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Soviet Children’s Books That Broke the Rules of Propaganda
- paleotrope 8y agoThis is a strange article. The first book discussed, Baba Yaga, isn't even Soviet, it was published in France by an organization that could be described as anti-soviet if you look at it's history. The second book, is claimed to be non-revolutionary, for some reason. Labeling a mosque as a "museum" is the result of fairly standard communist dogma. Not sure how that's "breaking the rules of propaganda". It is in fact propaganda.
- pandaman 8y agoPublishers of Baba Yaga, indeed, seem to be so much against the Soviets that they even use pre-1918 Russian orthography just because the switch to the new one happened after the Revolution despite it being prepared by the Imperial Academy of Sciences long before that.
- billfruit 8y agoThere was a soviet childrens short novel 'Disobedience Holiday' by Sergei Mikhalkhov, while I was a child I read it like a normal kids book, but now it looks to me, an allegory against the ills of capitalism, in the same way that Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies have their deeper meanings. It is a good story, It should be more popular.
- brunkerhart 8y agoI was a kid during soviet time. Propaganda books, i.e. books about revolution was a minority. Most of the books were regular children books about how to make friends, how to behave, how to study. There were books about science and fairy tales. Prose and poetry. There eas translation of books from authors from capitalist countries. The kid books was very cheap like 3-5 kopeck (0.03-0.05 of rouble) with the average salary of abou 35 roubles. The only problem was that most interesting books, teens books were rarely available in book shoops, but you could borrow it at a library. Libraries were available at every school as well as at district and city level.
- iliaznk 8y agoTrue, children's books without any propaganda was something we didn't lack back then
- IWeldMelons 8y agoAverage salary was way more than 35 roubles. 80-90 probably.
- yantrams 8y agoI was raised on these Soviet books in India and remember feeling sad and angry when Soviet Union broke up because all these amazing magazines (Misha anyone ?) stopped coming from Russia all of a sudden. PS: I uploaded about 50 of these books (in Telugu language) at http://linkdot.link/sooviytt-prcurnnlu-childrens-books.html http://linkdot.link/sooviytt-prcurnnlu-childrens-books.html Would be a great resource for anyone trying to teach Telugu to their kids Edit: Added a line
- mkbkn 8y agoI never read these. Is there any place where I could find the English and/or Hindi versions?
- yantrams 8y agoThis should keep you busy :) http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/ http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/
- raj2569 8y agoSame here, raised on a diet of Soviet books in Kerala, India. Misha was a favorite of mine. Still remember the publisher's names, Mir and Raduga publishers. There are other books like Firebird, some nice books about night sky and recreational mathematics ... I really miss those books and wonder if some copies could be found for my daughter who is now of the same age when I used to read these books.
- yantrams 8y agoI used up all my Mishas for covering books unfortunately :/ Have just a couple of them. It's not that difficult to find the Science/Math books - Yakov Perelman, Little Mathematics Library etc in old book stalls in Andhra but you have to be really lucky to find children's story books.
- ai_ia 8y agoYou can check it out here. https://mirtitles.org/ https://mirtitles.org/
- v_lisivka 8y agoFirst image on the page: is communist propaganda, second and third are printed by anticommunists in Paris, fourth and fifth is propaganda again. Where are pictures of these children books that broke the rules of propaganda?
- ai_ia 8y agoI grew up reading physics from Mir Titles. Really effective in teaching. Here is a great resource for Books. https://mirtitles.org/ https://mirtitles.org/
- raphlinus 8y agoSame here. Plus for some reason Yakov Zeldovich's books on calculus really sang to me, much more than American textbooks.
- IWeldMelons 8y agoSoviet children's books were normal books pretty much like American: fairy tales, adventures etc. Not only that, the most popular children's books were the ones written by Western authors: A.A. Milne, Astrid Lindgren, Rodari, Lewis Carrol, Frank Baum, H.C. Andersen.
- Fins 8y agoTo be fair, for pretty much the entire existence of the USSR, Frank Baum was present only as a retelling that had very little to do with Oz, and never even mentioned Baum's name anywhere.
- IWeldMelons 8y agoOr really? Very little? How is that? There were some deivation from Oz but overall it is quite close to the original. Like 90% close. Anyway, a friend of mine when he was a child, had a bool actually wiritten by Baum, about the wooden soldiers.
- Fins 8y agoVolkov's first book, "Wizard of the Emerald City" follows Baum somewhat closely. "Urfin Dzhus and his wooden soldiers" has nothing to do with anything Baum wrote other than a basic setting, and further sequels even less so.
- IWeldMelons 8y agoHmm. Yes you right about the sequels. However "The magician of Emerald City" is very close to the original. Anyway my original claim holds - the children's literature of the USSR was very international and mostly free of ideology. There might have been a reason for retelling the Wizard of Oz - Baum had bad reputation as a racist AFAIK, and probably the Soviet government did not want to look bad leaving his name on the book's cover.
- Fins 8y ago
- sologoub 8y agoArticle missed another remarkable thing about the 1932 Baba Yaga book - the text appears to be pre-1917 reform! Communists did quite a hack job with the written part of Russian, purging many Latin letters: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_Russian_orthography https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_Russian_orthograp... I don’t know whether this would call the books authenticity into question or show some cracks in the state control, but the use of the old “czarist” print would definitely not have been ok. Anyone that was being taught the reformed orthography would struggle to read it. I’m guessing this was a major selling point - you essentially make all non-communist state controlled printed media unreable.