nature was an issue with only one correct position. 32
      Not all writers used such blatant messages to elevate humans above nature. The distinctive subtexts in the works of Zinaida Aleksandrova subtly but consciously trivialized natural forces. In her poem Kolkhoz Spring, Aleksandrova portrays an idealized version of sowing on a collective farm. Spring emerges without inspiring flights of imagination, and ice melting on the lake evokes no emotion more profound than a starting signal for planting. Nor can nature make a good account of itself on a mechanized kolkhoz. The farm's few horses fade in importance beside the one Fordson and five Stalingrad tractors, and brigadier tractor driver Katia Petrova alone conquers four hectares with the old Fordson.56 Aleksandrova's Wind on the River similarly demystifies nature and promotes the social benefits of collectivism, without belaboring the point, for small children. Forty kindergarten students identically clad in blue shorts and white shirts disrobe to swim. When the wind scatters their clothes, they simply retrieve them without panic, anger, or any other pronounced emotion. The story shows the wind as powerful and sometimes a friend we cajole, but with calm and concerted effort it is easily overcome.57 Aleksandr Vvedenskii's Summer and Winter characterizes the change of seasons as emotionally and scientifically neutral in a work free of advocacy of the reflexive exploitation of the environment.58 33
      Hunting tales similarly continued to agitate against feelings of regret in exploiting nature. In two tales for small children about bears, fantasy and affection mixed easily with dispassionate violence. In Hunting Bears, a tale meant to be read to pre-schoolers by parents, a beginning illustration captioned "In pursuit" shows a pack of aggressive hunting dogs surrounding a bear. The bloody illustration "Hand-to-hand combat with the bear" follows, but subsequently readers alternately see one jovial bear drunk on wine, another caught in a trap, and finally a group of cubs. Tender feelings toward bears and the violence involved in hunting them are presented as complementary rather than contrasting.59 Similarly, "Bear Cubs" by Evgenii Charushin begins with a female bear being killed in her lair during the winter. Her two cubs turn up at the hut of Praskovia Ivanovna, whose husband killed the mother bear, and she takes them in. They initially do not leave her sheepskin rug, but Praskovia bottle feeds them and gains their trust. Eventually the cubs become bolder, and they hatch a fantastic scheme to journey to the city, which the story denounces with an elastic Russian term for anti-social behavior: "hooliganism." In the end, this combination of disparate themes seems calculated to disarm young emotions. The dispatching of the mother on the first page of the story, Praskovia's care, and the reality of the growing of the bears combine to encourage an attitude of unquestioning acceptance by the intended audience.60 34
      Finally, not all children's works abandoned celebrations of nature or incorporated only calculated messages. Even though examples of this trend were far less numerous than those that accepted or accommodated propaganda prescriptions, their very existence in the face of the relentless pressure for conformity being exerted by the regime holds great symbolic significance. Their small numbers notwithstanding, these writings exhibited a greater frankness than was possible in creations for adults in the age of Socialist Realism.61 They also helped establish a tradition of using concern for nature as a vehicle for expressing reformist agendas that outlived the Soviet regime itself.62About Deer and Children, About Dogs and the Goose by Anna Pokrovskaia depicts the intimidating power of nature, but it also highlights less menacing features. The opening chapter, "In the Tundra," describes ice on the ocean even in the summer and frozen ground that yields nothing but small shrubs. Soon this adversarial relationship between nature and humans gives way, however, to instances in which deer and birds emerge as friends of humans. Geese are later hunted and winter brings darkness, but Nature appears above all neither as friend nor foe exclusively, but as a formidable inevitability, and the story makes no calls for its conquest.63Northern May exhibits a similar spirit. It uses a neutral description of the harshness of the winter as a point of reference to describe the advent of spring, which the story enthusiastically celebrates.64 35
      Sergei Mikhailkov's The Vegetable Garden can only be reasonably read as a straightforward appreciation of nature and animals.65 And virtually every Russian child has experienced Chukovskii's Limpopo. In this classic tale, Doctor Aibolit provides a variety of medical services to the animal kingdom: his skill saves a hare, who has fallen under a streetcar; a mother hippopotamus sends a telegram that her young have fallen ill; the doctor is summoned to Zanzibar, Kalahari, and the Sahara. Aibolit eventually collapses on a road, however, and the animal kingdom returns his kindness. Wolves give him a ride on their backs, various fowl and fish help him along his journey, and in the end the doctor is celebrated by the animals. In the process, children are entertained and learn the names of animals and illnesses, but Chukovskii also communicates a positive bond between humans and animals, the necessity of caring for them, and the suggestion that the relationship between humans and animals is symbiotic.66 36
      The advent of Socialist Realism ultimately limited the range of possibilities in creating children's literature, but its most confining aspects never exercised full hegemony. Authors loyal to the regime interpreted its tenets in more than one manner, and the literature from 1932 to 1941 manifested continuities as well as changes. Even as the state strove to cloak all literary representations in terms of happiness and well-being, writing about the transformation of nature encompassed as much diversity as it had previously. 37
   

