Fairy Tales and True Stories

Russian History and Culture

Editors-in-Chief
Jeffrey P. Brooks
The Johns Hopkins University
Christina Lodder
University of Edinburgh

VOLUME 13

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/rhc

Fairy Tales and True Stories
The History of Russian Literature for
Children and Young People (1574–2010)

Βy
Ben Hellman

Leiden • boston
2013
Cover illustration: Yury Vasnetsov, The Stolen Sun (1958).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hellman, Ben, 1949– author.

 Fairy tales and true stories : the history of Russian literature for children and young people
(1574–2010) / by Ben Hellman.
  pages ; cm — (Russian history and culture, ISSN 1877-7791 ; volume 13)
 Includes bibliographical references and index.
 ISBN 978-90-04-25637-8 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-25638-5 (e-book)
1. Children’s literature, Russian—History and criticism.  I. Title. II. Series: Russian history and culture
(Leiden, Netherlands) ; v. 13. 1877–7791

 PG3190.H453 2013
 891.709’9282—dc23
2013024280

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ISSN 1877-7791
ISBN 978-90-04-25637-8 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-25638-5 (e-book)

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 CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ........................................................................................... vii

Preface ................................................................................................................. ix

  1.. The Beginnings (1574–1770) ................................................................... 1

  2.. From Enlightenment to Sentimentalism (1770–1825) ................... 7

  3.. Romanticism (1825–1860) ....................................................................... 24

  4.. Realism (1860–1890) ................................................................................. 77

  5.. Modernism (1890–1917) ........................................................................... 169

  6.. All the Colours of the Rainbow (1918–1932) ..................................... 294

  7.. A New Society—A New Literature (1932–1940) .............................. 354

  8.. “Under the Wise Leadership of the Party and the Fatherly Care
of Comrade Stalin” (1941–1953) ............................................................. 427

  9.. Thaw in the World of Children (1954–1968) .................................... 472

10.. Years of Stagnation (1969–1985) ........................................................... 534

 11.. Perestroika Reaches Children’s Literature (1986–1991) ................. 558

12.. The New Russian Children’s Literature (1991–2010) ...................... 563

Bibliography ...................................................................................................... 573
Index of Names ................................................................................................. 577
 List of Illustrations

  1.. Leonty Bunin, The Great Primer .......................................................... 3

  2.. Karl Bryullov, Antony Pogorelsky (1836) ............................................. 28
  3.. Rudolf Zhukovsky, The Little Humpbacked Horse (1856) .............. 38
  4.. Leo Tolstoy and His Grandchildren (1909) ....................................... 91
  5..Nikolay Vagner .......................................................................................... 134
  6.. Nat Pinkerton: The Band of Three Criminals (1916) ......................... 175
  7.. Lidiya Charskaya ....................................................................................... 179
  8.. Re-Mi, The Crocodile (1919) .................................................................... 291
  9.. Korney Chukovsky ................................................................................... 312
10.. Vladimir Konashevich, Wash’em’clean (1923) .................................. 315
 11.. Samuil Marshak ......................................................................................... 319
12.. Vladimir Lebedev, Circus (1925) ........................................................... 322
13.. Vladimir Tatlin, Firstly, and Secondly (1929) .................................... 329
14.. Boris Zhitkov .............................................................................................. 349
15.. Agniya Barto ............................................................................................... 382
16..David Dubinsky, Uncle Styopa (1950) ................................................. 387
17.. Vladimir Galdyaev, Lenin and Children (1978) ................................. 401
18.. Arkady Gaydar ........................................................................................... 405
19.. Aleksey Laptev, The Adventures of Neznayka and His Friends
(1954) ............................................................................................................ 529
20.. Gennady Kalinovsky, Gena the Crocodile and His Friends
(1986) ............................................................................................................ 550
21.. Grigory Oster (Photo: WSOY, Helsinki, Finland) ............................ 565
 Preface

By contrast with Russian literature for adults, which had already become
part of world literature by the end of the nineteenth century, the corre-
sponding literature for children and youth has by and large remained an
unknown field outside Russia. Hardly a single writer’s name, comparable
to those of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov or Solzhenitsyn, comes to mind.
Any comparable genius or originality appeared to be missing, and thus
the genre has remained an unexplored field. Translations are few in num-
ber and, especially in the case of poetry for children, they do not appear to
do justice to the originals. The long Soviet period with its stress on Com-
munist ideals and its restrictions on the creative freedom has also tended
to have a negative influence on any possible interest.
The history of Russian children’s and youth literature in its entirety
has never been written before. In pre-revolutionary Russia, serious schol-
arly interest and research were only starting to emerge before the fateful
year of 1917, and rare attempts to outline its historical development and
portray its leading practitioners proved to be shallowly descriptive. In
the Soviet Union, the approach to children’s literature was ideologically
determined and influenced by shifting political considerations. The bulk
of pre-revolutionary literature was most often dismissed with a few gen-
eralizations about its monarchist and religious character, while stress was
laid on the critic Vissarion Belinsky’s struggle for a progressive, realistic
literature in this field, too. A reliable canon of classics could not emerge
as book publication was state controlled and based upon criteria of a non-
literary character. Simultaneously, the merits of genuine Soviet children’s
literature were clearly exaggerated. Abrupt political changes, with some
names disappearing literally overnight and turning into non-persons,
made the creation of an objective historical overview of the genre well
nigh impossible. Even today, the effects of 75 years of Soviet power are
still felt in Russia, and the few serious attempts to write the history of Rus-
sian children’s literature are rather undermined by principles of selection
that are sometimes too narrow and sometimes openly inconsistent.
This book sets out to fill the gap by encompassing the history of Rus-
sian children’s and youth literature from its earliest period to the present
time. It has been a matter of dispute to fix a date for the birth of Russian
children’s literature. While some critics consider Catherine the Great’s
x preface

allegorical tales and Nikolay Novikov’s magazine Children’s Reading for the
Heart and Mind to constitute its beginning, others go back to the sixteenth
century and the publication of the first Russian primer in 1574, which is
the view adopted in this volume.
Initially, fiction occupied a modest place among published children’s
literature. For a long time the children’s book was part and parcel of the
teaching process. Informative books gave children and young people basic
insights into various sciences and stimulated their thirst for knowledge.
Teaching was for many centuries linked to the Orthodox Church and as a
result Biblical tales were given a prominent place in early reading. It has
thus been felt necessary to include some coverage of primers, textbooks,
etiquette books and religious texts in the current presentation.
In the eighteenth century, informative literature dominated, but from
the period of Romanticism onwards fiction grew steadily stronger and
more independent. A Russian speciality, paralleling the same phenom-
enon in adult literature, was the prominent role played by journals and
magazines. Their growth reflects an increase in the audience, an issue of
primary importance in a country where illiteracy was widespread and the
school system only developing slowly. The history of Russian children’s
and youth literature is thus also the history of journals and magazines
addressed to this very special audience.
It has also been felt necessary to take into consideration Russian
translations of foreign children’s literature. During some periods a large
proportion of what Russian children read was actually translations. Fur-
thermore, the reading of literature in foreign languages was part of lan-
guage training among the children of the Russian privileged classes in the
nineteenth century. The important role of foreign children’s literature
prior to 1917 shows how closely connected Russian was with wider Euro-
pean and American culture and, by contrast, the lack of cultural contacts
during the darkest Stalinist years tells of a short-sighted, fatally damaging
nationalistic policy.
An unsettled dispute concerns how children’s and juvenile literature
should be defined. The focus here is on works written and published for a
young audience, while works originally written for adults, but later turned
into standard reading for young people as well, are only included in the
discussion in passing. A critical discourse, with reviews, bibliographies and
lists of recommended reading, emerged in the mid-nineteenth century,
with the first attempts to survey the Russian tradition being conducted at
the turn of the century. This aspect of Russian children’s literature is also
elucidated in the present volume.
 preface xi

Russian children’s and youth literature and Russian childhood reading

are presented here chronologically. For the pre-revolutionary centuries,
concepts are adopted from general histories of literature, such as Roman-
ticism, Realism and Modernism. This is not a self-evident solution and the
boundaries of the various periods are admittedly open to debate. This also
goes for the term Modernism, here denoting an opening for a multitude
of new ideas and a broadening of the very concept of children’s literature.
As for the Soviet decades it seemed more natural to divide the chapters
according to the general political situation.
The year of the first publication is indicated for works mentioned in the
text. This usually means a journal or magazine publication, but in cases
where no such publication has been identified, the year of the first book
publication is given.
The transliteration system is a modification of the British standard.
Exceptions are made for names with commonly accepted spellings. In the
footnotes and the bibliography, the Library of Congress system is used,
without diacritical marks.

I am indebted to the editors-in-chief of Brill’s Slavic and Eurasian Studies

series, Jeffrey Brooks and Christina Lodder for their reading of my manu-
script and to Professor Marina Balina for her valuable comments. Finan-
cial support has been given by the Academy of Finland and the Finnish
Association of Non-fiction Writers. I am grateful to Richard Davies, Nigel
Goffe, Paul Graves and Donna Orwin for checking and correcting my Eng-
lish. I myself, needless to say, bear all responsibility for the final version.
 CHAPTER ONE

THE BEGINNINGS (1574–1770)

The first Russian books to address children were primers. The earliest
example, the Alphabet (Azbuka), published in Lvov in 1574, was com-
posed by Ivan Fyodorov (c. 1510–83), who has commonly been called
the first Russian book printer. In the postscript Fyodorov explains that
his intention is “to lighten study for children”. The reading material con-
sists of prayers and Biblical texts. The child is asked to listen to the wise
words of the book, since knowledge and learning are as useful to man as
honey is sweet on his tongue. With a quotation from the Book of Proverbs,
the teacher is also advised to punish his pupil severely to save the child’s
soul from hell.
Fifty years later, Vasily Burtsov-Protopopov compiled his Primer (Buk-
var, 1634) at the Tsar’s command, for the education of “all you small chil-
dren”. The child learns to read in order to be able to study the Scriptures
by himself and become a good Christian. Prayers and didactic material
form the book’s main content. In a poem added to the second edition,
apparently written by Savvaty, an editor at the Moscow Print Yard, which
was the Patriarchal publishing house, the reader is asked to leave behind
“all kinds of childish insolence” and work diligently and obediently. Child-
hood is the best time for learning, as knowledge is imprinted in the child’s
soul “like the seal in soft wax.”
The monk and theologian Simeon Polotsky’s (1629–80) Primer (Bukvar,
1679), appearing a full century after Fyodorov’s, was already a substantial
volume of 160 pages. In addition to presenting the alphabet and simple
texts, it demonstrates the theory of versification. Like his predecessors,
Polotsky believed in corporal punishment as the most efficient way of
achieving results. In the “Exhortation” he states that “The birch sharpens
the mind, stimulates the memory / and turns an evil will into a good
one . . .” Polotsky produced several works for use by the children of the
court, including A Garden of Many Colours (Vertograd mnogotsvetny,
1680), a book of poetry on various subjects.
One of Polotsky’s successors as imperial teacher and unofficial court
poet was Karion Istomin (late 1640s–no earlier than 1717), editor at the
Moscow Print Yard and a teacher of Greek. Istomin is considered one of
2 chapter one

the most enlightened Russians of his time. As a present for the Tsarevich
Peter on his eleventh birthday, Istomin wrote The Book of Reason (Kniga
vrazumleniya, 1683), the first Russian book of manners. The didactic pre-
scriptions are given in the form of a conversation between the author and
his pupil. In the text the future Peter the Great is taught appropriate behav-
iour at home, at the court and at church. Istomin urges him to become a
just and wise ruler, a protector of the sciences. Another of Istomin’s books,
Polis (1694), is an encyclopaedic work with short, rhymed texts on diverse
subjects such as grammar, poetics, music, astrology, geometry, geography,
and medicine.
In his Domostroy (1696), Istomin makes sure that good manners and
Christian morals are implanted in the children with the aid of syllabic
verses. The number of bows to be made in front of the icon follows every
prescription, as does the inevitable punishment. Five whacks will follow if
children wipe their noses with their caps or behave in some other repul-
sive way. It is notable that Istomin asks that children should be given a
chance to play for the sake of their physical well-being. However, their
games should be ‘decent’ and not harmful “for the eye and chest”. Those
who play for money or start a quarrel are to be whipped and forced to
bow 300 times to the icon.
Karion Istomin’s main contribution to children’s literature was The
Great Primer (Bolshoy bukvar, 1694), also called The Illustrated Primer
(Litsevoy bukvar), as illustrations are given a prominent place. Istomin
was in fact the first Russian writer to employ the visual method in teach-
ing. Each letter of the alphabet is given its own page; in the upper corner,
human figures form the letter in question with their bodies. The engrav-
ings show objects, plants or animals, the names of which all begin with
the same letter. These words are then repeated in couplets that offer some
elementary facts about the phenomena mentioned. The information is
naturally haphazard and sketchy, as for example when whale, horse,
cypress, key and bell are lumped together. The Great Primer was printed
in 25 copies, some of which went to the Romanov children.

The reforms of Peter the Great also influenced children’s reading. The state
needed enlightened citizens and skilled craftsmen, and thus great impor-
tance was attached to the education of the younger generation. Textbooks
and practical works came to dominate children’s literature. A significant
document of the period is A True Mirror for Youth (Yunosti chestnoe
zertsalo, 1717), a courtesy book serving the process of Europeanization in
Russia. In part, this volume has the same structure as the first primers,
 the beginnings (1574–1770) 3

Fig. 1. Leonty Bunin, The Great Primer

4 chapter one

with the alphabet and the numbers followed by a compilation of wise

sayings from the Bible. But the main section is the second part with its
rules of conduct and ethical guidance. Young men and women of the edu-
cated class are given advice and admonitions concerning table manners
(“Do not be the first to grab from the plate!”, “Do not gorge like a swine!”,
“Do not clean your teeth with your knife!”), social intercourse (“Hold your
hat in your hand when your parents have something to say to you”, “Do
not interrupt your interlocutors, but let everyone have his say!”), studies
(“Young people should always speak foreign languages between them-
selves, so that they will get accustomed to them, and especially when
they have something to say that the servants are not supposed to know”),
hygiene and morals (“In church you should turn your eyes and heart
towards God and not towards the fair sex, as the church is God’s temple, a
chapel, and not a hotbed of sin!”). Adolescents are warned against immoral
tales and songs and “stupid proverbs”. The main virtues impressed on girls
in a separate chapter are piety, humility and diligence.
A True Mirror for Youth was compiled by a collective on the orders
of the Tsar. Its sources were both Russian and foreign etiquette books,
among them Erasmus’ Golden Book, translated into Russian in the late sev-
enteenth century. Authoritative church fathers, including Martin Luther,
are also quoted. The book’s initial publication in one hundred copies did
not meet the demand and subsequently A True Mirror for Youth went
through nine editions, the last one appearing in 1767.
A more modest work is The First Lesson for Children (Pervoe uchenie
otrokam, 1720) by the Archbishop of Novgorod, Feofan Prokopovich
(1681–1736). In the foreword, Prokopovich, an associate of Peter the Great,
stresses the importance of books for children. A widespread knowledge of
reading and writing is seen as basic for the welfare of the state. Through
series of questions and answers, good manners, the Ten Commandments,
the Lord’s Prayer and the Russian Table of Ranks are imprinted in the
child’s mind. Here, the aim of upbringing is to raise enlightened and pious
citizens.
Forty years later, Grigory Teplov (1717–79), a Senator and the Head of
the Academy of Sciences, taught private morality in the spirit of rational-
ism in his Teachings for My Son (Nastavlenie synu, 1760). The child is no
longer threatened with the birch; instead, the tone of Teplov’s argumenta-
tion is fatherly and tender, as he indicates the way to happiness and well-
being for his thirteen-year-old son. Among his twenty-one golden rules one
finds, for example, “Look forward, both in happiness and unhappiness!”,
 the beginnings (1574–1770) 5

“Do not lose your head in the passions of love!”, “Distinguish true friend-
ship from familiarity!”, “Do not be capriciously stubborn, but make rea-
sonable compromises!” and “Wishes and tastes change with time”.

All through the eighteenth century, foreign literature dominated chil-

dren’s reading in Russia. Translations were made mainly from French
and German, and for many decades the selection consisted almost solely
of information books. The first illustrated children’s encyclopaedia, Orbis
Sensualium Pictus (1658) by the Czech pedagogue John Amos Comenius
was translated into Russian on government instructions in Peter the
Great’s time, but published only in 1768. In the middle of the century a
move towards imaginative literature occurred, and fables became stan-
dard reading for children. Aesop’s fables were published in an illustrated
edition for children in 1747. The foreword says that these fables are taught
in almost all German schools, but that, as the German children are forced
to repeat the texts parrot-fashion, they lack any notion of the strength and
value of the fables. In Russian translation, Aesop’s fables were therefore
published together with the English publicist Sir Roger Estrange’s moral
reflections and explanations. In the fables, moral truth and a wise conduct
of life, suitable also for children, are taught in an entertaining form.
Among the few longer fictional works that were translated, Daniel
Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719, transl. from French 1762–1764) and Jonathan
Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726, transl. from French 1772–1773) stand out.
Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe gave birth to a whole genre of didactic adven-
ture stories, Robinsonades. Of the many works about the lives of people
shipwrecked on desert islands, François Ducray-Duminil’s Lolotte et Fan-
fan (1788, transl. 1791), Joachim Heinrich Campe’s Robinson der Jüngere
(1779–80, transl. as Novy Robinzon, 1792) and Johann David Wyss’s Der
Schweizerische Robinson (1812–13, transl. 1833–34) all enjoyed popularity
in Russia. When the children in Leo Tolstoy’s Childhood (Detstvo, 1852)
play Robinson Crusoe, it is from Wyss’s version that they get inspiration.
The little Fyodor Dostoevsky also loved to play Robinson Crusoe, giving
the role of Friday to his brother Andrey.1
Tolstoy considered Robinson Crusoe to be exemplary children’s literature,
as it showed what a man can accomplish on his own, without exploiting

1 А.M. Dostoevskii, “Iz ‘Vospominanii’,” in F.M. Dostoevskii v vospominaniiakh sovremen-

nikov v dvukh tomakh. Vol. 1 (М., 1990), 73.
6 chapter one

the work of others.2 In 1862 an abridged version of Robinson Crusoe,

apparently made by one of Tolstoy’s young school assistants, was pub-
lished in his pedagogical journal Yasnaya Polyana. The short sentences,
laconic style and limited vocabulary reveal the influence of Tolstoy. In
Aleksandra Annenskaya’s highly popular adaptation of 1872, information
of a natural scientific character is given greater attention than the adven-
ture plot line.
The most widely-read children’s book of the eighteenth century was
François Fénelon’s Les aventures de Telemaque, fils d’Ulysse (1717). The
story of Telemachus’ adventurous search for his father Odysseus was
published in a Russian translation in 1747 and frequently reissued in jour-
nals and textbooks, as well as separate volumes, far into the following
century. Fénelon combined adventure episodes with didactic conversa-
tions between Mentor and his protégé. This narrative solution was not
altogether new in Russian children’s literature, but as used by Fénelon, it
became widespread, especially in presentations of educational material. It
is also notable that the teaching in Les aventures de Telemaque is not given
in the form of fixed rules, but aims at convincing the young reader of what
is good for him. Additionally, Les aventures de Telemaque functioned as a
source on the mythology of ancient times.

2 L.N. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v 90 tomakh. Vol. 55 (M., 1937), 230. (Diary
entry June 6, 1906.); V. Bulgakov, L.N. Tolstoi v poslednii god ego zhizni: Dnevnik sekretaria
L.N. Tolstogo (M. 1989), 376. (Diary entry October 11, 1910.)
 chapter two

FROM ENLIGHTENMENT TO SENTIMENTALISM (1770–1825)

Around eighty percent of all Russian books for children published in the
eighteenth century appeared during its last three decades. Popular genres
were illustrated dictionaries, textbooks structured as dialogues, and moral
tales and anthologies with extracts from ancient Greek and Roman litera-
ture. Some books for pure entertainment, chiefly folk and fairy tales, also
appeared. The number of Russian writers taking an interest in children’s
books was still exceedingly small, but it included some outstanding figurers
of the time, including Catherine the Great and the publisher Nikolay
Novikov.
The reasons for the growth of children’s literature in the second half
of the century were manifold. Impulses from the French Enlightenment
reached Russia through the Tsaritsa, including a belief in the importance
of knowledge for the development of the individual and of society. Lit-
erature was to form a vital part of teaching and upbringing. It was felt
that everything should be explained and proved in a logical way. The
pedagogical ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau were based on the notion
that childhood had a worth in itself. The child had the right to remain
a child and develop according to his inherent nature. Rousseau did not
pay much attention to children’s literature, but his cult of childhood as a
time of unspoiled human nature paved the way for Sentimentalism and
pre-Romanticism in literature.
Dissatisfied with the complicated structure of existing grammars,
Nikolay Kurganov (c. 1725–96), a Moscow professor of Mathematics and
Navigation, set out to compile his own Grammar, literally A Letter-Writer
(Pismovnik, 1769). The book, initially called A Russian Universal Grammar
(Rossiyskaya universalnaya grammatika), includes pages on grammar,
Russian history, and various scientific topics. Kurganov’s most remarkable
achievement was the book’s substantial literary section with its anecdotal
‘sharp-witted short tales’ (most of them translations), poems, folk poetry,
proverbs, riddles, and wise sayings. The attempt to bring Russian folklore
to readers was groundbreaking. Among the one thousand or so proverbs,
some had a radical ring, such as “The law is like a cobweb: the bumble-
bee passes, but the fly is wrapped up”, “Close to the Tsar, close to death”
and “The Tsar is far away, but God is high above”. Kurganov structured his
8 chapter two

Grammar to advance from simple texts to longer and more advanced pas-
sages, and he set out to offer young Russians both elementary knowledge
and enjoyable reading. Writers like Aleksandr Pushkin, Nikolay Gogol
and Alexander Herzen remembered Kurganov with gratitude. Originally
published for adolescents, Grammar eventually found a readership also
among uneducated people. The eleventh edition appeared in 1831.
For a boarding school for noble children in Bogoroditsk, Andrey Bolo-
tov (1738–1833), a professional agronomist, wrote Children’s Philosophy,
or Moral Conversations Between A Lady and Her Children (Detskaya filo-
sofiya, ili Nravouchitelnye razgovory mezhdu odnoyu gospozhoyu i eyo
detmi, 1776–1779). This voluminous work was modelled on Mme Leprince
de Beaumont’s much disseminated Magasin des enfants (1756), known in
Russia as The Nursery School (Detskoe uchilishche, 1761–68). Discussions
on religious and moral questions between a mother and her two children
are resolved in an enlightened spirit, not through rigorous prescriptions
but discursively. Having decided to leave all mischief behind them, the
children listen carefully to the wise words of their loving mother. A reli-
gious world-view lies at the core of the passages in which Bolotov, bas-
ing his knowledge upon contemporary research, explains the order of the
universe.
For the children’s theatre at his school, the first of its kind in Russia,
Bolotov wrote several plays, of which only The Unfortunate Orphans
(Neschastnye siroty, 1781) was printed. The heroes are two orphans, the girl
Serafima and the boy Erast, whose inheritance their guardian, the infa-
mous landowner Evilheart (Zloserdov), wishes to steal. “In a word, it is
not we that are dear to him, but our villages”, the girl explains. In his plan
to poison the boy and marry the girl to his own son, Evilheart, a ‘monster
of nature’, he is prevented by Count Noble (Blagonravov), the deus ex
machina of the play. With its adherence to the dramatic unities, stock
characters, ‘telling names’ and conflict between virtue and vice, the play
reads much like a children’s version of Denis Fonvizin’s classicist play The
Brigadier (Brigadir) from 1768–69. Bolotov’s drama was performed with
child-actors in most of the roles.
Another Russian playwright to take an interest in children’s literature
was Nikolay Sandunov (1769–1832). As director of the children’s theatre
of the Noble Pension at Moscow University, he knew the rules of drama-
turgy well, as can be seen from his tightly structured The Soldier’s School
(Soldatskaya shkola, 1794). The play contains a strong social critique as
Sandunov demonstrates how lawlessness prevails in the villages under the
reign of the despotic steward Nagger (Zanoza). The poor peasants live
 from enlightenment to sentimentalism (1770–1825) 9

in constant fear. But when Nagger tries to force the fair peasant maiden
Anyuta to marry him, he meets with opposition from Anyuta’s brother
Joseph. The young man is even ready to sacrifice his life to save his
sister. When Colonel Goodheart (Dobroserd) appears on the scene, evil
is unmasked and good ultimately triumphs.
Catherine the Great’s (1729–96) correspondence with French phi-
losophers is well-known, but the Tsaritsa was also active as an editor of
magazines and the author of a large number of works in various genres,
including children’s literature. For her grandsons, she composed a primer
(1781), founded a children’s library and wrote didactic dialogues and tales.
The Tale of Tsarevich Khlor (Skazka o tsareviche Khlore, 1781) and The Tale
of Tsarevich Fevey (Skazka o tsareviche Fevee, 1783) were the first original
works of fiction for children in Russia. Composed as they were in the spirit
of Classicism, the two allegorical tales are devoid of any Russian features
and the moral lesson is presented in an abstract form. The hero of The Tale
of Tsarevich Khlor is given the task of finding a rose without any thorns, a
symbol of virtue, and aided by his mentor Reason (Rassudok) and a staff
for each hand, Honesty and Truth, he manages to avoid all temptations
and obstacles in reaching the cherished goal. The birth of an ideal mon-
arch forms the happy ending. Catherine found the unusual name Khlor
in Roman history: Constantius I Chlorus (‘the Pale’) was Roman emperor
in 305–306.
The complicated, not to say incoherent, Tale of Tsarevich Fevey illus-
trates Rousseau’s ideas of a natural upbringing. For Catherine, the main
goal of education was to develop “a healthy body and an inclination for
goodness”. A positive spirit should be formed by avoiding “sad fantasies
or doleful tales”.1

Reading for the Heart and Mind

The most remarkable cultural figure from the time of Catherine the Great
is Nikolay Novikov (1744–1818). A devoted Freemason, he was at the heart
of the liberal opposition in Russia, and as a publisher he produced most of
the books printed in the 1780s. Among these were textbooks for children.
In one of his pedagogical articles he asserts that “No artist or craftsman
can do without the necessary tools; there is a saying that a student without

1 Ekaterina II, “Instruktsiia po obrazovaniiu i vospitaniiu, 1784,” Babushkina azbuka

velikomu kniaziu Aleksandru Pavlovichu (M., 2004), 8.
10 chapter two

a book is like a soldier without a rifle. Still many home teachers suffer from
the lack of textbooks.”2 Over a period of ten years, Novikov published over
forty books for children, mostly translations of non-fictional works.
Novikov’s most important contribution to children’s literature was the
magazine Children’s Reading for the Heart and Mind (Detskoe chtenie
dlya serdtsa i razuma, 1785–89), a free weekly supplement to his Moscow
Gazette (Moskovskie vedomosti). The editor explains his pioneer under-
taking in the opening words of the magazine. Those children who know
French or German do not have any problems in finding suitable literature,
but those who, for financial or other reasons, do not master foreign lan-
guages are left empty-handed. In his view Russian children need to exer-
cise their native tongue: “It is wrong to abandon one’s native tongue or
even feel contempt for it. For anyone who loves his country, it is very sad
to see that so many of you know French better than Russian.”3 Through
the foreign material, he adds, the Russian children might acquire preju-
dices against their fatherland.
In the spirit of the Enlightenment, Novikov offered six- to twelve-year-
old children a broad range of out-of-school reading material. Everything is
presented in a language and a style readily accessible to children. Science
is popularised, mostly in the form of dialogues. The editor’s good friend,
Goodheart (Dobroserd), gathers the children round him for a talk, or a
father and his son sit down to discuss natural phenomena such as the sun,
water and snow, or big issues such as the structure of the universe. History
here is most often the history of ancient times, and the geographical texts
tend to treat faraway countries, like India and China, more extensively
than Russia. That the goals of enlightenment were reached was later con-
firmed by the writer Sergey Aksakov: “After my acquaintance with this
magazine a radical change took place in my childish mind, and a new
world opened up for me (. . .) Many natural phenomena, upon which I up
till then had looked without reflection, though with curiosity, achieved a
new meaning and importance for me and became more absorbing.”4
One of Novikov’s stated goals was to mould his readers into exemplary
Christians and citizens. Every issue has a quotation from the Bible as its

2 N.I. Novikov, “О vospitanii i nastavlenii detei,” Izbrannye sochineniia (М.-L., 1951),

431–432.
3 N.I. Novikov, “Blagorodnomu Rossiiskomu iunoshestvu,” Detskoe chtenie dlia serdtsa
i razuma 1 (1802): 2–3.
4 S.A. Aksakov, “Detskie gody Bagrova-vnuka,” Sobranie sochinenii v 4 tomakh. Vol. 1
(M., 1955), 299.
 from enlightenment to sentimentalism (1770–1825) 11

epigraph. Through moral tales the child is taught his duties to God, the
Sovereign, his teachers and parents, his fellow men and himself. Little
Fyodor, who has the bad habit of wasting time by sleeping late, accidentally
wakes one morning at five o’clock and, thrilled by the experience, decides
to start a new life (“Nachalo tolko trudno”). A spoiled young nobleman
sent by his father to the countryside gradually learns to appreciate rural
life, the work of the peasants and the beauty of nature (“Perepiska ottsa
s synom o derevenskoy zhizni”). In other tales, class prejudices, laziness,
vanity, ignorance, and superstitions such as fortune telling and interpreta-
tions of dreams are condemned. Girl readers are given advice on beauty
care. Fables and riddles were standard material in the magazine.
The texts published in Children’s Reading for the Heart and Mind are
not signed, and most of them were in fact borrowed, some of them from
contemporary German children’s magazines or Joachim Campe’s Kleine
Kinderbibliothek, and only slightly Russianised. Campe’s famous pub-
lication had, incidentally, also been the model and the source for the
first publications of fictional material for children in Russia. They were
anthologies which included prose and poetry pieces: moral tales, fables,
edifying talks, historical anecdotes and dramatic scenes.5 The first volume
was called A New Kind of Toy, or Entertaining and Moral Tales for the Use
of Little Children (Novogo rodu igrushka, ili Zabavnye i nravouchitelnye
skazki, dlya upotrebleniya samykh malenkikh detey, 1776). The anthology
of four volumes, A Golden Mirror for Children, Containing One Hundred
Short Stories for the Education of the Mind and Heart of the Young (Zolotoe
zerkalo dlya detey, soderzhashchee v sebe sto nebolshikh povestey dlya
obrazovaniya razuma i serdtsa v yunoshestve, 1787), included stories by
Campe and the French writer Arnaud Berquin. It formed, in the words of
the historian of early Russian children’s literature, Marina Kostyukhkina,
“an encyclopaedia of children’s vices and virtues”.6

Novikov had hoped to inspire Russian writers to turn to children’s litera-

ture, but only Nikolay Karamzin (1766–1826), at that time a new name
in literature, answered his call. In 1787, Karamzin and Aleksandr Petrov
(c. 1763–93) took over Novikov’s magazine and changed its character
radically. The pages were now filled up with longer works for an older

5 Marina Kostiukhina, Zolotoe zerkalo: Russkaia literatura dlia detei XVIII–XIX vekov
(M., 2008), 10.
6 Ibid., 16.
12 chapter two

readership. The favourite was the French writer Stéphanie de Genlis, the
dominant influence at that time on girls’ reading all over Europe. Extracts
from her educational novel Les veillées du château and her Nouveaux con-
tes moraux et nouvelles historiques (1784), expressing Rousseauian views,
were published in Karamzin’s translation in issue after issue under the
title Rural Evenings (Derevenskie vechera). Madame de Genlis taught
manners and customs and praised moral improvement in a sentimental
spirit. The long moral tale Alphonso et Dalinda, remembered as an over-
whelming reading experience in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Insulted and
Injured (Unizhennye i oskorblyonnye, 1861), a memory which still brings
tears to the eyes of the hero, was also one of the works by de Genlis
that Karamzin chose for his Children’s Reading for the Heart and Mind.
In Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1865–69) the children tease each other with
the nickname Madame de Genlis, another reminder of the strong impact
the French writer had upon young Russians. Another important and sub-
stantial translation for the magazine was James Thomson’s The Seasons
(1726–30); this first English poem on the natural landscape was rendered
by Karamzin in prose.
Karamzin’s own main contribution to Children’s Reading for the Heart
and Mind was the story Eugene and Julia (Evgeny i Yuliya, 1789). Against
the background of a pastoral landscape a tragic love story is played out.
The virtuous orphan Julia, in whom “heart and mind were always active”,
is waiting for the homecoming of her beloved Eugene. Close friends since
childhood, they are now about to get married. But the planned wedding
turns into a funeral, as Eugene unexpectedly falls ill and dies within a few
days. It is as if nature itself intrudes, preventing innocent, platonic love
from turning erotic. Instead, Julia is offered another kind of bliss, a life in
rural isolation with bittersweet memories of a perfect love, a grave to tend
and hopes of a heavenly reunion. This ‘True Russian Tale’, as the subtitle
proclaims, was a revelation. Instead of the usual appeal to the reader’s
rationality, it offered languid melancholy. The pedagogical side had been
replaced by a concentration on the inner life of the characters with their
strong emotions and love for nature. Sentimentalism was thus first intro-
duced into Russian children’s literature before it reached adult readers.
In addition to Eugene and Julia, Karamzin also wrote some poems for
the magazine. The persona in “The Melancholic’s Spring Song” (“Vesenn-
yaya pesnya melankholika”, 1788) is sighing and crying in the midst of
nature as it celebrates the coming of spring. “When will my spring come, /
the winter of sorrow pass, / the mental gloom disappear?” he asks his Cre-
ator rhetorically. The theme of “The Sigh” (“Vzdokh”) and “On the Death
 from enlightenment to sentimentalism (1770–1825) 13

of the Maiden **” (“Na smert devitsy **”) is grief over the death of the
young loved one. Happiness is inevitably a thing of the past in the Senti-
mental texts.
All Novikov’s activities came to a halt in 1789. Catherine the Great had
initially supported all cultural endeavours, including educational reforms,
but the French Revolution and the Pugachev mutiny made her abandon
the ideals of the Enlightenment. Russian Freemasonry came under attack,
and in 1792 Novikov was imprisoned on the orders of the Tsaritsa. The
twenty volumes of his creation, Children’s Reading for the Heart and Mind,
however, lived on, appearing for the third and last time in 1819.
Karamzin moved on to adult literature and history, but his new works
also found a readership among adolescents. It has been claimed that
around 80% of children’s reading at the end of the eighteenth century
consisted of mainstream literature with Karamzin and the classicist poet
Gavrila Derzhavin being the favourites. Genuine poetry for children was
created by Aleksandr Shishkov (1754–1841) for the Children’s Library (Dets-
kaya biblioteka, 1783–85). The content consists partly of translations and
partly of adaptations from Campe’s Kleine Kinderbibliothek. Not only are
poems like “The Bathing Song” (“Pesenka na kupane”, 1773) and “Nikolay’s
Praise of Winter Pleasures” (“Nikolashina pokhvala zimnim utekham”,
1785) good translations; they are excellent poetry in their own right. The
joys of summer and winter are evoked with an inspiring freshness. The
happy mood and playfulness are conveyed through an energetic rhythm
and ringing sounds. It has been noted the Shishkov was the first to intro-
duce the image of a playing child into children’s literature.7
The volumes of Shishkov’s Children’s Library, consisting of poems,
tales, moral conversations, fables and plays, remained a favourite among
Russian children for many decades, the last edition appearing in 1846.
When working on his novel of reminiscences, Childhood Years of Bagrov
the Grandson (Detskie gody Bagrova-vnuka, 1856), Sergey Aksakov reread
the Children’s Library and was strengthened in his conviction that it
was the best reading that Russian children could be offered. Even as a
child Aksakov had learned many of its poems by heart, and they had
remained with him ever since.8 As a language theorist, then, Aleksandr
Shishkov went down in history as an archaist, but as a poet for children,
he was an innovator.

7 Kostiukhina, Zolotoe zerkalo, 27.

8 Sergei Aksakov, Sobranie sochinenii v 4 tomakh. Vol. I (M., 1955), 299.
14 chapter two

The end of the eighteenth century saw an increased interest in folklore.

Folk and fairy tales had earlier been sold in the marketplaces in the form
of chapbooks, cheap lubok-publications, but as the demand grew, they
found their way into more substantial anthologies. Sergey Drukovtsov’s
(1731–86) Grandmother’s Tales (Babushkiny skazki, 1778), Vasily Levshin’s
(1746–1826) Russian Folktales (Russkie skazki, 1780–83) and Pyotr Timo-
feev’s (years of birth and death unknown) Russian Folktales (Skazki
russkie, 1787) were not, strictly speaking, addressed to children, but they
were soon followed by more suitable volumes like Medicine Against Mel-
ancholy, or Genuine Russian Folktales (Lekarstvo ot zadumchivosti, ili nas-
toyashchie russkie skazki, 1786) and The Merry Old Woman, the Children’s
Entertainer (Vesyolaya starushka, zabavnitsa detey, 1790). The latter was
in fact a second edition of Timofeev’s Russian Folktales, now addressing
children. The tales were retellings of authentic folklore material with the
writers trying to preserve as much as possible of the original diction and
the genre’s specific traits. Fairy tales with kings, princes, helpful animals,
the evil old Baba Yaga, and dragons were now introduced into children’s
literature. In these tales not only Ivan Tsarevich but also Ivan the Fool, the
simple but clever peasant boy, manages to pass all tests and win the hand
of the beautiful Maiden Tsar.
In 1795, for the first time, a volume of Charles Perrault’s classic fairy
tales that was intended for children was published in Russian under the
title Wonder Tales with Morals (Povesti volshebnye s nravoucheniyami).
One of Perrault’s readers was Nikolay Karamzin, and the Russian senti-
mentalist’s first attempt as a fairy-tale writer, The Beautiful Princess and
the Fortunate Dwarf (Prekrasnaya tsarevna i schastlivy karla, 1793), was
partly inspired by Perrault’s “Riquet with the Tuft” (“Riquet à la Houppe”).
Karamzin treats the motif of Beauty and the Beast in a playful manner.
Much to the grief of her father, ‘The Good Man and the Tsar’, the Beautiful
Tsarevna rejects all her suitors and declares her love for the hunchbacked
court dwarf. Karamzin focuses on the inner conflicts of the princess and
her father, as they waver between decision and doubt. With humour and
hyperbole the author belies the reader’s expectations, as the hideous
fiancé does not go through any physical transformation. The conflict
between beauty and ugliness paired with wisdom is solved through the
power of love, but only on the mental plane.
A similarly light-hearted attitude to the themes of fairy tales is to
be found in The Deep Forest: a Tale for Children (Dremuchy les: Skazka
dlya detey, 1795). In the subtitle Karamzin claims that the work was an
impromptu, a literary game, written in one day and on the given condition
 from enlightenment to sentimentalism (1770–1825) 15

that certain words (balcony, forest, ball, horse, hut, field, raspberry, bush,
oak, Ossian, spring, grave, music) should appear in a given order. It is
as if Karamzin set out to parody traditional fairy-tale elements. Simul-
taneously, he is working close to the ‘horror tales’ of children’s lore, as
the commentator-narrator first awakens fear in his young audience, then
reveals that it is all a hoax. A twenty-year-old boy, “handsome as an angel,
mild as a dove”, is urged by a mysterious voice to enter the Deep Forest.
Everyone lives in fear of the place where an evil wizard, a friend of Beel-
zebub, is supposed to reign. But instead of the forces of evil, the fearless
boy, led by a white rabbit, finds the woman of his life. At the end of the
fairy tale the narrator exposes all the supernatural elements of the story,
giving them realistic explanations. The Deep Forest is not the home of
evil, but a shelter against the real misfortunes that will befall mankind in
the future.
In spite of their literary qualities and originality, Karamzin’s tales did
not become part of the literary canon for children. The explanation might
be the author’s disrespectful attitude to the genre. The author dubbed
these works ‘trifles’, a respected sub-genre in the time of Sentimentalism,
but later running the risk of their being reduced to the literal meaning of
the word.
The most widely read and disseminated books for children at the turn
of the century were all of foreign origin, with Berquin, Ducray-Duminil
and de Genlis being the most popular names.

A New Century

The first quarter of the nineteenth century was a period of stagnation

for children’s literature. Few writers of prominence paid attention to
children’s reading, the interest in fairy tales temporarily faded, and new
children’s magazines did not live up to the standard set by Novikov. The
publications were predominantly translations. The period saw a growing
interest in prose, but few of the works provide more than tedious moralis-
ing. Sentimentalism lived on, more productively than within mainstream
literature. An example is Sokrat Remezov’s (1792–1868) The Happy Ward,
or the Duty of the Grateful Heart (Schastlivy vospitannik, ili dolg blagodar-
nogo serdtsa, 1808). The story that opens the volume consists exclusively
of expressions of the boundless gratitude that a boy from a poor family
feels for the benefactor who enabled him to get an education. Essays on
modesty, love for one’s country, and God’s presence in nature were added
16 chapter two

to this ‘Russian story’. In “How to Read Books”, Remezov warns children

against reading without discrimination. The child who reads love novels
will find a gap open up in front of his or her feet and may meet the same
fate as Goethe’s Werther. Remezov’s preference was for books that con-
tain “holy and genuine truths”, books that are full of “honour and glory”.9
Pavel Vavilov, a writer about whom we know nothing, offers children
positive and negative models in A Russian Alphabet for the Teaching of
Young People of Both Sexes (Rossiyskaya azbuka dlya obucheniya yuno-
shestv oboego pola, 1816) and Exemplary Children’s Stories for the Benefit
of the Heart and the Mind (Detskie obraztsovye povesti dlya ispravleniya
serdtsa i razuma, 1817). The book stresses Christianity; first children learn
the letters, simple words, the Ten Commandments, and some basic prayers,
and then they read about the disobedient Mashinka, the well-mannered
Karolinushka, the prudent Daryushka and the untidy Katya. The title of
one of Vavilov’s moralistic stories reveals his ideal for women: “Modesty
is the girls’ best virtue.” In company the heroine wisely keeps quiet, and
she never passes on to others what she has overheard.
Under the influence of Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey (1768)
and Karamzin’s Letters of a Russian Traveller (1791–92), Mariya Gladkova
(1795–?), the first Russian woman writer of children’s literature, wrote a
sentimental travel book for children—A 15-Day Journey, Described by a
15-Year-Old Girl for the Pleasure of Her Father and Dedicated to Her 15-Year-
Old Friend (15-ti dnevnoe puteshestvie, 15-ti letneyu pisannoe v ugozhde-
nie roditelyu i posvyashchaemoe 15-ti letnemu drugu, 1810). On a trip by
a noble family from Moscow to St Petersburg, one of the daughters keeps
a diary. She takes an interest in the places they pass and in the everyday
life of the people they meet. Various social issues, such as the hard lot
of the serfs and widespread drunkenness, are also raised. The refusal of
some noble girls to use Russian upsets her. Gladkova’s intention was to
reproduce the style, thoughts and feelings of a young girl not yet affected
by reading novels.
Children’s poetry was still underdeveloped. Aleksandr Merzlyakov
(1778–1830), a professor at Moscow University, wrote two delightful
poems, “A Children’s Chorus for Little Natasha” (“Khor detey malenkoy
Natashe”, 1809) and “From Annushka to Dear Mama upon Presenting Her
with an Album” (“Ot Annushki—mamenke pri podarke alboma”, 1815).
In these poems we meet exemplary children in the company of their
parents and friends. “A Children’s Chorus for Little Natasha” questions

9 S. Remezov, Shchastlivyi vospitannik, ili dolg blagodarnogo serdtsa (M., 1808), 2.
 from enlightenment to sentimentalism (1770–1825) 17

the belief that only fairy tales and fantasy products can interest children.
The neighbour’s son is fascinated by the tales told by his nurse and fails
to see the greatness of little Natasha. The author’s answer is precisely a
“True Story for Small Children”, a presentation of one day in the life of
Natasha, everybody’s darling. While preserving her childish spontaneity,
Natasha lives up to the ideal of modesty, tenderness and simplicity. The
daily life of the heroine is presented by a children’s chorus, an interest-
ing narrative solution. In the other poem, Annushka presents her beloved
mother with an album on her name day, asking her to write down all her
precious thoughts, everything that she wants to pass on to her children.
Congratulatory poems, formally written from the viewpoint of the child,
were to remain a popular type of verse throughout the first half of the
nineteenth century.
Fables had been one of the strongest genres within classicism, and they
remained so during the first half of the nineteenth century: in this period
more than seventy books of fables for children were printed. Aesop’s
fables were published twenty times. Sergey Glinka edited Forty Fables for
Children by the Best Ancient Writers (Sorok basen dlya detey iz luchshikh
drevnikh pisateley) in 1828, and the following year his brother Fyodor, a
well-known poet, published A New Aesop for Children (Novy Ėzop dlya
detey). But Aesop was gradually to be surpassed by Ivan Krylov (1769–
1844), one of the Russian nineteenth-century classics. Some of Krylov’s
two hundred or so fables were initially published in children’s anthologies
or magazines; others made their way into children’s reading shortly after
their first publication. Starting with Nikolay Grech’s reader for grammar
schools of 1822, they became compulsory reading for Russian children.
The critic Vissarion Belinsky never tired of recommending that children
should be given Krylov’s fables because of their poetic qualities, exem-
plary language and Russian wisdom. Krylov’s position as children’s writer
was cemented by the illustrated biography Grandfather Krylov (Dedushka
Krylov, 1845), written by Dmitry Grigorovich a year after the poet’s death.
For Russian readers, many of Aesop’s and Jean de La Fontaine’s timeless
fables are better known in Krylov’s Russianised poetic renderings than in
plainer translations of the originals; however, some of Krylov’s own fables
need comments concerning their context and allegorical dimensions in
order to be appreciated.

Most children’s magazines from the first quarter of the nineteenth century
had a short life span, even though they were practically the only publi-
cations for children at the time. The Friend of Youth (Drug yunoshestva,
1807–15), called The Friend of Youth and of All Ages (Drug yunoshestva i
18 chapter two

vsyakikh let) after 1813, was the most long-lived. The editor, Maksim Nev-
zorov (1763–1827), a writer from Novikov’s Masonic circle, was an eccen-
tric recluse who considered children’s education his moral duty and was
prepared to spend all his energy and money on this cause.
The purpose of the magazine was “to promote the education of hearts
and minds and assist, as far as possible, in the development of physi-
cal capacities”.10 The sphere of activity was wide, as Nevzorov detected
vices, weaknesses and shortcomings everywhere. The tone of most of the
material, be it the lives of famous historical persons or pieces dealing
with natural science, is polemical and moralizing. As Nevzorov refused
to accept any ‘light reading’, that is “satires, epigrams, love novels and
comedies”,11 fiction came to consist of fables, amateur poetry and occa-
sional translations (of Horace among others). Of interest was the editor’s
wish to publish works by talented children, but as the example of the
eleven-year-old Sergey Vikulin shows, Nevzorov’s child readers were cast
in the same mould as the grey-haired chief editor. Little Sergey opens one
of his poems with the high-flown exclamation “Why, man, oh why! dost
thou always / strive for earthly happiness . . .” and then offers heavenly joy
as the only lasting solution.12
In keeping with the time, The Friend of Youth took a strong patriotic
and religious stand from 1809 onwards. “God Is on Our Side” was added to
the magazine’s epigraph. Fiction was now David’s Songs from The Book of
Psalms or pompous odes to the heroes of the Russian army. The father-son
pair with its never-ending ‘reasoning and conversations’ was exchanged
for stern cross-examinations of the ‘question and answer’ type. The suc-
cess of the magazine in reaching the impressive number of one hundred
issues can only be explained by the generosity of Nevzorov’s friends and
the editor’s unselfish devotion to the task.
The playwright Nikolay Ilin (c. 1777–1823) edited 24 issues of the fic-
tion magazine The Children’s Friend (Drug detey, 1809). Though this was
not acknowledged, the moral tales and short plays were almost all taken
from L’ami des enfants (1782–83) and L’ami de l’adolescence (1775–81), two
magazines edited by Arnaud Berquin. How common this policy was is
illustrated by the fact that Berquin in his turn had diligently borrowed
from the German magazine Kinderfreund (1775–82), edited by Christian

10 Drug iunoshestva 1 (1807): XI.

11  Maksim Nevzorov, “Uvedomleniia ob izdanii zhurnala ‘Drug iunoshestva’ na 1812
god,” Drug iunoshestva 10 (1811): 128.
12 Drug iunoshestva 2 (1813): 139–140.
 from enlightenment to sentimentalism (1770–1825) 19

Weisse. One of the few Russian contributions in The Children’s Friend

was Merzlyakov’s above-mentioned poem “A Children’s Chorus for Little
Natasha”.
The St Petersburg publication A Magazine for Children (Zhurnal dlya
detey, 1813–14) introduced colour illustrations into Russian children’s peri-
odicals. The anonymous editor included articles on grammar, geography,
history and religion. Fiction was given equal place with fables and anec-
dotes. The published list of almost two hundred subscribers shows that
A Magazine for Children was distributed all over the Russian empire,
including to Finland and Poland.
The Children’s Messenger (Detsky vestnik, 1815) excelled in sentimental
tales in the style of the French writer Jean-Nicolas Bouilly. Liza helps those
who suffer and feels good at heart, thinking that her activity is a Christian
virtue (“The Compassionate Lizanka”). A mother demonstrates in a dras-
tic way to her naughty son how it feels for the nestlings to be deprived
of their mother (“The Orphaned Nestlings”). God and the Sovereign are
given pride of place in the magazine. Many articles dwell on the glorious
history of Russia and its great figures. A groundbreaking series was “The
Childhood of Great Men” with its exemplary role models for children. The
first book of this kind had appeared in 1812—The History of the Childhood
of Famous People (Istoriya detstva znamenitykh lyudey).

The year of 1812 and the victorious war against Napoleon’s armies made
the Russians aware and proud of their own identity. In literature the trend
took the form of national fervour and a heightened interest in historical
themes and heroic ideals. Children’s literature responded to the historical
moment. The changes can be seen even in primers. In its composition
and page layout, A Gift for Children in Memory of the Events of the Year
1812 (Podarok detyam v pamyat o sobytiyakh 1812 goda, 1814) is reminis-
cent of Istomin’s Illustrated Primer, as each of the letters has its own page,
34 loose cards in all. Ivan Terebenyov’s (1780–1815) coloured caricatures
and the satirical two-line poems depict the French army as composed of
poor wretches in rags, forced to live on crows, while the victorious Rus-
sian people are glorified. The Russian muzhik literally forces the French
soldiers to dance to his tune. But pity for the defeated is also part of the
Russian, purely Christian, spectrum: “As terrible as his revenge is, just as
sincere is his love.”
One of the writers for children (and others) most associated with 1812
is Sergey Glinka (1776–1847). Enrolled in the home guard, he raised money
for the army and appealed to national sentiments as a tribune. Patriotism
20 chapter two

was also at the core of his literary activities. True to his maxim, “Teach
your children to serve their Fatherland and not themselves”,13 in Russian
Historic and Moral Tales (Russkie istoricheskie i nravouchitelnye povesti,
1810–20) he celebrated national heroes, like Ivan Susanin and Aleksandr
Menshikov. These were true Russians, who rose above selfishness and
devoted their life to the service of Russia. This ideal is also illustrated by
the fate of Natalya Dolgorukova in “A Model of Love and Conjugal Fidel-
ity” (“Obrazets lyubvi i vernosti supruzheskoy”). Orphaned at an early
age, this ‘angel on earth’ experienced only a short period of happiness.
During the reign of Anna—a time when, according to Glinka, as a result of
foreign influence “pity and all sincere emotions were considered a crime”,14
Dolgorukova’s husband is exiled to Siberia. Throughout all the hardships
she stays by his side, and when he is finally executed, she decides to
become a nun. Girl readers are taught conjugal love, faithfulness, simplic-
ity, and unselfishness. Happiness proves to be short-lived, while a life in
the service of the Fatherland is bathed in eternal glory. The tale is based on
Dolgorukova’s own notes but follows the model of Russian hagiography.
In Glinka’s works, moral greatness is largely a thing of the past. The
author expresses his concern for the spirit of modern times. A father must
save his children from the morass of foreign influence—mainly French—
in philosophy, fashion and lifestyle. Card games, balls, novels, theatre and
luxury in general are condemned as leading to vanity, frivolity and god-
lessness. High society has already lost its genuine Russianness. In these
didactic stories, written in the spirit of the prevailing official patriotism,
the narrator gets emotionally involved, stressing his position through
italics, exclamation marks and sighs. The revealing names—Sensible
(Zdravomysl), Goodheart (Dobroserdov), Beneficent (Blagotvor), Brave
(Khrabrov) and Debauchee (Razvratin)—delineate who is who in Glinka’s
world.
The same ardent advocacy of Russian monarchism and patriotism is to
be found in Glinka’s much-read serial Russian History for the Purpose of
Education (Russkaya istoriya v polzu vospitaniya, 1817–19, 1823–25). The
author already in the preface states his case: “All the Russian chronicles
bear witness that not a single evil deed has escaped punishment and that
persecuted innocence was never anywhere deprived of the pleasure given

13 Sergei Glinka, Russkie istoricheskie i nravouchitel’nye povesti. Vol. 1 (М., 1819), 28.
14 Sergei Glinka, Russkie istoricheskie i nravouchitel’nye povesti. Vol. 2 (M., 1820), 21.
 from enlightenment to sentimentalism (1770–1825) 21

by a pure conscience. These edifying truths are not based on fantasies, but
on events confirmed by the annals of history. In this sense Russian history
can truly be called a school of national morals.”15 The fourteen volumes
also include Glinka’s own comments, as he reads history as a moral tale.
Glinka’s A New Game for Children and Pictures from Nature and the Arts
with Additional Moral Poems (Novaya igra dlya detey i kartiny prirody i
iskusstv s prisovokupleniem nravstvennykh stikhotvoreniy, 1826) is inno-
vatory. According to Glinka’s calculations, the 36 coloured pictures could
be combined in more than 20,000 ways, and playing with them meant
combining business with pleasure.
In addition to his magazine for adults, The Russian Messenger (Russky
vestnik), a counterpart to Karamzin’s Messenger of Europe (Vestnik
Evropy), Glinka published a children’s magazine, New Children’s Reading
(Novoe detskoe chtenie, 1819–24). As the title indicates, the magazine was
oriented towards Novikov’s eighteenth-century enterprise. Telemachus for
Educational Purposes (Telemakh v polzu vospitaniya) filled one issue in
1821, as did Glinka’s own adaptation of Defoe’s The Adventures of Robinson
Crusoe, carrying the revealingly conservative subtitle The Consequences of
Thoughtlessness and the Triumph of Family Virtues (Sledstviya legkomys-
liya i torzhestvo semeystvennykh dobrodeteley). The editor’s interest in
history could be seen from his regular column, “An Extensive Russian
Chronicle” (“Obshirnaya russkaya letopis”). Poems in the form of odes to
members of the Imperial family could also be found on the pages of the
magazine.
Glinka stressed the role of the parents in the process of children’s read-
ing. His own publications were admittedly not accessible to children at
first glance: they had to be explained by the fathers and the mothers. Only
then, through this gesture of parental love, could children’s literature fulfil
its mission.
Glinka was also much involved in the vogue for Plutarch’s Parallel
Lives (Sravnitelnye zhizneopisaniya) that emerged in these years. Plu-
tarch’s biographies of great men from ancient history had already been
translated into Russian in the previous century, but they were now passed
on to a young audience. In 1808–10 Pierre Blanchard’s adaptation of Plu-
tarch for Adolescents (Plutarkh dlya yunoshey) was published in eight
volumes. Blanchard was also responsible for a volume of biographies of

15 Sergei Glinka, “Predislovie,” Russkaia istoriia. Vol. 1. Third ed. (М., 1823), 28.
22 chapter two

famous women, Plutarch for the Fair Sex (Plutarkh dlya prekrasnogo pola),
translated into Russian in 1816–19 by the poet Fyodor Glinka. Nevzorov
included chapters from Parallel Lives in his magazine The Friend of Youth,
and Sergey Glinka followed this example in New Children’s Reading.
In Russia, ‘Plutarch’ became a generic term, denoting biographies of
famous people in general, irrespective of who the author was. Russian
political and military figures, from Peter the Great and Suvorov to the
heroes of battles against Napoleon, stood alongside the classicist writers
of the eighteenth century, like Lomonosov and Derzhavin. The gallery of
women ranged from Princess Olga to Countess Ekaterina Dashkova, presi-
dent of the Russian Academy up to her death in 1810.

The most interesting publication of a pedagogical nature from this period

is the Children’s Museum (Detsky muzeum, 1815–29). Every issue includes
several colour engravings and accompanying texts in three languages—
Russian, German and French. In all, the magazine ran to 154 encyclopaedic,
large-format issues with scientific material. The full title reveals its broad
scope: “The Children’s Museum, or a Collection of Illustrations of Ani-
mals, Plants, Flowers, Fruits, Minerals, Costumes of Different Nationalities
in Their Original Form, Antiquities and Other Things for the Exhortation
and Amusement of Adolescence, Collected and Engraved after the Best
Models, with Short Explanations at the Level of Children’s Understand-
ing.” Thus, in the opening issue the reader obtained elementary informa-
tion about the elephant, the camel and the ostrich.
The Children’s Museum was a luxurious and expensive publication. The
same can also be said of the period’s many encyclopaedic anthologies. They
include the French-Russian Children’s Encyclopaedia, or a New Abbreviation
of All the Sciences (Detskaya ėntsiklopediya, ili Novoe sokrashchenie vsekh
nauk, 1802, 1818), Children’s Encyclopaedia, or the Latest Understanding of
All the Sciences (Detskaya ėntsiklopediya, ili Noveyshee ponyatie o vsekh
naukakh, 1811), The Latest Children’s Encyclopaedia, or an Understanding of
All the Sciences (Noveyshaya detskaya ėntsiklopediya, ili Ponyatie o vsekh
naukakh, 1815) and A Precious Gift for Children, or A New and Complete
Encyclopaedia and Russian Alphabet (Dragotsenny podarok detyam, ili
Novaya i polnaya ėntsiklopediya i rossiyskaya azbuka, 1818).
As developments within the different sciences advanced, it gradually
became more and more difficult to summarise all knowledge in one vol-
ume, and authors were forced to limit their scope and publish more spe-
cialised works. Pierre Blanchard popularised the botanical and zoological
 from enlightenment to sentimentalism (1770–1825) 23

findings of the French scientist Georges de Buffon in a volume translated

into Russian as Buffon for Young People (Byuffon dlya yunoshestva, 1814). It
included short, fascinating descriptions of different human races, animals,
birds and fishes. According to the preface to a Russian edition of 1866, the
book was “not cold and dry science, but filled with charm and passion”.16

16 Biuffon, Rasskazy dlia iunoshestva iz estestvennoi istorii (M., 1866), 3.

 chapter three

ROMANTICISM (1825–1860)

In the 1820s, Russian literature entered a new phase, Romanticism. The

changes were also felt in writing for children. A more favourable attitude
to imagination and emotional life brought with it a new way of looking at
childhood. Children were perceived as higher beings with an enchanted,
poetic world of their own. The concept of ‘a dual world’ signifies the co-
existence of everyday life and a world of fantasy, with the child effortlessly
crossing the borderline. This is the basis for the genre of fantasy, exempli-
fied during the Romantic period by works like Antony Pogorelsky’s The
Black Hen and Vladimir Odoevsky’s The Little Town in the Snuffbox. These
were the first Russian children’s books to achieve classic status. Still read
and appreciated are also the fairy tales in verse written by the Romantic
poets Aleksandr Pushkin, Vasily Zhukovsky and Pyotr Ershov. Many of
their fairy tales were based on foreign models, but in Russia they became
part of a search for a genuine ‘folk spirit’.
The interest in the national past and tradition found an outlet in books
on Russian history and geography. Adaptations of biblical stories were
also popular. The dominant genre of the period was, however, the moral
tale, an edifying epic or dramatic story on good manners and high moral-
ity. These stories contain no national features, and they often turn out to
be translations or adaptations without any mention of the original source.
The significance of their moral lessons can hardly be disputed, but, never-
theless, only period pieces were produced in this genre.
During the Romantic period, the first Russian writers devoting them-
selves almost exclusively to children’s literature appeared on the scene.
Boris Fyodorov, Anna Zontag, Vladimir Lvov, Aleksandra Ishimova, Pyotr
Furman and Viktor Buryanov were all genuine children’s writers, whatever
the literary level of their works. Gradually there emerged an awareness
that children’s literature formed a field of its own, separate of literature
for adults. A children’s book should not only be edifying, it should also
have literary qualities. The critic Vissarion Belinsky played an influential
role in this process.
The number of titles rose steadily. While a total of approximately 320
titles were issued in the period 1801–1825, the number more than dou-
bled in the next quarter-century, rising to around 860, a publication rate
 romanticism (1825–1860) 25

of more than thirty per year. By the middle of the 1830s, the output of
original Russian children’s literature surpassed the number of transla-
tions. Much fiction also found its way into readers and textbooks, proving
that literature was by now perceived as an indispensable part of a child’s
upbringing.

Fairy Tales and Fantasy

After a short-lived vogue for folktales at the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury, these more or less disappeared from children’s literature for several
decades. During the Romantic era, the folktale reappeared, both in the
form of adapted folklore material and original, artistic fairy tales. A six-
volume publication of Johann Musäus’ German folktales in 1811–1812 was
a visible sign of a growing appreciation. In 1825 a volume of new trans-
lations of Charles Perrault’s fairy tales appeared, but the crucial turning
point was a publication the following year in the magazine The Children’s
Interlocutor (Detsky sobesednik). The set of “Children’s Tales” (“Detskie
skazki”) included “The Briar-Bush” (“Kolyuchaya roza”), “Dear Roland
and the Maiden Bright Light” (“Mily Roland i devitsa Yasny svet”), “Brother
and Sister” (“Bratets i sestritsa”), “Little Red Riding Hood” (“Krasnaya
shapochka”), “The Enchantress” (“Volshebnitsa”) and “Raul the Blue Beard”
(“Raul sinyaya boroda”). The sources were not mentioned, but a closer
examination reveals them to be works by Charles Perrault, Ludwig Tieck
and the Brothers Grimm.
A cautious attitude was taken towards the genre of fairy tales, as can
be seen of the instructions accompanying the tales published in The Chil-
dren’s Interlocutor: “It is the mentor’s duty to explain to the children the
moral lesson of these tales and to separate in them the embellishments of
fantasy of useful truths.”1 The section of fairy tales was attributed to Vasily
Zhukovsky, a poet with close connections to German literature, but it was
in fact Zhukovsky’s niece and protégée, Anna Zontag, who was responsible
for the translations. This became clear in 1828, when Zontag included the
translations in her own volume Stories for Children (Povesti dlya detey).
Zhukovsky took an interest in Zontag’s work, and in a letter to her in 1827,
he expressed his view on translating for children: “Do not translate slav-
ishly, but as if you were telling your daughter a foreign story: this will give

1 Quoted in Nikolai Trubitsyn, “О skazkakh V.A. Zhukovskogo,” Russkii filologicheskii

vestnik 1 (1913): 131–132.
26 chapter three

your style a delicate clarity and simplicity.”2 This was also the policy of
Zontag, as she did not translate word for word, but retold the fairy tales in
a personal, creative way. When the hunter opens the wolf ’s belly in “Little
Red Riding Hood”, “out came flowers, then pies, and after that a milk jug
rolled out and milk spilled on the floor; he made another cut, and a red
cap appeared and suddenly the girl herself jumped out alive!”
E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Nutcracker and the King of the Mice (Nussknacker
und Mäusekönig, 1816) was to become a Russian favourite, not least
because of Tchaikovsky’s ballet. The German fantasy tale was translated
into Russian in 1835, appearing both as a separate volume, The Tale about
the Nutcracker (Skazka o Shchelkune), and in a slightly Russified version,
“Mr Nutcracker Doll” (“Kuklya Gospodin Shchelkushka”), to be found in
The Children’s Little Book for 1835 (Detskaya knizhka na 1835 g.) by Viktor
Buryanov. In 1840 the volume A Present for the New Year: Two Fairy
Tales by Hoffmann for Children Large and Small (Podarok na novy god:
Dve skazki Gofmana dlya bolshikh i malenkikh detey) included not only
The Nutcracker and the King of the Mice but also The Unknown Child (Das
fremde Kind, 1817). The unnamed translator was probably Vladimir Odo-
evsky, a great admirer of Hoffmann. In 1846, a more substantial Hoffmann
volume appeared under the title Fairy Tales for Children (Volshebnye
skazki dlya detey).
Wilhelm Hauff’s Oriental fairy tales were introduced by Zontag in 1844,
when the collection The Caravan (Die Karawane) appeared in a free, but
unabridged, translation, with the title A Fairy Tale in the Form of a Lit-
erary Miscellany for Easter Sunday of 1844 (Skazka v vide almanakha na
Svetloe Voskresene 1844 goda). Three years later, in 1847, Hans Christian
Andersen appeared in Russian as a children’s writer, when Julius Lundahl
(1818–54), a Swedish-speaking Finn, translated his “The Little Match Girl”
(“Malenkaya prodavshchitsa spichek”) into Russian for the magazine Little
Star (Zvyozdochka). In the same year A New Educational Library (Novaya
biblioteka dlya vospitaniya) published “The Nightingale” (“Solovey”) and
“The Ugly Duckling” (“Gadky utyonok”) in Apollon Grigorev’s rendering.

The Black Hen

1829 is a memorable year in the history of Russian children’s literature.

The publication of Antony Pogorelsky’s The Black Hen, or the Underground

2 Ibid., 131.
 romanticism (1825–1860) 27

Inhabitants (Chornaya kuritsa, ili podzemnye zhiteli) in fact signified the

birth of an original, prominent Russian children’s literature. Up to that
time children’s books had been covertly didactic and moralistic, as well
as highly dependent upon foreign patterns. The artistic side was under-
rated and fantasy and poetic feeling absent. The portrayal of children was
neither psychologically nor stylistically convincing. The Black Hen totally
changed the picture.
Antony Pogorelsky (1787–1836), a pseudonym for Aleksey Perovsky, was
a minor writer of romantic tales. Doubles, strange metamorphoses, and
meetings with the Evil Spirit filled his works. For the amusement of his
nephew, the future writer Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, he created
a tale about the meeting between a boy and an inhabitant of the under-
ground. Pogorelsky labelled The Black Hen a magic tale; he had made a
groundbreaking choice of genre for the work, in which realistic scenes are
freely mixed with fantastic episodes. All is based upon solid insight into a
child’s way of experiencing the world. The hero is a young boy, Alyosha,
who lives in a boarding school in St Petersburg at the end of the eigh-
teenth century. Out of kindness, he saves the life of a black hen, which
turns out to be a Lilliputian in disguise. As a sign of gratitude, the Lillipu-
tian takes Alyosha on nocturnal trips to his subterranean kingdom. Here
the boy is presented with a talisman, a magic hemp-seed, which can make
every wish come true. A thoughtless request—to know all lessons without
doing any homework—brings out the worst sides of Alyosha’s character.
Of having been a humble and diligent boy, he turns into a complacent
idler. Eventually, he even goes back on his word and discloses the secret
world of the Lilliputians. As a result, Alyosha not only loses his wonderful
talisman and his friend, but also causes the ruin of the hidden world.
Pogorelsky’s The Black Hen has unanimously been read as a cautionary
tale. From his friendship with the black hen, Alyosha learns the impor-
tance of fidelity and diligence. Deceiving himself in the choice between
good and bad, he simultaneously deceives his friends, both above and
under ground, and it is only by admitting his treachery to the hen that he
is able to free himself from his shortcomings.
In some respects, The Black Hen is reminiscent of German romantic
prose. Works by Clement Brentano, Friedrich de La Motte Fouqué, the
Brothers Grimm, and Ludwig Tieck, as well as folktales about subterra-
nean worlds of gnomes, have all been mentioned as possible sources of
influence. Pogorelsky was even personally acquainted with Hoffmann.
Ultimately, all comparisons serve more to demonstrate the originality of
Pogorelsky’s fantasy tale than to explain it. The Black Hen became a clas-
sic of Russian children’s literature because of its convincing portrait of
28 chapter three

Fig. 2. Karl Bryullov: Antony Pogorelsky (1836)

 romanticism (1825–1860) 29

childhood, its absorbing story line and timeless morals, but there is also
ambivalence in the text that makes it attractive to a dual audience.
The fantastic events of the tale are explained by Alyosha’s readings.
Just like Don Quixote, he has read too many romances of chivalry and too
many magic tales, and, as a result, he perceives the surrounding world in
a distorted way. His friendship with the black hen Chernushka and his
move from reality into a fantasy world are his way of searching for com-
pensation for the parental love and care that he lacks. For a long time
Alyosha only lives in his dreams and fantasies, alienating himself more
and more from his school and comrades. In this reading, the German
teacher of the boarding school functions as Alyosha’s saviour when he
gives the boy a good beating and forces him to admit that his nocturnal
adventures are no more than fantasies. From that point on, knowledge
and science take the place of dreams, and the beauty of St Petersburg
surrounding him replaces the pitiful imitations that he encountered in
the subterranean world.
Chernushka appears to be Alyosha’s benefactor, but in the world of
symbols and folk superstitions, a black hen has always been linked to the
Evil Spirit, either representing Satan himself or acting as his go-between.
The hen is indeed trying to win the boy’s soul, drag him down into the
underground and turn him into an obedient tool of its will. Pogorelsky’s
choice of a hemp-seed and not the traditional ring for a talisman has
caused astonishment. However, just like hashish, traditionally extracted
from hemp, the talisman gives its user a deceitful feeling of omnipotence.
Alyosha has been blamed for his failure to keep his promise not to reveal
the secrets of his subterranean friends, but it can also be argued that this
is the only way for him to be saved. Only by breaking with the forces that
the black hen represents can he can rid himself of his bad habits and harm-
ful fantasies and again win the acceptance of the school community.
The Black Hen also bears witness to Pogorelsky’s fascination for Free-
masonry. Alyosha is a candidate for membership in a secret organization
with its own social ideals and hierarchy. He passes the initiation test but
fails to become a ‘spiritual knight’, because he divulges the organisation’s
secrets. His self-examination brings out many intolerable traits of char-
acter. Alyosha clearly lacks modesty, moderation and self-denial, all cen-
tral ideals for a Freemason. The precarious stature of the subterranean
kingdom and subsequent expulsion of its inhabitants reflect the problem-
atic situation for Freemasonry in the Russia of Pogorelsky’s time. Many
regarded masonry as a religious apostasy whose members served the
30 chapter three

cause of Antichrist. Hence the unmasking of such a fraternity served the

welfare of society.
The Black Hen was hailed as a sensation in the children’s magazine
New Children’s Library, and its editor, the writer Boris Fyodorov, urged
Pogorelsky to enrich children’s literature with more works of the same
sort in the future.3 Leo Tolstoy mentioned it as one of his childhood
favourites.4 The favourable reception notwithstanding, Pogorelsky did not
write anything else for children, and thus The Black Hen remained his only
work within the genre.

The Town in the Snuffbox

The other significant fantasy tale of the period, Vladimir Odoevsky’s (1803–
69) The Little Town in the Snuffbox (Gorodok v tabakerke, 1834), is also
based upon the concept of a dual world, with a child functioning as the
bond between the two realities. Misha is curious about his father’s musi-
cal box, and in a dream, he enters its fascinating world and learns how
its different components function and interact. All small parts are given
individual human features. When the boy wakes up, he can faultlessly
explain the mechanism of the box to his father. Knowledge is attained not
through studies, but with the help of dreams and a lively imagination. The
rest can later be extracted from books, as Misha’s father points out.
The critic Belinsky was thrilled, writing in his review that E.T.A. Hoff-
mann could well have been the author of The Little Town in the Snuffbox.
The tale was hailed as a useful introduction to the laws of mechanics. That
Odoevsky simultaneously had given his work an allegorical dimension was
overlooked. What Misha encounters in the musical box is in fact a minia-
ture society, pointedly hierarchic. For those on the bottom, the bell-boys,
life is hard, endless toil. Like the Russian serfs, they are forever bound
to their place. The hammers and the roller, that is the middle class and
the landowners, justify the existing order with the argument that they are
just cogs in a huge machine. The ultimate power in this unhappy world
belongs to Tsarevna Spiral. In his dream, Misha sides with the exploited
people, and opposing the warning of his father, he touches upon the great
spring. The results of the allegorical attempt at a revolution are disastrous.

3 Novaia detskaia biblioteka 1 (1829): 110.

4 L.N. Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii v 90 t. Vol. 66 (M., 1953), 67. (Letter to M.M. Lederle.
October 25, 1891.)
 romanticism (1825–1860) 31

This concealed analysis of the repressive side of Russian autocracy leads

the reader to discouraging conclusions: the existing, highly unfair social
order is not to be questioned.
Odoevsky favoured fantasy in literature for adults, but for children he
never again produced anything similar to The Little Town in the Snuffbox.
His other celebrated children’s book, Frost Ivanovich (Moroz Ivanovich,
1841), is a fairy tale which makes use of Russian folkloric motives, devices
and stylistic ideals. The Grimm Brothers’ Frau Holle can also been seen
as a source of inspiration. Two girls are contrasted—the humble and dili-
gent Miss Stitcher (Rukodelnitsa) and the cold-hearted Miss Lazy-Bones
(Lenivitsa). With the help of Frost Ivanovich, a forerunner of the Russian
Father Christmas, the sympathetic protagonist is rewarded, while her neg-
ative counterpart is left empty-handed. An important part of the moral
behind Frost Ivanovich is that good deeds should not be done for the sake
of compensation, but have a worth of their own. Odoevsky employed
the same opposition between diligence and laziness in “The Broken Jar”
(“Razbity kuvshin”), which he claimed to be a Jamaican tale, and “The
Two Trees” (“Dva dereva”). In “The Inhabitant of Mount Athos” (“Zhitel
Afonskoy gory”) the holy man learns from a flower that one should serve
mankind without demanding gratitude.

Pushkin and Zhukovsky

The thirties was a decade of flourishing for literary fairy tales in verse.
Aleksandr Pushkin, Vasily Zhukovsky and Pyotr Ershov all were inspired
by Russian folktales, still largely existing only in oral tradition, and from
European romantic literature. Their choice of putting fairy tales into verse
might seem astonishing, as hardly any predecessors in Russia, or outside
Russia, for that matter, can be found. For them it was a way of giving
folklore new literary qualities, but also a reflection of their wish to write
primarily for an adult audience. In the case of Pushkin and Zhukovsky, it
did take several decades before their works were established within chil-
dren’s literature.
Aleksandr Pushkin (1799–1837), so central in Russian literature in gen-
eral, is also a key figure in Russian children’s literature. His fairy tales in
verse, even if they were not created for young people, have become clas-
sic children’s reading. Pushkin did not admire contemporary children’s
literature. The primitiveness of the moral tale disturbed him, and he was
likewise annoyed by the predominant, outdated stylistic ideals. Russian
32 chapter three

folklore inspired him to try his hand at fairy tales. During his exile to
the Mikhaylovskoe estate in 1824–25, he listened to tales told by his old
nanny, and made notes for future works. Not only the motifs of these folk-
tales, but also the beauty of their language, pleased him. Although only
one of Pushkin’s five completed fairy tales was indisputably based on Rus-
sian material, he gave a Russian form and language to foreign sources. He
wrote his fairy tales in 1830–1834, at the peak of his poetic powers, and
they are among his finest artistic accomplishments.
The first of Pushkin’s fairy tales, The Tale of Tsar Saltan, of his Son the
Glorious and Mighty Knight, Prince Guidon Saltanovich and the Fair Swan-
Princess (Skazka o tsare Saltane, o syne ego slavnom i moguchem bogatyre
knyaze Gvidone Saltanoviche i o prekrasnoy tsarevne Lebedi, 1831), is the
most original and elaborated. It is told in trochaic tetrameter with vari-
ous fairy-tale figures and motives intricately woven together. The char-
acters are more psychologically complex than was common within folk
tradition. Prince Guidon, who as a child was left to die, but who narrowly
escaped, sets out on a search for his father, Saltan. The plot progresses
dynamically, without abstract descriptions. In the end, the striving of the
good man is rewarded, and the family is reunited in a moving scene. The
Swan-Princess, the helpful animal, turns into a beautiful woman, ready
for marriage, and a new empire is established for the young couple. It is
a world of happiness and prosperity with parallels to the myths of Peter
the Great’s creation of St Petersburg.5 The Tale of Tsar Saltan ends, just
like Russian folktales, with a celebration, where even the bad characters
are forgiven simply ‘for the joy’ of it.
Mark Azadovsky convincingly showed in 1936 that Pushkin’s The Tale
of the Dead Tsarevna and the Seven Heroes (Skazka o myortvoy tsarevne
i o semi bogatyryakh, 1834) was mainly based upon the Grimm Brothers’
Snow White (Schneewittchen) and not upon a Russian folktale, as previ-
ously had been claimed.6 In his library, Pushkin had a French collection
of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales of 1830. Some minor Russian national
features were added to the tale, however. The seven dwarves are mous-
tached Russian heroes, bogatyrs, who, when not working in the woods,
chop off Tatar heads. The Tsarevna is sheltered from her evil stepmother

5 See J. Orlov, “Mif Peterburga i obraz tsarya v ‘Skazke o tsare Saltane’,” in A. Kovacs,
I. Nagy I. (ed.), Materialy III i IV Pushkinologicheskogo kollokviuma v Budapeshte. Studia
Russica Budapestinensia II–III (Budapest, 1995), 75–86.
6 M.K. Azadovskii, “Istochniki skazok Pushkina,” in Pushkin: Vremennik Pushkinskoi
komissii. Vypusk 1 (M.-L., 1936), 148.
 romanticism (1825–1860) 33

by the bogatyrs, but she refuses to marry any of them, as she wants to stay
true to her betrothed, the Tsarevich Elisey. Led by the sun, the moon and
the wind, Elisey finds his beloved and brings her back to life. The Tsarevna
stands out as Pushkin’s ideal woman, diligent, good-hearted and faithful.
At the wedding, the storyteller is present, drinking and rejoicing with the
others.
The Tale of the Fisherman and the Little Fish (Skazka o rybake i rybke,
1835) is the most popular among Pushkin’s fairy tales and the first to be
incorporated within the body of children’s reading. Rhymes and a tradi-
tional metric scheme are omitted here, in accordance with the poetics of
the West-Slavic songs that Pushkin was translating at the same time. In
spite of his poverty, the fisherman places no demands on the golden fish
that he has captured. In a Russian context, the fisherman can be seen
as representing the Slavophile ideal of kindness, simplicity and unselfish-
ness. The title chosen by Pushkin links the man to the fish, making him
part of nature. The wishes of his wife are, on the contrary, infinite, driven
as she is by the false ideal of power and might. Her thirst for domination
reaches its peak as she asks to become, not pope or God, as in the Ger-
man original, but ‘the sovereign of the ocean’. This is an attempt to attain
dominion over the very source of life. In addition, the ideals of the patri-
archal family have been forgotten in this outburst of gender hubris. In the
end, the couple is thrown back to their starting point. The Russian saying
‘by a smashed trough’, that is ‘to be no better off than when you started’,
comes from Pushkin’s fairy tale.
Anna Akhmatova was the first to point out that The Tale of the Golden
Cockerel (Skazka o zolotom petushke, 1835) was based upon “The Legend
of the Arabian Astrologer” from Washington Irving’s collection The Alham-
bra (1832).7 In the xenophobic atmosphere of Stalin’s time, this finding was
not welcome, and Soviet Pushkinists duly reprimanded Akhmatova. The
first cultural bridge across the Atlantic Ocean had been established via a
French translation. Pushkin’s enigmatic fairy tale has a strong streak of
Oriental mysticism. The threat against peace and stability does not come
from outer enemies, as King Dadon thinks, but from within himself; his
passion for a femme fatale destroys him. Blind to bad omens, he breaks
his promises, defies destiny and dies suddenly and violently. Akhmatova
proposed an allegorical reading, in which we see the two tsars of Russia
during Pushkin’s time wavering between the abuse of power and a wish

7 Anna Akhmatova, Sochinenii. Vol. 3 (Paris, 1983), 171.

34 chapter three

for withdrawal from the throne. Pushkin himself appears as the wise man,
eventually deprived of his promised rewards.
The Tale of the Priest and His Workman Balda (Skazka o pope i rabot-
nike ego Balde, 1831) is one of the folktales that Pushkin jotted down at
his country estate in 1824. The priest is looking for a farm hand and finds
his man in Balda, who “eats for four and works for seven”. The only pay-
ment Balda request is food and the right to hit his master three times
over his head when the year has passed. So as not to have to ‘pay’ Balda,
the priest gives him impossible tasks, but the simple, hardworking man
turns out to be cleverer than his master. The playful tone of the comic tale
breaks off as Balda, with a heavy hand, exacts his ‘payment’, pronouncing
the verdict: “Priest, you shouldn’t have gone rushing off after cheapness.”
A satirical portrait of a priest was highly sensitive in Pushkin’s time, and
when the fairy tale was posthumously published in 1840, Vasily Zhukovsky
wisely changed the priest into a merchant. On the other hand, The Tale
about the Priest and His Worker Balda was a favourite in Soviet times, as
it appeared to testify to Pushkin’s anticlerical disposition and sympathy
for the workman.
Pushkin had plans to publish his fairy tales as a cycle, arranged not
chronologically, but according to their themes. The tales can in fact be
divided into two groups. In The Tale of Tsar Saltan and The Tale about the
Dead Tsarevna and the Seven Heroes, home and family constitute the main
values, and both tales have a conventional happy ending. The protago-
nists of The Tale of the Fisherman and the Little Fish, The Tale of the Golden
Cockerel and The Tale of the Priest and His Workman Balda are gripped by
a strong passion that makes them blind. They trust in their own strength
but, when confronted with the laws of the outer world, they perish. The
same theme of false and fatal roles appears in other works by Pushkin in
the thirties, as in his ‘small tragedies’ and The Queen of Spades (Pikovaya
dama).
The plots of Pushkin’s fairy tales develop swiftly. Detailed descriptions
and inserted episodes are avoided. Simple epithets are preferred to meta-
phors. Pushkin adopted some stylistic features and traditional formulas
from folktales, but this did not shield him from criticism by contemporary
traditionalists. Belinsky frankly declared Pushkin’s fairy tales to be bad,
devoid of any poetic value. They were unsuccessful imitations, in which
all traces of the true Russian folk soul were lost.8 Today it is precisely their

8 V.G. Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 2 (M., 1953), 347.

 romanticism (1825–1860) 35

authenticity and their lack of artificiality which is admired. In Russia the

fairy tales have come to be considered as the quintessence of Pushkin’s
intimate bond with the Russian people, though this view carries the obvi-
ous risk of losing sight of the pan-human and pan-European background
of these works.
Pushkin did not set out to renew Russian children’s literature. In 1836,
he turned down Vladimir Odoevsky’s offer to publish in the magazine
Children’s Library (Detskaya biblioteka). Significantly, he did not consider
his fairy tales as relevant in this connection. Their entry into the chil-
dren’s canon came later, starting in the 1860s when Konstantin Ushinsky
included some of Pushkin’s fairy tales and poems in his popular readers.

In the summer of 1831 the poet Vasily Zhukovsky (1783–1852), the main
representative of early Romanticism in Russian poetry, was Pushkin’s
neighbour in Tsarskoe Selo. Both were fascinated by folklore, and some-
thing of a competition in writing fairy tales in verse arose between them.
Like Pushkin, Zhukovsky wrote for an adult audience, but his tales also
became classic children’s reading after his death.
Zhukovsky’s contributions to the literary duel of 1831 were The Sleeping
Tsarevna (Spyashchaya tsarevna, 1832) and The Tale of Tsar Berendey, His
Son Tsarevich Ivan, the Plots of Koshchey the Immortal and the Prudence
of Tsarevna Mariya, the Daughter of Koshchey (Skazka o tsare Berendee,
o syne ego Ivane tsareviche, o khitrostyakh Koshcheya Bessmertnogo
i o premudrosti Marii tsarevny, Koshcheevoy docheri, 1833). The first-
mentioned fairy tale, written in trochaic tetrameter, was modelled upon
both Perrault’s “The Sleeping Beauty” (“La belle au bois dormant”) and the
Grimm Brothers’ “The Briar-Bush” (“Dornröschen”). The changes are insig-
nificant, but the stories are told with great refinement and, partly, also
with irony. True to the spirit of the originals, Zhukovsky did not set out to
individualise the heroes or psychologically motivate their action. Instead,
he indulged in detailed, poetic descriptions and added an erotic dimen-
sion. One genuinely Russian feature is the standard ending—a party that
the storyteller attends.
The Tale of Tsar Berendey is basically a Russian fairy tale, handed over
to Zhukovsky by Pushkin, but it also bears traces of the Grimm Brothers’
“Dear Roland and the Maiden Bright Light” and “The Two King’s Children”
(“Die beiden Künigeskinner”). Tsar Berendey thoughtlessly promises to
give the evil Koshchey Bessmertny “what he has but does not know”. It
turns out to be his own newborn son, Ivan Tsarevich. However, Ivan is
saved from Koshchey by the cunning, fair Mariya Tsarevna, Koshchey’s
36 chapter three

daughter. It is an exciting tale about the triumph of love and the power of
the cross over evil and forgetfulness. Nikolay Gogol was very pleased that
the ‘German’ Zhukovsky had created something so completely Russian in
its spirit and literary devices. However, it has generally been considered a
weakness that Zhukovsky preferred the solemn and heavy hexameter to
the trochaic tetrameter. A Russian fairy tale in hexameters has been seen
by some as an impossible combination, but it can also be argued that
what was achieved was a prose-like diction, radical for its time.
Dating from the 1840s, a decade when Zhukovsky himself had small
children, there are three tales in verse—The Tale of Tsarevich Ivan and
the Grey Wolf (Skazka ob Ivane-Tsareviche i serom volke, 1845), The Tulip
Tree (Tyulpannoe derevo, 1845) and Puss in Boots (Kot v sapogakh, 1846).
The Tale of Tsarevich Ivan and the Grey Wolf is Zhukovsky’s masterpiece. It
unites a host of well-known figures and motives from Russian folktales in
a clever and ingenious way. Ivan, the youngest of three brothers, aspires
to the hand of Beautiful Elena, and to reach that goal he needs the help
of the Firebird, the Grey Wolf, the horse Golden Mane (Zolotogriv) and
Baba Yaga. With the help of ‘the water of life and the water of death’ he
rises from the dead to continue his quest. The evil force is personified
in Koshchey Bessmertny, and to kill him is not easy, as his death is in a
coffer under an oak on an island. In the coffer there is a hare, in the hare
a duck, in the duck an egg, and in the egg Koshchey’s death. In the end,
Ivan needs a cudgel-out-of-the-sack, a table-be-set and а cap of invisibility
to kill Koshchey and win Elena for his bride. A humorously playful detail
is that the Grey Wolf stays in the family as nanny, telling fairy tales to the
small children and teaching the older ones to read and write. The whole
story is said to have been found among the posthumous papers of this
fabulous beast.
The Tulip Tree is a blank-verse version of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy
tale Von dem Machandelbaum (The Almond Tree). It is a ghost tale, full
of ghastly details, and consequently seldom published for children. Zhu-
kovsky’s last fairy tale in verse, Puss in Boots, comes close to Perrault’s
original, Le Maître Chat, ou le Chat botté, except for some slightly satirical
accents.
Russian critics tend to treat Zhukovsky’s children’s stories unfairly. It
is as if the competition of the summer of 1831 is still going on and Push-
kin, the national poet, must wear the victor’s wreath. Such critics consider
Zhukovsky too European to deal with Russian material and too concerned
with the original texts. While simplicity and spontaneity were character-
istic of Pushkin’s fairy tales, Zhukovsky developed a refined, highly poetic
 romanticism (1825–1860) 37

diction. On the other hand, it can be claimed that Zhukovsky eventually

showed more interest in purely Russian material, while also being more
innovative. He concentrates more on pure adventure plots and approaches
them with subtle irony and parody. At a time when the position of fairy
tales as children’s reading was far from established, Zhukovsky unequivo-
cally defended the genre: “I presume that fairy tales for children should
be pure fairy tales, with no other goals than a pleasant, pure development
of fantasy.”9

The Little Humpbacked Horse

In literature for adults, Pyotr Ershov (1815–69) is a nonentity, but in chil-

dren’s literature, his position as a classic surpasses even that of Pushkin.
The Little Humpbacked Horse (Konyok-Gorbunok, 1834) is one of the most
popular Russian children’s books of all time. Ershov wrote it as an 18-year-
old student at the University of St Petersburg. Inspired by Pushkin’s fairy
tales, he set out to create something similar, using figures and motives
from fairy tales he had heard during his Siberian childhood. The metre
he chose was Pushkin’s favourite—the trochaic tetrameter. The result
was a masterpiece. After reading The Little Humpbacked Horse, Pushkin
is supposed to have exclaimed: “Now I can also stop writing this kind of
literature.”10
The Little Humpbacked Horse is a folktale pastiche in which Ivan the
Fool rises to power, assisted by a little magic horse. Ivan, the youngest
of three peasant brothers, is considered a fool, but is in fact simple, hon-
est and straightforward. If needed, he can also show cleverness and cour-
age. Even so, he is quite passive, sleeping much of the time, or despairing
when facing difficult tasks. Without his little humpbacked friend and
other helpers among the animals, he would not have caught the Firebird,
brought Tsar Maiden to the court and found her ring at the bottom of
the ocean. However, as Vladimir Propp has pointed out, the protagonist
of the folktale is nevertheless always a hero, and his helpers and donors
are expressions of his power and capabilities.11 In the end, Ivan the Fool

  9 V. Zhukovskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem: V 20 t. Vol. 4 (M., 2009), 518–519.
(Letter to P.A. Pletnev, 1845.)
10 A.K. Iaroslavtsov, Petr Pavlovich Ershov, avtor skazki “Konek-Gorbunov”: Biograficheskie
vospominaniia tovarishcha ego A.K. Yaroslavtsova (SPb, 1872), 2.
11 V.Ya. Propp, Istoricheskie korni vol’shebnoi skazki, (L., 1946), 150.
38 chapter three

Fig. 3. Rudolf Zhukovsky, The Little Humpbacked Horse (1856)

becomes tsar and marries Tsar Maiden. He receives what he did not aspire
to, while those who schemed fail in their plans. The happy ending has
a democratic, optimistic ring, as a simple peasant lad replaces the old,
cruel ruler. It is, however, a revolution without social roots, as the old tsar
simply dies because of a desperate rejuvenation cure. Ershov here uses the
popular motif of an old man proposing to a young, unwilling girl. Justice
and truth win, as Tsar Maiden is unanimously proclaimed ruler. It is in
fact she who asks for Ivan’s hand in the final scene, a gesture in harmony
with Ivan’s passive character.
 romanticism (1825–1860) 39

The verse fairy tale is told with great skill. Literary and spoken lan-
guage mix with archaisms, dialectisms and popular speech. A touch of
skaz is added, as the narrator is a representative of the simple people.
The plot has many unexpected twists, and magic events alternate freely
with everyday scenes. There are visually absurd scenes, as when Month
Monthson (Mesyats Mesyatsevich) kisses and embraces his guest Ivan
the Fool in heaven, or when the little ruff (a fish) falls on his knees in
front of the mighty whale. A stranded whale has villages on his back and
peasants ploughing on his lips. The humour is light and the irony playful.
Russian critics unfailingly stress Ershov’s bonds with the Russian people,
its language, wisdom and ideals. The fairy tale, which went straight into
the sphere of children’s literature, also became a favourite among the
common people.
From St Petersburg, Ershov moved back to his native city Tobolsk
in 1836. He worked as a teacher and school inspector, but as a writer
he never rose even close to the level of The Little Humpbacked Horse.
When he decided to rework his successful tale to strengthen its Siberian
colouring for a new edition in 1856, the result was close to disaster. Never-
theless, this later version is the source for all later editions. Before the end
of 1917, the book was published 26 times, and in Soviet times it appeared
in more than 130 editions, translated into 27 languages and with an overall
total of seven million copies.
It is a strange story, and some recent studies have even questioned
Ershov’s authorship of The Little Humpbacked Horse.12 These proclaim
Pushkin as the real author, a statement backed up by both biographical
and internal literary proofs. It is telling that Ershov, when finally given the
chance to fill in the gaps of the first edition, apparently did not have a clue
about what had been cut. If the author was Pushkin, these gaps might well
have been the writer’s choice, a literary device also used in Eugene Onegin.
The reasons for Pushkin to give away his work could have been manifold.
He may have wished to deceive his personal censor, or he may have been
reacting sorely to Belinsky’s devastating criticism of his earlier fairy tales.
Alas, Belinsky was as severe in his verdict on The Little Humpbacked Horse,
denying its author any talent and dismissing the work as another pitiful

12 See Aleksandr Latsis, Vernite loshad’: Pushkinovedcheskii detektiv (M., 2003), 3–26;
Vadim Perel’muter, “V poiskakh avtora,” in Aleksandr Pushkin (?), Konek-Gorbunok:
Russkaia skazka v trekh chastiakh (M., 1998), 27–54; Vladimir Kozarovetskii, “Skazka—
lozh’, da v nei namek,” in Aleksandr Pushkin, Konek-Gorbunok: Russkaia skazka (M., 2009),
3–41.
40 chapter three

folktale imitation. It is not even “a funny farce”, Belinsky proclaimed,13

and the critic of Notes of the Fatherland (Otechestvennye zapiski) agreed:
Ershov had produced only “rhymed absurdities”.14 The judgement of pos-
terity has been quite the opposite.
Аnother alternative to the candidature of Pushkin as the author of The
Little Humpbacked Horse has also been suggested. The musician Nikolay
Devitte (1811–44) was a lover of literary mystifications, and as the author of
unpublished fairy tales in verse he might have wanted to help a Siberian
student in need.15 Whether he had the talent for writing such a master-
piece as The Little Humpbacked Horse is another question.

