Janina Orlov

One year after the October Revolution in 1917, Latvian critic Kormtj published an article in Pravda entitled ‘The forgotten weapon’ where he pointed out the capacity of children’s literature in the process of constructing a new society. During the following decade, the new economic policies (NEP) enabled the establishment of publishing houses which specialized in children’s literature and thus a ‘golden age’ of Soviet Russian books for children started. Already from the beginning two different standpoints were manifested. On the one hand, the purely Party oriented, pro-communist literature depicting the new Soviet society with its citizens and leaders in the light of utopia, thereby creating an epic based on a mythical future. On the other hand, there were writers who did not commit themselves to Party politics, instead they pointed out the importance of fantasy, and unquestioned artistic freedom. Using Yury Lotman’s terminology, Soviet children’s literature actually represented a ‘dual secondary modelling system’.

In the middle of the eighties a new period began. The slogans ‘perestroika’ and ‘glasnost’ proved crucial for the literary process; former underground texts were exposed to open daylight and long forbidden works could finally be published. As for children´s literature, it suddenly found itself in deep crisis. With a few exceptions, the majority of books had remained happily in the utopian world of social realism. Step by step a re-evaluation took shape and the deconstruction of old models started. Among other things, this process has lead to parodical rereadings of the traditional Russian fairy tale world, as well as the search for new poetics. My presentation explores how change and renewal as consequences of the October revolution and the perestroika are reflected in Russian books for children.

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