MIXED MESSAGES

 
ULTIMATELY, SOVIET CHILDREN'S literature from 1928 to 1941 communicated multiple messages, even as it strove to provide a unified advocacy of transforming nature and humans and to project an aura of general harmony. On the scale of national politics, Stalinist-era literature eluded the hegemony the dictatorship sought, and in so doing it demonstrated an important limit to political control in the USSR, official rhetoric notwithstanding. Given the dynamics of Stalinism, it hardly causes surprise that the content of the most aggressive books for children could scarcely be distinguished from propaganda directed toward adults. At the opposite pole, the fact that traditional representations of the natural environment survived, although incompatible with the desiderata of the dictatorship, is also far from unexpected, since such works represent a conventional and seemingly reflexive form of mild resistance. But the hallmark of representations of the relationship between humans and nature in children's literature emerged between these extremes. Despite the state's emphasis on uncompromising transformation, children and adolescents received significant exposure to materials from state presses that treated nature dispassionately. These publications avoided both the schematicism of the crudest Stalinist creations and the emotiveness of unbridled celebrations of nature. 38
      Such works gave no comfort to those dedicated to preserving the natural environment. They lacked any semblance of a conservationist spirit and, while they refrained from calls for drastic action in the present, the alternative they offered was a lifelong attitude toward nature as an unremarkable resource designed for human exploitation. Ultimately, despite its failure to achieve all the regime desired—and to return to the idea with which this essay opened—the Stalinist conquest of nature directed toward youth was a vehicle for harnessing resources, but it was equally important as an exercise in attempting to transform the social attitudes of the future. 39


William B. Husband is professor of history at Oregon State University. He is author of "Godless Communists": Atheism in State and Society in Soviet Russia, 1917–1932 (Northern Illinois, 2000) and Revolution in the Factory: The Birth of the Soviet Textile Industry, 1917–1920 (Oxford, 1990) as well as editor of The Human Tradition in Modern Russia (SR Books, 2000). His current book project is Nature in Modern Russia: A Social History.



NOTES

I am grateful to the Cotsen Children's Library of Princeton University and the Friends of the Princeton Library for support that made possible the research for this essay. I also thank Andrea Immel, Marina Balina, and the anonymous referees for Environmental History.

1. M. Gurevich, and I. Igumnov, Kuznetskstroi: Sotsialisticheskoi gigant ([n.p.]: OGIZ-Gosudarstvennoe antireligioznoe izdatel'stvo, 1932), 5.

2. The Bolsheviks emerged when Russia's fledgling Marxist party, the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party, split into two factions in 1903. The Bolsheviks seized political office in the name of the Petrograd Soviet in October 1917, and in 1918 they formally changed their name to the All-Russian Communist Party , which later became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In practice, "Bolshevik," "Communist," "Soviet," and "Party" were treated as synonymous in Soviet political discourse, as they will be in this essay.

3. This work employs the term "propaganda" in its British usage, that is, as the systematic propagation of a particular doctrine or practice. This reflects the Russian sense of the term, and it frees the word from a common American colloquial association of "propaganda" with "falsehood."

4. Catriona Kelly has noted the similarities of adults' and children's exposure to representations of Stalin, even as she argues that the specific construction of a Stalin cult became more central in propaganda for children in 1934. Catriona Kelly, "Riding the Magic Carpet: Children and the Leader Cult in the Stalin Era," Slavic and East European Journal 49 (2005): 202–04.

5. The expression "correcting nature's mistakes" emerged in the 1930s in propaganda that promoted the Great Transformation of Nature, the Party's campaign to create a planned, improved environment. Supporters of the transformation used the expression, as well as references to "empty" and "unused" natural spaces, in public pronouncements that advocated the introduction of flora and fauna into new, non-native habitats.

