Russian Children's Literature and Culture

Description

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. Dedication Contents Series Editor’s Foreword Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Reading Soviet and Post-Soviet Children’s Culture—Contexts and Challenges 1 Creativity through Restraint: The Beginnings of Soviet Children’s Literature • Marina Balina 2 From Character-Building to Criminal Pursuits: Russian Children’s Literature in Transition • Larissa Rudova Part 1: Ideology, Literature, and Culture: Genres, Themes, and Issues 3 The School Tale in Children’s Literature of Socialist Realism • Evgeny Dobrenko 4 Between Sputnik and Gagarin: Space Flight, Children’s Periodicals, and the Circle of Imagination • Anindita Banerjee 5 Crafting the Self: Narratives of Prerevolutionary Childhood in Soviet Literature • Marina Balina 6 Literature and Cultural Institutions by and for Soviet and Post-Soviet Youth • Lisa Ryoko Wakamiya Part 2: Popular Children’s Entertainment 7 Arresting Development: A Brief History of Soviet Cinema for Children and Adolescents • Alexander Prokhorov 8 Comforting Creatures in Children’s Cartoons • Birgit Beumers 9 Juggernaut in Drag: Theater for Stalin’s Children • Boris Wolfson 10 “Nice, Instructive Stories Their Psychology Can Grasp”: How to Read Post-Soviet Russian Children’s Comics • Jos. Alaniz Part 3: Authors and Texts 11 Samuil Marshak: Yesterday and Today • Ben Hellman 12 Lev Kassil: Childhood as Religion and Ideology • Inessa Medzhibovskaya 13 Pavel Bazhov’s Skazy: Discovering the Soviet Uncanny • Mark Lipovetsky 14 A Traditionalist in the Land of Innovators: The Paradoxes of Sergei Mikhalkov • Elena Prokhorova 15 Evgenii Shvarts’s Fairy Tale Dramas: Theater, Power, and the Naked Truth • Anja Tippner 16 Invitation to a Subversion: The Playful Literature of Grigorii Oster • Larissa Rudova Contributors Biblography Index