An equally popular fairy tale in prose of the 1850s can be added to the
verse fairy tales of Pushkin, Zhukovsky and Ershov: The Little Scarlet Flower
(Alenky tsvetochek) by Sergey Aksakov (1791–1859). It was originally pub-
lished as an appendix to Aksakov’s novel of early reminiscences, Childhood
Years of Bagrov the Grandson (1858), where it is presented as a tale told by
the housekeeper Pelageya in the early nineteenth century. Aksakov, who
recreated it from his memory, saw it as a product of Russian oral tradition.
But the prototype is certainly not any of the Russian tales mentioned by
Soviet scholars, but, as Aksakov himself later confessed, Beauty and the
Beast (La Belle et la Bête) from Mme de Beaumont’s Magasin des enfants
(1756). The Russian nobility knew this eighteenth-century publication
both from the French original and from numerous Russian translations.
Aksakov had also seen André Grétry’s opéra comique version of the tale,
Zémire et Azor. He eventually strengthened the fairy-tale element through
the use of recurrent epithets and standard folktale formulae.
This tale about self-sacrificing love and the capacity to perceive the
beauty of the soul beyond a repulsive appearance has a timeless appeal.
A merchant picks a scarlet flower for his daughter, and, as a result, he
is threatened with death by a horrifying beast, the owner of the castle
and the garden. Out of love for her father, his beloved daughter takes
his place as a prisoner at the castle, and over time her faithfulness and
growing love causes a wonderful change in the beast. The satanic spell is
dispersed, and the prince captured within the beast is freed. It is also, as

13 Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 1 (M., 1953), 151.

14 Otechestvennye zapiski 8 (1840): 57.
15 E.L. Ukolova and V.S. Ukolov, Raspiatyi na arfe; Sud’ba i tvorchestvo Nikolaia Devitte
(M., 2001), 110–113.
 romanticism (1825–1860) 41

Bruno Bettelheim has pointed out, a tale about a girl’s emancipation from
her father figure, the necessity of transferring her love to a foreign and
therefore frightening person and her acceptance of the sexual dimension
of love.16

The question of whether fairy tales, be they folktales or original, artistic

tales, should be given to children was far from settled during the period
of Romanticism. Most children’s magazines in fact avoided the genre on
principle, and many of the leading writers of the period followed their
example. Something of a boom could nevertheless be seen in the 1840s,
when the very term ‘skazka’ was so sellable that publishers even employed
it in connection with books that actually did not include fairy tales, such
as The Tales of My Grandmother (Skazki moey babushki, 1839) and One
Tale after Another (Skazka za skazkoy, 1841–44).
Romanticism favoured the scientific collection of folktales. Anonymous
folktales and folk songs had always occupied a prominent place in oral
culture, but during the Romantic period in the 1830s and 1840s figures
like Vladimir Dal, Bogdan Bronnitsyn, Ivan Vanenko and Ivan Sakharov
systematically collected and published them. It was an open issue to what
extent these were authentic folktales or stylised works retold in a literary
manner.
Child readers were addressed later. Ivan Vanenko’s (died 1865) Rus-
sian Folktales and Short Tales for Small Children (Narodnye russkie skazki
i pobasenki dlya detey mladshego vozrasta, 1847–49) featured folklore
plots with modern traits and the editor’s own moral reflections. Later,
they often served as reading for elementary schools. An edition of 1863
carried the title Nanny’s Tales (Nyaniny skazki). The many animal fairy
tales that Ekaterina Avdeeva (1789–1865) included in her popular Russian
Tales for Children, Told by Nanny Avdotya Stepanovna Cherepeva (Russkie
skazki dlya detey, rasskazannye nyanyushkoyu Avdoteyu Stepanovnoyu
Cherepevoyu, 1844) are still being published as examples of genuine
folktales—“The Round Loaf ” (“Kolobok”), “The Wolf and the Goat” (“Volk
i koza”), “The Cat, the Fox and the Cockerel” (“Kot, lisa i petukh”), “The
Wolf and the Fox” (“Volk i lisa”), and others.

16 Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: the Meaning and Importance of Fairy
Tales (London, 1978), 306–309.
42 chapter three

Even Aleksandr Afanasev (1826–71), the most accomplished collector

and publisher of Russian folktales, edited a special collection for children
in 1870—Russian Folktales for Children (Russkie detskie skazki). If it had
earlier been generally known that children wanted to read fairy tales, it
was by then a widely acknowledged truth that the simple life-wisdom of
the folktales was of importance for the development of children’s emo-
tional life.

National History

Romanticism brought with it a heightened interest in the national past.

The standard work on Russian history was Nikolay Karamzin’s monumen-
tal History of the Russian State (Istoriya gosudarstva Rossiyskogo, 1818–26),
a work that also provided material for children’s writers. Nikolay Polevoy
(1796–1846) took a polemical attitude towards Karamzin, as even the title
of his History of the Russian People (Istoriya russkogo naroda, 1829–33)
shows. The history of the people, not the emperors, interested him. For
children Polevoy wrote Russian History for Early Reading (Russkaya isto-
riya dlya pervonachalnogo chteniya, 1835–41). In the foreword Polevoy pro-
posed that history could be absorbingly interesting. Not only did it show
how profoundly God rules the world and its people, but it also offered
moral examples. Evil and vices were punished and good rewarded, if not
in this world, then in the form of the contempt and hatred or the admi-
ration and gratitude of later generations. Belinsky found Polevoy’s four
volumes excellent reading. They were not just a collection of well-known
facts, but offered a subjective, absorbing view of their content. Belinsky
also praised the good language, the absence of superfluous details and the
author’s deep knowledge of the subject.
It was nevertheless Aleksandra Ishimova (1804/05–81), one of the first
professional woman writers in Russian children’s literature, who wrote the
classic Russian history for children. She had turned to writing in order to
earn a living. In 1833, there appeared her translation of Evenings at Home
(Semeynye vechera, 1833), a collection of didactic and moralistic tales of
the 1790s by the English writers John Aikin and Anna Barbauld. Members
of the court were interested in the book, and Ishimova found a patron-
ess there in one of the Grand Duchesses. Ishimova admired Walter Scott
and his recent Tales of a Grandfather (1828–30), a children’s version of
his own History of Scotland (1828). The result was her History of Russia in
Stories for Children (Istoriya Rossii v rasskazakh dlya detey, 1837–40), pub-
lished in six volumes by the Academy of Sciences, which accepted it on
 romanticism (1825–1860) 43

the grounds that it was “warmed by a love for the Fatherland, directed at
moral usefulness, and could serve to awaken children’s interest in further
reading in Russian history.”17
In the opening words of History of Russia in Stories for Children, Ishi-
mova promised a story more fascinating than any fairy tale: “Dear chil-
dren! You love listening to marvellous stories about brave heroes and
beautiful princesses; you enjoy fairy tales about good and evil enchant-
resses. Nevertheless, I am sure you will be even more pleased to hear not
a fairy tale, but a true story, the genuine truth. Listen to me and I will
tell you about the doings of your ancestors.”18 True to this approach, the
history of Russia was presented as a fascinating drama with heroes and
villains, moments of greatness and tragedy. Emotionally involved in her
material, Ishimova expresses boundless admiration for Peter the Great
and Catharine the Great, while she grasps in vain for psychological expla-
nations for the evil deeds of Ivan the Terrible. She keeps up a dialogue
with her readers, anticipating their reactions and exclamations. Russian
patriotism and a Christian faith define her worldview, as she covers the
whole history of Russia, from its birth in the ninth century up to the death
of Alexander I.
Ishimova borrowed from Karamzin’s History of the Russian State for the
first parts, but she also made use of many other sources, melding them
all into a highly readable and informative story. She had a good eye for
concrete, dramatic details, but neither did she forget to offer informa-
tion about, for example, life at the court or the situation of women and
children in earlier times. Poems by Derzhavin, Pushkin and Zhukovsky
animate the narration.
History of Russia in Stories for Children was a huge success. One of Ishi-
mova’s admirers was Aleksandr Pushkin. “That’s the way to write!” he
said in an encouraging letter to her, shortly before his fatal duel in 1837.19
It was the stylistic clarity and the lively narration that impressed him.
Belinsky, too, offered whole-hearted praise of Ishimova’s good language
and knowledge of her subject, though he later became more aware of
Ishimova’s conservative view of history, a feature that was condemned
by the radical literary critic Nikolay Dobrolyubov. Like Karamzin, Ishi-
mova centred her history on the Emperors and Empresses, seeing them

17 V. Ivanov, “A.O. Ishimova i ee kniga,” in A.O. Ishimova, Istoriia Rossii v rasskazakh
dlia detei. Vol. 2 (SPb, 1993), 365.
18 A. Ishimova, Istoriia Rossii v rasskazakh dlia detei. Vol. 1 (SPb, 1993), 1.
19 A.S. Pushkin, Sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh. Vol 10 (M., 1958), 623.
44 chapter three

as the guarantors of Russia’s greatness and prosperity. The existing order

appears as an expression of God’s will, while the hard lot of the people
is passed over in silence, and outbursts of discontent, like the Pugachev
rebellion, are social plagues.
History of Russia in Stories for Children, published in six editions during
the nineteenth century, was Ishimova’s main work. History was to remain
Ishimova’s main interest, but none of her many subsequent volumes, like
Grandma’s Lessons, or Russian History for Small Children (Babushkiny
uroki, ili Russkaya istoriya dlya malenkikh detey, 1852–56), Mamma’s
Lessons, or Universal History in Talks for Children (Mamenkiny uroki, ili
Vseobshchaya istoriya v razgovorakh dlya detey, 1858–63) and A Brief
Russian History (Sokrashchonnaya russkaya istoriya, 1867), had the same
impact. After the breakdown of the Soviet Union in 1991, the book expe-
rienced a new vogue, serving once again as schoolchildren’s first contact
with Russian history.
Ishimova was deeply involved in popularising knowledge for children.
The Summer Holidays in 1844, or A Trip to Moscow (Kanikuly 1844 goda, ili
poezdka v Moskvu, 1846), in the form of a girl’s diary about a trip from St
Petersburg to Moscow, reads like a guidebook to the Old Russian capital.
The meeting with Moscow is also a meeting with the genuine Russia, its lit-
erature and language. The diary ends in a promise to use Russian (instead
of French) more frequently in the future and also to urge others to do so.
In Stories for Children from the History of Natural Science (Rasskazy dlya
detey iz estestvennoy istorii, 1876), Ishimova informs children about the
flora and fauna of the whole world, illustrating her text with poems.
A pious tone, coupled with a concern for the young reader’s fond-
ness for dramatic events, characterises Ishimova’s popular Sacred History
in Talks for Small Children (Svyashchennaya istoriya v razgovorakh dlya
malenkikh detey 1841). Sometimes her narration gets out of hand, as in the
final scene, where the mother exhorts her children to thank God for his
kindness. Her daughter Katya replies: “Dear mother, we must also thank
you for all the good things that you have told us.” To which her son Kolya
adds: “Yes, yes, mother, we really have to thank you and kiss not only
your gentle hands but also your feet!”20 It is tempting to see this scene as
Ishimova’s self-appraisal after her life’s work in the service of children’s
literature.

20 А. Ishimova, Sviashchennaia istoriia. Third ed. (SPb, 1848), 128.

 romanticism (1825–1860) 45

The fictional works by Ishimova are weak. The Little Bell: A Reader for
Orphanages (Kolokolchik: Kniga dlya chteniya v priyutakh, 1849) consists
of simple moral tales. A pious widow sets out to write a book for her young
friends at the school, choosing to concentrate on heroes of indisputable
morals. “Naughty children do not deserve to be written about in books.
They are turned away not only from orphanages, but from all places, so
how can one feel like talking about them? No, let’s leave them in peace
right away and instead go on with telling about the small Helpers that we
all love.”21 To this category belongs ‘honest Alyosha’, who never eats buns
without his mother’s permission, and ‘happy Annushka’, who is cheerful,
tidy and neat, even if she is the daughter of a poor soldier’s widow.
Vladimir Lvov’s (1805–56) novel The Grey Coat, or the Keeping of a Promise
(Sery armyak, ili ispolnenie obeshchaniya, 1836) successfully treats recent
history. During the Great Fire of Moscow in 1812 and the French occu-
pation of the town, 13-year-old Petrusha loses contact with his parents.
His happy childhood is over; the only bond with the past is a grey coat,
a gift from his father. Petrusha sets out on a long trip, a promised pil-
grimage to Kiev. It is a hard journey, but the boy always chances to
meet kind people from all social classes, all of them ready to help him.
There emerges a picture of a united Russian people at a time of trial.
Petrusha also makes friends with a French soldier, a prisoner, who tells
him about the events of 1792, “a terrible movement, known under the
name of revolution”, that forced his family to flee to Russia. From Kiev,
Petrusha returns to Moscow, where he makes a living as a carpenter. His
main wish is to find all his benefactors and repay the kindness he met
during his journey. Ultimately, Petrusha is rewarded for his unbroken
spirit, as he regains his social position, the rank of a gentleman, and the
family property. The story of Petrusha is the story of how Russia recovered
after the Napoleon invasion.
The partly absorbing, partly sickly-sweet story of The Grey Coat alter-
nates with information, given “while Petrusha is resting”, about daily life
and the geography of Russia. The plot includes odd coincidences and
unexpected meetings, behind which one senses the author’s belief in
the goodness of man and the wise guidance of Providence. In spite of
its rather modest literary qualities, The Grey Coat became a minor classic
with a ninth edition appearing in 1907. As significant a critic as Apollon
Grigorev expressed his admiration for Lvov’s novel in 1847, calling it “one

21 A. Ishimova, Kolokol’chik (SPb, 1849), 103.

46 chapter three

of the too few children’s books that would honour not only Russian but
children’s literature in general”.22
Lvov, who incidentally was married to a sister of Pogorelsky, the author
of The Black Hen, was a retired officer with literature and agriculture as
his passions. His debut in literature, A Little Red Egg for Children (Kras-
noe yaichko dlya detey, 1831), an anthology of short stories, had passed
unobserved, partly because of its restricted range of themes. The book
was based upon his own experiences, as he had had to take care of his
younger brothers and sisters after the early death of his parents. Remark-
able is Lvov’s statement in the foreword that all the tales of the book had
been tested upon an audience of children.
Lvov could never repeat the success of The Grey Coat, even though
he tried to tell a similar story in Seryozha, the Foster-Child (Priyomysh
Seryozha) in 1854. A boy, who by accident has been separated from his
parents, lives with a merchant. While the son of the family is placed in
a good boarding school in St Petersburg, Seryozha has to stay at home.
Kind and modest by nature, he feels bitterness about being classed as
‘petty bourgeois’. Having learned the truth about his past, he runs away
from home in an attempt to live his own life. Seryozha appears again in
the life of his stepfather in the role of the mysterious stranger who saves
the old man from going bankrupt. After finding his own family, Seryozha
becomes a successful businessman, while his stepbrother Misha, the black
sheep of the family, only after repentance and forgiveness in a Christian
spirit, manages to find his place in society as an officer. The motives of
coincidences, unknown benefactors and revelation scenes showed that
Lvov was familiar with the novels of Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens.
Superfluous geographical details mar the overall impression.

The Moral Tale

The predominating genre during the Romantic era was the moral tale, a
pan-European type of children’s literature. In these simple stories about
virtue rewarded and vice punished, mischievous children are stigmatised
or undergo a moral transformation. At the other pole, we find paragons
of virtue, well-brought-up young people. At their best, these stories did
awake good feelings and contribute to the moral education of the chil-
dren, but they hardly ever had any notable literary qualities.

22 A.G., “Seryi armiak, ili Ispolnennoe obeshchanie: Povest’ dlia detei. Izd. 2-e. Moskva,
1847,” Moskovskii gorodskoi listok. February 14, 1847, 145.
 romanticism (1825–1860) 47

In “A Little Book for Children” (“Detskaya knizhka”, 1830), an unpub-

lished lampoon on three odious adult writers and critics, Pushkin used the
opportunity to discredit this type of literature. The Alyosha of the first tale
is an intelligent, but thoughtless boy. He does not care for studying, and
his arrogant ignorance makes him everybody’s laughing-stock. Pavlusha,
in the second miniature, is tidy, good-hearted and diligent, but incapable
of saying even three words without lying. As a result, nobody believes him,
even when he tells the truth. The third story tells about Vanyusha, a dirty
and impudent rascal. A good birching makes him realise his faults, and he
readily improves his manners.
The undisputed master of the genre was Boris Fyodorov (1794–1875).
Numerically, he dominated children’s literature in a ten-year period from
1827 to 1837 with a total output of more than one thousand poems and
one hundred stories. In 1830 alone seven of his books appeared, mostly
plays. Fyodorov was a highly educated man, a member of the Academy
of Sciences, but he worked for the Third Department, including making
reports on Vissarion Belinsky and liberal literary magazines.
Fyodorov began as the editor of the richly illustrated magazine The
New Children’s Library (Novaya detskaya biblioteka, 1827–29, 1831, 1833). In
his policy statement Fyodorov approvingly quoted the Tsar’s words that
a moral education was the basis for the prosperity of the state. He also
hoped to awaken an interest in reading and learning. In tales, dramas and
poems Fyodorov depicted the world of children, often under the revealing
rubric ‘Moral examples’. Poetic snapshots of children, such as ‘Diligent
Nikolinka’, ‘Lazy Katenka’, ‘Modest Ernest’, ‘Garrulous Dashenka’, ‘Careless
Annushka’, ‘Slovenly Yulenka’, ‘Pavlusha the Rascal’, ‘Prudent Dunyushka’,
and ‘Cry-Baby Mityusha’, taught morals in a simplified manner.
Material from the magazine provided the content of A Child’s Flowerbed
(Detsky tvsetnik, 1827, 1828) and A Child’s Pavilion (Detsky pavilon, 1836).
These literary anthologies (almanakh in Russian) included historical
anecdotes, talks, fables, moral tales, poems and plays. Fyodorov wanted
to assist in the upbringing of children by filling their hearts with ‘a moral
aroma’ and a love of God and their fellow men. His heroes achieve true
happiness through charity for the poor, respect for old people and kind-
ness towards animals and birds. On the other hand, excessive curiosity,
vanity, stubbornness, disobedience, greediness, cowardice and laziness
can lead them astray.
Fyodorov’s plays, written in both prose and verse, were collected in
the four volumes of Children’s Theatre (Detsky teatr, 1830–31, 1835), where
his adaptations of plays by Berquin, de Genlis and Louis-François Jauffret
are mixed in among his original works. Children were supposed to stage
48 chapter three

these approximately forty plays at home for their own edification and for
the amusement of their parents on name days, birthdays and other happy
occasions. Most of them take place in a familiar home milieu and raise
questions of moral and social nature. Petya, in The Black Cat, or The Liar
and the Epicure (Chorny kot, ili Lgun i lakomka), breaks a glass jar in order
to eat the forbidden syrup, but his accusations against the family cat are
exposed as lies. Another cat, actually a sorcerer in disguise, appears in
the main role in the fairy-tale play The Cat in the Golden Carriage (Kot v
zolotoy karete), in which a spoilt and lazy prince is taught a lesson. In a
Russia where social gaps were very large, Fyodorov was much occupied
with teaching the children the proper attitude towards the poor. All con-
flicts in these plays are solved in a sentimental way, more for the moral
advantage of the giver than for the genuine benefit of those living in need.
At a play’s end, adult characters often sum up the message.
Fyodorov introduced a new milieu into children’s literature: the board-
ing school for noble girls with its strong cult of the Tsar and the Tsar-
itsa. The protagonists of The Portrait of the Empress (Portret imperatritsy,
1829) experience deep sorrow when they learn that Maria Feodorovna,
the consort of Paul I and the patroness of their institute, has passed away.
However, the tragic event also offers the heroine a chance to delight her
beloved sister by presenting her with a secretly painted portrait of the
Tsaritsa. The delivery of the amateur picture is the dramatic highlight of
the play.
Fyodorov’s best works are his poems, collected in Poems for Children
(Detskie stikhotvoreniya, 1829) and Greetings of Children’s Love: A Collec-
tion of Poems, Spoken by Children for the Congratulation of Their Parents
and Relatives (Privetstviya detskoy lyubvi: Sobranie stikhov, govoryon-
nykh detmi dlya pozdravleniya roditeley i rodnykh, 1834). They include
congratulatory verses, poems about nature, and seasonal poems celebrat-
ing the joys of the Russian winter and holidays. The range was so wide
that the critic Dobrolyubov, on the occasion of a new edition in the 1850s,
could not refrain from a sarcastic comment: “Mr Fyodorov has poems on
everything; not one flower has avoided his poetic pencil, every bird has
its own poem, Russian military leaders have been roused and ancient phi-
losophers disturbed—nothing has escaped him.”23 As a poet, Fyodorov
saw himself as a pupil of Aleksandr Shishkov, and, in a poem of 1829, he
expressed his gratitude to Shishkov for many bright and happy memories

23 N.A. Dobroliubov, Sobranie sochinenii v deviati tomakh. Vol. 3 (M.-L., 1962), 162.
 romanticism (1825–1860) 49

connected with Children’s Library. At his best Fyodorov could fill his
poems with the same vigour and joy. He even excelled in writing poems
in which every line consists of only one word, still retaining the rhymes.
In such works as A Riddle-Play for the Amusement of Young People (Igra
v zagadki dlya udovolstviya yunogo vozrasta, 1834), A New Temple of Hap-
piness (Novy khram schastya, 1836) and A Young Lover of Natural Science
(Maly lyubitel naturalnoy istorii, 1836), Fyodorov experimented with new
genres. A Riddle-Play consists of 160 cards, that is, eighty riddles with their
corresponding answers, while A New Temple of Happiness is a kind of role-
play, based on Fyodorov’s own ‘moral examples’. Furthermore, Fyodorov
was one of the first Russian children’s writers to understand the impor-
tance of illustrations.
Throughout the 1830s and the 1840s Fyodorov was hugely popular. A
bestseller was his Joseph the Beautiful (Iosif Prekrasny, 1836), a reworking
of the Biblical tale about how Providence leads Joseph. After a posthumous
publication of his plays in 1882, Fyodorov’s name abruptly disappeared
from children’s literature. Such critics as Belinsky and Dobrolyubov had
already criticised him severely during his lifetime. Belinsky found only
“pathetic maxims” and “barbaric verses” in Fyodorov’s plays and poems,24
while Dobrolyubov worried about Fyodorov educating conservative, sub-
missive citizens.25 Fyodorov has been called a cynical graphomaniac and
a speculator in bad taste, but it is more accurate to see him as a typical
writer of his time. He was not even a purely Russian phenomenon, as
can be seen from the list of writers that he translated. Jauffret, Berquin,
Ducray-Duminil, Bouilly, Christoph von Schmid and Sophie de Renneville
all came close to the unsophisticated poetics and simplified moral lessons
of Fyodorov.

Vladimir Odoevsky

After his first appearance in children’s literature in 1834 with The Little
Town in the Snuffbox, Vladimir Odoevsky published in children’s maga-
zines and miscellaneous volumes only sporadically during the next few
years. In 1840 these works were collected in the volume Granddad Iriney’s
Fairy Tales and Stories for Children (Skazki i rasskazy dlya detey dedushki
Irineya). Granddad Iriney himself appears in some of the stories as the

24 Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 1 (M., 1953), 412.

25 Dobroliubov, Sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 5 (M.-L., 1962), 311.
50 chapter three

narrator. He loves clever children, “who listen when somebody addresses

them, who keep their wits about them and do not look out the win-
dow when their mother shows them a book”. His name goes back to the
author’s admiration for E.T.A. Hoffmann, in whose novel Kater Murr a
certain Fürst Irenäus (Prince Irenaeus) appears.
In two sketches for a foreword to Granddad Iriney’s Fairy Tales and
Stories, Odoevsky laid out his view on children’s literature. His goal was
to awaken the soul and the intellect of passive daydreamers. Reading in
itself was an active process, independent of its object, and therefore only
inexperienced pedagogues could feel alarmed by children’s taste for fan-
tasy and fairy tales. The function of fairy tales was to stimulate curiosity,
develop imagination and create an interest in reading.
In spite of this defence of fantasy literature, Odoevsky himself did not
produce any longer work in the vein of Hoffmann. Instead, he portrayed
children like those favoured by Granddad Iriney, children who carefully
listen to the words of grown-ups, take heed and consequently experience
the joy of being good. Diligent Lidinka, in “The Silver Rouble” (“Sereb-
ryanny rubl”, first publ. 1879), is torn between the desire to buy herself
a doll and the urge to give her silver rouble to the lame beggar at the
church door. It goes without saying that it is the philanthropic side of her
that prevails. In “The Little Orphan” (“Sirotinka”, first publ. 1846), Nastya
devotes herself to serving the poor children of her home village in the
spirit of true Christianity. The memory of a meeting with the Tsarevna at
a boarding school in St Petersburg inspires her in her work. There appears
to be a mystical bond between these two young women, as Nastya, for no
obvious reason, languishes away and dies shortly after the death of her
beloved Princess.
Death is not a definite end—that is the message of “Caterpillar”
(“Chervyachok”). The caterpillar does not die, but only changes form
when it turns into a butterfly. The parallel with the life of man is explicitly
brought out in a religious spirit, as Odoevsky addresses his young readers:
“You can often find that someone you frolicked and played with on the
soft meadow, tomorrow lies pale and lifeless; his family and friends cry by
his side, and he cannot smile at them; he is put in a fresh grave, and it is as
if your friend has never existed! But do not believe so! Your friend has not
died; his grave will be opened—and, unseen by us, he will rise towards
heaven in the form of a shining angel.”
Goodness is rewarded in Odoevsky’s world, and usually in an unexpected
way. The author had a predilection for dramatic scenes of recognition and
odd coincidences. The boy who saves the life of an abandoned baby by
 romanticism (1825–1860) 51

bringing it to an orphanage is many years afterwards himself saved from

starvation by his protégé, now a famous artist (“Sharmanshchik”). The fate
of the boy André in “The Joiner” (“Stolyar”), a true story about the famous
eighteenth-century French furniture-maker André Roubo, shows that a
humble origin is no obstacle to an ambitious and talented person’s rise in
status. André’s love for learning is noticed by a rich protector, who helps
the young man to become a renowned architect.
Kindness towards animals was an important issue for Odoevsky. The
animal story “Poor Gnedko” (“Bedny Gnedko”) tells of the sad fate of a
maltreated horse. The narrator addresses the audience directly in order
to make sure that the moral is understood: “I must say, my friends, that
it is a sin to torment poor animals, which are there for our use or our
pleasure. He who torments animals without any reason is a bad person.
He who torments a horse or a dog is also capable of tormenting a human
being.” The diary of a ten-year-old girl, “Extracts from Masha’s Journal”
(“Otryvki iz zhurnala Mashi”), gives interesting everyday scenes from the
life of a middle-class girl. The diary form is initially used in a productive
way, as the girl engages in self-searching, but the tale is spoiled by the
author’s too obvious attempt to set Masha up as a model heroine. What
Odoevsky presented through Masha was a new ideal for women, not just a
life of piano playing, balls and romances, but one of active involvement in
housekeeping. Masha takes this ideal to heart while still a child. Belinsky
is right when he comments that Masha reasons and behaves much too
maturely for her age.26
Odoevsky’s Granddad Iriney’s Fairy Tales and Stories for Children was
one of the few examples of Russian children’s literature to be praised by
Belinsky. According to him, Granddad Iriney is a Russian writer whom
children of all other nations could envy.27 Odoevsky knew how to address
children and even adults who had made Iriney’s acquaintance did not
wish to part with him. When Granddad Iriney returned six years later
with A Collection of Granddad Iriney’s Songs for Children (Sbornik detskikh
pesen dedushki Irineya, 1847), however, Belinsky dismissed these songs
and poems as banal and unpoetic. Nevertheless, there were qualities in
this first Russian songbook for children that went unnoticed by the cele-
brated critic. What Odoevsky had wanted to create were mnemonic songs
which would help the children to learn central rules of behaviour and give

26 Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 4 (M., 1954), 108.

27 Ibid., 107.
52 chapter three

them a positive attitude toward life, work and studies. A cheerful attitude
reigns in these songs about school life. Pupils are to sing one of them
as they enter the classroom two by two. Many of Odoevsky’s songs were
regularly included in Russian schoolbooks.
Included in the publisher Dmitry Samarin’s (1831–1901) series A Library
for Children and Young People (Biblioteka dlya detey i yunoshestva) in
1879, Granddad Iriney’s Fairy Tales and Stories for Children achieved clas-
sic status with several editions appearing within a few years. In addition
to the stories, editions from 1879 onwards include three plays. In The Tsar
Maiden (Tsar-devitsa, 1836), a tragedy for marionette theatre, the audience
is invited to correct the anachronistic errors of the author, who has freely
lumped together well-known figures from different epochs. Two well-
written comedies, The Tale-Bearer or Cunning against Cunning (Perenos-
chitsa, ili Khitrost protiv khitrosti, 1836) and Sunday (Voskresene), deal
with intrigues and complicated relationships in boarding schools for girls.
Also these plays prove that, of all the Russian children’s writers of the
1830s and 1840s, Vladimir Odoevsky showed the greatest understanding
of child psychology.

Women Writers

Sad at heart, Aleksandr Shishkov, president of the Academy of Sciences,

noticed the deficiency of children’s literature in the thirties. He there-
fore urged Lyubov Yartsova (1794–1876) to write a book for children with
“a moral sense and a Russian spirit”.28 He knew Yartsova as the translator
of The New Robinson (Novy Robinzon, 1833–34), Johann Wyss’s version of
Defoe’s masterpiece. The result was a one-thousand-page-long novel, Use-
ful Reading for Children, or A Happy Family (Poleznoe chtenie dlya detey,
ili Schastlivoe semeystvo, 1834–36), published by the Russian Academy
in an edition of 1,200 copies. The client was apparently satisfied with the
result, as the novel was duly awarded the Academy’s gold medal, a prize
instituted by Catherine the Great for outstanding achievements in the
field of Russian literature.
The happy Russian family Goodman (Dobrovy) lives an idyllic life at
their estate Bliss (Blagodatnoe) beside the Volga. Tender relations reign
between the family members. To deny oneself what one loves most for

28 Liubov’ Iartsova, “Ot sochinitel’nitsy,” in L. Iartsova, Schastlivoe semeistvo, ili Poleznoe

chtenie dlia detei. Chast’ pervaia (SPb, 1854), IV.
 romanticism (1825–1860) 53

the sake of the others is their highest joy. The serfs are wholeheartedly
devoted to their masters. Readers are invited to choose their favourite
among the five lovely children of the family, a difficult task, consider-
ing their complete lack of individuality. All their small adventures have
an instructive side. Between performing good deeds for the inevitable
orphans, cripples and beggars, the children have scientific conversations
on astronomy, history, physics and biology. A thunderstorm and a rain-
bow are discussed from both a physical and theological perspective. The
grandfather constantly reminds the children that God’s will reigns over all
phenomena. The negative characters all come from outside the Goodman
paradise. They are self-obsessed slaves of fashion, spoiled and lazy chil-
dren. They are also bad patriots, conversing only in French and ignorant
about everything Russian.
In 1854, a second edition was published under the original title A Happy
Family, or Useful Reading for Children. In the magazine Little Star Ishimova
recommended Yartsova’s novel because of its irreproachable morals and
interesting content. Nikolay Chernyshevsky was ready to give the book
an honorary place in Russian children’s literature, even though he found
its form outdated and the language heavy.29 This publication launched a
new set of children’s books from Yartsova, none of which, however, were
successful. The lavishly illustrated A Walk with Children in Kiev (Progulka
s detmi po Kievu, 1859) treated the history of the town with its legends,
university and monastery.
Anna Zontag (1785 or 1786–1864) was a more prominent writer. A
member of a noble family, she found a faithful mentor in her uncle, the
poet Vasily Zhukovsky. With his help, she started off with translations,
including the significant set of fairy tales in The Children’s Interlocutor in
1826. Married to an American navy officer in Russian service, she spent
the 1830s in Odessa, but eventually settled down on the family estate in
Mishenskoe.
Zontag’s main works were included in Stories for Children (Povesti
dlya detey, 1828–30) and Stories and Fairy Tales for Children (Povesti i
skazki dlya detey, 1832–34), both in three volumes. For small children she
wrote about seven-year-old girls, who are just discovering the world. The
moral dilemmas they have to face teach them to show generosity and
to avoid seeking praise. Sofinka gives money to a poor widow instead of
buying toys for herself (“Sofinka”). The tale “Olenka and her grandmother

29 [N. Chernyshevskii], [Review], Sovremennik. Vol. 49:1,V (1855): 40.

54 chapter three

Nazarevna” (“Olenka i babushka eyo Nazarevna”) brought tears to the

eyes of Zhukovsky, as he recognised persons from his own childhood in
this sentimental tale about the liaison between a poor old woman and an
orphan girl. In the juvenile tales we meet families who have to go through
poverty and misfortunes before they obtain redress through heavenly
intervention. The parental task of raising children is complicated in “The
Imitator” (“Podrazhatel”) because of the harmful influence of a neighbour
woman, a representative of high society with its false ideals of pride and
vanity. “The Overturned Carriage” (“Oprokinutaya kareta”) teaches that
good deeds should be performed out of genuine concern and not for self-
ish reasons. In the tale “Diligence and Laziness” (“Trudolyubie i lenost”,
1844), published in the magazine A Library of Education (Biblioteka dlya
vospitaniya), the poor but diligent boy becomes a doctor with the help of
a benefactor, while his lazy friend, who preferred begging in the street to
work, ends up in a Siberian prison camp.
Zontag received much praise for her talented narration, exemplary lan-
guage and good literary taste, but it would have been as fair to point out
the sentimental and overtly didactic features of her works. This was most
clearly seen in the 1860s, when Zontag’s main works were collected in
A Present for Children on Easter Sunday, or a Collection of Tales and
Short Stories for Children (Podarok detyam v den Svetlogo Voskresenya,
ili Sobranie detskikh povestey i rasskazov, 1861–62) and Christmas Eve
(Sochelnik pred Rozhdestvom Khristovym, 1864, 1880).
Zontag’s plays, collected in Three Comedies for Children (Tri komedii
dlya detey, 1842), stress love for parents. The two daughters of “A Present
for the New Year” (“Podarok na Novy god”), actually a play written by Elisa-
beth Charlotte Guizot, want to repay their mother for all the love and care
she has shown them. A competition in virtue emerges, with the deceased
father’s personal Bible as the reward. The mother reminds the girls of the
Christian duty to remember those who are left without New Year gifts.
Her daughter Mashenka feels the joy of charity: “Oh, how good it feels to
help the poor, to do good for people.” Noteworthy is the plea for racial
understanding in Zontag’s play The Bill of Exchange (Veksel), in which a
Jew appears as the helper of his deceased Russian friend’s family.
Zontag’s literary output is extensive, but as she most often neglected
to make any distinction between original works and translations, the
reader ends up wondering whether she actually wrote anything herself.
“The Bracelets” (“Braslety”), a story about twenty girls in a boarding school
competing for the love of their principal, Mrs Dobrolyubova, has a strong
Russian ring, but a simultaneous publication of the same story by Boris
 romanticism (1825–1860) 55

Fyodorov reveals that it was actually written by Maria Edgeworth. In

Zontag’s The Childish Story-Teller (Detsky rasskazchik, ili Sobranie
povestey, 1834), Tales for Children (Povesti dlya detey, 1835), A Collection
of Moral Tales (Sobranie nravouchitelnykh povestey, 1835) and Children’s
Theatre, or a Collection of the Best Foreign Writers (Detsky teatr, ili Sobranie
luchshikh inostrannykh avtorov, 1865), she acknowledged translating such
writers as Campe, Berquin, Blanchard, Guizot and von Schmid. What these
writers had in common was a love for an irreproachable moral ending.
Zontag’s main work is Sacred History for Children (Svyashchennaya isto-
riya dlya detey, 1837), a fluent rewriting of Biblical tales. Christian teach-
ing was to form the basis of man’s life, as “the Gospel revealed to us the
most important truths; it made the most abstract notions understandable
for us”.30 The critic Feliks Toll was in rapture: “An excellent book, which
ought to be in every family, where an early reading of the Holy Bible is
considered a necessity.”31 He was convinced that the skillfully written
book would become every unspoiled child’s favourite. Accepted as school
reading, Sacred History for Children went through nine editions, the last
one appearing in 1871. Its author received the prestigious Demidov prize
from the Academy of Sciences.
Zontag’s translations and adaptations of fairy tales, collected in Fairy
Tales for Small Children (Volshebnye skazki dlya detey pervogo vozrasta,
1862), have enjoyed a more lasting success. They include tales by Perrault,
the Brothers Grimm and Wilhelm Hauff. The folktale pastiches “The Ser-
vant and the Master” (“Sluga i gospodin”, 1831) and “The Dwarf with the
Fiddle” (“Karlik so skripkoy”) told of encounters with diabolic power and
the rescue of the soul through heavenly intervention. The Birch Maiden
(Devitsa-Bereznitsa, 1830) was a Russified adaptation of a German fairy
tale. The spoiled, stubborn girl of a poor family changes for the better
and ends up as the spouse of a prince through the magic help of her god-
mother, the Birch-Maiden.
Sofya Burnashova (c. 1820–83), a sister of the writer Viktor Buryanov,
wrote for children under the pseudonym Devitsa Esbe, that is ‘Spinster S.B.’
Raised at the Smolny Institute, she started with translations from French,
two volumes of contemporary moral tales by the Duchesse d’Abrantès
(1839). In the same year, there appeared a collection of original stories,

30 Anna Zontag, Sviashchennaia istoriia dlia detei. Vol. 2 (М., 1860), 399.
31 F. Toll, Nasha detskaia literatura: Opyt bibliografii sovremennoi otechestvennoi detskoi
literatury, preimushchestvenno v vospitatel’nom otnoshenii (SPb, 1862), 157.
56 chapter three

A Week at Grandmother’s Dacha (Nedelya u babushki na dache). Every day

after tea, Madame Surkina, a pious and rich noble woman, reads a moral
tale for her grandchildren. They learn how two envious and quarrelsome
children improve, how demanding but rewarding it is to adopt and raise
orphans, and how to fight superstitions successfully. On Thursday they are
told a story of missed opportunities. It is no longer enough to know only
French: if you want to work as a translator, one of the few fields where
girls could make their own living, you must learn English and German
as well.
A foundling brightens up the world of the old gardener Ivan Gavrilov
in Living Flowers (Zhivye tsvety, 1859). A love for nature is fostered in the
child, and later he becomes a famous botanist, supported by a rich protec-
tor. A concession to the philosophy of Romanticism is that the boy’s learn-
ing is partly based upon a dream in which flowers have human features.
In the foreword to A Dramatic Bouquet (Dramatichesky buket, 1859),
Burnashova displays a critical attitude towards existing plays for children.
Plays should avoid moralising expositions, drawn-out monologues and
superfluous dialogues. Her comedies for the home stage are dramatic with
humorous details. ‘Spinster S.B.’ could not, however, abstain from morals.
The thirteen-year-old boy who rebels against his home teacher quickly
realises that freedom is a heavy burden. One day at the market place in
the company of bad friends is enough to make him submissive to author-
ity. The naughty, wild girls and boys at the boarding schools also experi-
ence a moral awakening. In these plays, glimpses of talent can be seen,
but as the critic Feliks Toll rightly asked, on what grounds did Spinster
S.B., i.e. Burnashova, claim to be the author of other writers’ works?32 In
other words, just like her brother, she uninhibitedly mixed her activity as
a translator and a writer of original texts.

The Great Men of Russia

The leading children’s writer of the 1840s was Pyotr Furman (1809 or 1816–
56), a teacher and a journalist. In his first works, Comedies, Tales and True
Stories for Children (Detskie komedii, povesti i byli, 1844) and An Anthol-
ogy for Children (Almanakh dlya detey, 1847), he was still groping for his
niche in literature. The recurrent theme of these early plays and tales is

32 Toll, Nasha detskaia literatura, 253.

 romanticism (1825–1860) 57

charity in manifold situations, social milieus and countries. A destitute girl

helps an aristocratic refugee during the French revolution, rich benefac-
tors raise poor but talented children to a better life, and penniless people
give alms to those who are even worse off. In “Bullfighting” (“Boy bykov”),
Furman came out with a strong statement against bullfighting, admittedly
a not-very-burning Russian issue, urging his readers to support him in the
struggle against this barbaric institution.
Soon, however, Furman found his metier, historical fiction. In a series
of biographical novels, he portrayed the great men of Russia of the sev-
enteenth and eighteenth centuries. His heroes represent Russian nobility
and court circles; they are devoted Christians and citizens, loyally serving
their native country and its sovereigns. Furman quotes General Suvorov:
“Honour and love with all your heart the Empress, our mother; she is
God’s representative on earth, Our Lady. Obey your chiefs blindly; do not
question the orders, but do what you are told.”
The only tsar with a main role in Furman’s large oeuvre is Peter the
Great. For The Carpenter from Zaandam (Saardamsky plotnik, 1847), Fur-
man chose an episode from Peter’s years in the Netherlands that brings
out the best sides of the Tsar’s personality. Furthermore, the status of
Peter the Great is emphasised by a Christ parallel. When Peter the Great
explains why he has chosen to live incognito as a carpenter among the
poor people, sharing their sorrows and joys, he says: “My action is only a
weak imitation of the whole life of Him who suffered for the salvation of
all mankind . . .” The tsar is a supporter of the oppressed and the children’s
best friend. His appearance already singles him out—tall and handsome,
stately, with a passionate gaze that expresses kindness, intelligence and
noble-mindedness. In the striking climax of The Carpenter from Zaandam
the tsar reveals his true identity. People fall down on their knees in admi-
ration and adoration, weeping as Peter explains that he must leave them
for his real kingdom, the faraway Russia, which to his new friends seems
like a heavenly place.
Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, then a young literary critic, was not
impressed: “Here such speeches are made, such deeds are done, that it
would be funny if it were not so sad.”33 A more respectful attitude is shown
in Mikhail Bulgakov’s The White Guard (Belaya gvardiya, 1925–27), where
The Carpenter from Zaandam is mentioned as cherished family reading
from the time before the World War, the Revolutions and the Civil War.

33 M. Saltykov-Shchedrin, Sobranie sochinenii v dvadtsati tomakh. Vol. 1 (M., 1965), 338.
58 chapter three

For Aleksey Turbin the novel is an immortal work, a moving reminder of

idyllic civil life before Russia was brought to the brink of the abyss.
Furman’s men of the seventeenth century were Artamon Matveev (Bli-
zhny boyarin Artamon Sergeevich Matveev, 1848) and Prince Yakov Dolgo-
rukov (Knyaz Yakov Fedorovich Dolgorukov, 1880), both allies of Peter the
Great. Matveev stands out as a well-educated statesman and diplomat,
and, furthermore, a man of conscience. The life of Dolgorukov offers more
adventures and sudden changes of luck. Furman’s novel about him is a
monument to a Russian patriot, whose motto is “The truth is the Tsar’s
best servant”.
The Fisherman’s Son Mikhail Vasilevich Lomonosov (Syn rybaka Mikhail
Vasilevich Lomonosov, 1847) tells the legendary life story of Lomonosov,
who, thanks to his genius, managed to rise from an extremely modest
background to a position of prominence in science and literature. Fur-
man’s depiction of the career of Grigory Potemkin (Grigory Aleksandrovich
Potyomkin, 1845) is somewhat similar, as he goes from poverty to a high
rank in the court. Furman explains away the notorious ‘Potemkin villages’
as slander, made up by the enemies of Potemkin and Catherine the Great.
In yet another work, the military career of Aleksandr Suvorov stretches
from simple soldier to general (Aleksandr Vasilevich Suvorov-Rymniksky,
1848). Furman’s Suvorov is brave and knowledgeable, but above all, he is
defined as a true Russian.
Furman’s interest in Aleksandr Menshikov is of a slightly different order.
Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov (1847) is the story of a Russian statesman
who is led astray by greed and personal ambitions and falls into disgrace,
but rises to a higher understanding through humility and atonement and
dies a true Christian. Natalya Borisovna Dolgorukova (1857), Furman’s only
book for girls, expresses the same Christian ideals. Like Glinka in the 1810s,
Furman was fascinated by the sad fate of Natalya Dolgorukova, born for
a life of riches and happiness, but living at a time when noble characters
were humiliated and persecuted. Dolgorukova demonstrates selflessness
and submission by sharing her husband’s exile and humiliations.
Furman most often chose to tell the whole life story of his heroes. They
often have to rise from poverty and endure persecution and lack of appre-
ciation before reaching the heights of the Russian state hierarchy. Some of
them die in glory, mourned by the whole nation. The dramatic highlights
are often to be found in the dialogue. Many scenes come close to pathetic
melodrama, and Furman’s way of addressing the readers—‘My friends!’—
highlights his sentimental disposition. At their best, Furman’s historical
novels are enthralling and readable, dealing with enigmatic heroes amidst
dramatic events, but many of them are hastily written and lack lustre.
 romanticism (1825–1860) 59

Furman’s popularity did not save him from being attacked by the
critics. In a review of The Fisherman’s Son Mikhail Vasilevich Lomonosov,
Belinsky even suggested that it would be better for a child to remain
illiterate than to read Furman’s compilations, written with a “sluggish
and dead set of words”.34 Saltykov-Shchedrin complained that Furman’s
heroes were nothing but “faceless figures, walking maxims”.35 He felt that
Furman’s mistake was to underrate his audience. Child readers were not
treated as human beings, but as “simple organisms, only slightly higher
than the minerals”.36 In the late 1880s another critic expressed the suspi-
cion that Furmanov’s “copybook ethics” was wasted on young readers, as
his books were sure to arouse only “deadly tedium”.37
However, Furman also had influential supporters. The Ministry of Pop-
ular Education recommended his books on the basis of their patriotism
and high morals, and the influential pedagogue Vladimir Stoyunin praised
them. Towards the end of the century, attention to Furman was revived
with аn edition of his collected works in twelve volumes. By that time his
influence on Russian writers of historical fiction and fictional biographies
was commonly accepted.

Walking with Buryanov

In an essay on Viktor Buryanov (1810–88), a pseudonym for Vladimir Bur-

nashov, the writer Nikolay Leskov expressed the suspicion that literature
for Buryanov was “neither art nor service of some confessed truth or idea,
but just a means of making money, and nothing more”.38 It is true that
the money Buryanov earned from writing children’s books and critical
reviews exceeded his salary as a government clerk, and he later cynically
admitted that he “made children’s books just like pancakes”,39 secretly
suspecting that children read him just because there was nothing better
available. On the other hand, Buryanov was in many respects a talented
writer, open to new impulses and ideas and ready to extend the range of
contemporary children’s literature.

34 Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 10 (M., 1956), 143.

35 Saltykov-Shchedrin, Sobranie sochinenii v dvadtsati tomakh. Vol. 1 (M., 1965), 336.
36 Ibid., 335.
37 Obzor detskoi literatury za 1885–88 gg. (SPb, 1889), 62.
38 N. Leskov, “Pervenets bogemy v Rossii,” Istoricheskii vestnik 6 (1888): 563.
39 Russkie pisateli 1800–1917: Biograficheskii slovar’. Vol. 1 (M., 1989), 371.
60 chapter three

Born in Orel, where his father was vice-governor, Buryanov came to

children’s literature in the middle of the 1830s. In the foreword to A Small
Children’s Book for 1835 for Clever, Sweet and Diligent Young Boy and Girl
Readers (Detskaya knizhka na 1835 god dlya umnykh, milykh i prilezhnykh
malenkikh chitateley i chitatelnits, 1835), he reveals that he turned to chil-
dren’s literature upon realizing how neglected the field was in Russia. In
order to learn what children’s literature was all about, he read books by
foreign writers like Edgeworth, Ms. Opie, Guizot, Julie Delafaye-Bréhier
and Marceline Desbordes-Valmore. He was particularly impressed by Les
scènes du jeune âge (1834) by Sophie Gay. Five tales by Gay, reworked in
‘a Russian mode’, were included in his first book. Like Zontag and his sis-
ter Sofya Burnashova, Buryanov hardly ever drew any explicit borderline
between original and borrowed material, even though his wish was to
present Russian children with “а truly Russian book”.
Many of Buryanov’s stories juxtapose good and bad children, for exam-
ple the diligent and the lazy, the serious and the empty, the impudent
and the modest. Eventually the naughty child is taught a lesson, while his
counterpart is rewarded. The two cousins in “Pavlusha Shtykov and Vanya
Baklushin” represent different attitudes to work. He who trusts in begging
and cheating ends up in jail, while his poor relative, conscious of being a
descendent of a war veteran, devotes himself to studies and hard work.
Sometimes the promptings of conscience bring those who have erred to
admit their sins (“Imperial”, “Volshebny fonar”). The tale “The Blond Plait”
(“Belokuraya kosa”), actually composed by Gay, was singled out for praise
by the usually exacting Belinsky.40 In his opinion this actually quite ordi-
nary sentimental charity tale was precisely what children needed. In order
to prevent a poor family from being evicted, a girl sacrifices the most pre-
cious thing she owns, her long blond plait, which she sells to a wigmaker.
As a surprise reward for her good heart, she gets her hair back, now on
the head of a doll. The stated but not fulfilled aim of the tale was to show
that charity may turn into a vice, if it is done in order to be seen and earn
praise. It was this warning which caught the attention of Belinsky. The
girl performs a good deed unselfishly, for the sake of goodness, and not
because of a possible reward. The reader senses what is good and what is
bad, without having it pointed out by the author.

40 Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 2 (M., 1953), 114.

 romanticism (1825–1860) 61

The centrepiece of Buryanov’s book was a translation of E.T.A. Hoff-

mann’s The Nutcracker and the King of the Mice. Buryanov praised
Hoffmann’s fantastic tales for children as “full of life, intelligence and
strangeness”.41 Simultaneously, one can, however, detect a slightly hesi-
tant attitude, on Buryanov’s part, about the effect of fairy tales and fan-
tasies on children’s inexperienced minds. Tanya in “From One Extreme
to Another” (“Iz odnoy kraynosti v druguyu”), who takes fairy tales too
seriously and actually believes that animals can talk like they do in fables,
needs a protector to save her from disaster. In “The Sorcerer-Starling”
(“Skvorets Volshebnik”), it is explicitly stated that only naive children
believe in magic.
“The Blond Plait” was also included in The Children’s Storyteller (Detsky
rasskazchik I–II, 1836), where it stood side by side with the inescapable
moralizing about naughty children and their praiseworthy counterparts.
Belinsky, who already felt cheated in his high expectations concerning
Buryanov, complained about the careless language: “Mr. Buryanov fur-
thermore deprives you of all capability to talk and write in your mother
tongue in a normal human way.”42
In the opening words to the four volumes of Library of Tales and Short
Stories for Children (Biblioteka detskikh povestey i rasskazov, 1837–38),
Buryanov invites his readers to sit down on the ‘flying carpet’ of his
thoughts and follow him on new ‘voyages’. Exoticism and adventure were
introduced into Russian children’s literature through “The New Caucasian
Prisoner” (“Novy kavkazsky plennik”, 1837) and “Azinga: An American
Tale” (“Azinga: Amerikanskaya povest”, 1838). In ‘The New Caucasian Pris-
oner’, a children’s version of Pushkin’s poem “The Caucasian Prisoner”,
two religions and two cultures meet, as little Pavlusha is taken hostage by
the hostile Circassians. The boy trusts in God and the Russian Tsar, and,
assisted by a friend in the enemy camp, a boy of his age, he manages to
escape and return to his family.
“Azinga” is a Russian Red-Indian story, which shows that even if
Buryanov had read his James Fenimore Cooper, he was not too well
acquainted with American realia. Jaguars, bears and apes dwell side by side
in the forest where the 14-year-old Azinga strolls under palm trees with a
peacock feather in her hair. The cruel Guagibo, who takes Azinga and her

41  V. Burianov, “Ot avtora,” Detskaia knizhka na 1835 god, kotoruiu sostavil dlia umnykh,
milykh i prilezhnykh malenkikh chitatelei i chitatelnits V. Burianov (SPb, 1835), [I].
42 Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 2 (M., 1953), 376.
62 chapter three

little brother as prisoners, kills her father, the Indian chief Uncas. The
heroes are rescued through the help of a conscience-stricken deserter in
the enemy camp. Buryanov ends his pseudo-American tale with a com-
ment that slightly alters the sens moral of the story:
“Why does Mr Buryanov tell us such a cruel story?” my young readers surely
cry out. Dear children, I do it in order to dispel the delusion, which probably
many of your friends have, that savages have neither feelings nor virtues;
you look at them as if they were some sort of pitiful creatures that God
has not given anything, and it hurts me to encounter such a delusion. No,
my dear friends, even these uneducated creatures have their virtues; there
are very, very many vices in them, but one should not be blind to their
good traits. What respect they show old people, whose advice and will they
consider holy, and what warm friendship all the members of a tribe feel for
each other! It is, so to speak, one body moving towards a common goal—the
maintenance of their honourable name. And everyone participates, includ-
ing the women, children and old men: everyone grabs his weapon in order
to defend this valuable feeling. Are you convinced? In that case I am very
pleased: my task has been fulfilled, and I can put my pencil away without
worry until the next tale.43
The settings chosen for the other stories—mansions and girls’ boarding
schools—show where Buryanov’s readers were to be found. He treats the
rift between the masters and the people, between the rich and poor in a
conservative spirit. Buryanov also ponders how families should deal with
disobedience, vanity, dishonesty and hot-headedness and what methods
of education can bring forth repentance and penance. What we get at the
end of these tales is, if not always a total change, then at least the promise
of a new start.
Buryanov is primarily remembered as the author of a geographical tril-
ogy. His method was to take the children with him on ‘walks’. He started
off with the whole world, then turned to Russia and, finally, settled for
St Petersburg and its surroundings. Buryanov was criticised for factual
errors, a didactic attitude, occasional sentimental outbursts and pomp-
ous language, but it cannot be denied that he offered an overwhelming
amount of new information and seriously tried to make his text readable
for children. The bookish tone can be explained by the fact that Buryanov
himself hardly ever left St Petersburg.
Walks with Children Around the World (Progulki s detmi po zemnomu
sharu, 1836) is extremely detailed in its presentations of countries (none

43 V. Burianov, Biblioteka detskikh povestei i rasskazov (SPb, 1838), 63–65.

 romanticism (1825–1860) 63

too insignificant), towns and people with their local habits and political
and religious situations. Sometimes Buryanov turns emotional and raises
his voice. When he reaches Africa on his ‘walk’, he is upset by the many
local despots and expresses a wish “that the wise European nations would
put an end to the reckless actions of these black kings, and in this way
make this part of the world prosperous”.44
In Walks with Children in Russia (Progulki s detmi po Rossii, 1837),
Buryanov ‘walks’ from the Eastern to the Western border of Russia. In
Finland, he encounters a landscape worthy of the brush of the Flemish
painter David Tenier. The Finnish people turn out to be “honest, good,
courteous, but extremely lazy”.45 Among them there lives a widespread,
but unfounded, fear of the Russians. Peter the Great had already showed
himself to be a benefactor for foreign nations, and in the nineteenth cen-
tury Russia had provided the Finns with education, enlightenment and
shelter. This was an unabashed Russian point of view, and Buryanov did
not make a secret of the programme behind his book. His aim was to
awake an unconditional devotion to the Tsar and a love for Russia. Sum-
ming up the observations made during the ‘walk’, Buryanov wrote: “And
so we have travelled all over Russia, seen it from north to south, from
east to west, everywhere marvelled at its splendid order and noticed the
results of our kind Sovereign’s care. May God bless His Reign and prolong
Nicholas’ precious days for the happiness of all his subjects.”46
The daily schedule in Walks with Children in St Petersburg and Its
Suburbs (Progulki s detmi po St.-Peterburgu i ego okrestnostyam, 1838)
offered the possibility to get to know the sights of the Russian capital and
its surroundings during a two-week summer vacation. The guidebook is
interspersed with questions, exclamations and poetic quotations, which
reveal the pride that the author feels for his city. The account is occa-
sionally very concrete, as when Buryanov takes the readers with him in a
rowboat, makes two strokes with the oars and then asks the children to
admire the beautiful view on the left.
Buryanov abandoned children’s literature in the middle of the 1840s.
Nikolay Leskov, who dubbed him ‘the first Russian bohemian’, described
his last years. Extreme poverty, scorn and oblivion were the sad fate of a
man who once had been a celebrated children’s author.

44 V. Burianov, Progulki s det’mi po zemnomu sharu. Vol. 2 (SPb, 1836), 145.
45 V. Burianov, Progulki s det’mi po Rossii. Vol. 2 (SPb, 1837), 174.
46 Burianov, Progulki s det’mi po Rossii. Vol. 4 (SPb, 1837), 391.
64 chapter three

Also from the 1840s come the first translations of Xavier de Maistre’s La
jeune Sibérienne (1815): Parasha, the Siberian Girl (Parasha Sibiryachka,
1840) and The Young Siberian Girl (Molodaya sibiryachka, 1845). This was
a true Russian life story from the early nineteenth century, but told by
French writer. Parasha walked by foot from Siberia to St Petersburg, a total
of around 3,000 kilometres over twenty months, in order to ask for a par-
don for her exiled father. She experienced illness, hunger and cold, looked
in vain for pity and help, but she managed to get through to the Tsaritsa
and tell the Sovereign her story, in spite of all the obstacles set up by the
bureaucracy. Parasha had promised to enter a monastery if she succeeded
in saving her father, and at her death in 1809 she was a nun in Novgorod.
This story of pure selflessness and love for one’s parents was reprinted
numerous times in new translations and adaptations until 1917.

Poetry for Children

Children’s poetry reached a new artistic level with the publication of

four short lyrical pieces by Vasily Zhukovsky in 1852. The booklet appeared
in the German town of Karlsruhe with a dedication to Zhukovsky’s two
children, Pavel and Aleksandra. As the children were being raised in a
foreign country, Zhukovsky had wanted to present them with something
to read in Russian. The birds and animals of the poems are portrayed with
a warm and sympathetic attitude. “The Cat and the Goat” (“Kotik i kozlik”)
imitate each other, like two playful children. The bird in the spring scene
in “The Lark” (“Zhavoronok”) joyfully praises God with its song, while
“The Little Bird” (“Ptichka”) invites the reader to reflect upon the fate of
a bird of passage that leaves Russia for warmer countries. “Tom Thumb”
(“Malchik-s-palchik”) gives a lyrical description of a day in the life of a
charming little creature, the Tom Thumb of the title, who lives among
flowers, bees, butterflies, glow-worms and elves. All four poems were later
set to music, evidence of their musical quality.
Professor Yakov Grot (1812–93) collected his poems from Ishimova’s
magazine Little Star in the volume Literary Ventures: a Reader for Young
People (Literaturnye opyty: Chtenie dlya yunoshestva, 1848), and later
republished them at the request of teachers, with additional new mate-
rial, under the title Poetry and Prose for Children (Stikhi i prosa dlya detey,
1891). In the preface to the later edition, Grot formulated his aim as a
poet as being “to awake kind feelings and noble aspirations in the younger
 romanticism (1825–1860) 65

generation”.47 Grot hailed work (“Trud”), the joys of Russian winter

(“Zimnee vesele”), true friendship (“K drugu”), and maintenance of order
(“Poryadok”), while making serious attempts to imitate the voice of a
child.
A favourite among Russian children was Heinrich Hoffmann’s Der Struw­
welpeter. The first translation, Styopka-Rastryopka, appeared in 1849, only
four years after the original. Another translation—Petya-Zamarashka—
followed four years later. The publisher Mavriky Volf realised the commer-
cial potential of Hoffmann’s pictorial book and published the subsequent
editions of Styopka-Rastryopka. When the tenth edition appeared in 1914,
Styopka-Rastryopka had sold around 160,000 copies overall.
Many critics and parents were upset by the black humour and the cal-
lousness with which disobedience, refusal to eat, carelessness with fire,
racism, thumb-sucking and absent-mindedness were treated. Feliks Toll
dismissed Struwwelpeter as vulgar, attributing the book’s popularity to
its simplicity and the readers’ lack of aesthetic sense. There was noth-
ing constructive about Struwwelpeter, even though it was claimed that
naughty children changed for the better after reading it. If they actually
showed improvement, they had certainly also picked up new vices, such
as a wrong conception of poetry, Toll concluded.48
On the other hand, the poet Aleksandr Blok later praised Struwwelpeter
as “a very brave and lively book” with a fascinating title figure.49 Blok had
high regard for the anonymous Russian translator with his masterly han-
dling of alliteration and shifting meters. The fast transition from cause to
effect and the hyperbolic punishments that follow the ‘crimes’ were some-
thing unheard of in Russian children’s literature, even if Styopa himself
shared some traits with the Russian marionette figure Petrushka. Artists
too, such as Alexandre Benois and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, remembered
Struwwelpeter as one of their childhood favourites. Nadezhda Krupskaya,
on the other hand, recalled how Hoffman’s book, the first in her life, had
given her nightmares.50
The publishing house M.O. Volf followed up the success of Styopka-
Rastryopka with several other publications by ‘the author of Shock-Headed
Peter’, a reference not to Heinrich Hoffmann, but to his anonymous

47 Iakov Grot, “K tret’emu izdaniiu,” Stikhi i prosa dlia detei. Third ed. (SPb, 1891), [II].
48 Toll, Nasha detskaia literatura, 81.
49 A.A. Blok, Zapisnye knizhki (1901–1920) (M., 1965), 271.
50 Nadezhda Krupskaia, “Chto ia pomniu iz prochitannykh v detstve knig,” Pedago-
gicheskie sochineniia. Vol. 1 (M., 1957), 27.
66 chapter three

Russian translator. The author of one of these, Talking Animals (Govo-

ryashchie zhivotnye, 1860), which included moral tales in the form of
fables, was in fact another German, Adolf Glassbrenner. Just as in the orig-
inal, Sprechende Tiere (1854), Carl Reinhardt was responsible for the illus-
trations. More Talking Animals (Eshcho govoryashchie zhivotnye, 1860)
was a translation of Heinrich Horwitz’s Neue Sprechende Tieren (1854).
Reinhardt was the illustrator of this volume, as well as of A Travel into
Fairy Land (Puteshestvie v skazochnuyu stranu, 1860). These were picture
books, a new genre for Russian children’s literature. The publisher cut costs
by having the books printed in Leipzig, using the original colour plates.
Dobuzhinsky and the Soviet writer L. Panteleev warmly recalled a
clever parody, or, according to some critics, a vulgar imitation of Struw-
welpeter, namely About Gosha-Long-Arms (Pro Goshu-Dolgie-Ruki, around
1870). It was a translation, not from German, but from French. The cari-
caturist Bertall created both the texts and the illustrations of the original,
Les Infortunes de Touche-à-Tout (1861). The all-too-curious Gosha pays no
heed to parental warnings, and the results are even more drastic and grue-
some than in Hoffman’s book. Nose-picking, for example, results in a nose
so big that the poor boy has to transport it on a wheelbarrow. Gosha’s fate
is to become so swollen after having secretly eaten dough that he flies
away in the air like a balloon. The critic in the magazine Family Evenings
(1870) did not mind the lack of good taste: “The tale about Gosha is unpre-
tentiously composed. Its purpose is to amuse children, something which
they should not be denied.”51
Fyodor Miller (1818–81) wrote his Captions to Pictures: For Children
of the Youngest Age (Podpisi k kartinkam: Dlya detey pervogo vozrasta,
1851) under the influence of Shock-Headed Peter. Despite its title, the set
of poems does not seem to have been based on any pictures. Laughter,
pranks, horror and tragedy are mixed in a peculiar way. The rash children
in “Here comes a grey-haired old man . . .” (“Vot idyot starik sedoy . . .”) are
resolutely put in a sack and thrown to the fishes. The moral, as stated
by a stork, is equally straightforward: “If you hadn’t fooled around / this
would never have happened.” The poem “One, two, three, four, five . . .”
(“Raz-dva-tri-chetyre-pyat . . .”) about a hare that happily goes out for a
walk, but—‘piff-puff-oy-oy!’—is shot dead, has remained a favourite
among children, many times adapted and revised, and even turned into
a counting-out rhyme.

51  “Bibliografiia,” Semeinye vechera: Otdel dlia detei 2 (1870): 88.

 romanticism (1825–1860) 67

Children’s Magazines

Of the approximately twenty children’s magazines that were published

during the period 1825–50, many had a lifetime of several years, a fact
indicating that a stable readership for children’s literature was gradually
being formed. Most of the magazines had a broad spectrum of content,
ranging from fiction to popular science, but there were also attempts at
creating special publications, such as Children’s Drama Messenger (Detsky
dramatichesky vestnik, 1828–29) and Children’s Musical Library (Detskaya
muzykalnaya biblioteka, 1835).
The influential introduction of fairy tales in 1826 mentioned earlier
occurred in The Children’s Interlocutor (Detsky sobesednik, 1826–28),
a magazine edited by Nikolay Grech (1787–1867) and Faddey Bulgarin
(1789–1859). In contrast to the publication’s relatively meagre fiction sec-
tion were the agronomist Stepan Usov’s illustrated articles on physics,
chemistry, mineralogy, meteorology and agriculture. The form he pre-
ferred was a talk between a teacher and his student. In addition, questions
from readers were answered, such as, “What should you do to save your
life if you fall into deep water?”
The New Children’s Library (Novaya detskaya biblioteka, 1827–33) was
mainly Boris Fyodorov’s publication. Fiction dominated, predominantly
produced by the editor himself. Scenes presented from Peter the Great’s
childhood celebrated his magnanimous attitude towards his fellow men.
Many of the poems had a monarchist bias. Foreign writers favoured were
Campe, Jauffret, Ducray-Duminil, Berquin, Bouilly, de Renneville and von
Schmid. The magazine also contributed to the rising vogue for Oriental
fairy tales.
The New Children’s Library was advertised as being read by the chil-
dren at the Imperial Court, but a list of the approximately three hundred
subscribers in 1831 shows that, besides Grand Duchesses, the magazine
also reached Russian officers, schoolteachers, peasants, priests, clerks and
postmasters, plus a pupil from Bobruisk.
The most prominent writers to participate in The Children’s Library
(Detskaya biblioteka, 1835–38) were Granddad Iriney, alias Vladimir
Odoevsky, and Viktor Buryanov. Aleksandr Gren (1806–80?) contributed
sentimental tales and poems. Gren was a minor writer, one of Fyodorov’s
protégés, who, according to his own words, wrote children’s books in
order to make money to raise his three daughters and to have some suit-
able material for their moral education. Modesty and piety are the ideals,
and Gren’s well-mannered heroes unfailingly show due respect for their
68 chapter three

parents and for older people in general. Translated writers, among them
Bouilly and Count Louis-Philippe de Ségur, also appeared in The Chil-
dren’s Library.
The editors of The Children’s Library, Amply Ochkin (1791–1865) and
Vladimir Lvov, wanted to foster kindness in their readers with the help of
admirable examples. The tone is moralising and religious. The magazine
published articles on zoology, biology, ornithology, mineralogy, ethnog-
raphy, geography and history as well as the basics of music and foreign
languages. Plays and games, and an article on secret writing, lighten up
the content.
In 1838, Aleksandr Bashutsky (1805–76) took over Children’s Library,
later changing its title to A Children’s Magazine for the Education of the
Mind, the Heart and Morals (Detsky zhurnal dlya obrazovaniya ponyatiya,
serdtsa i nrava, 1838–39). In the policy statement the editor expresses a
wish, first and foremost, to entertain readers: “We will only play with you:
teaching is not our business. Your parents will arrange teachers for you; in
our company you can devote your spare time to play.”52 Children love to
play, joke and laugh, Bashutsky declared. The magazine published stories
by Granddad Iriney (Odoevsky), Eugénie Foa and Maria Edgeworth, but
it stressed pictures, music, magic, secret writing, games and experiments.
History was taught in the form of a play in which cards with historical
figures were to be put in their right places on the playing board. In spite
of its radically children-focused programme, A Children’s Magazine was
not a success. Bashutsky complained that, out of the total of 1,500 copies,
only 400 were sent out to subscribers, while a similar magazine in France,
which he dismissed as much weaker, had 12,000 readers.
A Library for Education (Biblioteka dlya vospitaniya, 1843–46) consisted
of two parts, one for parents and teachers, and the other for children.
Founded by the Slavophile Dmitry Valuev (1820–45) and edited by Avgust
Semyon (1783–1862), it included some distinguished Moscow professors,
such as Timofey Granovsky, Pyotr Redkin, Sergey Solovyov and Mikhail
Pogodin, among its contributors. The publication of Maria Edgeworth’s
Practical Education ran for the whole year of 1843. Much space was given
to scientific material on history, botany, geography and mythology, all
in an attractive form, in contrast to what the contemporary dry school
education could offer. Ivan Kireevsky (1806–56) and Aleksey Khomyakov

52 A.B., “K chitateliam,” Detskaia biblioteka 1 (1838): III.

 romanticism (1825–1860) 69

(1804–60) gave the publication a Slavophile leaning, imbuing the material

on Russian history with a love and a respect for the fatherland, for its “fate
and calling”, and for God.
The editorial board initially took a scornful attitude to contemporary
children’s fiction. Rather than feeding children on an exclusive diet of chil-
dren’s literature, parents were advised to give them the best works from
Russian adult literature. Funny stories, fairy tales and comedies were to
be admitted only in small doses, “only as amusement in between reading,
as rest after work”;53 nevertheless, A Library for Education did eventually
publish translations by E.T.A. Hoffmann, de La Motte Fouqué and Albert
von Chamisso. In 1844 Valuev translated Charles Dickens’ A Christmas
Carol (1843) as Svetloe Khristovo Voskresene, the first attempt in Russia at
remaking Dickens for young readers.
A Library for Education found a sequel in A New Library for Education
(Novaya biblioteka dlya vospitaniya, 1847–49), incidentally, the only chil-
dren’s magazine Belinsky found worth recommending to parents, as he
felt that it fostered a realistic attitude to the surrounding world.54 Its edi-
tor was Pyotr Redkin (1808–91), a professor of law at Moscow University
and a member of the State Council. The ten issues of close to two hundred
pages each actually look more like anthologies of scientific content than
children’s reading. Redkin’s professor-colleagues wrote articles on phys-
ics, astronomy, history and mechanics, and not always, it must be said, in
an easily comprehensible way. The historian Sergey Solovyov published a
children’s version of Nestor’s Chronicle; there were also adaptations of the
Odyssey and Iliad. The fiction section included some important publica-
tions, among them fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen and The Gold-
Bug by Edgar Allan Poe. (Belinsky dismissed the latter as a bizarre choice.)
Maria Edgeworth, a longstanding favourite among Russian children, was
represented with the story Tomorrow (Do zavtra).

In 1842, Aleksandra Ishimova founded the first Russian girl’s magazine,

Little Star (Zvyozdochka, 1842–63). Her readership consisted of girls from
seven to fourteen, primarily pupils from boarding schools for the nobility.
Ishimova herself appeared in the role of ‘Grandmother’, teaching history
and other sciences in the form of conversations. “Grandmother’s Tales”

53 N. Bilevich, “О prepodovanii russkogo iazyka,” Biblioteka dlia vospitaniia. Otd. 2, ch. 3
(1846): 49.
54 Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 10 (M., 1956), 141.
70 chapter three

focused on morals and ethics. The main virtues were love for God, patrio-
tism and obedience to parents. The possibility of improvement is stressed,
as ‘hot-headed Vasya’, ‘impatient Sonya’, ‘stubborn Vanya’ and ‘envious
Katya’ all come to terms with their vices. Charity was encouraged in ‘The
Kind Girl’ (“Dobraya devushka”, 1842), in which children get involved in
helping the poor.
Among Little Star’s contributors, Avgusta Voronova stands out with
her numerous stories, but Anna Zontag also appeared sporadically in its
pages. From Finland came poems and travel sketches written by Profes-
sor Yakov Grot. Fiction was mainly poetry (much of it about birds), writ-
ten not only in Russian, but also in German and English. Karl Peterson’s
(1811–90) “The Little Orphan” (“Sirotka”, 1843), a sentimental poem on the
miraculous rescue of an orphan boy from freezing to death, was to reach
a wide audience as a song.
Ishimova favoured translations of French, German or English children’s
literature. In the German writer Agnes Franz’ Buch für Kinder (1840) she
found the play “Fra Diavolo” (1843), an example of robber romanticism.
The German Romantic Friedrich Krummacher, who in the 1820s had com-
peted with Lord Byron in popularity, but who by now had been turned
into a children’s writer, was published with the recommendation that his
parables should be read under the lilac-bush at the dacha. Krummacher’s
short texts taught the reader that everything around you bore witness to
a merciful and loving Creator. The novel Mary and Florence (1835), by the
British author Ann Fraser Tytler, was a sensation, as were its sequels. The
English original exceeded ten editions, and in Russia all the issues of Little
Star in which the novel ran immediately sold out. The critic Dobrolyubov
praised Tytler as a highly talented writer who related to children as think-
ing and feeling human beings.55 Avoiding all sentimental exclamations,
Tytler awoke noble feelings in her readers.
What Ishimova did not want to see on the pages of her Little Star were
fairy tales, since these just “burdened the children’s imagination with the
whims of a depraved taste” and “left erroneous or even injurious ideas in
the mind and imagination”.56 Anything contradicting reality was apt to
foster distorted notions in readers. When Hans Christian Andersen’s “The
Little Match Girl” was published in 1847, the translation carried the excuse

55 Dobroliubov, Sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 4 (M.-L., 1962), 163.

56 “Ob’’iavlenie o prodolzhenii v 1844 godu zhurnala dlia detei ‘Zvezdochka’,” Zvez-
dochka 8 (1843): 280.
 romanticism (1825–1860) 71

that, contrary to its subtitle, it was not a fairy tale, but a ‘beautiful reverie’,
full of true poetry.57
Girl readers were given texts from a radically wide variety of fields,
from electricity and weather forecasting to indoor flowers and the art
of printing. Specialists such as Professor Stepan Baranovsky contributed
material from their field of learning, while articles on the childhood of
famous people, including Shakespeare, Louis XIV, Gustavus II Adolphus
and Benjamin Franklin, emphasised the importance of one’s early years.
Readers were invited to solve given tasks and send their answers to the
editor.
In 1850, Ishimova decided to split her magazine into two different pub-
lications: Little Star concentrated on younger girls, while the newcomer
Rays of Light (Luchi, 1850–60) was for girls between eleven and fourteen.
Articles on popular science were published in Rays of Light, while plays,
games, charades and riddles remained in Little Star. Every issue of Rays
of Light offered patterns for embroidery and clothes. In her prose tales,
Avgusta Voronova pondered the role of women in society and the family.
Poems which treated the theme of young death concluded in a feeling of
humility before God’s omnipotence. Many of these poems were anony-
mous and published in a foreign language.
Ishimova and Little Star were clearly already out of step with the devel-
opment of children’s literature in the 1850s. The magazine’s religious and
monarchist inclination was unshaken, as was its preference for didactic
and moralistic tales and poems. Dobrolyubov protested against Ishimo-
va’s policy to pass over burning social issues in silence. When Ishimova
decided in 1863 to drop the magazines, she had also more or less left lit-
erature herself.
In 1851 a new children’s journal, Magazine for Children: Religious, Moral,
Historical, Scientific and Literary Reading (Zhurnal dlya detey: Dukhov-
noe, nravstvennoe, istoricheskoe, estestvopisatelnoe i literarnoe chtenie,
1851–65), was launched, with Mikhail Chistyakov and Aleksey Razin as
the editors. Together they were responsible for almost all the content,
writing, editing, translating and even illustrating. An ardent dedication
to the Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolaevich was attached, and the opening
article, “Christianity’s Influence on Morality” (“Vliyanie khristianstva na
nravstvennost”, 1851), carried warnings concerning the consequences of

57 Zvezdochka 9 (1847): 115.

72 chapter three

godlessness. Small wonder the radical Dobrolyubov labelled Magazine for

Children as harmful.
The popular science section came to dominate Magazine for Children,
with articles on such diverse subjects as the life of the Eskimos, Living-
stone’s African travels and purchasing horses from Arabs. Biographies of
prominent painters and composers were standard features. Within fiction,
the editors favoured fables and folklore. Two translations of 1851, the fairy
tale “The Christmas Tree” (“Schastie i neschastie molodoy yolki”) by Hans
Christian Andersen and Hawkeye (Sokoliny glaz), an American Indian
story by James Fenimore Cooper, are worth mentioning. A speciality of
Magazine for Children were frequent analyses of poems and short stories.

Belinsky the Critic

There were few children’s books, be they fiction, translations, textbooks,

books of information or magazines, from the period 1835–1847, that
escaped the attention of the critic Vissarion Belinsky (1811–48). His deci-
sive role in the formation of Russian realism is an established fact, but
less known is the huge interest he took in children’s literature, devoting
more than sixty articles to publications in this field. When reviewing and
evaluating individual works, he gradually sharpened his thoughts about
the specific traits and demands of the genre, eventually formulating some-
thing of a theory of children’s literature.
Belinsky saw literature as playing a significant part in the upbringing
of children: “Children’s books are written for an educational purpose, and
education is an important issue: it decides the fate of the individual.”58
Books written specially for children should be given a prominent place
within the education system. Until Belinsky’s time children’s literature
had had a low status in the eyes of publishers, critics and parents. With
his severe condemnation of contemporary writers, Belinsky unwillingly
added fuel to the prevailing contempt for children’s literature.
Belinsky raised the bar high for children’s writers. They were to be
not only artists but also pedagogues and psychologists. Writing for chil-
dren was something that could not be learnt: “You must be born a chil-
dren’s writer: you cannot become one. It is a kind of calling. Not only
talent is needed, but also a kind of genius.”59 In a review of 1840, Belinsky

58 Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 2 (M., 1953), 367.

59 Ibid., 367.
 romanticism (1825–1860) 73

elaborated on his expectations: “The conditions for the formation of a

children’s writer are many, indeed very many: a favourable, loving, gentle,
calm, naively simpleminded soul, a sublime, educated mind, a lucid atti-
tude to reality, and not only a lively imagination, but also a lively, poetic
fantasy, which is capable of presenting everything in an animated, cheer-
ful form. It goes without saying that love for children and a deep knowl-
edge of the needs, peculiarities and nuances of childhood are among the
most important conditions.”60
Children’s writers must not shy away from social questions; Belinsky
enunciated this view in a discussion with Aleksandra Ishimova in 1848. In
her booklet A Few Words about the Reading of Novels and a Guide to Juve-
nile Reading (Neskolko slov o chtenii romanov i ukazatel chteniya dlya
yunoshestva) of 1847, Ishimova voiced her concern about the huge popu-
larity in Russia of French novels, in which even wicked persons, unable to
control their instincts, were depicted with pity and sometimes sympathy.
In these works, the duty to follow the voice of one’s heart was consid-
ered more important than family bonds. According to Ishimova, literature
should offer young readers good examples and teach them to love what is
good and despise what is wicked.
Belinsky did not dispute Ishimova’s point that children’s literature
should create positive ideals, but he argued that children should be
brought out of the nursery. As for the choice of themes, he claimed that
there should be no difference between literature for children and grown-
ups. Life had to be pictured as it was, “real life in all its nakedness, with
its joys and tragedies, richness and destitution, successes and sufferings”.61
Children should be given not only classics, but also contemporary litera-
ture, which told them about the life they themselves lived and simultane-
ously prepared them for adult life.
Children’s literature should be read and discussed on the same terms
as literature for adults. A children’s book had to be a work of art, and not
just an illustration of some ethical rule or didactic principle. In an article
of 1847, Belinsky stated his opinion that “the only work for children that
is good and useful is that which adults can read with interest and develop
a liking for, not as a work for children, but as a literary work written for
everyone”.62 Nevertheless, the special demands and needs of the audience

60 Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 10 (M., 1956), 89.

61  Ibid., 375.
62 Ibid., 144.
74 chapter three

were also to be taken into account. Everything had to be presented in a

way which corresponded to the child’s nature and his level of understand-
ing. Books should be “full of life, events, inspiration and warm feelings”.63
Belinsky paid much attention to language, blaming many contempo-
rary writers for an insufficient grasp of their native tongue. He pointed
untiringly out grammatical errors, overlong and clumsy sentences, archa-
isms, and stilted dialogue. His ideal was a simple, fluent and playful style.
Not only facts should be presented, but also ‘the poetic side’ of events. In
addition, he thought that the appearance of books and their illustrations
ought to be attractive. An effective method of teaching was through pic-
tures: “Look how avid children are for illustrated books. They are prepared
to read even the driest and most boring text, if it explains to them the
content of a picture. And because of this, pictures are increasingly used
as a help in upbringing and teaching.”64
Much to Belinsky’s grief, he discovered hardly any ‘progressive’ signs in
contemporary Russian children’s literature. The core line in his reviews
is “Poor children!” He also showed concern for parents who spent their
money on worthless books. For the leading children’s writers of the
period, be they Russian or foreign, Belinsky felt only contempt: “Poor chil-
dren, may God save you from smallpox, measles and the works of Berquin,
Genlis and Bouilly.”65 Among Russian writers, Belinsky especially and
repeatedly vilified Boris Fyodorov, Viktor Buryanov and Pyotr Furman.
They were, in his eyes, untalented writers who did not create books, but
‘made’ them for the Christmas and Easter market. In their works, reality
was presented in a distorted way so as to produce submissive citizens,
devoted only to their careers, like Molchalin, a character from Griboedov’s
play Wit from Woe (Gore ot uma), whose very name connotes ‘silence’.
Their ideals were meekness, all-forgivingness and obedience, instead of
the active civic spirit that Belinsky sought.
Belinsky especially detested the moral tale. Teaching morals should be
done indirectly, through action, and the drawing of a conclusion should
be left to the child-reader. In the writer, children wanted to see a friend,
ready to tell them a good story, and not a gloomy, boring mentor, teaching
them good behaviour through abstract maxims. There should always be
room for vivacity, playfulness and mischief.

63 Ibid., 92.
64 Ibid., 145.
65 Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 2 (M., 1953), 375; Vol. 4 (M., 1954), 108.
 romanticism (1825–1860) 75

Belinsky invited writers to appeal to children’s imagination, but when it

came to fairy tales and fantasy, the two most important genres of Roman-
ticism, he displayed an idiosyncratic view. For him, the concept of narod-
nost was central. It included both the notion of a unique, national Russian
spirit and the democratic nature of art. He therefore severely criticised
Pushkin’s, Zhukovsky’s and Ershov’s fairy tales, dismissing them as piti-
ful imitations of folk culture, a priori doomed to failure. Only genuine,
untouched folktales and folk poetry could be accepted: “[. . .] an imitation
is always an imitation: from under the homespun peasant coat your tail-
coat will always be visible. There will be Russian words in your folktale,
but no Russian spirit . . .”66
Belinsky rejected Ekaterina Avdeeva’s excellent collection, Russian
Tales for Children, Told by Nanny Avdotya Stepanovna Cherepeva, of 1844,
in the name of Realism: “We do not advise anyone to put it into the hands
of children, as we do not advise anyone to allow children to listen to all
kinds of stories told by nannies about house-spirits, wood-goblins and
that sort of rubbish, which will only poison the minds and confuse the
thoughts of the children.”67
Belinsky initially greeted the E.T.A. Hoffmann volume of 1840 with
enthusiasm, recommending this “charming work by a charming genius”
to everyone.68 Tales like these were necessary for the development of a
child’s imagination. However, seven years later, he expressed a warning
in connection with the German Romantic writer: Hoffmann was even
more dangerous for children than Paul de Kock, as excessive stimulation
of the imagination could lead children away from ‘real life’.69 Imagination
should be bridled, not excited. A Russian edition of The Thousand and One
Nights was not greeted by Belinsky as a treasure of fairy tales, but seen
only as a proof of the naivety of the Arabs, their “infantile state of mind,
immersed in an eternal somnolence”.70
For Russian children Belinsky eventually recommended Russian folk-
lore, Krylov’s fables, Vladimir Odoevsky’s The Tales of Granddad Iriney and
Ishimova’s, Polevoy’s and Solovyov’s books on Russian history. In addi-
tion, Redkin’s magazine A New Library for Education won his approval. As
the choice of genuine children’s literature was so meagre, children from

66 Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 1 (M., 1953), 151.

67 Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 8 (M., 1953), 120.
68 Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 3 (M., 1953), 497.
69 Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 10 (M., 1956), 140–41.
70 Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 6 (M., 1953), 186.
76 chapter three

twelve years of age and onwards were advised to read works for adults,
starting with Mikhail Zagoskin’s historical novel Yury Miloslavsky: or the
Russians in 1612 (Yury Miloslavsky, ili Russkie v 1612 godu, 1831), and then
moving on to Pushkin, Lermontov and Gogol. Of foreign writers, Belinsky
recommended Cervantes, Defoe, Swift, Victor Hugo, George Sand, Alexan-
dre Dumas, Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper. Belinsky especially
liked Scott and Cooper as writers who depicted real life in a highly artistic
form and thus offered good counterpoints to dubious fantasy literature.

What Russian children actually read in the 1840s can be seen, for exam-
ple, from Vera Zhelikhovskaya’s autobiographical My Adolescence (Moyo
otrochestvo, 1893). As far as she recalled, the choice of Russian children’s
books was still meagre at that time. Her young aristocratic heroine in Sara-
tov reads Ishimova’s History of Russia in Stories for Children, the magazine
Little Star and Pushkin’s fairy tales. The rest is foreign, mostly French, lit-
erature. The list consists of Berquin, Madame de Genlis’ Les petits émigres,
Alexandre de Saillet’s Les enfants peints par eux mêmes (1842) and a maga-
zine, Le dimanche des enfants. She learns English by reading Edgeworth,
and German with the help of Hoffmann’s tales.
Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s governess made up a list which shows what was
read in a well-off Russian family in the 1850s. Together with little Pyotr,
she read Amable Tastu’s Education maternelle (1836–43) and Edgeworth’s
Parent’s Assistant, or Stories for Children (1848). Stories by Guizot and von
Schmid offered a little lighter reading. The future composer was especially
fond of Michel Masson’s Les enfants célèbres (1838) and Eugénie Foa’s Les
petits musiciens (1850), where he could read about the astonishing achieve-
ments of children composers like Mozart.71 The preference for original
French literature is explained by the fact that not only was Tchaikovsky’s
governess French, but so, too, was his mother.