6. Definitions of nature in the Soviet period tended to be, above all, situational. Propaganda presented nature as an aggregate of flora, fauna, and inorganic elements. Beyond this, complex battles between conservationists and those determined to exploit and transform the natural environment—and neither group was homogenous—produced elastic definitions that were strongly configured by political circumstances. Finally, nuanced discussions regarding materialist definitions of the natural environment took place within the scientific community. For extensive discussion, see Douglas R. Weiner, Models of Nature: Ecology, Conservation, and Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000), 86–90, 92, 168–71, 204–10 and passim; Douglas R. Weiner, A Little Corner of Freedom: Russian Nature Protection from Stalin to Gorbachëv (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999), 75–77, 149, 202–03.

7. E. E. Zubareva, ed., Detskaia literatura (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1985), 90–158, especially 90–91, 96–97, 138–44; Jacqueline M. Olich, "Competing Ideologies and Children's Books: The Making of Soviet Children's Literature, 1918–1935" (PhD diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1999), 29–39; A. Babushkina, Istoriia russkoi detskoi literatury (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe uchebno-pedagogicheskoe izdatel'stvo, 1948), 207, 245; Lev Lifschutz-Loseff, "Children's Literature, Russian," in The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet Literatures (Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International Press, 1981), 74–77.

8. Lydiia Kon, Sovetskaia detskaia literatura, 1917–1929 (Moscow: Detskaia literatura, 1960), 8–9; Olich, "Competing Ideologies and Children's Books" 70.

9. Larry Holmes, The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse: Reforming Education in Soviet Russia, 1917–1931 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); William B. Husband, "Godless Communists": Atheism and Society in Soviet Russia, 1917–1932 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000), ch. 3.

10. Kon, Sovetskaia detskaia literatura, 1917–1929, 63; L. N. Kolesova, Detskie zhurnaly sovetskoi rossii: Uchebnoe posobie (Petrozavodsk: Izdatel'stvo Petrozavodskogo universiteta, 1993), 130–31.

11. Quoted in M. I. Alekseeva, Sovetskie detskie zhurnaly 20-kh godov (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1982), 52.

12. O partiinoi i sovetskoi pechati: Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Pravda, 1954), 312.

13. E. O. Putilova, Ocherki po istorii kritiki sovetskoi detskoi literatury, 1917–1941 (Moscow: Detskaia literatura, 1982), 5–7, 13–18, 24–34; Kon, Sovetskaia detskaia literatura, 1917–1929, 13, 18–20.

14. For example, Ia. A. Cherniavskaia and G. V. Regushevskaia, comps., Detskaia literatura: khrestomatiia: uchebnoe posobie dlia studentov pedagogicheskikh institutov (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1980), 153–54.

15. For a discussion of such early Soviet "suprematist internationalism," see Catriona Kelly, "The Little Citizens of a Big Country": Childhood and International Relations in the Soviet Union (Trondheim: Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2002), 6–14, quotation on 13.

16. Catriona Kelly, "Grandpa Lenin and Uncle Stalin: Soviet Leader Cult for Little Children," in The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorships: Stalin and the Eastern Bloc, ed. Balázs Apor et al. (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004), 103–06; Kelly, "Riding the Magic Carpet," 212–13; Kelly, "The Little Citizens of a Big Country," 25–26.

17. See for example, Russkii okhotnik January 1, 1890, 1; Russkii okhotnik, January 7, 1890, 17; K. V.Moshnin, comp., Moskovskoe obshchestvo okhoty (Moscow: V. Rikhter, 1898), 1–47.

18. Vladimir Vasilevich Lebedev, Okhota (Moscow-Leningrad: Raduga, 1925).

19. N. Dmitrieva and K. Lugina, Lisye vorotnik (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1926).

20. B. Filippov, Pro mnogikh chetveronogikh (Leningrad: Deshevaia biblioteka dlia detei rabochikh, 1924).

21. Iskorka 10 (October 1927): 12–13.

22. Katerina Clark, "Little Heroes and Big Deeds: Literature Responds to the Five-Year Plan," in Sheila Fitzpatrick, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1931 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 189–206; Evgeny Dobrenko, The Making of the State Writer: Social and Aesthetic Origins of Soviet Literary Culture, trans. Jesse M. Savage (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), ch. 4; Vera Smirnova, O detiakh i dlia detei (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo detskoi literatury, 1963), 112–13; Lewis Siegelbaum and Andrei Sokolov, eds., Stalinism as a Way of Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 76. On the dissolution of RAPP, see especially S. Andreev, "Komsomol—organizator detskoi literatury," Detskaia Literatura 18 (1938): 4–6.