71 Solomon Volkov, Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky: Interviews with George Balanchine (New

York, 1985), 43.
 CHAPTER FOUR

REALISM (1860–1890)

Realism brought fame to Russian literature. The novels of Goncharov,

Turgenev, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy became part of world literature. The
achievements of contemporary children’s literature are not as remarkable,
even though it showed the same turn towards Realism during the second
half of the nineteenth century. New magazines, such as New Library for
Education (Novaya biblioteka dlya vospitaniya) and Snowdrop (Podsne-
zhnik), favoured works that strove to describe the living conditions of
children truthfully. In many works a humanitarian touch was felt, as the
writer reflected on the life of the unprivileged masses.
If the 1860s were still bleak and translation-dominated, the 1870s
changed the picture. Children’s literature became more heterogeneous
as the choice of theme, subject and style grew wider. New milieus were
introduced, also illuminating the life of the poor peasantry or that of the
workers in the outskirts of the big cities. Some prominent writers of adult
literature tried their hand at writing for juvenile readers, but of greater
importance was a growing number of professional children’s writers. The
big names of the period include both women, such as Vera Zhelikhovskaya,
Aleksandra Annenskaya, Ekaterina Sysoeva and Evgeniya Tur, and men,
such as Mikhail Chistyakov, Pavel Zasodimsky, Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak,
Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko and Aleksаndr Kruglov. The demand for
new editions of their works bore witness to a substantial readership.
Even if the period favoured realistic fiction and books with factual con-
tent, it did not bring about an end to fairy tales and imaginative literature.
In the 1860s the growing commercial interest in children’s literature led to
a broadscale publication of Hans Christian Andersen’s tales, and the 1870s
brought the highly original fairy tales of Nikolay Vagner, Hans Christian
Andersen’s Russian colleague. Over the next few decades the Swedish-
speaking Finn Zacharias Topelius attracted readers’ attention with his
literary fairy tales.
In the 1860s, children’s literature was finally able to at least partly free
itself from the contempt which both writers and readers had traditionally
felt for it.1 This change of attitude was the outcome of a growing respect

1 N.V. Chekhov, Detskaia literatura (М., 1909), 121–122.

78 chapter four

for pedagogical research and work. Upbringing and education became

vital issues, and a growing network of schools enlarged the readership.
Konstantin Ushinsky’s and Leo Tolstoy’s primers were mainly intended
for a new audience of peasant children. In the Ministry of Popular Edu-
cation, lists of recommended reading were compiled, and at teachers’
conferences and in professional magazines such as Teacher (Uchitel) and
Pedagogical Anthology (Pedagogichesky sbornik), children’s reading and
the role of school libraries were discussed seriously. In the spirit of Belin-
sky, the critics continuously paid close attention to children’s reading and
worked to bring literature closer to reality. Readers were to be turned into
thinking, critically minded individuals.

As the demand for children’s literature grew, the publishers, too, demon-
strated an increasing interest in the genre. The leading publishing house
in the field was M.O. Volf. Mavriky Volf (1825 or 1826–83), actually Boleslav
Wolff from Warsaw, published his first books in 1853. He was the first in
Russia to divide readers into categories according to age: 6–8, 8–10 and
older. In the French manner, he introduced series, including the ‘Green
Library’, ‘Pink Library’, ‘Russian Library’ and ‘My First Library’. The ‘Golden
Library’ consisted of expensive editions, gift books for the Christmas and
Easter market, traditionally the high seasons for children’s books. The
youngest audience was offered picture books such as Styopka-Rastryopka.
Classics in the library series included Cervantes, Perrault, Swift, the Broth-
ers Grimm, Walter Scott, Fenimore Cooper, Wilhelm Hauff, Maria Edge-
worth and Christoph von Schmid. Modern foreign literature for juveniles
was represented by names like Harriet Beecher Stowe, W.O. von Horn,
Gustav Nieritz, Mayne Reid, Edmondo de Amicis, Jules Verne, Sophie de
Ségur, Gustave Aimard and Mark Twain. Among M.O. Volf ’s Russian writ-
ers, were to be found some of the biggest contemporary names—Mikhail
Zagoskin, Mikhail Chistyakov, Vladimir Dal, Nadezhda Destunis, Aleksey
Razin, Avgusta Pchelnikova, Aleksandr Kruglov and Sofya Makarova. A
long-lived enterprise of M.O. Volf was the magazine Around the World
(Vokrug sveta), which offered entertaining and informative reading for
juveniles as well as adults.

The Critics

The critical legacy of Vissarion Belinsky was continued in the 1850s

and 1860s by Nikolay Chernyshevsky, Nikolay Dobrolyubov and Dmitry
 realism (1860–1890) 79

Pisarev. Just like their preceptor, these ‘revolutionary democrats’, as they

were called in the Soviet Union, saw themselves as forced to admit that
contemporary children’s literature was not only aesthetically deficient
but also politically and ideologically conservative. Instead of raising a
generation of ‘new men’ aware of the controversial questions of the day,
this literature apparently strove to turn its readers into taciturn and well-
adjusted citizens.
Like Belinsky, these utilitarian critics ended up looking for suitable
juvenile reading among books written for adults. Another solution to the
alarming situation was the creation of biographies of ‘great men’. How-
ever, neither Chernyshevsky’s book about Pushkin (1856) nor Dobro-
lyubov’s volume about the peasant poet Aleksey Koltsov (1858) caught
anyone’s attention. Nevertheless, since they had been published anony-
mously, their own authors reviewed them. Needless to say, both reviewers
were impressed by the ‘unknown’ authors’ ability to talk to children in an
unconstrained manner.
Dobrolyubov presented Koltsov as an ardent defender of freedom,
while Chernyshevsky stressed the value of Pushkin’s activities for his
native country. The poet was “a hardworking, noble and powerful charac-
ter” with simple habits.2 Revealing for the situation of children’s literature
at the time is Chernyshevsky’s remark that he deliberately refrained from
calling his work a children’s book, as this was a label that many children
were sure to shun. Especially in the years between childhood and ado-
lescence, young readers preferred ‘bad’ literature to overtly ‘children’s lit-
erature’. Unfortunately for his book about Pushkin, this insight did not
prevent Chernyshevsky from producing a tedious tract, too sophisticated
for a young audience.
The starting point for Nikolay Chernyshevsky (1828–89) as a critic was
that children’s literature should depict reality in a reliable way. Books
were to be ‘textbooks of life’, and the authors were to take their reader’s
age into consideration. Furthermore, in contemporary literature, Cherny-
shevsky felt that the child was often underestimated and affronted by alto-
gether too primitive stories. The anthology New Stories: Short Stories for
Children (Novye povesti: Rasskazy dlya detey, 1854), which included trans-
lations from the French on the themes of meekness, humility and God’s
omnipotence, offered Chernyshevsky a chance to write witty parodies

2 N.G. Chernyshevskii, “Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin: Ego zhizn’ i sochineniia,”

Sobranie sochinenii v piati tomakh. Vol. 3 (M., 1974), 123.
80 chapter four

of bad children’s literature. The sentimentality, implausibility and verbos-

ity of such works were mercilessly and deservedly ridiculed.
Chernyshevsky anticipated the general development of the genre by
stressing the importance of a swift and economical narration and a strong
story line. The writer should continuously be answering the reader’s ques-
tion: “Well, what happened next? What happened?”3 The narrative man-
ner and ingenuous and simple language of a tale like “Matvey” in Tolstoy’s
magazine Yasnaya Polyana was singled out as exemplary. Some writers of
historical novels, like Mikhail Zagoskin and Konstantin Masalsky, stuck
to the essentials by offering straight talk and exciting plots. The list of
writers of fiction approved by Chernyshevsky largely consisted of writers
for adults, such as Pushkin, Scott, Dickens and George Sand. Out of all of
contemporary Russian children’s literature, he approved wholeheartedly
only of the magazines The New Library for Education and Snowdrop.
During a short period, the last three years before his premature death,
Nikolay Dobrolyubov (1836–61) wrote more than thirty articles and reviews
on children’s literature. In many respects, he was more unambiguous in
his statements than either Belinsky or Chernyshevsky. He declared that
the role of children’s literature was to raise its readers in the spirit of pro-
gressive ideas. Such literature as Ishimova’s magazines Little Star and Rays
of Light, which did not question social evils and inequality while encour-
aging modesty and submission, had to be rejected. The new ideals were
strength of character, a belief in truth and a readiness to fight lies and
hypocrisy. Children should be informed about the surrounding world and
about topical questions.
At the same time, Dobrolyubov did not ignore the specific disposition
of the audience. Children’s literature must assist in the intellectual and
moral development of its readers. For him, the ideal narrative was charac-
terised by extreme simplicity. The imaginative side of literature was not to
be overlooked: “Children’s literature should above all appeal to the child’s
imagination. This is a feature that is stronger in children than in other peo-
ple, and because of this it needs nourishment and guidance.”4 To the still
too few realistic books for children, some fairy tales could thus be added.
Even if the tales of the Brothers Grimm and Wilhelm Hauff were devoid
of any educative content, Dobrolyubov accepted them on the basis that

3 N.G. Chernyshevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh. Vol. 6 (SPb, 1906),
285.
4 N.A. Dobroliubov, Sobranie sochinenii v deviati tomakh. Vol. 4 (M.-L., 1962), 166.
 realism (1860–1890) 81

they strengthened the reader’s imagination and awoke a poetic feeling. He

also acknowledged the talent of Hans Christian Andersen, whose position
among Russian readers was not yet thoroughly established. Dobrolyubov,
who read Andersen in French, felt that the Danish writer knew how to
write without any disturbing ‘moralistic tails’.5 However, any supernatural
features in the tales were rejected by Dobrolyubov on the ground that
these might turn the reader’s attention away from reality.
Dobrolyubov’s favourite among Russian children’s books was Avgusta
Pchelnikova’s Talks with Children (Besedy s detmi, 1858–59). Written in a
simple style, it conveyed a deep respect for work. His other favourites were
all of foreign origin, for example, The Adventures of the Little Drummer-
Boy, or the Ruin of the Frenchmen in Russia in 1812 (Der junge Trommel-
schläger, 1838, transl. 1858) by the German writer Gustav Nieritz. The fate
of a German boy who is forced to join the French army on its Russian
campaign and to experience the horrors of the war at close hand made
absorbing reading.6 In its tendency, the novel was pacifistic. Likewise,
Dobrolyubov warmly recommended books by Dickens and George Sand,
as well as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852, transl. 1858), in
which the oppressed and maltreated were defended in a humane spirit. As
Russian children’s literature was still so meagre, Dobrolyubov suggested
that young readers should also be offered works by Pushkin, Gogol and
Turgenev.
The conclusions of Dmitry Pisarev (1840–68) were discouraging. Chil-
dren’s literature was doomed to be “one of the most pitiful, false and
unnecessary of all literary branches”.7 In an article of 1865 on school librar-
ies, he even claimed that the existence of a special literature for children
indicated that society was sick. Children from the first three school classes
should “run around, play and romp”, and not spend time on reading. As
for those children who read just for pleasure and killed time in the com-
pany of writers like Paul de Kock and Alexandre Dumas, père and fils,
Pisarev’s verdict was severe: such conduct was equivalent to immorality.
To read without any educative goal was “a profanation and prostitution
of thought”.8 A sound literature, created by a sound society, was good for
everyone, no matter of what age.

5 Dobroliubov, Sobranie sochinenii v deviati tomakh. Vol. 3 (M.-L., 1962), 483.

6 Ibid., 193–194.
7 D. Pisarev, “Shkola i zhizn’,” Sochineniia. Vol. 5 (SPb, 1866), 164.
8 Ibid., 165.
82 chapter four

Unlike Pisarev, Feliks Toll (1823–67) took great pains to acquaint him-
self with the existing children’s literature. His volume Our Children’s Liter-
ature (Nasha detskaya literatura, 1862) included reviews of 242 children’s
books and six children’s magazines from the period 1855–1861 and was
meant to be an aid to teachers, parents and writers. Much attention was
paid to dividing the readers into groups according to age (5–8, 8–12, 12–16)
and deciding which literature suited which age.
What Toll asked from children’s literature was a high moral sense, but
taught without any explicit moralising. At the same time, he felt that
children’s books should be wise and entertaining, have a a good style
and take heed of the readers’ ages. Rejecting sentimental literature and
books written purely to entertain readers, Toll eventually came to favour
popular science, that is, books offering scientific explanations for every-
day occurrences. Like Dobrolyubov, Toll singled out Pchelnikova’s Talks
with Children and Nieritz’s The Adventures of the Little Drummer-Boy, the
latter for its praiseworthy, universal morals. Fairy tales and fantasies, on
the contrary, disturbed “the spirit of sound pedagogy with an unpleasant
dissonance”.9 To stimulate the reader’s imagination beyond the border of
reality was hazardous, and anthropomorphism with its talking animals
was only apt to create confusion in the minds of young readers. The devel-
opment of imagination had to be regulated, and even fairy tales had to
contain some idea of importance and offer useful information.

The New Primers

In connection with the great social reforms of 1861, the need for changes
in the educational system was openly admitted. There was an acute
need for mass education, since an illiterate population made all progress
impossible. The school system had to be democratised to include peasant
children. In addition, a new type of textbook was needed. To be sure, sev-
eral good readers, mostly based upon foreign models, were already avail-
able, but they were all addressed to a narrow, privileged segment of the
population.
The popular German reader Der Deutsche Kinderfreund (1802) by Fried­
rich Wilmsen had been translated and adapted for Russian conditions by
Pavel Maksimovich (1796–1888), a school inspector from the St Petersburg

9 F. Toll, Nasha detskaia literatura: Opyt bibliografii sovremennoi otecheskoi detskoi
literatury (SPb, 1862), 24.
 realism (1860–1890) 83

district, under the title The Children’s Friend (Drug detey, 1839). Accepted
by the Ministry of Popular Education, it was widely used in the 1840s and
1850s. In 1882 its 19th edition appeared. The book with its moral tales,
fables and poems was a product of its time. Another much-praised primer
was The Christmas Tree (Yolka, 1845–46), compiled by Anna Daragan
(1806–77), daughter of the Rector of St Petersburg University. Its methodi-
cal structure and exquisite illustrations secured it longstanding success,
with a fourteenth edition appearing as late as 1907. It was one of M.O.
Volf ’s biggest successes, with well over 100,000 copies already sold dur-
ing Mavriky Volf’s lifetime.10 What was missing in it, though, was longer,
coherent texts. Daragan’s Natural History for Children (Estestvennaya isto-
riya zhivotnykh, rasskazannaya dlya detey, 1849) offered appealing read-
ing in addition to an impressive layout. In Daragan’s works pupils are
urged to start and end every lesson by crossing themselves and reading
a short prayer. It was important to her that the children learned Church
Slavonic at an early age in order to be able to read the Bible and say their
prayers.
Andrey Zablotsky (1808–81/82) and Vladimir Odoevsky co-authored
Stories about God, Man and Nature (Rasskazy o Boge, cheloveke i prirode,
1849), a reader based upon Raimund Wurst’s Das erste Schulbuch (1834).
The content is made up of stories, talks, aphorisms and texts on biology,
geography, theology and morals. Aleksandra Ishimova also felt a need to
present Russian children with material for reading. First Reading and First
Lessons for Small Children (Pervoe chtenie i pervye uroki dlya malenkikh
detey, 1856–58) was planned for home education, taking Tastu’s Education
maternelle (1836–43) as a model. In the talks and small stories that fol-
low the alphabet, numbers and syllable exercises, children ponder upon
moral issues, such as whether one should give beggars money out of pity
or in order to be called good (“Nishchy”). Ishimova’s selection of poems
in English and German varied the same set of feelings—obedience, piety,
pity and love for one’s neighbour. Biblical tales occupied a considerable
part of Ishimova’s two volumes.
Aleksey Razin (1823–75), the editor of Magazine for Children, made a
brave attempt to gather all human knowledge on nature and history into
one volume, God’s World (Mir Bozhy, 1857). The factual material is illus-
trated by poems. The overall tone is pious and optimistic: “And when you

10 S.F. Librovich, Na knizhnom postu: Vospominania. Zapiski. Dokumenty (Pg-M., 1916),

468.
84 chapter four

look at God’s world, in which everything is so splendid, regular and harmo-

nious, and at the intelligent inhabitants of this world, who all become bet-
ter and better, you unwittingly think about God with love and gratitude:
He has created all this, organised it and preserves it with his omniscient
Reason.”11 Well-structured and fluently written, God’s World succeeded in
awaking readers’ interest in knowledge and science, and its influence was
felt for decades to come.
In three books for young readers published in 1860—Travels in Differ-
ent Countries of the World (Puteshestviya po raznym stranam mira), His-
torical Stories and Biographies (Istoricheskie rasskazy i biografii) and Tales
and Stories for Children (Povesti i rasskazy dlya detey)—Razin continued
his activity as a populariser of history, geography and natural sciences.
Russian history is told in the form of epic stories, while travels, now
along the Volga, now over Niagara Falls, are presented in the form of
recollections, obviously not Razin’s own. In the texts with scenes from
Russian life the author’s concern for the poor and oppressed is strong.
“The Happiness and Misfortune of a Young Spruce” (“Schaste i neschaste
molodoy yolki”) is a pedagogue’s version of Andersen’s well-known tale,
“The Fir-Tree” (“Grantræet”).
The most successful of Razin’s works of fiction was The Real Robinson:
the Adventures of Alexander Selkirk on a Desert Island (Nastoyashchy Rob-
inzon: Priklycheniya Aleksandra Selkirka na neobitaemom ostrove, 1851).
The book was based on Joseph Boniface’s Seul, which purported to be the
authentic record of the Scottish sailor Selkirk.

New schools for the masses demanded another approach and a new kind
of material which would take readers’ tastes into consideration as well.
Two important names, Konstantin Ushinsky and Leo Tolstoy, represented
this renewal. Their readers became compulsory school reading for half a
century onwards and, consequently, several of their stories became stan-
dard children’s reading. Their books also provided an impetus for the
breakthrough of Realism in children’s literature.
Konstantin Ushinsky (1824–70/71) is generally recognised as the father
of Russian pedagogy and the founder of the Russian elementary school.
His contribution to children’s reading consists of two readers—Children’s
World (Detsky mir, 1861) and Native Word (Rodnoe slovo, 1864). While the

11 A. Razin, Mir bozhii (SPb, 1857), 473.

 realism (1860–1890) 85

former addressed children from ten to eleven, The Native Word aimed at a
slightly younger audience—children from six to nine-years-olds.
The success of Ushinsky’s textbooks was overwhelming. In Ishimova’s
Little Star, Children’s World was warmly recommended: “Until now there
has not been any book that would have been so useful, not only for chil-
dren in general, but also for pupils and their mentors.”12 The two read-
ers were used in Russian schools up to the revolution, with Native Word
being published in around 150 editions and well over ten million copies.
Children’s World was issued in about fifty editions. After the revolution a
choice of Ushinsky’s tales, mostly about animals, were included in Soviet
textbooks and have since retained their central position in children’s
reading.
In a foreword Ushinsky lays out his main principles. The material
should be set in children’s own surroundings but not necessarily taken
from their actual lives. While adults were fond of reading about child-
hood, children themselves preferred to look forward. Fairy tales should
not dominate over intellectually stimulating informative texts. Reading
material ought to be logically structured, as John Amos Comenius had
already demonstrated, and not too complicated to be retold by children.
Stylistic clichés should be avoided. The foreign model that Ushinsky could
warmly recommend was a British one, Reading Lessons (1855) by Edward
Hughes.
Ushinsky saw the Orthodox Church and school as the main educators
of the Russian people. An appendix to Native Word includes Biblical tales
written in Church Slavonic. Of equal importance to Ushinsky was provid-
ing a national basis for education. Stress should be laid on the Russian
language and folk tradition. The readers foster respect for the Russian
people and its culture, for the peasant and his work. Volodya and Liza in
A Trip from the Capital to the Countryside (Poezdka iz stolitsy v derevnyu)
leave St Petersburg behind them and travel into the realm of the Russian
peasantry. Here they meet another, completely different world, which
Ushinsky refrains from idealising. For the two children it is a shock to
see the conditions in which the peasants live and work, while they are
reminded that “Our peasants live a hard and simple life in the villages, but
it is their labour that feeds the whole of Russia.” For the privileged classes
it is an obligation to serve the common people and give them a better
future through education for all children.

12 “Novye knigi,” Zvezdochka 67 (1861): 228.

86 chapter four

The starting point in Native Word is the peasant child, his milieu and
his interests. Children’s World broadens this perspective. Its encyclopaedic
content has a growing complexity as its basic structure. The informative
texts deal with natural science, geography and Russian history. Nature
is a cornerstone in Ushinsky’s thinking: “I am convinced that the logic
of nature is the most accessible and the most useful logic for children.”13
Without sacrificing biological accuracy, he stresses the wisdom of nature
in the fictive texts. The children in “The Children in the Grove” (“Deti v
roshche”) learn diligence and a sense of responsibility by watching nature.
A father uses two playful dogs as a parable to teach his son respect and
tolerance (“Igrayushchie sobaki”). Some of Ushinsky’s animal tales, like
“The Two Goat Kids” (“Dva kozlika”) and “The Sun and the Wind” (“Solntse
i veter”) come close to fables. The negative example of the cockerel Petya
shows the need for patience and the ability to listen to others (“Umey
obozhdat”). The conflict of the tales sometimes takes the form of a quar-
rel, which eventually leads to the insight that everyone has his own place
in creation. The moral is most often taught in action and not through
direct authorial remarks.
Ushinsky borrowed and reworked foreign material freely. One of his
most famous texts, Four Wishes (Chetyre zhelaniya), is in fact a German
story from the eighteenth century. The first Russian version had already
been published by Novikov in the 1780s. The child protagonist, who sees
the charm of all four seasons, is an integrated part of nature. He lives in the
present, fully enjoying every minute. Ushinsky took folktales from Russian
folklore, such as “The Turnip” (“Repka”), “The Round Loaf ” (“Kolobok”)
and “The Geese” (“Gusi”), as well as songs, riddles and proverbs. In
Ushinsky’s eyes these were products of ‘the pedagogy of the people’.14 An
example of how freely Ushinsky handled foreign material can be found
in his prose-versions of Pushkin’s fairy tales. It was pioneering work just
to introduce Pushkin’s The Tale of the Fisherman and the Little Fish into
children’s literature. Poems by Pushkin, fables by Krylov and extracts from
the works of Goncharov and Turgenev were included in a literary section.
The translations were of minor interest, with the outdated Krummacher
as a dominant name.

13 K.D. Ushinskii, “Predislovie k 1-mu izd. ‘Detskogo mira’,” Sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 5
(М.-Л., 1949), 27.
14 К.D. Ushinskii, “Problemy russkoi shkoly,” Izbrannye pedagogicheskie sochineniia.
Vol. 2 (М., 1974), 88.
 realism (1860–1890) 87

Many of Ushinsky’s informative texts are presented as fictional narra-

tives. “The History of an Apple Tree” (“Istoriya odnoy yablonki”) demon-
strates how a seed turns into an apple tree with parallels to the evolution
of a child through education. The train of events from flax in the field to
children’s clothes is recounted in “How the Shirt Grew Up in the Field”
(“Kak rubashka v pole vyrosla”). The didactic content of “The Alien Egg”
(“Chuzhoe yaichko”) concerns the awareness, as well as the acceptance,
of differences.
Ushinsky was a master of style, deliberately avoiding foreign, difficult
words and smooth but empty phrases. All the pieces in his textbooks can
be read easily. Ushinsky also invites pupils to discuss and analyse his texts,
to make comparisons and draw conclusions and to tell their own stories.
Native Word also included cheerful poems about school, nature and
the four seasons. The author (and occasionally the translator) of these
unsigned poems, which number around thirty, was Lev Modzalevsky
(1837–96), a teacher of Russian at the Smolny Institute, where Ushinsky
had served as an inspector for some time. In “Invitation to School” (“Pri-
glashenie v shkolu”), morning nature brims with diligent work and action,
offering good models for the schoolchildren. This and other poems convey
a positive, cheerful attitude not only to the world of nature but also to the
world of learning. Many of Modzalevsky’s texts were later set to music.

The familiar name of Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) is also important in the field
of children’s literature. He became involved in the issue of children’s read-
ing when, in 1859, he founded a school for the peasant children of his
estate, Yasnaya Polyana. No curriculum, no punishment, and no rewards
were used in Tolstoy’s school. There was no homework and exams, and
the pupils were allowed to come and go freely. The ideal was an uncon-
strained relationship between the schoolmaster and his pupils. The chil-
dren were taught on the basis of their interests and questions, usually
in the form of conversation. All information had to be of immediate use
to the children.
Travels abroad gave Tolstoy the opportunity to learn about modern
European educational methods and practice. During 1862 he published
a monthly journal, Yasnaya Polyana, which contained writings on educa-
tion, polemics with the official education policy, and reports on his and his
colleagues’ work at both the estate school and the people’s school in the
region. The journal’s motto, “You think you’re leading, but it’s you who’s
being led”, taken from Goethe’s Faust, shows that Tolstoy saw teaching as
a process of give-and-take. In a provocative essay, he asked “Who should
88 chapter four

learn to write from whom, the peasant children from us or we from the
peasant children?” Impressed by the creative power of the children and
their manner of expression, he published their riddles and compositions
in a literary appendix. One example was “How a boy told how he was
caught in a thunderstorm in the forest” (“Kak malchik rasskazyval pro to,
kak ego v lesu zastala groza”). Tolstoy held the radical view that a text
written by a child was always “more righteous, refined and moral” than
anything written by adults.15 Foreign works, such as Robinson Crusoe and
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, were retold by the student teachers of his school in a
manner which would suit a Russian child.
Tolstoy was not happy with the existing readers and teaching material.
Even Ushinsky’s Children’s World he dismissed as ‘idle talk’. He considered
the moral too heavily underlined, and the style overloaded and intricate.
Every noun had an attribute attached. As a result, Tolstoy considered him-
self forced to compile a Primer (Azbuka) of his own. After many years
of intensive work, it appeared in four volumes in 1872. The author him-
self was pleased with the result: “Having written this primer, I can die
in peace”, he wrote in a letter.16 However, its cold reception drove him
to revisit his work, and in 1875, The New Primer (Novaya azbuka) came
out, this time with the reading material published separately as Russian
Readers (Russkie knigi dlya chteniya, 1875–1885). Recommended by the
Ministry of Popular Enlightenment, these books were widely used in Rus-
sian schools until 1917. During the author’s lifetime The New Primer was
published 28 times in around two million copies. Eventually, several gen-
erations of Russians were raised on Tolstoy’s stories for children. Many of
the stories still form part of the Russian school curriculum today.
The reading matter in The New Primer consists of minimalist texts, the
first ones made up of just a few lines, reflecting a small child’s gradual dis-
covery of his or her environment. Folk proverbs and sayings are included.
The illustrations in the 1872 edition were excluded from The New Primer
because they occupied too much space and only distracted children from
reading. In the story “Filipok” the title character is a little peasant boy
whose thirst for knowledge makes him defy his parents and the barking
dogs in the street in order to get to school. The portrait turns into an alle-
gory about the rise of the Russian people through education. “Little Red

15 L.N. Tolstoi, “Komu u kogo uchitsya pisat’, krest’ianskim rebiatam u nas ili nam u
krest’ianskikh rebiat?,” Sobranie sochinenii v 90 t. T. 8 (M., 1936), 323.
16 Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii v 90 t. Vol. 61 (M., 1953), 269. (Letter to A.A. Tolstaia,
1872.)
 realism (1860–1890) 89

Riding Hood” (“Krasnaya shapochka”) was retold with the wolf coming
out as the winner. He swallows up grandma and her grandchild, takes off
his disguise “and set off again into the forest”. The moral is also missing
in “The Three Bears” (“Tri medvedya”), Tolstoy’s rendering of the English
fairy tale “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”. The bears are given a Russian
identity through their names—Mikhail Ivanovich, Nastasya Petrovna and
Mishutka, while the intruder remains a nameless outsider. She functions
as a menace to the peaceful Russian community, a threat that must be
chased away. The different volumes and timbres of the bears’ voices are
depicted graphically, just like in the original. The laconic end (“And the
bears did not catch her”) makes “Three Bears” an adventure story about
imprisonment and escape. Seen from the perspective of the Russian bears,
it is also a patriotic tale, something of a War and Peace for small children,
where the Russian soil is eventually cleansed of the trespassing enemy.
For his Russian Readers Tolstoy chose chiefly foreign material, but
everything was thoroughly revised to suit his ideals of content and style.
Tolstoy, in fact, spent as much effort on these small tales as on his work
for adults. He worked hard on every word, rewriting the texts as many
as ten times. No special children’s themes were singled out, as Tolstoy
favoured content of universal interest. Legends and folktales of Russian,
Jewish, German, Turkish, Indian, Arabic and Persian origin make up a
large part of the volumes. The moral is often distinctly ‘Tolstoyan’. Praise
of meekness and forgiveness, or, in fact, ‘nonresistance to evil’, is the basis
of “God Sees the Truth but Waits” (“Bog pravdu vidit, da ne skoro skazhet”).
The merchant Aksyonov is falsely accused of murder, but when he, after
twenty-six years’ hard labour, comes across the real murderer, he refrains
from turning him in: “‘God will forgive you; perhaps I am one hundred
times worse than you are!’—And suddenly his heart lightened. And the
yearning for home left him, and he did not want to leave the prison, and
only thought about his last hour.” The force of love turns out to be equally
strong in “The Bishop and the Robber” (“Arkhierey i razboynik”), a scene
from one of Tolstoy’s favourite novels, Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, and
in “The Red Indian and the Englishman” (“Indiets i anglichanin”). In the
latter the old Indian sets his young prisoner free, in spite of the fact that
the Whites have killed his son. What we get is a demonstration of the
Christian command ‘Love Thy Enemy’ put in practice.
Tolstoy did not believe in poetry as children’s reading. Bypassing Krylov,
he went back to Aesop’s fables in prose. The moral of “Father and Sons”
(“Otets i synovya”), “The Ass and the Horse” (“Osyol i loshad”) and “Two
Comrades” (“Dva tovarishcha”) is reminiscent of folk wisdom. Diligence,
90 chapter four

kindness, honesty and courage are praised without excessive preaching.

In a French book, La morale en action ou choix de faits mémorables (1845),
Tolstoy found a moving story about the friendship between a lion and a
dog, “Le lion et l’épagneul”. In Tolstoy’s translation, “The Lion and the Little
Dog” (“Lev i sobachka”) became a modern fable about faithfulness unto
death. Thrown into the cage as food for the lion, the little dog becomes
the lion’s bosom friend. When the dog dies, the lion loses its will to live.
Tolstoy’s animal stories convey a strong love and respect for all liv-
ing creatures. Life is sacred. Tolstoy even ponders upon the fate of trees,
admiring their strong will to live. The eight stories about the dogs Bulka
and Milton were based on reminiscences from his time as an officer in the
Caucasus. To the same category of ‘true stories’ (byl) belong “The Shark”
(“Akula”) and “The Leap” (“Pryzhok”), breathtaking mini-adventures at
sea. Tolstoy usually prefers first-person narration in order to heighten the
feeling of authenticity. When explaining natural phenomena, such as dew,
fog, cold, water, wind or magnetism, he often appears explicitly in the role
of the teller. Some of the few non-fictional texts are taken from Ushinsky’s
readers. The children are taught through concrete examples and details,
which they themselves can verify. The starting point is always from the
children’s questions of ‘why?’ and ‘how?’
Russian Readers also include Tolstoy’s retellings of some well-known
fairy tales. In spite of his minimal height, the title character in “Tom
Thumb” (“Malchik s palchik”) is able to save himself and his brothers from
the death that their poor parents have planned for them. Cleverness and
endurance are praised. Tolstoy’s method of simplifying is demonstrated in
his shortened version of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New
Clothes” (“Tsarskoe novoe plate”). Andersen’s king has been replaced by
a tsar, and instead of a child we meet a Russian yurodivy, or God’s fool, in
the dénouement.
Typical for these ‘true stories’, legends, animal stories and fairy tales
is a short form, stylised content and an objective narrative manner.
The dynamic development of the plot is not undercut by lengthy descrip-
tions or pictorial language. The plot is simple and interesting. The didactic
element is to be detected by the reader, without being explicitly stated by
the author. Tolstoy’s style is one of few words, laconic and elliptical; the
ideals are brevity and simplicity. Everything should be “beautiful, brief,
simple and, above all, clear”, Tolstoy stated.17 One ideal was ancient Greek

17 Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 61 (M., 1953), 283. (Letter to A.A. Tolstaia.
April 6–8, 1872.)
 realism (1860–1890) 91

Fig. 4. Leo Tolstoy and His Grandchildren (1909)

literature, which Tolstoy studied at this time in the original language, and
the language of the Scriptures. Another source of inspiration was the lan-
guage of the peasants and their children. Tolstoy read some of the texts
out loud to the pupils at the school or to his own children, asking them
to repeat everything in their own words.
Tolstoy’s main work for young readers is A Prisoner in the Caucasus
(Kavkazsky plennik, 1872), a tale of adventure, labelled a ‘true story’. Local
life is pictured ethnographically. Two Russian officers, Zhilin and Kostylin,
are captured in the Caucasian guerrilla war. They are held for ransom, but
Zhilin manages to escape with the help of a Tatar girl. Zhilin is brave and
hardy; he does not lose hope when he is taken prisoner by the Chechen
enemy. By contrasting the two Russian officers, as well as the Russians and
their enemy, Tolstoy gives praise to courage, faithfulness and the sense of
duty. The result was, in Tolstoy’s eyes, something of an ‘epic poem’ for
children, based upon universal feelings like courage, compassion and the
fear of death.
The opening line of A Prisoner in the Caucasus is reminiscent of the
style of folktales and bylinas: “A barin was serving in the Caucasus as an
officer. His name was Zhilin.” The plain, unvarnished style bears the traits
of a folktale. Verbs dominate the short sentences. Tolstoy was immensely
92 chapter four

satisfied with the result, feeling that this narrative manner could also serve
as a model for his works for adults. A Prisoner in the Caucasus also gave
new life to the romanticism surrounding the Caucasus, a popular trend in
Russian children’s literature until the revolution.
In the 1880s Tolstoy wrote several ‘stories for the people’, based on the
same poetics as his works for children. Where Love Is, There God Is Also
(Gde lyubov, tam i Bog, 1885) is based on the story Le Père Martin by the
French Baptist preacher Reuben Saillens. The poor shoemaker Martyn
Avdeich realises that he has met the Saviour in the shape of the three
strangers whom he has helped. The story serves as an illustration of a pas-
sage from the Bible, “Inasmuch as ye have done it to unto one of the least
of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Later the story was rewrit-
ten by Mig Holder under the title Le Père Martin (1950) and by Brigitte
Hanhart as Schuster Martin (1986), and it became Tolstoy’s most famous
children’s book outside Russia. Holder and Hanhart worked in the spirit
of Tolstoy himself, handling the foreign text freely, but the final results
have more in common with Saillens’ French original than with Tolstoy’s
Russified version.
In 1907, Tolstoy wrote a book on religion for the pupils of the reopened
Yasnaya Polyana school, Christ’s Teaching, Presented for Children (Uche-
nie Khrista, izlozhennoe dlya detey). Surprisingly, this work bears no sign
of adaptation for the audience as far as the presentation of the content
is concerned, and the uninspired questions that conclude every chapter
make the book seem outdated in its methods.

Women Writers

The role of women in children’s literature expanded during Tsarist Rus-

sia’s last fifty years. Many of the children’s magazines had female editors,
and, as writers, women often knew better than their male colleagues how
to capture their readers’ interest and, consequently, they managed to
attract a considerable following. In the popular subgenre of ‘family novels’,
elements of adventure and suspense were introduced. The heroines are
acutely aware of their precarious social position and the need for educa-
tion when preparing for adult life. A staple figure is the poor orphan, who
relies on the charity of other people.
Avgusta Voronova (1813–?), whose real name was Anna Verner, can be
said to have introduced the women question into Russian children’s liter-
ature. Educated in the German Petrischule in St Petersburg, she made her
 realism (1860–1890) 93

literary debut with the volume The Grandmother-Storyteller (Babushka-

rasskashchitsa) in 1843. In three stories Voronova taught emotional think-
ing and praised feelings of modesty, pity, responsibility and helpfulness
towards animals and one’s fellow men. The daughter of a wealthy land-
owner keeps a red Easter egg as a reminder of her failure to help a poor
orphan as a child. Good deeds have to be performed every day. The critic
of Notes of the Fatherland (Otechestvennye zapiski) was positively sur-
prised: “To our great astonishment, these are fairly well-told stories for
children with illustrations that are not at all bad. For a children’s book,
this is something very rare, and, as the [Russian] proverb goes, In the
land of the blind the one-eyed is king. The Grandmother-Storyteller is fully
entitled to consider itself an aristocrat among the plebeian riff-raff in the
endless stream of children’s books published in Russia.”18
In the 1850s, Voronova published frequently in Ishimova’s magazines
Little Star and Rays of Light, later collecting some of her works in Chil-
dren’s Portraits (Detskie portrety, 1855) and The First Step (Pervy shag,
1858). She favoured ‘true stories’, supposedly taken from real life and
presented in the form of ‘notes’. The narrator, be it a tutor, governess or
grandmother, often resembles the writer herself. Family scenes and child
characters are depicted with a loving eye in stories like “A Trip to Rostov”
(“Poezdka v Rostov”), “Christmastide in 1847” (“Svyatki v 1847 godu”) and
“My Little Friend Mitya B-n” (“Moy malenky drug Mitya B-n”). More valu-
able than exemplary behaviour is ‘the education of the heart’. Unfortu-
nately, the sugar-sweet children and the static plots make most of these
works unreadable. Voronova’s story Grisha’s Adventures (Pokhozdeniya
Grishi, 1859) made Dobrolyubov predict that “impatient Vanechka, absent-
minded Grisha and all the other small dolls made up by a scholastic didac-
tics will never interest clever children”.19
In other stories, Voronova contrasted lives of poverty and of wealth. The
family girl in Two Christmas Parties (Dve yolki, 1857) becomes aware of
the harsh conditions, including drunkenness and starvation, which other
children have to endure. The function of the orphan, either adopted into
a rich family or generously accepted by a boarding school for noble girls,
is to serve as a test for the other girls. They must realise that she is not
there just to enable them to practice goodness, but that she has a worth
of her own. The same theme, incidentally, can also be found in Voronova’s

18 Otechestvennye zapiski 10 (1843): 31.

19 Dobroliubov, Sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 5 (М.-Л., 1962), 491–492.
94 chapter four

animal-tales. The children learn to bear responsibility and not just look
for short-lived pleasant emotions.
At her best Voronova features psychological portraits of girls and young
women at a turning point in their lives. Seeking admiration and praise for
one’s outward appearance or behaviour is condemned, while self-denial
and serving others are offered as ideals. Meekness, contentedness and trust
in God are the main values. This can also be seen in Voronova’s longest
work, the Bildungsroman Lyubochka: a Day from Lyubochka’s Childhood
(Lyubochka: Den iz Lyubochkina detstva, 1858) and in its sequel, Lyubo-
chka at Boarding School (Lyubochka v pansione). Lyuba’s natural charm
and unaffected manners are lost when she enters a boarding school in
St Petersburg. She falls prey to class prejudice and develops a weakness
for balls and beautiful clothes. At the school, the girls compete for praise.
After the death of her father, Lyuba and her mother are forced to leave
the capital. The simple life of the Russian province changes Lyuba for the
better. When we meet her again at the age of fourteen, she is devoting
herself wholeheartedly to charity. Her mother sums up the moral, “God
loves the meek and not the proud.”
Voronova’s main works are “The Diary of a Young Girl” (“Zhurnal
molodoy devitsy”, 1856) and “A Dangerous Gift” (“Opasny dar”, 1859). Both
deal with the maturing process, the farewell to childhood and entry into
adult life. The protagonist of the first work encounters love for the first
time. Wavering between two candidates, she makes the right choice with
the aid of her clear-sighted mother. The conflict in “A Dangerous Gift” is
of a different order. The heroine is a gifted girl who dreams of becoming
a writer. However, her sex and her poverty work against her. In the eyes
of the males around her, her aspirations are the outcome of false ambi-
tions and excessive imagination. At twenty-one she marries a doctor and
settles in the Russian provinces. Using a pseudonym, she starts to publish,
but harsh reviews force her to accept that she is primarily a wife and a
mother, whose gifts should be used for the benefit of her family.
Nikolay Dobrolyubov was upset by the story’s bias. He found it revolt-
ing that artistic talent was labelled “a dangerous gift” in a country where
idealism was seen as a calamity and where children were raised with a
cold, rational attitude to life.20 Paradoxically, we have a male critic asking
for a new type of female character from a leading woman writer. Dobro-
lyubov was also distressed by the abundance of love stories in Voronova’s

20 Dobroliubov, Sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 5 (M.-L., 1962), 493.

 realism (1860–1890) 95

book The First Step. Love was a trifling theme, not worthy of modern lit-
erature, he concluded.
Nadezhda Destunis (1827–66), or Nadezhda Krylova, as she sometimes
called herself, pictured Russian rural life for young city dwellers and future
landowners in her anonymously published book The Village (Derevnya,
1859). Through a series of sketches on peasant life and the natural world,
she wanted the reader to forget all dreams about foreign countries and to
discover the charm of Russian life and landscape. Credit is given to the
Russian peasant with his simple and toil-filled life. The abolition of serf-
dom and the establishment of village schools are imprinted in the reader’s
mind as necessary steps in Russia’s development.
Destunis actively worked for women’s right to education, but in gen-
eral she was sceptical of women’s emancipation. In her writings, she is a
populist, stressing the importance of a strong feeling for the nation. Ado-
lescents must not grow up detached from the people, their life and cul-
ture. In A Collection of Russian Folk Songs and Proverbs for Young People
(Sobranie russkikh narodnykh pesen i poslovits dlya yunoshestv, 1861),
Destunis presented folk culture as a carrier of everlasting beauty.
Most of Destunis’ works were unpublished at her early death in 1866.
The posthumously published Fairy Tales and Stories for Children (Skazki
i rasskazy dlya detey, 1882) revealed yet another side of her talent. Dia-
logues between vegetables, flowers and kitchenware lead up to criticism
of vanity, self-complacency and greediness. The life of a snowflake illus-
trates the importance of finding one’s own place in life. The charming
simplicity and radical anthropomorphism of these fairy tales were apt to
capture the interest of contemporary children.
Another Destunis, this one named Sofya (years of birth and death
unknown), showed the same interest in fantasy and fairy tales. Not satis-
fied with their everyday life, the heroes of The St Petersburg Robinsons
(Peterburgskie Robinzony, 1874) and Metamorphoses (Prevrashcheniya,
1893) flee to a world of adventures and fantasies. In Metamorphoses, the
lazy schoolboy Viktor tries different roles with the help of magic, but
eventually realises that there are no shortcuts in life. As long as he does
not change his attitude to his studies, the fairy Ignorance (Nevezhestvo)
will follow him everywhere. The title character of The Good-For-Nothing
Sorcerer (Charodey-pustodey, 1878) crudely intrudes into people’s life,
tempting them with easy money, until he is finally defeated by a curse.
Christian belief lay at the bottom of many of Sofya Destunis’ works, as for
example the illustrated collection of stories, God Helps (Bog v pomoshch,
1876). Her last published work was The Holy Bible, Retold for Older Children
96 chapter four

(Bibliya, pereskazana dlya detey starshego vozrasta, 1906). Including all

the books of the Bible, it told the story of man’s apostasy from God and
how the way back to the Heavenly Father is opened. The illustrations by
Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld were taken from Die Bibel in Bildern (Leipzig,
1852–60). There was a copy of Destunis’ The Holy Bible in the library of the
last Russian Tsar with the name of Grand Duchess Tatyana (1897–1918) in
it, a gift from Metropolitan Antony.21 Together with Destunis’ Lives of the
Saints (Zhitiya svyatykh, 1886), The Holy Bible was republished after the
fall of the Soviet Union, a mark of its perceived literary merits.
Another gifted storyteller was Avgusta Pchelnikova (1830–91), whose
real name was Avgusta Tseydler. Her books about small children discover­
ing the surrounding world were all published by M.O. Volf. The two well-
behaved children in Vanya and Katya (Vanya i Katya, 1856–57) fill their
days by celebrating their mother’s name day, giving alms to the poor and
rescuing nestlings by returning them to their nest. The children in A Jour-
ney of Discovery Undertaken by Nastya and her Cousin Kolya (Puteshestvie
dlya otkrytiy, predprinyatoe Nastey i dvoyurodnym bratom Koley, [186?])
and Nastya’s Life at the Dacha (Dachnaya zhizn devitsy Nasti, 1870) dis-
play more imagination. The childen conceive of themselves as explorers,
finding themselves now in America, now in the Caucasus, surrounded by
menacing Circassians. Deserts and wildernesses must be crossed before
the children can reach their own safe world.
These were picture books, printed in Germany, and provided with for-
eign illustrations. For Nastya’s Life at the Dacha, Pchelnikova used photo-
gravure illustrations by the famous Danish artist Lorenz Frölich. After a
summer spent in the countryside, little Nastya tells her doll about rural
life with animals and birds, an astonishing silence (no barrel-organs!) and
small adventures like accidentally slipping into the water. Nastya has also
realised the necessity of obedience: “How wise it would be for children
always to listen to their mummies!” Also, in the short texts of A First
Book for Small Children (Pervaya knizhka dlya malenkikh detey, 1870), the
importance of parental care is stressed. Again, the illustrations were of
extraordinarily high quality.
Everything in Pictures (Vsyo v kartinakh, 1862–64) is a sumptuously illus-
trated encyclopaedia for children in three substantial volumes. Its model
was Die Welt in Bildern (1856) by the German pedagogue Carl Friedrich

21 “Bibleiskie rasskazy, Evangel’skie istorii,” accessed March 15, 2013, http://www

.radiomaria.ru/publ/6-1-0-133.
 realism (1860–1890) 97

Lauckhard. Information is given about life at home and in foreign coun-

tries, about animals and nature. In the foreword to another children’s
encyclopaedia, Talks with Children (Besedy s detmi, 1858–60), Pchelnikova
laid out the main principles of education: the individual inclinations and
abilities of each child should be taken into consideration, and, in teach-
ing, abstractions must be avoided. Pchelnikova also rules out physical
threats.
Talks with Children presents objects from everyday life. From the
kitchen and the household, we move on to the carpenter’s workshop, the
bakery and the dairy. The colours of the rainbow, domestic animals and
birds are all given their own chapters. Small children are offered singing
games, while older readers are taught English and French using Theodore
Robertson’s then famous method. In the stories, which are few in num-
bers and generally weak, a mother gives her curious daughter a moral
education. The book reaffirms that love for God and for one’s neighbour
should be implanted at home, while society must offer education. Both
Dobrolyubov and Toll agreed that Talks with Children was one of the best
contemporary Russian children’s books. It was written “simply and clearly,
without any trite affection and unnecessary appeals to the “dear children”,
wrote Dobrolyubov,22 while Toll called it just “superb”.23
A similar work, warmly recommended by Ivan Turgenev, was A Girl’s
Diary (Dnevnik devochki, 1862) by Sofya Butashevskaya (early 1830s–after
1880), a pseudonym for Sofya Butkevich. Turgenev had made the author’s
acquaintance in Paris and helped her work out the initial idea for her book.
The result was, according to Turgenev’s foreword, “a sound, unstrained
realism”, which he found to be an all too rare trait in contemporary chil-
dren’s literature.24
Facts are mixed with fiction, as Butashevskaya pays attention to the
everyday life of a little girl from a well-off intelligentsia family. Teaching
is turned into play, as the objects—ranging from clothes and furniture
to food—step forward to tell their stories. The mother assists with infor-
mation about the life of ants and how bread is baked. She also imprints
love and respect for everyone, independent of his or her social status. The
girl is given the opportunity to help the poor, a blind woman and her

22 Dobroliubov, Sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 5 (M.-L., 1963), 75.

23 Toll, Nasha detskaia literatura, 22.
24 I. Turgenev, “Predislovie k ‘Dnevniku devochki’ S. Butkevich,” Polnoe sobranie
sochinenii: V tridtsati tomakh. Pis’ma: V vosemnadtsati tomakh: Pis’ma. Vol. 15 (M.-L., 1968), 89.
98 chapter four

daughter, with food, clothes and shelter. Butashevskaya added a play by

Berquin, thus indicating one source of her inspiration.
The Adventures of Pony, the Donkey from Ems (Priklyucheniya Poni,
ėmskogo osla, 1852) by Mariya Rostovskaya (1816–72), met with some suc-
cess in the middle of the century. A poor Italian boy travels to Russia in
search of a living; he earns money by showing his ape and donkey. He
faces much hardship but also encounters goodness: eventually, a wealthy
St Petersburg family helps him to return to his mother in Parma. In a simi-
lar fashion, the dog Zhuchka (1857) is shown the way back to his family by
a good hearted peasant boy.
In The Village of Lebyazhe (Seltso Lebyazhe, 1856), a worried father
looks for a radical solution to the problem of raising his son: “I hope that
life in the country will help him to think and feel in a healthy and good
way.” Like the pair of Prince Bezukhov and Platon Karataev in Tolstoy’s
War and Peace, a boy from a noble family is taught courage, diligence and
a Spartan way of life by a peasant lad. Even so, the father does not forget
to stress that everybody has his own place and tasks in society. In this
work Rostovskaya created a rosy idyll, where everyone is good, the squire
a kind father figure and the peasants contented and prosperous.
In the 1860s Rostovskaya edited her own magazine, Family Evenings
(Semeynye vechera, 1864–69). Here she published a voluminous novel,
The Peasant School (Krestyanskaya shkola, 1864–65), in which a stranger
from St Petersburg arrives in a village on the banks of the Volga, makes
friends with the children and opens a school where an affable spirit reigns.
An uncomplicated idealism is typical of Rostovskaya’s thinking. This is
also the case with Stories (Povesti, 1863), which Rostovskaya filled with
examples of goodness, honesty and various Christian virtues. The spirit of
the stories is summarised in “The Small Soldiers” (“Soldatki”): “Our duty,
the duty of all people in general, is to live for one another, to relieve the
pain of others, to help according to one’s strength: with words, deeds and
love, and then the goal of our life will surely be attained and we will not
just be whirling around in worldly vanity.”
Rostovskaya’s shorter stories were collected posthumously in The Little
Star (Zvyodochka, 1876) and Childish Amusements (Detskie zabavy, 1909).
The reader is presented with negative portraits, like rowdy Tonya, rude
Vanya or the boy who neglects his schoolwork because of his absorbing
interest in pigeons. All these children must be re-educated in a Christian
spirit. We also meet their opposites: “There are kind humans whom God
sends to earth, as if he wanted the poor people to have sincere friends
and trustworthy benefactors” (“Buyanka Tonya”). Children’s logic in these
 realism (1860–1890) 99

moral tales can sometimes call forth smiles, but more often the tone
is stern and serious. Rostovskaya stressed that nothing she wrote was
invented, and everything was taken straight from life. Stylistically, Ros-
tovskaya gradually grew into an accomplished writer with a good under-
standing of her audience’s tastes and likings.
Rostovskaya was also the author of Stories from Journeys (Rasskazy iz
puteshestviy, 1882). A St Petersburger travels with his son to Switzerland
via Germany in order to treat his health. Quotations from guidebooks are
mixed with personal observations and comments. The volume ends with
a stroke of national smugness: “‘East, West, home is best’—this wise prov-
erb is just, all comparisons between the beauties of Switzerland and the
broad plains of Russia notwithstanding.”
Irina Gordeeva-Shcherbinskaya’s (years of birth and death unknown)
first steps in children’s literature were closely linked to Ivan Turgenev. In
1867, Irina’s mother sent a fairy tale in verse to the famous writer. Turge-
nev detected “something suggestive of an emerging talent” in the work, not
sufficient, though, for publication.25 Six years later Gordeeva-Shcherbin-
skaya herself wrote to Turgenev, sending him her new works and asking
for a meeting in St Petersburg. Turgenev read the stories and returned
the manuscripts with the words that he had read them “with pleasure”.26
When the stories finally appeared in 1875 under the title Readings for Chil-
dren (Chtenie dlya detey), Turgenev’s letters served as an introduction.
The master’s annoyance is easy to imagine. A second, enlarged volume
came out in 1886, while a third and last edition, this time with the title
Katya, appeared in 1904. Only then did the author reveal her identity.
Turgenev’s half-hearted letter of recommendation could not conceal
Gordeeva-Shcherbinskaya’s lack of originality. “Katya”, a Cinderella story,
tells of a Russian orphan, who rises from poverty and want to fame and
fortune as an opera singer, famous all over Europe. In “Crust” (“Gor-
bushka”), a story from the 1904 publication, a neglected girl becomes an
honoured creator of fashion. With her melodramas, Gordeeva-Shcherbin-
skaya wanted to stress the latent talent of the common people. Those who
have been given much do not value it, while those who start with empty
hands have a strong will to fulfil their destiny. Goodness gives birth to
goodness, as benevolent adults give young talents a helping hand.

25 Turgenev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem. Pism’a. Vol. 7 (M.-L., 1964), 21.
26 Turgenev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem. Pis’ma. Vol. 10 (M.-L., 1965), 239.
100 chapter four

The story by Gordeeva-Shcherbinskaya that Turgenev appreciated

most was “Midsummer Night” (“Noch na Ivanov den”), probably because
it owed something to some of the stories in his own Notes of a Hunter
(Zapiski okhotnika). Actually more fascinating is “The Adventures of a
Curious Squirrel” (“Pokhozhdeniya lyubopytnoy belki”), the monologue
of a tame squirrel who has learnt to understand human speech. The story
ends brutally with the animal freezing to death and being thrown on the
rubbish heap by the family’s servant.

Tur, Annenskaya and Zhelikhovskaya

The 1870s and 1880s witnessed a rapid development of stories about girls.
New women writers appeared on the scene, explicitly addressing girl read-
ers with their prose. The same was happening in the West. The Russian
translation of Louisa Alcott’s Little Women (1868) in 1876 played its part in
the growth of the subgenre; its everyday realism, with close attention paid
to the moments of happiness and sorrows in family life and to relations
between the girl characters, served as a ready-made model for Russian
writers. A review in the volume On Children’s Books (O detskikh knigakh)
in 1908 praised Alcott’s novel highly: “The original idea and the interest-
ing, vivid and absorbing quality of the story grip the reader fully . . .”27 The
critic Nikolay Chekhov, however, was more hesitant about “the excessive
eulogy of petty bourgeoisie family prosperity”.28
The new women writers approached girls’ themes in various ways.
The heroines of Evgeniya Tur’s books are tested by fate and unexpected
changes in their life circumstances. Ekaterina Sysoeva wrote about the
carefree childhood in a cultivated family of landed gentry, while Eliza-
veta Kondrashova, falling back on her own reminiscences, pictured child-
hood and youth at home and in boarding school. Aleksandra Annenskaya
broadened the perspective with her portraits of middle-class girls forced
to find a place for themselves outside the family circle and to earn their
living through work. Apart from her ‘family novels’, Vera Zhelikhovskaya
found a theme of her own in the collision between the Russian and Islamic
worlds in the Caucasus, as seen through the eyes of adolescent girls.

27 О detskikh knigakh (M., 1908), 150.

28 Chekhov, Detskaia literatura, 164.
 realism (1860–1890) 101

When Evgeniya Tur (1815–92), well over fifty, started to write for young
readers, she already had two literary careers behind her. Raised in a cul-
tured family (her brother was the playwright Aleksandr Sukhovo-Kobylin)
and equipped with a brilliant education, she was a prominent figure in
the Moscow salons of the 1830s and 1840s. As Countess Salias de Turnemir
(her husband was Sailhas de Tournemire, a French aristocrat), she became
known as a writer of society tales. In the 1850s, she moved to journalism,
writing literary criticism and editing a magazine of her own. It was only
from the middle of the 1860s that she devoted herself to children’s litera-
ture. When her works for children and young people were collected thirty
years later, they filled six volumes.
Tur’s initial success within the field was of a dubious character. Her
two novels about early Christianity, each running to approximately ten
editions, were in fact only slightly revised versions of foreign works. The
Catacombs (Katakomby, 1866) was identical with Fabiola or the Church of
Catacombs (1854) by Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman, while the real author of
The Last Days of Pompeii (Poslednie dni Pompei, 1882) was Edward Bulwer-
Lytton. The fact that there also existed Russian translations of these two
novels, with the correct authorial attribution, did not prevent Tur from
being celebrated as a talented writer of historical novels. To these vol-
umes was added Martyrs of the Coliseum (Mucheniki Kolizeya, 1883), with
its description of the Coliseum and its bloody history. The modern visitor
to Rome still senses the fate of martyrs. Again, we find a foreign source
behind Tur’s book, namely Father A.J. O’Reilly’s The Martyrs of the Coli-
seum (1871).
In The Catacombs and The Last Days of Pompeii, the cruel persecution
of the first Christians is dramatically depicted against the background of
pleasure-seeking Romans. The flourishing town of Pompeii turns into a
heap of ruins as God’s punishment for its depravity. The core of Christian
teaching is love and mercy for one’s fellow man and a belief in equality,
even between master and slave. The highest ideal is martyrdom, giving
one’s life for the truth. Substitute Christianity with revolution, and one
realises that Tur’s adaptations must have struck a sensitive chord among
radical young Russians.
Tur’s books about the lives of saints and churchmen, based upon sources
in a pseudo-scientific manner and written in a simple folksy style, could
hardly have appealed to young readers. The same is true of The Sacred His-
tory of the Old Testament (Svyashchennaya istoriya Vetkhogo Zaveta, 1888)
with its excerpts from the Holy Bible and meditative reflections.
102 chapter four

The historical novel The Children of King Louis XVI (Deti korolya Lyu-
dovika XVI, 1885) is reminiscent of a saint’s biography. Based on docu-
ments and memoirs, it tells of the gruesome fate of Louis XVI’s children
during the French Revolution. As a possible model for the novel, the
memoirs of Marie Thérèse Charlotte d’Angoulême, the King’s daughter,
have been mentioned. The King’s ten-year-old son Louis dies in prison,
mistreated and humiliated, two years after the execution of his parents.
Tur presents him as a wise and good-hearted martyr, ready to forgive his
persecutors. Little Louis evokes sympathy in many people, but no one
dares to risk being accused of monarchism as a result of feeling mercy and
kindness. Tur does not ponder the reasons for the hatred and discontent
of the masses; Louis XVI is presented as a well-meaning regent, though,
unfortunately, too weak and mild. All the misfortunes that were to befall
France during the following century are depicted as punishment for the
uprising, the killing of innocent people, and the terror. The novel reads
as a warning against revolutions and must have made quite an impres-
sion if read—secretly—after the October Revolution. The first edition of
the novel, bearing the title “The Adventures of a Twelve-Year-Old Girl”
(“Priklyucheniya dvenadtsatiletney devochki”), in the magazine Children’s
Rest (Detsky otdykh) in 1882, opens with this commentary: “The legitimate
government was overthrown; power fell into the hands of people without
any education, without rules, without religion.”29
The Shalonsky Family (Semeystvo Shalonskikh, 1880), with its love story
set against a historical background, reads almost like a (failed) attempt
at creating a juvenile War and Peace. The novel, which was published in
an English translation in London in 1882, is a family chronicle of three
generations, told by a noblewoman. Looking back at an eventful life,
she recalls her childhood in a loving family. Their idyllic domestic life is
crushed when the French army crosses the Russian border and her father
and brothers join the army. The seventeen-year-old Lyuba experiences the
defence of Russia and the terrible year of 1812 from her restricted point of
view, hearing the sound of the battles and seeing the sky turn red when
Moscow is burning. The war not only brings death to her family, but also
love in the person of an officer, an army friend of her fallen brother. He
is an ideal Christian, who had already as a young man come into con-
tact with the Freemasons and learned “Christian feelings, a kind and lov-
ing attitude to the poor and especially towards servants”. This attitude

29 Detskii otdykh 10 (1882): 125.

 realism (1860–1890) 103

of mercy and charity, freed from aristocratic haughtiness, was Tur’s own
philosophy.
Tur’s two society and romance novels, Princess Dubrovina (Knyazhna
Dubrovina, 1886) and Seryozha Bor-Ramensky (dated 1888), still make
interesting reading. Anyuta, the heroine of the former, who is wilful and
talented but lazy, grows up an orphan. Her life changes drastically when
she is unexpectedly adopted by a rich Moscow branch of her family and
becomes Princess Dubrovina. It is a peripeteia, a reversal of fortune, remi-
niscent of the plot in Frances Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), which
was translated into Russian in 1889 by Eketarina Sysoeva. Wealth, how-
ever, is not a solution to problems, but a trial. Living among the Moscow
high nobility, deprived of the company of children of her own age and
forced to suppress all genuine feelings, Anyuta feels like a prisoner. When,
at the age of eighteen, she takes over a country estate, she is ready to use
her influence for the good of the people. Free from prejudices, she now
works for reconciliation between her relatives, grateful for the upbringing
she received among the provincial gentry. Princess Dubrovina is a Cinder-
ella story with a happy ending for all involved.
Seryozha Bor-Ramensky is a Bildungsroman depicting the formation of
Seryozha’s character. Torn between two families and seeking his own way,
the young man comes to ponder upon the difference between outer and
inner richness, the essence of happiness and duty towards one’s parents.
Tur knew how to create individualised characters and a credible social
background, but the plot of the novel is lacking in dynamism.
In the 1870s Tur also wrote some fairy tales. “The Pearl Necklace” (“Zhem-
chuzhnoe ozherele”, 1870), “A Crystal Heart” (“Khrystalnoe serdtse”, 1873)
and “The Little Star” (“Zvyozdochka”, 1873) were later collected in the vol-
ume Three Stories (Tri rasskaza, 1884). In this case, contemporary success,
with the book running to as many as seven editions, is not an indicator
of high artistic level. In the first of the tales the Jew Solom from Grenada
helps his sick daughter by helping others, and their tears of gratitude form
a magic necklace. In the other two, a boy with a crystal heart is unable
to feel love, and a star, which brings consolation and happiness into the
lives of children, is powerless before a mother mourning the death of her
child. Tur’s feelings are sincere, and love and pity are indisputable values,
but the creative force is missing.
Aleksandra Annenskaya (1840–1915) attended a German boarding school
in St Petersburg in the 1850s. Educated to become a governess, she ran her
own private elementary school for a few years, simultaneously teaching in
free Sunday Schools for workers and peasants. Close to her heart was the
104 chapter four

movement for women’s right to higher education. Annenskaya’s brother

was Pyotr Tkachov, a populist theoretician and a revolutionary in exile,
and in her works one finds a similar belief in the potential of the broad
masses and a sense of duty towards the unprivileged. Her brother-in-law
was the refined poet Innokenty Annensky.
During the 1870s and 1880s Annenskaya continuously published nov-
els and stories in the magazine Family and School (Semya i shkola), later
collecting them in the volumes Winter Evenings (Zimnie vechera, 1877,
1887), My Two Nieces (Moi dve plemyannitsy, 1882), One’s Own Way (Svoim
putyom, 1889) and Light and Shadows (Svet i teni, 1903). New editions kept
appearing well into the twentieth century; Annenskaya also gained some
popularity in France, with five titles published there around the turn of
the century.
The foreword to the volume On Children’s Books (O detskikh knigakh,
1908) declares that the prime task for children’s writers is not to amuse
and entertain, but to guide children’s moral development and present
them with essential facts about life.30 The unsigned foreword could well
have been written by Annenskaya, chief editor of the volume. Excluding
all fantasy elements, she painted a realistic picture of life in a sober, low-
key tone. Her heroes are mostly of modest origin. In fact, Annenskaya
introduced the raznochinets, a person with intellectual aspirations but a
modest social status, into children’s literature. At an early age, these boys
and girls are forced to make a living through work. In Annenskaya’s stories
the girls are not the traditional objects of desire, but aspiring subjects,
striving to build their own lives. The goal is not marriage, but economic
independence and a profession enabling them to serve others. Success is
not dependent upon parents, but their future is shaped through studies
and unselfish work.
Annenskaya’s credo is already present in Foreign Bread (Chuzhoy khleb,
1871–72), one of her first publications. In the story, well-off townspeople
take care of an orphan girl from the countryside. For Annenskaya, how-
ever, material prosperity is most often linked to callousness and egotism.
The girl eventually refuses to eat ‘foreign bread’ and attempts to achieve
independence as a village teacher. The two orphans of Brother and Sister
(Brat i sestra, 1874) are put in a similar position, as their heartless, arro-
gant uncle takes charge of their upbringing. The girl passes the moral test
and preserves her compassion for the poverty-stricken, while her brother

30 “Predislovie,” O detskikh knigakh (M. 1908), XIII.

 realism (1860–1890) 105

ingratiates himself with his guardian and ends up as the externally suc-
cessful inheritor of all his riches. The gifted girl from a poor St Petersburg
clerk’s family also goes astray in The Hope of the Family (Nadezhda semi,
1876). Given a chance to study, she develops feelings of contempt for her
humble background. Dazzled by the false ideals of high society, she loses
her capacity for compassion.
A sensitive heart is more worthy than outwardly irreproachable con-
duct. This is the theme of My Two Nieces (Moi dve plemyannitsy, 1874) and
By the Jetty (U pristani, 1883), for example. The former juxtaposes two girl
characters—one unfeeling and the other tender-hearted. Only the adult
who can see beyond outer appearance discerns the two children’s true
selves. In the second novel Annenskaya compares spiritual and material
welfare. A vocation for teaching is spiritually rewarding, even if it entails
economical difficulties, while the life of a merchant leads to the loss of
one’s soul. Egoism is untenable, while work for others is gratifying.
In the novel Anna (1875), Annenskaya’s main work, published in as
many as seven editions, two ways of upbringing and two ideals of living
are contrasted. On the one hand, we have simple life in the country, close
to nature, and, on the other, urban society with its superficial, false ideals.
Anna, a nine-year-old orphan, leaves her grandmother in the countryside
for her uncle in the town. He is one of Annenskaya’s stock characters,
haughty, vain and hard-hearted. Anna does not fit into this new milieu
and is saved by a move back to the country. Self-chosen poverty gives her
the right world-view, with serving the people at its core. Annenskaya’s
populist background is strongly felt in this instance.
Annenskaya’s Bildungsroman is filled with a belief in the possibility of
rising from a modest background to a better future and in the ultimate
victory of goodness. In “Grisha” (1872), a tale of spiritual rebirth, the son of
a simple organ-grinder, accustomed to a life of hunger, theft and drunken-
ness, is offered a place as a servant in a noble family, but is fired under
the suspicion of dishonesty. He is already going astray when he is given
a new chance in life. A sense of right and wrong is born; he learns to
take responsibility and to help others. Through study and support from
kind people, the street-child Grisha eventually becomes a doctor. The
downtrodden boy called Wolf-cub (Volchonok, 1899), the girl Olga in Hard
Struggle (Trudnaya borba, 1889), Anna in Without Family, Without Kith or
Kin (Bez rodu, bez plemeni, 1903) or Petya in The Failure (Neudachnik,
1903)—all have similar fates. With rough backgrounds, after being prob-
lem children in their families or at school, on the brink of becoming social
outcasts, they eventually find a vocation as teachers, doctors or nurses
106 chapter four

and find satisfaction in serving those who are afflicted by spiritual and
physical deprivation.
Comrades (Tovarishchi, 1873) stands apart from Annenskaya’s other
works. It is a school-story with all the staple ingredients, such as conflicts
between teachers and pupils and a struggle for power among the children.
Kolya, the son of a wealthy landowner, has problems adjusting himself
to a life of rules and regulations. A strong individual, he finds it hard to
submit to collective decisions, and questions of honesty lead to a further
rift. Eventually, the pupils are turned into a collective of comrades, ready
to assist each other.
When, in 1896, Annenskaya moved over to a new magazine, Corn-
Shoots (Vskhody), her main interest became the biographies of travellers
and writers.

Towards the end of the century many women writers wrote about their
childhood and youth, partly spent within the family, partly in boarding
schools. These works, often written in a nostalgic vein, combined traits
of ‘family novels’ and school stories. The heroines of works by Sysoeva,
Zhelikhovskaya and Kondrashova are adolescent girls from rich families,
fortunate to grow up in a harmonious world.
The History of a Little Girl (Istoriya malenkoy devochki, 1875–76) by
Ekaterina Sysoeva (1829–93) is a simple and delightful book with an obvi-
ous autobiographical basis. Its first part was translated into French as
L’Enfance de Katia and published in Paris in 1895. The story is told from
the point of view of a grown-up, recalling her formative years in the 1840s,
between the ages of six and sixteen. After the death of her mother in the
novel’s opening scene, the girl grows up a loner, without parental warmth
and care. For many years she lives with her aunt in Moscow, separated
from her father and his new family. Still, the novel does not dwell upon
negative feelings. It is filled with lively scenes of name days, Christmas hol-
idays, church visits, friends and guests, games, picnics and travels, studies
and exams, minor moral conflicts. The description of the setting—from
the country estate to a boarding school—is excellent. After the death of
her aunt, the girl joins her father’s new family, but even here no conflict
arises, as she comes to adore her stepmother. The History of a Little Girl
ends with the heroine aged sixteen, ready to leave home.
Sysoeva, who started as a children’s writer in the magazine Family Eve-
nings in 1869, took her profession seriously. She wanted to serve young
people, to foster love for work and one’s fellow human-beings through
 realism (1860–1890) 107

idealised characters. An annoying lack of creative imagination, however,

led to mostly disappointing results. The writer’s intentions are all too often
immediately clear to the reader. The tales in A Present for Kind Children
(Podarok milym detyam, 1882) are overtly sentimental, as when the best
Christmas present is showing mercy to one’s fellow by offering shelter to a
freezing, homeless girl from the street (“Rozhdestvensky podarok”). Good-
ness and mercy are needed in a world where the children are divided into
rich and poor, the satisfied and the hungry, the warm and the frozen.
Like Tur, Sysoeva took an interest in ancient Rome and the trials of the
first Christians. The heroine of her superficial and naive novel Aktėa (1883)
is a Greek girl from the time of the Emperor Nero. An unswerving Chris-
tian, she is thrown to the wild beasts at the Coliseum, but to everybody’s
surprise the tiger refuses to touch the saintly girl.
During the last ten years of her life, right up to her death in 1893, Syso-
eva edited the children’s magazine The Spring (Rodnik). Her own con-
tributions were mainly biographies and translations from English and
French.
One of the most popular and productive writers of the period was Vera
Zhelikhovskaya (1835–96). After the early death of her mother, the writer
Elena Gan (Hahn), she was brought up in the Saratov house of her grand-
mother, an eminent natural scientist. Zhelikhovskaya turned to literature
in the 1870s at the age of around forty and she did so, in her own words,
“solely for the amusement of my own children”.31
The Caucasus is the setting of many of Zhelikhovskaya’s juvenile books.
Part of her childhood had been spent in Georgia, and after the death of
her first husband she returned to Tiflis (Tbilisi). With solid knowledge she
portrayed local customs, ethnographic details and natural scenery, often
from the point of view of a Russian outsider. The plots of her Caucasian
tales are dramatic, especially when enacted in the troubled decade of the
1840s. The conflict often rises from cross-cultural relations. Even if Zheli-
khovskaya does show sympathy for the indigenous population, she never
forgets to point out her understanding of the Russian mission in the Cau-
casus, which was to soften manners and teach Christian morality. For her,
the conflict was ultimately a struggle between Christianity and Islam.
In Out for Adventures (Za prikliucheniyami), published in Tiflis in
1878, four boys set out for a summer holiday adventure during a week of

31 Russkie pisateli 1800–1917: Bibliograficheskii slovar’. Vol. 2 (M., 1992), 202.

108 chapter four

freedom. In spite of the promising opening, exceptional for its time, most
of the dramatic incidents are given in the form of inserted monologues.
The journey offers the boys, who represent four different nationalities, a
chance to examine their prejudices and learn to accept differences. The
culmination is an ecstatic religious experience in an ancient, ruined Geor-
gian church. The Russian boy, who has read Cardinal Wiseman’s Fabiola,
learns that Christians have given their lives for their faith on Caucasian
soil, too.
The hero of Prince Iliko, Little Prisoner of the Caucasus (Knyaz Iliko,
malenky kavkazsky plennik, 1888) is a Georgian boy who is kidnapped
during an assault by hostile mountain-dwellers, the Lezghins. Many years
later he is found by a Russian family, who, attracted by his good nature,
decide to take care of him. With the help of a birthmark, Iliko’s father, a
Georgian Prince, recognises his son, but the boy prefers to stay with his
Russian benefactors, a resolution that reveals the racially biased attitude
of the author. Iliko’s choice is partly motivated by his Christian upbring-
ing, a legacy of his late Russian mother. The critic in A Survey of Children’s
Literature in 1889 mercilessly dismissed the novel as “flabby, boring, life-
less” and predicted that no reader would get further than the first few
pages.32 The disheartening conclusion was that here is a writer who has
turned to children’s literature because she is not talented enough for an
adult audience.
Zhelikhovskaya investigated the submissive position of Muslim women
in the novel In a Remote Tartar Corner (V tatarskom zakholuste, 1888).
During a summer spent in a small Tartar town, the Tiflis girl Olga becomes
acquainted with Gyulli, daughter of a local Prince. Defying the prejudices
of the grownups, Olga and Gyulli secretly seek each other’s company.
Gyulli, a captive of her family and religion, lives a restricted life, being
denied education and the right to choose a husband. Olga sets out to lib-
erate Gyulli from the Muslim sphere of influence. The Tartar girl is drawn
to the Russians, who offer her the possibility to receive an education and
to acquaint herself with the Gospels and their message of love for one’s
enemies. A happy ending is impossible in this divided world, but Zheli-
khovskaya consoles her readers by letting Gyulli die a Christian.
The same task of liberation from spiritual captivity can be found
in From Darkness to Light: the Story of a Molokan Boy (Iz tmy k svetu:

32 Obzor detskoi literatury za 1885–1888 g.g. (M., 1889), 23.

 realism (1860–1890) 109

Istoriya malchika-molokana, 1882). The life style and beliefs of the Molo-
kans, a group of sectarians whom the Tsarist regime had deported to the
Caucasus, are equated with darkness. Through the interference of an
Orthodox family, the gifted orphan Dmitry is saved for “a new, sensible,
bright life”.
In Zhelikhovskaya’s prose the figure of the renegade often occupies
the meeting ground between the Christian and the Muslim world. This
is the motif of the noble savage, familiar from books about American Indi-
ans. The unavoidable Russian reference, a literary intertext, is Pushkin’s
Prisoner of the Caucasus. The problematic friendship between the enemy
and a Russian girl is depicted in “Mamed Selim”, a short story from Cau-
casian Tales (Kavkazskie rasskazy, 1895). In “Kunak Ragim” from the same
volume, a Russian girl shows mercy to a wounded Azbek, and he, in his
turn, saves her life by offering her shelter when she travels without a con-
voy outside the town. In the eyes of his own people, Ragim is a traitor
and as such he is doomed to a cruel death. His fate serves to illustrate
Zhelikhovskaya’s view of two different worlds. The Russians of her books
wage an honourable war: they do not kill women and children and they
do not mistreat prisoners.
After the death of her second husband, Zhelikhovskaya moved to St
Petersburg. Responsible for bringing up five children on her own, she
devoted herself totally to literature, publishing mostly in Family and
School (Semya i shkola) and Family Evenings (Semeynye vechera). For Lei-
sure and Work (Dosug i delo), a monthly magazine for soldiers, she wrote
non-fiction texts about the conquest of the Caucasus, portraying military
heroes, from General Aleksey Ermolov down to anonymous officers and
soldiers. Many of these publications with their ‘official patriotism’ were
later collected in separate volumes, not explicitly addressing juvenile
readers, but plausibly of some interest to them. The stories of Caucasian
Legends (Kavkazskie legendy, 1901) deal with the introduction of Christi-
anity to the Caucasus. A Christian spirit is set against cupidity, jealousy
and vindictiveness.
Zhelikhovskaya’s sentimental and melodramatic ‘family novels’ were
popular. Young love set in high society, dreams of the future, the power
of music, art and poetry, love for nature, and alarming foreboding are all
recurring components of these tensely structured juvenile books. Olga
and Aleksandr in On the Threshold of Spring (Na vesenney zare, 1904) are
an ideal young couple. Their love grows during one summer, but dreams
of a common future are crushed when Aleksandr, thirsting for heroic
110 chapter four

deeds, joins the war against the Turks, a just and holy war. His death on
the battlefield marks the end of Olga’s ‘spring’, but she is consoled by the
thought that ‘summer’ happiness must still be ahead.
The title of Truth Makes Love Stronger (Lyubov pravdoy krepka, 1888)
refers to a well kept secret in Baron Krüger’s family: his daughter Tamara
is an adopted child who has a biological brother. The girl’s anguish, as she
realises that some important truth is being withheld from her, threatens
to split the family. The conflict is complicated by the fact that her brother,
a Georgian prince, has been adopted into a family of simpler background.
Through her education and upbringing, Tamara is, furthermore, a ‘Russian
foreigner’. Eventually, descent and religion turn out to be more important
than cultural background, and truth only serves to strengthen the bonds
of love between these family members.
The Blade of Grass is Small but Hardy (Mala bylinka, da vynosliva, 1897)
opens with a graveyard scene on the shore of the Black Sea. After the
death of their parents, the children have fallen into an economically diffi-
cult situation. The oldest sister struggles to keep the circle of brothers and
sisters together and make ends meet. In this story of survival, it is never-
theless more through a chance meeting with the Benefactor, an old family
friend, than through their own endeavours that the children can move
towards a “truer, full happiness”. Another conflict portrayed is between
class prejudices and a democratic disposition. The false ideals of the high
aristocracy are rejected, as the youngest sister is saved from being adopted
by rich, narrow-minded relatives.
For small children, Zhelikhovskaya wrote fairy tales. Shrunk by an evil
sorcerer, the little girl in The Little Rose (Rozanchik, 1882) faces adven-
tures in a suddenly strange world of insects, birds and animals. She must
perform three heroic deeds to return to the human world. The positive
moral message is that love and kindness are stronger than brute force.
Little Stars (Zvyozdochki, 1898) spreads the joyful message of Christmas as
a time of giving and forgiving. Zhelikhovskaya could not avoid sentimen-
tality as she wrote about spoilt children from well-off families who make
poor children happy by giving away toys from their well-stocked nursery
or about a barin who gives a poor young man a chance to study.
Zhelikhovskaya’s main works, What I Was Like As a Child (Kak ya byla
malenkoy, 1891) and its sequel, My Adolescence (Moyo otrochestvo, 1892–
1893), are based on the author’s diaries. Written fluidly, these autobio-
graphical books tell the story of the early years of the girl Elena. Keeping
close to the child’s own perspective, Zhelikhovskaya depicts small episodes
from the everyday life of a well-off provincial family during the first half
 realism (1860–1890) 111

of the nineteenth century. Idealising the past, Zhelikhovskaya portrays a

sensitive child surrounded by a happy and loving family. What Elena still
has to learn is to respect her elders and to overcome her fears.
What I Was Like As a Child covers life from the child’s first impressions
to the death of her mother, who, like Zhelikhovskaya’s own mother, is
also a writer. These are “the early, happy years of golden childhood”. The
sequel, My Adolescence, tells of the 1840s, when the now seven-year-old
Elena goes to stay with her grandmother in Saratov and later travel to the
Caucasus. She feels the loss of her mother deeply but finds her again in
the books she wrote. The social perspective broadens through meetings
with common people, while the psychological portrait of a dreamer with
a creative imagination deepens. The main task is to learn tolerance, but
also to experience happiness from doing your duty. This is in fact the life
credo of the heroine: “An outer, casual happiness is changeable! But there
is a true, unfailing happiness, which is completely dependent on oneself:
this happiness consists of fulfilling one’s duty! It can never betray us; in
life and when dying, the consciousness of having honestly fulfilled one’s
duty brings great bliss!” To the critic in On Children’s Books (1908) this
was too much, and he protested: “Such an idealization of life in general
and especially of the epoch of serfdom can have a harmful effect on older
children!”33
In What I Was Like As a Child and My Adolescence, we also see glimpses
of Zhelikhovskaya’s sister, the future Theosophist Madame Blavatsky. It
was in fact her sister’s first name, Elena, that Zhelikhovskaya used for her
heroine. Without abandoning her Orthodox faith, Zhelikhovskaya also
showed some interest in spiritualism and strange phenomena, as can be
seen from her Fantastic Tales (Fantasticheskie rasskazy, 1896). However,
it must be added, in her works for children this side was never explicitly
expressed.
Zhelikhovskaya had a following in France, where not only her auto-
biographical works but also four other volumes appeared in translation.
In Russia, What I Was Like As a Child and My Adolescence sold tens of
thousand of copies to intelligentsia families. Many of her magazine pub-
lications were posthumously republished in book form. Even after the
Revolution, the publishing house Devrien, now located in Berlin, went on
publishing Zhelikhovskaya for Russian émigré children.

33 O detskikh knigakh (M., 1908), 54.

112 chapter four

Elizaveta Kondrashova (1836–87) started to write only at an advanced

age and then solely ‘for family reasons’.34 Her career covers a span of only
four years. The Solntsev Children: From the Diary of a Boarding School Girl
of the Twenties (Deti Solntseva: Iz dnevnika institutki dvadtsatykh godov,
1887) tells the story of two St Petersburg girls in the 1820s. Because of the
early death of their father and the economical distress of their mother,
Katya and Varya are put into the Pavlov boarding school. Relationships,
affections, conflicts and friendship among the students are analysed, and
favourites and detested members of the teacher’s collective are portrayed.
Holidays and picnics break the routines. Educational issues are treated
from the point of view of grown-ups.
Katya, who initially has problems adjusting, ends up with a gold medal
from her school, while her unruly sister Varya is heading for trouble.
She is about to get married, but just before the wedding she runs away
with another man. Katya, who for some time has worked as an assistant
teacher at the boarding school, ends up as a governess. Her calling is to
help others. The conflicts which most often arise out of misunderstand-
ings do not alter her positive outlook on life, while her sister is doomed
to a life of tragedies. The novel’s realism feels in parts lengthy, undramatic
and, in the final analysis, too finicky, but, to quote the writer’s daughter,
it manages to avoid “romanticism, sentimentality, everything false, ficti-
tious, and implausible”.35
Kondrashova’s novel was supposed to total four parts but it remained
unfinished. The second part, The Adolescence of Katya and Varya Solntsev
(Yunost Kati i Vari Solntsevykh, [1901]), was posthumously compiled after
Kondrashova’s death by her daughter and only then was the identity of
the author revealed.
A child of the 1860s and the Populist movement, Serafima Bazhina
(1839–94) had the same goal as most contemporary children’s writers,
namely, to elicit sympathy and pity for the downtrodden. Her stories,
collected in Wills-o’-the-Wisp (Bluzhdayushchie ogonki, 1891), depict the
world of the simple people and their deprivations. A second edition of
the collection was simply called Stories for Children (Rasskazy dlya detey,
1908). In these stories children are ruthlessly exploited at work. Some of
Bazhina’s stories even survived the October Revolution due to their theme

34 Russkie pisateli 1800–1917. Vol. 3 (M., 1994), 50.

35 M.V. Volkonskaia, “Neskol’ko slov vmesto vvedeniia,” in E.N. Kondrashova, Iunost’
Kati i Vari Solntsevykh. Third ed. (SPb, s.a.), V.
 realism (1860–1890) 113

and pathos. These include “Vasia, the Newspaper Boy” (“Vasia gazetchik”,
1892), initially called “The Yokel” (“Derevenshchina”, 1891), and “How
Misha Ended up at the Factory” (“Kak Misha popal na fabriku”, 1894),
initially—“The Lucky One” (“Shchastlivchik”, 1879). Vasya and Misha are
honest and clever boys who work to help their families and create a future
for themselves.
Under the pseudonym Olga Rogova, Olga Schmidt (1851–?) met with
some success in the 1880s with two collections of stories, The Swallow’s
Nest (Lastochkino gnezdo, 1880) and Lily of the Valley (Landysh, 1885).
Much of this work was standard material—orphans who are given human
dignity and a chance in life, pity for the poor, repentance and forgiveness,
love for animals—but Rogova also introduced some new themes, such as
Russian children’s confrontations with foreign cultures, be they Indian or
Chinese.
Later Rogova turned to history. Under her maiden name Schmidt, she
published a historical story, Galya (1886), about the coming of Christianity
to Rus. Galya’s love for God and Christ and her readiness to die together
with persecuted believers compel her father, Prince Roslav, to rescind his
decision to sacrifice his daughter to the old gods. Rogova thus chose, with
this book, to focus on a turning-point in the religious life of the Slavs. Pub-
lished in six editions, it seems to have struck a chord among readers.
Bogdan Khmelnitsky (1888) and its sequel, The Son of the Hetman (Syn
getmana, 1891), both novels published by Devrien, dramatise Ukrainian
events of the mid-seventeenth century. Under the leadership of the het-
man Bogdan Khmelnitsky, the Cossacks rise against the Poles and fight for
national freedom, but ultimately, attracted by Orthodoxy and a benevo-
lent Emperor, choose to unite with Russia. These are adventure novels,
embedded in history and written in the spirit of Walter Scott. Fights,
imprisonment, escapes, duels, spies and oaths of revenge maintain the
readers’ interest. Bogdan Khmelnitsky was written in connection with the
unveiling of the hero’s statue in Kiev in 1888. Today these two novels about
how ‘Little Russia’ (Malorossiya) was united with its ‘mother’, Russia, have
been republished under new historic circumstances. Unfortunately, The
Son of the Hetman now appears without the original illustrations, made
by a young Léon Bakst.
A similar patriotic spirit can be found in the bylinas that Rogova pre-
sented in Russian Heroes (Russkie bogatyri, 1893). Nikolay Karazin pro-
vided the colourful aquarelles. In her foreword, Rogova explains that these
heroic tales are a key to understanding the Russian people, its history and
fate. She also published Russian Tales for Small Children (Russkie skazki
114 chapter four

dlya malenkikh detey, 1893). These folk and animal tales were taken from
collections by Afanasev, Dal, Sakharov and others and retold in an artistic,
attractive form. Bread (Khleb, 1908), a little volume published in Stupin’s
Library, contains a homage to the Russian countryside and its inhabitants.
A caring father informs his daughter how the corn from the field finally
ends up as the bread on their table. Rogova was also an eminent transla-
tor of classics such as Baron Münchausen, Gulliver’s Travels, Don Quixote,
James Fenimore Cooper and Hans Christian Andersen.
Sofya Makarova (1834–87) devoted herself wholeheartedly to children’s
literature, pouring out novels, stories, fairy tales, and essays at a fast tempo
for two decades. Many of her approximately thirty books were met favour-
ably by readers (or, rather, readers’ parents), reaching up to seven or eight
editions, but, nevertheless, critics occasionally blamed her for preferring
‘microscopic’ conflicts in which already exemplary children were given
further moral lessons in a simplified form. Collections of stories such as
From the Life of Children (Iz detskogo byta, 1869), The Village (Derevnya,
1871) and Winter Evenings (Zimnie vechera, 1883) were praised for their
“warm feelings, a gift of observation, and knowledge of children’s life”.36
In these stories children are taught a sense of duty towards their fellow
men and nature. Novelty (Novinka, 1882) consists of small moral tales from
the everyday life of children. In the foreword Makarova sets a not-too-
demanding task for the reader: to “decide for yourself which acts in these
stories are good and which ones are bad”.37
Some of Makarova’s works were adapted from foreign sources, including
Mignona, the Musician’s Daughter (Minona, doch muzykanta, 1884). The
events of the original work, Das Musikantenkind (1863) by Emmy von Rho-
den, were transferred to St Petersburg. Simultaneously, Makarova strove
“to preserve the charming simplicity and truthfulness” of the original.38
The story about a maltreated orphan girl who eventually becomes a
famous musician fitted well into the context of Russian realism.
Makarova took a strong interest in Russian history. A teacher by profes-
sion, she strove to add didactic moments to her historical novels. Patrio-
tism comes out strongly in The Menacing Cloud (Groznaya tucha, 1886),
a novel on the theme of 1812. “Like a menacing cloud Napoleon and his
hordes descended upon us (. . .), and, just like a cloud, not a trace was

36 O.I. Rogova, “Lektsii po detskoi literature,” Pedagogicheskii sbornik 3 (1890): 269.

37 S. Makarova, “Predislovie,” Novinka. Third ed. (SPb, 1889), [I].
38 S. Makarova, Minona, doch muzykanta. Fourth ed. (M., 1913), [I].
 realism (1860–1890) 115

left of them. A thunderstorm purifies the air. May this hostile thunder-
storm also make our hearts beat faster and our love for our fatherland
grow even stronger”, says one of Makarova’s heroes, setting the tone of
the work. Employing the Tolstoyan model, Makarova gives a broad spec-
trum of the war—from Napoleon to Russian civilians, from the burning of
Smolensk to the French retreat. When a young French officer is wounded
and imprisoned by the Russians, he finds not only a true Russian kindness
in Moscow, but also his lost father, a French aristocrat in exile.
Olga Rogova found Makarova’s novel with its strong storyline and dra-
matic turns worth reading,39 while another critic declared it a disaster:
“The book is not only bad but also outright harmful, as it is so tedious, that
a young person who reads this work will easily lose all interest in read-
ing anything more about the war of 1812.”40 “Skuchnaya tucha” (“Boring
Cloud”) would have been a more proper title than “Groznaya tucha”.
Vanity of Vanities (Sueta suet, 1887) goes further back in time, to the
first half of the eighteenth century. In the struggle for dominance after the
death of Peter the Great, the ambitious Prince Menshikov and the Dolgo-
rukov family are active agents at the Russian court. Greed for power and
money eventually leads them astray, and only in his Siberian exile does
Menshikov come to understand that ‘all is vanity’. A clear conscience is
better than pomp and glory—that is the moral of the novel.
Sometimes teaching history in a light, entertaining way took odd forms.
In The Story of the Coins (Rasskaz monet, 1901), coins tell their life stories
to twelve-year-old Vanya. The heydays of their existence coincide with
historical events that include the Time of Troubles, Peter the Great’s
reforms, the Napoleonic War, the Crimean War and the abolition of serf-
dom. The common thread is thin, and Makarova’s narrative solution is
not made more plausible by the circumstance that coins are allowed to
speak and communicate only once a year, on Midsummer’s Eve. This
moment of magic is then made superfluous, as we learn that Vanya was
only dreaming.

39 O.I. Rogova, “Lektsii po detskoi literature,” Pedagogicheskii sbornik 3 (1889): 269;

O.I. Rogova, “K voprosu o detskoi literature,” Russkaia shkola 12 (1893): 98.
40 Obzor detskoi literatury za 1885–1888 g.g., 35.
116 chapter four

Male Realists

Antony Pogorelsky’s The Black Hen laid the foundation for autobiographi-
cal prose about childhood, a prominent subgenre in Russian literature.
Leo Tolstoy, in his first works, recaptured the character-building of a
boy from his early years to adolescence. Tolstoy did not write for young
readers, but his ‘childhood-trilogy’ nevertheless found its way to adoles-
cents. One of them was the future Symbolist poet Zinaida Gippius. In
an article of 1908 about her childhood favourites she mentions Robinson
Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, David Copperfield and The Secret Island by Jules
Verne. The great discovery was, however, Tolstoy: “Everything in my soul
turned over when, for the first time, I was given Childhood and Boyhood
by Leo Tolstoy to read. This book immediately became my favourite, the
most precious, and what’s more, the dearest and closest.”41
The interest Tolstoy took in the experiences and inner life of a child and
the writer’s adoration of childhood inspired many other writers. In Russia,
many of these works have traditionally been classified among children’s
literature, a not very happy solution, as most of them demand a sophis-
ticated reader. In a semi-fictional novel, Childhood Years of Bagrov the
Grandson (Detskie gody Bagrova-vnuka, 1858), Sergey Aksakov depicted
the life of a child of the landed gentry in the 1790s. Aksakov’s intention
was to write for children, but in the same manner as when writing for
adults. No moralising tendency was to be included, as this was a trait that
children detested. The choice of perspective was demanding, as Aksakov’s
narrator is only ten years old as he looks back at his early years spent
on an estate. The content is made up of family-life scenes and nature
impressions.
In a story by Klavdiya Lukashevich, “The Correspondence of Three
Friends” (“Perepiska tryokh podrug”), set in 1895, Aksakov’s novel func-
tions as a test of literary taste and maturity. In a letter to her friend, a
thirteen-year-old girl describes her impressions of Childhood Years of
Bagrov the Grandson:
It’s such a wonderful book that I cannot find words for it. I couldn’t tear
myself away from the book. You read it, and it feels like you’ve come to
know a big family, and everything that concerns them is so interesting, as if
it were real. All the different places are so well described that you can see

41 Z. Gippius, “Iskateli pravdy,” Tropinka 16 (1908): 618.

 realism (1860–1890) 117

them in front of you. You must read it,—you will be grateful. I have a feeling
that, after this book, no other book will please me.
The answer from her friend Daisy is discouraging. She represents another
type of reader with a different approach to literature:
Well, well, dear Natasha, I must say your taste astonishes me. Yesterday I
got your Aksakov from the library, and I just could not get beyond the first
two chapters. I looked at the ending, and it was even more boring. [. . .] Can
anyone really like stories like these? It’s only in the institute that you can
study them, and then only when you are forced to by the teacher. I’ll bring a
novel with me to the institute, one so interesting that it will take your breath
away. It is full of secrets and murders. But you have to read it secretly. If the
class-teachers see it, there will be trouble. We could even be expelled from
the boarding school, you know.42
No title is mentioned, but it is clear that the book Daisy is praising is of
foreign origin. Russian writers could not match the best foreign writers
of adventure stories; instead, they offered psychological studies, atmo-
sphere and a precious feeling for style, traits not appreciated by all young
readers.
A prominent name in the children’s literature of the 1860s and 1870s
was Mikhail Chistyakov (1809–85). He wrote for all ages, achieving some
popularity, but critics did not like his work. In 1872 Anna Kryuchnikova,
a pseudonym for Anna Sakharova, in the journal Family and School, com-
plained about the lack of good Russian children’s literature, using Chistya-
kov as her main example of the sad state of the genre: “It is difficult to
accept as fiction the sugary, wishy-washy, lofty phrases of Messrs Chistya-
kov, Iyulsky e tutti quanti, which are offered the readers under the tempting
heading of children’s tales, stories, sketches and so forth.”43 In his stories
about people tested by a cruel fate, Chistyakov often turned sentimental
and melodramatic in an outdated fashion. Occasionally, it is difficult to
see on what basis he labelled his works as children’s literature.
Chistyakov’s first books were packed with material from Magazine for
Children, which he had edited together with Razin. In ensuing volumes,
such as Stories and Tales for Children from 12 to 15 (Povesti i skazki dlya detey
ot 12 do 15 let, 1862), Stories about the Past (Rasskazy o bylom, 1868), A Liv-
ing Grain (Zhivoe zerno, 1870), Winter (Zima, 1870), Spring (Vesna, 1870)
and The Past and the Possible (Byloe i vozmozhnoe, 1875), he displayed a

42 Klavdiia Lukashevich, Zavetnoe okno (M., 1997), 183–84.

43 Anna Kriuchnikova, “Zadachi detskoi belletristiki,” Sem’ia i shkola 8 (1872): 266.
118 chapter four

wide range of choices, moving between different countries, milieus and

epochs. Whether it was the lives of Eskimos or Russian peasants, noth-
ing was foreign to Chistyakov. The explanation of this astonishing ability
was given by Nikolay Chekhov, the historian of Russian children’s litera-
ture: Chistyakov’s recipe was to take a foreign (most often German) story,
change the names and the places and retell the plot in his own words.44
For Chistyakov the basis of life and ethics throughout history is the
Bible and Christian belief. His countrymen provided the prime exam-
ples of the proper Christian attitude. A French soldier, participating in
the Crimean War, is startled by Russian goodness. Only on Russian soil
does he meet true love for one’s neighbour, readiness for self-sacrifice
and an amazingly mild character (“Russkaya dusha”). However, even as
a Christian, Chistyakov had his blind spots. In Ears of Wheat (Kolosya,
1866) he expressed concern for a black slave in faraway Louisiana, while
in “A Tatar Girl” (“Tatarskaya devochka”), ‘a true story’, he is delighted
at the expulsion of the Tatars, a “lazy, dirty and carefree people”, from
the Crimea, where their land is taken over by German colonists who are
genuine Europeans. The heroine of this story is a Tatar girl who loves the
Russians for their humanity even in war. The happy ending consists of her
baptism and marriage to a Russian officer. In The Adventure of a Poor Boy
(Priklyucheniya bednogo malchika, 1883) Chistyakov follows the rise of a
country lad who gets a chance to study and make his dream of becoming
a deacon come true.
Side by side with these attempts at realism, Chistyakov wrote legends—
using both Russian and foreign sources—and fairy tales. The critical recep-
tion was no more favourable for these works. The critic of Bibliographical
Guide (Bibliograficheskoe ukazanie, 1870), an attachment to Children’s
Reading, dismissed the content of For Small Children (Dlya malyutok,
1868), characterizing it as unsuccessful attempts to curry favour with the
readers. “Why, when talking with children, one has to please them with all
kind of nonsense, is something which we absolutely cannot understand”,
the critic exclaimed.45
Such an attitude made it difficult for critics to see the positive qualities
of a fairy tale like “Living Grass” (“Zhivaya trava”) from Ears of Wheat, an
imaginative rewriting of a folktale in which a poor boy from the country
marries the Tsarevna, or a gem like The Adventures of the Young Squirrel

44 Chekhov, Detskaia literatura, 44.

45 “Dlia maliutok,” Detskoe chtenie. Prilozhenie: Bibliograficheskii ukazatel’ 2 (1870): 5.
 realism (1860–1890) 119

Babochka (Priklyucheniya molodoy belki Babochki). The latter, originally

published in Magazine for Children in 1858, represented something new in
Russian children’s literature: the memoirs of a squirrel, scratched down on
leaves and bound together to form a book. Found by a hunter, this book
is translated into human language and published together with a self-
portrait of ‘the author’. Babochka sets out to explore the world beyond
her own territory. What follow are the adventures of the curious squirrel
among animals and humans until she can find her way back home. In a
period of down-to-earth realism, this charming animal tale went against
the grain, but nevertheless caught the attention of readers. It was reis-
sued in 1868, 1883 and again—by M.O. Volf—in 1912. A critic admitted in
1885 that Chistyakov’s tale, “for its language, its content, and its pleasant
outlook”, was a good publication for small children.46 Even Nikolay Chek-
hov writes that many childish tears had been shed over the sad fate of
Chistyakov’s squirrel, in spite of the naivety of the tale.47

Populism, with its emphasis on social justice and moral obligation, had a
strong impact on children’s literature in this period. The unspoken dictum
was that a writer had to be committed to civic duty. The reader’s social
consciousness and sense of responsibility had to be awoken. The hard life
of the common people was shown with compassion, and the main pro-
tagonist was most often a child, whose too-short life span was marred by
poverty and starvation. The lack of equality was demonstrated by com-
parisons between the everyday life of the rich and the poor.
For example, in Dmitry Grigorovich’s (1822–99/1900) The Gutta-Percha
Boy (Gutteperchevy malchik, 1883), a young, maltreated circus artist falls
from a trapeze and dies before the eyes of the children from a wealthy
family. In their world the tragic incident is only a nuisance that must be
quickly dispelled so as not to disturb their peace of mind. Also typical of
the time was the celebrated Realist writer Vladimir Korolenko’s (1853–
1921) The Cave Children (Deti podzemelya, 1885). Although Korolenko
wrote much about children, only The Cave Children, a shorter version of
a tale for adults, was written for young readers. In this work the world-
view of a lawyer’s son broadens when he is confronted with orphan chil-
dren living in a cave at the churchyard. Suddenly he becomes aware of

46 O detskoi literature. Vypusk 1. Knigi, izdannye v 1883 godu (M., 1885), 102.
47 Chekhov, Detskaia literatura, 44.
120 chapter four

social injustices and the appalling life conditions of many children of his
own age.
Pavel Zasodimsky (1843–1912) was a prominent figure in the children’s
literature of the 1880s. His debut within the field occurred in 1871 with “The
Conspiracy of the Owls” (“Zagovor sov”), an allegorical animal tale about
the struggle between darkness and light, published in Children’s Reading;
his popularity, however, was mainly based upon Heartfelt Stories (Zadu-
shevnye rasskazy, 1883–84). These two volumes of short stories came out
in nine editions up to 1918. Zasodimsky wanted to develop the reader’s
“moral and social instinct”, to awaken in him good feelings and thoughts,
love and compassion.48 This he did through stories about the dark sides
of rural and urban life. Poverty, starvation, sickness and death reign in his
works. To his invented characters—be they children or grownups—“life
in this world does not seem happier than lifelong penal servitude”.49
Reproached for introducing too many tragic notes in his stories,
Zasodimsky explains himself in the foreword to his Heartfelt Stories. Partly
the choice had to do with his own background, but Zasodimsky also for-
mulates a general rule. “In real life, too, just as in these small stories, there
is much more sorrow than joy; much more often you see tears than happy,
radiant smiles . . . According to [Friedrich] Rückert, a poet should more
often and more extensively talk about human suffering and griefs, than
about joys and pleasures, if he wants the majority of his readers to take
his works into their hearts.”50 For Zasodimsky serving the people meant
writing about drunkards, prisoners, frozen and homeless children and
penniless workers.
Zasodimsky dismissed dry didactic discourse, but neither did fairy
tales or imaginative literature find any favour in his eyes. He accepted
legends, however, and produced several sentimental Christmas tales. Here
too the tone is utterly dark. The poor orphan street-children in the story
“In Front of the Oven” (“Pered pechkoy”) die. One fir tree brings joy
to privileged children during Christmas in “The Tale of Two Fir Trees”
(“Istoriya dvukh eley”), while the other must serve as an adornment at the
funeral of a worker. In “The Poor Christ” (“Bedny Khristos”), Jesus appears
as the friend of children and social outcasts.

48 P. Zasodimskii, “К chitateliu,” Sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 1 (SPb, 1895), [I].

49 Ibid., 86 (“Temnye sily”).
50 P. Zasodimskii, “O tom, kak ia stal detskim pisatelem,” V zimnie sumerki. Second ed.
(М., 1914), 397.
 realism (1860–1890) 121

In the article “How I Became a Children’s Writer” (“O tom, kak ya stal
detskim pisatelem”) from the collection In the Winter Dusk (V zimnie
sumerki, 1901), Zasodimsky analysed his success in the field of children’s
literature:
In my stories, I did not try to imitate the children’s way of thinking or their
mode of speech; I wrote them without thinking that you have to write for
children in some special way, sickly sweet and lisping. The main thing for
me was to choose a story line, and when the content of the story was out-
lined, I could write completely freely, just as when writing for adults. I really
think that it is this simple form of telling, and not any special artistic merit,
that explains why some of my stories were eagerly read.51
Many of Zasodimsky’s works were published by Posrednik (Intermedi-
ary), a publishing house founded on the initiative of Leo Tolstoy in 1884
in order to provide good literature at a low price for the people. From
1898 onwards Posrednik regularly published children’s literature in its
series A Children’s and Young People’s Library. Zasodimsky’s works were
a self-evident choice for inclusion, as his understanding of the teachings
of Christ had a Tolstoyan streak. “The Blind Man from Danilov” (“Slepoy
iz Danilova”) portrays an apostle of love, the spiritual leader of the village
children, while the scientist of “The Alchemist” (“Alkhimik”) is a bene-
factor, working unselfishly for children and the sick and poor. The story
“In the Forest” (“V lesu”) in Zasodimsky’s collection In the Winter Dusk
puts it plainly: in Russia you always give to beggars. The other stories
elaborate the theme of boundless kindness and benevolence. It is among
the simple people that, as a writer, Zasodimsky felt at home.
In adult literature, the name of Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak (1852–1912), that
is, ‘Mamin from Siberia’, is connected with Naturalism. In the same vein,
he published works for a young audience based on a scrupulous, unbiased
observation of social life. He loves Siberian nature, and often contrasts the
beauty of the Ural Mountains with the imperfect world of man. Mamin-
Sibiryak’s heroes are the hunters, fishermen, miners and factory workers
of the Urals, and in addition, the native people of Siberia found in him a
spokesperson. Mamin-Sibiryak found inspiration in Konstantin Ushinsky’s
reader Children’s World, which he had read from cover to cover as a child.
It was Ushinsky’s feeling for nature and his closeness to the life of the

51 P. Zasodimskii, Iz vospominanii (M., 1908), 230.

122 chapter four

simple people, all rendered with an unfailing realism, which had made
such a strong impression on Mamin-Sibiryak.
Mamin-Sibiryak’s first children’s story was Emelya, the Hunter (Emelya-
okhotnik, 1884). A touching drama unfolds against the background of
majestic forest scenery. The old hunter Emelya does not have the heart to
shoot a doe and her fawn, as the scene of motherly love reminds him of
his own daughter, who gave her life for her son when saving him from a
wolf pack. The sick and hungry grandson back home also appreciates this
impulse of compassion.
Emelya, the Hunter was published by the Russian Fröbel Society, which
also awarded the book one of its annual prizes for best children’s story.
Notwithstanding the good reception, Mamin-Sibiryak returned to chil-
dren’s literature only in the 1890s, a decade apparently more favourably
disposed to his brand of Naturalism. He then began to publish regularly
in the leading magazines, collecting his best works in Tales and Stories
for Small Children (Skazki i rasskazy dlya detey mladshego vozrasta,
1895), Stories and Tales (Rasskazy i skazki, 1897–98), Summer Lightning
(Zarnitsy, 1897) and In the Urals (Po Uralu, 1899). Many of these volumes
were included in the popular collection Library for Family and School
edited by Dmitry Tikhomirov.
Moved by the scene of a lonely old man dying on a frozen river in Win-
ter Quarters by the River Studyonaya (Zimove na Studyonoy, 1892) the Lit-
eracy Committee decided to present Mamin-Sibiryak with a gold medal.
In this work the loss of his sole friend, a dog, makes the outsider set out
on a last journey towards inhabited areas. The close relation between man
and nature is a theme that Mamin-Sibiryak returned to in many of his
realistic animal stories. The old man in The Foster Child (Priyomysh, 1893)
takes care of an abandoned cygnet throughout the winter, and then bids
it a heart-rending farewell as the following autumn the bird is ready to fly
south with the other swans. In another work a hunter and his dog compete
to make life comfortable for an injured hare throughout the winter, even
if the experience deprives them forever of the joy of hunting (“Bogach i
Eryomka”, 1904). Grey Neck (Seraya sheyka, 1893) bears the name of a crip-
pled duck saved by kind people and animals from a cunning fox and the
winter cold. The animals are anthropomorphised to heighten the sense
of desperation and suspense. The author’s belief in the power of love and
pity remains unshaken.
The children in Mamin-Sibiryak’s stories are helpless victims of unre-
stricted capitalism. Heavy work and chronic want deprive them of their
 realism (1860–1890) 123

childhood. The author displays compassion for the child-underdog, but he

does not spare his readers from tragedies. All too often the only possible
outcome of social misery is a premature death. Twelve-year-old Proshka
in The Breadwinner (Kormilets, 1894) dies in an accident at the factory.
His short life is one of perpetual hard work, starvation, fatigue and cold.
Every morning ‘the wolfish song’ of the factory whistle calls him to work.
Proshka’s death brings about the ruin of his family as it loses its breadwin-
ner. Proshka’s namesake in The Spit (Vertel, 1897) does not fare better. The
boy works twelve hours a day in a jewellery workshop, eventually dying
from consumption. The price paid for the mining of gemstones is high.
Proshka is chained to his workbench as if in penal servitude. His place is a
dark and dirty corner of the workshop, where “it was as if the sun had for-
gotten about him, as mothers sometimes leave their small children with-
out proper care”. Proshka’s joyless life is effectively contrasted with that
of the well-meaning but naive children of a rich family. The social gulf
cannot be bridged; no forces or efforts can save the poor boy’s life. Nine-
year-old Mikhalka in Under Ground (Pod zemlyoy, 1891) narrowly escapes
the same fate, as on Christmas Eve he participates in forbidden, private
ore-mining in order to ease the desperate situation of his family.
Philanthropy was not Mamin-Sibiryak’s solution to social problems,
despite the exception of White Gold (Beloe zoloto, 1897), a story of sur-
vival, in which the young Kiryusha is able to escape work at the platinum
mine, receive an education and build a future for himself thanks to the
help of a supportive master. The portraits of the employers are otherwise
unflattering in Mamin-Sibiryak’s works; egoism, greed, brutality and dis-
honesty are their dominant traits.
Around the turn of the century, Mamin-Sibiryak was one of the most
widely read Russian children’s writers. For him, the importance of his
writings for children surpassed that of his other works. In a letter of 1894
he could express misgivings about the material rewards of publishing in
children’s magazines: “If I were rich, I would choose to devote myself to
children’s literature.”52 Nevertheless, he wrote a total of approximately 150
stories and sketches for a juvenile audience. It was the notion of a recep-
tive and attentive reader that inspired him: “For me every children’s book
is a living thing, as it awakens the soul of the child, directs his thoughts,

52 Vl. Kranikhfel’d, “Dm. Marin-Sibiriak,” Sovremennyi mir 11 (1912): 359. (Letter to the
publisher, 1894.)
124 chapter four

and makes his heart beat together with the hearts of a million other
children.”53
Some of the best works in the extensive production of Vasily
Nemirovich-Danchenko (1844–1936) are those written for young readers.
Published mainly in Dmitry Tikhomirov’s Library for Family and School
and Library for Children’s Reading, they reached a large readership. A long
and eventful life, which included travels all over Russia and to almost
every continent, gave Nemirovich-Danchenko an abundance of material.
Typical of his works is a combination of a truthful reflection of reality,
exotica and adventure. His weaknesses were superfluous details and over-
long digressions from the story line.
Originally trained as an army officer, Nemirovich-Danchenko par-
ticipated in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78. Besides fighting in the
battles, he also worked as a war correspondent, being in fact one of the
first professionals in this field in Russia. He returned over and over again
to war experiences in his writing. For him the Russo-Turkish War was a
war of liberation, with the concept of a Slavic brotherhood at its core,
and, simultaneously, a war between Christianity and Islam. This did not
prevent him from expressing anti-war feelings and singling out moments
of understanding between enemies. The tendency of one of his stories,
Makhmud’s Children (Makhmudkiny deti, 1884), earned the praise of Leo
Tolstoy.54 The Russians in this work, moved by the thought of their cap-
tive’s small children back home, let the Turkish officer Makhmud ‘escape’
instead of executing him.
In Bogdan Shipkin (1883) and Myseyko’s Belongings (Myseykina khurda-
murda, 1900) Nemirovich-Danchenko sees the conflict mainly as a reli-
gious war. In the first of these the Orthodox Bulgarians prefer death to
cooperating with the Turks against the Russian army. A Bulgarian child
is saved by Cossacks, who raise him with a new warrior identity, that of
Bogdan Shipkin. In Myseyko’s Belongings, on the other hand, it is a Turk-
ish boy whom the Russians adopt and turn into Misha Naydyonov. The
Russian way of waging war makes a deep impression on the enemy: “The
Russians are kind . . . It is good to be with the Russians. The Russians do
not offend the women and . . . they love children.”

53 Dm. Mamin-Sibiriak, “Iz dalekogo proshlogo: Vospominaniia,” Sobranie sochinenii:

V 8 t. Vol. 6 (M., 1955), 742.
54 L.N. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v 90 tomakh. Vol. 85 (M., 1937), 186. (Letter to
V. Chertkov. April 26, 1885.)
 realism (1860–1890) 125

Nemirovich-Danchenko reworked his popular war novel Thunderstorm

(Groza, 1879) for juvenile readers, and did the same with Forward (Vperyod,
1883), which he published in 1911 as The Last Heroes (Poslednie bogatyri)
and The Martyrs of Shipka (Mucheniki Shipki). In spite of all obstacles,
love emerges between a Russian soldier and a Turkish girl. The notion
of the equality of all people is important, but Nemirovich-Danchenko
also points out that Russia brings freedom to Muslim women. In the final
scene the Turkish girl totally surrenders to her beloved: “May your God be
my God, your mother my mother, your fatherland my fatherland.”
Nemirovich-Danchenko was also interested in the Caucasus. Born in
Tiflis as the son of a Russian officer and an Armenian mother, he had
spent the first ten years of his life there. The Caucasus, as the meeting
point of Europe and Asia, where dramatic events based upon deep ethnic
and religious divisions occur, provided material for historical novels set in
the 1830s and 1840s. Nemirovich-Danchenko knew the local culture and
its many fascinating legends and molded them into exciting stories with
added ethnographic details and historical facts, all set against magnifi-
cient natural scenery.
In Falcon Nests (Sokolinye gnezda, 1895) the young Georgian Mikhalko
is forced to leave his poor home in Abkhazia in search of a better life. On
his way to Tbilisi he narrowly escapes being sold by greedy Abkhazians
to Istanbul merchants as a slave. At the end of the story the brave boy is
richly rewarded. Gavryushka in Captivity (Gavryushkin plen, 1900) went
through fourteen editions, the last one published in 1917. This story is pre-
sented as a childhood memory from Dagestan. A motherless boy shows
courage by going into the mountains to look for his father, a soldier who
had disappeared during a skirmish with the Lezghins. Gavryushka him-
self is captured, but he manages to find his father, and together they are
exchanged for other prisoners.
In Independent Shamkhar (Volny Shamkhar, 1903), set in the 1830s, the
Abkhazian town of Shamkhar is the centre of local resistance against the
Russian occupation, but the foreign troops mercilessly crush the dream
of a society of equality and justice. Nemirovich-Danchenko attempts to
analyse the complex relationship between the Russians and the local pop-
ulation: “During the time described here, the Caucasus was in fact living
in its Middle Ages. We arrived here during this epoch. Our detachments
thus interrupted the normal development of the mountain clans from the
feudal knight system to new ways of life. Because of this we could not
understand them, nor they us!”
126 chapter four

The critical voice in A Heavenly Aul (Podnebesny aul, 1898), published

in eight editions, does not belong to the narrator but to a Mullah: “Why
do you take our auls and our herds away from us, burn our plantations
and force us to destroy our saklyas [fortified villages] and leave for other
places? Don’t you have enough space back home?” No answer is given,
and Nemirovich-Danchenko only briefly adds: “But the Russians only pen-
etrated deeper and deeper into the mountains.” Simultaneously, A Heav-
enly Aul, just like Caucasian Heroes (Kavkazskie bogatyri, 1902), recalls
forgotten heroic deeds from battles between Cossacks and the Cherkess.
True to the spirit of Russian Realism, Nemirovich-Danchenko did not
fail to show compassion for the poor and downtrodden. His works are
marked by sincerity and love for mankind, though he occasionally lapses
into triviality and emotional outbursts. His heroes have to show courage
and energy to survive, while retaining their faith in man. An old legend
about Christ staying with Russian workers comes to life in The Forgotten
Mine (Zabyty rudnik, 1885), in which an old miner helps workers caught
by a landslide escape from the ‘underground realm’. The tone is optimis-
tic, as Nemirovich-Danchenko’s young heroes always manage to become
masters of their own lives and shape a better future for themselves. Little
Fedka, the Miner (Fedka-rudokop, (1891) loses touch with his mother dur-
ing a pilgrimage in Siberia, and it takes many adventures before the little
boy eventually finds his way back home. It is a story of growth, as Fedya,
upon his return, is prepared to join the miners’ collective and start helping
his mother financially. Descriptions of the life of miners are mixed in with
local legends and impressions of Siberian nature. The Story of an Aban-
doned Boy (Istoriya broshennogo malchika, 1899) and its abridged version,
Father Vedeney’s Foster-Child (Priyomysh ottsa Vedeneya, 1900), could well
have been called The True Story of a Russian Ragamuffin, as Nemirovich-
Danchenko sticks so closely to the pattern of James Greenwood’s The True
History of a Little Ragamuffin, a favourite in Russia. The homeless Egorka
is adopted by a childless priest, but after the death of his benefactor, the
boy is again out on the street in the company of young rogues. Assisted
by kind people, he gets an opportunity to study, and, just like his Eng-
lish counterpart in misfortune in Greenwood’s original, he nourishes the
dream of helping other street children in the future.
In On the Edge of Destruction (Na krayu gibeli, 1889) fifteen-year old
Volodya runs away from home, because, under the influence of Mayne
Reid’s books, he wants to see America. Instead, he gets to know his native
country better, as he goes from Moscow via Nizhny Novgorod along the
Volga to Astrakhan and across the Caspian Sea to Baku. He runs away from
 realism (1860–1890) 127

school but learns important facts about life in Russia from kind people he
meets along his journey. Nemirovich-Danchenko weakened his novel with
tedious informative chapters. Prison, hunger and sickness force Volodya
back to his sheltered home. Eventually, he realises that books and reality
seldom meet.
Help Thyself (Sam sebe pomogay, 1902) deals with a project of turning
a lazy, spoiled and haughty boy into ‘a real man’ in the span of one year.
Sasha’s uncle is a veteran from the Russo-Turkish war, but it is more his
American experiences that he uses for remoulding the boy’s character:
“[. . .] remember: Help thyself! That is what turned America into a great
country.” The uncle stresses that everyone must work, instead of relying
on the help of servants or other people, claiming that this also requires
coming close to the people, the roots and strength of Russia. The uncle’s
talks about the life of black Americans illustrate the importance of human
dignity. Needless to say, Sasha is a different person when the year comes
to an end; energetic, active and reliable, he is now a positive model for
readers.
Aleksandr Kruglov (1852–1915) was a prominent children’s writer in the
1880s and 1890s. After a radical youth in Vologda, where he was expelled
from school, he turned to writing. He destroyed his first novel on the
advice of Dostoevsky, who found it too bookish, lacking in knowledge of
life. Kruglov never reached a big audience with his books for adults, but
within children’s literature he had considerable success. Magazines like
Children’s Reading, Children’s Rest, Little Toy and Spring competed for his
stories, and his numerous books appeared in edition after edition. Despite
Kruglov’s success, however, the children’s literature historian Nikolay
Chekhov defined him as “a golden mediocrity”.55
Kruglov knew his audience, even if he claimed that he did not recognise
any difference between writing for children or adults.56 When addressing
the youngest readers, he demonstrated an efficient handling of the lim-
ited form, employing short, simple sentences and clear-cut images. Books
like Follow Me, Children (Za mnoyu—detki, 1888) and For Small Readers
(Malenkim chitatelyam, 1898) are filled with scenes from the life of small
children. The heroes are portrayed as close to their pets—cats, dogs and
caged birds. In A Christmas Present (Podarok na yolku, 1880), a collection

55 Chekhov, Detskaia literatura, 147.

56 I.M. Iudina and L.N. Ivanova, “Arkhiv Al’medingenov: Iz istorii detskoi zhurnalistiki,”
Ezhegodnik Pushkinskogo doma. Vol. 8 (L., 1981), 8.
128 chapter four

of tales and poems, Kruglov included a translation of a Czech fairy tale,

Dobrunka i Zloboha, actually the very same fairy tale that Samuil Marshak
was to turn into a play, Twelve Months (Dvenadtsat mesyatsev), in 1943.
The stepdaughter, who is sent out into the winter without mercy to pick
flowers, is assisted in her task by the twelve months of the year, while
the evil stepmother and stepsister are duly punished. A Christmas tale
by Bret Harte, an American writer with a big following in Russia, further
varied the theme of human warmth and concern in the midst of poverty
and destitution. Kruglov’s choice of stories revealed a certain weakness
for melodrama.
Kruglov took a special interest in animals, as exemplified by Four-
Footed Bandits (Chetveronogie razboyniki, 1905), a cycle of stories partly
based on the author’s own recollections about wolves. In The Adventures
of Mishka Toptygin (Priklyucheniya Mishki Toptygina, 1899) Kruglov tells
of a captured bear given to some children as a playmate. Mishka is then
stolen by gipsies and shown for money. Maltreated, he manages to escape
to a short-lived freedom. Strangely enough, Kruglov does not dwell on the
feelings of the children as they recognise their lost old friend, now shot
and stuffed and reduced to an ornament.
The eponymous cat in Kotofey Kotofeevich (1888) and the dog in Polkan
Sobakevich (1896) both belong to caring, well-off families. They illustrate
the staple motifs of the subgenre, experiencing both sorrows and happy
moments. Obedience and disobedience are contrasted as the animals
adjust themselves to their new surroundings. Moments of close friendship
are followed by the traumatic situation of becoming lost. The thoughts of
the animals are reproduced in a subtle way, as Kruglov employs a Tolstoyan
style with simplified sentences and precise descriptions of setting.
Inspired by the ideas of the 1860s and Tolstoy’s radical social program,
Kruglov wanted to educate and enlighten his readers. He wrote mainly
about the lives of the common people of the Russian country side. Look-
ing for examples of goodness and acts of pity towards the poor, outsiders
and animals, he never fails to praise diligence and honesty. His young
heroes have to pass through ordeals; they make mistakes and carry the
heavy burden of being outcasts, before they can attain their goals and
realise their talents and dreams. A recurrent theme is the striving towards
knowledge and education. Kruglov unfailingly finds good people among
adults, reliable friends of all children, ready to assist them in times of trou-
ble. Examples of such adults are plentiful in the volume Forget-Me-Nots
(Nezabudki, 1885), where the most moving story tells of the sad fate of a
German language teacher, the laughing-stock of his pupils, a loner who
 realism (1860–1890) 129

dies in a snowdrift. In his plea for pity for the underdog, Kruglov follows
in the steps of the great Russian Realists.
The peasant boy Fedya in There Is a Hole for Every Nail (Vsyakomu
gvozdyu svoyo mesto, 1889) is physically deformed and sickly, repudiated
by the other children in the village. With the help of an old man, however,
he finds his place as a shepherd, learns to read and gains love and respect.
The reader is explicitly told that “The Lord does not abandon the orphan”
and “Not a single soul is superfluous in God’s world”.
Kruglov’s most popular book was Head of the Family (Bolshak), first
published in 1883 and republished nine times by 1917. It begins with
a young boy who, after his father’s death, has to take care of his poor
mother and sisters. Energetic and diligent, he finds a job, conscientiously
paying all his father’s debts while still pursuing his studies. Working for
his family, he still does not forget the poor and the sick, old people and
children, who are in acute need of help. This positive hero is successful
in all his endeavours, and we can trust that his dream of a workshop of
his own will come true one day. The moral of the story is uttered by the
priest at the funeral of the hero’s father: “Happiness is having a clear con-
science and peace at heart.” A similar example is given in Living off Others
(Za chuzhim gorbom, 1885). A work-shy boy runs away from home, but
life among beggars and young thieves does not please him, and he returns
to his family, ready to shoulder all responsibilities.
The ideal is more confusing in Ivan Ivanovich & Co (Ivan Ivanovich i
kompaniya, 1880), which reads like a manual of entrepreneurship and
capitalism. Little Ivan starts with two empty hands but, being a thrifty boy,
ends up as a rich merchant. The attitude of the author is clearly divided:
what Ivan Ivanovich gains in the form of money and social position, he
loses in purely human terms. Even so, the critic in A Survey of Children’s
Literature (1886) called Ivan Ivanovich & Co a book “harmful for children”,
as Ivan Ivanovich’s example was far from praiseworthy.57 A French trans-
lation, appearing in three editions, showed that Kruglov had struck upon
a theme of general, contemporary significance.
In Kruglov’s world, even dreams and fantasies have to be realistic. Valya,
in “The Yankee from the Vologda District” (“Yanki Vologodskogo uezda”),
a story in Winter Leisure (Zimnie dosugi, 1880), is so under the spell of
Mayne Reid that he even sleeps with the books of the American writer
under his pillow. Only America exists for him, and the other children are

57 Оbzor detskoi literatury. Vypusk II: Knigi, izdannye v 1884 godu (SPb, 1886), 30.
130 chapter four

not slow in giving him the nickname Yankee. But as he grows up, he frees
himself from the American mirage and finds the Russian within himself.
In From Golden Childhood (Iz zolotogo detstva, 1889), a true story about
Kruglov’s childhood, Zagoskin’s historical classic Yury Miloslavsky, or the
Russians in 1612 is mentioned as the boy’s favourite reading. In this novel
of 1831, the children find heroes who are role models for their war games.
Dreaming of becoming an officer, little Kruglov and his friends copy mili-
tary life with its inspections, councils of war, strategy planning and peace
talks. Real life is mixed with play, as the children bravely participate in
fighting a fire. This heartfelt and humourous little book, full of interesting
details, also became popular in France as Les petits soldats russes.
Kruglov’s poems were overshadowed by his prose, but even such a
demanding critic as the poet Vladislav Khodasevich (1886–1939) found
them to be the work of a genuine children’s writer. The poems collected
in For Children (Detyam, 1894) were “somehow very radiant, and most
importantly—not sugary, with no cheap adjustment to ‘the children’s
level’ and with no moralizing”.58 The tone is generally serious as Kruglov
tackles motifs like early death, the importance of work and knowledge,
patriotism and the struggle for truth. An autumnal atmosphere is more
tangible in the poems than that of spring.
The works of Aleksey Slivitsky (1850–1913) display a strong love for
nature. In The Demolished Lair (Razoryonnoe gnezdo, 1882) the captive
bear Mishuk Toptygin becomes emotionally attached to his master and
his dog, but their life together inevitably ends in a tearful farewell, as the
animal grows up and returns to its natural element in order to survive.
The Little White Hare (Belyachok, 1886) also deals with friendship between
man and animal, in this case an abandoned young hare. A life of play and
laughter comes to an end as the hare ultimately chooses freedom. The
book was awarded a Fröbel medal. The title character in Lisa Patrikeevna
(1883) is a fox, in whose company a nanny involuntarily spends a night,
captured as they both are in a pit. She afterwards retells for the children,
the story that she heard the fox tell to a wolf, the third inmate of the pit.
Why Slivitsky needed such an elaborate frame story simply in order to
give some facts about the life of foxes is unclear.
In France Slivitsky earned some success with two translations in
1895—Maître Renard (Lisa Patrikeevna) and Le Sergent Kvassoff. The
hero of the latter, Uncle Kvasov (Dyadka Kvasov, 1889), a veteran of the

58 V. Khodasevich, “Parizhskii al’bom. VI,” Sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 4 (M., 1997), 211.
 realism (1860–1890) 131

Crimean War, loves to spend time with young military cadets, participat-
ing in their manoeuvers, excursions and war games. The narrator recalls
with warmth this figure from his own past and turns Uncle Kvasov into
an idealised Russian prototype. Another heroic figure is the old architect
in The Story of a Little House (Istoriya odnogo domika, 1898). The children
listen to him telling how he rose from humble origins to fame, after his
talent was detected when, as a young boy, he constructed a miniature
model of a prince’s palace.
Ivan Turgenev (1818–83) took some interest in children’s literature. His
plan to write a whole volume for children never materialised, but he made
a contribution to the genre with a nature tale, “The Quail” (“Perepyolka”).
Written at the request of Sofya Tolstaya, it appeared in 1883 together
with a short story by Sofya’s husband, Leo Tolstoy. “The Quail” relates
the shocking childhood memory of a hunting trip in the company of the
narrator’s father. The child narrator pities a fatally wounded bird which
had tried to save its fledgling. The incident forms a turning point in the
life of the teller, and he never becomes an ardent hunter. With his story
Turgenev attempted to awaken love for all living creatures.

Fairy Tales and Fantasy

The prevailing positivist outlook of the period did not promote any inter-
est in folk or fairy tales. Literary critics and pedagogues such as Toll and
Ushinsky were ready to campaign against this kind of literature on the pre-
text that it had a harmful influence on children. In 1869–1870 the review
section of Children’s Reading (Detskoe chtenie) carried out a campaign
against fairy tales by such writers as the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian
Andersen and Mikhail Chistyakov. Their works were said to be of no ‘ben-
efit’ to the children because they pointed an immature imagination in a
dangerous, unsound direction.59 In a review of Russian Tales for Children
(Russkie skazki dlya detey), the author wrote that these tales of fantasy
lacked educational value and profound thoughts. What was allegedly
missing was common sense. He mocked a new edition of Avdeeva’s col-
lection Russian Tales for Children, Told by the Nanny Avdotya Stepanovna
Cherepeva in the spirit of Belinsky: “It is completely excusable for Nanny
Avdotya to entertain children with all kinds of rubbish, but apparently

59 Detskoe chtenie: Bibliograficheskii ukazatel’ 2 (1870): 5.

132 chapter four

there are also a fair number of parents at the same intellectual level as the
nanny, since four editions of the book have been sold out.”60
The struggle of critics against fantasy and fairy tales was a hopeless
cause, as both publishers and readers were demanding an increase in
output. Starting from the 1870s, the genre (above all in translations) saw
something of a boom in Russia. However, according to Irina Arzamast-
seva, a historian of Russian children’s literature, the fairy tales of this
period resembled realistic stories.61 Wonders and metamorphoses were
less frequent, and writers avoided allegory. Animals, plants and objects
still talk and think, but for man the fantastic dimension of a dual world is
closed, as he is no longer able to make contact with other worlds.
In the 1860s Ivan Turgenev translated Charles Perrault’s classic fairy
tales. M.O. Volf published the volume with Doré’s illustrations. In his
foreword, Turgenev stressed the living bond between fairy tales and folk-
tales and claimed, furthermore, that Perrault’s tales were “cheerful, enter-
taining, unconstrained, unburdened by superfluous moral or authorial
pretensions”.62 At a certain period in their lives, children needed fairy
tales like those of Perrault.
All the fairy tale writers of the period acknowledged their debt to Hans
Christian Andersen. His stories first appeared in Russian in the mid 1840s,
but the final breakthrough came in the 1860s. The Society of Women Trans-
lators prepared several of his fairy tales for publication in 1863, 1867 and
1868; ten years later a collection of three volumes appeared, and, finally, in
1894–95, a set of four volumes came out with translations by the Danish-
born Pyotr Ganzen (1846–1930) and his wife Anna (1869–1942). For the
first time, the tales were translated directly from Danish, and not via Ger-
man. One peculiarity of Andersen’s fairy tales was that their motifs were
often taken from reality, even from everyday life. The recurrent theme of
struggle against unfavourable fate was much in the spirit of Russian lit-
erature of the 1880s. Andersen’s satire of contemporary phenomena was
also well received in Russia.
The first collection of fairy tales by the Finnish writer Zacharias Topelius
to be published in Russian appeared in 1883. The translator was Matilda
Granstrem, the wife of the publisher Ėduard Granstrem. The tales received
mixed reviews from critics, some of whom labelled them didactic,

60 Detskoe chtenie: Bibliograficheskii ukazatel’ 12 (1869): 99.

61  I.N. Arzamastseva and S.A. Nikolaeva, Detskaia literatura. Sixth ed. (M., 2009), 175.
62 Turgenev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 15 (M., 1968), 93.
 realism (1860–1890) 133

conservative, sentimental and narrowly patriotic. Poor people appear in

the literary world of Topelius as humble and satisfied with their lot, much
to the annoyance of a writer like Pavel Zasodimsky. Other critics, on the
contrary, gratefully noted the irreproachable moral message, the religious
idealism and occasional humour. What the People Should Read (Chto chitat
narodu, 1889), edited by Khristina Alchevskaya, provides examples of pos-
itive responses from children, who were to have the decisive voice in this
connection. Eventually Topelius’ following in Russia and, subsequently,
in the Soviet Union was more long-lived than in his native country. As
elsewhere, “Sampo, the Little Lapp” (“Sampo Lappelill”) and “Adalmina’s
Pearl” (“Adalminas pärla”) became the most popular of Topelius’ tales.
The library of Symbolist poet Aleksandr Blok contains a Topelius vol-
ume of 1888 that was a gift from Blok’s aunt when he turned seven.63
Together with Kot Murlyka (Nikolay Vagner) and Hans Christian Ander-
sen, the Finnish writer is also mentioned in an sketch for Blok’s poem
Retribution (Vozmezdie, 1910–21), as examples of what the poet read in
his early years.64

The most prominent Russian writer of fairy tales was undoubtedly Nikolay
Vagner (1829–1907). He was of noble origin, and his father was a famous
mineralogist. After having read some of Hans Christian Andersen’s tales at
the age of forty, this professor of zoology at Kazan University and member
of the Academy of Sciences, already an international name and prize win-
ner in his field, told himself that he could produce something as good as
the work of the acclaimed Danish writer.65 He was also inspired to renew
the Russian fairy-tale genre. The result was The Tales of Kitty Cat (Skazki
Kota-Murlyki, 1872), a collection consisting of around twenty-five tales.
The Kitty Cat, Murlyka, only appears in the foreword. Her function is
in fact not that of a storyteller, nor can she be seen as simply a disguise
for Vagner himself. In the introduction, Murlyka tells the reader that she
was born upside down, as a result of which she looks at the world in a
highly peculiar way. The cat rejects the modern world with its science
and culture. All talk of truth, progress and brotherhood will remain only
words as long as concern, kindness, mutual love and spiritual depth are
missing. The key word is ‘humanity’, a word uttered by “the great teacher”.

63 Biblioteka A. Bloka: Opisanie. Vol. 2 (L., 1985), 313.

64 A. Blok, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v dvadtsati tomakh. Vol. 5 (М., 1999), 177.
65 Russkaia shkola 1 (1892): 37.
134 chapter four

Fig. 5. Nikolay Vagner

Here Murlyka is deliberately unclear, as ‘humanity’ is a word never used

by Jesus, and no clue is given to suggest who else the teacher could be.
What then is a fairy tale good for? That is a question also asked by the
grandchild in “The Fairy Tale” (“Skazka”). His grandmother answers in
a manifesto-like fashion: “It leads to the good and implants an aversion
for the bad. That’s not a little, is it?” When Prince Gaydar in “Greatness”
(“Velikoe”) searches for greatness and truth, he finds it in a mother’s love,
in forgiveness for enemies and compassion.
Though not a great writer, Vagner was undoubtedly an original one. He
wrote genuine tales of wonders with kings, princesses and fairies, but also
nature tales in which natural phenomena are personified. This category
 realism (1860–1890) 135

includes, for example, “The Birch” (“Beryoza”), a fairy tale reminiscent of

Andersen’s “The Fir Tree” (“Granen”), and “The Daisy” (“Gaaseurten”). The
presence of a critical dialogue with the Danish writer is also demonstrated
by both “Pimperlė”, in which the title character is a Sandman figure who
entertains and comforts children just like Andersen’s “Ole Lukøie”, and
by “Kurilka”, a study in groundless pride in the spirit of Andersen’s “The
Shirt” (“Flipperne”). Furthermore, Vagner also wrote about poor, home-
less children. In this regard, he was very much part of his time, the age of
Realism, with its focus on social problems.
In the foreword to The Tales of Kitty Cat, Murlyka anticipates the
amazement of critics: “Why do you tell non-children fairy tales in chil-
dren’s language?” The reader does get the impression that Vagner made
no significant distinction between tales for children and those for adoles-
cents or adults. Contemporary pedagogues were perplexed. To the ques-
tion of who the intended readers of these tales are, the cat answers that
they include both actual children and the child within every grown-up.
Adults, according to Murlyka, are often grown-ups only physically; spiri-
tually, they are most often on a lower level than children. Murlyka con-
fesses a strong belief in children: “In their heart you can find nature itself,
simple, direct, great.” This is the basis of the cat’s belief in the future, in
a new man and a new society. In Vagner’s works the future is frequently
visualised as a light on the horizon, perceived only by the chosen few.
In his philosophical tales Vagner raised many of the eternal or, as they
were called in Russia, ‘cursed’ questions: What is the secret of life? Why
do we live? What is happiness? In the fairy tales that Vagner based on the
struggle between good and evil, he calls the very concept of good and evil
into question. In the foreword Murlyka the cat admits that she is full of
contradictions, as “only a stick has no conflicts”. The reader is invited to
ponder the issues raised and the paradoxical views expressed. A dialogue
between reason and feeling, between logical and illogical, emerges. Typi-
cally for a work by Vagner, much is left unsolved.
The saying ‘Life is a blessing’ echoes in many of Vagner’s fairy tales, but
simultaneously death, including the death of children, is sometimes seen
as an even greater blessing, since a better world waits beyond the grave.
Vagner took a great interest in spiritualism, and for many years he was the
president of the Russian Society for Experimental Psychology. This partly
explains the mystic side of his tales. Still, the question of whether such
tragic endings were suitable for children was unavoidable. An unexpected
gloomy atmosphere prevails in “Without light” (“Bez sveta”). A brother
and sister become orphans after their father has fallen in battle and their
136 chapter four

mother has drowned. As if that were not enough, the girl goes blind. The
children’s instinctive trust in people’s kindness is crushed by the egoism
of their relatives. They leave for St Petersburg in search of help, but the
ending leaves no room for hope: “And the big town swallowed them up!—
Is there any remainder left of you, sufferers of our native land, or have you
disappeared without a trace, like so many others, God’s small sparkles,
trampled down in the dirt, in the dark night of public life?”
Vagner’s tales often praise the power of love, but then again, the author
often lets a ruthless Darwinism reign. The weak and the sick have to give
way; their function—both in nature and among people—is to function
as manure for a stronger life. This is the theme of “The Song of Life”
(“Pesenka zhizni”).
In Vagner’s works social problems are solved through charity, which
may brighten up the spirit of the giver for a moment, but even kind-
hearted generosity is not always seen as the solution. In “New Year” (“Novy
god”) a poor orphan goes every Christmas to visit ‘His Excellency’, and
gets money in reward. At the end of the tale, the boy is a grown-up, now a
philanthropist himself, just like his former benefactor. Even so, he is filled
with dark thoughts at the threshold of the New Year. The coming year will
not bring relief, as ‘the monster’ of misery, poverty and vice is too strong
and has now moved from the suburbs into the very centre of the city.
Yet another Vagnerian paradox is that paradise, the happy ending of
some of his fairy tales, is seen as a place of boredom and discontent. Life
with all its conflicts is more rewarding than the static idyll.
If the moral is occasionally doubtful, the same can be said about
Vagner’s literary gifts. In places he gives the impression of an amateur
with a weak sense of style, love of verbosity, sometimes overwhelmed by
sentimental feelings. On the other hand, Vagner shows his strength when
he surprises the reader with some unexpected turn or revelation overstep-
ping the rules of decorum.
The Tales of Kitty Cat was immensely popular for over fifty years. In
all, it appeared in ten editions, with some new fairy tales later added to
the original ones. Russian artists participated as illustrators. After 1917
Vagner’s works ran up against Soviet materialism and atheism and were
thus forbidden.
Initially, Aleksandra Kovalenskaya (1829–1914) wrote her tales only for
‘domestic use’, but on the advice of relatives and friends she decided to
publish them as Seven New Tales (Sem novykh skazok) in 1864.66 These

66 Russkie pisateli 1800–1917. Vol. 2 (M., 1992), 578.

 realism (1860–1890) 137

variations on the themes of goodness and spiritual beauty are set in fairy-
tale countries or in nature among insects, flowers and mushrooms. A
nightingale scribbles down its memoirs on leaves, telling of its happy life
(“Zapiski Soloveyka”). Further tales were added in Stories and Tales for
Children (Rasskazy i skazki dlya detey, 1885) and New Stories and Tales for
Children (Novye rasskazy i skazki dlya detey, 1885). Kovalenskaya bravely
attributed human qualities to plants and animals, trying to attain allegori-
cal and symbolic depth for her works through personification. However,
the little dewdrop’s philosophical discussions with a blade of grass or the
ink-pot’s exchange of thoughts with the pencil on the nature of creativity
only call forth feelings of embarrassment in the reader as glaring examples
of the pathetic fallacy.
Kovalenskaya also tried her hand at writing sentimental stories of real-
ism, but the result was, if possible, even weaker than her tales. Outbursts
of kindness and changes of heart overcome isolation and poverty, and
unexpected meetings between children and old people lead to happy end-
ings, preferably embedded in a religious atmosphere.
When V. Samoylovich (1824–84), pseudonym for Sofya Soboleva, died
in 1884, Viktor Ostrogorsky, the editor of Children’s Reading, wrote in a
private letter: “This was perhaps our most talented and clever children’s
writer. And as is often the case, she died in a state of destitution: there was
not even enough money for her burial.”67 Ostrogorsky was not the only
one to hold Samoylovich in high respect. Aleksandr Kruglov called her the
best children’s writer of the 1870s, a writer combining artistic feeling with
irreproachable morals. Had she been born abroad, into another culture,
she would have been famous.68 In her lectures on children’s literature in
1889, Olga Rogova also listed Samoylovich among the foremost contem-
porary writers.69
Even so, it is not altogether clear why Samoylovich was so highly
esteemed. During her lifetime she published only one book, To the
Memory of the Past Year (Na pamyat starogo goda, 1874), but there were
many posthumous publications. You’ll be Known by the Way You Live (Kak
pozhivyosh—tak i proslyviosh, 1885), Nine Stories for Children’s Reading
(Devyat rasskazov dlya detskogo chteniya, 1893), and Intimate Stories
(Zavetnye rasskazy, 1910) include childhood memories, scenes from life
at boarding school, historical tales, animal tales, geographical sketches

67 Russkie pisateli 1800–1917. Vol. 5 (M., 2007), 698.

68 A. Kruglov, “Drug malen’kikh detei,” Ezhenedel’noe obozrenie 64 (1885), 265–266.
69 O. Rogova, “Lektsii po detskoi literature,” Pedagogicheskii sbornik 12 (1889): 520.
138 chapter four

and translations. The Academician Mikhail P. Klodt illustrated the 1893

volume.
In Samoylovich’s works the poor are offered pity and consolation, and,
thanks to generous charity or an unbreakable stamina and determination,
many of them overcome all obstacles and find their place in society. The
orphaned Finnish children in “Difficult Years” (“Trudnye gody”) are dili-
gent and honest, and, in spite of their humble peasant background and
unfriendly natural surroundings, they achieve happiness in life. Worst off
is the Jewish boy Schmuel (“Shmuel”): deceitfully rejected by his Russian
playmate, he never breaks the curse of being an outcast and eventually
comes to understand that in Russia a Jew’s best (and only) friend is a dog.
Brighter is the fate of the poor motherless peasant boy in Friends (Druzya,
1905). Weak, teased and tormented, he nevertheless finds a trustworthy
friend to whom he in his turn can offer support later in life, when the
wheel of fortune has changed the situation.
Samoylovich also reworked foreign literature of the same sentimental
kind. Her Bitter Fate (Gorkaya sudba, 1905) is in fact Alphonse Daudet’s
famous Fromont jeune et Risler âiné (1874). The tragic story of a lame dress-
maker, fated to die young without having experienced the bliss of love,
was much to the taste of Russian readers.
Only the volume Magic Tales (Volshebnye skazki, 1896) reveals Samoy-
lovich’s genuine talent. Humans have to face temptations from the under-
ground world, as dragons, sorcerers and gnomes set out to test their inner
value. Goodness, self-denial, closeness to nature, love and pity defeat evil.
An understanding of the true, genuine values in life is required. Even the
alchemist who sells his soul to a wizard in a Faustian hope of attaining
the secret of making gold ultimately repents and regains his humanity. In
“The Enchanted Flowers” (“Ocharovannye tsvety”), those who have failed
as humans, having fallen into selfishness, are turned into flowers that live
in the hope of being freed from their enchantment by teaching others.
In “The Sack with Gold, a Diamond Ball and a Magic Pipe” (“Meshok s
zolotom, brilyantovy sharik i volshebnaya svirel”), the young man who
took happiness, when three brothers chose between riches, fame and
happiness, turns out a winner. Happiness, in this tale, is to live among
one’s equals in harmony and mutual love. Samoylovich stayed completely
free of the national fairy-tale tradition and chose India, China, medieval
Germany, or a pure fantasy world as the setting rather than a Russian
landscape. Her heroes carry exotic names, such as Ariana, Ingibe, Armilla,
Elvar, Philoegus, Agradarta and Noran.
 realism (1860–1890) 139

Vladimir Dal (1801–72), the famous lexicographer and collector of Rus-

sian folklore, entered children’s literature at a very late stage. He started
to publish in Family Evenings in the middle of the sixties, and his first
children’s book appeared in 1870, only two years before his death. The
Very First Book for a Semi-Literate Granddaughter (Pervaya pervinka polu-
gramotnoy vnuke, 1870) and Another Very First Book: For a Literate Grand-
daughter and Her Illiterate Brothers (Pervinka drugaya: Vnuke gramoteyke
s negramotnoyu bratieyu, 1872) include folklore, that is tales, songs, prov-
erbs, tongue-twisters, riddles, games and jokes. A Russian spirit is at the
core of all the texts. In his foreword, Dal criticises the tendency to use
foreign models in the upbringing of Russian children. Echoing Dosto-
evsky and the Slavophiles, he stresses the importance of being close to
the native soil, the pochva: “This book is Russian in its spirit, in its relation
to everyday life and to the life of the people.”70
In his formative years, Dal had composed stylised folktales for adults.
As a linguist, he was more interested in the language than in the content
of these tales. Taking advantage of the possibilities for stylistic experi-
ments, he preferred a skaz narration, a peculiar narrative style based on
the spoken language of the people, often with an ethnographic colour. His
method of reworking folklore by embellishment and modification of the
moral occasionally prompted accusations of falsification and ignorance of
the genuine ‘folk spirit’. When publishing folklore for children, Dal hum-
bly called himself a compositor who only ‘revised’ the material.
It is mainly his animal tales for which Dal is remembered as a children’s
writer. A recurrent character in them is the cunning fox that is eventually
unmasked and defeated. This is the story line in “The Fox and the Hare”
(“Lisa i zayats”), “The Fox and the Bear” (“Lisa i medved”) and “The Bast-
Shoe Fox” (“Lisa Lapotnitsa”); the other animals in Dal’s tales also most
often display their standard folktale features.
In other tales, Dal offered adventures in a fairy-tale setting. The title
character in “A Fastidious Girl” (“Priverednitsa”) is a spoiled child who
fails to look after her little brother. Aided by nature, well-disposed to her,
she manages to find the boy and save him from the old and evil Baba-
Yaga. As she does this, a change of character takes place in the girl. “The
Snow-Maiden” (“Devochka Snegurochka”) repeats the plot of becoming
lost and finding the way back. An old couple has a child, a girl born in the

70 V.I. Dal’, “Ot pravshchika,” Pervaia pervinka polugramotnoi vnuchke (M., 1870), 3.
140 chapter four

snow, but she loses her way in the deep forest. She is brought back home
safely, not by the unreliable wild animals that cross her way, but by the
family’s faithful watchdog.
After Dal’s death in 1872, his archive was made available to the editors
of Family Evenings. The folktales posthumously published in the maga-
zine are packed with Russian wisdom, sometimes in the form of proverbs,
sometimes as the outspoken moral of the story. Devoutness is a promi-
nent feature. The priest is often the one who finds the right words when
it comes to showing mercy for the suffering and the weak.
Two ‘small books for small children’, Little Ones (Kroshki, 1870) and New
Little Ones (Novye kroshki, 1875), were supposedly written by Dal’s wife
and only edited by the master himself. These are small stories about little
Liza and her younger sister Katya. The two girls are well-behaved, while
their boy cousins are ill-bred pests. Liza and Katya learn not only about
nature, but also about the importance of ‘doing God’s work’. Their mother
teaches them ethics and morality, while their grandfather, perhaps a por-
trait of Dal himself, is a talented storyteller. However, what the girls really
want to hear are ‘true stories’. Published by M.O. Volf with splendid colour
illustrations offering scenes from Russian life, these books, nevertheless,
failed to attract the attention of critics and readers.
Fairly traditional are the two classic animal tales of Vsevolod Garshin
(1855–88), a highly promising writer who died while still quite young. In
The Tale of the Toad and the Rose (Skazka o zhabe i roze, 1884) a meta-
physical struggle between senseless evil and pure beauty is given the
allegorical form of a toad’s attempt to destroy a rose. The beast’s victory
turns into defeat as the broken rose can still brighten up the last moment
of a dying child, thus achieving an afterlife. Dried, it lives eternally, as a
memory of a short moment of happiness.
In an ingenious way the animal tale and the allegory merge into a fable
in Frog the Traveller (Lyagushka-puteshestvennitsa 1887). The frog takes
off to see the world together with the ducks, but the trip to a faraway
paradise comes to an abrupt end, as the frog, high up in the sky, cannot
refrain from boasting about its cleverness. The story was partly a rework-
ing of an ancient Indian fable about a tortoise and two geese, found in the
Panchatantra, but Garshin changed the moral. The vainglorious frog is not
punished with death, but is only confronted with irony and laughter. On
the other hand, the frog comes out a winner, as it has shown the courage
to try to change its life, even if its dreams turn out to be too high-flown.
In the mid-1890s the inveterate Realist Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak sur-
prised his readers with an excellent set of animal tales, Alyonushka’s Tales
 realism (1860–1890) 141

(Alyonushkiny skazki). Initially published in Children’s Reading (Detskoe

chtenie) and Corn-Shoots (Vskhody), they appeared as a book in 1896. The
volume was dedicated to the writer’s four-year-old daughter Elena, his
darling after the death of his wife. The stories formed an important part of
the upbringing of this weak and sickly child, and were aimed at fostering
optimism and a love of life. Mamin-Sibiryak knew the Russian folktales,
as well as Vagner’s and Andersen’s tales, but he managed, nevertheless, to
create something quite original.
An introduction, written in the spirit of folk lullabies, shows little Alyo-
nushka in her bed, half asleep, half awake, listening to the stories. The
heroes form a long list of animals, birds, insects and flowers. Even the
porridge and milk are animated and allowed to enter a heated conver-
sation. In part, Mamin-Sibiryak offers trustworthy information about the
lives of his creatures, but he simultaneously personifies them in a manner
close to the folk tradition. Basically they are types, as in fables, but still
equipped with some individual features and open to changes. The pro-
tagonists might be small, but in Mamin-Sibiryak’s world spiritual strength
is more important than physical power. That is why the tiny mosquito
Komar Komarovich, together with his friends, can chase off the intruder,
the bear Misha, from their territory. Others have to learn to adjust to real-
ity, the conditions of life, and accept differences and the wishes of others.
Excessive self-assertion and boasting are ridiculed, but even so cleverness
and slyness might occasionally turn out to be of greater value than all
moral principles.
The moral is presented in a humorous way in “The Tale of the Brave Hare
Long Ears, Squint Eyes, Stub Tail” (“Skazka pro khrabrogo zaytsa-dlinnye
ushi-kosye glaza-korotky khvost”). The bragging hare unexpectedly meets
a hungry wolf, but a purely accidental victory offers it the chance to hang
on to its false self-image and, perhaps, eventually become the animal it
wants to be. The arrogant turkey in “Wiser than the Rest” (“Umnee vsekh”)
has too high an opinion of itself and must undergo public humiliation
before it can be accepted by the others. Still, it cunningly manages not to
lose face and its self-respect. In “The Tale of the Crow Blackhead and the
Yellow Canary” (“Skazka pro Voronushku-chornuyu golovushku i zholtuyu
ptichku Kanareiku”), the crow gives the sparrows a lesson in tolerance,
as it offers protection to the runaway canary. All these characters share
a love of freedom. The canary even prefers death to captivity. Mamin-
Sibiryak does not avoid tragic ends at all costs, even if his fantasy world is
basically a world without evil. Behind it is the figure of Alyonuhska, whose
love for all living creatures includes even cockroaches.
142 chapter four

In all, sixteen editions of Alyonushka’s Tales were published before the

revolution, and the success story continues to this day. Around three mil-
lion copies were printed in the Soviet Union and the book was translated
into twenty-six languages, as an example of what Russian children’s lit-
erature at its best had to offer. In France, the French translation, Contes à
mon enfant (1909), was awarded a gold medal.
Unhappily overshadowed by the famous collection of animal tales is
the intriguing A Fairy Tale about the Great Tsar Gorokh and his Splendid
Daughters Tsarevna Princess Kutafya and Tsarevna Goroshinka (Skazka
pro slavnogo tsarya Gorokha i ego prekrasnykh docherey tsarevnu Kuta-
fyu i tsarevnu Goroshinku, 1899). Composed of standard fairy-tale motives,
including the ending with the teller confessing to have been present at the
wedding party without a drop of the mead having come into his mouth,
the totality of the work is nevertheless complex and distinctly Mamin-
Sibiryak’s own. It includes a portrait of a beloved emperor who turns into
a cruel tyrant. Suspicious of everyone, he sees signs of betrayal everywhere,
throws innocent people into jail or executes them and brings misfortune
to his family and his people. The opposite of the emperor is his daughter
Goroshinka, small as a pea, but skilled in magic. She solves all the conflicts,
only to be rewarded with ingratitude and haughtiness. But a noble knight
brings about a physical change in Goroshinka by accepting the outsider
just as she is. As in The Beauty and the Beast, prejudices must be overcome
and the real person found behind outer appearance. Ugliness turns into
beauty as the spell is dissolved. This fairy tale was not published between
1918 and 1978, which shows how sensitive Mamin-Sibiryak’s study of the
abuse of power was. As a result, the emperor’s lesson that it is much more
advantageous to be good than evil went unheard.

Informative Literature

Information about nature and the work of man, all in an entertaining

form, was what Vasily Avenarius (1839–1923) offered in his first original
books for children. The Tale about the Shaggy Bee (Skazka o pchole Mokh-
natke, 1879) and What the Room Says (Chto komnata govorit, 1880) were
both awarded with prizes by the Russian Fröbel Society in 1880. In the
former, also translated into French, Avenarius tells about life in a bee-hive
with humour, an appropriate tone and vivid development of the plot. At
the centre is the short and dramatic life story of Shaggy Bee, from its birth
to its tragic death. Shaggy is part of a collective, whose motto, incidentally,
 realism (1860–1890) 143

is the same as that of the three musketeers, ‘All for one, one for all’, and it
meets its death in a battle against the common enemy, a bear.
As the title reveals, What the Room Says employs the device of per-
sonification. While lying sleepless one night, Vanya starts to listen to the
discussions between the pieces of furniture in his room. The table tells
its life story, from a birch in the woods to the finished piece of furniture.
No balance is eventually achieved between the plot and the furniture’s
monologues, making What the Room Says rather boring reading. The tale
ends with an exhortation to openness: There is a lot to be learned about
the surrounding world, if you only keep your ears and eyes open.
To these two successful tales, a third original animal tale, The Tale about
the Ant Hero (Skazka o Murave-Bogatyre, 1883) was added in the book
Children’s Tales (Detskie skazki, 1885). Unlike the bee-hive, the ant-hill is
a class society, full of conflicts. The protagonist is chosen as the anti-hill’s
ataman, and he is forcibly drawn into a civil war between the farmers
and the cattle-breeders. Without a doubt, this book contains more fantasy
than trustworthy information.
The son of a Lutheran priest in Tsarskoe Selo, Avenarius worked for
many years as a clerk in various state departments before turning to litera-
ture. His first publications got such unfavourable reviews that he decided,
once and for all, to switch to children’s literature. His first attempts within
the field were adaptations and re-tellings of Russian folklore. A Book about
Kievan Heroes (Kniga o Kievskikh bogatyryakh, 1876) was later enlarged to
become A Book of Bylinas (Kniga bylin, 1880). Avenarius combined several
different versions of the same heroic epic tale to produce a text suitable
for children. His books were popular, and they were also included in cur-
ricula for schools.
Avenarius took a similar approach to fairy tales and folktales in two
books that he edited: Thirty Best New Fairy Tales (Tridtsat luchshikh novykh
skazok, 1877) and Master Fairy Tales by Russian Writers (Obraztsovye skazki
russkikh pisateley, (1882). In the latter he stated that he wanted to present
good literature which had been unfairly eclipsed by Perrault, Hauff and
Andersen. Avenarius accepted fairy tales, because they developed a child’s
reasoning power, inquisitiveness and good, human feelings.71 He trusted
children’s ability to distinguish fantasies from truth, but pointed out that
without imagination no independent thinking was possible.72 The literary

71  V. Avenarius, Obraztsovye skazki russkikh pisatelei. Vol. 2 (M., 1882), VIII–X.
72 Ibid., IX.
144 chapter four

material had to be clever, moral (not too overtly, though), not frightening
and clearly addressed to children.
An interesting choice for Thirty Best New Fairy Tales was a story by
Aleksandr Milyukov (1816 or 1817–97), “The Posthumous Notes of a Poodle”
(“Posmertnye zapiski pudelya”), which Avenarius had found in the Dos-
toevsky brothers’ magazine Epoch (Ėpokha, 1864) under the original title,
“Notes of a Wanderer” (“Zapiski odnogo skitaltsa”). The clever dog of the
story has learned to read and write, and towards the end of his life he
writes down his life story with a pencil in his paw. It is a dog’s life, with
ups and downs and standard events, all told in a tongue-in-cheek man-
ner. Part of the humour is the dog’s classical education, with references
to Histoire des chiens célèbres (1808), the dogs’ Plutarch. Avenarius did not
manage to secure a lasting place for Milyukov’s story in Russian children’s
literature, but it must have had some influence on later similar works by
Aleksandr Kuprin, Sasha Cherny and others.
Master Fairy Tales by Russian Writers was a noteworthy pioneer
attempt at establishing the literary canon of Russian artistic fairy tales
from Catherine the Great and Pushkin to contemporary writers such as
Vagner and Garshin. Avenarius was also the first person to include Fyo-
dor Dostoevsky’s “A Boy at Christ’s Christmas Party” (“Malchik u Khrista
na yolke”, 1876) among the best Russian tales for children. Dostoyevsky
had surely not intended the story about a beggar child freezing to death
during Christmas to be read by children, but the juxtaposition of child-
hood in a rich family and a poor one and the disheartening dénouement
made it fit neatly into the Realist tradition within Russian children’s
literature.
Later, Avenarius also edited a collection of poetry, Thirty Years (Za
tridtsat let, 1900), which included poetry from Apollon Maykov to the
modern Symbolists. The book was intended for a young audience, without
presenting, however, any poetry written especially for it.
Avenarius also filled the demand for biographical novels of great per-
sonalities. His books about the life of classic Russian writers were first
published in Spring, and then separately. Recommended by the Academic
Committee of the Ministry of Popular Education and praised by critics,
they were widely used in Russian schools, giving pupils their first contact
with the lives of Pushkin and Gogol. Avenarius knew how to turn the writ-
ers into living persons set against a documented historical background.
The volumes are reliable without, however, forgetting to be entertaining.
It is mainly the abundant dialogue that gives life to the hard facts.
 realism (1860–1890) 145

The two volumes about Aleksandr Pushkin, Pushkin’s Adolescent Years

(Otrocheskie gody Pushkina, 1885) and Pushkin’s Years of Youth (Yuno­
sheskie gody Pushkina, 1887), deal with the poet’s time in the Imperial
Tsarskoe Selo Lyceum, his circle of friends and first literary attempts. In
the young Pushkin, Avenarius already detects signs of the future genius,
but even so he refrains from attributing overly mature thoughts and words
to the poet.
While Pushkin was an open, straightforward and passionate character,
sure to wake the readers’ sympathies, Avenarius had his misgivings about
how to present Gogol. Not only was there less material, but Gogol was a
less attractive person: “Naturally, it would never have occured to anyone
that this unsociable small person, lazy both in his body and mind, remind-
ing others of his existence only through some occasional, not totally
harmless, prank, would become a great humorous writer.” The result, the
trilogy Gogol’s Years of Study (Uchenicheskie gody Gogolya, 1895–97), was
indeed less dramatic and less interesting. Lack of good material renders
the story rather incoherent. Gogol’s path to literary greatness was long
and troubled, and it is only the third and last volume, where Gogol is
groping for his place in literature and St Petersburg cultural circles, that
is of greater interest.
From writers, Avenarius moved on to scientists (Nikolay Pirogov), com-
posers (Mozart, Glinka), and travellers (Columbus). He also wrote a novel
on the complex fate of Shamil, the Caucasian freedom fighter, who even-
tually surrendered to the Russian army. The inevitable dialogue with Leo
Tolstoy’s Hadji Murat makes The Eagle of Chechnya and Dagestan (Oryol
Chechni i Dagestana), published in Heartfelt Word (Zadushevnoe slovo) in
1916–17, interesting reading, in spite of its modest literary merits.
Mariya Rostovskaya wrote a set of biographies of Benjamin Franklin
(1852), the painter Karl Bryullov (1852), and the poet Gavrila Derzhavin
(1864). The biographical novels by Ekaterina Sysoeva, published seri-
ally under the title “People of Work and Willpower”, included The Life
of James Garfield: From Log Cabin to the White House (Zhizn Dzhemsa
Garfilda: Ot brevenchatoy khizhiny do Belogo doma, 1882) and The Life
of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Zhizn Bicher-Stou,
avtora Khizhiny dyadi Toma, 1892). For these two works about an Ameri-
can president and an American writer, Sysoeva used books by William
Thayer and Charles Edward Stowe. After completing a biography on Hans
Christian Andersen (1898), Sysoeva turned to the life story of a man of the
church, The Life and Feats of Innokenty, the Preacher of the Gospel in the
146 chapter four

Aleutian Islands (Zhizn i podvigi Innokentiya, propovednika Evangeliya

na Aleutskikh ostrovakh, 1901).
Aleksandra Annenskaya also took an interest in biographies of scien-
tists, travellers, politicians and writers. Her works appeared mainly in The
Lives of Exceptional People (Zhizn zamechatelnykh lyudey), a series which
had been started by Florenty Pavlenkov at the end of the 1880s. Annens-
kaya’s range of subjects was wide: Nikolay Gogol (1891), Charles Dickens
(1892), François Rabelais (1892), Benjamin Franklin (1893), George Sand
(1894), Honoré de Balzac (1895), George Washington (1899), Fridtjof
Nansen (1899), Sven Hedin (1899) and Christopher Columbus (1915). Not
all of these works were for children, and even the question of authorship
is unclear in some cases.
The pedagogue Vasily Vodovozov (1825–86) wrote several informative
books intended to awaken children’s curiosity and their thirst for knowl-
edge. His First Reader for Elementary Schools (Kniga dlya pervonachal-
nogo chteniya v narodnykh shkolakh, 1871) had been published in twenty
editions by 1896, with a total of around 700,000 copies. This book com-
peted with Tolstoy’s readers, using the same method, advancing from
simple, basic texts towards more demanding pieces. Vodovozov was an
accomplished writer with a good feeling for style. Poems, short tales and
informative texts teach botany, geography, history, physics and civics.
Questions intended to activate children are frequently added: “What did
we just read?”
In the second part of the reader (1878), Vodovozov turned to juveniles
and adults. The volume is encyclopaedic in character, presenting, for
example, the following image of Americans: “As active and inventive as
the English, they are freer and simpler than them in every respect. Exam-
ples of their unusual energy are their fast-growing cities, their railways
and many inventions.”73
Another book much used in schools was Vodovozov’s Stories from Rus-
sian History (Rasskazy iz russkoy istorii, 1861–64), a stodgy collection of
historical documents and bylinas going right up to the Time of Troubles.
Vodovozov also tried his hand at fiction. Children’s Stories and Poems
(Detskie rasskazy i stihkotvoreniya, 1871) includes unpretentious stories
and poems, either dealing with moral conflicts from the life of children
or providing facts about nature and folk life. There are questions for dis-
cussion. Occasionally the simplicity of Vodovozov’s writing is beneath

73 V. Vodovozov, Kniga dlia pervonachal’nogo chteniia. Vol. 2 (SPb, 1878), 513.
 realism (1860–1890) 147

all criticism. Vanya in “The Adventure of the Shirt” (“Pokhozhdenie

rubashechki”) gets tired of studying German and treats the pages of his
textbook carelessly. The result is odd, to say the least: “[. . .] suddenly the
pages rustled in a strange way, started to prattle, and a voice could be
heard: ‘Vanya! Don’t you recognise me? I am your old shirt!’ Vanya even
jumped with fright. ‘Don’t be afraid!’ could again be heard from the pages.
‘I am the very same shirt that you gave to little Petya!’ ” What follows is the
story of how a shirt could turn into paper.
As is apparent in his Russian Fairy Tales in Verse (Russkie skazki v
stikhakh, 1883), Vodovozov, like Konstantin Ushinsky, considered Russian
folk culture a source of learning and wisdom. Unfortunately, Vodovozov
too often managed to ruin the originals by his adaptations.
Vladimir Stoyunin (1826–88), another prominent pedagogue, did much
for the development of teaching literature in schools. In his books on the
theoretical study of literature, pupils are encouraged to discuss and write
their own analyses instead of learning facts by heart. Stoyunin underlined
the historical aspects of literature, and particularly the importance of the
writer for his own time. In his reader, A Russian School Anthology for the
First Classes (Klassnaya russkaya khrestomatiya dlya nizzhikh klassov,
1876), he included classic Russian writers, insisting that pupils be given
adult literature—both prose and poetry. Even history and geography were
to be taught with the help of fiction.
In natural science the big name was Modest Bogdanov (1841–88), geog-
rapher, zoologist, and professor at St Petersburg University. In the 1870s
and 1880s Bogdanov published numerous stories about animals in Educa-
tion and Instruction (Vospitanie i obuchenie) and Spring, providing fic-
tionalised information about the life of animals. Many of these tales, for
example “The War between the Magpies and the Foxes” (“Voyna sorok s
lisitsami”), where the planned cooperation between a magpie and a fox
comes to nothing because of the latter’s cunning, were published as sepa-
rate booklets right up to 1917. After Bogdanov’s death in 1888, these works
were collected in a solid volume, From the Life of Russian Nature (Iz zhizni
russkoy prirody, 1889). In the foreword, Professor Nikolay Vagner points
out that Bogdanov showed a love for both nature and children.74 A ninth
edition was published as late as 1960. According to a contemporary critic
“children’s literature is seldom so fortunate as to have such a talented and

74 N. Vagner, “Predislovie,” in Modest Bogdanov, Iz zhizni russkoi prirody (SPb, 1889),
[V].
148 chapter four

simultaneously authoritative pen from the field of science”.75 Another of

his books, The Parasites Among Us: Sketches About the Life of Animals Who
Have Settled Down Among Mankind (Mirskie zakhrebetniki: Ocherki iz
byta zhivotnykh, selyashchikhsya okolo cheloveka, 1884), which reached
twenty editions, was received enthusiastically: “There is nothing similar
in children’s literature . . . Even dry, callous nature becomes absorbingly
interesting through these lively, bright sketches and stories.”76

Animal Reason (Um zhivotnykh, 1876), with sixty-one short tales for small
children, was translated, or, as the book states, ‘borrowed’, from English.
The format and the content appealed to readers, and the book came out
in four editions. The behaviour of animals exemplifies human emotions
such as friendship, gratitude and courage, but also cruelty and selfishness.
A clever ape helps rescue its Russian family during the French invasion of
1812, clearly an expression of loyalty and resourcefulness. But what were
the children supposed to learn from the story “The Wasp and the Fly”
(“Osa i mukha”)? The wasp catches a fly, but as its prey turns out to be too
heavy, it first cuts off its wings and then its head. Then it is able to carry
its burden, and “briskly and happily it flew away to its own little nest”.
Russian children had no problem in recognizing “The Lion and the Dogs”
(“Lev i sobaki”) as the French story that Leo Tolstoy had used for his Rus-
sian Readers. A lion at the Vienna Zoo ‘magnanimously’ spares the life of
a small dog thrown into its cage as food.

Poetry for Children

Through textbooks and special anthologies, classical Russian poetry gradu-

ally achieved a firm place in children’s reading. Many contemporary poets
tried writing for both an adult and a young audience. Poetry also went
through a period of populism, with writers siding with the oppressed and
demonstrating their civic-mindedness. In his adult verse, Nikolay Nekrasov
(1821–77/78), “the poet of wrath and sorrow”, paid much attention to the
harsh living conditions of the simple people, including children. Folk
poetry served as an important source of inspiration. He dedicated a cycle
of six poems, including the well-known “General Toptygin” (1867) and
“Granddad Mazay and the Hares” (“Dedushka Mazay i zaytsy”, 1870), to

75 Vestnik Evropy 4 (1889): 889.

76 Russkaia mysl’ 12 (1889): 543.
 realism (1860–1890) 149

Russian children. The former is a social satire in the spirit of Gogol. A roar-
ing bear, being transported in a sleigh, is mistaken for a general and calls
forth fear and servility in the spectators. During a flood, the hunter Mazay
(“Dedushka Mazay i zaytsy”) is overcome by pity at the sight of defence-
less hares and saves them by taking them into his boat. A compelling
feeling of love for all living creatures is conveyed through a humorous,
straightforward narration. The absurd picture of granddad Mazay with his
boat full of hares is much to the taste of children. Nekrasov had plans
to publish his children’s poems as a separate volume, but this idea was
fulfilled only posthumously by his sister. As a whole, To Russian Children
(Russkim detyam, 1881) was not successful as children’s literature. In some
of the poems, only the formal address to a young audience reveals whom
the poet considered his readers to be.
Nikolay Chekhov in 1908 declared Nekrasov’s children’s poetry to be
rightly forgotten, claiming that it had been written merely for commercial
reasons.77 However, the Soviet era revived these poems, partly through an
intensified cult of Nekrasov as one of the main champions of Realism.
A more professional attitude to children’s poetry was displayed by
some of Nekrasov’s followers: Aleksey Pleshcheev, Ivan Surikov and Spiri-
don Drozhzhin. For many decades these poets published in the leading
children’s magazines. Recurrent themes were compassion for peasant
children, nostalgic childhood memories, rural scenes and love for nature.
The main relationship is that between children and their grandparents.
The role of old people is to pass on their folk wisdom and show concern
for the growing generation.
Social problems were central. In his two collections of children’s poetry,
Snowdrops (Podsnezhnik, 1878) and Granddad’s Songs (Dedushkiny
pesni, 1891), Aleksey Pleshcheev (1825–93) woke sympathy in his reader
for homeless orphans and starving and sick child-beggars, whose destiny
most often was an early grave. The perspective in these poems is some-
times that of an old man moved by the thought or sight of the children.
The intonation of spoken language is mixed with influences from folklore.
“The Old Man” (“Starik”, 1877) is a sentimental obituary of a forester who
loved children.
Pleshcheev’s child heroes are portrayed with great understanding.
Vasya prefers roaming in the woods to doing his homework, a choice
accepted with a gentle smile by his mother and nurse (“Zavtra”), while his

77 Chekhov, Detskaia literatura, 122.

150 chapter four

counterpart in “The Grandmother and Her Little Grandson” (“Babushka i

vnuchek”, 1878) dreams of being able to attend school together with the
other children. Playing can wait, and instead of fairy tales, he longs for
true stories, ‘what really happened’. His grandmother has to give in to the
fact that, in modern society, it is knowledge that counts.
Pleshcheev also edited anthologies of children’s literature. A Little Book
for Children (Detskaya knizhka, 1861) included tales by Hans Christian
Andersen and the Brothers Grimm. An imposing poem, “The Christmas
Tree” (“Yolka”) by the established poet Yakov Polonsky (1819–98), stood
out among the material in another volume edited by Pleshcheev, At the
Party: An Anthology for Children (Na prazdnike: Sbornik dlya detey, 1873).
Polonsky presents a poor peasant boy who has a grand religious vision
while he is out looking for a Christmas tree for his grandmother. It is
from her that he has learned about the Christmas traditions of the Rus-
sian gentlefolk, but it takes his childish imagination to give the rituals a
deeper meaning. A fairy tale, “Pimperlė”, by Kot Murlyka, that is, Nikolay
Vagner, is also excellent. Pleshcheev’s own poem, “A Raindrop” (“Kaplya
dozhdevaya”), was printed with music by César Cui.
In the 1870s Pleshcheev invited another talented poet, Ivan Surikov
(1841–80), to start writing for children. At the core of Surikov’s poetry is
an acute social conscience. He only uses traditional lyrical devices spar-
ingly; instead, he comes close to the poetics of folk songs. The poem “In
the Winter” (“Zimoy”) tells of a childhood lost because of early sorrows
and heavy responsibilities. With the help of simple metaphors, the poet
conveys childish fantasies and fears, joys and concerns in an emotion-
ally convincing way. Surikov wanted to present not just the hard lot of
the Russian peasant children, but a broader spectrum of life. A fishing
trip with granddad and encounters with Russian nature serve as mate-
rial for other poems. In “Granddad Klim” (“Ded Klim”) and “The Treasure”
(“Klad”), the poet portrayed two child-loving old people. Surikov’s own
happy childhood memories form the basis of “Childhood” (“Detstvo”). The
boy rushes home in the winter evening from the joys of the toboggan-run
to a peaceful hut where he is lulled to sleep by grandmother’s fairy tales.
“Oh, childhood years, / how happily you passed by! / You weren’t clouded /
by sorrow and need”, the poet concludes.
Only in passing did the self-taught peasant poet Spiridon Drozhzhin
(1848–1930) paint pictures of poor children and beggars. His main con-
cern was ‘pastoral idylls for children’, as Drozhzhin’s poems are called
in the sub-title of one of his collections. The four seasons, the peasant’s
work in the field, the joyous singing of the birds, God’s presence in nature,
 realism (1860–1890) 151

laughing children and genially smiling old people fill his poetry books for
children, The Year of the Peasant (God krestyanina, 1899), The Home Vil-
lage (Rodnaya derevnya, 1905) and The Four Seasons (Chetyre vremena
goda, 1914). His poems nostalgically recall his own childhood and home
village. In “To School” (“V shkolu”) children are encouraged to study so as
to shape a bright future for Russia.
Dmitry Minaev (1835–89), a minor poet known for his parodies and
satirical poems, turned to children’s literature during his last decade, the
1880s. In Evenings with Granddad (Dedushkiny vechera, 1880) and Russian
Folktales for Children (Narodnye russkie skazki dlya detey, s.a.), Minaev
included rewritings of Russian folk and fairy tales. The humour, terror
and—occasionally—dubious moral teaching were preserved intact, but
the prose of the originals was turned into unrhymed poetry in the style
of the Russian heroic poems, the bylinas. Minaev’s two original works
for children, New Novelties (Novye novinki, 1882) and A Warm Little Nest
(Tyoploe gnyozdyshko, 1882), were picture books published by M.O. Volf.
The poems depict scenes from the happy life of children from well-off
families. Permeated with love and understanding, these poems are told
from a child-like perspective. Imagination is set loose as the child plays
with a ball or with dolls and rides his hobby-horse or swings on a seesaw.
Minaev also took an interest in lullabies, providing a modern approach to
the old genre in his publications in Heartfelt Word. In a Christmas poem,
Father Frost appears, generously rewarding kind children while carrying
away the mischievous ones in his sack.

Children’s Magazines

Around 1860 several new children’s magazines appeared alongside the still
thriving Little Star, Rays of Light and Magazine for Children. The boom,
however, turned out to be illusory, as most of the newcomers proved to
be short-lived. A common problem was the difficulty of recruiting new
writers; the editors were often compelled to cut down the fiction section
or to content themselves with translations.
Snowdrop (Podsnezhnik, 1858–62) set out to renew the children’s maga-
zine tradition. Its chief editor, Vladimir Maykov (1826–85), worked out a
programme close in spirit to that of the leading contemporary magazine
for adults, The Contemporary (Sovremennik). The idea behind Snowdrop
was that children between ten and fifteen, both girls and boys, would be
presented with reading material not found in their schoolbooks. Works
152 chapter four

published were supposed to develop the reader’s aesthetic taste and

awareness of “morals, beauty, goodness and truth”.78 Great weight was
attached to the illustrations.
The contributors to Snowdrop include some well-known contempo-
rary names. Grisha, the Little Apprentice (Grisha, malenky podmastere,
1858), by Dmitry Grigorovich, tells the story of a boy living in poverty and
misery. Another of Snowdrop’s writers was the pedagogue Vasily Vodo-
vozov. Apollon Maykov (1821–97), the editor’s brother, contributed some
outstanding idyllic poems on nature and country life. His “The Dream of
a Negro” (“Son negra”, 1860) was written in the spirit of Harriet Beecher
Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a highly topical novel for Russia at that time.
From a dream of a life in freedom, the slave wakes up to his hard lot.
Humorous poems from Fyodor Miller’s Texts for Pictures provided a dis-
tinct counterpoint. Translations of works by writers such as Shakespeare,
Washington Irving, George Sand, Franz Hoffmann, Dickens and Walter
Scott gradually took over the fiction section of Snowdrop, and although
Snowdrop published some Russian fairy tales, the big European names—
the Brothers Grimm, Hauff and Andersen—were favoured.
In 1859 Snowdrop published two anthologies with extracts from contem-
porary prose and poetry by Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Goncharov,
Afanasy Fet, Apollon Maykov and Nikolay Nekrasov as supplements. Valu-
able as they were, these volumes, nevertheless, bore witness to the lack of
a genuine contemporary Russian children’s literature.
Articles on life in foreign countries, travel and history were numerous.
It was through Snowdrop that the legendary American naturalist John
Audubon’s texts on North American bird life and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
rewritings of ancient Greek myths, The Tanglewood Tales (1853), reached
a Russian audience.
The stated aim of Dawn (Rassvet, 1859–62) was to provide a forum
for the progressive ideas of the 1860s. The critic Nikolay Chernyshevsky
noted with satisfaction the magazine’s wish to give its readers a political
education and foster a civic spirit and humanitarian concern. However,
the moral and spiritual development of readers was to be kept within the
limits of Christian teaching.
The chief editor Valerian Krempin (1825–89), initially an artillery-
man, explicitly identified his main audience in the magazine’s subtitle,
A Journal of Science, Art and Literature for Young Women. At a time of new

78 “Ot redaktsii,” Podsnezhnik 12 (1858): [III].

 realism (1860–1890) 153

thinking, a change in the upbringing of girls was also seen as necessary.

Their intellectual horizon was to be broadened with the help of material
on the role of women in literature, history and science. The woman ques-
tion, as reflected within the family and society, had to be discussed. On
Dawn’s front page, as a symbol of the coming changes, the morning sun
awakens a sleeping girl.
Krempin also promised his audience romantic stories, since love and
marriage were admittedly central issues in the life of women. Eventually,
Dawn published fiction only sparingly, one of the few accepted names
being the Swedish writer Emilie Flygare-Carlén. In the substantial criti-
cal section, some new names appeared, including Dmitry Pisarev, Nikolay
Mikhaylovsky and Aleksandr Skabichevsky (1838–1910/1911). In his mem-
oirs Skabichevsky later offered an explanation of the problems that juve-
nile literature and magazines like Dawn encountered at this time: “Books
specially meant for adolescent reading carry a humiliating stamp of offi-
cialdom, making the juveniles feel like minors, still unable to understand
what adults read. Imagine how annoying that is! As a result, children’s
magazines can enjoy some popularity in Russia, but whatever is meant
specially for adolescents always tends to provoke indifference among
those same adolescents.”79
Nikolay Ushakov’s The Interlocutor (Sobesednik, 1859–60) was a maga-
zine for children eight years old and upwards. Its very first article was an
explanation of the Lord’s Prayer. Fiction was mostly unsigned trifles such
as outdated cautionary tales on pious, kind-hearted children helping the
poor. Small stories explained Russian proverbs. Poems published in Ger-
man and French indicated the target audience’s high cultural level.
The Interlocutor introduced Captain Mayne Reid to Russian readers.
The first works by him to appear were The Desert Home, or the Adven-
tures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness (transl. 1859) and The Plant Hunt-
ers (transl. 1860). Competing with Snowdrop, The Interlocutor presented
Audubon’s findings on North American wildlife. The colour illustrations
were superb here, as well as in the magazine’s other articles on biology,
geography and history.
Another short-lived children’s magazine, Leisure (Chas dosuga, 1858–62),
was modelled on a French journal La Récréation, which had appeared in
Paris some twenty years earlier. According to its subtitle, it was intended
to be “a magazine of games, amusement and entertaining reading for

79 A.M. Skabichevskii, Literaturnye vospominaniia (М.-Л., 1928), 128.

154 chapter four

Russian youth”. Assisted by her brother, Viktor Buryanov, and “a few Rus-
sian ladies”, Sofya Burnashova, or ‘Spinster S.B.’ (Devitsa Esbe), as she
called herself, returned to children’s literature as an editor after a few
years of silence. The content was most entertaining: it included outdoor
and indoor games, gymnastics and sports, puppet theatre, sheets of music,
picture puzzles, riddles, anecdotes, kites, dolls’ clothes and phantasma-
goria. Burnashova wanted to combine amusement with useful learning,
and hence even the educational articles were given an engaging form.
Paradoxically, after two years it was the readers who requested more seri-
ous material. The result was an increasing number of practically orien-
tated articles on issues such as agriculture, housekeeping, needlework and
handicrafts.
Burnashova was also editor-in-chief of Kaleidoscope (Kaleydoskop,
1860–62). In spite of its attempt to address topical issues, this short-lived
weekly magazine, also called Children’s Illustration (Detskaya illyus-
tratsiya), remained insignificant. Initially, all its material was unsigned,
and towards its end it consisted only of items taken from other magazines.
The fiction section was overall weak. The legendary Parasha from Siberia
made a comeback, now in the form of a drama written by Nikolay Pogodin
(1796–1846).
M.O. Volf was the publisher of Amusements and Stories (Zabavy i
rasskazy, 1863–67), a magazine targeted at children between six and ten.
The programme is worth quoting in its entirety: the magazine aimed,
“without any pedantry and dry moralizing, to develop moral truths about
love for one’s neighbour, pity for the unfortunate and the poor and respect
for moral virtues, regardless of the accidentally unattractive appearance
they take, as well as about the course of action necessary for maintaining
harmony in the family, the treatment of animals and so forth”.80
Avgusta Pchelnikova, the well-known children’s writer, was the editor.
The magazine published anonymous, simple stories with religious and
moral content, scenes for amateur theatres, and songs. The ethnographic
material contributed to the spreading of prejudices, as when the father in
“The Gypsies” (“Tsygany”, 1864) explains to his son that Gypsies are lazy,
deceitful, and inclined to thieving. The Finns do not fare any better. When
little Seryozha asks his mother about those people in funny caps selling
butter, cream and Baltic herring at the marketplace, she replies that “The
Finns are notable for their laziness and carelessness; the Finn lies on his

80 Librovich, Na knizhnom postu, 471.

 realism (1860–1890) 155

load, not worrying about anything, and if the loaded cart comes close to
the ditch, he prefers to trust in providence and let it topple over, rather
than to stir and turn the horse to the other side; but in general they are
good-natured people” (“Chukhontsy”, 1864).81
Later, in spite of the magazine’s title, fiction was either excluded or
turned into badly camouflaged informative literature with time-honoured
titles like “Kolya’s discussion with Varinka” and “Petya’s letter to Tanya”.
Also, the section consisting of games and enjoyable pastimes was gradu-
ally replaced with articles on popular science and history. In them chil-
dren with inquiring minds ask about such subjects as thunderstorms, the
human body, plants, birds, coffee, walnuts, the people of the Caucasus,
moles, Columbus and fans. Despite these changes, Amusements and Sto-
ries did not lose its readers, and it ceased publication only because of
the serious illness of its editor.
Family Evenings (Semeynye vechera, 1864–91) was founded by Mariya
Rostovskaya. Together with Maykov from the discontinued Snowdrops,
she edited the magazine up to 1869, when, because of bad health, she
handed the task over to Sofya Kashpireva. Published under the patronage
of Grand Duchess Maria Aleksandrovna, Family Evenings came out in two
versions, one for younger, and one for older children. The distinction was
not always clear, and for some years even a section for ‘the smallest one’
was included.
The content of Family Evenings was varied. Texts on chemistry, geog-
raphy, astronomy and travel alternated with episodes from the lives of
famous writers and composers. Professor Dmitry Kaygorodov started to
write in its pages in the 1880s for adolescents on biology. Small children
were offered picture puzzles and riddles. Fiction was the main empha-
sis, however. During the first years Rostovskaya favoured her own poems
and stories, republishing among others the novel The Peasant School.
Commenting upon her writings, she stressed their realism—nothing was
invented, but everything was taken straight from nature. Grot, Dal, Syso-
eva and the poet Drozhzhin also appeared frequently in Family Evenings.
Evgeny Belov (1826–95) and Aleksey Razin wrote for older children on
historical themes. Mikhail Chistyakov and his wife Sofya (1817–90) came
from the editorial board of a discontinued publication, Magazine for
Children. Family Evenings did not publish any first-rate Russian writers,

81 “Chukhontsy,” Zabavy i rasskazy (1864): 101.