23. O partiinoi i sovetskoi pechati, 377. See also Zubareva, Detskaia literatura, 194–95; Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, Small Comrades: Revolutionizing Childhood in Soviet Russia, 1917–1932 (New York: Routledge Falmer, 2001), 133–59.

24. Marina Balina, "Introduction," in Politicizing Magic: An Anthology of Russian and Soviet Fairy Tales, ed. Marina Balina, Helen Goscilo, and Mark Lipovetsky (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2005), 106.

25. Catriona Kelly, "'Thank You for the Wonderful Book': Soviet Child Readers and the Management of Children's Reading, 1950–1975," Kritika 6 (Fall 2005): 719–20.

26. The protection afforded by her status as widow of founding Party leader Vladimir Lenin enhanced Krupskaia's ability to speak publicly on issues that concerned her.

27. Olich, "Competing Ideologies and Children's Books," 225–46, 287–89; Evgeny Steiner, Stories for Little Comrades: Revolutionary Artists and the Making of Early Soviet Children's Books, trans. Jane Ann Miller (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999), 169–76.

28. Stalin would later amend this to make cadres rather than technology per se the leading engine of transforming the USSR.

29. Weiner, Models of Nature, 168–77 and passim; Weiner, A Little Corner of Freedom, 38, 59–60.

30. Gurevich, and Igumnov, Kuznetskstroi, 2–11. Quotation is on 8.

31. Nikolai Nikolaevich Aseev, Kuter'ma (Zimniaia skazka), izdanie vtoroe (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1931), 1–16.

32. Nikolai Fedorovich Denisovskii, Zoloto (Moscow: OGIZ-Molodaia gvardiia, 1931), 3–15. Quotation is on 14–15.

33. Ibid., 16–29. Quotation is on 29.

34. N. Amosov, Protiv rozhdestvenskoi elki (Moscow: Bezbozhnik, 1930), 4–5.

35. M. Granavtseva, Domashnie ptitsy (Moscow: OGIZ-Molodaia gvardiia, 1931).

36. Konstantin Dmitrievich Ushinskii, Kak rubashka v pole vyrosla, illustrated by Maria Diniakova (Moscow or Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1930); Konstantin Dmitrievich Ushinskii, Kak rubashka v pole vyrosla, illustrated by A. E. Kulikov (Moscow or Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1930).

37. Vladimir Maiakovskii et al., Flazhki na Shtykakh: Sbornik k oktiabriu (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1930), 19–26.

38. Sofia Zakharevna Fedorchenko, Kak mashina zverei vsroloshila (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, c. 1930).

39. N. I. Leonov, Pro sever (Moscow-Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1928), 3–12.

40. Iskorka 9–10 (September-October 1930): 10–11.

41. Zateinik 3 (March 1931): 12 and passim.

42. N. Venkstern, Andreika na plotu (Moscow: Rabotnik prosveshcheniia, 1928), especially 3–4, 13, 15, 26.

43. The scholarly literature is vast. See especially Jeffrey Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin!: Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times—Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Karen Petrone, Life Has Become More Joyous, Comrades: Celebrations in the Time of Stalin (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000).

44. A full treatment of this aspect of Stalinism and of Lysenkoism dwarfs the scope of any single essay, and recent scholarly literature on the topic is impressive. See especially Weiner, Models of Nature; Weiner, A Little Corner of Freedom; Loren R. Graham, Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: A Short History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), ch. 6; Timothy J. Colton, Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 1995), ch. 4; Cynthia A. Ruder, Making History for Stalin: The Story of the Belomor Canal (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1999). See also Brian Bonhomme, Forests, Peasants, and Revolutionaries: Forest Conservation and Organization in Soviet Russia, 1917–1929 (Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs, 2005).

45. See Husband, "Godless Communists;" William J.Chase, ed., Enemies Within the Gates?: The Comintern and the Stalinist Rrepression, 1934–1939, trans. Vadim A. Staklo (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001); J. Arch Getty, Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933–1938 (New York : Cambridge University Press, 1985).

46. Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin, 108–14; Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual, 3rd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 1–15 and passim; Katerina Clark, "Little Heroes and Big Deeds," 189–206; Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, 69–72.

47. O partiinoi i sovetskoi pechati, 418–25.

48. Ibid., 426–27.

49. Zubareva, Detskaia literatura, 195–96; B. D. Razova, ed., Sovetskaia detskaia literatura (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1978), 142–44; Andreev, "Komsomol—organizator detskoi literatury," 6–12.

50. Balina, "Introduction," 105–19, especially 106–07. On the earlier didactic role of fairy tales, see Mark Lipovetsky, "Introduction," in Politicizing Magic, 233–50, especially 236. On the "rehabilitation" of folklore in the mid-1930s, see Ursula Iustus, "Vozvrashchenie v rai: sotsrealizm i fol'klor," in Sotsrealisticheskii kanon, ed. Khans Giunter and Evgenii Dobrenko (St. Petersburg: Akademicheskii proekt, 2000), 70–86; Kirschenbaum, Small Comrades, 117–18.

51. Evgenii Dobrenko, "Sotsrealizm i mir detstva," in Sotsrealisticheskii kanon, 31–43.

52. Il'ia Kukulin and Mariia Maiofis, "Detskoe chtenie sovetskoi epokhi: nesovetskii vzgliad," Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 60 (2003): 214–15; Kelly, "The Little Citizens of a Big Country," 24–25; Marina Balina and Larissa Rudova, "Introduction," Slavic and East European Journal 49 (Summer 2005): 186–87; Omri Ronen, "Detskaia literatura i sotsialisticheskii realism," in Sotsrealisticheskii kanon, 975.

53. Zateinik 2 (February 1939): 2–3 and passim, quotation on 3. For a discussion of parallel developments in the major children's magazine Murzilka, see Felicity Ann O'Dell, Socialisation Through Children's Literature: The Soviet Example (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 125–27.

54. Em. Mindlin, Ne mozhet byt'! (Moscow-Leningrad: OGIZ-Molodaia gvardiia, 1933).

55. Samuil Marshak, Voina s Dneprom, tret'e izdanie (Leningrad: OGIZ-Gosudartsvennoe izdatel'stvo detskoi literatury, 1935).

56. Zinaida Aleksandrovna Aleksandrova, Kolkhoznaia vesna (Moscow: OGIZ-Molodaia gvardiia, 1932). A kolkhoz is a collective farm.

57. Zinaida Aleksandrovna Aleksandrova, Veter na rechke (Moscow: OGIZ-Molodaia gvardiia, 1932).

58. Aleksandr Ivanovich Vvedenskii, Leto i zima (Leningrad: Lendetizdat, 1935).

59. Evgenii Ivanovich Charushin, Okhota na medvedia (Leningrad: OGIZ-Molodaia gvardiia, 1933).

60. Evgenii Ivanovich Charushin, Sem' rasskazov (Leningrad: OGIZ-DETGIZ, 1935), 19–28.

61. Il'ia Kukulin and Mariia Maiofis, "Detskoe chtenie sovetskoi epokhi: nesovetskii vzgliad," 214–15; Kelly, "The Little Citizens of a Big Country," 24–25; Balina and Rudova, "Introduction," 186–87; Omri Ronen, "Detskaia literatura i sotsialisticheskii realism," 975.

62. During the 1950s, for example, environmentally conscious scientists expressed their concerns in ways not possible in other spheres. By the late 1980s, environmental protection groups were in the forefront of the political activism made possible by Party leader Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of openness (glasnost'). This phenomenon is the focus of Weiner, A Little Corner of Freedom.

63. Anna Konstantinova Pokrovskaia, Pro olenei i detei, pro sobak i pro gusei (Moscow: Kooperativnoe izdatel'stvo Posrednik, 1934).

64. Mikhail Isaakovich Ruderman, Severnyi Mai ( Moscow: OGIZ-Molodaia gvardiia, 1933).

65. Sergei Mikhailkov, Ogorod (Moscow: Detizdat, 1936). Mikhailkov was by no means a dissident writer, but in fact one who consistently and energetically furthered official policies of the moment.

66. Kornei Chukovskii, Limpopo (Leningrad: TsK VLKSM Detizdat, 1936).

Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.

 



April, 2006 Previous Table of Contents Next