156 chapter four

however; one of the best was Vera Zhelikhovskaya, who joined the maga-
zine in 1881.
Translations were the core of Family Evenings, with writers like Hans
Christian Andersen, Charles Dickens, Gustav Nieritz, Franz Hoffmann,
Mayne Reid, Gustave Aimard, Jules Verne and Louis Jacolliot. Mark
Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Saw-
yer and The Prince and the Pauper all appeared in its pages only one year
after the publication of the originals. The German writer Georg Ebers was
a favourite in the 1870s and 1880s. Ebers, whose collected works were pub-
lished in thirteen volumes in 1896–98, had quite a following among Rus-
sians, who especially liked his Egyptian novels.
Yulian Simashko’s (1821–93) Family and School (Semya i shkola, 1871–
88) resembled Family Evenings, but published more Russian material. Its
subtitle was Pedagogical Magazine (Pedagogichesky zhurnal), and subse-
quently one of its two versions was a publication on pedagogical theory
and methodology for parents and teachers. The thoughts propagated in it
were mainly those of Friedrich Fröbel.
The family version of Family and School gave advice on how to make
one’s own toys and games, such as chess, dominoes and draughts, and
how to conduct chemistry and physics experiments. It also benefited from
Kaygorodov’s deep knowledge of botany. Younger children were invited
to enjoy themselves with colouring pictures, puzzles and song games. The
biggest names in prose to appear there were Aleksandra Annenskaya and
Vera Zhelikhovskaya. Other names worth mentioning are Anna Sakharova
(1851–1900), a writer of fairy tales, Aleksandr Kruglov, Vasily Vodovozov,
Vasily Avenarius and Mikhail Chistyakov. Aleksey Pleshcheev contributed
poetry, while Sergey Miropolsky (1842–1907) edited a poetic anthology dis-
tributed to the subscribers, The Seasons (Vremena goda, 1878).
When Pleshcheev invited Ivan Surikov, a promising peasant poet, to
join the magazine’s contributors in 1872, he pointed out what the editors
expected from children’s poetry: “Do you have any poems the content
of which would make them suitable for a children’s magazine, that is a
motif taken from nature or with fairy-tale content, but with a theme of
educational significance?”82
Among the translations published in Family and School were works by
Jules Verne, Georg Ebers, Mayne Reid and Mark Twain. “Sampo, the Little

82 A.N. Pleshcheev, Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii (M.-L., 1964), 390.

 realism (1860–1890) 157

Lapp”, the fairy tale by Topelius destined to become a Russian favourite,

came out in 1877.
A new magazine with the time-honoured title Children’s Reading (Dets-
koe chtenie, 1869–1906) began to appear in 1869. At the start the number
of subscribers was around 400, more than doubling within one year.83 The
first editors were the cousins Aleksey (1840–1917) and Viktor Ostrogorsky
(1840–1902). The latter was a teacher of literature, brought up under the
radical influence of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov. In Viktor Ostrogor-
sky’s view, literature had an important role to play in the democratic devel-
opment of man and society. One grateful reader was the young Vladimir
Ulyanov in faraway Simbirsk. The future Communist leader Lenin did not
have any favourite books, but he always read Children’s Reading with plea-
sure.84 His wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, also mentioned the magazine as
her favourite reading during the time of the Russo-Turkish War in 1877. In
Children’s Reading she found many inspiring examples of human dignity,
initiative, magnanimous helpfulness and loyalty.85
Children’s Reading was initially a predominantly non-fiction magazine.
In it children readers could find texts on various subjects, such as min-
erals, rain, skating, fishing, bird’s nests and spiders. It published articles
about the work of miners, the reign of Ivan the Terrible, and the rules for
croquet. Picture puzzles, labyrinths and chess problems were popular. The
content of the column ‘Games and Hobbies’ was intended as an important
part of a child’s development and upbringing. The reader learned how
to do woodwork, for example putting together a stool, a ladder and—an
Orthodox cross. Biographies of writers and scientists, such as Carl Lin-
naeus, were standard material. The editor Viktor Ostrogorsky published
Russian proverbs, sayings and songs, later collecting them in From Popu-
lar Life (Iz narodnogo byta, 1883) and From the World of Great Traditions
(Iz mira velikikh predaniy, 1883). Like Avenarius’ publications of Russian
folktales, Children’s Reading stressed the national heritage.
Zasodimsky, Kruglov, Annenskaya and Sysoeva provided prose, and
Drozhzhin and Pleshcheev poetry. The most popular foreign writers were
Dickens, Gustave Aimard, Bret Harte, Topelius, Ouida and Daudet, though
their works were usually radically revised. Children’s Reading took a clearly

83 “Dvadtsatiletie zhurnala ‘Detskoe chtenie’,” Detskoe chtenie. Prilozhenie: Pedago-

gicheskii listok. January–March (1894): 5.
84 A.I. Ulianova, Detskie i shkol’nye gody Ilicha (М.-Л., 1955), 10–11.
85 N. Krupskaia, “Chto ia pomniu iz prochitannykh v detstve knig,” Pedagogicheskie
sochineniia v 9 t. Vol. 1 (M., 1957), 29–30.
158 chapter four

negative attitude to fantasy and fairy tales. In the supplement Pedagogical

Leaflet (Pedagogichesky listok), works such as A Thousand and One Nights
(1870) were even accused of having a dangerous effect on the reader.
In 1882 a new children’s magazine appeared under the title Spring
(Rodnik, 1882–1917). It had emerged from another magazine, Education
and Instruction (Vospitanie i obuchenie, 1877–81), and was recommended
for pupils in the lowest classes in boarding and grammar schools for
girls. Intended as a ‘spring’ of knowledge about the surrounding world, it
offered “interesting and useful reading in order to develop love of truth
and beauty”.86 The content was to be of encyclopaedic character, but stress
was to be laid on life in Russia, both in historical and modern times.
During its first years, Spring published no translations of interest, but
the editors, Ekaterina Sysoeva and her nephew Aleksey Almedingen
(1855–1908), managed to gather an imposing team of Russian writers:
Chistyakov, Annenskaya, Kruglov, Zasodimsky, Nemirovich-Danchenko
and Avenarius. Kot Murlyka (Nikolay Vagner) remained true to a pessi-
mistic world-view, as can be seen from his Beata: a Picture from Old Nea-
politan Life (Beata: Kartinka iz staroy neopolitanskoy zhizni, 1891). When
little Beata’s father, a poor cobbler, is sentenced to ten years in prison for
theft, his family is destitute. Beata pities a wounded seagull, a symbol for
her own desperate situation. Vladimir Korolenko successfully reworked
his own In Bad Company (V durnom obshchestve) into The Cave Children
(Deti podzemelya) in 1886, and in the next year Garshin’s fairy tale Frog
the Traveller was published. Pleshcheev, Polonsky, Drozhzhin and Ivan
Nikitin wrote poetry for the magazine. Modest Bogdanov and the untir-
ing Professor Kaygorodov also found time to assist Spring with articles on
nature.
In a private conversation in 1884, Leo Tolstoy admitted that Spring was
the magazine that his children preferred. He himself had a high opinion of
the publication, finding it much more pleasing than its competitors, such
as Children’s Rest.87 In 1888, Sysoeva invited Anton Chekhov to publish in
Spring. He took the proposition seriously, even though he had no expe-
rience of writing for young people. Nevertheless, a year later he had to
admit that he had not been able to produce anything worthwhile for it.88
His brother Mikhail, on the contrary, published a travel sketch in 1889
under a pseudonym.

86 [Announcement], Rodnik 1 (1882): [I].

87 Iudina and Ivanova, Ezhegodnik Pushkinskogo doma (1981), 8.
88 Chekhov. Literaturnoe nasledstvo. Vol. 68 (M., 1960), 173. (Letter to E. Sysoeva, 1887.)
 realism (1860–1890) 159

Spring had financial difficulties. During its entire existence, the receipts
from subscriptions never covered the expenses. Even so, the increase in
subscribers was initially strong, from 418 in 1882 to 3,000 in 1886.89 The
writers were poorly paid. In a letter to the magazine’s editor in 1893
Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak complained, “I love to write for children, but it
happens that I haven’t done much work in this respect purely for external
reasons about which it is even a bit awkward to speak. For example, the
fee conditions you offer lower the price of my work up to 40%. You must
admit that this makes things more complicated, and even more so as writ-
ing for children is not that easy.”90

Criticism

In his early anthology of critical reviews of children’s literature, Feliks Toll

progressed as far as 1861. After that year, there is a long gap. The 1860s and
1870s saw no reviews, and Toll’s pioneer work was only continued in the
1880s. A Survey of Childrens’ Literature (Obzor detskoy literatury, 1885–89)
offered advice to parents and teachers on suitable reading for children.
Its standards were fairly high, and it told many children’s writers such
as, for example, Sofya Makarova, in a rather straightforward manner, that
their books had no value whatsoever.91 The survey also warned against
books that could harm “a correct development of a child’s mind or heart”.92
From the start, the editorial board included the writer Vsevolod Garshin,
and apparently his share in their work was of decisive importance, as pub-
lication ceased immediately after his suicide in 1888.
What Should the People Read? A Critical Guide to Books for Popular
and Children’s Reading (Chto chitat narodu? Kritichesky ukazatel knig
dlya narodnogo i detskogo chteniya) took a different approach. Khris-
tina Alchevskaya (1841–1920), the head of a Sunday school for women
in Kharkov, arranged readings of literature for children and grown-ups,
including peasants and poor urban citizens, at the beginning of the 1880s.
What Should the People Read? encouraged its readers to voice their opin-
ions about what they had read, and the result of the experiment was col-
lected in three volumes—published in 1884, 1889 and 1906. The content

89 Iudina and Ivanova, Ezhegodnik Pushkinskogo doma, 7.

90 V. Vil’chinskii, “I.S. Shmelev v zhurnale ‘Rodnik’,” Russkaia literatura 3 (1966): 186,
note 8.
91 Obzor detskoi literatury. Vypusk I: Knigi, izdannye v 1883 godu (SPb, 1885), 57–59.
92 Ibid., IV.
160 chapter four

of the literary works is retold and the teacher voices her opinion, but the
main part of each review is a summary of the ensuing discussion. The
teachers were advised not to lead the discussions, but just to take notes.
The approximately 1,500 reviews also include extracts from letters and
written statements from readers. What Should the People Read? earned
much praise: Tolstoy, among others, found it to be very useful. For the first
time, the opinion of the reader was taken into account, and for children’s
writers it was encouraging to see that they were actually read and appreci-
ated. When in 1889 the first volume was put on display at the Exhibition
Universelle in Paris, Alchevskaya and her co-authors were presented with
the highest award.
The attitude taken to existing children’s literature in Ivan Feoktistov’s
On the Issue of Children’s Reading (K voprosu o detskom chtenii, 1891, 2nd
enlarged ed. 1903) was highly critical. While literature for adults had visibly
developed, he discerned stagnation in literature for children. In Russia, as
elsewhere, children’s literature was still a synonym for “vulgarity and lack
of talent”.93 Feoktistov regarded children’s taste for folk and fairy tales as
natural, because these genres assisted them in their development. Accord-
ing to his positivist view, these genres repeated the history of mankind,
starting from myths and allegories. Feoktistov could still accept folktales,
if they had not been reworked and edited, but he dismissed most of the
artistic fairy tales as mere entertainment that teased the reader’s nerves
“like bright fireworks or acrobatic performances”.94 The fairy-tale genre
was dying and becoming unnecessary, Feoktistov thought, as a writer of
today was not able to create in the same spirit as primitive man. ‘Reality’,
‘science’ and ‘the world of learning’ are keywords for Feoktistov, and he
called on writers for children intellectually to stimulate and instruct their
audience. Revealing his mentor in the field, Feoktistov also edited a col-
lection of Belinsky’s articles and reviews on children’s literature.
In her “Lectures on Children’s Literature”, read at the Fröbel Society
and published in Pedagogic Anthology (Pedagogichesky sbornik) in 1889–
1890, Olga Rogova tried to define good children’s literature, of which she
found little in Russia. Literature for young readers was either originally
written for adults or written without any knowledge or understanding of
children’s psychology. To be successful, a children’s writer had to take into
consideration the reader’s age, expectations and needs. The form should

93 I. Feoktistov, K voprosu o detskom chtenii. Second ed. (SPb, 1903), 83.
94 Ibid., 114.
 realism (1860–1890) 161

be simple, and the material interesting and useful. Open didacticism were
to be avoided. Likewise, the pessimism and the rendering of bottom-
less sorrow, hunger and need, typical of the writings of Zasodimsky, for
example, should, not be tolerated, as children were born optimists. Satire
and irony of the kind to be met in some of Hans Christian Andersen’s
tales were also out of place. Rogova likewise dismissed “absurd fantasies”
such as Max and Moritz and love scenes of the kind she detected in Mark
Twain’s Tom Sawyer, for example.95
When it came to drawing up a list of her recommendations, Rogova was
ready, in spite of her critical attitude, to include most of Russia’s children’s
writers: Mikhail Chistyakov, Mariya Rostovskaya, Vladimir Lvov, Evgeniya
Tur, Aleksandra Annenskaya, Vasily Avenarius, Aleksandr Kruglov, Niko-
lay Vagner (Kot-Murlyka), Ekaterina Sysoeva, Mariya Lyalina, Vera Zhe-
likhovskaya, V. Samoylovich, Nikolay Poznyakov and Viktor Ostrogorsky.
Their works were filled with high ideals, including truth, kindness and
beauty. The only work Rogova singled out as exemplary was of foreign
origin, Yasya’s Adventure (Priklyuchenie Yasya, 1886) by the Polish writer
Eliza Orzeszko. Here was a story which dealt with a life in poverty and
provoked strong emotions of pity, while managing to avoid superficial
effects and sentimentality. In Przygoda Jasia, as the book was called in
Polish, a boy from a rich family loses his way and is taken care of by a
worker’s family. He learns to know a world which he had feared but now
comes to love. The critic in A Survey of Children’s Literature (1889) also
praised Orzeszko’s unstrained, artistically written story with its warm and
human feelings.96

Translations

Translations were very important in the literature of 1860–1890. Published

both in children’s magazines and separately, they reached a large audi-
ence. Memoirs of 19th-century childhood tend to mention translated chil-
dren’s literature more than Russian works. The spectrum was broad, as
Anglo-American, German, French, Italian and Scandinavian literature all
found their way to Russian readers.
Countesse Sophie de Ségur’s background made it easy for her to estab-
lish herself in Russian literature. Known as a French children’s writer,

95 Rogova, “Lektsii po detskoi literature,” Pedagogicheskii sbornik 11 (1889): 444, 446.

96 Obzor detskoi literatury za 1885–1888 g.g., 42.
162 chapter four

she was actually born in St Petersburg as the daughter of Count Fyodor

Rostopchin, governor and military commander of Moscow when Napo-
leon’s army occupied the city in 1812. Tolstoy’s War and Peace includes an
unflattering portrait of Count Rostopchin. His daughter Sophie married a
Frenchman, converted to Roman Catholicism, and moved to France. Her
first book, a collection of fairy tales, appeared in 1857. Her pre-teen read-
ers especially liked Les Malheurs de Sophie (1859, Priklyucheniya Sonichki,
1864; Soniny prokazy, 1869). Here she transformed her Russian childhood
into a stylised French vie de chateau. The four-year-old Sonya (Sophie)
is a strong-willed girl, raised in a community of women. Obedience and
humility are foreign to her, as she commits rash pranks and transgresses
all norms. Without moralizing, de Ségur insisted on girls’ right to be mis-
chievous, even if reprimands were sure to follow. In France, de Ségur is
said to have had as many readers among girls as Jules Verne had among
boys, and in Russia, too, she found a wide readership, ranging from chil-
dren in orphanages to those at the court. The sequel Les vacances (1859),
published as Kanikuly (1870) in M.O. Volf ’s Golden Library with Bertall’s
original illustrations, came out in four editions.
In Russian high society de Ségur was also read in the original French,
partly as a training in the language. The Symbolist writer Andrey Bely and
the artist Alexandre Benois remembered her from the beautifully bound
Bibliothèque Rose.97 In the magazine Semaine des Enfants, Benois found
de Ségur’s Les Memoires d’un âne (1860), a work which he reread several
times with pleasure. He had no need of the Russian translation, Zapiski
osla (1864). A more critical reader was Vladimir Nabokov, who saw Les
Malheurs de Sophie as a glaring example of “vulgar sentimentality”. Still,
he could not avoid again being filled with something of the same “oppres-
sive rapture” as he had felt in his childhood when reading Ségur.98
The Russian discovery of The True History of a Little Ragamuffin (1866),
written by James Greenwood, an obscure British writer, was a stroke of
luck. In his native country Greenwood’s book passed unnoticed, but in
Russia it became a classic as Malenky oborvysh (1868). Three translations or
adaptations appeared within a short span of time. Marko Vovchok (1834–
1907), a pseudonym for the Ukrainian writer Mariya Markovich, produced
the first one, published only two years after the original. The translation

97 Andrei Belyi, Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii: Vospominanii v trekh knigakh. Vol. 1

(M., 1989), 216; Aleksandr Benua. Moi vospominaniia v piati knigakh: Kniga pervaia,
vtoraia, tret’ia (M., 1993), 234.
98 V.V. Nabokov, Drugie berega (L., 1991), 64–65.
 realism (1860–1890) 163

by Aleksandra Annenskaya of 1876 was more successful, with many ensu-

ing editions. Annenskaya softened some of the scenes which she consid-
erd too coarse and unsuitable for children.99 Greenwood’s novel about a
childhood filled with hardship and violence was reminiscent of Annens-
kaya’s own works. A boy from the slums of London runs away from his
violent father and drunken stepmother and ends up living among street
children. He survives, and with the help of benevolent adults he can start
a new life as a worker, ready to assist other unfortunate children.
Greenwood’s realism and the sincere tone of the narrative impressed
critics. As an anonymous critic in On Children’s Books (1908) put it, the
book grips the reader from the very first page.100 Maksim Gorky read
Greenwood enthusiastically. The young hero of Gorky’s In the World
(V lyudyakh, 1916), another social outcast, reacts strongly to the English
novel: “[. . .] the title of the book stung me, but the first page already called
forth a triumphant smile in my soul,—and it was with this smile I read
the whole book to its very end, rereading some pages two or three times.
So, even abroad, boys can sometimes lead such a difficult and tedious
life! Well, my situation is not that bad: there’s no reason to be depressed!
Greenwood offered me much cheerfulness . . .”101
In Soviet times, The True Story of a Little Ragamuffin acquired new
topicality, as, in 1926, Korney Chukovsky adapted the novel, using
Annenskaya’s version as his source. This time it was intended to be read
as a statement on the true nature of capitalism, revealing social problems
still common in the West that only socialism could resolve. In all, it was
published over forty times in some 20 million copies and in several lan-
guages in the Soviet Union. Compare this with the fact that it was never
translated into any other language and that, in the writer’s homeland, it
appeared only twice, the last time in 1884!
A similar novel about waifs and strays was Cleg Kelly: Arab of the City
(1896) by the Scottish writer Samuel Crockett. It was immediately suc-
cessfully adapted into Russian, again by Aleksandra Annenskaya. It is a
story about poor, deserted children, forced to flee their rough home con-
ditions. Crockett offered these children of the street a happy ending. Sur-
prisingly, it is not an unexpected inheritance that changes their lives, but
their firm decision to work for a living. Kruglov declared enthusiastically

  99 O detskikh knigakh (M., 1908), 98.

100 Ibid., 196.
101  M. Gor’kii, “V liudiakh,” Sobranie sochinenii v 18 tomakh. Vol. 9 (M., 1962), 280.
164 chapter four

that the novel “belongs to those books which children will reread many
times. Everything is close to life and true, and many of its characters are
typical and sometimes even moving; the novel is full of warm feelings,
close to humour.”102 Crockett’s Russian success continued in Soviet times,
undoubtedly because of the depressing picture of children’s life under
capitalism presented in his novel.
Alphonse Daudet’s Dickensian novel Le Petit Chose (1868), in which the
hardship of a naive, egoistic young man is depicted with sympathy and
humour, achieved considerable popularity. Only by giving up his unre-
alistic dreams of becoming a writer or an actor and accepting life as a
merchant and a family man does the young man come to terms with life.
The first translation of this French Bildungsroman appeared in 1875 with
the title The Little Man: the Story of a Child (Malenky chelovek: Istoriya
odnogo rebyonka), and it was followed by new translations under differ-
ent titles well into Soviet times. In 1908 a Russian critic wrote that “the
elegant language, the bright colours, the subtle psychological analysis and
the fascinating plot make this work a valuable contribution to children’s
literature”.103
Jules Verne almost instantly became a success in Russia. In a review
for The Contemporary (Sovremennik), satirist Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
singled out the first translation—Vozdushnoe puteshestvie cherez Afriku
(1864), from Verne’s Five Weeks in a Balloon (Cinq semaines en ballon,
1863), as an excellent counterbalance to the then current Russian chil-
dren’s literature, which he dismissed as naive and crudely moralistic.
According to Saltykov-Shchedrin, the young reader will find that he is
treated with respect by the French writer and not just given some “small
doses of knowledge”; Verne gives him “true knowledge”, and he speaks
about “the genuine, real thing”.104 All Verne’s subsequent works appeared
in Russian soon after the originals, most of them translated by Marko Vov-
chok. Verne found enthusiastic readers not only among young people but
also among writers as significant as Tolstoy, Turgenev and Chekhov. It
was not only the scientific and encyclopaedic side of Verne’s writings that
attracted readers, but also the writer’s pathos and advocacy for equality

102 A. Kruglov in Vestnik vospitaniia (1894). Quoted in S.V. Kurnin, Chto chitat’ detiam:
Sbornik retsenzii iz zhurnalov (М., 1900), 130.
103 О detskikh knigakh (M., 1908), 197.
104 M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, Sobranie sochinenii: V 20 tomakh. Vol. 5. (М., 1966),
435–36.
 realism (1860–1890) 165

and brotherhood. The vogue for Jules Verne culminated in his collected
works in 88 volumes in 1906 and, again, in 1917.
Adventure stories about the American Wild West enjoyed extraordinary
esteem. In Aleksandra Annenskaya’s novel Comrades (Tovarishchi, 1873),
books about Red Indians make the pupils neglect their schoolwork, and
as a result they are forbidden to read Fenimore Cooper and Mayne Reid.
James Fenimore Cooper had enjoyed a first wave of fame in the 1840s; in
Pathfinder Belinsky found many scenes which he thought would adorn any
Shakespearean drama. In the 1860s Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales were
revived and republished by M.O. Volf, and towards the end of the century
a third period of Russian admiration for Cooper set in. His collected works
were published twice, in 1897–1898 and again in 1901–1911. After the revo-
lution Gorky wrote a foreword for a new Russian translation of Pathfinder
(1923), claiming that Cooper’s books had taught many Russian revolution-
aries “feelings of honour, courage and a striving towards action”.105 Natty
Bumpo was an ideal man—honourable and working unsparingly for other
people. Of a completely diverging opinion was Nadezhda Krupskaya, an
influential figure in the formation of Soviet children’s literature. She saw
the publication of Cooper in the Soviet Union as a grave mistake because
of his “purely American cult of the white man”.106
In Russia, Cooper’s fame was, however, to be surpassed by that of
Mayne Reid. Before 1917 Reid’s collected works appeared three times,
in 1864–74 (20 vols), in 1895–96 (24 vols) and in 1907–08 (40 vol.). One
of Reid’s many Russian readers was the future Symbolist poet Konstan-
tin Balmont. When Balmont recollected his childhood favourites of the
1870s, the memory of Reid’s book was the most precious: “Uncle Tom’s
Cabin, [Ivan] Nikitin’s “The Coachman’s Wife”, [Aleksey] Koltsov’s Songs,
Jules Verne’s novels—how can I forget them! And Mayne Reid! Every Sat-
urday when I was eleven or twelve years old, an officer, a friend of my
mother, brought me one or two volumes by Mayne Reid, sometimes even
three volumes from the officers’ library. And I can hardly believe that the
sons of ancient Israel could have experienced the joys of Saturdays more
intensely than I did. I have never again experienced such enjoyment from
reading. [. . .] In your childhood and early youth, a book is not literature:

105 M. Gor’kii, “[Predislovie k knige Fenimora Kupera ‘Sledopyt’],” Sobranie sochinenii.

Vol. 24 (M., 1953), 227.
106 Quoted in A. Lunacharskii, “Puti detskoi knigi,” Kniga detiam 1 (1930): 6.
166 chapter four

everything in it lives and enters your soul, its meaning, its language, its
outer appearance, paper and cover.”107
In Russia, Reid’s The Headless Horseman (1866, transl. 1868) became his
most popular work. In his Speak Memory, Vladimir Nabokov devotes a
whole chapter to the novel, pointing out that he was privileged to be able
to read the unabridged English original. When rereading Reid’s novel as
a grown-up, he could relive his early strong sensations. Vera Andreeva
(1910–86), the daughter of the writer Leonid Andreev, read Mayne Reid in
the late 1910s: “An immortal work, which forever struck my imagination,
was, of course, The Headless Horseman. I can still recall the beginning:
‘The stag of Texas, reclining in midnight lair, is startled from his slumbers
by a horse’s hoofbeat. He lifts his head and listens. Again the hoofbeat is
heard, but this time there is a clinking of steel against stone.’ ”108 Together
with her little brother, she copied her favourite novel into an exercise
book.
Adventure stories had to be imported, as Russian writers showed nei-
ther interest nor talent for this genre. The English novelist Frederick
Marryat, the pioneer of the sea story, had already been translated during
his life time, but Ekaterina Burnashova’s translation of Masterman Ready,
or the Wreck in the Pacific (1841)—Sigizmund Ryustig, bremensky shturman:
Novy Robinzon (1856), equipped with excellent illustrations, turned Mar-
ryatt into reading for adolescents. The change of title is explained by the
fact that Burnashova translated not the English original but Franz Hoff-
mann’s German retelling. In the 1910s as many as three sets of collected
works by Marryat appeared, one of them in 24 volumes.
Mark Twain was introduced as a writer of juvenile books in 1877 by the
magazine Family Reading. The Russian translation of The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer came just one year after the original, and Twain’s next novels
were also translated with impressive efficiency: The Prince and the Pauper
(1882) in 1883 and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) in 1886. His
collected works, in eleven volumes, came out earlier in Russia (1896–1899)
than in his homeland. Many Russian readers testify to Twain’s impact on
them. For the poet Nikolay Gumilyov the novels about Tom Sawyer and
Huckleberry Finn were “the Iliad and Odyssey of childhood”, and Anna
Akhmatova favourably compared “the great and immortal” Adventures of

107 K. Bal’mont, “О knigakh dlia detei,” Morskoe svechenie (SPb-М., 1910), 190–191.
108 Vera Andreeva, Dom na Chernoi rechke (M., 1974), 25.
 realism (1860–1890) 167

Tom Sawyer to Don Quixote.109 Marina Tsvetaeva, who read Twain’s books
at the turn of the century in M.O. Volf ’s Golden Library, remembers reading
them with nostalgia in a poem, “Books in Red Binding” (“Knigi v krasnom
pereplyote”), written some ten years later : “From the days of childhood /
you send me a last farewell, / my loyal friends / in worn, red binding.” She
reads the novels in bed while her mother is playing Grieg and Schumann
on the piano in an adjacent room. She recalls exciting scenes and fascinat-
ing characters, and ends with an exclamation, “Oh, you golden names: /
Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, Prince and Pauper!”
Revolutions and political changes did not affect Twain’s prominent
place in Russian children’s reading. One of the first works to be published
by the Soviet publishing house Universal Literature (Vsemirnaya litera-
tura) was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1919. Gorky’s and Korney Chu-
kovsky’s recommendations played a significant role in this case. A new
edition of Twain’s collected works was issued at the end of the 1920s.
In 1886, M.O. Volf ’s magazine Around the World (Vokrug sveta) pub-
lished a translation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous adventure yarn
Treasure Island (1883, Ostrov sokrovishch). In the Soviet period, Nikolay
Chukovsky retranslated Stevenson’s all-time favourite (1935). Other novels
by Stevenson to reach a Russian audience were The Black Arrow (1888,
Chornaya strela, 1890) and The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde
(1886, Strannaya istoriya doktora Dzhekilya i mistera Khayda, 1904).
Stevenson’s collected works came out in 1913–1914, on the eve of the First
Word War.
The aboved-mentioned German writer Franz Hoffmann, like Green-
wood and Crockett, found more popularity in Russia than in his home-
land. Russian readers liked anything written by him—moral tales, fairy
tales, adaptations of classic novels, adventure stories and biographies—
and altogether between 25 and 30 of his works were translated. Hoffmann’s
name later became synonymous with simple moralizing, speculation in
bad taste and a low literary level, but he admittedly knew his audience. He
had a kindred spirit in Sofya Makarova, who published a collection with
the title 75 Stories for Small Children after Franz Hoffmann (75 rasskazov
dlya detey mladshego vozrasta po Fr. Gofmanu, 1882). A speciality of Hoff-
mann was to publish, under his own name, reworkings of other writer’s
works. The Red Rover (Krasny morskoy razboynik), which was translated

109 Iu.A. Roznatovskaia, “Mark Tven: russkaia sud’ba,” 16, accessed March 15, 2013, www
.libfl.ru/about/dept/bibliography/books/twain.pdf.
168 chapter four

by Rostovskaya and published in Ushakov’s magazine The Interlocutor as a

work by Hoffmann, was in fact Fenimore Cooper’s famous sea novel.
Not surprisingly, fantasy elicited rather weak response during the years
of programmatic Realism. Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies (1863),
the first modern children’s science-fiction novel, was translated as The
Adventures of Fomushka, the Chimney-Sweep, Above Ground and Under
Water (Pokhozhdeniya Fomushka-trubochista na zemle i pod vodoyu) in
1874, but its many layers and absurd traits apparently failed to make any
impression on Russian readers. The choice of title suggests that Kingsley’s
novel would fall neatly into the category of realistic reports of unhappy
childhoods, so favoured during this period. A new translation, Deti vody,
by M. Khanevskaya, appeared in Heartfelt Word in 1910–1911, but this time,
too, Kingsley’s masterpiece appears to have passed unnoticed.
 CHAPTER FIVE

MODERNISM (1890–1917)

Publishing for Children

Children’s literature grew rapidly in quantity and prestige in Russia in the

early twentieth century. For decades the dominance of magazines had
been unchallenged, but now the situation was gradually changing. At the
turn of the century around 500 children’s books were published annually,
and at the threshold of the First World War, that number had doubled.
The most popular magazines had thousands of readers. The potential
public was substantial. In 1914, 48 percent of Russia’s population, that is,
around 85 million, were under 19 years of age. Admittedly, illiteracy was
still a huge problem, but reforms were under way.
The field of publishing was dominated by M.O. Volf. The house’s
founder, Mavriky Volf, had died in 1883, but his widow and sons carried
on business successfully right up to 1917. A catalogue of 1913, summing up
sixty years’ activity for the benefit of Russian children, included around
1,500 titles, both original Russian and translated literature. Among con-
temporary writers, the biggest name was Lidiya Charskaya. She was also
the main attraction in M.O. Volf ’s tremendously popular children’s maga-
zine Heartfelt Word (Zadushevnoe slovo).
Competing publishers gradually appeared on the scene. The F. Pavlenkov
company’s first success came in 1873 with The Illustrated Alphabet
(Naglyadnaya azbuka), which received an honourable mention at a
Vienna exhibition in the same year. The primer, which ran to 22 editions,
was primarily intended for self-study. The pictorial material was the basis
of the volume, with most of the 600 illustrations referring to rural life.
A dedication to the memory of Konstantin Ushinsky revealed whom
Florenty Pavlenkov (1839–1900) considered his teacher. Another name of
importance was Friedrich Fröbel, who is quoted on the cover of the book:
“To my mind, the primary and most urgent part of children’s upbringing
is to stimulate their thinking, and this as early as possible.”
In 1900 Pavlenkov’s Illustrated Fairy Tale Library (Illyustrirovannaya
skazochnaya biblioteka) consisted of 110 small volumes containing folk-
tales and works by writers such as E.T.A. Hoffmann, Hauff, Andersen and
170 chapter five

Topelius. Another long-running series was The Life of Exceptional People

(Zhizn zamechatelnykh lyudey), which reached 191 titles, published in a
total of one-and-a-half million copies. Many of these volumes, devoted to
what could be called a world-wide intelligentsia, were primarily intended
for juveniles.
The publishing firm of the Swiss-born Alfred Devrien (1842–after 1918),
who had initially come to Russia to work for Volf, started with agricultural
literature, but from the 1890s onwards children’s books dominated its out-
put. Devrien published small volumes of fairy tales with colour illustra-
tions, but also works by leading women writers, including Zhelikhovskaya,
Makarova, Sysoeva, Kondrashova, Anna Khvolson, Nadezhda Lukhmanova
and Mariya Lyapina. A trademark was the high level of colour printing.
After a long life in the service of Russian literature, Devrien was to die
outside Russia, driven away by the revolution. An attempt to restart his
publishing activity among émigrés was short-lived.
In 1881 Ėduard Granstrem (1843–1918) founded a publishing house in
St Petersburg together with his wife Matilda (1848–1930) and daughter.
Besides editing, all three were also active translators. Ė.A. Granstrem poured
out highly priced, lavishly illustrated gift books by foreign writers such as
Burnett, Louis Boussenard, Carl Falkenhorst and Lewis Carroll. One of his
publications, Little Asya (Kroshka Asya, 1915), was based on a book by the
French writer Gabriel Franay about a curious, slightly mischievous little
girl and her world of animals, flowers and play. Besides translating writers
like Topelius and books like the Kalevala (1898), Ėduard Granstrem wrote
many juvenile books himself. Several decades later, Veniamin Kaverin,
in Two Captains (Dva kapitana, 1938–44), recalled Granstrem’s A Century
of Discoveries in the Biographies of Exceptional Seafarers and Conquerors
of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Stoletie otkrytiy v biografiyakh
zamechatelnykh moreplavateley i zavoevateley XV–XVI vv, 1893) as excel-
lent, inspiring reading, full of admiration for the great adventurers and
explorers. In all, Ė.A. Granstrem published around fifty books before the
company closed down in 1916.
Ivan Sytin is a legendary brand in the history of Russian publishing.
From the very start Ivan Sytin’s (1851–1934) policy was to reach out to the
rural population, to all those who for economic reasons were deprived of
literature. His motto was “The very best and as cheap as possible”.1 Ini-
tially, Sytin published mainly informative literature as additional support

1 I.D. Sytin, Zhizn’ dlia knigi (M., 1960), 84.

 modernism (1890–1917) 171

for schools and school libraries. He only addressed children’s literature in

earnest in the early twentieth century. From Russian and Ukrainian folk
and fairy tales, Sytin turned to Pushkin and Zhukovsky and foreign clas-
sics of children’s literature. Of the contemporary writers that he published,
Klavdiya Lukashevich was the most lucrative. Informative literature, too,
was included in the programme; for example, the famous scientist Dmitry
Kaygorodov was one of Sytin’s writers.
Posrednik (The Intermediary), an enterprise born on the initiative of Leo
Tolstoy in 1874, followed the same guiding principle as Sytin’s publishing
house. The two firms cooperated, with Sytin being responsible for printing
and distribution. They distributed millions of books to the Russian rural
population and village schools. By 1917, the company’s published titles,
which included books for children, youth and the unsophisticated masses,
exceeded 1,000. One of its great successes was Library for Children and
Young People (Biblioteka dlya detey and yunoshestva), started in 1898. Its
list of writers included names like Dickens, de Amicis and Selma Lagerlöf.
Another series, I. Gorbunov-Posadov’s Library (Biblioteka I. Gorbunova-
Posadova), included inexpensive readers and textbooks, some of them
translations from German, on various subjects such as drawing, handi-
craft, gardening, geography and biology.
Ivan Gorbunov-Posadov (1864–1940), the head of Posrednik from 1897,
composed a Picture Alphabet (Azbuka-kartinka, 1889). The inclusion of
movable cut-out letters was an innovative step. From letters and simple
words, beginners gradually move on to small stories, many with Biblical
story lines. The life philosophy of this staunch follower of Tolstoy can
be deduced from book titles like To Live is to Serve Love (Zhit—lyubvi
sluzhit) and Living Love (Zhivaya lyubov). Even among animals, be they
lions, horses or dogs, Gorbunov-Posadov detected the same law of love
and readiness to help, as can be seen from his Merciful Animals (Miloserd-
nye zveri). As the editor of Posrednik’s children’s magazine Lighthouse
(Mayak), Gorbunov-Posadov even continued to spread the message of
compassion and love during World War I.
Posrednik survived the Bolshevik coup of 1917 and was only closed in
1935. One of its writers during the Soviet period was Lucy Fitch Perkins
with her ‘Twins series’. The international aspect of Perkins’ attempt to
acquaint children with different cultures and customs turned out to suit
both the publisher and the Soviet regime.
Iosif Knebel took a more aesthetic approach to literature. A Jew from
the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Knebel (1854–1926) had come to Moscow
in the 1870s to work for a Riga-based publishing house. As a publisher,
172 chapter five

he specialised in illustrated textbooks and children’s books of high artis-

tic and colour printing quality. Among his 400 volumes, one finds pop-
up books, colouring books for small children and adventure stories for
juvenile readers. Knebel’s Gift Series (Podarochnaya seriya, 1906–18) was
groundbreaking. The publisher invited such outstanding artists as Georgy
Narbut, Dmitry Mitrokhin and Viktor Zamiraylo to do the illustrations for
this set of small booklets. The series came to include around fifty large-
format books of twelve pages each. A normal edition ran to 5,000 cop-
ies, and the price was kept low—fifty kopecks. The series consisted of
folktales, classic fairy tales and works by, for example, Zhukovsky, Krylov,
Andersen and Richard Gustafsson, a Swedish author of sea tales. Notably,
no contemporary Russian children’s writers were included. The emphasis
in the volumes was on the artist, not the writer. According to Knebel, “The
child will quickly forget the content. But the colours, the bright spectrum
and the drawing will stamp themselves on his soul for a long time and
leave a trace, perhaps forever.”2
The last years of Knebel’s enterprise were full of ups and downs. At
an international exhibition of printing and graphics in Leipzig in 1914,
his publications were given a prominent place. During an anti-Semitic
pogrom the next year, books, illustrations and technical apparatus at his
Moscow studio were destroyed. Having survived wars and revolution,
Knebel cooperated with the Soviet authorities in the twenties.
Typical for the period was the interest that leading artists took in chil-
dren’s literature and consequently the swift development of the picture
book. The Russian style moderne was influenced by lubok and genuine
folk art. Among the artistic highpoints of the period were the graphic art-
ist Ivan Bilibin’s (1876–1942) colourful illustrations of Russian fairy tales
and Pushkin’s The Tale of Tsar Saltan (Skazka o tsare Saltane, 1907) and
The Tale of the Golden Cockerel (Skazka o zolotom petushke, 1910). In his
Picture Alphabet (Azbuka v kartinakh, 1904), the artist, art critic and art
historian Alexandre Benois (1870–1960) offered fascinating pictures, full of
detail, from the world of children’s play and fantasies. Each letter corre-
sponds to one word. The words are primarily taken from the world of aris-
tocratic children, living in castle-like mansions with their grandparents.
Familiarity with the world of fairy tales, the theatre and fashionable toys
is taken for granted. The cavalcade starts off with a bellicose Negro. When

2 L.I. Iuniverg, “Izdatel’stvo I.N. Knebel’ i khudozhniki detskoi knigi: Iz istorii sozdaniia
knig ‘Podarochnoi serii’,” in Detskie knigi izdatel’stva I.N. Knebel’ (М., 1989), 10.
 modernism (1890–1917) 173

he reappears on the last page, he is completely pacified as a result of hav-

ing learnt to write in Russian. The letter F represents the word ‘fimiam’
(incense): it stands for a world of learning that is celebrated in an Ortho-
dox way. It is difficult to see any pedagogical programme behind Benois’
Picture Alphabet. Orientated towards the poetic and fantastic, the volume
aimed at an aesthetic education rather than the teaching of morals. The
print run of this expensive volume was 2,500 copies.
Stupin’s Little Library (Bibliotechka Stupina) consisted of around 100
cheap volumes. Short stories, fairy tales, animal tales, booklets of scien-
tific content and elementary language courses were sold for ten kopecks.
The Magician (Charodey, 1882), by the artist Ivan Panov (1844–83), which
taught children conjuring tricks, became a longstanding favourite, even
though it was claimed that the tricks were either impossible to under-
stand and perform or, on the contrary, were too simple and naive. In
1916, Stupin’s Little Library was criticised for being based on an outdated
literary concept, in which the main aim was to adjust to the taste and
wishes of children without paying any heed to pedagogy and aesthetics.3
In Soviet times, however, Samuil Marshak recalled these small booklets of
his childhood with warmth.4 Their miniature size, typeface, the colour of
their covers, and the choice of texts—all of these made Stupin’s Library
a real treat.

Nat Pinkerton and Murzilka

A library report of 1910 shows what Russian children were reading in the
early twentieth century. Lidiya Charskaya was the favourite, with 318
loans. After her came two foreign writers—Jules Verne (191) and Mark
Twain (101). Evgeniya Tur (78) and Klavdiya Lukashevich (76) did not even
come close to Charskaya’s popularity, but still had their readers. Foreign
children’s literature was further represented by E.T.A. Hoffman, Mayne
Reid, Gustave Aimard, Ernest Thompson Seton, Louisa May Alcott and
Frances Hodgson Burnett, while Zasodimsky, Kruglov, Mamin-Sibiryak,
Zhelikhovskaya, Al. Altaev, Aleksandr Fyodorov-Davydov and Nikolay
Poznyakov stood out among Russian writers.

3 “Obzor ‘Bibliotechki Stupina’,” Novosti detskoi literatury 2 (1916): 9.

4 S. Marshak, “V nachale zhizni,” Sobranie sochinenii v vos’mi tomakh. Vol. 6 (М., 1971),
120.
174 chapter five

This statistical report came from the provincial town of Samara, but it
was representative of Russia at large. In a readers’ poll taken in Moscow
the following year, children aged nine to twelve were asked about their
favourite writer. Nikolay Gogol was chosen by 34.1 percent of the children,
while 23.3 percent preferred Pushkin. Of genuine children’s writers, Char-
skaya was in a class by herself with 21.6 percent of the votes. After her fol-
lowed names such as Mark Twain, Jules Verne and Vera Zhelikhovskaya.
What these surveys do not reveal is that mass literature, produced in
cheap editions, had conquered the market as never before. The favourites
among Russian boys were weekly detective magazines with Sherlock Hol-
mes, Nat Pinkerton, ‘the king of the detectives’, and A. Putilin, ‘the genius
of Russian criminal investigation’, as their heroes. Ninety percent of the
pupils at Russian high schools were reported to read detective stories. In
1908 alone, almost ten million copies were purchased in Russia. The thea-
tres performed plays based upon detective stories.
Nat Pinkerton’s popularity was overwhelming, right from the very first
publication, The Criminals’ Plot (Zagovor prestupnikov), in 1907. Over the
next three years, a series of fifty Nat Pinkerton volumes was published.
While a normal print run would be a few thousand copies, these book-
lets came out in numbers close to 200,000. The price varied from five to
fifteen kopecks. Detective stories were published not only in Moscow
and St Petersburg, but all over Russia; they appeared not only in Russian,
but were also translated into numerous other languages of the Russian
Empire.
The books about Nat Pinkerton were originally of American origin.
John Russell Cornwell had published the first books under the pseudo-
nym Nick Carter. Soon Russian writers also got involved in creating new,
racy adventures. Their identities were not revealed, but Aleksandr Kuprin,
Mikhail Kuzmin and Nikolay Breshko-Breshkovsky are among those who
have been mentioned as possible ghost-writers.5
Pinkerton is an American detective, brave, strong and noble. In his
hunt for murderers, he experiences breathtaking adventures in strange
places. He is often trapped, but always manages to escape eventually. The
women he meets are all beauties, while the criminals are monsters. In
the end, the crooks are put behind bars, while Pinkerton is generously
rewarded by his employers. The cover pictures were flamboyant and so

5 “Nat Pinkerton,” accessed March 15, 2013, http://amnesia.pavelbers.com/Knigi%20

detstva4.htm.
 modernism (1890–1917) 175

Fig. 6. Nat Pinkerton: The Band of Three Criminals (1916)

176 chapter five

were the titles—The Struggle on the Suspension Bridge, The Blood-Stained

Altar, Pinkerton in the Grave, The Attempt upon the Life of the President, The
Ghost in the Lunatic Asylum and so on.
Pinkerton’s popularity did not diminish in the 1910s. One of his numer-
ous readers was George Balanchine (1904–83), the future famous chore-
ographer. In his memoirs he vividly remembered the craze for Pinkerton,
Nick Carter and Sherlock Holmes: “They came out serially, in coloured
cardboard covers. Every week you could buy а new instalment, consisting
of a few dozen pages. The price was low—ten to twelve kopecks. We read
those books right away and passed them along. I remember Pinkerton’s
Journey to the Other World, The Model, The Mystery of the Burgas Castle.
They were so entertaining!”6
The critic Korney Chukovsky saw the popularity of Pinkerton as an
alarming sign that mass culture was taking over, while high culture, the
legacy of the Russian intelligentsia, was losing ground. In 1908, he attacked
the epidemic enthusiasm for mass literature in an article called “Nat Pink-
erton and the Literature of Today”: “Instead of a soul, Pinkerton has a fist,
instead of a head—a fist, instead of a heart—a fist, and the only thing
that is asked of him is to let this fist talk.”7 Another critic, A. Suvorsky, saw
Pinkerton’s popularity as an indication of defects in contemporary Russian
children’s literature.8 The child readers wanted heroes to look up to, like
the brave, cunning and clever Pinkerton, while Russian children’s writers,
like Mamin-Sibiryak, Lukashevich, Zasodimsky and Kazimir Barantsevich,
only offered them sorrow and suffering and a passive feeling of pity for
the weak. A questionnaire in Kiev schools gave the same result: the chil-
dren loved Pinkerton precisely for his courage, wisdom and smartness.
The pedagogue Viktor Rodnikov concluded that Nat Pinkerton had many
traits that were all too rare in Russian children’s literature.9

After Antony Pogorelsky, Vladimir Odoevsky and Nikolay Vagner, there

had not been much of fantasy and literary fairy tales in Russian children’s
literature. Foreign impetus was clearly needed. The publishing house M.O.
Volf heard about the commercial success of the American illustrated tales

6 Solomon Volkov, Strasti po Chaikovskomu: Razgovory s Dzhordzhem Balanchinym

(М., 2001), 35.
7 K. Chukovskii, Sobranie sochinenii v piatnadtsati tomakh. Vol. 7 (M., 2003), 45.
8 А. Suvorskii, “Nat Pinkerton v detskom ponimanii,” Vestnik vospitaniia 1 (1909):
161–162.
9 V. Rodnikov, Detskaia literatura: S ukazaniem vazhneishikh knig dlia detskogo chteniia.
Third ed. (Kiev, 1916), 37–38.
 modernism (1890–1917) 177

about the Brownies. Created in 1879, the first volume about these small
creatures, The Brownies: Their Book, had appeared in 1887, opening the
way for a series of similar books. Anna Khvolson, one of M.O. Volf  ’s minor
writers, was asked to do a Russian version,10 and the magazine Heartfelt
Word could publish her first installment, Little Thumbs and Little Finger
Nails (Malchiki-s-palchik, devochki-s-nogotochek), the same year—1887.
From their Island of Happiness the Lilliputians set out to save human
beings from starvation and disaster. The name of the American writer and
artist, Palmer Cox, is not mentioned, as Khvolson merely used his illus-
trations, while writing completely new prose texts (not verse as in the
originals). Whereas Cox had produced short, separate episodes, Khvolson
strove to create coherent stories.
The Kingdom of the Little Ones: the Astonishing Adventures of the For-
est Lilliputians (Tsarstvo malyutok: Udivitelnye priklyucheniya lesnykh
chelovechkov) followed in 1889 and a year late came The Forest Lillipu-
tians: the Adventures and Travels of the Small Fairies (Lesnye malyutki:
Priklucheniya i stranstvovaniya kroshechnykh ėlfov). While the creatures
in 1887 carried Russian names, they were now named after their charac-
ter, just like in the American original. Twenty-seven tales made up the
first book publication, The Kingdom of the Little Ones: the Adventures of
Murzilka and the Forest Lilliputians (Tsarstvo malyutok: Priklyucheniya
Murzilki i lesnykh chelovechkov, 1898), which reached four editions in
Russia, while a fifth edition was published in Berlin in the 1920s. After the
final breakthrough, hardly a year went by without Heartfelt Word offer-
ing new Murzilka adventures, most of them also published as books. For
two years there also existed a monthly Murzilka’s Magazine (Zhurnal Mur-
zilki). Other commercial articles were added, such as dolls, toys, a game
with Murzilka and his friends travelling all over Europe, a game of domi-
noes, a puppet theatre with ready-made figures, a play called Murzilka’s
Birthday (Den rozhdeniya Murzilki) and a portrait book (Albom Murzylki).
These works were only rarely attributed to Cox; in most cases he was only
mentioned as the artist or was totally omitted. Khvolson’s part in the ven-
ture was soon taken over by another of M.O. Volf ’s standard names, Sigiz-
mund Librovich (1855–1918), whose pseudonyms included Viktor Rusakov,
S. Rusakov, S. Mund and Uncle Grumble (Dyadya Vorchun). Like Khvolson,

10 M.V. Sobolev, “Obzor detskikh knig za 1899 god,” Pedagogicheskii sbornik 6 (1900):
506.
178 chapter five

Librovich preferred to write prose tales, taking great liberties with the
original.
The little pixies, which in Russian are sometimes called fairies, some-
times forest Lilliputians, live under ferns in the forest. The main hero,
and most often also the narrator, is Murzilka (in the American original—
Dude). Murzilka is a lazy, bragging, self-important snob, always dressed in
a swallow-tailed coat and with a silk top hat on his head and a monocle
in his eye. He sees himself as brave and daring, but is always unmasked,
much to the mirth of his friends. Unlike the American Brownies, the Rus-
sian pixies, while still subordinate characters, all have names that charac-
terise them. Two memorable characters, who were to reappear in Soviet
times in books by Nikolay Nosov, are Znayka (Doono) and his brother
Neznayka (Dunno). Curious and thoughtless, the Lilliputians are very
childlike, and they inevitably end up in trouble and in dangerous situ-
ations in their contact with the world of human beings and during their
journeys to faraway countries. Good-natured and optimistic by nature,
they are always ready to assist each other. The importance of Palmer Cox’s
original illustrations with their wealth of detail cannot be overestimated
when it comes to explaining Murzilka’s popularity.

The Phenomenal Lidiya Charskaya

Translated children’s literature traditionally enjoyed great popularity in

Russia, but by the turn of the century many Russian writers were also
seriously competing for readers’ interest. Women writers were often more
apt than their male colleagues to take into consideration the expecta-
tions of their readers, and their understanding of the specific features and
demands of the whole genre was in general more valid. While a gloomy
naturalism and a candid defence of maltreated children were still typical
for most of the male writers, the women did not shy from outstanding
heroines, highly-strung feelings and unusual adventures. The most typical
representative of this trend was Lidiya Charskaya.
The popularity of Lidiya Charskaya (1875–1937) is an unprecedented
phenomenon in pre-revolutionary Russian children’s literature. For
around fifteen years almost every work from her pen became a bestseller.
Furthermore, her productivity was extraordinary, with four to five large
works annually. In all, Charskaya wrote more than eighty books, a number
that includes novels, stories, fairy tales and poems—mainly for children
and juveniles, but occasionally also for adults. In the children’s magazine
 modernism (1890–1917) 179

Fig. 7. Lidiya Charskaya

Heartfelt Word she was the main attraction, but she also found time to
write for New World (Novy mir), M.O. Volf  ’s magazine for adults.
Charskaya was born as Lidiya Voronova in a well-off family in Tsarskoe
Selo outside St Petersburg in 1875. The early loss of her mother created
strong emotional bonds with her father, a colonel and military engineer.
His second marriage led to open conflicts with his daughter, and after
attempts to run away from home, she was put into the exclusive Pavlovsky
Institute for Noble Girls in St Petersburg. After graduation in 1893 at the
age of eighteen, she attended acting courses to become a professional
actress. Between 1898 and 1924 she worked at the Imperial Aleksandrinsky
Theatre, mostly apperaring in minor roles. The pseudonym ‘Charskaya’
was taken as a pen name. An early marriage proved to be short-lived and,
to support herself and her little son, Charskaya turned to writing. On the
basis of her diary from her boarding school years, she composed a novel
for girls, Notes of a Boarding School Girl (Zapiski institutki), the publica-
tion of which in Heartfelt Word in 1901–1902 was an instant success.
Life at private boarding schools had been depicted in detail in chil-
dren’s literature since the 1830s. In these schools girls of principally aristo-
cratic background spent six or seven years with little, if any, contact with
life outside. These were formative years, as their schooling started around
the age of eight. In the boarding school childhood culminated and the
girls were prepared to move into womanhood.
180 chapter five

In Notes of a Boarding School Girl, Lyuda Vlassovskaya, a humble and

kind-hearted orphan, arrives from Ukraine, and for the following seven
years she is to be part of a female collective behind closed doors. The
author takes a greater interest in the dynamic relationships between the
girls than in a strong plot. A power structure, based upon both personal
character and academic success, is established between the girls, and all
newcomers have to pass through a disturbing process of adjustment. The
emotional register is wide, as devotion alternates with contempt and hos-
tility, remorse leads to forgiveness, and shame gives way to a feeling of
honour. Thoughtless pranks lead to misunderstandings and feuds, while
dreams and superstitions give rise to mysterious visions and nocturnal
adventures. The obligatory reconciliation between pupils is accompanied
by tears and kisses. The cult of friendship is strong. The lonely girls have
an acute need for a father figure, and while most of the teachers remain
in the background, the priest stands out as an object of adoration. The
Christmas and Easter services in the school’s chapel are eagerly antici-
pated events, while another highpoint is the annual visit by the Sovereign
Emperor and his consort.
As a counterpoint to the doleful Lyuda, Charskaya introduced Nina
Dzhavakha, an enigmatic Caucasian girl. Proud and freedom-loving, Nina
finds it difficult to adjust herself to a life of restrictions and regulations.
This haughty newcomer with aristocratic pride nevertheless becomes the
leader of the class and Lyuda’s closest friend. In a blatantly melodramatic
scene Nina dies at the boarding school, a pure heart-rending example of
Romantic young death.
Charskaya followed up Notes of a Boarding School Girl with a series
of novels with partly recurrent heroines—Princess Dzhavakha (1903,
Knyazhna Dzhavakha), Lyuda Vlassovskaya, (1904), The Second Nina
(Vtoraya Nina, 1907) and The Dzhavakha Nest (1910, Dzhavakhovskoe
gnezdo). Grey and cold St Petersburg with its suffocating boarding school
setting is contrasted with the exotic Caucasus. From the genre of school
novels, the readers move into a Romantic tradition with passionate char-
acters and breathtaking adventures. At Russian military outposts, the her-
oines witness the struggle against local rebels. For the Caucasians it is a
holy war, while the Russians are fighting for the Emperor and the empire.
As a religion of mercy, Christianity is seen as an invincibly strong element
in this struggle.
In Princess Dzhavakha Charskaya created a background for the epony-
mous heroine. It is her story, told from her own point of view. She is the
only child of a Georgian prince who assisted the Russians in their war
 modernism (1890–1917) 181

against the Muslims. In order to make Nina’s heritage even more complex,
Charskaya chose a Tatar maiden, a convert to Christianity, as her mother.
The mother dies when Nina is nine, and the girl grows up a tomboy, wild
and daring. She fights bandits and rides alone among the mountains. The
choice of the St Petersburg boarding school is an attempt by her father to
cure the girl’s temper and bad habits and make her into a true princess.
In The Evenings of Princess Dzhavakha (Vechera knyazhny Dzhavakhi,
1911) Charskaya collected Caucasian legends, filled with romantic adven-
tures and strong emotions. These are the tales that Nina Dzhavakha
listened to as a child, and thus they also serve as a key to a deeper under-
standing of her character.
Of Charskaya’s numerous heroines, no one was adored as much as Nina
Dzhavakha. Fantasy mixed with reality as her readers went to the Pav-
lovsky Institute to look for Nina’s classroom or searched for Nina’s grave at
the Novodevichy Cemetery in St Petersburg. The young Marina Tsvetaeva
wrote a poem, “To the Memory of Nina Dzhavakha” (“Pamyati Niny Dzha-
vakhi”), which expressed a fascination with Nina’s dual nature—tender
but proudly inaccessible, freedom-loving but doomed to die within the
four walls of the institute. Another admiring reader, Leonid Andreev’s
daughter Vera, felt kinship both with Nina and with Lida, the heroine of
Charskaya’s series of autobiographies: “Lidiya Charskaya, with her faint-
ing, crying boarding school girls, provoked sharp contempt in the boys,
and so as not to discredit myself in their eyes, I mocked Charskaya’s
heroines publicly, but secretly I loved the unhappy and proud princess
Dzhavakha and strongly pitied the poor boarding school girl Lida, who
suffered so (and why?) because of her hateful stepmother.”11 In Soviet
times, Elena Bonnėr (1923–2011) defied her mother’s disapproval and
read Charskaya in secret: “Sometimes I even tried on Nina Dzhavakha as
an image for myself, because when I looked in the mirror, I thought we
looked alike.”12
After the boarding school and the untimely death of her friend Nina,
Lyuda travels to Georgia to work as a governess in the Dzhavakha fam-
ily. This is the subject of Lyuda Vlassovskaya. In the Caucasus, Lyuda acts
like an ‘angel of God’, reconciling broken families and converting Mus-
lims to Christianity. Her motto is “God created man to be of benefit to
other people”. She counters hate with love and understanding and shows

11  V.L. Andreeva, Dom na Chernoi rechke (M., 1974), 24–25.

12 E.G. Bonnėr, Dochki-materi (М., 1994), 189.
182 chapter five

compassion to her enemies. When she is kidnapped by mountain tribes-

men, Prince Dzhavakha comes to her rescue.
Charskaya must have felt remorse at having too light-heartedly dis-
posed the popular figure of Nina Dzhavakha, and she decided to turn one
of the Princess’s young Tatar relatives into her double. In The Second Nina
Lyuda makes friends with her pupil Nina bek-Izrail and her father, General
Dzhavakha. The ‘second Nina’ is another genuine tomboy, as proud and
wild as the first. She is an aristocrat who behaves like a Caucasian dzhigit,
a skilful horseman, a fact partly explained by her mixed background.
The standard clichés, an improbable plot and hyperbolised characters—
everything makes for good reading. Tragedy and melodrama mix as Nina
is rescued by a noble bandit, a Robin Hood figure. She is sent away to a St
Petersburg boarding school with Lyuda as her teacher. Alienated from her
schoolmates, she plans to run away, but finds a friend in another outsider-
figure, Lida Ramsay from Finland.
In The Dzhavakha Nest Nina bek-Izrail takes care of homeless orphans
in a multi-ethnic collective. Thanks to her unselfish work, she becomes
something of a saintly legend in Georgia. Working side by side with her is
another acquaintance of ours, Lyuda Vlassovskaya. One of their pupils is
Nadezhda Larina, a talented but spoiled and egocentric harpist, who after
the death of her parents must pass through a painful process of adaptation
and change before she is accepted by Nina’s collective. The setting is once
again that of the Caucasus with its majestic beauty and wild customs.
In many of Charskaya’s books we explore the school milieu, be it a
gymnasium, a boarding school or an orphanage with a small collective
of pupils. Newcomers, preferably orphans, are met coldly by the collec-
tive, are tested and abused, clash with the leadership, violate the rules
and have to bear the consequences, feel remorse and experience forgive-
ness. Recurrent characters are those with a meek nature, who cry alone
in the night for their deceased mother, or strong individuals, mischievous
and thoughtless children, whose true noble nature has yet to be revealed.
When falsely accused, they would rather take the blame than give away
their classmates. They are also the first to see the human being in a
detested teacher. A turning point is often some serious illness, preferably
the result of bullying by others, which awakens everyone’s conscience. In
this category belong The First Friends (Pervye tovarishchi, 1903), Tasya’s
Sorrow (Tasino gore, 1906), Small White Capes (Belye pelerinki, 1906),
Notes of a Small Gymnasium Girl (Zapiski malenkoy gimnazistki, 1908),
The Gymnasium Girls (Gimnazistki, 1910), The Lucky Boy (Schastlivchik,
1910), The S-t of the I-e (T-a i-ta, 1911), The Orphanage Girls (Priyutki, 1912),
 modernism (1890–1917) 183

For the Family (Radi semi, 1914) and The General’s Daughter (Generalskaya
dochka, 1915).
In almost all of Charskaya’s books, girls are in the foreground. Her
heroines are complex personalities with an intense emotional life. These
fascinating and talented teenage girls were ready-made objects of self-
identification, as Beth Holmgren has pointed out. While Evgeniya Tur
could be seen as a distant, high-culture writer, Charskaya was accepted
as “the ultimate confidante, a mentor”.13 In her world traditional femi-
nine duties and housework do not exist, and instead of striving towards
marriage and motherhood, the heroines experience something of an eter-
nal girlhood. The girl collective is a surrogate family with the members
supporting each other. These role-models offered the readers a substitute
for their own experiences. Readers even began to style themselves after
Charskaya’s girls and imitate their looks. Thanks to Charskaya boarding
schools achieved a new popularity.
With their use of recurring formulae, Charskaya’s books are good exam-
ples of mass literature. They offered entertainment and met the need for
escape and daydreaming, but always on an unimpeachable ethical basis.
Belief in goodness never wavers in them. All conflicts are overcome,
loneliness turns into a feeling of belonging, and a belief in the future is
restored. Some novels, like A Special Girl (Osobennaya, 1912), The Life of
Lyusa (Lyusina zhizn, 1915) and A Fairy Tale (Volshebnaya skazka, 1915),
stress growth and change; egotistic and contrary heroines start to take
responsibility for other people, helping the poor and teaching children.
Charskaya’s last novel, A Big Soul (Bolshaya dusha, 1918), told the success
story of the 13-year-old hunchback Venya. From being a detested freak,
a loner, he turns into a successful musician. The plot of Venya’s favour-
ite Hans Christian Andersen tale, The Ugly Duckling, becomes reality, as
Charskaya optimistically shows the possibility of change.
A set of four novels, a tetralogy, with an obvious autobiographical basis,
includes the titles Why? My Tale About Myself (1908, Za chto? Moya pov-
est o samoy sebe), Big John (1909, Bolshoy Dzhon), Forever: The Youth of
Lida Voronskaya (1911, Na vsyu zhizn: Yunost Lidy Voronskoy) and Goal
Reached (1911, Tsel dostignut). They tell the story of Lida, a mother­-
less girl, proud and self-centred, who is spoilt by her officer father. A
problematic relationship with her stepmother leads to attempts to rebel.

13 Beth Holmgren, “Why Russian girls loved Charskaya,” The Russian Review. Vol. 54.
January (1995): 96.
184 chapter five

Next, the reader finds Lida in a lively girl collective at a boarding school
with a stifling atmosphere. The concluding volumes tell of love, early mar-
riage, motherhood and the start of a career as a writer and actress. The
role of mother is not enough, as Lida also wants to achieve an identity as
an artist. We can recognise motives and themes, characters and conflicts
from Charskaya’s fictitious works, but in this set of novels the tone is more
natural, the narrative more brisk, the humour more conspicuous.
The adventure element is prominent in Charskaya’s books for a younger
audience. These include Notes of an Orphan Girl (Zapiski sirotki, 1902),
Liza’s Happiness (Lizochkino schaste, 1907), A Home for Naughty Children
(Dom shalunov, 1908), The Little Forest Girl (Lesovichka, 1908), The Little
Siberian Girl (Sibirochka, 1909), The Hothead (Shchelchok, 1911), Number
Thirteen (Trinadtsataya, 1912), Bicho-Dzhan (1913) and Little Margot
(Malyutka Margo, 1914). The plots are forceful, with many unexpected
turns. They tell about the extraordinary destinies of children who are
deserted, lost or kidnapped. The children fall into the hands of escaped
convicts and unscrupulous scoundrels, they end up in exotic places like
the Siberian taiga, the mountains of the Caucasus, circuses, monasteries,
gypsy camps or reformatories, or they are forced to earn their living as
street singers. They experience injustice and humiliations, beatings and
hunger, but they also encounter goodness and friendship. Poverty and
wealth, indifference and compassion, cruelty and kindness are contrasted.
A happy end is obligatory, as the children find their way back to their
families or to their true friends, often through a melodramatic scene of
recognition. Their true background is revealed or their latent talent is dis-
covered. All this is told in an uncomplicated style, with short chapters that
alternate tension and relaxation.
In her historical novels Charskaya did not strive for authenticity, and
she has indeed been found guilty of factual errors. In the early Soviet
years, these novels were dismissed as blatantly monarchist, but in recent
years the attitude has changed. The well-known Soviet writer Boris Vasilev
(1924–2013) declared that Charskaya’s historical novels, in spite of their
naivety, brought Russian history to life in a fascinating form and “taught
me to take delight in it. And delight in your fatherland’s history is an emo-
tional expression of love for it”.14
Ermak, the conqueror of Siberia in the sixteenth century, is the hero
of The Stern Detachment (Groznaya druzhina, 1909). In a foreward the

14 B.L. Vasil’ev, Letiat moi koni: Povesti i rasskazy (M., 1984), 170.
 modernism (1890–1917) 185

publisher presented the novel as having great pedagogical value, as it “stirs

the soul” and “evokes good feelings”.15 The heroic deeds of Ermak, which
are partly seen through the eyes of a young prince, are historically true,
but they are also reminiscent of folktales, the bylinas with their bogatyrs.
In The Wrath of the Tsar (Tsarsky gnev, 1909), Charskaya uses the point of
view of a young boy to find some redeeming traits in the character of the
feared Tsar Ivan the Terrible.
The Time of Troubles with Boris Godunov, the False Dmitry, Ivan
Susanin and Tsar Vasily Shuysky, comes to life in The Longed-For Tsar
(Zhelanny tsar, 1913). The racy plot culminates in the coronation of the
young Mikhail Romanov, “the longed-for tsar”, who is to bring stability to
Russia. It was no coincidence that the novel appeared when the Romanovs
were celebrating 300 years on the throne.
In his foreword to On the Tsaritsa’s Orders (Tak velela tsaritsa, 1910),
the publisher points out that modern pedagogical research had shown
that children preferred true stories, and, among these, books on historical
themes additionally had a great pedagogical importance. Not only should
military victories be remembered, but also small deeds from times of
peace. As there were too few historical tales for young children, Charskaya
tried to fill the gap with a tale about the encounter between Peasant Rus-
sia and the Court during the reign of Catherine I. Herself of humble origin,
the Tsaritsa showed a rare understanding of her subjects.
The reign of Anna in the first half of the eighteenth century was a time
of crisis for Russia. The weak sovereign was in the hands of unscrupulous
foreign adventurers. This is the setting for The Tsesarevna’s Pageboy (1908,
Pazh tsеsarevny) with its strong adventure plot played out on a histori-
cal canvas. Using a technique reminiscent of Alexandre Dumas’ Les trois
mousquetaires, Charskaya created melodramatic scenes with strange coin-
cidences, revelations, disguises, mystical foreigners, doubles, villains and
heroes. The novel is also reminiscent of a fairy tale, where the sovereign,
called the Tsar-Maiden, is ultimately saved by a brave knight. As in her
other books, Charskaya put children—including girls—at the centre of the
events in her historical novels. The lesson learnt is that foreigners looked
down upon Russia, but with Elizaveta Petrovna taking the throne in 1741,
a happy time awaits the empire. In the last scene, the beautiful Tsaritsa, lit
by the sun, glances over the Russian setting with her hands stretched up
towards the heavens. “ ‘All for the greatness of Russia! All for the might of

15 Lidiia Charskaia, Groznaia druzhina. Third ed. (Pg-M., s.a.), [I]

186 chapter five

our beloved fatherland!’ whispered the Tsar-Maiden’s lips, and she threw
a loving glance at the crowd that had gathered.”
A Bold Life (1905, Smelaya zhizn) tells about the remarkable figure of
Nadezhda Durova, who participated in the war of 1812, dressed as a cav-
alryman. Her memoirs had been published by Pushkin, but Charskaya
added imaginary events and persons. The result was a legend with strong
romantic overtones. Charskaya must have felt an affinity with Durova, as
she sees in her the same desire to make one’s own choices and develop
one’s talents. Another trait they have in common is longing for an officer
father. What we get is the fascinating life of a tomboy, a Cossack girl,
who thirsts for patriotic emotions and military adventures. She escapes
from home, from a life of decorum, to participate in the Napoleonic wars
and achieve fame and rewards. Joan of Arc was an inspiring model for
Durova.
Gazavat: A Mountain People’s Thirty-Year Struggle for Freedom (Gaza-
vat: Tridtsat let borby gortsev za svobodu, 1906) brings the reader to the
mid-nineteenth century with the Caucasians fighting a ‘Gazavat’, that is
a ‘holy war’, against the unbelievers. The border lines get mixed up as
the son of the Circassian chieftain Shamil, Dzhemal, is taken hostage by
the Russians. The situation places Dzhemal in a dilemma when he makes
friends with Russians, feels drawn to Christianity and dreams of peace
between the Russian Emperor and the Caucasians. He sees it as essential
that the Russians take over in the Caucasus, as “they will open up the road
to enlightenment for us, teach us civilisation, and turn us into a cultured
people”. In the final struggle his father Shamil is taken prisoner, and now
he also sees the light: “I already knew that the Russians are brave and that
they fight like lions. But, only now, I have also learnt that they are gener-
ous.” Shamil realises that Christianity means mercy and goodness. The
surrender is total as the old freedom fighter is set free, offered a pension
and a meeting with the Emperor.
Some of Charskaya’s fairy tales were collected in The Fairy Tales of the
Blue Fairy (Skazki Goluboy fei, 1909). Formally they are deeply rooted in
the European tradition, and links can be established back to both folktales
and writers like E.T.A. Hoffmann and Andersen. Allegorical figures such
as Truth and Beauty teach love, goodness, faithfulness and mercy. Any
violation of prohibitions and warnings leads to disastrous results. How-
ever, Charskaya did take a creative attitude to her predecessors, giving
a personal touch to her fairy tales. As Aleksandra Matveeva has pointed
out, the recurrent theme is that of inner transformation, a change of char-
 modernism (1890–1917) 187

acter from vices and failings towards perfection.16 The reader learns how
goodness and a civic mind are born in her heroes. Sympathy and pity
are not enough, because action is also needed. Through Biblical allusions
Charskaya indicates where the sought-for ideals could be found.
The role of the blue fairy of the title is to convey tales of nature to the
author, who in her turn reworks them for her young readers. In many of
these fairy tales, one finds a greater awareness of the dark sides of life,
of poverty and suffering, injustice and cruelty, than in the writer’s other
works. Occasionally a tension emerges between fantasy and truth, between
the fairy tale genre and real life. The role of goodness in an imperfect
world is far from unproblematic, and Charskaya does not always offer
happy solutions.
Only as a poet does Charskaya appear to have failed to attract read-
ers, and her volumes of poetry passed relatively unnoticed. The Blue Wave
(1909, Golubaya volna) shows a fascination for the mysterious side of
nature, from which fairy tales and legends stem and where God’s pres-
ence is strongly felt. Recurrent motives are the four seasons, Christmas
and Easter, birds and flowers, but the orphan beggar, asking for charity,
also appears in Charskaya’s poems. The Happy Dozen (Vesyolya dyuzhinka,
1906), and Funny Babies (Smeshnye malyutki, 1913), published as supple-
ments to Heartfelt Word, included poems about dolls, toys, games and ani-
mals. The children play at circus and arrange ‘concerts’, they teach their
cat to read and play the piano, they throw snowballs and go for bicycle
rides. The humour is mild, and the mood is cheerful.
The undisputed favourite among Russian children and young teenag-
ers, Charskaya could not, however, count on much sympathy among crit-
ics. Her most fierce opponent was Korney Chukovsky, who, in an article of
1912, did not mince words when it came to ridiculing her. Charskaya was
the “genius of banalities”, a kind of mechanical apparatus, producing book
after book according to a restricted scheme.17 One just pressed the effect
buttons, labelled, for instance, Horror, Fainting-Fit, Illness, Villainy, Hys-
terics, Heroism—and a new work by Charskaya was born. On every page
one could find “hackneyed phrases, hackneyed figures, outdated common

16 Aleksandra Matveeva, Lidiia Charskaia: Stil’ skazochnoi prozy (Iaroslavl’, 2005),

118–122.
17 K. Chukovskii, Sobranie sochinenii v piatnadtsati tomakh. Vol. 7 (M., 2003), 309.
188 chapter five

effects”.18 Chukovsky maintained that Charskaya only knew extremes

when it came to beauty, talent, bravery and heroism, and that as her main
protagoniosts she accepted only rich aristocrats.
In spite of his contempt for Charskaya, Chukovsky had to admit that
her popularity had reached unheard-of heights. He quoted a report from
a children’s library, according to which the works of Charskaya in 1911 had
been borrowed 790 times, while the corresponding number for Jules Verne
was 232. Chukovsky’s contact with readers confirmed the picture: “Good
old Jules Verne has no chance to keep up with her. In front of me I have
346 letters from children about books they have read, and out of them 282
(that is more than eighty percent) are full of praise for Charskaya.”19
Another of M.O. Volf  ’s writers, Sigizmund Librovich alias Viktor Rusa-
kov, set out to explain the Charskaya phenomenon in a more positive
light. In his booklet Why Do Children Love Charskaya? (Za chto deti lyu-
byat Charskuyu?, 1913) he quoted enthusiastic letters from readers. The
majority of her readers were about 13–14 years old, but many grown-ups
had also taken her to their hearts. In Rusakov’s eyes, Charskaya was the
Empress, who discussed central moral issues and promoted the truths
of life in poignant language and entertaining plots. In a subtle way she
awoke good feelings and taught love and compassion. Rusakov quoted
Charskaya as saying, “I have preserved a child’s soul and the freshness of
early impressions. And what’s more, I love, I sincerely love childhood, I
have preserved a holy love for the cherished feelings of youth.”20 Char-
skaya gave readers what they wanted, but even so she still respected them.
Even if most of her readers did not have an aristocratic background, they
had no difficulty identifying themselves with her intriguing, freedom-
loving heroines.
Charskaya also had readers outside Russia; she is in fact one of the most
translated of pre-revolutionary Russian children’s writers, with books
coming out in England, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland. In
the 1920s, four of her novels were published in America.
Contemporary events were only weakly reflected in Charskaya’s works.
One example is found in Stream after Stream, Wave after Wave (Struyka
za struykoy—volna za volnoy, 1909). This book is said to consist of sto-
ries by German writers, reworked by Charskaya, but the concluding story,

18 Chukovskii, Sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 6 (M., 2002), 155. (First publ.: Rech’, Sept. 9, 1912,
2–3.)
19 Chukovskii, Sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 7 (M., 2003), 304.
20 Viktor Rusakov, Za chto deti liubiat Charskuiu? (SPb-M., 1913), 18.
 modernism (1890–1917) 189

“Tough Times in Manchuria!” (“V Manchzhurii plokho!”) surely must have

come from Charskaya’s pen. During the 1904–1905 war against the “nasty
Japs”, Russian children in this story raise money for soldiers’ families by
taking grown-ups as hostages and demanding money for their release.
Another connection to current events can be seen during the First World
War, when Charskaya published patriotic poems in Heartfelt Word. And a
story from the same period, The Savage (Dikar, 1915–16), celebrates a group
of boys who work as underground scouts at the front. Dima is caught by
the Germans and sentenced to death, but just at the point of execution
a Cossack patrol appears. Dima is another of Charskaya’s many unruly,
problematic characters, who eventually grow up and show themselves
worthy of respect and love. The schoolgirl in Natasha’s Diary (Natashin
dnevnik, 1916–17) is likewise highly concerned about the war and feels a
strong hatred for everything German.
Charskaya’s own situation changed drastically after 1917. The magazine
Heartfelt Word was closed down; her books were removed from librar-
ies as alien to the working class and its ideology; no more reprints were
allowed. For a few years she managed to fool the censors, publishing five
books of poetry and fairy tales in 1925–1927 under the protective pseu-
donym N. Ivanova. These small volumes attest to an unbroken creative
power. Charskaya successfully experiments in them with new genres,
such as prose poems and satirical epic poems. Master Pepka—Make It
Strong (Master Pepka—delay krepko, 1927) tells about the carefree bun-
gler Pepka, a master of failure in all fields. Charskaya does not offer any
solution to Pepka’s problems, but lets him escape the wrath of the people
in a way reminiscent of Chichikov in Gogol’s Dead Souls. Prov, the Fish-
erman (Prov-rybolov, 1927) and About the Lazy Little Mouse Sharp-Tooth
(Pro lenivogo myshonka Ostrogo Zubryonka, 1925) humourously vary the
theme of the outsider, the individual who stands aloof from the collective,
while The Puppet Show (Balaganchik, 1925), on the contrary, reads like an
allegorical defence of artistic freedom. The attempt to turn wild animals
into obedient circus artists fails, and the conclusion is—“The animal must
live in freedom!”
In 1924 Charskaya was dismissed from the theatre. When N. Ivanova’s
true identity was revealed, even this breathing space was closed. Up to
her death in 1937, Charskaya lived in misery and sickness, receiving only
a scant pension and scarce secret aid from faithful readers. When her
former opponent, Korney Chukovsky, learned about her desperate situ-
ation, he tried to arrange some help for her. One of her former readers
is said to have married her, but materially her situation did not change.
190 chapter five

Yury, Charskaya’s only child, ended up on the other side of the border, in
Kharbin, and died in the same year as his mother. Charskaya is buried in
the Smolensk Cemetery in St Petersburg.
In spite of the ideological ban, Charskaya was still widely read in Soviet
Russia between the wars. At a meeting with Young Pioneers, the critic
Viktor Shklovsky was taken aback when they asked whether it was alright
for them to read Charskaya, Lukashevich and Little Lord Fauntleroy. All
this was literature that he remembered from his own childhood, but
his answer, published in Literaturnaya gazeta in 1932, was nevertheless
a horrified ‘No!’ In order to enter the new world and play their part in
its further development, Soviet youth needed “the food of the gods”, an
expression which Shklovsky took from H.G. Wells, but what Charskaya
offered them was “the food of the dwarfs”. Shklovsky concluded that this
kind of literature was used in the ideological struggle in order to prevent
Soviet children from growing.21 In 1934, the result of a readers’ poll made
the Soviet establishment worry that Charskaya might be undermining the
Communist project by awakening pity for the class enemy in her defence-
less readers, and at the Soviet Writers’ Congress the same year Samuil
Marshak raised the case of Charskaya in his speech about contemporary
children’s literature, complaining that “killing Charskaya” had turned out
to be a demanding task. Marshak was assisted by Chukovsky with a totally
unfair, nasty characterisation of Charskaya’s works: “Charskaya poisoned
children with the syphilis of militaristic and barrack-patriotic feelings.”22
One writer who was ready to risk defending Charskaya was the Symbol-
ist Fyodor Sologub (1863–1927). In an article written in 1926, he pointed
out that Charskaya’s popularity among juvenile readers was an unsur-
passed phenomenon, exceeding even that of Ivan Krylov in Russia or
Hans Christian Andersen in Denmark.23 Sologub considered Charskaya’s
fame fully deserved, as she had shown a deep, almost Tolstoyan respect
for children, talked with them as equals and accepted that they could also
serve as teachers for the older generation. Furthermore, Charskaya had
understood the youthful thirst for “great deeds, exploits, dangers, catas-
trophes in the name of a higher social justice”. Since he himself was an

21  Viktor Shklovskii, “O pishche bogov i o Charskoi,” Literaturnaia gazeta 16 (1932): 1.

22 Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s’’ezd sovetskikh pisatelei 1934: Stenograficheskii otchet (М., 1934
[1990]), 180.
23 E.O. Putilova, “F. Sologub i L. Charskaia,” Russkaia literature 4 (1995), 97–98. Also in
E.O. Putilova, Detskoe chtenie—dlia serdtsa i razuma: Ocherki po istorii detskoi literatury
(SPb, 2005), 100.
 modernism (1890–1917) 191

outcast in the field of Soviet literature, Sologub was prevented from pub-
lishing his defence of Charskaya.
More unexpected was praise from L. Panteleev, author of a famous
novel about a Soviet children’s asylum, The SHKID Republic (Respublika
Shkid, 1927). Only late in life did he dare to confess that he had also been
under the spell of Charskaya as a child: “The sweet rapture with which
I read and reread her books, an echo of this rapture still lives in me—
somewhere where the most precious childhood memories dwell, the most
intoxicating smells, the most frightening rustles, the happiest dreams.”
Writing these words in 1979, Panteleev asked for forgiveness that he had
not expressed his love for Charskaya earlier: “And I want to testify: I loved,
I love, I am thankful for everything that she gave me as a human being,
and, consequently, also as a writer.”24
Another surprising homage to Charskaya came from Boris Pasternak,
who is reported to have said that, in Doctor Zhivago, he consciously tried
to write “almost like Charskaya”,25 probably meaning that he wanted to be
as accessible to everyone and to capture the reader’s attention as totally as
the celebrated children’s writer had done in the early twentieth century.

In the Shadow of Charskaya

In 1894, Nadezhda Lukhmanova (1844–1907) published her fictionalised

memoirs, Twenty Years Ago: Boarding School Memoirs (Dvadtsat let nazad:
Institutskie vospominaniya). Its first part, published separately as Girls:
Memoirs of a Boarding School Girl (Devochki: Vospominaniya institutki,
1896), became a favourite among girls and was published repeatedly. The
novel comes close to being a memoir about the author’s own years at
the Pavlovsky Institute in St Petersburg, a boarding school which Lidiya
Charskaya was to make famous ten years later with her first book. As con-
tact with the outside world is extremely limited in the institute, the time
the events take place in Lukhmanova’s novel remains undefined. Life in
the ‘institutional anthill’ is presented through several characters, each
given her own specific traits. A never-ending struggle goes on between
the girls and their teachers, with feelings wavering between protest and
submission, misbehaviour and forgiveness. The role of the few men in this

24 L. Panteleev, “Kak ia stal detskim pisatelem,” Sobranie sochinenii: V 4 tomakh. Vol. 3
(L., 1984), 316–317.
25 T. Ivanova, Moi sovremenniki, kakimi ia ikh znala (M., 1987), 414.
192 chapter five

‘feminine kingdom’ is accentuated, as they become objects of romantic

dreams and religious ecstasy. Unexpected deaths and mystic visions bring
emotional tension into the everyday life of the boarding school. The high
points are balls and Christmas and Easter celebrations. The culminating
scene of Girls is the final examination, after which the girl’s collective is
dissolved. The last line of the novel reads: “The door of the porter’s lodge is
flung open, and thirty well-mannered girls leave their institute for ever.”
In spite of the success of Girls, Lukhmanova later concentrated on writ-
ing for adult readers. Nevertheless, one of the girls from her first novel
reappeared in The Boarding School Girl (Institutka, 1899–1900), this time
seeking to find her place among adults.
The only Russian children’s writer to come even close to the popularity
of Lidiya Charskaya in the early twentieth century was Klavdiya Luka-
shevich (1859–1931 or 1937). The two women writers did not necessarily
compete, as Lukashevich mostly addressed a younger and primarily rural
audience. The range of her writing is wide; it includes stories, animal
stories, fairy tales, plays, text books, calendars, anniversary publications,
memoirs and historical essays. In all, the list of Lukashevich’s publications,
all editions included, reaches almost two hundred titles, and by 1908, the
total number of copies sold was already estimated to have exceeded 1.5
million. The critic Nikolay Chekhov thought that Lukashevich wrote and
published twice as much as was good for her, but her readers did not
seem to mind.26
In My Dear Childhood (Moyo miloe detstvo, 1914) and Life Isn’t Easy
(Zhizn prozhit—ne pole pereyti, 1918), two absorbing volumes of mem-
oirs, Lukashevich recollected episodes from her formative years. The years
between six and eight were religious. Her warm-hearted nanny was her
‘guardian angel’, and the death of the faithful old servant meant the end
of a happy childhood. Inspired by populist ideals and new female roles,
her mother abandoned the family to work among the people. Klavdiya
stayed with her father, a bank clerk, who took to drinking after the
divorce. A private teacher awoke Klavdiya’s interest in literature, her first
literary favourites being Zhukovsky’s poetry, Konstantin Ushinsky’s Chil-
dren’s World and Iosif Paulson’s (1825–98) Reader (Kniga dlya chteniya,
1868). As her father’s relatives moved into their house, life again changed.
The atmosphere became monastic—joyless and cold. At the threshold
of youth, Klavdiya was a lonely girl, longing for an absent mother and a

26 Chekhov, Detskaia literature, 144.

 modernism (1890–1917) 193

lost sister, secretly seeking comfort in literature. Looking back, she could
nevertheless insist that “life is meant to be a blessing, it is given to us for
happiness, and for all of us there exists the great, holy foundation of life—
that is, work and people”.27
At the gymnasium Lukashevich edited a school magazine, which
she filled with her own writings. Her first publication was a poem, “On
the Death of Emperor Alexander II” (“Na smert Gosudarya Imperatora
Aleksandra II”), published in Children’s Reading in 1881, when she was
twenty. Not long ago, the young Lukashevich declared, “our Sovereign and
Father” was honoured as a war hero: now he lives only in our hearts. Rus-
sian peasant children and the Serbs and Bulgarians are especially grateful
to their “liberator”. The editorial board explained that it was its duty to
publish this “spontaneous expression of youthful feeling”.28
In 1885 Lukashevich moved with her family to Irkutsk, where she taught
at a boarding school for girls. After the death of her husband and little
daughter, a tragedy reflected in the story The Bright Little Sun (Yasnoe sol-
nyshko, 1898), she returned to St Petersburg with her three remaining chil-
dren. Employed at the local Railway Board, with the children temporarily
placed in an orphanage, she again took up writing. Supported by the edi-
tor Viktor Ostrogorsky, she chose Children’s Reading as her main forum.
Ostrogorsky advised the beginner how to write for children: “Write truth-
fully about life, give the simple truth, as clean as the children’s crystalline
souls. Watch nature closely, learn from it. Write as Belinsky advised, that
is, write for children so that adults will also read you with pleasure. Like
Turgenev, write and pay attention to your style. Search for the right words
to express your thoughts; that is what our great writers Gogol, Pushkin
and Lermontov did.”29 Through the poet Pleshcheev, Lukashevich made
the acquaintance of Aleksandra Peshkova-Toliverova, the publisher and
editor of Little Toy (Igrushechka), in which she subsequently published
frequently. In the 1890s, four of her stories received the prestigious
Fröbel-prize.
Lukashevich’s first collection of stories, The Bright Little Sun and Other
Stories (Yasnoe solnyshko i drugie rasskazy, 1898), was an instant suc-
cess, eventually coming out in nine editions. During the next decade it
was followed by several equally popular collections—The Tiny Grains

27 K. Lukashevich, Moe miloe detstvo (M., 1914), 3.

28 Detskoe chtenie 3 (1881): 217.
29 K.V. Lukashevich, “Moe pervoe literaturnoe detishche,” Rodnik 12 (1906): 91.
194 chapter five

(Zyornyshki, 1899), On the Road of Life (Na zhiznennom puti, 1900), Years
of Childhood (Detskie gody, 1901), From the Recent Past (Iz nedavnego pro-
shlogo, 1901), One of Many (Odin iz mnogikh, 1902), Dear Friends (Lyubimye
druzya, 1902), Toilers (Truzheniki, 1903), The Little Nest (Gnyozdyshka,
1903), From Life (Iz zhizni, 1908) and Precious Road (Zavetny put, 1910).
Many of the stories included in these collections also came out as separate
booklets.
Kindness, helpfulness, gratitude and friendship are celebrated as
Lukashevich gives numerous examples of pity, solidarity and care for
one’s fellow men in her sentimental stories. In seemingly hopeless situ-
ations a good-hearted helper always turns up, and in return, this deus ex
machina is also positively affected through the encounter (“Pervye shagi”,
“Dorogoe nasledstvo”, “Strogaya doktorsha”, “Bosonogaya komanda”). Old
men with a stern outer appearance but a heart of gold overcome their
isolation and become involved in the lives of poor children, helping them
to make a good start in life (“Bedny rodstvennik”). The true purpose of life
is to show concern for other people. This is the maxim of the spinsters
in “Two Sisters” (“Dve sestry”), who take care of children maltreated by
fate. The old childless couple in “Good People” (“Dobrye lyudi”) adopt an
orphan girl and teach her to show similar compassion towards other peo-
ple. In “Makar” and “Cold Heart” (“Kholodnoe serdtse”), too, a rewarding
friendship is born across the generation barrier.
The children react with gratitude and do not fail to fulfil all the expec-
tations that are focussed on them. A motherless, problematic girl, an
outsider in the class collective, is turned into a model pupil by a patient
and loving teacher in “Sonya Malykh”. Lukashevich also gives examples
of diligent, talented children from the people, mostly orphans, who man-
age to succeed in life by their own endeavours. “Dasha from Sevastopol”
(“Dasha-sevastopolskaya”, 1898) works as a nurse in the Crimean War and
the peasant boy in “Divine Spark” (“Iskra bozhiya”, 1892) becomes a doc-
tor, while “Mirosha the Musician” (“Mirosha-muzykant”, 1910) ends up as
a member of the court orchestra.
Lukashevich frequently wrote about poor lonely people and unhappy
children. In her stories one finds unsociable men with dogs as their sole
companions, hunchbacks teased by everyone and sick orphans. In spite
of difficult living conditions, idylls are created as Lukashevich singles
out moments of pity and charity that are turning points in life. Over and
over again, she creates idealised pictures of hardworking people in the
countryside or on the outskirts of towns. The girl in “Salary” (“Poluchka”)
 modernism (1890–1917) 195

manages to prevent her father from spending all his salary in the tav-
ern. Other children are forced to participate in working life too early, for
example as nursery-maids (“Aksyutka-nyanka”) or shepherds (“Vanya-
pastukh”), in order to contribute to their family’s meagre income. They
fulfil their task with an unfailing sense of duty. Kindhearted children are
admired (“Dama s muftoy”). The comical Kiryusha, one of ‘God’s fools’, is
met with sympathy by another outcast, a lame boy (“Kiryusha Yurodivy i
belogrudka”).
Old people are prominent in Lukashevich’s writing. She pays tribute
to modest, forgotten heroes, such as the poultry woman Agafya (“Ptich-
nitsa Agafya”), the steward Tikhon Mikhaylovich (“Tikhon Mikhaylovich”)
and an old nanny, the heart of the family (“Nyanya”). ‘Work’ is honour-
able: “Everyone, rich or poor, must work for the common good”, explains
the narrator in “Kids” (“Rebyatishki”). “Only then will life be appealing
and interesting, only then will man fulfil his duty.” In the spirit of her
populist mother, Lukashevich stressed inescapable obligations towards
the people. The heroine of “First Steps” (“Pervye shagi”) wants to forget
herself and do something worthwhile for others, and she dreams of open-
ing a school and devoting herself to teaching. A similar calling is voiced in
“Towards the Light” (“K svetu”). The odds are not good for the kind, obedi-
ent fifteen-year-old boy, since his father is dead, his mother lame and his
grandmother a drunkard. With the help of the inevitable philanthropist,
he manages to free himself from spiritual darkness and advance towards
light, working as a teacher.
Some of Lukashevich’s plots culminate in a dramatic, extreme situa-
tion that brings out the best in people. This can be a case of illness, a
fire, a snowstorm, a runaway troika, a flood (“Uzhasnye dni”), an eco-
nomical catastrophe (“Barin i sluga”), a meeting with an escaped convict
(“Zavetnoe okno”), or an assault (“Bedny rodstvennik”, “Na bolshoy dor-
oge”). A resolute girl saves her comrade from drowning (“Medal”). Inno-
cent people are accused of theft, but eventually exonerated (“Kolechko”,
“Stary kamerdiner”). Fatherly love and professional duty vie with each
other in “The Switchman” (“Strelochnik”), as a railway worker risks the
life of his own child to prevent a major accident.
Lukashevich’s love for all things living included animals. In her stories,
which often appear to be based on some of her own memories, we meet
bears, hens, cranes, fishes, dogs, ants, bees and birds. More important than
the informative side is the emotional closeness between the child and the
animal.
196 chapter five

In all her works Lukashevich demonstrated an unfailingly positive atti-

tude to life. She wanted to show “why life, with all its sorrow, suffering
and sickness, is nevertheless good and full of strong calls to happiness”.30
A convincing example of this philosophy, taken straight from real life, was
the biography of Helen Keller, the American girl who, in spite of her blind-
ness, deafness and dumbness, managed to acquire a university degree. In
the foreword to The Wonderful Fire of Life (Chudny ogonyok zhizni, 1910),
Lukashevich explained the meaning of her book about Keller:
I want this story to affect my young friends with the same cheerful, invigor-
ating and healthy influence that penetrated the whole life of this fine girl.
To love life, meekly to reconcile oneself with adversities, to love everything
in God’s beautiful world and to strive to be of use and joy to everything
living, to walk firmly and steadily along the difficult way towards knowl-
edge . . . Isn’t this the greatest happiness, the ideal life toward which every-
one must strive? And this is the kind of life that this blind, deaf girl lives.31
Lukashevich found an ideal example of a benevolent attitude toward
one’s fellow man in the legendary philanthropist Friedrich Haass (Fyodor
Gaaz), whose life she pictured in A True Friend of Mankind (Istinny drug
chelovechestva, 1900). As the main doctor of the Moscow prisons, Haass, a
German who had settled in Russia in the early nineteenth century, worked
to improve conditions for prisoners. He founded a prison hospital and
schools for the prisoners’ children. Haass’ unselfish work earned him the
nickname ‘the holy doctor’, but his sad fate was to die in utter poverty.
Annoyed by all the kind people, modest benefactors and ideal children
in Lukashevich’s works, critics sometimes blamed her for excessive sen-
timentality. The author answered, “If by sentimentality is meant that I
have spared the children’s fantasy from brutal, painful pictures, then I can
answer that I did it on purpose. I have depicted life’s truth, but I mainly
chose what is good, pure, and bright, as it has a calming, comforting, rec-
onciling effect.”32 The child should not be deprived of his trust in good-
ness by scenes from the dark sides of life.
Benefiting from her own pedagogical experience, Lukashevich produced
a great number of books for schools. The Sower Alphabet and a First Reader
for the School and the Family (Azbuka-seyatel i pervoe chtenie dlya shkoly
i semi, 1907), which ran to eleven editions, was followed by several similar

30 K. Lukashevich, “Predislovie,” Moe miloe detstvo, 6.

31  K. Lukashevich, “Predislovie,” Chudnyi ogonek zhizni (M., 1910), 6.
32 Lukashevich, “Predislovie,” Moe miloe detstvo, 5–6.
 modernism (1890–1917) 197

books. The publisher was the Schools’ Council of the Holy Synod, an insti-
tution that also supported other publications by Lukashevich. From the
alphabet and simple words, the pupils advance towards short stories that
primarily deal with life in the country. The only writer of renown in the
first volume—except for Lukashevich herself—was Leo Tolstoy. Religion
and patriotism are important themes. Arithmetic and drawing are also
taught, and the work of pedagogues, be they teachers or parents, is facili-
tated through methodical advice.
Other readers followed. The First Little Word (Pervoe slovechko, 1912)
addressed children between three and eight, while Bright Ray (Svetly luch,
1905) was meant for a slightly older readership. According to Lukashevich,
one important component in upbringing is religion. In the first chapter of
Bright Ray, “A Prayer” (“Molitva”), teaching starts with a prayer. Uncom-
plicated texts, some of them by great Russian writers, and carefully chosen
illustrations made Lukashevich’s readers popular. For festivities at home
and at school, Lukashevich composed programmes consisting of decla-
mation, dramatic scenes, songs and parades. The objects of celebration
vary from writers such as Gogol and Tolstoy to events such as the 300th
anniversary of the House of Romanov and heroic Russian feats in the
World War.
Lukashevich also wrote plays meant to be staged by children at home
or at school. Some of these include dances, music and songs, and the chil-
dren also learn how to prepare the stage decorations and costumes. The
plays treat hackneyed motives like an old couple who adopt a homeless
child (Pobedila, 1893), or the children of a rich family who, in an out-
burst of philanthropy, send their toys to the children of the poor chim-
ney-sweep (Trubochist). In The Little Red Flower (Krasny tsvetochek, 1897)
and The Christmas Tree (Yolka), a lofty moral and pity for the suffering
are taught through fairy tales. A spark of humour, rare in Lukashevich’s
works, occasionally comes to the surface in Happy Days (Vesyolye dni,
1896) and Alarm Among the Dolls (Kukolny perepolokh (1909). The fluent
and natural dialogue partially explains the success of these plays. When,
in 1914, Lukashevich collected all her plays in Theatre for Children (Teatr
dlya detey), she also added some scenes from classic Russian adult dramas
adapted for children’s amateur theatre.
One of the first of its kind in Russian children’s literature is The Lit-
tle Basket (Kuzovok, 1905), an activity book filled with stories, fairy tales,
poems, plays, riddles, charades, songs, puzzles, colouring pictures, hand
shadows, cardboard models and Christmas decorations. Another new
genre was a table-calendar for children, My Friend (Moy drug, 1903), which
198 chapter five

also included short stories, poems, plays, reading suggestions, articles on

history, nature and the Russian court. Furthermore, it taught needlework,
collecting herbs, drawing, photograph and cultivating a kitchen garden.
The reading and hobby material was also published separately under
the title A Little Something about Everything (Obo vsyom po nemnogu,
1905). Another literary miscellany was Read and Tell Others (Pochitaesh—
drugim skazhesh, 1907), in which children could find colour pictures,
puzzle pictures and models for Christmas tree decorations.
Lukashevich also published fairy tales. For children from three to
eight she composed Tales for the Smallest Children (Skazki dlya samykh
malenkikh detey, 1908), which included original tales, adaptations of Rus-
sian folktales and translations of English tales. Together with poems, nurs-
ery rhymes, facetious catchphrases (pribautki), absurd short texts, such
as “The Bubble, the Straw and the Bast Shoe” (“Puzyr, solominka i lapot”),
and original illustrative material, these fairy tales make Tales for the Small-
est Children one of Lukashevich’s best publications. Another rewarding
enterprise was the two-volume (one for older, one for younger children)
Fairy Tales of Modern Russian Writers (Skazki sovremennykh russkikh
pisateteley, 1910). In the foreword the author explains that she has cho-
sen tales that “promote the development of humane, noble feelings and
that are devoid of everything frightening and absurd, but which still have
preserved in full measure that poetic, fantastic element that is the basis
of a good tale”.33 This excellent compilation includes both established
names—from Vagner to Charskaya—and new ones and demonstrates
the breadth and promising outlook of contemporary Russian children’s
literature. Photographs of the writers and illustrations by artists such as
Elizaveta Byom (Boehm) further underlined the importance of the
anthology.
Lukashevich was a Russian patriot. On the occasion of the fiftieth anni-
versary of the Crimean War, she published The Defence of Sevastopol and
Its Glorious Defenders (Oborona Sevastopolya i ego slavnye zashchitniki,
1904), a book addressed to both juveniles and the common people. Many
sources were used, including Lukashevich’s own interviews with veterans
at the historical sites. The Crimean War was also the subject of several
small booklets, including The Storm is Drawing Closer (Groza nadvigaetsya),
Two Memorable Days: to the Memory of General Khrulyov (Dva pamyatnykh

33 K. Lukashevich, “Predislovie,” Skazki sovremennykh russkikh pisatetelei (M., 1910),

[4].
 modernism (1890–1917) 199

dnya: Pamyati generala Khrulyova, 1904) and The Glorious Defence of Sev-
astopol (Slavnaya sevastpolskaya oborona, 1905). Lukashevich found hero-
ism and a love for the fatherland among high commanders and simple
soldiers, among women and children, comparable to that of the heroes of
ancient times. In the war the Tsar and the people had stood united.
Lukashevich concluded The Glorious Defence of Sevastopol with a paci-
fistic sigh: “We end our work with the ardent wish that the sun of peace
and brotherly love one day will rise over the world and that war, this ter-
rible barbarity between people, will never recur.”34 Reality did not answer
her prayer and Lukashevich was to witness several wars in the years to
come. The Russo-Japanese war prompted a book packed with background
information and newspaper reports, Russia’s War with Japan (Voyna
Rossii s Yaponiey, 1904). Nicholas II stands out here as a champion of
peace. In The Deeds of Our Dear Heroes (Podvigi rodnykh geroev, 1915),
the First World War made Lukashevich recall heroic moments in Russian
history, from Minin and Pozharsky in 1612 up to the war against Japan
in 1904–1905. The two heroes of Pal at War and He Ran Away to the War
(Druzhok-voin. Ubezhal na voinu, 1916) are a dog and an eleven-year-old
boy. In St Petersburg Lukashevich supported a private hospital for
wounded soldiers, named after Leo Tolstoy, and another one for children
from soldiers’ families. She was not spared her own private tragedy, as her
son died at the front in 1916.
The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 drastically changed Lukashevich’s sit-
uation. A third, concluding volume of memoirs—Gymnasium and Family
(Gimnaziya i semya), announced for publication in 1918, never appeared.
At the end of the Civil War she was living in the little town of Gelendzhik,
where she had moved in 1917 for health reasons. Here she was contacted
by Anatoly Lunacharsky, the Soviet Commissar of Education, who wanted
her to participate in the formation of Soviet children’s literature. Luka-
shevich did return to her home town, now called Petrograd, but chose
to stay aloof from literary life. She was still widely read and published
among émigrés, but in Soviet Russia only two small books came out—
Mitrofashka (1924) and The Son of the Railway Switchman (Syn streloch-
nika, 1927). In the former, dated 1920 with a dedication to her grandson,
the Civil War appears from the point of view of a child. War and all evil
take the form of a fantasy figure, Mitrofashka, and only the return of
the father and the establishment of peace make the evil spirit disappear.

34 K. Lukashevich, Oborona Sevastopolia i ego slavnye zashchitniki (М., 1904), 289.
200 chapter five

The latter book is an interesting continuation of the earlier heroic story—

The Switchman. Recalling his father’s words –“duty, duty above all”—the
son of the switchman, a brave little Soviet Pioneer, prevents bandits from
robbing a train. The Red Army also takes part in the operation. The vol-
ume is a weak and somewhat pathetic attempt to adjust to new ideologi-
cal demands.
Lukashevich’s own precarious situation in Soviet Russian cultural life
did not prevent her from trying to intervene in favour of other unfortu-
nate victims of the time. When her godson, the young musician and com-
poser Dmitry Shostakovich, was on the brink of starvation in 1921, she
sent a moving plea to Lunacharsky.35 Lukashevich’s last years were spent
in misery, with all her books weeded from libraries and no opportuni-
ties to publish. Lukashevich died in 1931, apparently in what was by then
Leningrad. The grim year of 1937 has also been mentioned as a possible
year of death.
Sofya Lavrenteva (1836–after 1917) already made her debut in 1873 in
Children’s Reading. Without ever achieving a large following, she was
active within children’s literature right up until 1917, participating in most
of the major children’s magazines. Simple short poems accompany the
fifteen colour prints in Children’s Amusements (Detskie zabavy, 1891), the
illustrations being undoubtedly of foreign origin. Little George (Zhorzh)
probably has the honour of being the first to ride a bicycle in Russian chil-
dren’s poetry. His fate is to fall off his vehicle to the mirth of the other chil-
dren. The other heroes of Lavrenteva’s cartoon volume also have exclusive
amusements such as playing with elephants, apes and ponies.
The New Styopka-Rastryopka (Novy Styopka-Rastryopka, 1898), pub-
lished under Lavrenteva’s name, is in fact a translation of Julius Lohmeyer’s
Der Tierstruwwelpeter (1887) with Fedor Flinzer’s superb illustrations.
While the original Styopka-Rastryopka was still enjoying undiminished
popularity, this later volume was a failure. Even so, it contains many gro-
tesque highlights from the world of children in the spirit of Hoffmann.
Lavrenteva’s child heroes are able to change for the better only through
drastic measures: Varya is used as a scarecrow in the fields because of her
untidiness, and instead of presents Fedyusha gets a good beating from
Father Christmas because he has the nasty habit of destroying his and

35 N.S. Selov (ed.), “  ‘Proshu obratit vnimanie na vydaiushchiisia talant’: Dokumenty

GARF o D.D. Shostakoviche. 1921 g.,” Otechestvennye arkhivy 6 (2006): 99–100.
 modernism (1890–1917) 201

others’ belongings. Vasyonok is sent off to Africa to learn table manners

in a local school.
Small plays and short scenes are included in A New Collection of Plays
for Children and Young People (Novy sbornik teatralnykh pes dlya detey i
yunoshestva, 1899). Many of them are written to be performed by the chil-
dren as a gift to their parents. The moral of these mostly realistic pieces
with scenes from school and family life is irreproachable. Some fairy-tale
plays brighten the general picture.
Lavrenteva was exceptionally widely-travelled and she drew on her
experiences in informative travel books. The two children in Around the
World: Vanya and Sonya’s Trip Abroad (Po belu svetu: Puteshestvie Vani
i Soni za granitsu, 1900) see most of continental Western Europe, includ-
ing the Nordic countries, as they travel in the company of their parents.
Lavrenteva tries to stick to the children’s point of view, taking into con-
sideration their interests and emotions. The many illustrations enhance
the informative character of the book. One of the high points of the trip
is a visit to Odense, Hans Christian Andersen’s town. “Do you remember
his tales?” the father asks his children. “  ‘Of course!’ Vanya exclaims. ‘I am
especially fond of the tale about the little tin soldier!’  ” Vanya and Sonya
pick an ivy leaf from Andersen’s grave as a memento.
Lavrenteva’s stories were collected in Kind Souls (Dobrye dushi, 1901)
and From Life (Iz zhizni, 1903). The motif of love for animals and nature
alternates with scenes of charity from the human world. As her hero-
ines attend institutes or pursue a career, Lavrenteva explores the tension
between home and the outside world. As it tells its life story in “The Cal-
lous Master” (“Chorstvy barin”), a chair (!) reveals unexpected knowledge
of human nature. To the Little Ones (Malyutkam, 1904) and To Small Chil-
dren (Malym detkam, 1912) offer simple reading for beginners. Between
scenes of happy games at home readers are reminded of the harsh reality
of homeless children freezing in the winter cold.
The author’s life-long love of music brought her to Bayreuth, where
she attended a performance of Wagner’s Parsifal. One of her last works,
Parsival (1913), retells the German legend about the power of Christianity
with inspiration and a distinct poetic touch. Given the book’s literary mer-
its, it is surprising that it had to be published at the author’s expense.
The name of Anna Khvolson (1868–1934) is today primarily remembered
in connection with Murzilka, but during her lifetime she was also known
for her original works. “The World Is Not Without Kind People” (“Svet
ne bez dobrykh lyudey”), originally included in her first book, The Brook
(Rucheyok, 1888), and later published separately with a new title, Victims
202 chapter five

of Fire (Pogoreltsy, 1908), tells of two orphans whose house burns down.
The boy freezes to death in the cold winter, but his sister survives. A kind
doctor takes care of her and sees to it that she can attend school. This
lesson in love for one’s neighbour, pity for the homeless and readiness to
offer help is exemplary of a well-established Russian literary tradition.
As a counterpoint to an all-too-harsh reality, Khvolson wrote fantasy
tales, which she hoped might change the world: “And ever since the little
ones, Fairy Tale and Fantasy, started to visit the world, everyone has lived
a happier life.”36 Khvolson also made use of a fairy-tale element when
telling children about nature. Her readiness to animate the material world
seems boundless: tea leaves tell a samovar about life in China and hand-
kerchief converse with a sheepskin coat. Scientific facts delivered in the
old-fashioned form of talks between adults and children or, even worse,
served up by the natural phenomena themselves, made the critic Mikhail
Sobolev in Pedagogical Anthology (Pedagogichesky sbornik) in 1889 wish
that Khvolson would learn to teach “without the aid of thinking lumps of
clay, moralising corals, lecturing socks”.37 In the same year The Review of
Children’s Literature (Obzor detskoy literatury) advised parents to present
their children with books by the famous German zoologist Alfred Brehm
rather than Khvolson’s ‘absurdities’.38
The children were not as criticial; they took Khvolson’s books to their
hearts. This also goes for Among Flowers (Sredi tsvetov, 1889), a translation
of Émile Desbeaux’s Le Jardin de Mademoiselle Jeanne (1880), and Friends
and Favourites (Druzya i lyubimtsy, 1890). The setting of Among Flowers is
a Crimean country estate, where an old gardnener lets little Nyuta have
her own garden, something which allows the author to entertain and give
lessons in botany and zoology at the same time. Friends and Favourites
consists of stories about children’s encounters with nature.
As one of Heartfelt Word’s main writers, assisting with stories, fairy tales
and poems, Khvolson gradually changed her poetics. This can be seen in
Children by the Sea (Deti u morya, 1909), a picture book, in which a family
trip to the beach comes up as a bright memory in the autumn. It is pos-
sible, however, that the book is a translation, as the illustrative material
seems to be of foreign origin.

36 A. Khvol’son, Rucheek (SPb, 1888), 147.

37 M. Sobolev, Pedagogicheskii sbornik 5 (1889): 508.
38 Obzor detskoi literatury za 1885–1888 g.g. (SPb, 1889), 62.
 modernism (1890–1917) 203

Khvolson died an émigré in Paris in 1934, totally forgotten as a chil-

dren’s writer.
The Kid and Zhuchka (Malysh i Zhuchka, 1896) by Valentina Dmitrieva
(1859–1947) was awarded a Fröbel prize and became a popular favourite
for many generations. Like Tolstoy’s Filipok, Dmitrieva’s fatherless peas-
ant boy the Kid symbolises the Russian people’s craving for learning. A
positive attitude to life makes the Kid everybody’s favourite. In the dra-
matic final scene he is saved from freezing to death in a snowstorm by his
faithful dog Zhuchka. The Soviet writer Vera Inber remembered The Kid
and Zhucka from her pre-revolutionary childhood and was later surprised
to see how short Dmitrieva’s famous story was in reality. In her imagi-
nation it had grown into a grandiose epos with mythical, larger-than-life
figures.39
Dmitrieva, daughter of a former serf, had radical Populist sympathies.
A teacher and a doctor, she was involved in revolutionary activity and
was imprisoned several times for distributing forbidden literature and
participating in demonstrations. Her heroes are common people of peas-
ant origin, working in factories, coal mines and ports. Ten-year-old Dimka
(1900) is sold to a glassworks in Moscow, where he is forced to work in
harsh conditions. Seen from this hell, his poor home village looks like a
lost paradise. While many of his wretched comrades at work adjust and
lose their best character traits, Dimka remains humane and rebels by run-
ning away.
Dmitrieva’s pacifist story “Mama at War” (“Mama na voyne”, 1898) was
widely read. In letters home, a young nurse in the Russo-Turkish war of
1877–1878 expresses her horror at the bloodshed. The Turkish enemy is
also human and, just like the Russians, “suffers, feels pain, laughs and
cries”. This insight makes the nurse’s children stop playing war, and when
their mother finally returns home they start praying for the enemy in a
true Christian spirit.
The best of Dmitrieva’s stories for children were included in the vol-
umes The Unfortunate One and Other Stories (Goryun i drugie rasskazy,
1910) and Spring Colour (Veshny tsvet, 1911). Here we meet friendship that
crosses class barriers, orphans who are saved by kind people and given a
chance to study and conscience-stricken thieves. The stories are charac-
terised by a strong belief in human kindness and a readiness to help fel-
low men. Prejudices can all be overcome. Dmitrieva also wrote fairy tales,

39 Vera Inber, Sobranie sochinenii: V 4 tomakh. Vol. 4 (M., 1966), 114.

204 chapter five

such as “The Christmas Tree in the Forest” (“Yolka v lesu”), in which Father
Christmas arranges a party for the inhabitants of the forest. An orientation
towards the fantastic and dreamlike, rare for the predominantly realist
Dmitrieva, characterises the tale “In the Green Kingdom” (“V zelyonom
tsarstve”). Little Petrushka encounters living, enigmatic nature, where a
struggle between good and evil is taking place.
As a writer, Dmitrieva survived the year of 1917, publishing several
books in the twenties before gradually dropping out of Soviet literature,
which was essentially foreign to her.
The pedagogue Mariya Lyalina (1880–1910) based her stories on eth-
nographic and historical material. The orphan boy in A Native Talent
(Samorodok, 1894) works as a cowherd but is attracted by the world of
learning. This talented child of the people, perhaps a new Lomonosov,
gets a chance in life through his contact with the local gentry. A help-
ing hand is also offered to the heroine of The Granddaughter of the Brave
Corporal (Vnuchka khrabrogo kaprala, 1911), a little Russian girl who loses
her home and parents during the 1812 war. A French officer takes her with
him to France and leaves her his fortune. His generosity is partly a reac-
tion to the “well-known” Russian attitude towards the enemy: “The French
already knew that the Russians were kind people who treated the fleeing
soldiers from the crushed army with compassion.” The historical story For
Her Father: Princess Khotinskaya (Za ottsa: Knyazhna Khotinskaya, 1914)
advocates freedom of religion. The Princess is able to win redemption
for her father, an Old Believer, during an audience with Tsarevna Sofya
Alekseevna.
Lyalina is also the author of short, sentimental, moralistic stories, writ-
ten in an old-fashioned vein—Small Children and Their Small Doings
(Detishki i ikh delishki, 1898). The children play at war, get into trouble
on a pond and in the forest, feel envy towards their brothers and sisters,
learn to regret and confess small sins. Christmas and Easter are the source
of “pure spiritual bliss” for Lyalina’s child characters. Little Brothers and
Sisters (Bratishki i sestryonki, 1892) presents scenes from a peaceful, idyl-
lic children’s world; the illustrations by the British artist Emily J. Harding
appear to have inspired the text. Spoiled Little Children (Malenkie balo-
vni, 1906) includes one hundred stories, adaptations of English children’s
literature.
Lyalina also wrote several plays for school theatres. A whole series of
her books deals with Russian travellers. In 1893 Lyalina wrote to her pub-
lisher Suvorin that her heroes, who include not only Nikolay Przhevalsky,
Nikolay Severtsev and Grigory Potanin, but also Charles Darwin, “can serve
 modernism (1890–1917) 205

as excellent examples of diligence and will-power for young people”.40 Her

goal was “to throw light on these names in the memories of my contempo-
raries and simultaneously show them the respect they deserve”.41 Special-
ists were grateful for Lyalina’s attempt to popularise scientific work, while
readers had definite problems with these dry biographies with their mass
of superfluous details.
Assuming that a male name would make it easier to establish herself as
a writer, Margarita Yamshchikova chose to publish under the pen name
Al. Altaev (1872–1959). She found the name in a short story by Yakov
Polonsky, a writer whom she deeply admired. Her first work, a Christmas
fairy tale, “Seeing in the New Year” (“Vstrecha novogo goda”), appeared in
1899 in the December issue of Universal Illustration (Vsemirnaya illyustrat-
siya), when she was only seventeen. The death of a sick boy on the New
Year’s Eve is metaphorically depicted as a flight through the sky under the
guidance of a young New Year to a land where there are no tears and no
suffering.
After an early divorce from a husband who forbade her to write and
burned her manuscripts, Altaev chose to devote herself to writing for a
living. She started with workbooks for pre-school children, but she soon
found her main genres—fictionalised biographies and historical novels.
She produced life stories of artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael
and Bryullov, scientists such as Galileo, Giordano Bruno and Carl von
Linnaeus, political figures such as Garibaldi and Abraham Lincoln, com-
posers such as Beethoven, Glinka and Tchaikovsky, writers such as Cer-
vantes, Lermontov and Hans Christian Andersen, religious activists such
as Luther, Jan Huss and Patriarch Nikon. Together with her daughter,
Altaev wrote two books on the childhood of notable people in 1918 and
1919. Her heroes, depicted in a fairly sentimental and schematic way, stay
true to their vision and calling in spite of adversity and suffering. They are,
in the words of one of Altaev’s books, ‘torch-bearers’.
In her historical novels Altaev treated turning points in history. Not only
the Russian past interested her, but also conflicts from Czech, German,
Dutch, Italian, English, Spanish and Latin American history. Her adven-
ture tales presented information about uprisings, revolutions and wars of
liberation. The novels have many layers and describe clear-cut conflicts.
In Under the Banner of the Shoe (Pod znamenem Bashmaka, 1906) Altaev

40 Russkie pisateli 1800–1917. Vol. 3 (M., 1994), 443.

41  Ibid.
206 chapter five

presents the religious figure Thomas Münzer and the rebellous German
peasants of the early sixteenth century as revolutionary heroes. The par-
allel to the Russian situation was obvious, and the publication of more
than ten editions showed that it did not pass unnoticed. Thunder over
Moscow (Groza na Moskve, 1914) deals with the times of Ivan the Ter-
rible. Altaev does not pay attention only to the social conflicts of the era,
but also to the Tsar’s family drama. The tyrannical Tsar is seen partly
through the eyes of two of his many wives, the Cherkessian beauty Mariya
Temryukovna and the young Marfa Sobakina. Doomed to remain an out-
sider in the Kremlin, Marfa dies just two weeks after their wedding, curs-
ing the ruthless despot and murderer Ivan on her deathbed.
Along with her biographical and historical novels, Altaev also wrote
tales and animal stories for younger children, collecting them in books like
Snowflakes (Snezhinki, 1897), Stories about Animals and People (Rasskazy
o zhivotnykh i lyudyakh, 1905), Stories and Tales (Rasskazy i skazki, 1911)
and Tales of Life (Skazki zhizni, 1913). Pity and concern for all living crea-
tures, trademarks of the Russian Realists in general, characterise many of
her stories and tales. By contrasting different experiences of childhood,
Altaev touched upon the issue of social inequality. A Christian spirit fills
her cycle of ‘spruce tales’. In her writing about animals, a recurrent theme
is freedom and captivity; that is also the title of one collection, In Captivity
and in Freedom: the First Stories about Life in Nature (V nevole i na vole:
Pervye rasskazy iz zhizni prirody, 1911). In many tales by Altaev a child
opens the door of a cage to let a bird soar up freely into the air.
Partly as a result of her astonishingly large number of publications,
Altaev’s oeuvre is uneven. The critic Nikolay Savvin had another explana-
tion: “The colourfulness and the very artistry of her images are lost every
time the author chooses a topic from current life.”42 In general, he consid-
ered her to be “аn exceptionally talented artist”, one of the most powerful
writers of contemporary children’s literature.43 Nikolay Chekhov, in his
Children’s Literature (Detskaya literature, 1909), also called Altaev “a truly
outstanding writer of our time”.44
At an early age Altaev came in contact with radical political circles dur-
ing the 1905 revolution. Her critical attitude to the Tsarist regime made it

42 N.A. Savvin, Opyt ezhegodnika detskoi literatury i zhurnalistiki za 1909 g. (M., 1910), 64.
43 Ibid., 63.
44 Chekhov, Detskaia literatura, 143.
 modernism (1890–1917) 207

easy for her to become a Soviet writer. She continued to write up to her
death in 1959, and in all, during seventy years of literary activity, more
than 200 of her books appeared. Very few of them, however, appear to be
of lasting value.
The title story of Tatyana Shchepkina-Kupernik’s (1874–1952) collection
of short stories From Lita’s Childhood (Iz detstva Lity, 1913) tells of twelve-
year-old Lita, a lively girl who loves Nikolay Vagner’s The Tales of Kitty Cat.
An orphan, Lita has to leave her hometown and move to St Petersburg to
stay with her mother’s relatives. This ray of sunshine manages to breathe
new life into the callous, egoistic and reserved adults in her new surround-
ings. Lack of warmth, care and pity is characteristic of the milieu where
Shchepkina-Kupernik’s children live, and many pages are devoted to their
search for ways to overcome these obstacles. Shchepkina-Kupernik, better
known as an actress from the Moscow Art Theatre, is also the author of
other children’s books, including Stories for Children (Rasskazy dlya detey,
1903) and Life Opens Up (Zhizn otkryvaetsya, 1905).
In the magazines Path and Spring one can also come across the name
Olga Forsh (1873–1961). Everybody Has His Own Likings (Chto komu nrav-
itsya, 1914), a collection of her works for children, showed that here Rus-
sia had a talented, highly original children’s writer. Unfortunately, Forsh
escaped the attention of both critics and audience, and during her long
Soviet career she never returned to the field.
Without actually being a Symbolist, Forsh accepted their premise of
double realities. With the help of unstrained imagination, the children of
her stories freely restructure the world and erase the border line between
man and animal. Forsh’s main work, The Bear Panfamil (Medved Pan-
famil, 1909), has a racy opening: “When Panfamil ran away from his mas-
ter, six-year-old Fomka sat on his shoulders and yelled out for joy at the
top of his voice. Everything had turned out just as he thought.” Fomka
turns into a bear cub, living the free life of a Russian Mowgli. To ‘turn bear’
(omedveditsya), a neologism, is no problem for little Fomka. The boy’s
imaginative force is defeated only when it tries to incorporate the world
of adults in its realm of fantasy. The attempt to marry the bear to the lady
landowner Tomata (Pomidora) does not succeed.
“The Wind Player” (“Dukhovik”, 1912) is a highly original, intriguing tale.
Dukhovik is a fantasy spirit that materialises in vegetables at night, and it
manages the process of metamorphosis as children and animals change
identity and shapes. An accomplished artist, Forsh illustrated the tale her-
self. The heroine of “Pumpa’s Garden” (“Pumpin sad”, 1914) is allowed to
208 chapter five

enter the animal world as a reward for her kindness towards all living
creatures. In “The Cunning Animals” (“Khitrye zveri”, 1912) the animals
take advantage of the thin line between man and animal. When the own-
ers of a farm are away, the sly animals take over the house, fooling the
servants by appearing as a general and his spouse.
Mariya Tolmachova (1867–1942) only started to write for small chil-
dren in the 1910s. How Tasya Lived (Kak zhila Tasya, 1913) reveals the
author’s deep interest in the inner world of the child. Parents and children
solve moral dilemmas together. The book’s unrealistic dialogue partially
undermines its artistic ambitions. Tolmachova’s next book, Small People
(Malenkie lyudi, 1914), was published by Solovyova in the Path library.
Friendship and meetings across class barriers are recurrent themes. A sud-
den glimpse into other people’s lives brings about changes. Peaceful Pages
(Mirnye stranitsy, 1916) depicts the life of children from well-off families.
They play and take care of animals, celebrate Christmas and Easter, quar-
rell and make peace, fall ill and get well. Little Vasya’s favourite reading is
the magazine Glow-Worm (Svetlyachok), a homage to Tolmachova’s tire-
less writer colleague, Aleksandr Fyodorov-Davydov.
As one of the most promising new names in children’ literature prior
to 1917 Tolmachova went on publishing for children in the Soviet 1920s.
However, after 1930 her name disappears from literature and nothing is
known about the last decade of her life.

Pity for the Outcast

Almost all male writers of importance in the early twentieth century wrote
at least occasionally for children, but only a few of them showed any gen-
uine insight into the specifics of the genre. Adaptation to the children’s
level of development and taste was most often insufficient. Humour, fan-
tasy and exciting adventures were rare, while the defence of the outcast
remained the abiding theme.
Nikolay Poznyakov (1856–1910) is famous for his ex-libris, “This book
has been stolen from Nikolay Poznyakov”. In his children’s books nothing
of this cynical distrust of his fellow man is to be found. In his numer-
ous Christmas and Easter stories, outbursts of seasonal love and concern
bring people closer to one another. The importance of these holidays is
exceptional, and Poznyakov invites the reader to ponder upon their true
meaning. In other stories, written in the spirit of classical Russian Realism,
Poznyakov discovers genuine, forgotten heroes among children and work-
ing people. Many of these stories are presented as genuine memories.
 modernism (1890–1917) 209

Poznyakov was also a diligent translator of poetry, mostly epic poems

with a moral content. He turned Bret Harte’s sketch How Santa Claus Came
to Simpson’s Bar (1870) into a poignant poem, Saint Nikolay (Svyatoy Niko-
lay), included in the collection first called Read Something! (Pochitat-by!,
1887) and later renamed From Heart to Heart (Ot serdtsa k serdtsu, 1897).
The poem also appeared separately. Touched by the exalted Christmas
expectations of a poor, sickly boy, coarse Californian workers do their best
to turn the Christian message of love into reality. Poznyakov also pub-
lished a volume of short works called Children’s Party (Detsky prazdnik,
1884), later renamed A Keepsake for Small Children (Na pamyat detkam,
1894).
Poznyakov’s main work for children is the long-standing favourite Com-
rade: a Story from School Life (Tovarishch: Povest iz shkolnoy zhizni, 1896).
It is a school novel, written in the spirit of Thomas Hughes’s pattern-setting
Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857), which had been translated into Russian by
Kazimir Barantsevich in 1874. In Poznyakov’s novel, ten-year-old Borya is
fearful of leaving his sheltered childhood world to enter a boarding school
in St Petersburg. A kind and gullible boy from the countryside, he does not
find the adjustment easy. Not everybody has good intentions. There are
lazy and dishonest pupils, but also bullies, who take joy in harassing out-
siders, be they Jews or Germans. Borya gradually learns the hard facts of
life, which include enduring the tragic deaths of friends and teachers, and
he makes close friends and becomes a model pupil. The book explores the
difference between true concern for others and malignant informing on
classmates. Borya is guided by his adored father’s words: “The main thing
is to love people, to respect them. Remember that even in an evil person
there is still a divine spark.” The seventh, and last, edition of Comrade
came out in Berlin in 1923, a reminder for émigré children of a world lost
forever.
In the 1880s Vasily Avenarius became known as a writer of informative
literature and fairy tales. Later he tried the genre of biographical novels,
portraying the young Pushkin and Gogol. Towards the turn of the century
he turned to writing historical novels, striving both to provide facts by cre-
ating true pictures of the chosen time and setting, and, at the same time,
to develop a dynamic and romantic plot. The task was not an easy one,
and sometimes Avenarius’ wish to educate the reader takes the form of
tedious excursions with footnotes and genuine documents. His historical
characters also tend to lack psychological depth.
Avenarius started off with the most dramatic period of all, the Time of
Troubles. For the Tsarevich (Za tsarevicha, 1890–1902) is a lengthy trilogy,
210 chapter five

consisting of Three Crowns (Tri ventsa), The Son of the Ataman (Syn ata-
mana) and Towards Moscow! (Na Moskvu!). Modelled after The Captain’s
Daughter by Pushkin, it does not achieve the same artistic level. In the
first part the ‘False Dmitry’ appears, claiming to be the Tsarevich who has
miraculously survived the gruesome plans of Boris Godunov. In the sec-
ond part, Dmitry gathers an army and secures support in Zaporozhe and
Poland. The third part tells about the march on Moscow, Dmitry’s corona-
tion, his brief time at the height of power and his bloody end.
Dmitry is presented as a clever but reckless person. He is himself unsure
of his true identity, but having chosen the role of the Tsarevich, he sticks
to it to the very end. At the bottom of his striving for power is a longing
for freedom. However, the true hero of the trilogy is Mikhailo Kurbsky,
Dmitry’s supporter. Artistically a rather lifeless figure, Kurbsky is full of
virtues, straightforward, and ready to fight for the man whom he believes
to be the legitimate ruler. He also fights women, Jesuits and Poles who try
to take advantage of Dmitry in their own interests. The Poles emerge as
frivolous and improvident, full of cruel contempt for the common people.
There is an ongoing struggle between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and
as reprehensible as Dmitry’s attempt at gaining power are the ruthless
machinations behind the scenes.
The theme of loyalty and rebellion at a complex historical moment
recurs in Out of Favour (Opalnye, 1905). During the reign of Tsar Aleksey
Mikhaylovich, a boyar falls into disgrace for his criticism of the duma and
is exiled to his estate. His children are drawn into the Cossack rebellion
led by Stenka Razin. Avenarius spent considerable effort on understand-
ing the background of the conflict. In a happy final scene, the Tsar and his
boyar and the father and his son are all reconciled.
Avenarius sets the historical novel In the Lion’s Mouth (Vo lvinoy pasti,
1894) in the time of the creation of St Petersburg. The book narrates the
adventures of a young nobleman, an honourable Russian patriot, and his
servant, who have been sent by Peter the Great secretly to gather informa-
tion about the Swedish fortress Nyenskans. Captured by the enemy as a
spy, the nobleman is freed only when Russian troops attack the fortress.
Avenarius contrasts two types—the energetic, self-made Russians and the
class-conscious and indolent Swedish nobility. His admiration for Peter
the Great verges on a cult. The tsar’s historical mission is to defeat the
Swedes and expand Russia’s borders. This is a turning point in history, the
beginning of Russian dominance; in the epilogue her new capital is born
on the site of the old Swedish fortress Nyenskans.
 modernism (1890–1917) 211

With its plot solidly based upon documents, The Little Make-Believe
Soldier (Menshoy Poteshny, 1891) recounts the youth of Peter the Great
and his circle of friends. Menshikov appears as an idealised figure who
rises from a seller of pasties to the Tsar’s counsellor. This story was later
included in the volume Cornflowers and Ears of Wheat (Vasilki i kolosya,
1895).
Under the German Yoke (Pod nemetskim yarmom, 1907–1908) has two
parts: Bironism (Bironovshchina) and Two Regencies (Dva regentstva). It
is set during the years 1739–1741, with power in Russia in German hands,
and spying and informing everywhere. Ernst Biron, Duke of Kurland, is
Tsarevna Anna’s favourite, but among the Russian people he is hated. The
oppressor only enjoys a short three-week period of power. A young hero-
ine, Lilli Vrangel, unfortunately too often forgotten by the author, wit-
nesses political intrigues in the palace. In the background of the historical
drama we see Lomonosov, the great figure in Russian science. Avenarius
gave his novel a happy ending with Elizaveta Petrovna coming to power
through a coup in 1741, allowing a period of nationalist-orientated Russian
rule to begin.
Before Sunrise (Pered rassvetom, 1899) is a tale from the last years of
serfdom viewed partly from the perspective of the child of a landowner.
He sees families dissolved as serfs are sold like cattle. The boy reads Tur-
genev’s The Notes of a Hunter and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s
Cabin, but a bigger influence is his father, who acknowledges the human
dignity of the serfs. For the father, the Russian peasants and servants are
equals and not just property, while other landowners see the prevailing
system as God’s will. The edict of emancipation in 1861 is perceived as the
most important event in Russia during its thousand-year-long history, and
Alexander II, the ‘tsar-liberator’, is extravagantly praised.
In A First Foreign Trip: the Travel Diary of a Boarding School Girl (Pervy
vylet: Putevoy dnevnik institutki, 1902), initially published in Spring as
In Foreign Places (V chuzhikh krayakh, 1901), a fifteen-year-old St Peters-
burg girl travels with her brother to see their mother in Ems, the German
health resort, during their summer holidays. These knowledgeable chil-
dren from a senator’s family are good observers. Avenarius, nevertheless,
refrains from loading his novel with too many historical and geographical
facts. Speaking in the youth slang of the time, the girl describes meetings
and visits to zoos, museums and palaces. The children visit Berlin and
Vienna, and briefly Italy and Switzerland. Everything is different: only the
sparrows are the same as those in Russia. The issue of national character
212 chapter five

comes up. At the sight of the emotional meeting between the Russian girl
and her mother in Kissingen, a German utters, “Das sind Russen”, upon
which the girl comments, “Yes, yes, dear Germans, we are people with a
heart, still so natural that we cannot hold back our family feelings.”45 At
the end of the novel an entirely superfluous scene is added of a close
friend of the children dying in Vienna. Thoughts of the lonely Russian
grave in Austria put a damper on the last days of the journey. At the Rus-
sian border a porter asks the girl kindly: “Well, what do you say, miss, is it
‘East, West, home is best’?”46 Readers are sure to know the answer.
Scenes from the author’s childhood are recounted in Pages from Child-
hood Memoirs (Listki iz detskikh vospominaniy (1888–90) with warmth
and humour and without any sentimentality. Avenarius writes in fluent
language about his formative happy early years in his family and among
relatives. Especially important is the influence of his father, a priest, from
whom he gets a firm sense of duty and honour.
Avenarius also tried his hand at science fiction, a then-undeveloped
genre in Russian juvenile literature. The Unusual Story of a Resurrected
Pompeian (Neobyknovennaya istoriya o voskresshem pompeitse, 1889),
published in the magazine Novels and Stories (Romany i povesti), was
originally written for adults, but turned into youth reading in 1903. A
mummy found in Pompeii is resurrected (incidentally, by the scent of
cheap Italian tobacco!) and learns about life in modern Italy. Not only is
he amazed by the latest technology, but he also looks critically at modern
life with its gap between rich and poor. The clash between different world
views is treated more in the spirit of a serious lecture than as an adventure
story with a few humorous situations inserted. The book is illustrated with
photographs.
After the revolution Avenarius published Plays for Children (Pesy dlya
detey) and Small Plays for Small Children (Peski dlya malyutok), both in
1924. The dramatisations of classic short stories and fables were definitely
out of touch with the historical moment. Avenarius was never accepted
in the Soviet Union, and only after 1991 did his works experience a modest
renaissance.
Konstantin Stanyukovich (1843–1903) was already an established writer
when, in the mid-1890s, Almedingen invited him to publish in the maga-
zine Spring. Stanyukovich did not take much persuading; he had in fact

45 V.P. Avenarius, “V chuzhikh kraiakh,” Rodnik 2 (1901): 204.

46 Avenarius, Rodnik 6 (1901): 670.
 modernism (1890–1917) 213

long planned to write something for children. His choice of subject, life
at sea, another under-represented subgenre in Russian juvenile literature,
was obvious. Stanyukovich came from Sevastopol, where his father had
been an admiral in the Russian fleet. In 1860, at the age of sixteen, the
young Stanyukovich went on a sea voyage around the world on the cor-
vette ‘Kalevala’, returning to Russia only three years later with the firm
decision to become a writer.
Stanyukovich’s first work for young readers, Around the World on the
‘Falcon’ (Vokrug sveta na ‘Korshune’), appeared in 1895–1896 in the maga-
zine Spring. Drawing on his own experiences, Stanyukovich tells the story
of a young Russian sailor Ashanin, whose character is fostered by stormy
weather, a rough commander and a coarse crew. Rather than inventing
extraordinary events, Stanyukovich dwells upon everyday life on a naval
ship. In a loosely linked chapter, Ashanin is sent to Saigon, commissioned
to write a report on the French subjugation of Cochin China. The descrip-
tion of foreign countries is, as always in Stanyukovich’s works, done with
care for accurate ethnographic details.
Freedom, equality and human dignity were central issues for Stanyuko-
vich. His favourite decade was the 1860s, when the Russian Emperor liber-
ated the peasants and spoke out against corporal punishment in the army
and navy. Among the sea stories that Stanyukovich published in children’s
magazines, The Little Sailor (Matrosik, 1898), a study in heroism and self-
sacrifice, and Maksimka (1896) are particularily interesting. In the latter,
the crew on a Russian naval clipper rescues a shipwrecked African boy,
who has been kept as a slave on an American ship. Maksimka, as he is
now called, chooses to stay with the Russians, even converting to Ortho-
doxy, as, for the first time in his life, he is treated like a human being.
Slavery had been abandoned in Russia, but was still in force in America.
The Nurse (Nyanka, 1895) movingly pictures the friendship between a boy,
the son of a captain, and his ‘nurse’, a crippled sailor. The idealised por-
traits of a man of the people and a pure-hearted child are contrasted with
a milieu full of prejudices. The critic Nikolay Chekhov thought The Nurse
was one of the best stories in Russian children’s literature.47
The same pathos dominates Stanyukovich’s main work for young read-
ers, the voluminous Adventures of a Sailor (Pokhozhdenie odnogo matrosa,
1899–1900). A young Russian sailor, left ashore in San Francisco in the
1860s, has adventures during a sea voyage to Australia and a stage-coach

47 Chekhov, Detskaia literatura, 171.

214 chapter five

ride across the American continent. He is involuntarily drawn into the

American civil war, in which he sides with the North. With his boundless
goodness and his faith in man and the power of forgiveness, this Myshkin
figure appears as a simpleton in the eyes of the Americans, but like Dos-
toevsky’s hero, he changes the life of the people that he meets. The book
strongly criticises American ideals and the American way of life, which
are presented as racist, mercilessly profiteering and contemptuous of the
poor. The soul is forgotten, complains the Russian, for whom it is more
important to remain human than to gather riches. Stanyukovich partly
relies on the British historian and traveller Walter Hepworth Dixon, whose
works on American life had been immediately translated into Russian in
the 1860s and 1870s, but some of the charlatans, swindlers, drunkards and
robbers in the rogues’ gallery seem to be taken from Mark Twain’s The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The young Russian chooses to return to
St Petersburg rather than settling in America.
As a child Stanykovich had witnessed and even participated in the
Crimean War. In his last, unfinished novel, The Boy from Sevastopol (Sev-
astopolsky malchik, 1902), he returned to this dramatic period from the
perspective of a child. Using both historical documents and his own
recollections, Stanyukovich created a broad epic, ranging from gener-
als to the eleven-year-old Markushka. The boy, who loses his family and
friends in the war, expresses pacifist sentiments (“Why do people kill
each other . . . Why!”), but cannot avoid becoming involved in the fighting
against the French and English invaders. Here, he comes to realise that
the enemy army, too, consists of suffering humans forced by their mon-
archs to participate in the bloodshed.
In Stanyukovich’s works children and young people have the main roles,
but the author focuses primarily on the relationship between adults and
children. A feeling of responsibility towards readers is strong. Stanyuko-
vich’s unfamiliarity with the genre of children’s literature did not prevent
him from producing some of the best works of the period. In Adventures of
a Sailor, Stanyukovich aimed at creating something like a Russian version
of popular adventure books by foreign writers like Boussenard and Louis
Jacolliot. The many memorable, convincing character portraits and the
unfailing human pathos made Stanyukovich one of the most respected
Russian writers at the turn of the century.
In a trilogy consisting of Tyoma’s Childhood (Detstvo Tyomy, 1892),
School Boys (Gimnazisty, 1893) and Students (Studenty, 1895), Nikolay
Garin-Mikhaylovsky (1852–1906) traced the spiritual development of a
boy from an officer’s family. Psychological analysis of the main characters
 modernism (1890–1917) 215

is central, but Garin-Mikhaylovsky was also good at creating social types.

The boy’s strict upbringing in the family and at school generates attempts
at rebellion. Unfortunately, the trilogy lacks a consistent story line and a
sense of drama and humour. In the Soviet Union a chapter from Tyoma’s
Childhood was published separately under the title Tyoma and Zhuchka
(Tyoma i Zhuchka). The story of how Tyoma recues his beloved dog from
a deep well became a resounding success.
In contrast, an incomprehensible silence shrouds Garin-Mikhaylovsky’s
Tales for Children (Skazki dlya detey, 1909). Highly original and absorbing,
the volume deserved a better fate than oblivion after just one edition.
In the tradition of Nikolay Vagner, Garin-Mikhaylovsky did not shy away
from non-standard plots, seemingly illogical twists and tragic solutions. A
great and steadfast love often leads to death, and, likewise, salvation from
cruelty and insults only exists in a world beyond our senses. Still the dream
of happiness for all on earth is strong, as for example in “The Book of Hap-
piness” (“Knizhka schastya”). A fearless quest for truth leads the young
wilful hero in “The Capricious Black Prince” (“Chorny Prints-kaprizuka”)
to the realm of Princess Truth (Pravda). Eventually, the evil sorcerer who
guards the entrance to the utopia of total veracity is defeated without
much effort: “Out of old age he grew smaller and smaller and eventually
became so small that a little fish swallowed him without even noticing.”
“The Story of a Girl” (“Istoriya odnoy devochki”) opens with a similarly
grotesque situation: “Once when all the children werer sitting at the table
for dinner, an enormous hand suddenly came through the open door and
grabbed one of the girls. The girl kicked about with her little legs and
then disappeared from the room together with the terrible hand.” The
hand belongs to a giant who intrudes into the life of man just for the fun
of it. Having flung the girl far away, he disappears from the tale. The tale
unexpectedly ends with a wedding between the girl and a prince, but only
after many parodic twists and conflicts.

Like their precursors, the new generation of Realists preferred to depict

physically and psychologically maltreated children from the lower strata
of society. In their animal stories, too, these writers chose to portray
physically abused, abandoned individuals. A pessimistic note reigned in
Leonid Andreev’s (1871–1919) and Aleksandr Serafimovich’s short stories
about the joyless life of unprivileged children. Andreev’s stories of crushed
dreams and aspirations, such as “The Little Angel” (“Angelochek”), “Petka
at the Dacha” (“Petka na dache”) and “Biter” (“Kusaka”), had a cruel
ring whether they described children or animals, who enjoy short-lived
216 chapter five

happiness before being again plunged into solitude and misery. Originally
written for adults, these short stories, as evidence of the miseries of Tsar-
ist Russia, became frequently published children’s reading in the Soviet
Union.
A cycle of small stories called Little Fairy Tales Not Exactly for Children
(Skazochki ne sovsem dlya detey, 1911) lived up to its title. As parodies
of moral tales with a twisted sens moral at the end, they can hardly have
found many readers among young Russians. The cycle also included
Andreev’s only work originally published for children, “The Brave Wolf”
(“Khrabry volk”, 1909). It is a weird, surrealistic tale about a wolf that,
because of its impudence, has its tail cut off by a policeman. Fussy, stupid
doctors try to substitute a hot iron, a samovar and a cupboard for the
missing tail. The ideal solution seems to be an umbrella, but the result
of the operation is that the animal is lifted up towards the clouds during
a storm. In front of his wife and children the father figure is tested and
found wanting. Korney Chukovsky singled the tale out as original, while
other critics remained puzzled.48
In the short period between the 1905 Russian Revolution and the First
World War, Aleksandr Serafimovich (1863–1949) frequently published in
children’s magazines. Some of his stories were collected in the volume
Children’s Stories (Detskie rasskazy, 1907), later called Simple Life (Pros-
taya zhizn, 1911), with the outstanding artist Boris Kustodiev as illustrator.
Serafimovich stands out as an archetypal Realist writer whose works are
devoted to social themes. In stories like “The Little Miner” (“Malenky
shakhtyor”, 1895), “Nikita” (1906), “The Holiday” (“Prazdnik”, 1907), later
called “The Little Barber” (“Malenky parikmakher”), and “Mishka the
Vampire” (“Mishka-Upyr”, 1909), he depicts the life of children, most often
orphans, who grow up under utterly harsh conditions. From an early age
they do hard work for which the only reward is to be bullied and mal-
treated. Theirs is a world of exploitation and violence, hunger and unem-
ployment. Frequent settings are coalmines, railways and fishing villages.
The poor peasant boy Gavrilka in “The Snake Puddle” (“Zmeinaya luzha”,
1914) is one of Serafimovich’s rare winners, as against all odds he is able
to develop his talents and become an artist.
Unsure about the tastes of his audience, Serafimovich often indulges in
far too detailed descriptions of milieu and also in poetical digressions. He
tried to overcome a lack of epic material by choosing dramatic situations

48 Chukovskii, Sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 2 (M., 2001), 557.

 modernism (1890–1917) 217

such as a storm or a nocturnal adventure in the deep forest as peripeteia.

This is the case in “Into the Storm” (“V buryu”, 1903), “In the Forest”
(“V lesu”, 1908), later called “Life in the Forest” (“Lesnaya zhizn”), and “The
Little Ferryman” (“Malenky paromshchik”, 1916), later called “A Night of
Thunder and Lightning” (“Vorobinaya noch”). Like so many of his male
colleagues, Serafimovich wanted to open his readers’ eyes to the nature
of a class society. The middle-class boy in “Seryozha” (1907) does not see
the point of attending school, but seeks ‘real life’ in the works of Jules
Verne and Mayne Reid. Encountering homeless children, social outcasts,
plainly reveals to him the existence of a divided Russia. Serafimovich is
at his best in the story “Three Friends” (“Tri druga”, 1914), where little
Vanyatka’s friendship with a young hare and a puppy and his irresistible
wish to attend school, in spite of his young age, are depicted with a
tenderness rare for this writer.
It cannot be denied that Serafimovich had an important message, but,
as Nikolay Chekhov wisely commented, “it would be terrible if children’s
literature presented its readers with more of this kind of material”.49 Not
surprisingly, Serafimovich became a staunch Soviet writer, siding with the
Bolsheviks immediately after the October Revolution. He abandoned chil-
dren’s literature, but his early stories were frequently republished, now as
testimonies of children’s unhappy life in pre-revolutionary Russia.
Nikolay Teleshov (1867–1957) wanted to show how his homeless heroes,
‘God’s children’, for whom life has become a burden, occasionally encoun-
ter kindness and sympathy. A cycle of three stories dealt with the fate of
the children of peasant migrants, who travel to Siberia in search of land
and a better life. Syomka in “Homewards” (“Domoy”, 1898) loses his par-
ents during their journey eastwards. Abandoned and forgotten, the boy
resides among people for whom it does not matter whether he lives or
dies. The friend Syomka makes on his trip back home to ‘Raseya’ turns
out to be an escaped convict. When his comrade is arrested, Syomka is
again left on his own in a cold, indifferent world. In “Mitrich’s Christmas
Tree” (“Yolka Mitricha”, 1901), eight orphans rejoice when the watchman
Mitrich decides to surprise them with a Christmas tree with candles, as
well as sausages and sweets, dancing and singing. His reward is the hap-
piness of these gloomy children. The old dog in “Everything Will Pass”
(“Vse prokhodit”, 1909) looks back on a life without many happy moments
and tries hard to see it now in a golden light.

49 Chekhov, Detskaia literatura, 152.

218 chapter five

With stories like these, Teleshov neatly placed himself in the tradition
of down-to-earth Realism. He followed closely the advice that he had
received from Dmitry Tikhomirov, the editor of Children’s Reading, on
how to write children’s literature: “The main thing (. . .) is to forget that
you are writing for children and not to ingratiate yourself with the child
reader. The simpler, the better.”50
Teleshov’s lasting contribution to Russian children’s literature is, how-
ever, of quite a different kind. It is the fascinating fairy tale “The White
Heron” (“Belaya tsaplya”, 1900), in which Princess Isolde is led astray by
her vanity. At her command, a rare white heron is killed so that its snow-
white tuft can adorn her wedding-dress. Isolde’s thoughtless whim leads
to the extinction of this whole species of bird. The wise words of her father
are fulfilled: “True happiness lies only in mercy, and if we become brutal,
happiness will escape us.” In a dream Isolde is reproached for her deed
by the last two herons, and, full of remorse, she decides to devote herself
to charity in her kingdom. A dream of universal happiness rises from the
bloody realm of death.
In his story “In the Depths of the Earth” (“V nedrakh zemli”, 1899),
Aleksandr Kuprin (1870–1938) praised the courage and loyalty of a twelve-
year-old miner. The boy feels like a stranger in the coalmine and the
accommodation barracks, but when a mine-shaft collapses, he overcomes
his fear and saves the life of an adult miner. Unspoiled by his uncouth sur-
roundings, he leaves readers with the hope of a better future. The theme of
the moving and dramatic stories “The White Poodle” (“Bely pudel”, 1904)
and “The Elephant” (“Slon”, 1907) is the beneficial relationship between
children and animals. In spite of his miserable life, poor Sergey is not pre-
pared to part from his beloved white poodle for any money, and little
Nadya regains her will to live thanks to her meeting with an elephant, an
exotic dream come true.
The volume Children’s Stories (Detskie rasskazy, 1908), whose cover,
incidentally, was by Ivan Bilibin, included several new stories by Kuprin,
which, however, did not win the author much prestige as a children’s
writer. Lions, elephants and dogs are meant to appeal to children’s love
for animals (“V zverintse”, “Lolli”, “Sobache schaste”), and a flower which
blooms only once in a hundred years serves to show that beauty can
dwell within a modest outer appearance (“Stoletnik”). In “The Miraculous
Doctor” (“Chudesny doctor”) Kuprin pays homage to the famous doctor
Nikolay Pirogov, a saintly figure who treated poor people for free.

50 N. Teleshov, Zapiski pisatelia: Vospominaniia (М., 1948), 13.

 modernism (1890–1917) 219

For a second edition in 1914, Kuprin wrote “The Poor Prince” (“Bedny
prints”), a sad story about the overprotected upper-class boy Danya. He
rebels by attending a children’s Christmas procession, singing for money
in the neighbourhood, but he is soon brought back to his cage-like life.
Only Danya’s father understands the unnatural, even harmful essence
of the boy’s upbringing, but he is helpless against the matriarchy of the
household.
In emigration Kuprin wrote “Sapsan” (1921), a dog’s monologue. The
dog philosophises about big issues like life and death, but also reflects
upon its relations with its Master, with the daughter of the family (‘The
Little One’) and with the cat Katya.
Aleksey Svirsky (1865–1942), whose real name was Shimon Dovid Vig-
doros, was a writer from a Jewish background. An orphan, he roamed
around Russia, living among the lumpenproletariat and workers, and even
spending time in prison. After learning to write at the advanced age of
23, he became a notable children’s writer at the turn of the century. Mak-
ing use of his own experiences, Svirsky wrote about ‘street children’. His
main work is the novel Ginger (Ryzhy, 1901–02), which tracks the path of
an orphan shoemaker’s apprentice. Eleven years old, he starts to roam
around Russia, passing through Moscow, St Petersburg, Kiev and Odessa
on his endless travels. The adventure plot, with events seen from a child’s
point of view and colourful scenes in doss-houses, thieves’ schools and
a Russia of beggars and pilgrims, gained the book a well-deserved popu-
larity. Svirsky did not idealise life at the bottom of society; instead, he
showed how easily it destroys people. Ginger, however, is able to resist
all temptations and shape his own life. А swindler and conjurer who
plays a fateful role in Ginger’s life gives him sound advice on his death-
bed: “You must understand, we have passed life by, we haven’t been in its
midst . . . You must work . . . Be of use to other people . . . There you’ll find
happiness . . . Stop roaming around . . .” Eventually, Ginger finds his place
in the community of workers.
In a letter to the editor of Spring in 1910, Ivan Shmelyov (1873–1950) out-
lined his view of children’s literature: “The magazine must be encouraging,
it must lead one to the light, to optimism, to a sense of the worth of one’s
personality, to a belief that great possibilities are also immanent in sim-
ple hearts and in poor people.”51 Shmelyov’s own stories convey the same
respect for the common people and the self-taught man, often a loser in
a hierarchical class society. Toward a New Life (V novuyu zhizn, 1907) is a

51 V. Vil’nichinskii, “I.S. Shmelev v zhurnale ‘Rodnik’,” Russkaia literatura 3 (1966): 187.
220 chapter five

Bildungsroman, in which Senya, a poor peasant boy, goes through many

ordeals until he becomes a respected scientist, ready to work for the great
cause of the Russian people.
“The Servants of Truth” (“Sluzhiteli pravdy”), published in Young Russia
in 1906, exposed one of the dark spots of contemporary Russian life, the
pogrom. The senseless cruelty towards Jews is seen through the eyes of a
boy. In stories like “A Bright Page” (“Svetlaya stranichka’, 1908), “On the
Sea Shore” (“Na morskom beregu”, 1910), “A Gentleman in Rags” (“Rvany
barin”, 1910) and “Kuzma the Soldier” (“Soldat Kuzma”, 1915) Shmelyov
wrote about meetings, friendships and losses with a bittersweet taste of
nostalgia. Children and adults of different social backgrounds are brought
together, and the values of the adult world are put on trial when seen
through the eyes of a child. Shmelyov established distance from his cho-
sen subjects by retelling ‘a friend’s stories’ or looking back over a period
of many years. His stories about animals, like Towards the Sun (K solntsu,
1907), “Mary” (“Me1 ri”, 1907), “The Last Shot” (“Posledny vystrel”, 1908)
and “My ‘Mars’  ” (“Moy ‘Mars’  ”, 1910) stress man’s responsibility towards
nature.
Shmelyov published frequently in Young Russia from 1906 until the
revolution. He had already offered his very first text to Tikhomirov and
Children’s Reading as a pupil in the fifth year. The story was rejected, but
in an encouraging way, and Shmelev returned to it later, publishing it in
Young Russia as “One Night” (“Odnazhdy nochyu”, 1912). Some of his sto-
ries appeared in the volumes Towards a Bright Goal (K svetloy tseli, 1910)
and They and We (Oni i my, 1910). As a children’s writer, Shmelyov was
first and foremost a conventional Realist, and his attempts at fairy tales
deservedly passed unnoticed.
The stories of My Book (Moya kniga, 1909) by Evgeny Chirikov (1864–
1932) contain scenes from the lives of children and their pets. Chirikov
had a good eye for psychological nuances and inner conflicts. The sub-
stance of his most popular story, “Kolya and Kolka” (“Kolya i Kolka”), is a
schoolboy’s emotional return home from boarding school for the Christ-
mas holidays. “Ginger” (“Ryzhy”) was Chirikov’s literary debut in 1886.
When reading this accusation against the ‘fat cats’ of society in print, the
author himself could not help bursting into tears: an eight-year-old beg-
gar boy dies sick and hungry in a cold basement, mourned by nobody but
his faithful dog. Another dog, the narrator of “My Life” (“Moya zhizn”),
now abandoned and forgotten by its once so beloved family, nostalgically
recalls his “sweet, carefree youth”. Comparisons with human life give
depth to the dog’s story. Nor did Chirikov spare his readers’ feelings in
 modernism (1890–1917) 221

“The Piglet” (“Chavryusha”), in which a boy sees his beloved playmate, a

piglet, become food for the table.
A volume by Chirikov of 1909 is entitled In the Kingdom of Fairy Tales
(V tsarstve skazok). The child protagonist longs for the realm of fairy
tales, that is to say, “In a Certain Kingdom, In a Certain Land”. After many
adventures and encounters with both good and evil fairy-tale figures, some
of them taken from Russian folklore, he reaches his destination. Upon
returning home, he finds that nobody recognises him anymore, but luck-
ily the whole journey turns out to have been a dream. The critic Nikolay
Savvin found Chirikov’s book lacking in both charm and poetic feeling
and labelled it a failure.52 What Savvin failed to see was the author’s per-
sonal touch and rare ability to relive thoughts and fantasies from his own
childhood.
Ivan Nazhivin (1874–1940), a follower of Tolstoy, published mainly in
Tikhomirov’s Library for the Family and the School. His Peasant Children
(Krestyanskie deti, 1911–15) depicts scenes from peasant life, encounters
with nature, games, treasure hunts and scenes at school, often including
a kind and beloved teacher. Positive feelings and a strong belief in love
and kindness reign in Nazhivin’s works. The message is always impec-
cable, as for example in Mirushka’s Stories (Mirushkiny rasskazy, 1911), a
book dedicated to the memory of a beloved daughter. On the other hand,
Nazhivin’s weaknesses as a children’s writer also stand out: the adult nar-
rator is often too distant from his child characters, the storyline too thin
and lacking in originality.
Even in emigration in Belgium, Nazhivin wrote sporadically for chil-
dren. Green Shoots: Stories for Children about School Days (Zelenya:
Detskie rasskazy iz shkolnoy zhizni, 1922) tells of nine-year-old Vanya’s
initiation into a new Moscow school. He is drawn to the world of culture
and dreams of becoming a writer. Marxist literature is read in secret in the
school, but Nazhivin makes his standpoint clear by making love for Russia
the alternative to this kind of seductive underground literature.
Ioasaf Lyubich-Koshurov (1872–1937), a writer of humble Jewish origin,
started to publish in children’s magazines at the beginning of the century.
The children’s magazine which he himself launched had only one issue.
His sentimental stories about poor people, such as A Living Soul (Dusha
zhivaya, 1901) and The Canary (Kanareyka, 1901), treat moral conflicts,
processes of awakening and repenting, inevitably with a happy ending.

52 N. Savvin, Osnovnye napravleniia detskoi literatury (L., 1926), 62.

222 chapter five

Lyubich-Koshurov’s many tales about animals mix trustworthy informa-

tion with fiction and eccentric humour. A recurrent scenario is to have
the animals tell their stories to each other. The Dragon (Drakon, 1903) is
taken down from the words of a lizard, and In the Realm of Bees and Ants
(V tsarstve pchol i muravyov, 1902) we meet an ant-writer, the Mayne Reid
of the ant hill. Its book about African ants is included as a novel within
the novel, a rather original device. Uncle Vak (Dyadya Vak, 1901) is a frog,
captured by a boy and displayed at an animal exhibition.
In almost every children’s magazine of the early twentieth century one
was sure to come across the name Evgeny Shveder (1879–1946). In the
1910s his books appeared one after another—At Dawn (Na zare, 1910),
Gymnasium Girls (Gimnazistki, 1913), The Robinsons and Other Stories
(Robinzony i drugie rasskazy, 1913), The Fugitives (Begletsy, 1914), Among
Schoolchildren (Sredi shkolyarov, 191[?]), Gymnasium Girls’ Summer Holi-
days (Gimnazistki na kanikulakh, 1915), and so on. Much seems to be
based upon memories and events from Shveder’s own “dear, irretrievably
lost childhood”.53 He depicts the life of schoolchildren during their sum-
mer holidays in the countryside; his active boys enjoy freedom, but often
end up in trouble. The children have read their Mayne Reid and go look-
ing for adventures, but what they actually find is contact with real life
and nature, as they go hunting and fishing, or encounter people at work
in the countryside.
Shveder wrote fables, in which flowers, birds and animals comment
on human weaknesses. Biographies of famous people were another field
that he covered. Shveder came from Pskov and used his first-hand knowl-
edge of Pushkin’s nearby estate Mikhaylovskoe in a children’s book about
Pushkin. He went on writing after 1917, still publishing in Murzilka, the
magazine of the Young Pioneer movement, in the early 1930s. In 1945, at
the end of the Second World War, he was arrested, accused of participat-
ing in a pro-fascist magazine in Dnepropetrovsk during the occupation,
and reportedly died in a prison hospital the following year.
Ivan Mitropolsky (1872–after 1917) published in magazines such as Chil-
dren’s Reading, Little Toy and Guiding Light, but much of his writing also
appeared as books. Life in the villages with poverty and disease is at the
centre of the collection Taken from Life: Stories for Children (Iz zhizni:
Rasskazy dlya detey, 1899), while On the Timber Rafts (Na plotakh, 1903)
tells about the hard life of rafters. In Stories from the Volga (Iz volzhskikh

53 E. Shveder, Na zare (M., 1910), 133.

 modernism (1890–1917) 223

rasskazov, 1904), Mitropolsky wrote about the adventures of two boys on

a ship sailing along the river Volga.
Mitropolsky’s short story “Water” (“Voda”) was published in A Book of
Short Stories and Poems (Kniga rasskazov i stikhotvorenii, 1902), an anthol-
ogy of the writers of the Wednesday (Sreda) group. The volume included
works by such well-known authors as Andreev, Bunin, Gorky and Kuprin,
but in spite of this it was Mitropolsky’s story that was singled out for
praise by critics. During the unbearably hot weather in the Russo-Turkish
war, the fight for water makes everybody forget the suffering of a young
boy who is the favourite of the Russian army. The narrator calls himself
Cain, a murderer, whose egoism led to the death of his ‘brother’. A similar
pacifistic mood prevails in Mitropolsky’s stories about the Russo-Japanese
war, of which he had personal experience. In The Children of the Lieu-
tenant (Deti leytenanta, 1905) a Russian boy who finds that his Japanese
friends in Port Arthur are now called enemies has to flee back to Moscow
together with his family. His little brother bluntly asks, “Why do people
make war?”, and wishes that the war would soon be over.
Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) took a somewhat high-brow attitude to
children’s literature. In his opinion, nothing had to be written especially
for children; suitable books had only to be chosen from adult literature.
He wrote in a letter in 1900 that “So-called children’s literature is some-
thing which I neither like nor accept. Children must be given only what
is good enough for grown-ups.”54 As examples Chekhov gives Gogol,
Goncharov’s travel sketch The Frigate Pallas (Fregat Pallada), Hans Chris-
tian Andersen’s tales, all works read with the same pleasure by everyone.
From his own oeuvre, Chekhov chose two short stories suitable for
young readers, “Rusty” (“Kashtanka”, 1887) and “Patch” (“Beloloby”, 1895).
The former presented episodes from the life of a dog whose dreams clash
with harsh reality. Man’s shifting attitude to animals is exposed, but so is
the unfailing faithfulness of the dog. In “Patch”, published in Children’s
Reading, a she-wolf and a puppy meet, and for a moment, two widely dif-
ferent worlds come together. In both stories, Chekhov employed a fairly
radical anthropomorphism, but his eloquent style, the complex feelings
and the open endings may make these short stories too complex for
children.

54 A.P. Chekhov, Pol’noe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v 30 tomakh. Pisʼma. Vol. 9 (M., 1980),
19. (Letter to G.I. Rossolimo, January 1900.)
224 chapter five

Aleksandr Fyodorov-Davydov (1873–1936) was an extremely prolific writer

in the field of children’s literature. He wrote 125 books, and edited many
popular magazines that he filled mostly with his own material. His name
also appeared frequently in other magazines, such as Children’s Reading.
To make things even more complicated, Fyodorov-Davydov often used
pseudonyms, such as Tyap-Lyap, A. Fede and Tkach Osnova (Weaver
Bottom), a character from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Fyodorov-Davydov came from a teacher’s family. The choice of audi-
ence was easy for him, as “a natural, inborn striving towards everything
bright and young irresistibly drew me to childrens’ literature, to which I
wholeheartedly devoted myself  ”.55 Fyodorov-Davydov wrote in all genres,
although mostly for small children. In addition to his fairy tales, Christ-
mas tales, legends, animal tales, realistic stories, plays and poems these
include translations of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen
and rewritings of Russian folktales. He was also the author of numerous
readers and literary miscellanies. Fyodorov-Davydov even produced his
own, altered version of Ershov’s The Little Humpbacked Horse (Konyok-
Gorbunok, 1909).
The world of children and animals, often presented in a fable-like form,
were subjects dear to Fyodorov-Davydov. He knew how to speak to chil-
dren, often with playful humour and unexpected twists, and he had a tal-
ent for creating plots. The language and simple syntax of his small books
made for easy reading. Truth and justice, friendship and goodness are vic-
torious. Fyodorov-Davydov never lacked readers, though he did lack the
originality needed to become a truly great writer.
His first children’s book, Winter Dusk (Zimnie sumerki, 1895), was one
of his most successful, appearing in eleven editions. It included much of
what made him famous later on. Fairy tales in the spirit of Andersen and
realistic stories taught the importance of working for others, helping the
poor and doing one’s duty. Thieves feel remorse, while the oppressor and
the oppressed find a way to each other’s hearts, as the gulfs of a class
society are overcome in moments of love and pity.
Fyodorov-Davydov’s tales recount the adventures of young squir-
rels, hares, foxes, wolves, goslings, dogs, cats and birds. Most of them
are told with the animal-hero as the narrator. In Fyodorov-Davydov’s
literary world everything is alive: dolls and toys, or even a sewing nee-
dle, a millstone or a fir-cone, have voices. Together, these ‘living beings’

55 Kto za detei: Galereia pisatelei dlia detei (M., 1906), 79.

 modernism (1890–1917) 225

demonstrate the necessity of solidarity and helpfulness. In The Cat Bayun

(Kot-Bayun, 1901), the cat tells fairy tales to little Natasha. There is more
than a touch of Andersen in these tales of goodness and helpfulness. Dolls
step into the breach to help poor people. The grumpy, lonely old owl starts
to watch over the nestlings of a blue tit, defending them from crows.
In other tales old people and children come together. Brownies help
the diligent, kind shoemaker’s apprentice Hans in The Smart Little Shoe-
maker (Lovky bashmachnik, 1901) complete an order in time, but Hans
also manages to reconcile enemies.
Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe was the subtext for The Elephant Robinson:
the Adventures of the Famous Elephant Jumbo and His Comrade Tuesday on
an Uninhabited Island (Slon-Robinzon: Priklyucheniya znamenitogo slona
Yumbo i ego tovarishcha Vtornika na neobitaemom ostrove, 1908). In the
absurd fairy tale The Biggest Spoon (Samaya bolshaya lozhka, [1903]), the
lazy glutton Zhikharko changes his ways only when Baba Yaga steals his
gigantic spoon. In The Diary of Coco the Parrot (Dnevnik popugaya Koko,
1908), a clever bird tells his life story, starting from the moment when he
was brought from Africa to Russia by a sailor. The tale has many ups and
downs, adventures altering with periods of peace.
In the popular verse tale Mischievous Pip (Prokaznik Pip, 1899), Fyo-
dorov-Davydov recounts the adventures of a little mouse, basing the
humorous stories upon ‘mouse annals’. Pip experiences all kinds of calam-
ities, but always gets away with his spirit unbroken. Nikolay Bartram, in
Soviet times the director of the first Russian toy museum, illustrated this
volume. The illustrations are claimed to have been made according to the
instructions of four mice and one rat. The book includes a map of Pip’s
territory. Russian children’s literature had never seen anything like this
before.
The Adventure of a Siskin (Priklyuchenie chizhika, 1912) introduces read-
ers to the world of birds. The hero Fifinka ends up in bad company and
experiences life in a cage before it starts to appreciate freedom. Real hero-
ism is to feel pity for one’s enemy, as when Fifinka intervenes to save the
detested cat. When it came to demonstrating goodness and friendship in
the animal world, Fyodorov-Davydov knew no limits. In the tale The Sick
Little Bird (Bolnaya ptichka, 1912), two mice take care of a wounded swal-
low during the winter. With tears in their eyes, they watch her fly away to
join her brothers and sisters when spring comes.
Fyodorov-Davydov’s most accomplished book is The Adjutant Without
Any Meat: His Joys, Suffering and Adventures (Adyutant bez myastsa: Ego
radosti, stradaniya i priklyucheniya, 1902), in later editions called Once
226 chapter five

Upon a Time There Lived a Boy (Zhil-byl malchik). This ‘story of the past’
reads almost like a companion to Tolstoy’s Childhood. Little Shura tells his
story about life in a mansion, about the adults, an absent father, difficult
teachers and a loving grandfather. He loves the free life in the country-
side, and a forced move to Moscow makes him cry for three days. Simul-
taneously, the move means the end of childhood and the beginning of
adolescence.
The Dolls’ Rebellion (Kukolny bunt, 1909) is a Christmas tale about the
relationship between two children and their maltreated toys, their Christ-
mas presents. One night the children are called to account for all the evil
that they have done to their toys. The rebellious toys refuse to obey and
they seize power. The roles are reversed, as the children are turned into
a doll and a wooden soldier and are treated as badly as they had once
treated their toys. The doll Mimi is said to have told this tale to Fyodorov-
Davydov, and Mr Pen and Mr Pencil supposedly did the illustrations.
One of the few pre-revolutionary professional male children’s writers,
Fyodorov-Davydov was able to continue his career after 1917. He contri-
buted to the Soviet magazine Murzilka and published around forty books
in the twenties, when they were printed in editions of 15,000 or even
25,000 copies. The picture-book The Pranks of Pus-Karapus (Prokazy Pusa-
karapusa, 1927), a verse tale, narrates the difficult life of a kitten, probably
not the only creature to find living conditions hard in those years.
The name of Aleksey Remizov (1877–1957) has not generally been con-
nected with children’s literature, even if his occasional works in the field
reveal a remarkable talent and a good understanding of the genre. His
only children’s book, Little Wrinkle (Morshchinka, 1907), is an animal story,
illustrated in colour by Mstislav Dobuzhinsky. The mouse Little Wrinkle
does not like sitting at home, while his aunt is out looking for food, so he
sets with a friend out on a dangerous expedition to the legendary Zabru-
gal Castle with its ‘treasury’ full of delicacies. Sticking to the viewpoint of
the animals, Remizov gives reality a new dimension, in which all phenom-
ena have a mythical explanation. Mystic and humorous overtones mix
freely. The story lacks all moral content, as the two adventurous mice
safely return home after their raid on the tempting larder.
A genuine Christian piety fills “Easter” (“Paskha”, 1910), a story about
Olya’s love for everything connected with Orthodox Easter. Religiosity is
treated in a lighter vein in “Pilgrimage” (“Bogomole”, 1906). Little Petka
goes to a nearby monastery in the company of his grandmother. He
decides to become a monk, when he realises that he could then climb the
bell-tower as much as he likes, without anybody interfering.
 modernism (1890–1917) 227

The basic idea of “The Fingers” (“Paltsy”, 1909) is surrealistically strange:

five disobedient fingers set out to frolic. In “A Christmas Present for the
Kiddies” (“Rebyatishkam na yolku”, 1914), later published as “Snowball”
(“Snezhok”), there is a fascinating incongruence between the text, which
incidentally reveals Remizov’s calligraphic talent, and the author’s own
drawings. With his weird fantasy creatures, Remizov is out solely to amuse
his readers. The atmosphere is also cheerful in the poem “The Fox Is Hav-
ing a Ball” (“U lisy bal”, 1907), with the animals—a donkey, a goat, a deer
and a lion—marching across “ditches and banks” on their way to the
fox’s ball. Rhythmically and phonetically they also form an orchestra. A
wooden toy from Dobuzhinsky’s collection of Russian folk culture objects
is said to have been the inspiration for the poem.56
One of Remizov’s favourite genres was the folktale, but very few of these
pastiches and adaptations were written for children. An exception is “The
Tale of the Bear, the Three Sisters and Hare Ivanych” (“Skazka o medvede,
tryokh sestrakh i Zaychike Ivanyche”, 1906), published in Path. The sisters,
who marry a bear, break the prohibition of their shaggy spouse with tragic
results, but aided by the clever youngest sister and Hare Ivanych, they
rise from the dead and outwit the beast. “Comrades” (“Tovarishchi”, 1917),
from the children’s anthology Creative Work (Tvorchestvo), also resem-
bles a Russian folktale, but the light-hearted mood is Remizov’s own. The
sole raison d’être of Happy (Vesyoly) and his comrades, a wolf and a bear,
seems to be scaring people, including the evil Baba-Yaga, and playing
pranks. Boris Zvorykin, an artist who was soon to emigrate, assisted with
excellent illustrations.
There is something very modern about O. L. D’Or’s (1879–1942) book
The Ink Lilliputians: The Adventures of Mr Blot and his Eight Comrades
(Chernilnye chelovechki: Priklycheniya mistera Klyaksa i ego vosmi tovarish-
chey, 1908), published by M.O. Volf. It is a humorous tale about the travels
of small creatures living in an ink-pot. They dutifully serve the school-
children, but when school is done for the day, their own life can begin.
Human beings know nothing about their existence. They make an excur-
sion outside town to discover the world, talk with flowers, ride on dragon-
flies and visit a bird’s nest. All eight of them, right down to Little Comma
(Zapyatayka), are individuals. There is no moral except the notion that
all things have a soul. The volume was technically excellent, a luxurious

56 M. Dobuzhinskii, “Vstrechi s pisateliami i poėtami: Remizov,” accessed March 15,

2013, www.silverage.ru/paint/dobuzh/dobuzhinskiy_vstrechi_3.html.
228 chapter five

edition with colour illustrations and a text written in easy language.

O. L. D’Or, whose real name was Iosif Orsher, was a well-known satirist and
feuilletonist, but unfortunately he never returned to children’s literature.

Nature Poems and Lullabies

Towards the end of the nineteenth century poetry had firmly established
itself as one of the main genres of children’s literature. No magazine could
do without lyrics written for children. The number of poets specializing
in children’s poetry was considerable, and even many of the leading poets
of ‘the Silver Age’ took an interest in the genre. Realists like Ivan Bunin
and Ivan Belousov continued the Drozhzhin tradition with seasonal pic-
tures and idyllic Russian landscapes. The Symbolists were fascinated by
the inner world of children and their closeness to a second, hidden reality.
For a number of years their Path was one of the leading Russian children’s
magazines. Sasha Cherny and Mariya Moravskaya, two poets who ended
up in emigration, expressed a new kind of respect for children and their
fantasies and games. Humourous verse was written by Konstantin Ldov,
an accomplished translator of the German writer Wilhelm Busch, also a
favourite in Russia.
In the anthology New Poets (Novye poėty, 1907), explicitly addressing
children, modernists mix with traditionalists. Among the poets we find
Bunin, Konstantin Balmont, G. Galina, Andrey Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov,
Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Vladimir Solovyov. The critics had every reason
to doubt whether children would really be able to appreciate these highly
sophisticated and subjective poems.57 A similar project was launched four
years later, when the cream of contemporary Russian poets appeared
in the volume Morning Star: a Poetry Anthology for Adolescents (Utren-
nyaya zvezda: Sbornik stikhov dlya otrochestva, 1912). The list of names
was impressive—Balmont, Merezhkovsky, Solovyov, Bely, Bunin, Solo-
gub, Aleksandr Blok, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Valery Bryusov, Zinaida Gippius,
Poliksena Solovyova, Sergey Gorodetsky, Nikolay Gumilyov—but again
one wonders whether the volume actually reached its target audience.

In the 1890s Ivan Bunin (1870–1953), the first Russian Nobel Prize win-
ner for literature (1933), appeared frequently in the pages of Children’s

57 I.N. Arzamastseva, “Vek rebenka” v russkoi literature 1900–1930 godov (M., 2003), 261.
 modernism (1890–1917) 229

Reading. Many of his poems were collected in separare volumes for

children—Under the Open Sky (1898, Pod otkrytym nebom), Poems and
Short Stories (Stikhi i rasskazy, 1900) and Wild Flowers (1901, Polevye
tsvety). Occasionally, Bunin could show pity for the outcast from society,
be it a black boy in Sidney harbour (“V portu”) or a Croatian organ-grinder
far from his beloved Zagreb (“S obezyanoy”), but mostly he produced
pure nature poetry, where hardly any humans break the harmony and
delicate impressions of the Russian landscape. The narrator is usually a
grown-up, revisiting his native heath or nostalgically reliving childhood
emotions. Bunin filled his poems with clouds, birches, spring rain, win-
ter snowstorms, starry skies, dawn, breezes, nightingales and the peal of
church bells. His world is a tranquil one of colours, sounds and scents.
Sometimes religious feelings make their way into Bunin’s poetry, as in
“The Angel”, where an innocent, blessed child meets his guardian angel. It
is not always easy to comprehend the basis on which Bunin chose poems
for young readers. The volume Selected Poems for Young People (Izbrannye
stikhi dlya yunoshestva, 1909) consisted, in fact, mostly of poems which
had previously been published for adults. It should also be mentioned
that Bunin’s much praised translation of Longfellow’s The Song of Hia-
watha (Pesn o Gayavate) initially appeared in the children’s magazine
Corn Shoots (Vskhody).
The major part of Ivan Belousov’s (1863–1930) poetry addresses children.
The volumes Kids (Malyshi, 1893), Songs about Work (Iz pesen o trude,
1897), To My Small Children (Moim detkam, 1898), Spring Guests (Vesen-
nie gosti, 1905) and Swallows (Lastochki, 1908) mostly include poems from
Children’s Reading. In his melodic poems Belousov celebrates the arrival
of the spring, thunderstorms, the twittering of swallows, work in the fields,
the happy laughter of children and the wisdom of grandmother’s fairy
tales. Life in the countryside is harmonious, with the village church as
its emblem. The town is a prison, where children pine away dreaming of
a return to their home village. Belousov’s sensitive perception of nature
in different seasons makes Evgeniya Putilova call his poetry “a first nature
primer for children”.58 Later, children disappear from Belousov’s poetry,
giving way to an exclusively adult point of view.
As an editor for the publishing house Utro, Belousov brought out
two anthologies, both called Morning (Utro), bringing together prose
and poetry by writers from the Znanie group, including Andreev, Bunin,

58 E.O. Putilova, “Russkaia poėziia detiam,” Russkaia poėziia detiam. Vol. 1 (SPb, 1997), 40.
230 chapter five

Teleshov, Skitalets, Shmelyov and Serafimovich. The composer César Cui

set one of Belousov’s poems to music.

Childhood was an important theme for the Symbolists and, consequently,

a gateway to children’s literature. Employing a childlike perception of the
world, they tackled the riddles of life, looking for a hidden, more mean-
ingful reality behind the dreary world of everyday life. With linguistic
and rhythmic brilliance, the Symbolists brought nature to life and cre-
ated fairy-tale worlds. A popular genre was the lullaby, through which
the child is carried into the realm of night and dreams. These poets did
not simplify their poetic language when writing for children, but stayed
true to their own poetics with a high aesthetic level, hidden subtexts and
unusual metaphors.
From 1895 onwards, the virtuoso poet Konstantin Balmont (1867–1942)
published sporadically in Children’s Reading. Later his was a recurrent
name in Path. In all, Balmont wrote close to one hundred poems for chil-
dren, but only once did this substantial effort result in a book. Fairy Tales
(1905, Feynye skazki), dedicated to his four-year-old daughter Nina, con-
sists of three cycles, “The Fairy” (“Feya”), “Children’s World” (“Detsky mir”)
and “Blades of Grass” (“Bylinki”). Initially, sixteen of the poems were pub-
lished in Children’s Reading under the title “Bright World” (“Svetly mir”)
earlier the same year.
In these poems Balmont reveals an awareness of the small things that
surround us and a childlike ability to feel amazement and joy at this mini-
ature life. The unimportant things in nature are brought out, or, in Vera
Zhibul’s words, “in the familiar the miraculous unfolds, and then again,
in the visible that which cannot be seen”.59 It is a fairy-tale realm, open
only to the child and the poet, as Balmont’s colleague Valery Bryusov
pointed out.60 Earth, with its flowers, insects, “midges and small beetles”
and gnomes, is seen as the triumph of eternal beauty. A grain of sand or
snowflakes on a child’s tiny little finger are perceived with wonder.
At the centre of Balmont’s poetic world is the Fairy, everyone’s darling.
For the poet she is his seductive Muse, turning reality into magic. In a
dress made of petals and cobwebs and a girdle of sunrays, she is busy
checking the dew-drop situation, blowing bubbles through a straw, riding
on the back of a dragonfly and sailing on a leaf, and she dismisses the

59 Vera Zhibul’, Detskaia poėziia Serebrianogo veka (Minsk, 2004), 55.

60 V. Briusov, Sredi stihkov, 1894–1924 (M., 1990), 91.
 modernism (1890–1917) 231

petty everyday concerns of other creatures with ringing laughter. In this

tiny world everything is in a state of flux. There is no room for hate and
violence, even though envy, jealousy and quarrels occasionally threaten
the idyll.
In the section “Children’s World” Balmont revealed an interest in folk-
lore, composing stylised poems in a similar spirit. He claimed that some of
his children’s verses and lullabies were of Spanish or Finnish origin. From
Russian folklore he took Fortunatus’ cap and the figures of the mermaid,
the Gray Wolf, Baba-Yaga and Koshchey. There is a move away from the
world of adults, from school duties and the field of learning to fantasies
and pure joy. The hearty laughter of a child leads the poet back to his own
childhood and helps him to look at life with new eyes. Balmont’s lullabies
carry the child into a harmonious dream world. In other poems Balmont
created impressionistic nature scenes, where an enchanted world is felt
below the surface. Nature is animated and the seasons personified. In all
his children’s poems Balmont revealed a sharp ear for tone and sounds.
Without employing a simplified, ‘childlike’ intonation, he helped to
develop the aesthetic sense of his readers.
Among the writers in Path we also find Aleksandr Blok (1880–1921), one
of the greatest Russian poets of the twentieth century. In the 1910s he col-
lected his children’s verse in two small volumes, The Whole Year (Krugly
god, 1913) and Fairy Tales (Skazki, 1913), both published by I. Sytin. In his
notebook Blok had written that, in the modern world, the task of upbring-
ing was to prepare children for adulthood. All signs of sentimentality had
to be wiped out.61 In reality, his poems for children do not correspond to
this view. Blok is obviously moved by the thought of the young genera-
tion, its innocence and joy at being alive. An older generation can only
observe children with affection and tenderness.
The harmonious composition of The Whole Year is based upon the cal-
endar. Every season has three poems. Spring is a time of expectancy—of
warmth, thaw and Easter (“Verbochki”). Summer is full of magic, the won-
der of a new rising life or a hidden harmonious reality. Autumn brings
clarity to one’s thoughts and feelings. The hero of “The Teacher” (“Uchi-
tel”) is an aging teacher, tired after a day of fruitful work. The crowd of
schoolchildren is like a flock of sheep, for whom he, like a shephard, bears
responsibility. The children’s season is winter with its toboggan runs,
snowmen and snow castles. Laughter and cries of delight accompany

61 A. Blok, Zapisnye knizhki Al. Bloka (L., 1930), 169–170.

232 chapter five

their games. The Whole Year culminates in the poem “Christmas” (“Rozh-
destvo”). With its simple syntax, praise of diligence and generosity and
its stylised portrait of an angelic girl, it unproblematically fits into the
great tradition of children’s poems. In an attempt to come close to the
child’s perspective, Blok wavers between the voice of the child and that
of a grown-up narrator.
There is more of a programmatic Symbolism in Fairy Tales. The book,
which also tackles major philosophical issues, was obviously intended for
an older audience. An interest in folk poetry and mythology is also evi-
dent. In these poems Blok set up pairs of opposities—the safe and the
unknown, the parental home and the wide world, the shore and the sea,
wakefulness and sleep, life and death. The volume ends with a boy being
carried into the realm of dreams with the help of his mother’s fairy tales
(“Sny”). In “Silence in the Forest” (“Tishina v lesu”) and “Christmas Eve in
the Forest” (“Sochelnik v lesu”), two children’s poems not included in the
books, God’s presence in nature is revealed.
In a 1921 review of Maurice Maeterlinck’s The Blue Bird, Blok created
an artistic ideal out of the duty to preserve an inner link with one’s child-
hood: “Only he who has preserved within himself eternal childhood has
the right to call himself an artist.”62 Creativity starts with this link, and
then the artists “see everything around them in a new way, they see the
very soul of things, things, animals and plants talk with them in a com-
prehensible language”.63 This outlook might have led to new children’s
poems had Blok not met an untimely death that same year. That he still
held the genre in great respect can be seen from the fact that, as late as
1918, he worked out a plan for a children’s book that would include forty
to fifty poems.
In Vera Zhibul’s book on the children’s poetry of the Symbolists, Mariya
Pozharova (1884–1959) and Olga Belyaevskaya are called pre-Symbolists.64
Their poems attempt to make contact with another reality through fan-
tasy, dreams, nature and Christian allusions. Both mainly wrote poetry for
children, without, however, achieving the fame they definitely deserved.
Pozharova’s great literary legacy was only collected posthumously. A close
friend of Poliksena Solovyova, she started to publish in 1904, partcipating

62 A. Blok, “O ‘Goluboi ptitse’ Meterlinka,” Sobranie sochineii: V 6 tomakh. Vol. 5.

(M., 1971), 514.
63 Ibid., 516.
64 Zhibul’, Detskaia poėziia Serebrianogo veka, 45–53.
 modernism (1890–1917) 233

initially in most children’s magazines of the period. In all, Pozharova

published three books of poetry before 1917—Among Children, Toys and
Small Animals (Sredi detey, igrushek i zverkov, 1911), A Happy Corner: the
Book of Red-Haired Irochka (Vesyoly ugolok: Kniga ryzhenkoy Irochki,
1914) and Little Bells (Bubenchiki, 1915).
In the foreword to her first book, Pozharova says that she has main-
tained contact with the world of children through her doll, her cat and
the howling wind. With love and compassion she writes about small chil-
dren and their toys, kites, dolls, animals and games. Small scenes from
the world of children are created, sometimes also in the form of dramas.
A “gentle sun” is watching over the children, and when the happy day
is done, “white angels, protectors from blue paradise, come flying to us”.
Published by M.O. Volf, Among Children, Toys and Small Animals was
beautifully illustrated in colour by G. Kaspari. Red-haired Irinochka pre-
sides over the two following volumes with poems about her toys and pets,
merry inventions and pranks. In their games the children are inspired by
their beloved fairy-tale books. In one poem little Irina is busy building a
sand castle on the beach. Pozharova creates an animated world, some-
times choosing the perspective of a toy as a defamiliarising device.
With Little Lyul (Malenky Lyul, 1911), Pozharova made a promising con-
tribituon to the subgenre of Lilliput fairy tales, sadly undeveloped in Rus-
sian children’s literature. Lyul, small as a blade of grass, runs away from
his grandfather Tok-Tok with an irresistible wish to see the ocean. Only
after many adventures on land and sea, among squirrels, birds, fishes and
princes, does he return safely home.
Pozharova died only in 1959. In the Soviet Union she achieved popular-
ity after the Second World War with volumes like The Brook (Rucheyok,
1947) and Poems for Children (Stikhi dlya detey, 1950). These volumes con-
tain poems about children, but also about nature, an animated nature
friendly to man. The relation between child and nature is intimate. The
poet talks with the trees, the grass, the birds and the different seasons.
Fairy-tale and mythical creatures inhabit the forest. A festive mood and
a bright happiness reign. An abundant use of exclamation marks contrib-
utes to the exalted atmosphere.
No exact dates of birth or death are available for Olga Belyaevskaya
(1860’s–after 1918), an indicator of her anonymous place in children’s lit-
erature. She had already started to publish in the late 1880s and continued
right up to 1918. Writing mostly for children, she appeared in many of the
contemporary magazines, but mostly in Path. Her only two books—Drop
(Kapel, 1908) and The Little Golden Belt (Zolotoy poyasok, 1914)—were
234 chapter five

published by the Path press. Belyaevskaya’s “The Christmas Tree” (“Yolka”)

expresses the sorrow of the spruce, which has to die far away from its own
milieu. Its laments are softened by the happy faces of the children dur-
ing Christmas. Belyaevskaya loved animals, willow branches and the first
signs of spring; her poetry contains an on-going conversation with nature.
There are few actual children in her poems, even though their capacity for
amazement and their openness are close to her.
The famous poet Sergey Esenin (1895–1925) started his writing career
with poems for children. “The Birch” (“Beryoza”) was published in Little
World (Mirok) in 1914, when he was only 19 years old. It is a good exam-
ple of the genre that suited Esenin best—pure nature poetry, colourful
and bright. Man is at one with an animated nature; everywhere he finds
beauty, love and happiness. In other poems, figures from Russian folklore,
like the wood-goblin (leshy), appear. During a festival, the participants
in a kolyada, a house-to-house Christmas-carol-singing party, outwit a
snowstorm. These early poems were intended to form a children’s book,
The Robin (Zaryanka), a plan that did not materialise during Esenin’s
lifetime.
Children occupy a modest place in Esenin’s children’s verse. One can
find them listening to grandmother’s fairy tales (“Babushkiny skazki”) or
shivering with cold outside the rich man’s house, asking for alms (“Pobi-
rushka”). The long epic poem “The Orphan” (“Sirotka”) reads like a parody
of the hackneyed motif of the maltreated orphan girl, who is rewarded
for her goodness by being married to the king. The subtitle “A Russian
Tale” is motivated by the introduction of Father Frost, who freezes the
evil stepmother and stepsister to death and transforms the orphan’s tears
into a beautiful necklace.
A recurrent name in children’s literature after the 1905 revolution was
Sergey Gorodetsky (1884–1967), initially a Symbolist epigone. He took
a great interest in folklore and children’s lore, including drawings. The
many children’s poems which he published in the magazines Heartfelt
Word, Path and Young Jackdaw were partly collected in the volumes Iya
(1908) and Hallo (Au, 1913). The former had the intricate subtitle Poems
and Drawings for Children, Written and Drawn by Sergey Gorodetsky Over
a Period of Two Whole Years. This Book is dedicated to My Little Daughters
Iya, Taya, Naya. Also to the Sun and Moon, to All Children in the Whole Land
(Stikhi dlya detey i risunki sochinyal i risoval tselykh dva goda Sergey
Gorodetsky. Ėtu knigu posvyashchayu Dochkam Ie, Tae, Nae. Takzhe
Solntsu i Lune, Detyam vsem po vsey strane). The book Iya made the critic
 modernism (1890–1917) 235

Korney Chukovsky exclaim, “Iya is a treasure for all kids—it is so original

and magnificent.”65
In many of his poems Gorodetsky addresses children directly or tries to
adopt their perspective and voices. The success of these approaches was
not necessarily based upon a deep knowledge of children, even if he wrote
for his own daughters, but more upon the very nature of his poetic gift.66
When illustrating his books, Gorodetsky also employed a simplictic touch.
Nature and the four seasons were his favourite motives, with the lullaby
as a cherished genre. Nature is animated in the form of a laughing Spring,
a snowfield joyfully greeting the first skier, or a happy mushroom family.
The cat goes to school, and Doctor Insect (Doktor Kozyava) cures other
insects. None of nature’s inhabitants are too small to appear in Gorodetsky’s
poems, and in them one can also meet the Wood-Goblin (Leshy), the
Water-Spirit (Vodyanoy), the Sorcerer in the Oven Chimney, and the mis-
chievous Invisible (Nevidimochka), the very existence of whom the Real-
ists deny. Gorodetsky’s Christ figure is also utterly human and heartfelt.
E.T.A. Hoffmann was the obvious inspiration behind the little volume
Fedka the Brick (Churban-Fedka, 1913), which also included a version of The
Nutcracker. As the toys of the nursery come alive at night-time, they have
to handle feelings of envy and rivalry and experience small adventures.
Deep in the forest, the hero of Mika the Little Aviator (Mika-Letunok, 1913)
encounters Winterer One-leg (Zimovnik Odnonog) and is carried north-
wards on the fantasy figure’s back in his search for a frozen mushroom.
When such a mushroom is thrown up in the air, it signals the start of win-
ter. Ultimately, Mika decides not to interfere with the change of seasons,
but humbly accepts that the time for winter has not yet come. In Tsarevna
Candy (Tsarevna Slastena, 1915) the nyanya stands guard at the nursery
door, preventing nightmares from disturbing the sleeping child, and lit-
tle Anya is carried by old Starikashka to Candy Land. The Little Tsarevich
(Tsarevich Malysh, 1911) depicts a world filled with strange fairy-tale crea-
tures and absurd situations. The introduction to Five Blown Kisses (Pyat
vozdushnykh potseluev, 1914) is as original as it is strained: the five kisses
(one for each finger) that the mother blows her daughter take the form
of five tales. Unfortunately, they turn out to be too lengthy and boring for

65 Chukovskii, Sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 2 (M., 2001), 561. (First publ.: Kornei Chukovskii,
Materiam o detskikh zhurnalakh. SPb, 1911.)
66 Arzamastseva, “Vek rebenka” v russkoi literature 1900–1930 godov, 265.
236 chapter five

a child audience. It must be added than Gorodetsky’s profoundly original

fairy tales had illustrations of high visual quality.
Gorodetsky returned to children’s literature in the 1920s, now closely in
step with Communist ideals. Internationalism is celebrated with a slight
touch of humour in The Winged Postman (Krylaty pochtalon, 1923), while
Vanya’s Freckles (Vesnushki Vanyushki, 1924) attacks all kinds of ‘supersti-
tions’, among them the central Christian beliefs he had himself cherished
a decade earlier. The Revolt of the Dolls (Bunt kukol, 1924) is a revolutionary
allegory, demonstrating the mechanism of an uprising. Eventually, read-
ers are invited to participate in world revolution by spreading its message
to those who have not yet taken it to heart, such as the Chinese and the
Africans. In these booklets Gorodetsky not only showed himself to be a
fullfledged Communist writer, but also appeared as an avant-garde artist,
deftly illustrating his own texts.
During the last decade of Tsarist Russia, Vasily Knyazev (1887–1937)
actively published children’s poetry, sometimes with his own illustrations,
in magazines like Heartfelt Word, Small Sparkles (Iskorki), Little Toy, Red
Dawns and Young Jackdaw. Knyazev created a fairy-tale world with fairies,
gnomes and the cheerful Murzilka. Forest Lilliputians live among spiders,
grasshoppers, dragonflies and other insects in a wizard’s garden. It is a
magic world, where a hare goes to buy a fashionable white fur in Winter’s
shop. The poet claims to have witnessed all these merry scenes himself or
heard about them from a beetle.
In 1912 Knyazev published a book, Boba Skvoznyakov, written together
with Pyotr Potyomkin (1886–1926). It is a humorous epic poem about a
schoolboy’s pranks. Bad Boba misbehaves during lessons, fails to do his
homework and frequently ends up in fights. In the countryside, he mis-
treats animals and pulls flowers to pieces. Nature takes its revenge by let-
ting Boba be attacked by bees and an angry goat. The influence from Max
und Moritz is already obvious from the illustrations. The magazine Young
Jackdaw showed its appreciation of the book and rewarded the authors
with a prize.
Little Nina’s Small Fairy Tales (Ninkiny skazochki, 1915) was published
as an attachment to Heartfelt Word. These happy, eccentric fairy tales
were originally written for Knyazev’s little friend Nina. In the company of
a butterfly he had travelled far away from Truth to meet fantasy figures
and charming insects. There he found gnomes building a house out of
straw, Murzilka, dressed up in a new tail-coat, playing the cello, and plays
being performed in the house of the fairies.
 modernism (1890–1917) 237

Just like Gorodetsky, Knyazev had no trouble in adapting himself to

Soviet cultural politics after 1917. This, however, did not save him from
being arrested and perishing in Gulag in 1937.
The name of Lev Zilov (1883–1937) comes up repeatedly in children’s
magazines of the 1910s. He also wrote two pre-revolutionary children’s
books—An ABC About Yura and Valya (Azbuka pro Yuru i Valyu, 1914)
and The Adventures of Postage Stamps (Priklyucheniya pochtovykh marok,
1916). The poems of the first book begin with the letters of the alphabet.
With gentle humour, Zilov depicts scenes from the lives of two boys. Their
pranks and games, toys and stuffed animals form the poetic content. The
Adventures of Postage Stamps was an attachment to Fyodorov-Davydov’s
Little Glow-Worm. When the post office is closed for the night, the stamps
go travelling around the world, meet people and even experience the
World War. Zilov admitted that the idea for the rather strained story was
borrowed, but he did not reveal its true author.
Zilov continued working within the field of children’s literature after the
October Revolution, publishing several small books and writing reviews of
children’s literature for Pravda. One of the most curious children’s books
of the 1920s is his The Clay Dummy (Glinyany bolvan, 1923). A childless
old couple decides to bake themselves a child out of clay, but to their
horror he turns out to be a raving dummy who swallows everything that
comes his way. Having eaten the whole Russian village, this Golem figure
meets his death in a downpour. Out of his remains rise his victims, angry
but relieved to have escaped the nightmare. Printed in the provincial
town Ivanovo-Voznesensk, the book with its dubious allegorical message
escaped the attention not only of the censors but, alas, also of the public.
The artist Leonid Chernov-Plessky, however, became a victim of the Great
Terror in 1938.

In sharp contrast to the Russian poets who favoured fleeting impressions

from a rural Russia or fairy-tale pastiches, the German poet Wilhelm Busch
introduced a cruder and more modern world. His popularity in Russia
was immense. Among his numerous admirers one finds the composer
Igor Stravinsky, who at an advanced age still loved to recite Busch’s verses
by heart.67 Busch’s humour is black; violence and death are treated in a

67 Solomon Volkov, Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky: Interviews with George Balanchine

(NY, 1985), 44.
238 chapter five

lighthearted way. Read, however, as parodies of moral children’s literature,

his epic verses are provocatively entertaining. Additional value is provided
by the illustrations; Busch picture books are in fact reminiscent of modern
comics. His main work, Max und Moritz (1865), a tragicomic story of two
incorrigible pranksters, was translated into Russian in 1888 as Two Rascals
(Dva prokaznika), and two years later as “Max and Moritz, or Two Rascals”
(“Maks i Morits, ili dva shaluna”), included in a big Busch volume, Happy
Stories about Jokes and Pranks (Vesyolye rasskazy pro shutki i prokazy,
1890). Konstantin Ldov made the translations for M.O. Volf, who included
Busch in their Golden Library (Zolotaya biblioteka). A third translation of
Max und Moritz appeared in 1909 with the title The Naughty Boys Fedka
and Grishka (Fedka i Grishka, shaluny-malchishki), this time in a transla-
tion made by R.K., that is, Raisa Kudasheva.
Busch’s Plisch und Pljuch (1883) also found popularity in Russia. As
Plish and Plum, or Two Dogs (Plish i Plum, ili dve sobachki), it was ini-
tially included in the 1890 collection. A new translation, Plikh and Plyukh,
appeared in 1913. In Busch’s verse story two dogs are saved from drown-
ing by two boys. Afterwards, the four of them commit a series of pranks,
before the whip eventually reforms their depraved characters. The story
was little Daniil Yuvachev’s favourite reading, and in the 1930s the Oberiu
writer, who now called himself Daniil Kharms, made a new, free trans-
lation for a Soviet children’s magazine. Outside the Soviet Union, Rus-
sian émigrés were offered a translation of Max und Moritz by Vyacheslav
Kulikovsky (1885–1925), published in Berlin in 1923. A critic commented:
“Unfortunately, Busch is untranslatable, and therefore the humour suffers
to a high degree even in Kulikovsky’s relatively good translation.”68
The minor poet Nikolay Ratomsky (years of birth and death unknown)
competed with Ldov by translating all Busch’s main works. Ratomsky also
made attempts at working in the same genre with his own verses. The
two rascals in his Absent-Minded Parasha and Slovenly Styopa (Parasha
rasteryasha i Styopa rastryopa, 191[?]) are incurably inclined to wicked
behaviour, and their ‘pranks’ even include stealing a car and an aeroplane.
The air of modernity is also strong in the scene where the boys end up at
a skating-rink. Ratomsky seems as fascinated by mischief as his Parasha
and Stiopa, and he allows them to get away with it without punishment
or remorse.

68 Evgenii Elachich, Ukazatel’ izdannykh za rubezhom Rossii knig dlia detei i iunoschestv
(Praga, 1926), 8.
 modernism (1890–1917) 239

Busch’s chief Russian translator was Konstantin Ldov (1862–1937), a

pseudonym for Vitold-Konstantin Rozenblyum. He wrote poetry for adults,
but it was his humourous tales and poems for small children, mainly pub-
lished in Heartfelt Word, that were most read. He was a skilful user of
rhymes, and a casual tone made his verses easy to memorise. Some of his
works were collected in picture books like A Big Little Book for Small Chil-
dren (Bolshaya knizhka dlya malenkikh detok, 1884), Staying with Grand-
dad in the Countryside (U dedushki v derevne, 1886), The Drum (Baraban,
1893), Doggy Pranks (Sobachkiny shalosti, 1901), Small Soldiers (Malenkie
soldaty, 1901), A Child’s Menagerie (Detsky zverinets, 1903), Twenty Mis-
chievous and Ten Naughty Children (Dvadtsat prokaznikov i desyat sha-
lunov, 1902) and Happy Sharing (Vesyolaya skladchina, 1913), all of them
published by M.O. Volf.
Ldov’s children play doctor and travel around the world (in their own
garden) in eighty minutes, arriving back home just in time for lunch; they
play with arrows, beat their drums and bury dead birds. A rhythmically
captivating counting-out rhyme is “Mr Beetle the Teacher” (“Gospodin
uchitel Zhuk”), in which the insects in a meadow learn the alphabet.
In An Evening at the Circus (Vecher v tsirke), Ldov surprised his readers
with mobile illustrations—as early as 1886! A visit to the circus inspires
children to arrange a doll circus at home. The curious and clever cats in
Miaow, Miaow, Miaow (Myau, myaushki, myau, 1900) are busy drinking
coffee, dancing and riding bicycles. When the children in Little Soldiers
play soldiers in war games, the result is broken mirrors and dolls without
limbs. The geese are the enemy, as the little soldiers fight “for Russia and
the Tsar”. Despite its title, The Happy Circus of the Clown Fips (Vesyoly
tsirk klouna Fipsa), there is not much humour in this small volume. When
the clown Fips presents his trained animals, he simultaneously makes his
true goal clear: “I would like to teach you / to love and pity animals.” It
appeared in book form in 1913, but its first publication in Heartfelt Word
was actually in 1902.
Ldov also created satirical portraits of uncouth, thoughtless, lazy, dirty,
snobbish boys like Grubby Sasha (Sasha-Zamarashka) and Lazy Kolya
(Kolya-Bezdelnik). The moral is very clear, and Ldov’s humour remains
rather restrained, never attaining the delightful tastelessness of the Ger-
mans Hoffmann and Busch. In 1915 Ldov left Russia for Brussels. During
his many years in emigration he never returned either to his fatherland
or to children’s poetry.
Raisa Kudasheva (1878–1964) started publishing in 1896 at the age of
eighteen. She signed her poems, tales and stories in magazines such as
240 chapter five

The Little One, Little Glow-Worm, Dear Little Sun and Snowdrop (Pod-
snezhnik) only as R.K. or some other pseudonym, and the writer therefore
remained completely unknown. “I didn’t want fame, but I just could not
refrain from writing”, was Kudasheva’s explanation.69 Kudasheva wrote
with light humour and much tenderness about the world of children, with
games, toys, animals, nature. She had success with the picture book Jolly
Grandma and the Little Dog Boom (Babushka-Zabavushka i sobachka Bum,
1906), based on the English nursery rhyme “Old Mother Hubbard”. Dis-
satisfied with Kudasheva’s translation, Samuil Marshak made his own ver-
sion in the 1920s, “The Poodle” (“Pudel”). Two other books by Kudasheva
are The Wild Toboggans (Sanki-Samokatki, 1910) and The Cockerel’s Mis-
fortune (Beda petushka, 1915). Inspired by Busch, whose Max und Moritz
she had translated as Fedka and Grishka, Kudasheva wrote How Pavlik and
Netochka Played Tricks (Kak shalili Pavlik s Netochkoy, 1910) about two
active, ingenious and mischievous children.
The poem “In the Forest a Little Christmas Tree Was Born” (“V lesu
rodilas yolochka”, 1903) was put to music in 1906 and became a favourite
song among children as “The Little Christmas Tree” (“Yolochka”). Kuda-
sheva follows the path of a pine-tree from the deep forest to the centre of
a children’s Christmas party. Beginning in the 1940s, this elegic and poetic
text was also sung in the Soviet Union as a New Year’s song. Kudasheva
finally got recognition under her full name when a collection of her poems
was published in 1948 and, again, in 1958. Before her death in 1964 she also
saw her fairy tale “The Cockerel” (“Petushok”) republished.
Poliksena Solovyova (1867–1924), or Allegro, as she called herself as
a poet, had a remarkable intellectual background. Her father was the
historian Sergey Solovyov, Rector of Moscow University, and Vladimir
Solovyov, an original mystic and philosopher, was her brother. Solovyova
felt at home in the Symbolist circles of St Petersburg. In 1906 she founded
the children’s magazine and publishing house Path and, until the clos-
ing-down of the magazine in 1912, she worked there as editor, writer and
illustrator. The publishing house issued approximately twenty of her
volumes, including The Christmas Tree (Yolka, 1907) and The Red Egg
(Krasnoe yaichko, 1913). Some of them were written together with Solovy-
ova’s partner, Natalya Manaseina.
Solovyova’s range of genres includes religious legends, humorous ani-
mal poems, nature poetry, lullabies and riddles. Everything is animated

69 Russkie pisateli 1800–1917. Vol. 3 (M., 1994), 198.

 modernism (1890–1917) 241

and meaningful in the true Symbolist tradition. Feelings of blessing and

joy reign not only among men, but all of nature is also part of the essen-
tially Christian mystery. The light of the star of Bethlehem falls upon ani-
mals as well as humans.
Solovyova also took an interest in theatre, showing a true feeling for
dramatic conventions. The fairy-tale play The Wedding of the Sun and
the Spring (Svadba solntsa i vesny, 1907), with music written by Mikhail
Kuzmin, a well-known Russian modernist writer, celebrates spring, the
great feast of the year. Flowers, trees, birds, insects, sunrays, the winter
wind and snowflakes—all bear witness of the coming of spring. Towards
the end of the play, the solo voice and the choir unite in a hymn. The
message of new life is brought to all children and to all people who are
weighed down by life. Suffering and sorrow turn into rejoicing as everyone
is offered greenery, air and light. The triumph of the spring, freed from
winter’s captivity, parallels God’s gift of life beyond death.

Nonsense poetry, celebrating a mood of excessive hilarity and the right

consciously to act and talk in a silly and inconsequent way, was still a rare
phenomenon in Russian children’s literature. Sasha Cherny and Mariya
Moravskaya wrote the best humorous verses of the 1910s. Love for child-
hood and a lively imagination are characteristic of both. They strove to
speak with a child’s voice, achieving authenticity in rhythm, intonation
and vocabulary. Games, toys and animals are at the centre of their enter-
taining poems. Together Cherny and Moravskaya form a bridge to the
splendid children’s poetry of the 1920s, preparing the ground for Korney
Chukovsky and Samuil Marshak.
Sasha Cherny (1880–1932), whose real name was Aleksandr Glikberg,
had already established himself as a satirist when he started to write for
children. He initially took a condescending attitude to contemporary chil-
dren’s verse, as can be seen from the venomous parody “A Little Dose of
Syrup” (“Siropchik”, 1910), devoted “to the ladies, twittering in the chil-
dren’s magazines”: “The lady, swinging on a branch,/ chirped: “Dear little
children! / The little sun gave the little bush a smacking kiss, / the lit-
tle bird adjusted its little bosom / and, embracing the camomile, / ate
its semolina porridge . . .” In the second stanza, the children, who have
been listening silently to the lady poet with a gloomy expression, sud-
denly interrupt the ‘twittering’ with an innocent question: “How many
lines did it chirp?”
Cherny’s first poem for children appeared in 1911 in the magazine Bonfire
(Kostyor). The following year he participated in an anthology, The Little
242 chapter five

Pale Blue Book (Golubaya knizhka), alongside a new name in children’s

literature, Maksim Gorky. While Gorky’s “Little Sparrow” (“Vorobishko”)
did not reveal any talent for the genre, Cherny successfully mixed fantasy
and reality in his tale “The Red Pebble” (“Krasny kameshok”). A helpful
boy is awarded a magic pebble which lets him understand animal lan-
guage. However, the ability to communicate with non-humans turns out
to be short-lived, as the pebble is already gone the next morning. Instead,
the boy finds a book on animal life under his bed. The move from fantasy
to learning is reminiscent of Odoevsky’s The Little Town in the Snuffbox.
In another anthology, The Firebird (Zhar-ptitsa, 1912), Cherny published a
poem, “The Chimney-Sweep” (“Trubochist”), at the invitation of the edi-
tor, Chukovsky. The homage to the chimney- sweep, a friend of all chil-
dren and cats, was set to music by Yury Ėngel.
A joyful mood reigns in Cherny’s own collection of children’s poems,
Knock-Knock (Tuk-tuk, 1913). The author showed rare understanding of a
child’s nature, imagination and humour. Cherny clearly felt at home in
the company of adventurous and inquisitive children. He never plays the
tutor, but is always prepared to learn from the children. The narrative
voice, most often that of a child, plays train with dolls and a cat as passen-
gers (“Poezd”), goes skating (“Na konkakh”) or dances ecstatically around
a bonfire (“Kostyor”). In “The Brave Ones” (“Khrabretsy”) the point of view
alternates between that of a boy and a frog, as they watch each other with
suspicion. Both try to adopt an attitude of bravery in front of the unknown
other. “Bob’s Rocking-Horse” (“Bobina loshadka”) is fed chocolate by its
master, and every night the sweets disappear from its stomach as if by
magic. Only the cat knows the truth: it is the cockroaches who feed on
the chocolate!
In Cherny’s next book, The Living Alphabet (Zhivaya azbuka, 1914), cock-
roaches are provocatively characterised as “the kindest of all animals”. The
volume set out to renew the genre of spelling books. The letters grow tired
of dozing in books and decide to arrange a nocturnal costume ball. At the
party, ‘A’ appears as an aist (stork), ‘Ts’ as a tsaplya (heron), and so on.
The narrator becomes an accidental witness of the ball. Unfortunately,
Cherny’s straightforward verses do not correspond fully with the initial
idea behind the book. “Feeble-mindedness and vulgarity” was one criti-
cal opinion, and the final verdict was harsh: “Not to be recommended.”70
More impressive than Cherny’s texts are the colour illustrations by Vadim
Falileev, the author’s favourite artist.

70 [Anonymous], [Review], Novosti detskoi literatury 8 (1916): 25.

 modernism (1890–1917) 243

Even as an émigré in France, Cherny remained interested in children’s

literature. In his eyes it now had the function of a vital bond with a lost Rus-
sia; the émigré child’s feelings for Russia and the Russian language should
be strengthened through good literature. In 1921 he published a large col-
lection of poetry, Children’s Island (Detsky ostrov). It appeared in Berlin,
although for tax purposes Danzig was the city of publication indicated in
the volume. With new poems added to the earlier Knock-Knock, Cherny
demonstrated that he was still a child at heart and remained a master of
verse technique. Cherny moves freely in the world of his beloved children
with their games, toys, dolls, teddy bears and snowmen. He devotes one
whole verse cycle to animals. They range from house pets to exotic ani-
mals, such as a sad crocodile and a monkey that longs for its homeland,
‘Apelsiniya’. In a moving evening prayer, a dog asks to be let into paradise,
or at least into “some old shed” together with its much-loved young master,
Antosha (“Arapkina molitva”). In a pure example of the defamiliarisation
technique, the poem “Who Fancies What” (“Chto komu nravitsya”) trains
an outsider’s perspective on human life. Animals comment on the sight
of naked children swimming from their subjective point of view, naively
unaware of its limitations. The poem “Polka” (“Polka”) anticipates Korney
Chukovsky’s well-known “The Chatterbox Fly” (“Mukha-tsokotukha”). A
spider arranges a birthday party for insects, including a cockroach. In a
childlike fashion, the animals play and have fun, but the party ends in
tears when the spider eats one of his guests, a fly.
The Rainbow (Raduga, 1922) is a poetry anthology edited by Cherny.
Practically all Russian poets of importance—from Derzhavin to Akhma-
tova—are included. The idea was to introduce the brilliant Russian poetic
tradition to children living in exile. Six years later, Cherny edited another
volume, The Russian Land (Russkaya zemlya, 1928), published in con-
nection with the Day of Russian Culture, a central event for émigrés. Big
contemporary names like Bunin, Kuprin, Shmelyov, Remizov and Mikhail
Osorgin are among the contributors, but the overall bleak impression cre-
ated suggests a lack of genuine enthusiasm for the project. Even Cherny’s
homage to Lomonosov failed to raise the standard.
In emigration, Cherny took an interest in the Russian scout movement.
In 1927, presumably reading “A Song for Boy Scouts” (“Pesnya boyskautov”,
1926), he visited a scout camp outside Paris. The ‘song’ is composed as an
antiphon between the choir and its leader. The hedgehog, the squirrel and
the crow watch with amazement as hearty Russian children march to the
refrain ‘Forwards!’
Cherny’s understanding was not limited to children: he was also deeply
fond of animals. The Diary of the Fox-Terrier Micky (Dnevnik foksa Mikki,
244 chapter five

1924–25) acquaints the reader with the clever Parisian dog Micky. Writ-
ing with a pencil between its teeth, Micky gives a dog’s perspective on
life, nature and moral issues. The philosophically-minded dog visits the
zoo, a beach, a cinema and a dacha, and even writes poetry. The defa-
miliarisation device gave Cherny a chance to look at human behaviour
with a critical eye. A satirical touch is present when Micky criticises the
life of his masters as being filled with too many unnecessary things and
concerns. In 1927 Cherny’s dog diary was published in Paris in 200 num-
bered and signed copies. It was illustrated by the graphic artist Fyodor
Rozhankovsky, who was to become well-known internationally. Cherny
used his earnings from the book to buy himself a dacha on the French
Riviera, where he spent his last years.
The narrative device of The Diary of the Fox-Terrier Micky was not new
for children’s literature. A very similar French book had appeared in
Russian translation in 1858 as The Notes of Little Ami (Zapiski Amishki).
Inspired by E.T.A. Hoffmann’s clever cat Murr, Ami starts to write down
its reflections on life, human beings and moral conflicts. Even an episode
of running away from home, complete with subsequent happy reunion,
can be found in this early children’s book.
Two other late works by Cherny, A Sanatorium for Cats (Koshachya san-
atoriya, 1924, 1928) and The Seafaring Squirrel (Belka-moreplavatelnitsa,
1933), were less successful, already doomed by the author’s decision not
to employ the animal heroes as speakers.
Mariya Moravskaya (1889–1958) was born in Poland, but moved with
her family to Odessa in the 1890s. She only started to publish in the 1910s,
even though she had been writing since childhood. As a poet for adults,
she was close to the Acmeists, but she also had contacts with the Symbol-
ists. For children, Moravskaya published in magazines such as Path, some-
times using pseudonyms, including a Kiplingesque “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”. She
had a profoundly subtle feeling for language. In an autobiographical por-
trait she declared, “My sincere conviction is that Russian is the most musi-
cal of all languages, when it comes to poetry, and I am very glad that I am
a Russian poet.”71
Moravskaya published only one book of poetry, Orange Peel (Apelsin-
nye korki, 1914). The volume, excellently illustrated by Sergey Chekhonin,
was reviewed positively by critics. Chukovsky liked the happy atmosphere,
while Georgy Ivanov declared that “this is genunine children’s verse,

71 Quoted in Russkaia poėziia detiam. Vol. 1 (SPb, 1997), 734.

 modernism (1890–1917) 245

without any exaggarated seriousness, but also without any boring lisping”.72
Boris Ėikhenbaum agreed: “No moralizing, no attempt at ingratiating one-
self, just humour. Just feelings, just images, just jokes, just humour!”73
Moravskaya’s children’s stories, collected in Flowers in the Cellar (Tsvety
v podvale, 1914), dealt with everyday themes. The heroes (most often boys)
are outsiders, who long for freedom and foreign places. “In the Animal
Shop” (“V zverinom magazine”) tells of maltreated boys who, in an explicit
parallel to the boys’ own situation, let a lark out of its cage and back into
its proper element. The title story expresses similar feelings: flowers help
to brighten up a life of poverty and sickness in a cellar.
Moravskaya left Russia in 1917 for a tour of Japan and the USA. She was
never to return, dying in Chile after the Second World War. In emigration
Moravskaya did not write for children any more, but her Orange Peel was
republished in Berlin in 1920.

Translations

In lists of Russian children’s reading in the early twentieth century, there

are many translations. Vera Andreeva, Leonid Andreev’s daughter, recalls
the favourite authors in their family’s library: Charskaya, Verne, Bousse-
nard, Mayne Reid, James Fenimore Cooper, Alexandre Dumas and Ernest
Thompson Seton.74 The children of Korney Chukovsky, Nikolay and
Lidiya, had their own preferences. Nikolay loved Victor Hugo, Walter
Scott, Dickens, Verne, Cooper, Mayne Reid, Conan Doyle, Robert Louis
Stevenson and Mark Twain, while Lidiya preferred Little Women by Louisa
May Alcott, Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess by Frances Hodg-
son Burnett and Lady Jane, or the Blue Heron by Cecilia Jamison.75
Louisa May Alcott enjoyed steady popularity in Russia from the 1870s,
when the first translation of Little Women came out. All the sequels,
including Little Men, were promptly translated and frequently republished
until 1917. One of Alcott’s translators was Elizaveta Beketova (1834–1902),
the poet Aleksandr Blok’s grandmother. Another inspiring book for
Russian children’s writers was Frances Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy
(1886), translated in 1889 by Ekaterina Sysoeva and published by Devrien.

72 Georgii Ivanov, “O novykh stikhakh,” Apollon 3 (1915): 53.

73 B. Ėikhenbaum, [Review], Russkaia mysl’ 2:III (1914): 60.
74 Andreeva, Dom na Chernoi rechke, 24.
75 Lidiia Chukovskaia, Pamiati detstva (New York, 1983), 174–175.
246 chapter five

The novel about a good-natured, clever boy, who turns out to be of noble
birth, was not only a ‘from rags to riches’ tale, but also had a distinct dem-
ocratic message. Under different titles it eventually had ten editions in
Russia. “Mrs Burnett’s book fully deserves the flattering reputation it has
achieved”, said a Russian critic, recommending it to readers of all ages.76
A Little Princess (1905) also appeared almost immediately in Russia (1908)
and achieved the status of a bestseller before 1917. With the help of a rich
imagination and a little luck, the heroine goes from poverty to prosperity.
Burnett’s third famous novel, The Secret Garden (1911), was translated in
1913, and the first publication was followed by a few other editions before
the fall of the literary iron curtain. The Soviet Literary Encyclopaedia
(Literaturnaya ėntsiklopediya) of 1929 explained why The Secret Garden
could not be accepted under Communism: it indulged in mysticism as a
result of the author’s interest in Theosophy.77
The fourth book in Lidiya Chukovskaya’s list of her childhood reading,
Cecilia Jamison’s Lady Jane (1891), is a sentimental story of a girl who after
the death of her mother is thrown out into a harsh world, with a blue
heron as her sole friend. Eventually vice is punished and virtue rewarded.
Lady Jane was immediately translated into Russian in 1891, and it was also
well-known through publications in children’s magazines.
A book missing from Chukovskaya’s list is Mary Dodge’s Hans Brinker
and the Silver Skates (1865). The first translation, The Silver Skates (Sereb-
ryanye konki) of 1876, was made from Pierre-Jules Stahl’s revised version.
It is yet another story about a poor, motherless family, in which the chil-
dren assist their ailing father and eventually triumph over adversity. The
Russian foreword says that “if one of the main merits of a good, exemplary
children’s book is to awaken good feelings in the young readers and make
them perform noble deeds, then this book fully lives up to its purpose”.78
The book’s popularity in Russia continues to the present day.
Kate Wiggin became known and loved in Tsarist Russia with Timothy’s
Quest (1890), translated in 1897 and frequently reissued. The story of two
brave orphans and their dog looking for a home was irresistible to Rus-
sian children. Wiggin’s main work, Rebecca of Sunnybrooke Farm (1903),
on the contrary, had to wait until the fall of the Soviet regime to reach a
Russian audience.

76 O detskikh knigakh (М., 1908), 87.

77 Literaturnaia ėntsiklopediia. Vol. 1 (M., 1929), 468.
78 M. Dodzh, Serebrianye konki. Second ed. (SPb-M., s.a.), 1–2.
 modernism (1890–1917) 247

Ivan Turgenev already recommended Barfüssele (1856) by Berthold

Auerbach for publication in the magazine The Contemporary (Sovremen-
nik) in the 1860s, but it was turned down by both Nikolay Nekrasov and
Chernyshevsky.79 When published for children in the early twentieth cen-
tury as Bosonozhka (1903), it became an instant success. The German story
about two orphans, who try hard to be worthy of their deceased parents,
repeats all the sentimental clichés of the genre. The children’s life is a
perpetual manoeuvring between benefactors and exploiters. While the
brother goes astray, his sister turns from a barefooted outsider, living at
the mercy of others, to a respected member of society. Discovered by her
‘prince’ in a true Cinderella fashion, she finds happiness in marriage.
The school novel The Heart (Cuore, 1886) by the Italian Edmondo de
Amicis was a long-standing favourite among pre-revolutionary Russian
juvenile readers. Mariya Rostovskaya did the first translation, but many
others followed under shifting titles—The Heart (Serdtse), Fathers and
Children (Ottsy i deti), The Diary of a Schoolboy (Dnevnik shkolnika),
A Schoolboy’s Notes (Zapiski shkolnika) and School Year (Shkolny god).
Among de Amicis’ translators one finds Lenin’s sister, Anna Ulyanova
(1864–1935); her Schoolfriends (Shkolnye tovarishchi) appeared in 1898. As
a member of the Italian Socialist Party, de Amicis was embraced by Rus-
sian socialists. In all, his Cuore had twelve editions in Russia before 1917.
To this number must be added all the separate chapters and fragments
that were included in textbooks and anthologies.
On Children’s Literature praised Cuore unequivocally: “Amicis’ book pro-
vides answers to almost all questions of both a personal and social char-
acter within the limits of children’s understanding, and we consider it to
be the most valuable and indispensable book in all children’s libraries.”80
The novel’s diary form proved to be effective. One objection was, how-
ever, raised. For the Tolstoyan editor Ivan Gorbunov-Posadov, de Amicis’
belligerent patriotism and male-centered world-view were not acceptable
on principle, and when Posrednik published Cuore in Ulyanova’s transla-
tion, all the episodes recounting military deeds were exchanged for stories
about valiant girls.
De Amicis’ other works, such as Dagli Appennini alle Ande (From the
Apennines to the Andes, 1886), actually a chapter from Cuore, also won
recognition. A curious postscript to the Russian craze for the Italian writer

79 Dobroliubov v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov (L., 1961), 177–78.

80 О detskikh knigakh (SPb, 1908), 80.
248 chapter five

was the short silent film “The Young Lady and the Hooligan” (“Baryshnya
i khuligan”) of 1918, with the Futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky in the
main role. The film was loosely based upon de Amicis’ story “La Maestrina
degli Operai” (“A Woman Teacher of the Workers”, 1898). Anna Ulyanova
made the Russian translation of the story in 1901.
Hector Malot’s Sans famille (1878) appeared in 1887 in Russia as Without
Kith or Kin (Bezrodny). An accurate translation of the original title, With-
out Family (Bez semi), was soon introduced, but so was the more mar-
ketable The Foundling (Podkidysh). In Malot’s novel we meet yet another
heroic orphan, one who roams around France in search of a better life.
Later in the Soviet Union, now republished in Aleksey Tolstoy’s transla-
tion, Sans famille fulfilled two tasks. On the one hand, it was published in
the original language for the benefit of those who were studying French at
school. As the novel told readers “about the harsh conditions of the simple
people in the capitalistic world”, it was also considered to have important
informative value. Indirectly, it served to prove that Soviet readers lived
in the best of worlds.81 A Russian TV-film version of 1984 is proof of the
lasting attraction of Malot’s novel.
Incidentally, Malot’s first translator, Anna Rozalion-Soshalskaya (1861–
1902), was an accomplished children’s writer in her own right, with sev-
eral books written mainly in the 1890s. Her speciality was international
themes, whether German, English, Icelandic or Chinese.
Marshall Saunders made a brilliant contribution to the genre of animal
autobiographies. The dog in her Beautiful Joe (1893) tells its own story,
and it has indeed much to say about both the human and the animal
worlds. It was no coincidence that Krasavets Dzhoy (1901) was published
by Posrednik as part of ‘Gorbunov-Posadov’s Library’. With its poignant
rendering of a dog’s most secret thoughts, it made a valuable contribution
to the discussion of animal rights. A Russian critic concluded in 1908 that
Saunders’ book is “apt to raise humane feelings in children”.82
The British writer Ouida’s Fairy Tales for Children (Skazki dlya detey)
appeared in 1883 with Vsevolod Garshin as one of the translators. Garshin’s
two translations—“The Ambitious Rose Tree” and “The Nürnberg Stove”—
were also published separately in 1890. In the same volume, Russian chil-
dren could also find “The Little Earl”, one of Ouida’s most sympathetic

81  Iu. Kondrat’eva, “G. Malo i ego povest’ ‘Bez sem’i’,” in Gektor Malo, Bez sem’i
(M., 1956), 6.
82 O detskikh knigakh (1908), 159.
 modernism (1890–1917) 249

stories. Translated as Priklyuchenie malenkogo grafa and, later, as Barchuk

(1895), it shows how a young nobleman learns humility and empathy only
when he flees from a life of isolation, privilege and wealth.
Ouida’s sentimental story A Dog of Flanders (1872) with its heart-
rending last scene where an orphan and his dog freeze to death on the
threshold of Antwerp Cathedral, became a Russian bestseller right from its
first translation in 1892. In 1905 it was published in the magazine Path as
Nello i Patrash. In the Soviet Union, too, Ouida’s novel was viewed favour-
ably viewed, now as convincing testimony of the harsh living conditions
of children under capitalism.

Three French writers of adventure novels—Gustave Aimard, Louis Jacol-

liot and Louis Boussenard—were astonishingly popular in Russia. At the
turn of the century, even their extensive collected works were published
in Russian translation. Through their books, a juvenile Russian audi-
ence became acquainted with such exotic locations as North and South
America, Cuba, Africa, India, and Australia. Louis Boussenard, sometimes
called ‘France’s Haggard’, was even more popular in Russia than in his
homeland. While remaining completely unknown in America and Great
Britain, for example, his forty-volume collected works were published
here in 1911. Aventures périlleuses de trois français au Pays des Diamants
(1884), in Russian Pokhititeli brilliantov, and Le Capitain Casse-Cou (1901,
Kapitan Sorvi Golovu), dealing with the recent Boer War, became Russian
classics. Naturally, the critics were not as enthusiastic as the readers. A
publication of 1886 was dismissed as ‘boulevard literature’ with a content
that was “coarse, silly and utterly absurd”; the critic could only feel pity
for its young readers.83
A fourth French writer must also be mentioned in this connection.
Gabriel Ferry, who had died already in 1852, experienced a renewed popu-
larity in Russia towards the end of the nineteenth century. The favourite
work among Russian youth, Le coureur des bois (1850), was translated under
three different titles—Lesnoy brodyaga (1852, 1901), Obitatel lesov (1882)
and Chornaya ptitsa i Oryol snegovykh vershin (1898), while Ferry’s Costal
l’Indien (1852) was published in translation in 1884 and 1911. Le coureur des
bois narrated the adventures of a French-Canadian woodsman in Mexico,
while Costal l’Indien dealt with the Mexican War of Independence.

83 Obzor detskoi literatury za 1885–1888 g.g. (SPb, 1889), 7.

250 chapter five

The collected works of H. Rider Haggard ran to twenty volumes in 1913.

Most read was King Solomon’s Mines, which in the early Soviet years came
out in a new translation by Korney Chukovsky. In the 1920s Rider Haggard
also found admirers among the Serapion Brothers, a group of talented
young Petrograd writers. They preferred the combination of a strong plot
and technical artistry to traditional Russian Realism, and they proposed
this as a model for the new post-revolutionary literature.
The international celebrity Ernest Thompson Seton, in Russia called
Seton-Thompson, wrote unsurpassed animal fiction. His main work,
Wild Animals I Have Known (1898), was published in 1910 as My Wild
Friends (Moi dikie znakomye). Vera Andreeva vividly remembered some
of Seton’s works: “And what about Seton-Thompson’s wonderful stories
about animals, which, with their nobility and bravery, surpassed cruel and
mercenary human beings! Never in my life have I shed such bitter and
truly sincere tears as when I read about the mighty Winnipeg Wolf, who
died languishing in captivity, about the poor pigeon Arnaux, who died at
the hands of some scoundrel just a short distance from his home, where
he was heading to after a long exile, about the Pacing Mustang, who pre-
ferred death to shameful captivity by some sly man.”84
Seton gained something of a cult status in the children’s magazine
Lighthouse, edited by Gorbunov-Posadov. Readers requested his photo-
graph and address, and, to satisfy their curiosity, Anna and Aleksandr
Zelenko (1871–1953) visited the American author at his farm outside New
York in 1913. Seton ended the interview, which was subsequently pub-
lished with unique photos, with greetings to his numerous Russian read-
ers: “Yes, I find Russia to be very interesting and I really would like to go
there. Americans know too little about it.”85
Lighthouse magazine also favoured two other pioneers of the modern
animal story, Canadians Charles G.D. Roberts and William J. Long. The list
of Roberts’ Russian publications includes around one hundred titles. The
stories of his The House in the Water (1908) were widely read.
“Almost all young readers know Kipling’s stories. Children love them
and read them with great interest.”86 This Russian verdict on Rudyard
Kipling’s works was uttered in 1908. The Jungle Book (1894–95) had been
translated as Dzhungli in 1895 and 1906, Captains Courageous (1897,

84 Andreeva, Dom na Chernoi rechke, 25.

85 Anna and Aleksandr Zelenko, “V gostiakh u Setona-Tompsona i ego zverushek,”
Maiak 1 (1913): 79.
86 O detskikh knigakh, 121.
 modernism (1890–1917) 251

Smelye moreplavateli) in 1898. Kim (1901) was published in a Russian

magazine in the same year as the original. Just So Stories (1902) appeared
in Russian as Stories and Tales (Rasskazy i skazki, 1903) with the writer’s
own illustrations included. The reception was warm: “All the stories are so
witty, so lively, so full of a sharp-edged humour, that children are enrap-
tured by them.”87
The Gadfly (1897) by Ethel Voynich, a British writer, enjoyed a lasting
vogue in Russia. Through her marriage to a Polish radical, Voynich had
become a supporter of the Russian revolutionary cause. In The Gadfly
she wrote about the Italian struggle for freedom from Austrian opression
in the 1830s and 1840s. For Russian revolutionary youth the book, called
Ovod (1898) in translation, served as a source of inspiration. Forgotten
elsewhere, its popularity continued in the Soviet Union, with writers like
Gorky and Nikolay Ostrovsky praising it unhesitatingly. By the time of
Voynich’s death in 1960, her Gadfly had sold an estimated two-and-a-half
million copies in the Soviet Union. A film version of 1953 has a score by
Dmitry Shostakovich.
Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) was anony-
mously translated in 1879 as Sonya in the Realm of Wonders (Sonya v
tsarstve Diva). The critics completely failed to understand it: “There are
books on which you do not want to expend even ten words, as they are
so far beneath contempt. The publication that lies in front of us belongs
precisely to this category. It is hard to imagine anything more empty and
absurd than this fairy tale or, rather, long story (fantasy is needed when you
write fairy tales)”; so said Women’s Education (Zhenskoe obrazovanie).88
Popular and Children’s Library (Narodnaya i detskaya biblioteka) found no
wit, gaiety or artistry in the book, but just an extremely boring and absurd
delirium.89 Thirty years later, there were new attempts to render Carroll’s
notoriously challenging puns and manifold allusions to English nursery
rhymes in Russian. Within a span of five years, no fewer than four transla-
tions appeared, by Matilda Granstrem (1908), P. Solovyova (Allegro) (1909),
A. Rozhdestvenskaya (1912) and (presumably) Mikhail Chekhov (1913).
Allegro’s version was initially serialised in Path, while Rozhdestvenskaya’s
Priklyucheniya Alisy v volshebnoy strane was a Heartfelt Word publication
(1908–09). It had been presented there as one of the most famous English

87 Ibid., 122.
88 Quoted in V.V. Lobanov (ed.), L’iuis Kėrroll v Rossii (M., 2000), 12.
89 Ibid., 8.
252 chapter five

children’s books, a tale that all English children knew. The number of cop-
ies sold in England was said to have been 100,000.
The anonymous, fourth translation of Alice in Wonderland was included
in the volume English Fairy Tales (Angliyskie skazki, 1913), published by
the magazine Golden Childhood, whose editor was a brother of Anton
Chekhov, Mikhail. In the 1920s several new translations appeared, by
d’Aktil, i.e. Anatoly Frenkel (1890–1942) (1923), by V. Azov, i.e. Vladimir
Ashkenazi (1873–1948), with Tatyana Shchepkina-Kupernik translating
the lyrics (1924) and still another by V. Sirin, i.e. Vladimir Nabokov (Ber-
lin, 1923). Nabokov’s translation was called Anya in Wonderland (Anya v
strane chudes). Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass was translated into
Russian for the first time in 1924 by Azov. The Soviet reception in the 1920s
was no better than the pre-revolutionary reception had been. The critic
S. Rogozina found the book “senseless” and rejected it together with Peter
Pan and Pinnochio: these were books that “do not amuse our children”.90
Heartfelt Word serialised Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio (1880) in 1905–06 as
The Adventures of a Wooden Boy (Priklyucheniya derevyannogo malchika).
The translation by Kamilla Danini included the original illustrations. The
introduction declared that all Italian children know the work. In 1906,
M.O. Volf published Danini’s translation as a book, this time with the
original title. Several other translations followed. Nina Petrovskaya (1879
or 1884–1928) published one in Berlin in 1924 for Russian émigré children.
Aleksey Tolstoy was said to have edited the translation. Around ten years
later, he produced a Soviet version of Collodi’s masterpiece, claiming that
it was a book that he did not have at hand and that he only faintly remem-
bered from his childhood. Simultaneously, the original was branded as
“permeated with petit-bourgeois, Philistine morals” in the Soviet Literary
Encyclopaedia (1931).91
J.M. Barrie’s famous Peter Pan figure, who had appeared for the first
time in The Little White Bird (1902), came to Russian children only much
later. The translation, Belaya ptichka, appeared first in Gorky’s maga-
zine Chronicle (Letopis) in 1917 and the following year as a book. Peter
Pan (1906), translated as A Book with Pictures about Peter Pan (Kniga s
kartinkami o Petere Pane, 1918) had little chance to find its way to Russian
readers, published as it was during the turmoil of the Civil War.

90 S. Rogozina, Novaia detskaia literature (M., 1924), 22, 34.

91   Literaturnaia ėntsiklopediia. Vol. 5 ([M.], 1931), 383.
 modernism (1890–1917) 253

Kenneth Grahame’s first books, The Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days
(1898), appeared quickly in Russian as Zolotoy vozrast (1898) and Dni gryoz
(1900), but his main work, The Wind in the Willows (1908) had to wait until
the last years of the Soviet era. Edith Nesbit’s The Book of Dragons (1900)
and The Five Children and It (1902) were translated before the revolu-
tion (Skazki o drakonakh, 1911; Chudishche, 1914), but failed to create any
impression. Surprisingly enough, The Wizard of Oz (1900) by Frank Baum
was not translated prior to 1917, a fact which allowed the Soviet writer
Aleksandr Volkov to publish it under his own name and with a new title,
The Wizard of the Emerald City (Volshebnik izumrudnogo goroda), in the
late 1930s.

Informative Literature

During the modernist period much attention was paid to informative

literature, with many respected scientists prepared to popularise their
findings for the benefit of a young readership. In 1891 I. Sytin bought the
magazine Around the World (Vokrug sveta, 1861–1917) from M.O. Volf and
turned it into a success. The number of subscribers gradually rose from
4,500 to 50,000. The magazine covered “scientific expeditions and geo-
graphical discoveries, tales and legends of different people, biographies
of famous people, travellers’ stories, educational excursions, scientific dis-
coveries, grandiose projects, unusual hunting expeditions on land and sea,
catastrophes in the air and dramas on the ocean”.92 For a period of some
years, the magazine also had a philatelic and an Esperanto ‘corner.’ In
addition, serial publications of novels by popular writers such as Verne,
Haggard, Kipling, Boussenard, Lagerlöf, Camille Flammarion, H.G. Wells
and Conan Doyle ran from issue to issue.
A major endeavour was the publication of The Children’s Encyclopae-
dia (Detskaya ėntsiklopediya, 1913–1914) in ten volumes. It was issued by
Ivan Sytin and formally connected with his children’s magazine, The Little
One. Modelled on the British The Children’s Encyclopaedia (1910), edited
by Arthur Mee, it was reworked and expanded to suit Russian conditions.
Sytin invited eminent Russian scholars to be the editors: for example, Pro-
fessor Yuly Vagner (1865–c. 1946), who had some experience of writing
for children. The stated goal of the encyclopaedia was “to answer all the

92 I.D. Sytin, Zhizn’ dlia knigi (М., 1960), 83.

254 chapter five

questions of an inquisitive child’s mind, and simultaneously give parents

and educators material for conversation and activities with children.”93
Each of the ten volumes had its own theme, with both the humanities
and the natural sciences represented. In order to make the encyclopaedia
accessible for the target audience, the adaptation was based on modern
psychological and pedagogical theories. The volumes had numerous illus-
trations, partly in colour. In spite of its high price, The Children’s Encyclo-
paedia sold out.
Between 1893 and 1902 Dmitry Kaygorodov (1846–1924), professor at the
Forestry Institute in St Petersburg, regularly published his own column,
“From the Calendar of Russian Nature” (“Iz kalendarya russkoy prirody”),
in the children’s magazine Spring. In From Our Native Nature (Iz rodnoy
prirody, 1902, 1912), a reader for schools and families, he alternated classic
Russian nature poetry with informative sketches and articles. His ambition
was not only to provide information, but also to awaken interest in nature
and inspire schoolchildren to make their own observations. Kaygorodov
also recommended Evgeniya Dits’s (years of birth and death unknown) two
children’s books on nature, With Small Children about Birds and Animals
(S detkami o ptitsakh i zhivotnykh, 1895) and The Four Seasons (Chetyre
vremeni goda, 1905). In his foreword he praises Dits’s ability “to tell small
children completely simple things in completely simple language”, one of
the hardest literary tasks imaginable.94 Everything is taken straight from
life and rendered in a heartfelt and sincere way. In Birds and Animals the
children are given factual information on animals and birds in their neigh-
boorhod, while The Four Seasons follows the changing seasons in nature
from the perspective of a small boy.
A favourite among readers was How Yura Comes to Know the Life of
Insects (Kak Yura znakomitsya s zhiznyu zhivotnykh) by Aleksandra Bos-
trom (1854–1906). Initially published in 1907, a fifth edition appeared in
1918. Inquisitive little Yura participates in the work at the family’s country
estate. He makes friends with the domestic animals and, from the books
read to him by his mother, also learns about wild animals. The author was
clearly most interested in dogs, and Yura comes to know different breeds,
both from literature and in real life. In spite of its chaotic composition, the

93 Ibid.
94 E. Dits, Chetyre vremeni goda ([M.], 1905), [3].
 modernism (1890–1917) 255

publisher Sytin saw Bostrom’s book as an exemplary model for informa-

tive children’s literature.95
Bostrom, actually Aleksandra Tolstaya, was the mother of the future
Soviet Russian writer Aleksey Tolstoy. She mostly wrote illustrated inform-
ative books for small children. Dear Friend (Podruzhka, 1892), published
in six editions, received an honourable mention at a World Exhibition
in Brussels. It is for children who have just learned to read, telling them
about the surrounding world in 130 simple stories. From the playroom
we move into the garden and the cowshed, then out into the fields and
the forest. A girl from a rich city family and peasant children interact in
Two Small Worlds (Dva mirka, 1904). Without delivering any overt mes-
sage, Bostrom lets the children make friends, thus offering her readers
glimpses of village life as seen by an outsider. In addition, Bostrom wrote
around ten plays, though only a few of them were published. A Dream in
the Meadow (Son na lugu, 1904) is a fairy-tale play.
As a writer, Aleksandr Usov took the pen name Aleksandr Cheglok
(1871–1942). ‘Cheglok’ is the name for the falcon species called the Eura-
sian Hobby in English, and the writer’s choice of it indicated his inter-
est in birdlife. After some early publications in Children’s Reading in the
1890s, he followed up with four volumes called Our Native Nature: Russia’s
Animals, Birds and Reptiles (Rodnaya priroda: Zveri, ptitsy i gady Rossii,
1900–1909). Basing his sketches upon his own observations, childhood
memories and overheard stories, Cheglok blended informative passages
with vivid narrations of encounters with animals and birds. The subjects
range from frogs and hedgehogs to wolves and bears, from greater titmice
to eagles. A self-taught amateur, Cheglok occasionally made factual errors,
but rich personal experience and the talent of a storyteller compensate
for this weakness.
Cheglok’s knowledge of wildlife was expanded by journeys to Africa in
1909 and 1910–1911 and a trip around the world in 1913–1914. In My Adven-
tures in the Sahara and Northern Africa (Moi priklyucheniya v Sakhare
i Severnoy Afrike, 1912), Stories from Africa’s Animal World (Rasskazy iz
zhizni zhivotnogo mira Afriki, 1912) and The Birds of Africa (Ptitsy Afriki,
1915), he wrote about exotic animals and birds, such as pelicans, flamin-
gos, elephants, giraffes, antelopes, hyenas and apes. His interest in African
nature can also be seen in his large output of books for small children. An
accomplished writer, Cheglok knew how to choose a captivating point of

95 Sytin, Zhizn’ dlia knigi, 80.

256 chapter five

view and create suspense. On a trip to India, Australia and North America,
he was accompanied by his friend Vasily Vatagin, one of Russia’s foremost
animal painters. Vatagin’s illustrations for Cheglok’s books gave them
additional value.
For health reasons, Cheglok moved from St Petersburg to the Cauca-
sus, where he became involved in the revolutionary movement around
1905. The following year he left for Italy, moving in radical émigré circles.
Returning to Russia after the October Revolution, he actively participated
in the literary life of the 1920s. In the Stalinist era Cheglok withdrew to
his orchard, devoting his time to agriculture and Theosophy. In 1936 he
was arrested as an anarchist and mystic and eventually exiled to the Mur-
mansk region. From there he escaped in 1942 to die in solitude.
N. Ragoza also disappeared from literature mysteriously, and we know
nothing about him (or, perhaps, her). Ragoza knew the animal world, had
a good stylistic sense and an eye for dramatic plots. He wrote “simply, sin-
cerely and truthfully”, as the critic Elachich said.96 Ragoza had definitely
been influenced by Ernest Thompson Seton, Jack London and other writ-
ers of nature stories with a leaning towards fiction. His name appeared
in the magazines Spring and Corn Shoots, and also as the author of books
like Burr the Old Badger (Burr, stary barsuk, 1910), The Great Migration
of the Lemmings (Velikoe pereselenie lemmingov, 1911), King of the Thorn
Brushes and Other Stories from the Life of Animals (Korol kolyuchikh zaros-
ley i drugie rasskazy iz zhizni zhivotnykh, 1913), The End of the Wild Boar
(Konets sekacha, 1914) and The Mad Wolf (Besheny volk, 1914). The hero
of the last-mentioned book is the sly and strong wolf Blacknose (Cher-
nomordy). Infected with rabies, he turns from being the master of nature
into a helpless victim. Ragoza follows closely the wolf  ’s agony until his very
last moment. In 1924, a Ragoza title, Animals and Birds (Zveri i ptitsy), was
published for the first and last time during the Soviet period. Recent repub-
lications of The Mad Wolf may generate a new readership for the author.

Heartfelt Words

The high number of children’s magazines in the early twentieth century tes-
tifies to a literary field in rapid growth. There were twenty-two magazines
published in the first half of the nineteenth century, and sixty-one in the

96 E. Elachich, Sbornik statei po voprosam detskogo chteniia (SPb, 1914), 183.
 modernism (1890–1917) 257

second. In 1909 alone Russian children could choose between nineteen

magazines. Admittedly, their content and artistic level often left much to
be desired, but the magazines addressed a broad audience. Not only did
children with an aristocratic or middle-class background have their own
magazines, but peasants’ and workers’ children could now also find read-
ing material of special interest to them.
The Children’s Reading (Detskoe chtenie, 1869–1906), taken over by
Dmitry Tikhomirov (1844–1915) in 1890, upheld the legacy of the Realist
school. Among its prose writers were the foremost contemporary names,
including Mamin-Sibiryak, Nemirovich-Danchenko, Zasodimsky, Stanyu-
kovich, Fyodorov-Davydov, Teleshov, Zhelikhovskaya and Lukashevich.
Tikhomirov even succeeded in persuading Chekhov to submit a short
story. Additional reading came out in supplements and in the serial Library
for Family and School (Biblioteka dlya semi i shkoly). Popular foreign
names were Alphonse Daudet, Georg Ebers, Jack London, Rudyard Kipling
and Ernest Thompson Seton. Poems by Drozhzhin, Bunin, Belousov and
Shchepkina-Kupernik were published, and the Symbolist Balmont pro-
vided poetry and fairy tales in verse.
The encyclopaedic scientific section included articles on industry and
technology, Christmas traditions in Sweden, Niagara Falls, Nansen’s voy-
ages and Joan of Arc. The lives of historical figures, such as Hernán Cortés,
King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy, Garibaldi and Mikhail Pogodin, were
summarised for juveniles. In 1900 Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko, the
former war correspondent, greeted the new century with a utopia, “The
End of War” (“Konets voyny”), predicting that mankind, just as it had abol-
ished slavery and burning at the stake, would put an end to war in the
coming century. If the men failed, Nemirovich-Danchenko was certain
that the women would show the way.
In 1906, Tikhomirov concluded that the magazine’s title, Children’s
Reading, was no longer adequate in a Russia experiencing major social
and political changes, and he renamed it Young Russia (Yunaya Rossiya,
1906–18). The programme remained more or less the same, but in order
to instill the appropriate civic spirit for the historical moment, the writ-
ing was more topical. The team of writers expanded with the addition of
some new names like Avenarius, Serafimovich, Al. Altaev and Shmelyov.
In the 1910s, Ivan Nazhivin, the follower of Tolstoy, wrote frequently for
Young Russia’s Library series. A translation of London’s White Fang (1906)
was serialised in 1907 as Bely klyk. Other new foreign writers included
Selma Lagerlöf, the Swedish Nobel Prize winner, and Charles Roberts, the
Canadian wildlife writer.
258 chapter five

When Children’s Reading-Young Russia celebrated its fortieth anniver-

sary in 1909, it was praised by its rival Spring (Rodnik) as “a highly liter-
ary, serious magazine that pursues the highest educational goals”.97 At the
outbreak of the First World War five years later, Young Russia published
an article by Nemirovich-Danchenko, “Yesterday and Today” (“Vchera
i segodnya”). Oblivious of his dreams of eternal peace in 1900, he now
exclaimed: “How terrible the war will be, but how good it is to live at
such moments.” It was a life-and-death struggle, but not because of some
piece of land or affronted national feelings. Because Germany’s dream
was to turn the Slavic and Latin races into slaves, the war was “a struggle
between races for their very existence, for their whole future”.98
In 1915 the death of Tikhomirov, the magazine’s principal editor, was
widely mourned. This was a man who had done a huge amount for Rus-
sian children’s literature. Ivan Shmelyov remembered him not only as a
person who had loved the Russian people deeply and served the cause
of enlightenment unselfishly, but also as the author of Primer (Bukvar),
composed together with his wife Elena in 1872. Primer had come into
Shmelyov’s hands at the age of seven: “It was the first book to show me
the good things of life, how life and God’s world are transformed through
art.”99 Repeatedly published (with more than 160 editions), the book had
in fact served as the first lesson in reading for many generations. The focus
of Tikhomirov’s Primer was life in the countryside and the work of the
peasantry. Fables, proverbs and poems were given significant space, as
the Tikhomirovs strove to acquaint young readers with Russian culture
and life.
Spring (Rodnik, 1882–1917) also stayed true to the heritage of Real-
ism. Aleksey Almedingen, who became sole editor of the magazine after
the death of his aunt Ekaterina Sysoeva in 1893, quoted Belinsky: “Only
that children’s literature is good that is of interest also to adults.”100 The
themes chosen could differ, but the demands for high artistic standards
and truthfulness were similar to those for adult literature.
Among Spring’s Russian writers were Vagner (Kot Murlyka), Avenarius,
Altaev, Poznyakov, Gorbunov-Posadov, Zasodimsky, Kruglov, Stanyu-
kovich, Lukashevich, Mikhail Prishvin and Aleksey Svirsky. Tolstoy’s son,
Lev Lvovich Tolstoy (1869–1945), wrote for Spring, making his debut in

97 “Sorokoletie zhurnala ‘Iunaya Rossiia’,” Rodnik 1 (1909): 222.

98 Vasilii Nemirovich-Danchenko, “Vchera i segodnia,” Iunaia Rossiia 9 (1914): 1103.
99 Iv. Shmelev, “Vstrechi: Svetloi pamiati D.I. Tikhomirova,” Iunaia Rossiia 1 (1916): 4.
100 Natalia Al’medingen, “Pamiati A.N. Almedingena,” Rodnik 3 (1909): 418.
 modernism (1890–1917) 259

1891 under the pen-name L. Lvov. Not only did he write fiction, but also
sketches about life in foreign countries, such as Sweden and Egypt. Poetry
was contributed by the standard names of the day—Belousov, Polonsky,
Drozhzhin and Mariya Pozharova. Elena Samokish-Sudkovskaya and
Elizaveta Byom (whose speciality was silhouette pictures) were among
the illustrators.
In a tradition dating from the time of Sysoeva, foreign children’s litera-
ture was given a place of prominence. One of Sysoeva’s discoveries was
Cecilia Jamison, whose Lady Jane (1891) and Toinette’s Philip (1894) both
appeared in her translation in the same year as the originals. How neatly
Jamison’s books fitted into the mainstream of Russian children’s literature
can be seen from the alternative titles that they later received: The Orphan
Girl (Devochka-sirota) and Black Toinette’s Foster-Child (Priyomysh chor-
noy Tuanetty). Other foreign writers published in Spring during its last
twenty-five years of existence were Verne, Kipling, Twain, Daudet, Lon-
don, de Amicis, Orzeszko, Jerome K. Jerome and Vicente Blasco Ibáñes.
Fairy tales and legends by Oscar Wilde (Тhe Birthday of the Infanta, 1908),
Topelius and Lagerlöf also appeared in the pages of Spring.
Dmitry Kaygorodov followed the calendar of Russian nature. The biog-
raphies of famous persons (“Zamechatelnye lyudi”), such as Muhammed,
Ivan Fyodorov, Denis Fonvizin and Sven Hedin, were recounted in a sim-
plified form. A chess column began in 1906. Reports on famines in Fin-
land (1893) and in the Stavropol district (1899) bore witness to a sensitive
social consciousness. Russia’s ‘inner turmoil’, with its demonstrations and
strikes in 1905–06, was also covered. During the Russo-Japanese War the
magazine raised money for the families of fallen soldiers.
When Spring celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1906, it already
had an impressive legacy: 588 writers, scientists and artists, 154 poems,
766 stories and fairy tales, 540 scientific articles and more than 6,000 illus-
trations had been published in it. The following ten years did not change
the general picture. After the death of Aleksey Almedingen in 1908, his
daughter Natalya (1883–1943) took over. She wanted to involve leading
adult writers in children’s literature, but Ivan Shmelyov pointed out an
obstacle to this in a letter to the editor. He complained that writers could
not survive on the meagre fees that the children’s magazines offered. But
he said that the policy of Spring pleased him, since it aimed to instill “light,
truth and love” in its readers.101 He concluded that the magazine should,

101 V. Vil’chinskii, “I. S. Shmelev v zhurnale Rodnik’  ”, Russkaia literatura 3 (1966): 187.
260 chapter five

first and foremost, serve the needs of elementary schools, preserving close
bonds with the simple people.
In 1910 Spring founded a readers’ club, with reports on the activities of
young people all over Russia. The members discussed topics of mutual
interest, swapped addresses and informed each other about their hobbies.
Collecting post cards was the hottest item in the very last issue of Spring,
late in 1917.
The Young Reader (Yuny chitatel, 1899–1906), edited by Anna Ostrogor-
skaya (1863–after 1900), a doctor, addressed children between twelve and
fifteen. During its first year of existence, the magazine had 4,917 subscrib-
ers, of whom 800 lived in St Petersburg and Moscow. Two copies went as
far as the Yakutsk Government in Eastern Siberia.102 Two years later, in
1901, The Young Reader had 10,464 readers, of whom 23 lived abroad.103
The Young Reader began as a purely literary magazine with prose writ-
ers like Zasodimsky, Mamin-Sibiryak, Stanyukovich, Grigorovich, Semyon
Yushkevich (1868–1927), Kuprin (“Bely pudel”, 1903), and Al. Altaev.
Among recurring names in the poetry pages were Belousov, Pleshcheev,
Bunin and Allegro (Solovyova). Foreign literature was given much space
with names like Victor Hugo, Dickens, Verne, Kipling, de Amicis, Char-
lotte Brontë (Jane Eyre), Bret Harte, George Eliot, Henryk Sienkiewicz,
Ernest Thompson Seton, Ouida, Rider Haggard and Daudet. Robert Louis
Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde appeared in the Library of the Young
Reader.
Increasing attention was paid to social and political events. In 1899
the magazine raised money among its readers for starving children in the
province of Bessarabia. In 1904 the money went to children whose fathers
were fighting in the Russo-Japanese War. An article in 1905 discussed the
Russian revolutionary tradition. The same year, the publication of His-
toire d’un conscrit de 1813 (Istoriya rekruta), a novel by Émile Erckmann
and Alexandre Chatrian, caught readers’ attention. It had a strong paci-
fist tendency, with a stress on the suffering that wars bring with them:
“War must be hated as a manifestation of national sorrow and misfortune.
(. . .) A time will come when the ‘brotherhood of man’ will no longer be
empty words and war will be something impossible . . . Such a time will
come!”104 The antiwar stand of The Young Reader was already manifest in

102 “K zhurnal’noi statistike,” Iunyi chitatel’ 48 (1899): 1493–1494.

103 “K zhurnal’noi statistike,” Iunyi chitatel’ 24 (1901): 117–118.
104 “Predislovie,” Iunyi chitatel’ 7 (1905): 78.
 modernism (1890–1917) 261

1899, when Bertha von Suttner’s Die Waffen Nieder! (1889) was published
in the magazine’s library with the title Doloy oruzhie!
The radical programme of The Young Reader eventually led to conflicts
with the censor. The magazine was considered too extreme, something
of a spokesman for socialist ideas. In 1905 the Ministry of Popular Edu-
cation decided that The Young Reader should no longer be subscribed
to in schools and popular libraries. A year later the editors were forced
to inform their readers that the magazine was being discontinued. The
reason given was that prices had gone up so drastically that subscribers
could no longer afford to pay for the magazine. However, the legacy of The
Young Reader continued in a publishing house with the same name.
Corn Shoots (Vskhody, 1896–1917), an illustrated magazine “for the
family and the school”, was the enterprise of one man, Ėduard Monvizh-
Montvid (1858–1911). At his death in 1911, Al. Altaev published an obituary
eulogizing Monvizh-Montvid as an exceptional idealist, who had willingly
sacrificed everything for his magazine and for Russian children’s litera-
ture.105 Publishing for children was not a lucrative business, and Monvizh-
Montvid struggled with financial problems. To keep Corn Shoots going, he
lived in a small flat without servants, sent his family to the countryside,
where living was cheaper, worked without any assistance, and occasion-
ally even abstained from eating.
It was in Corn Shoots that Maksim Gorky made his first appearance as
a children’s writer. The drab life of a small apprentice in “A Good Telling
Off  ” (“Vstryaska”, 1898) is temporarily lightened by a visit to the circus, a
typical scene for the dominating theme of compassion for the underdog in
Russian children’s literature. Other authors who appeared in Corn Shoots
were Kuprin, Svirsky (Ryzhik), Altaev, Stanyukovich, Sergey Gusev-Oren-
burgsky (1867–1963), Daudet, Kipling, Bret Harte, all representatives of a
down-to-earth Realism. With its stress on everyday Realism in literature
and serious articles on science, the magazine was reminiscent of a tradi-
tional ‘thick journal’ for adults.
God’s World (Mir bozhy, 1892–1906) started off with the subtitle A
Monthly Magazine of Literature and Popular Science for Young People and
for Self-Education (Ezhemesyachny literaturny i nauchno-populyarny
zhurnal dlya yunoshestva i samoobrazovaniya) and an impressive list
of writers, including Mamin-Sibiryak, Bunin, Zasodimsky, Balmont and

105 A. Altaev, “Pamiati redaktora zhurnala ‘Vskhody’ Ėduarda Stanislavovicha Monvizh-

Montvida,” Tropinka 21–22 (1911): 877–880.
262 chapter five

Evgeny Chirikov. The fiction section was strong, but there were also good
articles on travel, natural science and ethnography. In 1892 Elizaveta
Vodovozova (1844–1923), in a sketch on Finnish life, informed her readers
that “At the present time, sorcerers have completely disappeared from
Finland, but at the end of the last century their number in that coun-
try was rather significant.”106 After five years, the editors of God’s World
decided to change its target audience, and the words “For Young People”
were dropped from its subtitle.
A magazine heavily criticised later from a Soviet perspective was Chil-
dren’s Rest (Detsky otdykh, 1881–1907). It was accused of false romanti-
cism and of carrying propaganda for monarchist and naive philanthropic
ideals. This was probably the publication that Gorky had in mind when,
in 1930, he talked about a magazine of the late nineteenth century, full
of “disgustingly charming boys”.107 Officially, Children’s Rest claimed to
promote three values—religion, love for one’s native country and appre-
ciation of good art. In the 1880s Evgeniya Tur was the biggest name, but
gradually writers such as Zhelikhovskaya, Aleksandr Fyodorov-Davydov,
Poznyakov, Lukashevich, Zasodimsky, Kruglov, Nemirovich-Danchenko,
Mamin-Sibiryak, Ignaty Potapenko, Al. Altaev, Belousov, Pozharova and
G. Galina (1870 or 1873–1942) also started appearing on its pages. In 1881,
when his brother-in-law, Pyotr Bers (1849–1910), was editor of the maga-
zine, Leo Tolstoy contributed a short story, “What Men Live By” (“Chem
lyudi zhivy”). Children’s Rest favoured Russian literature; among its few
foreign writers, Kipling, Verne and Ernest Thompson Seton stand out.
Oscar Wilde’s fairy tale about unselfish love, The Happy Prince (1888), was
translated in 1898.
Initially, Realism with a Populist strand dominated, but later Children’s
Rest could also include fairy tales by writers such as Topelius and Hans
Christian Andersen, folktales and satirical texts, as for example Wilhelm
Busch’s Plisch und Pljuch (Istoriya dvukh sobachek, 1895). In the 1890s
more and more space was given to games, puzzles and riddles, sheet
music, physics experiments and texts about fishing. The reader learned
how to make his own barometer. In 1895 Russian children were taught the
rules of lawn-tennis, and four years later, the rules of “Okey”, a sport remi-
niscent of cricket. Georgy Chulkov (1879–1939), then a student expelled
from his university, wrote biographies of great men’s childhoods and a

106 Elizaveta Vodovozova, “Finliandiia,” Mir Bozhii 9:II (1892): 27.

107 M. Gor’kii, “Eshche o gramotnosti,” Sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 24 (M., 1953), 328.
 modernism (1890–1917) 263

series of articles on Africa (1902), a continent which was as foreign to him

as to his readers.
When celebrating the magazine’s twentieth anniversary in 1901, the edi-
tor Nikolay Popov (1871–1949), a writer of stories and articles, stressed that
the magazine wanted, first and foremost, to be a friend of its readers and
therefore, their opinion was of great importance for the editiorial board.
Zasodimsky campaigned to raise money for street children, a social prob-
lem that he had often touched upon in his works. In 1906 Children’s Rest
celebrated its 25th anniversary, but a year later the magazine was discon-
tinued. The explanation given was its economical losses, but it is highly
possible that articles like one about the Duma and civil rights (“Beseda o
gosudarstve i gosudarstvennom ustroystve”, 1906) and another about elec-
tions in Finland, a radical model from a Russian perspective, had created
an untenable situation for the magazine.
Little Toy (Igrushechka, 1880–1912) was founded by Tatyana Passek
(1810–89), who edited it for its first seven years. The title was misleading,
perhaps in a deliberate attempt to pass the magazine off as a harmless
publication for small children. In reality, Passek was trying to keep up
the radical legacy of Alexander Herzen, her relative and close friend. In
1885 the magazine laid out its programme: “The goal is to strengthen the
development of heartfelt tenderness, religious and aesthetic feelings and
love for the entire visible world, to awaken the consciousness of moral
plight, the necessity of labour and the importance of independence, as
a source not only of spiritual strength, but also of moral and material
independence.”108 In plain language, this meant serious publications with
a clear-cut didactic and moral tendency.
Passek herself published her memoirs in Little Toy. Vagner (Kot
Murlyka), Annenskaya, Zhelikhovskaya and Kruglov represented Russian
children’s literature, while popular foreign names were Verne, Daudet,
Nieritz and Bolesław Prus. Pleshcheev and Drozhzhin published poetry,
and the genre of fairy tales consisted of translations by the ubiguitous
Hans Christian Andersen and Topelius. In addition, the magazine con-
tained articles on popular science, travel sketches and biographies of great
men such as Martin Luther and Benjamin Franklin.
Aleksandra Peshkova-Toliverova (1842–1918) made changes when she
took over Little Toy in 1887. Illustrations brightened up the drab layout.
New names were added to the list of contributors,—Zasodimsky, Altaev,

108 T. Passek, [Announcement], Igrushechka. Zhurnal dlia detei 3 (1885): [95].

264 chapter five

Mamin-Sibiryak, Lukhmanova, Poznyakov, Lukashevich, Gorbunov-

Posadov, Avenarius, Belousov, Shchepkina-Kupernik, A. Fyodorov, Solo-
vyova (Allegro) and Lev Lvovich Tolstoy. Georg Ebers, de Amicis, Twain,
Kipling, George Sand and Selma Lagerlöf represented foreign literature. A
peculiarity was the publication of texts in French and German, most often
translations of classic Russian literature. Much attention was paid to the
supplement, A Little Toy for Little Children (Igrushechka dlya malyutok,
1889–1912).
In 1891 Little Toy had the honour of publishing, “Little Fool” (“Dura-
chok”), Nikolay Leskov’s (1831–95) first and last attempt at children’s lit-
erature. In the eyes of the world, the good-hearted and hardworking serf
boy is a fool, but eventually he wins everybody’s respect. Leo Tolstoy was
not impressed and rejected a separate publication by Posrednik.109 “Insin-
cere” was his unexpectedly harsh judgement, and, indeed, “Little Fool”
never appeared as a book.
Little Toy also featured an ‘art gallery’, articles on Russian history and
the peoples of Russia, a nature column by Kaygorodov and biographies
of famous people. The chief editor, Peshkova-Toliverova, wrote Helen
Keller’s biography (1910–11) and selected aphorisms suitable for children
from Leo Tolstoy’s A Circle of Reading (Krug chteniya). Handicrafts were
encouraged in columns like “Games and Handicrafts” (“Igry i ruchnoy
trud”) and “At the Worktable” (“U rabochego stola”). Advice for activities
during long winter evenings appeared under the title “Do It Yourself !”
(“Sdelayte sami!”). The girls were presented with cut-out patterns. When,
in 1904, the magazine raised money for the children of wounded and sick
soldiers, four-year-old Lena assisted with 25 kopecks.
The merits of Little Toy did not pass unnoticed. In 1904, at an exhibi-
tion called Children’s World, the magazine received a silver medal, and
four years later it received a certificate of merit at the exhibition Art in
the Life of the Child.
In 1905 Vladimir Lvov (1869–1939) founded a new illustrated children’s
magazine, Family and School (Semya i shkola, 1905–17), intended for town
and village children between ten and twelve. The list of contributors
included well-known names—Belousov, Drozhzhin, Zasodimsky, Mamin-
Sibiryak and Teleshov. Among the translations, works by Scandinavian
writers were popular, and so were Charles Roberts’ nature tales. And,

109 L.N. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 87 (M., 1937), 68. (Letter to V.G. Chertkov,
January 1891).
 modernism (1890–1917) 265

naturally, no children’s magazine could do without the biographies of

great men and women.
One of Posrednik’s many enterprises was the magazine Lighthouse
(Mayak, 1909–18). The stated programme was “to offer children sound and
interesting reading material and assist in the development of the children’s
own activity, creative work, love for both intellectual and physical work,
and active love for all living things”.110 The cover had a picture of a light-
house overlooking a dramatic scene of rescue from a small rowing boat
during a heavy storm. The obvious meaning of the title was expressed in a
story “The Song about the Marvellous Girl” (“Pesnya o slavnoy devushke”,
1909): “Day and night the old lighthouse keeps repeating: I am watching
over you. Take care, brothers!”111
The editor, Ivan Gorbunov-Posadov, was a devoted follower of Tol-
stoy, and during its ten years of existence the magazine never failed to
propagate Tolstoyan principles. The old master himself assisted with a
children’s prayer, letters to children and adolescents and aphorisms. In
“The Wolf  ” (“Volk”, 1909) he demonstrated the ethical necessity of veg-
etarianism through a dream with a parallel between a wolf eating a child
and a child eating a chicken. Tolstoyan sympathisers publishing in Light-
house included Nazhivin, Pavel Bulanzhe (1865–1925) and Anna Chert-
kova (1859–1927). Something of a cuckoo in the nest of Lighthouse was the
pedagogue Nadezhda Krupskaya, who sent her contributions from exile
in Switzerland. In 1911 Krupskaya translated a true story, “My First Day at
School” (“Moy pervy shkolny den”), from German, and four years later she
published a German memoir of childhood. The story ended with a moral,
programmatic for the translator: “When I grew older, I thought a lot about
how unfair it is that some people have much, while others have nothing,
and I tried to understand what caused wealth and poverty and what could
be done so that everyone would have a good life. I read a lot and studied,
and now I know why.”112 As the wife of Lenin and an influential person in
the Soviet educational establishment, Krupskaya was to do immeasurable
harm to Russian children’s literature in the 1920s.
Korney Chukovsky, the acerbic and demanding critic, held Lighthouse
in high esteem, even though he found it boring.113 Essentially, it was a

110 Protalinka 1 (1909): back cover.

111  Maiak 1 (1909): 4.
112 “Moi pervyi shkol’nyi den’, peredeleno s nemetskogo N. Krupskoi,” Maiak 10
(1910): 40.
113 Chukovskaia, Pamiati detstva, 174.
266 chapter five

serious publication with hardly any room for imagination and laughter.
Fiction appeared only sparingly, and then mostly in the form of trans-
lations of works by writers like Lagerlöf and Lucy Fitch Perkins. Cecilia
Jamison’s Toinette’s Philip was revived through a new translation as Priyo-
mysh chornoy Tuanetty (1915). Among the few poets, one finds established
names like Belousov and Drozhzhin, but also new talents, such as Olga
Belyaevskaya and Lev Zilov. Demyan Bedny, a future staunchly Soviet
poet, wrote verse fables, while the editor himself spread the message of
love and God’s omnipresence through stories and sketches.
The call in the magazine’s manifesto for “an active love for all living
things”, was not just empty rhetoric. Hardly any issue passed without
some article on nature and animals. William Long, the American writer
on nature, animals and field biology, was already well-known to a Rus-
sian audience. The most popular nature writer in Lighthouse was Charles
Roberts, but Ernest Thompson Seton was also a long-standing favourite
with readers.
Readers learned about bookbinding, woodwork, hand shadows, winter
sports, camera obscura, stereoscopic photography and the life of Eski-
mos. They were taught conjuring tricks and chemical experiments; they
learned how to draw, use modelling clay and build boats, kites, a sundial
and nesting boxes, as well as to cultivate their own vegetable garden. In
the spirit of Tolstoyan internationalism and universal brotherhood, Light-
house taught Esperanto. Contact with readers was important: letters were
published and answered on a regular basis. In 1918, the last year of the
magazine’s existence, the readers were given their own Lighthouse club.
As a major violation of the law of love, the Great War was more or
less ignored by Lighthouse. When Gorbunov-Posadov wrote about heroic
deeds, he did not find them among soldiers, but among workers and
firemen. Also, the February and October Revolutions passed unnoticed.
Lighthouse could not, however, remain untouched by the changing times.
The lack of paper and printers caused problems at the end of 1916. In
1918, prices rose dramatically, and distribution became impossible, when
the whole postage system broke down. Other newspapers and magazines
were no longer allowed to advertise Lighthouse. The last issue appeared
in the autumn of 1918. The magazine ended as it had started, namely, with
a celebration of Leo Tolstoy. Gorbunov-Posadov asked readers to stick to
Tolstoyan principles and live as Tolstoy taught, that is, “to live, loving
each and every one, all people, no matter whether they are good or bad,
and all living creatures, from our friend, the horse, down to the tiniest
little insects; live, loving each and every one and working to ensure that
 modernism (1890–1917) 267

everyone’s life will be better, happier, more radiant and loving.”114 After
this declaration, the light of the Lighthouse was forcibly switched off.

The most popular children’s magazine during the last two decades of
Tsarist Russia was unquestionably Heartfelt Word (Zadushevnoe slovo,
1876–1918). Ivan Goncharov, the author of the novel Oblomov, coined the
name, and it was on his recommendation that Sofya Makarova, a writer
from Family Evenings, became its first editor. The first decade of the maga-
zine’s existence was not impressive. For a start, Heartfelt Word was split
into four different publications, each with its own explicit readership
(5 to 8 years old, 8 to 12 years old, above 12, and family reading). The bleak
content consisted mostly of unsigned small stories, probably from the pen
of the editor herself, and furnished with explanations for parents. Small
competitions were designed to motivate readers.
In 1884, M.O. Volf took over the publication of Heartfelt Word and cut
down its versions to two—one for younger and one for older children. In
the same year a new writer, Klavdiya Lukashevich, published an Easter
story, the beginning of a series of sentimental stories about poor but
kind-hearted people versus the rich but hard-hearted and about heart-
rending encounters between children and old people. Lukashevich was
soon followed by two other promising writers, Vasily Avenarius and Anna
Khvolson. Towards the end of the 1890s, Heartfelt Word had become the
leading children’s magazine, a position which it retained until the very
end in 1918. The list of writers includes Charskaya, Pchelnikova, Zhe-
likhovskaya, Shchepkina-Kupernik, Aleksandra Tolstaya (later Bostrom),
Evgeny Shveder, Konstantin Ldov, Mariya Pozharova and G. Galina. Writ-
ers for adults, too, such as Sologub, Gorodetsky, Aleksandr Fyodorov, Boris
Lazarevsky and Boris Zaytsev, appeared in the pages of Heartfelt Word.
An important name in Heartfelt Word was Sigizmund Librovich, pub-
lishing under his many pseudonyms. A favourite device of Librovich was
to let objects, for example, a pen-knife, tell their own story. For many
years just a member of the editorial board, Librovich inherited the diffi-
cult task of being the magazine’s chief editor during its final stages.
Heartfelt Word took pride in being, first and foremost, a Russian maga-
zine. When it published translations it chose them with unfailing good
taste. Among its foreign writers, one finds Louisa May Alcott, Frances

114 I. Gorbunov-Posadov, “K devianostoletiiu so dnia rozhdeniia L.N. Tolstogo,” Maiak

7–9 (1918): 77.
268 chapter five

Burnett, Berthold Auerbach, Mark Twain and Jules Verne. Collodi’s

Pinocchio was published as The Adventures of a Wooden Boy (Prikly-
ucheniya derevyannogo malchika) in 1905–1906, while Lewis Carroll’s
Alice in Wonderland (Priklyucheniya Alisy v volshebnoy strane) followed
in 1908–1909. Charles Kingsley’s Water Babies (Deti vody), which had been
ignored in 1874, was given a new chance in 1910–1911, while Der Struwwel
Peter (Styopka-Rastryopka) was published as a supplement in 1912. In 1911
the name Beatrix Potter appeared for the first time in Russia, when Heart-
felt Word published The Tale of Two Bad Mice (1904) as O dvukh skvernykh
myshkakh. In the Soviet Union, fifty years were to pass before Potter was
accepted again. A stroke of luck was finding The Brownies by Palmer Cox.
Heartfelt Word introduced these comic little creatures in 1887, and subse-
quently they regularly appeared in the magazine’s pages for many years.
Light entertainment was provided by games, comics, picture-book sup-
plements, stamp albums, colouring books, songs and sheet music. Chil-
dren were asked to write texts to given illustrations. Supplements with
children’s fashions were published annually. As early as 1901, Heartfelt
Word was teaching its readers the basics of photography. The readers’
column was very popular. In 1884, Valery Bryusov, a ten-year-old school-
boy, wrote about his wonderful summer in a village outside Moscow: “We
had picnics, went swimming, played, and only studied one hour a day.”115
Occasionally he also caught sight of foxes and rabbits. Ten years later the
same Bryusov was to achieve national fame as the first Russian Symbolist
poet. Vera Lomachkina (also 10 years old) reported that she had watched
moving pictures in a museum in the company of her father in 1897. Kostya
Andreev, a seven-year-old boy from St Petersburg, presented a rather mar-
ginal problem, when he asked the magazine’s readers in 1905, whether
they thought he had made the right choice in naming his parrot Fluff
(Pushok). From 1908 onwards, children were sending in their answers to
a questionnaire about their reading preferences. The cult of Lidiya Char-
skaya emerges strongly in these responses.
In 1901, Heartfelt Word started raising money in memory of its first edi-
tor, Sofya Makarova. She had proposed raising 3,000 roubles to place an
orphan girl in a St Petersburg home and allow her to study. Six-year-old
Mina Gelman from Odessa saved kopeck after kopeck until, “with a happy
heart”, she could send a tiny sum to the editorial board in 1901. Ten years

115 Zadushevnoe slovo 16 (1884): 303.

 modernism (1890–1917) 269

later Heartfelt Word celebrated its thirty-fifth anniversary by founding a

scholarship named after Charskaya.
Lidiya Charskaya also dominated the Heartfelt Word edition for elder
children, which serialised her annual novels. As for the rest of its con-
tent, side by side with biographies, there were articles on literature, his-
tory and geography. Aphorisms, crosswords, comic strips, photographs,
paintings lightened up the layout. The Eiffel tower was included as a con-
struction kit consisting of forty cardboard parts. The readers’ own column
offered engaging reading. In 1892, K. Kyun (12 years old) and B. Shveder (14
years old) wanted to know where and when the tradition of saluting had
started, while Zhanna Srebnitskaya wondered about the etymology of the
word ‘rouble’. In 1909, Misha Grebov (11 years old) asked readers which
sport, football or cricket, they preferred, while other children wrote about
their summer trips. Charskaya was the unchallenged favourite among
readers; Verne and Alcott were also popular. When the World War broke
out in 1914, fourteen-year-old Natasha Volkova from Penza expressed her
disappointment at not being accepted as a nurse, while Raya Filimonova
(12 years old) from Samara had more trivial problems. She had bought a
diary, but did not know how to start it, and therefore asked for advice.
Heartfelt Word greeted the February Revolution with enthusiasm: “In
the fate of our native country, a great joyous change has occurred.”116 The
revolution promised a “free, happy life in the future”. The meaning of the
word ‘freedom’ was explained to the children: “True freedom is respect
for the rights of everyone . . . Therefore, one of the main conditions is not
to harm other people, not to do any evil to others, not to force anyone by
using violence, and to listen to your inner voice under all circumstances.”117
That summer the most urgent problem was a 600 percent rise in prices
and wages, and the magazine was forced to ask subscribers for additional
payments. The October Revolution passed without comment, but its con-
sequences could not be avoided. Heartfelt Word was closed at the end of
January 1918.
For Soviet literary scholars Heartfelt Word was the prime example of
a reactionary publication, either staying stubbornly aloof from all social
problems and crucial historical events or interpreting them in a conser-
vative way. However, the magazine’s ability to please its readers was not
denied.

116 Zadushevnoe slovo 8 (1917): 243.

117 S. Polianin, “Chto takoe svoboda,” Zadushevnoe slovo 22–23 (1917): 332. (April 9, 1917.)
270 chapter five

The magazine Path (Tropinka, 1906–12) was an ambitious undertaking

among children’s periodicals. Its editors, Poliksena Solovyova and Natalya
Manaseina (1869–1930), turned it into an unofficial organ of the Symbol-
ists, the leading literary group of the period, and the list of contributors is
impressive, to say the least. Path published poems by Belousov, Balmont,
Sologub, Blok, Andrey Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Zinoveva-Annibal, Vladimir
Pyast, Moravskaya and Gorodetsky, and prose by Gippius, Merezhkovsky,
Remizov, Aleksey Tolstoy, Mariėtta Shaginyan and Olga Forsh. The illus-
trative material was also excellent, thanks to artists such as Ivan Bilibin
and Mikhail Nesterov. The policy statement of Path made clear that the
main aim was not to teach morals and manners, but “to develop artistic
intuition in children and present them with entertaining and wholesome
reading, including religious and fairy-tale elements”.118
Quite in harmony with Symbolist philosophy, Path visualised a dual
world, a higher and a lower reality, and the existence of a transcendental
world beyond the reach of the five senses. Nature was animated and per-
sonified, and in the religiously orientated material folklore and Christian
belief merged together unproblematically.
Under her pseudonym Allegro, the editor Solovyova was active in Path
both as a writer and an illustrator. A mystical, religious inclination was
already evident in her very first publication, the fairy tale “The Spruce and
the Aspen” (“Yolka i osina”, 1906). The aspen is cursed by the Creator as
the tree on which Judas hanged himself, while the spruce is blessed on the
basis of its sacrificial death for Christ.
Religious issues also emerge in animal tales in Path. In Zinaida Gip-
pius’ (1869–1945) story “Even the Animals” (“I zveri”, 1909), a reassuring
answer is given to the animals, who ask the angels whether they, too, will
be allowed to enter heaven after death. Mariėtta Shaginyan’s “The Old
Woman ‘Fairy Tale’” (“Starukha-skazka”, 1910) stresses the importance of
fantasy and fairy tales. At a time when children prefer conjugating Ger-
man verbs to listening to fairy tales, the old woman Fairy Tale is lying on
her deathbed. When she manages to give back joie de vivre to a sick girl,
she is embraced by grateful life itself, and she then rises as young, strong
and happy as she had been in the past. Artistically, Shaginyan’s tale is
embarrassingly weak and its message too heavily underlined, namely that
if children’s literature is to survive, the prevailing realistic trend must be
overcome.

118 Tropinka 1 (1906): back cover.

 modernism (1890–1917) 271

Signs of modern times also entered the pages of Path. In Gippius’ story
“Off They Flew” (“Poleteli”, 1911), fourteen-year-old Katya, who spends the
winters living close to Paris with her parents, not only rides in a Mercedes,
but is also allowed to drive the family’s small, two-seater sports car! She
even almost fulfills her dreams of flying. Articles treated subjects as var-
ied as aeroplanes, the Olympic Games, bats, the peoples of Russia and
the childhood of Peter the Great. Added to the usual riddles and picture
puzzles were ‘stories without words’, that is, comic strips.
Translations in Path included works by Anatole France, Rudyard Kipling
and Jack London. The real sensation was a translation of Lewis Carroll’s
Alice in Wonderland (Priklyucheniya Alisy v strane chudes) in 1909 by
Solovyova (Allegro). The novel was presented to Russians as a favourite
among English children. In 1910 it also appeared as a book, published
again by Path. The magazine’s first book publication had been Kuprin’s
Elephant (Slon), but, not surprisingly, Solovyova came to dominate their
book output with more than twenty volumes.
Path encouraged its readers to write to the editorial board. In 1911, nine-
year-old Lyonya Altgauzen from Lesnoy wanted to know why the wind
blows and what books he should read. The answer to the second question
was a list of names and titles, indicative of what was considered to be the
best Russian and foreign children’s literature in the last years of the Tsarist
regime. Self-evident choices were classics like Pushkin, Tolstoy, Turgenev,
Defoe and Harriet Beecher Stowe. To these were added contemporary
writers like Korolenko, Mamin-Sibiryak, Garin-Mikhaylovsky, Stanyuko-
vich, Avenarius, Chekhov (“Kashtanka”), Teleshov (“Belaya tsaplya”) and
Dmitry Kaygorodov. Foreign writers included the ever-popular Green-
wood, Thompson Seton, Ouida, Longfellow, Twain and Jack London. New
favourites among Russian readers were the Polish writer Eliza Orzeszko,
whose Przygoda Jasia (Priklyuchenie Yasya, 1886) went through eleven
editions in Russia, and the Canadian writer Marshall Saunders. Saunders’
Beautiful Joe, the fictionalised autobiography of a dog, came out in four
editions as Krasavets Dzhoy. The list of recommendations also included
de Amici’s Diary of a Schoolboy. When the Italian writer died in 1911, Path
published an obituary that pointed out that his school novel had been
translated into almost all European languages, including three different
Russian translations, and that the book had been published in more than
one hundred editions in the writer’s homeland.
At the exhibition Art in the Life of Children in 1908, Path received the
gold medal. When the magazine ceased to exist four years later, it was
not because of problems with censorship, but as the result of financial
272 chapter five

problems. Significantly, the end of the magazine coincided with a crisis

within Russian Symbolism. The moment demanded a new type of chil-
dren’s magazine. The Soviet judgment was to be severe: Path was a deca-
dent phenomenon with a strong religious and mystical tendency. Samuil
Marshak had his own explanation for the journal’s short life: “Not without
reason was Path read only by the children of St Petersburg writers, while
children of clerks, officers and the urban lower middle class all travelled
on the thoroughfare of Heartfelt Word.”119
Young Jackdaw (Galchonok. 1911–13), a counterpart to the popular
satirical magazine Satirikon, had a quite different profile. The program-
matic opening words, directed at parents, claim that Young Jackdaw, as a
humourous magazine for children, free from all pedagogical goals, repre-
sents something new in Russia. One of its models was Der gute Kamerad,
a German children’s magazine, which had been published since 1886. “The
child should learn by playing”, was a golden rule for Young Jackdaw,120 and
therefore the Tsarist school system with its strict discipline was ridiculed in
a roughly humorous way, partly seen through the eyes of children. Among
prose writers, Gorodetsky, Arkady Averchenko, Georgy Landau and Gorky
stood out, while Pozharova, Moravskaya and Vasily Knyazev contributed
good poetry. In Aleksey Tolstoy’s fairy tale “The Snow House” (“Snezhny
dom”), the lonely peasant boy Petechka plays games of make-believe with
the gnome’s daughter in his snow hut. Foreign names of interest were
Edgar Allan Poe, London and Boussenard. Much attention was paid to the
illustrations, partly because the chief editor, Aleksey Radakov (1877–1942),
was himself an artist. Illustrators Nikolay Radlov and Vladimir Lebedev
used strong colours, often with a primitivistic touch. In spite of its origi-
nality, Young Jackdaw was shortlived due to a lack of subscribers. To this
reason must be added an obvious unfamiliarity with the target audience
among some of the contributors.
Mikhail Chekhov (1865–1936) edited Golden Childhood (Zolotoe detstvo,
1907–17). Chekhov had been publishing in children’s magazines since the
1880s though without attracting any attention. He was not only Golden
Childhood’s editor, but, apparently, also its main writer. Pseudonyms were
sometimes used, but much of the magazine’s material was unsigned. A red
cover with two frightened kittens looking through a hole at a barking dog

119   S. Marshak, “O nasledstve i o nasledstvennosti v detskoi literature,” Sobranie sochine-

nii: V 8 t. Vol. 7 (М., 1971), 294.
120 A. Radakov, “Nashim chitateliam,” Galchenok 51 (1912): 13.
 modernism (1890–1917) 273

attracted the attention of the presumptive audience. In Golden Childhood

children could find stories about animals and nature, the life of poor peo-
ple, travel sketches, fairy tales, songs and games. Belousov assisted with
poems about nature. Games, pictures, puzzles, conjuring tricks, cut-outs,
shadow plays and cartoons enlivened the sometimes dull content. Trans-
lations include tales by Lagerlöf, Alice in Wonderland and an adaptation
of Lew Wallace’s Ben Hur (1880), called On the Eve of a New Life (Na zare
novoy zhizni, 1909–10).
Nikolay Koretsky (1869–1938), a minor poet and playwright, was the
editor of Skylark (Zhavoronok, 1913–1923). His authors include the prose
writers Gusev-Orenburgsky, Potapenko, D’Or, Lazarevsky, Viktor Muy-
zhel, Skitalets, Vasily Brusyanin and Remizov while G. Galina, Aleksey
Lipetsky, Pyotr Oreshin and Vladimir Narbut contributed poetry. Kuprin’s
story “Marya Ivanovna” (1914) appeared in Skylark; it tells of a disobedi-
ent ape that the owner has to give away to the zoo. The magazine’s illus-
trations, including photographs, were of great importance. The readers
learned songs and how to play ‘Battleship’ and prepare dried flowers. An
article informed them about the origin of chocolate. Koretsky managed
to keep his Skylark alive even a few years into the Soviet period. After its
suppression in 1923, he went on working at various editorial tasks, but in
1937, at the peak of the Great Terror, he was arrested and in the next year
executed, accused of anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation.
Dear Little Sun (Solnyshko, 1905–17) was a family-based magazine. Ini-
tially designed by Aleksey Almedingen to be a counterpart to his other
publication, Spring, it was taken over by his daughters Natalya and
Tatyana (1885–1942) after his death in 1908. For its audience, Dear Lit-
tle Sun chose a neglected group, that is, peasant children, pupils of the
first two classes at village schools. The new magazine was noted by Leo
Tolstoy, who recommended it warmly to a teacher at the school on his
estate.121 Avenarius (fairy tales), Fyodorov-Davydov, Nazhivin and Mariya
Tolmachova wrote prose for it, while the new women poets Mariya Pozha-
rova, Mariya Moravskaya, Olga Belyaevskaya and Poliksena Solovyova
contributed poetry. Tatyana Almedingen wrote about nature. Russian his-
tory was treated in several articles, while other articles dealt with subjects
like clever animals or the making of glass. Folktales, riddles, songs and

121 I.M. Iudina and L.N. Ivanova, “Arkhiv Al’medingenov,” Ezhegodnik rukopisnogo

otdela Pushkinskogo doma na 1979 god (L., 1981), 21.
274 chapter five

drawings filled many pages. The Great War provoked informative articles
about the Allies and the work of Red Cross.
Dear Little Sun greeted the February revolution of 1917 enthusiastically:
“Children! In the life of our fatherland a great change has occurred.”122
The bad tsar had been deposed, and now the people were going to rule.
The nature poet Ivan Belousov was also enthusiastic: only now could he
breathe freely. In the very last issue, published after the Bolshevik takeo-
ver, Tatyana Almedingen expressed her regrets that Dear Little Sun had so
often been delayed in 1917. She promised that when the war ended and a
new life and a new order were established in Russia, the children would
get their magazine on time.123
Thawed Patch (Protalinka, 1914–17) was addressed to children aged ten
to twelve. The editor Aleksandr Pechkovsky (years of birth and death
unknown), one of Symbolist Andrey Bely’s former ‘Argonauts’, took a
great interest in Russian folklore. In 1916, Thawed Patch published Afana-
sev’s Russian Folk Legends (Narodnye russkie legendy) as a separate vol-
ume in an adaptation for children. In an article, “A Few Words about the
Vignettes in Thawed Patch”, Pechkovsky explained why the magazine car-
ried pictures of Russian folk toys at a time when city children, the maga-
zine’s main readers, were playing with wind-up cars. For Pechkovsky it
was a duty to love ‘the beauty of the earth’ at a time when genuine Rus-
sian folk art was on the verge of disappearing.124 True to this programme,
Thawed Patch also published folktales and Russian sayings provided with
modern illustrations. The Kalevala, the Finnish epos, was published as a
supplement in 1914 with Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s illustrations. During the
Great War the magazine pursued a pan-Slavic line.
Not surprisingly, the young peasant poet Sergey Esenin felt drawn to
Pechkovsky’s magazine. His poem “A Mother’s Prayer” (“Molitva materi”,
1914) was linked to the World War. The poem tells of how, back in the vil-
lage, an old mother cries in sorrow and joy when she learns that her son
has fallen with the enemy’s captured banner in his hand. Another new
name to appear here was the young Futurist Nikolay Aseev (1889–1963),
who favoured history and folk legends. The future great name of Soviet
science fiction, Aleksandr Belyaev, made his debut in 1914 in Thawed
Patch with a fairy-tale play—Grandma Moyra (Babushka Moyra). Prose

122 Z., “Velikie dni,” Solnyshko 2 (1917): 33.

123 T. Al’medingen, “Kak pechataetsia knizhka ‘Solnyshko’,” Solnyshko 5–6 (1917): 128.
124 A. Pechkovskii, “Neskol’ko slov o zastavkakh ‘Protalinki’,” Protalinka 12 (1914): 809–810.
 modernism (1890–1917) 275

by Serafimovich, a song by Balmont, poems by Lev Zilov, an article

about George Frideric Handel and cartoons (‘funny pictures’) were also
included.
Small children, too, had their own magazines around the turn of the
century. The most long-lived was The Little One (Malyutka, 1886–1917),
aimed at children between four and eight. The very first issue called out
to its audience: “Come here, children, run to meet your new friend.”125 The
Little One promised to be a good playmate, to bring along new friends
from the forests and fields, to teach the children ‘holy words’ like the ones
they would hear in church, and kind words like the ones they could hear
from their parents. In the short prose texts, children play with their toys,
dolls and pets. Accidents sometimes happen, as when the dolls lose their
heads at a too-lively ball, but then again, the ‘doctor’ skilfully cures them.
Other children arrange an exhibition of their drawings. The didactic layer
is next to non-existent, but a religious bias is often felt. When a child asks
why the flowers and the grass cry at night, it receives the answer that dew-
drops are God’s way of taking care of everything created (“Rosa”, 1886). In
addition to fiction, The Little One published simple songs, riddles, games
and tasks, such as, for example, forming words out of given letters.
The authors hide themselves behind names like Uncle Sasha and
Auntie Masha. ‘A. E.’ turned out to be the extremely modest Raisa Kuda-
sheva, who in 1896, at the age of 18, had her first poem published in The
Little One. Today the magazine is mainly remembered for the publication
of Kudasheva’s poem “In the Forest a Little Christmas Tree Was Born”
(“V lesu rodilas yolochka”) in 1903. This was the first version of what was
to become a favourite song among Russian children under the title “The
Little Christmas Tree” (“Yolochka”).
Red Dawns (Krasnye zori, 1904–12) also addressed small children, with-
out, however, meeting much favourable response. It published short
tales by second-rate writers like Aleksandr Budishchev (1864–1916) and
Evgeny Shveder, but also—rather surprisingly—by Lidiya Charskaya,
who at times sent the magazine some original material. In promotional
announcements, Belousov, Lukashevich, Mamin-Sibiryak and Aleksandr
Fyodorov were mentioned as having promised to contribute. Parents were
asked to send in their children’s drawings.
1911 was a critical year for Red Dawns. Some well-known names, for
example, Sofya Lavrenteva, Al. Altaev, Mariya Tolmachova and Selma

125 Maliutka 1 (1886): 3.
276 chapter five

Lagerlöf, appeared in the magazine sporadically, but most of the mate-

rial was in fact produced by the editor Aleksandra Peshkova-Toliverova,
then approaching her seventies. The publication of double issues with a
minimum of pages could hardly satisfy its subscribers. An attempt to save
the magazine was made the following year, when L. Kormchy (whose real
name was Leonard Piragis) (1876–1944), a minor children’s writer, took
over as chief editor. The result was a more varied publication with some
new names and pages filled with comic strips, jokes, charades and tasks. A
new logo with a cockerel sitting on a fence greeting the rising sun with its
crowing heralded a new epoch. Only five issues later, however, the maga-
zine ceased to exist. The apparent reason was the publication of a story by
Kormchy, “The Brotherhood of the Black Owls” (“Bratstvo Chernykh sov”).
Three boys who love adventures and mysteries form a secret brotherhood
during the summer holidays. Like their heroes Robin Hood and Rinaldo
Rinaldini, they plan to take from the rich and give to the poor. In their
attempt to save an old woman from having her property seized to pay a
debt, they plan a robbery, but eventually confine themselves to an anony-
mous threatening letter to a repugnant merchant. The story had a radical,
menacing tone, which made the authorities intervene. Kormchy, who had
been imprisoned and exiled for his writings during the Russian revolution
of 1905, was, however, allowed to continue working for his main organ,
Corn Shoots.
Initially, Red Dawns had been founded and edited by Kazimir Barantse-
vich (1851–1927), a children’s writer of some prominence since the 1880s.
Even though he possessed no great talent, he did have an eye for character
and setting. Gratitude and friendship were his favourite themes, some-
times, admittedly, presented in a rather bizarre manner. A story in his
collection Friends (“Drugi”, 1898) tells of the friendship between a lonely
man and a mouse, and another tells of two puppies, ‘two friends’, who are
caught and hanged. A memorable figure is the ‘noble’ horse Serko, but it is
actually the death of an old horse that Barantsevich wants to recount. For
one of the short stories in his Golden Days (Zolotye dni, 1892), Barantsevich
chose a gigantic cockroach as the narrator of fairy tales (“Skazki chornogo
tarakana”). “Don’t ask me how I was able to understand its speech”, the
narrator wisely comments.
Barantsevich’s most popular work was Egor’s Wanderings (Skitanie
Egorki, 1899). The little orphan Egor, a street singer, who lives in a cold
damp cellar, is offered help by a kind German, and he is eventually able
to return to his home village to become a peasant. The message of the
story is whispered by the birch leaves at an early stage: “Don’t be afraid!
 modernism (1890–1917) 277

There are good people in this world! Live an honourable life and nobody
will do you any harm!”126
In the early twentieth century, the prolific Aleksandr Fyodorov-Davydov
edited four magazines—Ant (Muravey, 1900–04), Little Glow-Worm
(Svetlyachok (1902–20), Guiding Light (Putevodny ogonyok, 1904–18) and
Facts and Fun (Delo i potekha, 1905–08). This was light reading, highly
popular among small children. Statistics show that, in Kiev in 1912, only
Heartfelt World had more subscribers (292) than Little Glow-Worm (220)
and Guiding Light (180).127 First and foremost, Fyodorov-Davydov wanted
to entertain and amuse children, and this he did in the form of stories,
fairy tales, fables, legends and anecdotes. Fyodorov-Davydov was respon-
sible for most of the material, but he also had assistance from writers like
Mamin-Sibiryak, Nemirovich-Danchenko, Lukashevich, Poznyakov, Brus-
yanin, Belousov, Kruglov, Drozhzhin, Zasodimsky and Pozharova. Sergey
Esenin published a poem in Guiding Light. The First World War, or the
Second Patriotic War, as it was initially called in Russia, was strongly rep-
resented in Guiding Light with war stories by Mitropolsky and Zilov and
a miniature copy of the unfortunate Reims Cathedral. A pioneer transla-
tion of Edith Nesbit’s The Enchanted Castle (1907)—Zakoldovanny zamok
(1915)—revealed the editor’s ability to keep up with the times.
There is an unfailingly positive feeling in everything Fyodorov-Davydov
wrote. Many of his fairy tales, close to folktales, are excellent. Animals,
from the smallest insects to the kings of the jungle, live a human-like
life. Hares go to school, insects give a ball and the parrot keeps a diary.
Children communicate freely with birds and animals. Fyodorov-Davydov
claimed to be giving ‘true tales’ about nature, but he definitely understood
‘truthfulness’ in his own way. In numerous supplements Fyodorov-Davy-
dov also offered puzzles, charades, riddles, conjuring tricks, hand shad-
ows, instructions for making your own toys and furniture for a doll house,
children’s drawings and a variety of games.
On the connection of the tenth anniversary of Little Glow-Worm in 1911,
Fyodorov-Davydov declared that he wanted to give his readers a happy
childhood, full of bright memories, and to teach them to value their
homes, their families and parents. In the ‘glow-worms’, i.e., his readers,
he wanted to awake “love and compassion for the weakest, respect for

126 K. Barantsevich, Skitanie Egorki (SPb, 1899), 88.

127 V.P. Rodnikov, Ocherki detskoi literatury (Kiev, 1912), 138.
278 chapter five

work, understanding of the necessity of mutual aid between people and a

full independence in life”.128
Sytin also published three children’s magazines—Little World (Mirok,
1902–17), Children’s Friend (Drug detey, 1905–07) and The Little Bee
(Pcholka, 1906–07). Simplified articles on Russia’s war history revealed
the greatness of the country. Folktales were given much space. In 1909
Little World was continued by a magazine with the same title, mainly
remembered for its publication of Sergey Esenin’s very first poem, “The
Birch” (“Beryoza”), in 1914. Hiding behind the pseudonym ‘Ariston’, nine-
teen-year-old Esenin painted a beautiful word-picture of a snow-covered,
sparkling young birch.
The children’s magazines Forget-Me-Not (Nezabudka, 1914–17), Children’s
World (Detsky mir, 1907–15) and Good Morning (Dobroe utro, 1909–18)
also deserve mention. With a priest as its editor-in-chief, Forget-Me-Not
published material with a clear-cut Christian message, a programme which
entirely suited a writer like Klavdiya Lukashevich. The target audience for
Children’s World was children between nine and twelve. Among its writers
Charskaya and Shchepkina-Kupernik stood out, while Elizaveta Byom was
the most professional of the illustrators. From Italy came Mikhail Osorgin’s
(1878–1942) rather odd short story, “Flowers and Grass” (“Tsvety i trava”,
1907). A feverish, terminally ill twelve-year-old boy is able to understand
the language of nature. The ivy accuses him of being a parasite, living in
Italy on the work of the peasants on their Russian family estate. Death
liberates him from his qualms of conscience. Good Morning, which car-
ried the impressive subtitle “A Magazine of Art, Literature, Humour and
Sports”, offered easy reading with an abundance of illustrations.
The period also saw the first attempts to publish newspapers for chil-
dren. What’s New (Chto novogo, 1908) and Children’s Newspaper (Detskaya
gazeta, SPb 1908, M. 1910) remained short-lived, while A Little Newspaper
for Children and Youth (Gazetka dlya detey i yunoshestva, 1910–15) lasted
for six years. The editor during its last three years was Aleksandra Pana-
fidina (1860–1919), a publisher and bookshop owner. The cheap (seven-
kopeck) weekly newspaper offered topical material from all parts of life,
news that reflected what was going on in Russia and abroad. It included
articles on aeroplanes and the scout movement. It also covered sports,
with articles about the Stockholm Olympics in 1912, for example. There
was photo reportage, something new for Russia. Money was collected

128 Iubileinaia kniga “Svetliachka” 1902–1911 gg. (SPb, 1911), 13.

 modernism (1890–1917) 279

for starving children. Aleksandr Kruglov wrote editiorials with the title
“Letters to the Small People” (“Pisma k malenkomu narodu”), but as a
result of his chauvinism at the outbreak of the World War, he was excluded
from the list of contributors.
Only a handful of the existing magazines for children and youth sur-
vived the October Revolution. The last ones to be closed were Little Glow-
Worm (1920) and Skylark (1923). During the Civil War, the White side had
its own children’s magazines, often connected with the scout movement.
In emigration, attempts were made to keep up the old tradition with mag-
azines like Little Green Stick (Zelyonaya palochka, Paris, 1920–21), Young
Reader (Yuny chitatel, Riga, 1926), Swallow (Lastochka, Kharbin, 1926–45),
Lights (Ogonki, Paris, 1932–33) and The Cricket (Sverchok, Paris 1937–39).
Little Green Stick, edited by Don Aminado (1888–1957) and Aleksey Tol-
stoy, had an impressive list of contributors, but failed to achieve a firm
financial basis. Its most valuable publication was Tolstoy’s story, Nikita’s
Childhood (Detstvo Nikity, 1921). Walt Disney’s well-known figures were
introduced to Russian children by Swallow in the 1930s.

Criticism

The interest that Russian pedagogues took in children’s literature at the

beginning of the twentieth century was another indication of the grow-
ing prestige of the genre. Professional journals presented new books and
offered recommendations for children’s reading. Critics made the first
attempts at outlining the development of the Russian children’s literature.
One of the first theoretical works on children’s literature in Russia,
Aleksandr Kruglov’s Literature of ‘the Small People’ (Literatura ‘malenkogo
naroda’), was initially published in Education Herald (Vestnik vospitaniya,
1892–95), before it appeared as a book in 1896. Kruglov defended the need
for a separate children’s literature, while stressing that the genre demanded
a specific kind of talent. ‘Children’s writer’ had to be an honorable title.
A love of children and a deep insight into child psychology were needed.
The writer had to become a child himself, a close friend of the children.
Kruglov wanted literature that would acquaint children with real life,
even its dark sides, without, however, crushing their belief in the triumph
of goodness. The writer was an educator who implanted high ideals
and taught sympathy for the downtrodden. The heroes of children’s
books were to fight for a happy future for themselves. Instead of dry logic,
maxims and moralizing, Kruglov advocated images, sounds and colours.
280 chapter five

He insisted that the child also had the right to enjoyment and laughter.
Even a book like Styopka-Rastryopka, considered by many to be unsuit-
able for children, was accepted by Kruglov.
Surveying the genres of children’s literature—stories, books for small
children, poetry, plays, magazines, picture books—Kruglov came to the
conclusion that children’s literature had made visible progress since its
dismissal by Dmitry Pisarev in the 1860s. What was still missing was a true
appreciation of the writers. While their works could be much read, the
authors themselves were often forced to live and die poor and neglected.
Also, the press and critics failed to pay due attention to the genre.
Kruglov took a special interest in illustrative material. Pictures were
often taken at random from some foreign magazine or book, while, in
fact, there had to be a congenial relationship between the writer and the
artist. Not only was good artistic technique needed, but also imagination
and taste. The lack of Russian illustrators was alarming; in a choice which
cannot be disputed, Kruglov singled out Ivan Panov as the greatest name
among the few native artists.129
In 1906, Aleksandr Fyodorov-Davydov compiled a book, Who Is for
Children? (Kto za detey?), with pen portraits of the main contemporary
names in the field. In the foreword, he writes that ‘children’s writer’ is no
longer a shameful term in Russia, now that the writers have left the old,
sentimental children’s literature behind for good.130 He found that morals
were now taught in a unaffected way, unnoticed by the reader, and that
writers had accepted the fact that they should be close to their audience.
One has to live among children, to laugh and cry with them, Fyodorov-
Davydov concluded.
In December 1908, in the newspaper Rech, the artist, art historian and
critic Alexandre Benois published a sharp attack on contemporary Rus-
sian children’s literature.131 According to Benois, for whom the Realist
tradition meant little or nothing, Russian children’s literature was a total
desert: “We have nothing of our own that could even partly be compared
to Western [children’s literature]. We have nothing that would be dear
to children and would leave its mark on their whole life and develop
qualities inherent in them.” The Russians had nothing that could come

129 A.V. Kruglov, Literatura ‘Malenkogo naroda’. Vypusk vtoroy (M., 1897), 5.

130 A.A. Fedorov-Davydov, “Vzgliad na detskuiu literaturu,” in Kto za detei: Galereia
pisatelei dlia detei (M., 1906), 16.
131  Aleksandr Benua, “Khudozhestvennye pis’ma: Koe-chto o elke,” Rech’, December 25,
1908, 3.
 modernism (1890–1917) 281

even close to the books of Hauff, Hoffmann, Hans Christian Andersen,

Dickens, Fenimore Cooper, Mayne Reid, Verne, Madame de Ségur and
Gabriel Ferry. As for Russian illustrations, a subject dear to Benois, they
formed “a sea of vulgarity and tastelessness” and could best be described
as “dead, grey, dull”. The exceptions were exceedingly few and always only
occasional—Benois mentions names like Ivan Bilibin, Viktor Zamiraylo,
Sergey Malyutin and Vasily Polenov—and they were often marred by an
antiquated pseudo-Russian style.
The problem was evident at Christmas-time, when children expected
to receive books as presents. Those who knew foreign languages could,
without any problems, find good literature with splendid illustrations and
foreign magazines such as Le Jeudi de la Jeunesse and Qui lit rit. There were
Russian translations, to be sure, but they were most often of poor quality.
However, reading only foreign literature meant alienating oneself from
Russian life.
When it came to pinpointing the reasons for Russian children’s litera-
ture, both old and contemporary, displaying nothing but “vulgarity and
lack of taste”, Benois came up with a risky explanation:
Finally and essentially, the whole civic, virtuous, noble, humane tendency
of Russian children’s literature does not deserve the respect to which it lays
claim. I would even say that this tendency is the main curse of the Russian
children’s book. It is precisely its noble tearfulness, its persistent attention
to those ill-treated by Fortune, its exhortation to compassion that consti-
tutes the nightmare that keeps the Russian children’s book in its hopeless
and depressing captivity.
The wish to make good, kind, moral citizens out of children with the help
of moralistic and didactic children’s literature had resulted in “a Niagara of
tears”, books filled with “drunken shoemakers, sick mothers, rags, stench,
dirt, slush, sickly sweet moaning”. Russian writers offered children stories
of “how an old woman gave her last penny to an old man and a three-year-
old nanny-girl wiped the nose of her one-year-old brother”. From child-
hood Benois had detested this gloomy literature, and he was sure that his
aversion was shared by all ‘normal’ children. His choice was to give chil-
dren Pinkerton to read rather than unimpeachably moral Russian books.
Missing were all the main components of good children’s literature, that
is, genuine feelings, spontaneity, cheerfulness, joy, a carefree atmosphere,
curiosity, amusement. What Benois wanted to find in children’s books
was “the sun, the forest, flowers, a dream of the distant and adventurous,
a courageous heroic spirit, a striving for exploits, a beautiful pride and
self-awareness”.
282 chapter five

The following year there appeared Children’s Literature (Detskaya lit-

eratura, 1909), another substantial book on the theory, history and social
role of the genre. Its author, Nikolay Chekhov (1865–1947), set out to justify
the existence of a special children’s literature. One goal was to awake an
interest in reading, so that children at a later age would be able to appre-
ciate literature for adults. Children’s literature, according to Chekhov,
should also provide information about life and the surrounding world.132
To accomplish this, the children’s writers had to have a good knowledge
of the opinions, interests and tastes of their audience. In their themes and
form, their works had to differ from those of adult literature.133
In his survey of the history of children’s literature, Chekhov distin-
guished between authors who just ‘scribble’ and those who genuinely
create.134 A Russian favourite of his was Konstantin Stanyukovich, in whose
works he found sympathetic heroes, living characters, absorbing plots
and a vivid picture of life. Other writers of importance were Nemirovich-
Danchenko, an accomplished story-teller and stylist, Mamin-Sibiryak,
who always awoke positive feelings in his readers, and Nikolay Vagner.
Chekhov was sure that, had Vagner written in another language, he would
have achieved world-wide fame.135 Among contemporary writers Chekhov
singled out Al. Altaev, but he also praised Charskaya, a representative of
‘romantic literature’. Charskaya possessed “a lively fantasy and a flawless
literary style”.136 Fyodorov-Davydov received praise for his ability to “talk
with the children” and to understand and share their interests.137
Chekhov did not accept the trend, widespread among contemporary
writers, of using the language of children, but on the other hand, he pro-
vided many examples of the opposite, and equally reprehensible, strategy:
the use of a language and style completely foreign to the audience. Among
readers, peasant children and pre-school children were two neglected
groups. Statistics showed that only 1.5 percent of published works were
directed at those who could not yet read. The book market overflowed
with foreign mass literature written by the likes of Aimard, Boussenard,
Marryat and André Laurie, not to mention all the Pinkerton books. In
Chekhov’s view, this was mendacious literature that revelled in violence

132 Chekhov, Detskaia literatura, [XIII].

133 Ibid., 14.
134 Ibid., 132.
135 Ibid.
136 Ibid., 141.
137 Ibid., 147.
 modernism (1890–1917) 283

and cruelty. On the other hand, the popularity of foreign mass literature
clearly showed what was missing in Russian children’s and juvenile litera-
ture, namely, adventures in an exotic setting, energetic and brave heroes
and an optimistic and vivid narration.
Magazines and illustrations for children had separate chapters, and in
the last section of his book, Chekhov dealt with such issues as the impor-
tance of children’s literature within education and the role of adults,
teachers and school libraries.
In 1915, Chekhov published a second book on the subject, Introduction
to the Study of Children’s Literature (Vvedenie v izuchenie detskoy liter-
atury). Based on the author’s lectures for teachers, it was partly a second
edition of the 1909 volume. Chekhov defended fairy tales on the grounds
of their educative role and national roots. While Pushkin’s fairy tales were
‘pearls’, many pedagogues still found Pyotr Ershov to be more problem-
atic because of all the absurdity, coarseness and incomprehensibility they
saw in The Little Humpbacked Horse. However, to Chekhov’s mind it was
a work that would have a long life, full of artistry, a life-affirming attitude
and cheerfulness as it was.138
This time the debate about fairy tales had been prompted by the ped-
agogue and nature writer Evgeny Elachich (1880–1945). In his Collected
Articles about Children’s Readings (Sbornik statey po voprosam detskogo
chteniya, 1914), he recommended a more cautious approach to fairy tales.
Children should be introduced to the genre at a late stage, as fairy tales
often used symbols and an allegorical form foreign to young readers. The
moral could be dubious and the events illogical and scary. Elachich took
a critical approach to Nikolay Vagner, questioning his place within chil-
dren’s reading altogether. The feelings of misery and gloom that reigned
in Vagner’s tales could even deprive a reader of the will to live.139
In his Introduction to the Study of Children’s Literature, Nikolay Chekhov
divided Russian children’s literature of the previous fifty years into partly
overlapping groups: Sentimentalism, Romanticism, Utilitarian Realism,
Populism, Artistic Modernism and New Children’s Literature. Within Pop-
ulist literature much genuine compassion for the people could be found,
but feelings of grief and desperation often exceeded what was good for
children. Modernists such as Gorodetsky, Cherny and Blok wrote without
any pedagogical task, giving only superficial, superfluous entertainment.

138 N. Chekhov, Vvedenie v izuchenie detskoi literatury (M., 1915), 34–35.

139 Elachich, Sbornik statei po voprosam detskogo chteniia, 132.
284 chapter five

Chekhov concluded that games and toys were more beneficial for children
than the poetry of writers like these. He now also took a more critical atti-
tude to Charskaya. It was true that she loved her heroes, let good triumph,
knew how to tie several story lines together, but, on the other hand, her
view of life was narrow, superficial and petit-bourgeois, and when it came
to creating literary characters, she revealed a poverty-stricken imagina-
tion. It was as if the same person kept reappearing under different names
in her books.
In his Essays on Children’s Literature (Ocherki detskoy literatury, 1912),
later called Children’s Literature (Detskaya literatura, 1915, 1916) in its
enlarged editions, Viktor Rodnikov (1879–?), a Kievan historian of Russian
pedagogics, pointed out that children live in their own world, which is not
a miniature model of the adult one. The writers had to take into considera-
tion the intellectual level and the developmental phase of their audience.
They should avoid political issues, acute social problems and feelings of
love (for instance, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was ‘erotic’
literature because of an exchange of kisses!), and, likewise, excessive cov-
erage of poverty, cruelty and death. Children’s literature should, however,
reflect life and ethical conflicts truthfully, while avoiding “artificial moral-
izing” and blatant tendencies.140 The task of children’s literature was not
only to foster but also to offer aesthetic sensations. Like Belinsky, Rod-
nikov considered a work that was appreciated by both children and adults
to have passed the ultimate test of a work’s value. Therefore, one should
not write especially for children, but for a dual audience.141
Unlike Benois, Rodnikov held Russian children’s literarure of the nine-
teenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century in high esteem,
characterizing it as many-sided and rich. He ranked Mamin-Sibiryak as
one of the most talented writers, with “Emelya the Hunter” as his main
work. Mamin-Sibiryak’s works for children displayed artistic simplicity,
sincerity and high ideals. Rodnikov found Charskaya less sympathetic.
He felt she was not much better than Pinkerton, crudely tendentious and
with a stack of implausible characters. He reported that he had seen how
Charskaya’s books led girls into “all kinds of absurd eccentricities”.142 Nor
did Rodnikov care much for the modernist strand within contemporary
children’s literature: this kind of literature did not correspond to children’s

140 Rodnikov, Ocherki detskoi literatury, 22.

141   Ibid., 29.
142 Ibid., 179.
 modernism (1890–1917) 285

aesthetic taste, and they could not possibly grasp the meanings of com-
plex symbols.
Rodnikov cited recent statistics showing that around three-quarters of
children between eleven and sixteen loved reading poetry, while eleven-
year-olds preferred fairy tales. Rodnikov accepted fairy tales, because they
developed the imagination and the aesthetic sense and taught children
to distinguish between good and bad. Vagner with his gloomy world-
view could not, however, be recommended.143 The lack of good picture
books was alarming, and the only writers of such works whom Rodnikov
found worth mentioning were Valery Karrik (1869–1943) and the Swede
Elsa Beskow. Karrik, a caricaturist, published 28 entertaining booklets, for
which he was both the writer and the artist, under the title Picture-Tales
(Skazki-kartinki). After the revolution he emigrated to Norway, enjoying
popularity especially in the USA with his adaptations of Russian folk-
tales. Elsa Beskow did not establish herself as a name of importance in
Russia before 1917, even though some of her books had been translated
by that time, for example, Puttes äventyr i blåbärsskogen (Peter in Blue-
berry Land; Chernichny dedka, 1903), Olles nya skidor (Ollie’s Ski Trip;
Tosya na lyzhakh, s.a.) and Tomtebobarnen (Children of the Forest; Pod
staroyu sosnoy, s.a., Lesovichki, s.a.). Rodnikov also stressed the need for
good illustrations in children’s books, recommending artists such as Ivan
Panov, Nikolay Karazin, Mikhail Mikeshin, Mikhail Klodt, Elena Samokish-
Sudkovskaya and Elizaveta Byom.
In annual volumes published by The Pedagogical Paper (Pedagogichesky
listok), under the title Towards a Yearbook of Children’s Literature (Opyt
ezhegodnika detskoy literatury, 1910–16), Nikolay Savvin (1878–1934) paid
close attention to the published output within the field. Like Chekhov
and Rodnikov, Savvin found the new Russian children’s literature to be
unique, personal and creative. It was original and luminous. He singled
out names like Zasodimsky, Mamin-Sibiryak and Stanyukovich and tried
to prove with the help of statistics that the genre was going through a
dynamic period. In three ensuing small monographs entitled “Our Chil-
dren’s Literature” Savvin presented three writers of importance—Ivan
Shmelyov (1913), Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak (1923) and Aleksandr Serafi-
movich (1924). An unfailing interest in the genre led him to continue his
critical work into the early Soviet years with volumes like The Principles
of Criticism of Children’s Literature (Printsipy kritiki detskikh knig, 1924)

143 Ibid., 106.
286 chapter five

and The Main Trends of Children’s Literature (Osnovnye napravleniya det-

skoy literatury, 1926). In these works Savvin adapted himself to the Soviet
approach to children’s literature. The best pre-revolutionary works rep-
resented what he called “the artistic-realistic trend”; in them the authors
boldly treated important themes like social injustice and lack of equality.
The modernists’ attempts within the genre were, on the contrary, failures,
one reason being that their works were devoid of any ethical principles.
As for Charskaya, she should have been exposed as a bad influence by
librarians and teachers at an early stage and prevented from spreading her
petit-bourgeois morality and world view, in which a complacent sense of
personal well-being was the ideal.144
A Russian translation of Heinrich Wolgast’s book Das Elend unserer
Jugendliteratur (1896) (Problemy detskogo chteniya [The Misery of Our
Children’s Literature], 1912) was important because of its insistent demands
for artistic value. According to Wolgast, children’s literature should not
only educate and cultivate, but should also develop the readers’ aesthetic
taste. Just like his Russian colleagues, Wolgast showed distaste for mass
literature, fearing that it could prevent the majority of children from dis-
covering good literature.
In the 1910s the fruitless debate over the role of children’s magazines
continued. “Do children need a children’s magazine?” Mikhail Vasilevsky
asked in a supplement to Heartfelt Word in 1911 (Nuzhen li detyam det-
sky zhurnal?), and Vasily Zelenko (1880–?) seconded him with an article
in Children’s Literature News (Novosti detskoy literature), “Are children’s
magazines needed?” (“Nuzhny li detskie zhurnaly?”).145 Both concluded
that magazines were indeed needed as an aid to parents and teachers in
the process of upbringing and education. A survey of 3,000 children and
young people in St Petersburg revealed that 39 percent preferred maga-
zines to books because of the magazines’ rich and shifting content and
greater topicality. Zelenko, a permanent critic at the magazine Children’s
Literature News, also published a volume for teachers and parents, Guide
to Children’s Reading (Rukovoditelstvo detskim chteniem, 1915), and one
for librarians—Children’s Libraries (Detskie biblioteki, 1917).
Critics did not overlook the importance of bibliographies. At the turn
of the century, in the improbable location of the Pedagogical Museum of

144 N. Savvin, Osnovnye napravleniia detskoi literatury (L., 1926), 89.

145 Vasilii Zelenko, “Nuzhny li detskie zhurnaly?,” Novosti detskoi literatury 3 (1912):
1–4.
 modernism (1890–1917) 287

St Petersburg Military Training Schools there existed a ‘Section for Criti-

cism and Bibliography of Children’s Literature’, which published the result
of its work in a volume entitled What Children Should Read (Chto chitat
detyam, 1898). The members of this section met once or twice a month
to read their reviews to each other. Under the same title, in 1900, Sergey
Kurnin published a collection of reviews of children’s literature selected
from pedagogical magazines.
Mikhail Sobolev (?–1918) did a valuable job listing articles published
in children’s magazines in the 1870s and 1880s. His Reference Book on the
Reading of Children of All Ages (Spravochnaya knizhka po chteniyu detey
vsekh vozrastov, 1903, 1907) included books published during the previous
thirty years, totalling well over four thousand titles. Short critical com-
ments on several hundred children’s books were included in A Guide to
Books for Children’s Reading (Ukazatel knig dlya detskogo chteniya, 1905,
1916) by Aleksandr Flyorov and Vsevolod Murzaev. The stated criteria for
a good children’s book was that it should be accepted by children and
grown-ups alike and elicit new or strengthen old “good feelings and moral
concepts”. The author’s world-view should be “pure and irreproachable in
all respects”.146 In What Children Younger than Fifteen Should Read (Chto
chitat detyam do 15 let, 1910) and Good Children’s Books (Khoroshie detskie
knigi 1–3, 1914), Mariya Lemke listed books she could recommend. In a
foreword she made clear what her criteria were: good literature should
stimulate independent thinking, awaken good feelings, help readers to
orientate themselves between good and bad and represent a high artistic
level.147
On Children’s Books (O detskikh knigakh, 1908) included reviews of
almost two thousand books published before 1907 and considered recom-
mendable for children between seven and sixteen. The editors, in a fore-
word possibly written by Aleksandra Annenskaya, explained what they
sought in children’s literature: it should unobtrusively “instill sound moral
concepts, guide the reader’s moral development, [. . .] help him to get to
know life”.148 Children’s books did not have to entertain or divert (for that
children had toys and were given opportunities to play) and the problem
with Fenimore Cooper, Mayne Reid, Gustave Aimard and other writers of

146 A. Flerov and V. Murzaev, Ukazatel’ knig dlia detskogo chteniia (M., 1905): XIII.
147 Mariia Lemke, Khoroshie detskie knigi. Vypusk II. Srednii vozrast (SPb, 1914), 16.
148 O detskikh knigakh (M., 1908), XIII.
288 chapter five

adventure stories was that they created a fantasy world with little if any
connection with real life.
Two monthly magazines devoted to criticism of children’s literature
and addressed to parents were published in the years before the revo-
lutions of 1917—Children’s Literature News (Novosti detskoy literatury,
1911–16) in Moscow, and What and How Should Children Read? (Chto i kak
chitat detyam? 1911–17) in St Petersburg. In these publications one could
find not only reviews, but also presentations of writers and discussions
on the theory of children’s literature and its role in the formation of the
readers’ characters.

The Crocodile

In the years preceding the 1917 revolutions, the sharp-tongued critic Korney
Chukovsky (1882–1969) worked hard to stimulate awareness of the ‘dan-
gers’ of mass-produced children’s literature. He waged a private campaign
against Nat Pinkerton, the magazine Heartfelt Word and the books of
Lidiya Charskaya, asking for a more critical attitude from parents of their
children’s reading. His articles were collected in the volume To Mothers
about Children’s Magazines (Materyam o detskikh zhurnalakh, 1911).
Chukovsky’s starting point was that writers should respect their young
readers; literature for children and young people should not be a refuge
for second-rate writers: “A writer for adults does not absolutely have to
be gifted, but for a children’s writer it is obligatory.”149 While authors
traditionally regarded children as small adults with the same interests
and needs as adults, albeit on a smaller scale, Chukovsky demanded that
children’s real nature should be taken into consideration. Anyone who
wanted to write for children had to become a child himself and adopt a
child’s way of thinking, talking and looking at his surroundings. “The child
creates his own world, his own logic and his own astronomy, and anyone
who wants to talk to children must first penetrate this world.”150
Chukovsky found contemporary Russian children’s literature to be grey
and trivial. There were no genuine poets, just writers who produced the
obligatory Christmas and Easter poems according to established models.
Children’s magazines based their publication policy on erroneous views
of their readers. There was too much seriousness, didactic purpose and

149 Chukovskii, Sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 2 (M., 2001), 556.

150  Ibid., 552.
 modernism (1890–1917) 289

tediousness, and not enough smiles, fantasies, fairy tales and childish
‘insanity’. Chukovsky had found the latter quality in Leonid Andreev’s
overlooked, weird tale “The Brave Wolf  ” (“Khrabry volk”) of 1909.151 He
also singled out Gorodetsky’s collection Iya (1908) as a genuine treasure,
“original and grandiose”.152 Among the magazines, he saw something
positive in Lighthouse (for example its anti-militaristic tendency) and in
Fyodorov-Davydov’s publications (a carefree atmosphere), but mainly in
Path, where Chukovsky himself had started out as a children’s writer. For
the poets of Path the child’s own vision of the world was fundamental;
they did not write for children or about children, but from the point of
view of children, simultaneously creating new forms. Chukovsky did,
however, criticise Path for its neglect of urban themes and its overly large
output of religious poems.
In the same year—1911—Chukovsky was asked by the publishing house
Shipovnik to start a new magazine for children. The idea materialised
in the form of an anthology, The Firebird (Zhar-ptitsa, 1912). Chukovsky
invited writers and artists that he personally admired, including Sasha
Cherny, Aleksey Tolstoy, Mariya Moravskaya, Sergey Sudeykin, Sergey
Chekhonin, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky and Aleksey Radakov. Tolstoy’s inno-
vative fairy tale “The Firebird” (“Zhar-ptitsa”), full of absurd and unex-
pected turns and details, stands out, while the editor’s own contributions
were rather modest. “The Chicken” (“Tsyplyonok”) is a prose miniature for
small children with the author and the illustrator Chekhonin engaging in
clever interplay. The strength of the anthology was precisely the fruitful
cooperation between writers and artists, visible also in the layout of the
book. The Firebird was not a popular success, something which, Chukovsky
explained, was a result of its high artistic standard and price.
In 1915, an anthology called Our Magazine (Nash zhurnal) appeared. For
Chukovsky this was an old dream come true, as all the texts and illustra-
tions had been created by children, and the role of adults was restricted to
technical help. The initiators were two brothers, Zhorzhik and Garrik Arn-
shtam, four and seven years old, while the other contributors were invited
to participate through a newspaper announcement. The most interesting
story was “The Adventures of a Sleepwalker” (“Priklycheniya lunatika”),
written by seven-year-old Lidochka Ch-kaya, that is, Chukovsky’s daugh-
ter Lidiya. The story is reminiscent of the absurd prose of Daniil Kharms,

151  Ibid., 557.
152 Ibid., 561.
290 chapter five

but written fifteen years earlier than the formation of the Oberiu group. In
a supplement to Our Magazine, the enthusiastic opinions of well-known
writers and artists were quoted.
At this time Chukovsky saw himself as a voice crying out in the wil-
derness, but he found a kindred spirit in Gorky, who recognised in the
pugnacious critic a force to be used. “Now one good children’s book is
worth more than ten polemical articles”, Gorky told Chukovsky. “If you
really want to destroy this rottenness, you should not attack it with your
bare fists but create something of your own, something genuinely artistic.
Then the rot will stop by itself. This is the best polemic; not words, but
deeds.” 153
Chukovsky’s first attempts at writing for children had passed unno-
ticed, and his artistic breakthrough happened rather by chance. In 1916
his little son Nikolay was taken into hospital in Helsinki, and on the way
back home to their dacha on the Karelian Isthmus, Chukovsky improvised
a story to the rhythm of the night train to help the boy overcome his pain
and fears. This was the origin of The Crocodile (Krokodil, 1917), a seminal
work of modern Russian children’s literature.
The subject alone was sensationally original. A cigar-smoking crocodile
walks among the crush of trams on Nevsky Prospekt, the main street of
Petrograd (as St Petersburg had been renamed at the start of the war with
Germany); he speaks German (later changed to Turkish) and gobbles up
policemen and dogs that get in his way. This is Krokodil Krokodilovich, a
visitor from from Africa, who is now terrorising the whole city. The mon-
ster meets his match in the fearless Vanya Vasilchikov, who is on the run
from his nurse. With a wooden sword and a toy pistol, the little hero sub-
dues the rebellious crocodile.
The second part of the verse tale takes a surprising turn, as man takes
on the role of oppressor. Banished to Africa, Krokodil Krokodilovich tells
the wild animals how their brothers are kept locked up in cages in Rus-
sia, and the animals unite to start a war of liberation. In response to man
keeping animals as prisoners, the animals also take a hostage, a little girl,
from among the humans. As always with Chukovsky, the tale is resolved
harmoniously. The inmates of the zoo are freed and are allowed to stay
in St Petersburg on condition that they only eat porridge and drink but-
termilk. Using the form of a fairy tale, Chukovsky replayed the utopian
dream of everlasting peace that Vladimir Mayakovsky had presented in

153 M. Gor’kii, O detskoi literature (M.-L., 1952), 341.

 modernism (1890–1917) 291

Fig. 8. Re-Mi, The Crocodile (1919)

his contemporary epic The War and the World (Voyna i mir, 1917), in which
people destroy their guns and animals file their claws blunt. The revolu-
tionary ideals of freedom and equality are fulfilled.
Tradition and innovation meet harmoniously in Krokodil.154 Chuko-
vsky introduced the modern city and technology into Russian children’s
poetry, but at the same time he built on the legacy of folktales, which
is the source of features like anthropomorphism, an outwardly insignifi-
cant and weak hero, and the final collective victory celebration. The ele-
ments of improvisation and playfulness are striking. The important factor
in writing The Crocodile was to refrain from interrupting the narrative:
there was no time for lengthy description and original rhymes; the tale
had to be dynamic and fast-moving, something Chukovsky achieved with
a generous use of verbs, economy with adjectives and a constant change
of metre. In Crocodile, Chukovsky was already shaping a style, a range of
motives and a fairy-tale setting that were to become his hallmark.

154 For a good analysis of the poetics of Chukovsky, see Elena Sokol, Russian Poetry for
Children (Knoxville, The University of Tennessee Press, 1984), 3–24 and 60–92. The book
also includes insightful studies of the children’s poetry by Samuil Marshak, the OBERIU-
poets and the poets of the 1960s.
292 chapter five

Crocodile was originally published in For Children (Dlya detey), a

monthly supplement to the popular family magazine Niva, with Chukovsky
himself as editor. Chukovsky bypassed all the established names of the
genre, recruiting instead new talents, such as Cherny, Moravskaya, Pozha-
rova, Gorodetsky, Vladislav Khodasevich, Aleksey Remizov, Aleksandr Grin
and Tėffi (1872–1952). The only ‘classic’ writer to be accepted was the Finn
Topelius and his fairy tale “Tuttemuj”. Chukovsky himself made transla-
tions from English, among them the fairy tale “Tsar Puzan”, in which an
unlikely friendship emerges between the farcically fat Tsar Puzan and the
giant who had been terrorizing the inhabitants of Puzan’s empire.
The most remarkable publication in For Children was definitely
Chukovsky’s Crocodile, or Vanya and the Crocodile (Vanya i krokodil),
as it was originally called. It was serialised in all the twelve issues that
appeared with illustrations by Re-Mi, that is, Nikolay Remizov. Its recep-
tion among children was enthusiastic, while critics were more cautious:
the modern fairy tale with its tendency towards the absurd was an alien
literary form in Russia. Many were hostile to fantasy literature simply on
principle, and there were also concerns that the story of a usurper, a self-
appointed tyrant, who governs by fear until he is exposed and defeated by
a child, might be a political allegory.
Simultaneously, Chukovsky, at the invitation of Maksim Gorky, gathered
material for a miscellany for small children with the working title Rainbow
(Raduga). The art editor was Alexandre Benois, the same man who had
vigorously condemned Russian children’s literature in 1908. Chukovsky
assembled the writers and artists of The Firebird anthology of 1912, add-
ing Gorky, Khodasevich, Bryusov and Natan Vengrov (1894–1962) as new
names in the literature section. Retellings of folktales were in fashion, and
at this historical moment the motif of Ivan the Fool outwitting the Tsar
had a topical ring (“Pro Ivanushku-durachka”). The boastful, smug samo-
var in Gorky’s fable (“Samovar”) ultimately becomes so hot that it cracks,
much to the satisfaction of the other kitchen utensils. Sasha Cherny wrote
about the joy of two girls over a new Wendy house, while Aleksey Tolstoy
(“Fofka”) showed a rare ability to relive the fantasies and fears of children.
Happy poems about happy small creatures were created by Khodasevich,
Vengrov, Moravskaya and Cherny. Nevertheless, the best part of Chukov-
sky’s and Benois’ miscellany was not the literary works, but the fruitful
cooperation between the writers and the artists—Lebedev, Zamiraylo,
Radakov, Dobuzhinsky, Chekhonin, Ivan Puni and Yury Annenkov. Work-
ing in the very spirit of the literary texts, they promised a strong future
 modernism (1890–1917) 293

for Russian picture books. Among the illustrators, only Ilya Repin lacked
the modernist touch.
Appearing as something of a parallel to the Rainbow project were the
two volumes of Children’s ‘Creative Work’ Literary Miscellany (Detsky
almanakh ‘Tvorchestvo’, 1917), but if the idea behind them was to renew
children’s literature, the result was a failure. All the new names here fail
to make any impression. Instead, Aleksey Remizov’s retelling of a folk-
tale is readable, as is Evgeny Chirikov’s scary story, “The Tale of the Old
House” (“Skazka starogo doma”). Mariya Moravskaya’s poems and story
“The Treasure-Hunters” (“Kladoiskateli”), telling about treasure-hunting
in the spirit of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, stand out as genuinely focused
on children and written from a child’s angle, while the poems of Blok,
Belousov and Esenin, with their birds and flowers, seem outworn. Also
old-fashioned for the era are the illustrations by admittedly talented art-
ists like Léon Bakst, D.S. Moor and Aleksey Radakov.
The two Creative Work miscellanies came out in January 1917 in 6,000
copies, escaping the February Revolution by one month. Chukovsky’s and
Benois’ miscellany Rainbow had been planned to appear in the spring of
1917, but as a result of the crisis in printing in the wake of the Febru-
ary Revolution, it was published only in January 1918, just in time for the
Orthodox Christmas. Chukovsky and Gorky were displeased to find that
its title had been altered to Christmas Tree (Yolka), in itself a reasonable
change. Even worse, in the eyes of Gorky and Chukovsky, was Benois’
frontispiece. His Christmas tree was full of small cherubs with lit candles
in their hands; an angel offers apples, and at the top of the tree there sits
a strongly modernised Baby Jesus. All this was in direct conflict with the
content and the whole idea behind the anthology, not to mention the his-
torical moment. The paradox was that Christmas Tree was one of the first
children’s books (if not the very first!) to be published in Soviet Russia.
With this clash, a century-long chapter in the history of Russian children’s
literature ended. It had perhaps not produced many great names and
works, but it had found its audience and shown itself capable of growth.
In 1917 the air was full of promise. What was actually achieved was an
almost total breakdown of the existing literature through suppression,
forced emigration, the closing down of magazines and purges of libraries.
The new, Soviet Russian children’s literature consequently began from a
tabula rasa.
 chapter six

ALL THE COLOURS OF THE RAINBOW (1918–1932)

The Forgotten Weapon

On 17 February 1918, an article appeared in Pravda entitled “The Forgot-

ten Weapon”. Only three months had passed since the Bolshevik seizure
of power, but the remoulding of society along socialist lines had already
begun. Now it was the turn of children’s literature. The keynote had been
sounded by Lenin, who said that “the entire purpose of training, educat-
ing, and teaching young people should be to imbue them with commu-
nist ethics”.1 In “The Forgotten Weapon”, L. Kormchy, a minor children’s
writer, who had decided to join the winners, declared that children’s
literature was an indispensable ally in the process of moulding the new
man. Literature was a weapon that must not be left in the hands of the
class enemy, the bourgeoisie, but the duty of the state was to liberate the
genre from “poison, filth and trash” and provide children with more suit-
able literature.2
The negative side of the programme was not difficult to put into prac-
tice. Censorship had been introduced immediately after the October Rev-
olution, and in the course of 1918 the majority of non-Bolshevik publishing
houses, newspapers and magazines were progressively forced to close.
Simultaneously, many of the leading writers preferred to emigrate to
escape the threat of thought control and restricted freedom of expression.
The creation of a new type of children’s literature was a much more dif-
ficult task. An initial prerequisite was to expand the potential readership
by combating illiteracy and introducing compulsory schooling. Progress
in this area was considerable: while the number of people able to read
and write made up only 28% of the Russian population in 1897, this was
already up to 57% in 1926. In 1939 the official figure was 87%. With more
widespread literacy and the development of the library network, a large
market was created for literature for children and young people.

1 V.I. Lenin, “Zadachi soiuzov molodezhi,” Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Fifth ed. Vol. 41
(M., 1963), 309.
2 L. Kormchii, “Zabytoe oruzhie,” Pravda. February 17, 1918, 3.
 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 295

The Bolshevik Party found an energetic and influential collaborator in

Maksim Gorky, who had shown an interest in children’s literature long
before the Revolution. During the First World War he drew up guidelines
for a children’s literature section of the Petrograd (formerly St Petersburg)
publishing house Parus (The Sail). The plans included a series of literary
biographies of great figures from history. The idea was to counter the bru-
talising effect of the war and to give young readers an image of man as a
creator and bearer of culture.3
With the war at its height, only a fraction of Gorky’s ideas could be real-
ised, but by 1918 the situation had changed. Cultural life was centralised,
and the new rulers proclaimed their intention to disseminate good litera-
ture among the masses. Gorky was the central figure in a project to estab-
lish a state-controlled publishing house, Vsemirnaya literatura (World
Literature). In December 1918, he drew up a memorandum for another
publishing house, Russkaya literatura (Russian Literature), on literature
for children and young people. He urged that Russian classics should be
widely spread in editions made for school libraries.4 It was indeed the
classics that also came to dominate Vsemirnaya literatura’s output for
school libraries, while most of the Russian children’s literature of the past,
no matter how wide its popularity had been, was resolutely excluded.
Gorky also took an active part in his friend Zinovy Grzhebin’s publica-
tion project in 1921, creating a book list for the planned children’s litera-
ture section. Folktales and epics would lay the foundations, acquainting
even 5–9-year-olds with the myths of antiquity, the Icelandic sagas and
the Kalevala. The next stage would take in 19th-century tales—Aleksandr
Pushkin, Pyotr Ershov, Sergey Aksakov, Wilhelm Hauff and Hans Christian
Andersen—and the classics of Russian adult literature. Juvenile litera-
ture was represented by foreign writers such as James Fenimore Cooper,
Mayne Reid, Charles Dickens and Mark Twain, all old-time favourites for
Russian readers. The main thing was to offer young readers books that
would fill them with high ideals and stimulate a belief in man’s greatness
and unlimited potential. There was a need for stories about ‘knights of
the spirit’, fighters for truth and martyrs for the Revolution. The dominant
theme would be optimism and heroism.5 In fact, Gorky’s programme of

3 O.D. Golubeva, “Knigoizdatel’stvo ‘Parus’ (1915–1918),” in Kniga: Issledovaniia i mate-

rialy. Vol. 12 (M., 1966), 175.
4 M. Gor’kii, “Dokladnaia zapiska ob izdanii russkoi khudozhestvennoi literatury,”
O detskoi literature: Stat’i, vystupleniia, pis’ma (М., 1968), 73–75.
5 Gor’kii, “Katalog izdatel’stva Z.I. Grzhebina,” O detskoi literature, 78–81.
296 chapter six

1921 already contained the kernel of socialist realism, the dogma he would
help to establish in the 1930s.
Gorky was also the editor of the first Soviet children’s magazine, Northern
Lights (Severnoe siyanie), published in Petrograd in 1919–1920. The initia-
tive had come from the People’s Commissariat for Education, which asked
for an official, communist alternative to the discontinued bourgeois mag-
azines. The chosen target group was children between 9 and 12 years old.
The first issue of Northern Lights carried Gorky’s programme statement,
entitled “A Word to Grown-Ups”. The aim of the magazine was to awaken
in its readers “an active spirit, an interest in and respect for the power of
reason, the discoveries of science, and the great mission of art, which is
to make man strong and beautiful”.6 No secret was made of the fact that
children’s literature also had an ideological purpose. Later, in 1933, Gorky
was to put it plainly: “Education means evoking a revolutionary spirit.”7
Northern Lights first and foremost addressed the children of the pro-
letariat. Its milieu was the city, the cradle of the new, Soviet life. Under
the heading “Club for the Curious”, it published notes on science, tech-
nology and new inventions. Children learned about the tough conditions
in which people had lived in pre-revolutionary Russia and about the vic-
torious socialist revolution. Among the educational material there were
articles with titles like “What Can the Masses Achieve?” and “The Value
of Labour”.
The artistic standard of Northern Lights remained low, although its con-
tributors included a number of major adult writers and artists. A kind of
drab social realism dominated the prose, while the poems tended to read
like slogans. The heroes were taken from the working class and the Red
Army. In one short story, typical of the period, a little girl learns that her
father, who died fighting for the Reds in the Civil War, gave his life to
save a comrade. Nor did Gorky raise the level with his own contribution,
the short story “Yashka” (1919). Young Yashka, having experienced nothing
but hardship in his short life, dies and goes to paradise, but he does not
accept heavenly justice, preferring to return to Earth and join the fight for
a better world. In the Soviet Union Gorky’s story was hailed as the first
anti-religious work for children.
Northern Lights came out under difficult circumstances. The Civil War
was still in progress, Petrograd was in the grip of famine and there was a

6 Gor’kii, “Slovo k vzroslym,” O detskoi literature, 76. (First publ.: Severnoe siianie 1–2 /
1919: 7.)
7 Gor’kii, “O temakh,” O detskoi literature, 117.
 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 297

shortage of even the most basic necessities. Because of distribution prob-

lems, the magazine was only sold in single copies, and the editors did not
risk publishing items that would have stretched over more than one issue.
It was the shortage of paper that ultimately sank Northern Lights in 1920,
when it had a circulation of 1,200 copies.

In 1921, Lenin launched the New Economic Policy (NEP) in an attempt to

put society back on its feet after the Civil War. The decision constituted
a step backwards towards capitalism in so far as private enterprise was
permitted again, albeit to a limited extent. There was also a relaxation of
control over cultural life: private and cooperative publishing houses and
magazines with their own publishing policy were set up. As a result, a new
generation of writers emerged, making the 1920s one of the most interest-
ing decades in the history of Russian children’s literature.
The outlook for children’s writing was gloomy at first, with 1921 being
a year of deep crisis. Gorky, the eternal driving force, left the country for
a number of years. The output of literature dropped sharply, with only
thirty-three books and two magazines for children published that year.8
The debate about children’s literature revealed acute and profound differ-
ences of opinion. A big congress on children’s reading held in the same
year addressed the relationship between children’s literature and politics.
One group of writers, teachers and librarians felt that writers should avoid
ideological questions and instead deal with general human conflicts and
feelings, while the communist faction among the 162 delegates demanded
that literature should overtly prepare children for the construction of the
new world that was already taking shape.9
Another subject of debate was the relationship to the literary heritage.
Here, as with adult literature, there were radical voices demanding a
purge of the whole of pre-revolutionary literature. The moderate line pre-
vailed, but the process of renewal was nevertheless much more thorough
in children’s literature than in writing for adults. Of the pre-revolutionary
‘stock’ of writers and books, as many as three quarters were effectively
replaced in the 1920s.10 What was accepted from the old literature was
mainly works that could be read as criticism of life under the Tsars.

 8 L.F. Коn, Sovetskaia detskaia literatura 1917–1929 gg: Ocherk istorii russkoi detskoi lite-
ratury (М., 1960), 63.
9 N. Sher, “Iz istorii detskoi knigi,” Detskaia literatura 3 (1967): 10.
10 S. Marshak, “O nasledstve i nasledstvennosti v detskoi literature,” Vospitanie slovom:
Stat’i, zametki, vospominaniia (M., 1964), 349. (First publ.: Izvestiia. May 23 and 27, 1933,
2 and 3.)
298 chapter six

At the same time, new centres of literary life began to spring up in Petro-
grad, where a group of young and talented writers gathered around the
Raduga (Rainbow) publishing house and the Children’s Literature Studio.
Over the next few years, this group would raise the genre to an interna-
tional level.
It all began with the literary critic Korney Chukovsky’s attempt to find
a publisher for some new children’s poems that he had written. Since the
poems lacked any openly political content and since, furthermore, the
state publishing houses were still battling with high production costs and
a shortage of paper, Chukovsky met with no success. Salvation came from
the private sector, where the journalist Lev Klyachko (1873–1934) had
founded a publishing house, Raduga, specialising in children’s literature.
Its first books came out in 1922—two small volumes by Chukovsky. A total
of 7,000 copies were printed, a large number for that time.
Raduga soon became a centre for new writing for children. On Chuk-
ovsky’s recommendation, a promising children’s author, Samuil Marshak,
was appointed literary editor. The output was based around small books
of poetry by these two exceptional talents, Chukovsky and Marshak. Other
writers connected with Raduga included Vitaly Bianki, Agniya Barto, Boris
Zhitkov and Vera Inber. Great stress was laid on layout and illustration;
the firm was associated with a long line of brilliant artists, including Vladi-
mir Konashevich, Sergey Chekhonin, Yury Annenkov, Boris Kustodiev,
Konstantin Rudakov, Vladimir Lebedev and Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin.
Raduga became one of the biggest private publishers in Soviet Russia
in the 1920s, with an annual output of over 100 titles. One of the last pub-
lications was Yury Vladimirov’s The Orchestra (Orkestr), published in 1929
in 30,000 copies. By that time, the NEP had been abandoned, and private
publishing houses were forced to close, just as they had been ten years
earlier. Raduga was formally shut down in 1930. It is clear that there were
more than just economic factors behind the company’s demise. A Soviet
encyclopaedia of 1982 provides the following epitaph: “The publishing
house did not have sufficiently close contact with the People’s Commis-
sariat for Education; a number of its books were apolitical and remote
from the central questions of the time.”11 The People’s Commissariat for
Education was the body ultimately responsible for children’s literature.

In 1920, the Moscow Institute for Children’s Reading was established by

the Commissariat for Education under the leadership of Anna Pokrovskaya

11 “Raduga,” Knigovedenie: Ėntsiklopedicheskii slovar’ (M., 1982), 434.

 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 299

(1879–1972) and Nikolay Chekhov, the foremost expert on Russian children’s

literature from before the revolution. The institute was a research centre,
concerning itself with the theoretical study of children’s literature, the
psychology of the reader, the establishment of bibliographical resources
and collaboration with the publishers of children’s books. The institute
maintained a library and also issued a review, New Children’s Books (Novye
detskie knigi, 1923–28), later called Books for Children (Kniga detyam,
1928–30). The first issue of New Children’s Books reveals the total political
innocence of the editorial board. In the spirit of pre-revolutionary criti-
cism they recorded the reactions of children, the actual target audience,
to new children’s books. For example, Sasha Cherny’s Children’s Island
(Detsky ostrov) of 1921 was read to 178 children between the ages of eight
and fourteen, of whom ten children read it on their own, and all their
spontaneous exclamations and general views were carefully written down.12
The children’s absolute favourites were, however, Chukovsky’s books
Wash’em’clean (Moydodyr) and The Giant Cockroach (Tarakanishche),
both dating from 1923. The humour, the imaginative force, the illustra-
tions—everything inspired rapture.13
In 1923, the Institute for Children’s Reading was incorporated into the
Institute on Working Methods for Extracurricular Activities, an adminis-
trative measure which eventually undermined its position. The institute
worked under difficult circumstances, existing purely on the enthusiasm
of its staff. No official support was given, as the institute chose to focus
its research on pre-revolutionary literature, which appeared to have no
connection whatsoever with the present situation. Chekhov thought oth-
erwise, presuming that knowledge of the roots of children’s literature, its
early writers and works, the initial genres and theoretical discussions, was
needed in order to understand the contemporary scene.
A conference was held in Petrograd in 1921 with around 300 participants.
In his speech Chekhov laid out a plan for a methodical study of Russian
children’s literature. The result appeared at the end of the decade—
Material on the History of Russian Children’s Literature (1750–1855) (Mate-
rialy po istorii russkoy detskoy literatury 1750–1850, 1927–29), a two
-volume set, which included a historical survey, chapters on ten promi-
nent writers and a bibliography of Russian children’s literature from the
early 18th century to the mid-19th century.

12 Novye detskie knigi 1 (1923): 18.

13 Novye detskie knigi 2 (1923): 20–26.
300 chapter six

Shortly afterwards the situation of the institute had become so diffi-

cult, that it effectively ceased functioning. “It has almost become an illegal
institution”, Korney Chukovsky already wrote in his diary in 1927, after a
discussion with Anna Pokrovskaya.14 The work of the institute was con-
tinued, albeit on a more modest level, by the Museum of Children’s Lit-
erature in Moscow. The musem, which achieved independent status in
1934, was headed by the pedagogue and poet Yakov Meksin (1886–1943).
In the autumn of 1937, he read a paper at a conference, drawing up plans
for the future of his museum. Shortly afterwards, he was arrested and the
museum was closed down. Meksin died in the Gulag in 1943, while the
museum’s collection of around 70,000 books was lost forever.

The first Soviet children’s library was set up in Petrograd at the Peda-
gogical Institute for Pre-School Education. In 1922, the library became a
meeting place for a literary circle, the Children’s Literature Studio. Under
the leadership of Marshak and the folklorist Olga Kapitsa, close collabora-
tion was established between teachers and children’s writers. The circle
studied the folklore of different countries and the classics of children’s
literature, and discussed new Russian works. Marshak attracted Raduga
writers like Bianki and Zhitkov to the Studio, and it was here that Evgeny
Schwartz and the artist Evgeny Charushin also gained their first experi-
ence of the genre. Not for nothing did the Studio come to be described as
the cradle of Soviet children’s literature.
Before very long, the Children’s Literature Studio also acquired its own
magazine. Its original title was The Sparrow (Vorobey, 1923–24), but at
Marshak’s instigation it was soon changed to The New Robinson (Novy
Robinson, 1924–25), a name more in tune with the demands of the Soviet
regime for fundamental change. Even if the magazine was only “a small
hammer among tens of thousands of gigantic workers’ hammers, forging
a new life”, it had an important role in the communist upbringing of chil-
dren.15 The target group was children aged 8–12. These were “the children
of the war and the revolution”, who, according to the editorial board, had
no need for fairy tales and fantasies.16 What they supposedly aspired to was
to become good Soviet citizens and integrated members of the workers’
collective. In the May issue for 1924, The New Robinson’s editor-in-chief,
Zlata Lilina (1882–1929), a Bolshevik veteran, who, incidentally, was

14 K. Chukovskii, Dnevnik 1901–1929 (M., 1991), 426.

15 “K nashim chitateliam,” Vorobei 7 (1924): 2.
16 Vorobei 1 (1923): 3.
 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 301

married to one of the Soviet leaders, Grigory Zinoviev, explained the goal
of history to the children: “Through a common effort we will overthrow
the power of capital. Yet another offensive, yet another blow—and slavery
will be wiped out from the whole planet.”17 Portraits and photographs of
Lenin were recurrent illustrations.
After Marshak joined the editorial board of the magazine and put his
stamp on its publication policy, the level of writing rose. The New Robin-
son’s authors included Marshak, Bianki, Zhitkov, Schwartz and M. Ilin. It
is worth mentioning that Marshak also managed to persuade writers for
adults like Nikolay Aseev, Nikolay Tikhonov, Osip Mandelstam and Boris
Pasternak to contribute. Viktor Shklovsky, the formalist literary critic,
introduced readers to the American film industry and life in Hollywood
with his “A Journey to the Land of Cinema” (“Puteshestvie v stranu kino”,
1925). Recurrent material included Bianki’s column “The Forest Gazette”,
about the seasons in nature and the lives of animals, and Zhitkov’s col-
umns “The Wandering Photographer”, “How the People Work” and “The
Craftsman”. Popular scientific material was presented by Ilin under the
heading “The Laboratory of The New Robinson”. Part of the magazine’s
content was made up of humorous poems and jokes, often with an ideo-
logical bias.
The readers were encouraged to participate as detkory, children corre-
spondents. The radicalism of the readers sometimes even surpassed that of
the editors, as in the case of the detkor Zagrebin from the Friedrich Engels
detachment, who proposed that Young Pioneers should be forbidden from
playing football, the new sports craze.18 An unsigned article, “Down With
Football!”, ran along the same lines. When playing football children used
improper breathing techniques, the arm muscles grew weaker, and, worst
of all, too often the games led to injuries and even death. The anonymous
author ended by praising basketball as a better alternative.19

Hedgehogs and Siskins

In book publishing, Raduga was joined by a serious competitor in the

shape of the state publishing house Gosizdat (GIZ), in which books for
children and young people were given their own department, Detgiz, in

17 Z. Lilina, “Pervoe maia—prazdnik truda—prazdnik detei,” Vorobei 4 (1924): 9.

18 Novyi Robinzon 7 (1925): 19.
19 “Doloi futbol!,” Novyi Robinzon 11 (1925): 29–30.
302 chapter six

1924. Marshak was chosen as literary editor for the Leningrad branch
(Petrograd had changed its name in 1924). As Raduga was gradually forced
into retreat, the leading children’s authors of the period gathered around
Detgiz. Almost all its publications were literary events, and it was here that
the new prose for young people emerged, with names like Bianki, Zhitkov,
L. Panteleev, Arkady Gaydar and Aleksey Tolstoy. Detgiz also became a
home for the co-called OBERIU group, one of the most colourful elements
in Soviet children’s literature of the interwar period.
OBERIU had been started by the young avant-garde poets Daniil
Kharms and Aleksandr Vvedensky. Together with Nikolay Zabolotsky,
they constituted the core of the group. A number of other writers, such
as Evgeny Schwartz, Yury Vladimirov and Nikolay Oleynikov, were good
friends of the Oberiuts and became closely associated with their literary
programme. Marshak noted the exceptional talent of the Oberiuts and
decided to try to interest them in children’s literature: “I thought that they
could introduce oddity into poetry for children, the kind of oddity that
you can find in counting rhymes, puns and songs in children’s lore all over
the world.”20 In the children’s literature section of Gosizdat he was able to
offer them secure employment.
The Oberiuts and their allies would not have played such a significant
role within children’s literature, if changes in the field of children’s maga-
zines had not suddenly presented them with something of a mouthpiece of
their own. The New Robinson ceased publishing in 1925, following pressure
from Marxist critics and teachers, but it found worthy successors in The
Hedgehog (Yozh, 1928–35) and The Siskin (Chizh, 1930–41), two magazines
for children that became legendary for their dazzling literary and artistic
standards. The editorial board for both was located on the sixth floor of
the Singer House on Nevsky Prospekt. Collaborators included practically
the whole group from The New Robinson, but it was Kharms and his young
friends whose collective editorial efforts and numerous personal contribu-
tions accounted for the high quality.
The time for independent publications was over and, officially, The
Hedgehog and The Siskin were organs of the Young Pioneer Movement,
the communist children’s organisation. While the first magazine took
11–13-year-olds as its target group, the second was aimed at younger chil-
dren, including those of pre-school age. The Hedgehog gave pride of place
to factual material. Soviet Young Pioneers told of their activities, and

20 L.K. Chukovskaia, V laboratorii redaktora (М., 1963), 268.

 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 303

reports on the growth of the international communist children’s move-

ment were received from abroad. A reader from Mongolia recalled how
and where he first heard the name of Lenin. Much publicity was given
to an international Young Pioneer Camp in 1930, when children from all
over the world came to the Soviet Union to receive ideological training.
One issue on the agenda was helping Scouts to free themselves from their
belief in God. In 1931, The Siskin carried a report about an American boy,
Harry Eisman, who was said to have been sentenced to three years in
prison for engaging in communist activities and inciting a riot against the
Boy Scouts in New York. After a wave of protests, Harry had been released
and was now living happily in Moscow. In 1934–35, the murdered Lenin-
grad political leader Sergey Kirov was mourned in several issues. When
the magazine raised money from the readers, it was for the benefit of
those still living under the yoke of capitalism. In 1936, little Masha’s 3
roubles and 38 copecks were sent to the Spanish workers. The anniversary
of the Red Army was never passed over in silence, and Lenin and—from
1933 onwards—Stalin were shown continuous affection and gratitude.
Like its predecessor The New Robinson, The Hedgehog ran columns on
scientific and technical subjects in an effort to keep children up to date
with the latest developments, while The Siskin taught children how to
pour milk into a glass, how to make toys out of potatoes and matches
and how to fly a kite. When the Christmas tree was rehabilitated in the
form of a New Year’s tree in 1936, The Siskin advised its readers about how
to decorate it in an appropriately Soviet way.
What eventually distinguished The Hedgehog and The Siskin was their
literary professionalism. A profound understanding of the mentality of
children characterised most of the published material. Humour and fan-
tasy were always present, whatever the subject, and the interest in graphic
design made every page into an adventure. The jokes already began in
the titles. ‘Yozh’ means hedgehog and ‘chizh’ is a siskin, but the editors
explained that these were actually abbreviations for “Ezhemesyachny
zhurnal” (Monthly Magazine) and “Chrezvychayno interesny zhurnal”
(Extremely Interesting Magazine) respectively. The humour blossomed in
the literary contributions from the Oberiuts and in Oleynikov’s “Clever
Children’s Club”, which presented readers with riddles, competitions and
puzzles. Kharms contributed under many pseudonyms, sometimes also
with unsigned material. As Professor Trubochkin, he answered the read-
ers’ tricky questions. Translations were totally absent until the mid-1930s,
when classic tales by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen
unexpectedly appeared on the pages of The Siskin.
304 chapter six

While The New Robinson never had a print run of more than 16,000
copies, the number for The Hedgehog and The Siskin eventually reached
100,000 subscribers and single-copy purchasers.

Communist Reading

For a long time, the Communist Party adopted a wait-and-see attitude in

cultural matters, and it is only from the mid-1920s that we can speak of
a conscious cultural policy. Children’s literature was taken up for discus-
sion at the 13th Party Congress in 1924, where a resolution, recognising the
importance of bringing forth a truly Soviet type of children’s literature,
was passed. What this meant was plainly stated: “We must proceed to
create a children’s literature under the strict control and supervision of
the Party, with a view to fostering a stronger sense of class-consciousness,
international solidarity and love of work.”21
The Communist Party found vital support for this effort in the Young
Pioneer organisation, founded in 1922 on the model of the Scout move-
ment. Through its main publications, the monthly magazine Murzilka
(1924–), the weekly Pioneer (Pioner, 1924–1991) and two daily newspapers,
Leninist Sparks (Leninskie iskry, 1924–41) and Pioneer Truth (Pionerskaya
pravda (1925–), the organisation was able to offer children the sort of read-
ing that would nurture them in the desired spirit. Murzilka was aimed at
children aged 4–7, the so-called October Children, while the readers of
Pioneer were aged 9–12.
An important writer during the first years of Murzilka’s existence was
Aleksandr Fyodorov-Davydov, who, true to his pre-revolutionary poetics,
focused on animal tales. Instead of pikory (Young Pioneer correspondents),
zverkory (animal correspondents) appeared in his texts. It was probably
Fyodorov-Davydov who chose the title for the magazine. Originally, Mur-
zilka was the Russian name for Dude, the main character of Palmer Cox’s
The Brownies, but instead of the snobbish little figure with his top hat and
monocle, the Soviet Murzilka turned out to be a white puppet. In 1937, the
figure went through yet another metamorphosis, this time turning into a
yellow teddy bear, equipped with a red beret, a scarf and a camera.
Lev Zilov was also still active with humorous poems and tales, while
Ivan Belousov stuck to his beloved poetic nature scenes. Much space was

21 “Rezoliutsiia XIII s’’ezda partii,” О partiinoi i sovetskoi pechati, radioveshchanii i televi-

denii: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (М., 1972), 113.
 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 305

given to jokes, games, riddles and hand shadows, but political material
was inevitably given prominence. The October Children swore to become
Bolsheviks when they grew up, proclaimed their atheism and looked for-
ward to a universal October. If they made a snowman in the winter, it
was in the shape of “a gently smiling Uncle Lenin”. Meetings with politi-
cal leaders were memorable events; “I liked him”, declared seven-year-old
Misha Zabludovsky after a meeting with the Military Commander Semyon
Budyonny.22
Murzilka had a competitor in the shape of The Entertainer (Zateynik,
1929–41, 1946–53, 1968–75), which offered material for evening pro-
grammes with plays, songs, games and conjuring tricks. It was in The
Entertainer that the poet Agniya Barto published some of her first works.
Readers were invited to take part in competitions, where the prize was
a trip to Moscow on the day of the October Parade. One must also men-
tion United Children (Druzhnye rebyata, 1927–53), which aimed at boys
and girls from the countryside, and The Young Naturalist (Yuny naturalist,
1928–41, 1956–), a popular science magazine, which at the height of its
popularity had a circulation of four million copies.
It was in magazines like Pioneer and Pioneer Truth that the Revolu-
tion and Soviet reality finally established themselves as the main themes
within the new children’s literature. Alongside fiction and popular science
columns, prominence was given to reports on working life, industrialisa-
tion and the First Five Year Plan. Children correspondents wrote in to
describe how their hometowns were changing before their very eyes. The
active involvement of the readers was also a salient feature of The Drum
(Baraban, 1923–26), a magazine mainly produced by a group of Moscow
communist teenagers. Publicity material about the Pioneer organisation
dominated, and international issues were shown to be cleverly resolved
by Soviet Young Pioneers, working underground to organise global revolu-
tion and help African and Asian workers to rise against their oppressors.
Some of the criticism by the Party levelled at The New Robinson arose
from the fact that the magazine was entirely produced by adults and was
therefore likely to be remote from the life of the Soviet Young Pioneers.
The majority of readers did not complain. A survey conducted in 1925
showed that, out of 614 respondents, 580 found the magazine “very good”.
A twelve-year-old boy did think that the stories lacked a Pioneer spirit,
but, on the other hand, a fourteen-year-old girl was of the opinion that

22 Murzilka 6 (1924): 22.

306 chapter six

there were too much about Pioneer life, and besides, not all Young Pio-
neers were praiseworthy in their character and behaviour. A nine-year-old
girl asked for a 40-centimetre-high portrait of Lenin to put on her wall,
while another girl of the same age had a more prosaic plea: a bar of choco-
late as a weekly free supplement.23
The general line was that literature should deal with Young Pioneer
life, and the heroes should be model Pioneers. The young readers should
be stimulated to take an active part in building Soviet society. Slogans
such as ‘political education’, ‘party loyalty’ and ‘civic awareness’ were
also employed in the debate on children’s literature. Key tasks were the
reorganisation of agriculture and the battle against religion and petty-
bourgeois manners that had sprung up in the wake of the NEP. The Party
viewed with distaste all attempts merely to amuse and entertain. Writing
about the beauty of nature and the innocent pleasures of childhood began
to be seen as an escape from ‘the great seething mass of life’.

What Is Good and What Is Bad?

The major topics in Soviet poetry for children of the 1920s were the Civil
War, the work of socialist construction, and the Soviet man. In the sec-
ond half of the 1920s, Moscow poetry anthologies carried titles like Be
Prepared, October and Children and The Young Leninists’ Songbook. The
children in these poems are active October Children and Young Pioneers,
and the great festivals they look forward to are no longer Christmas and
Easter, but May Day and the anniversary of the October Revolution. The
emphasis is on an international way of thinking, here synonymous with
solidarity with communists and workers in foreign countries. The 13th
Party Congress had demanded that working life should figure more prom-
inently in writing for children and the result was poems like “Where Does
Porcelain Come From?” and “What Did the Tractor Do?”.
In the vanguard of political writing for children was the proletarian
poet and Communist Party member Demyan Bedny (1883–1945). His
propaganda poems and satirical portraits of representatives of ‘the old
world’ came out in 1919 under the title Read, Foma, and Get Wise (Chitay,
Foma—nabiraysya uma). This trend was continued by poets such as
Vladimir Mayakovsky, Agniya Barto, Nikolay Aseev, Aleksandr Bezymensky

23 “Nash dnevnik: Chto govoriat rebiata?”, Novyi Robinzon 4 (1925): 21–22.

 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 307

and Semyon Kirsanov, in whose poems everyday realism was paired with
socialist ideology.
The most significant name among the Muscovite poets was the Futurist
Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930). As early as 1918, with Gorky’s encour-
agement, he had contemplated putting together a book of poems for chil-
dren. Much of the content was to be made up of political satire, but the
draft also included “Playful Clouds” (“Tuchkiny shtuchki”), a poem that
lacks any kind of ideological charge. Seen through the prism of a child’s
imagination, the sky comes to life and the clouds turn into a parade of
elephants and camels, with the sun following like a yellow giraffe. A later
poem, “Elephants and Lionesses on Every Page” (“Chto ni stranitsa—to
slon, to lvitsa”, 1928), was written in the same spirit. The animals at the
zoo are presented in humorous verses. Soviet scholars, however, were
careful to point out that Mayakovsky still makes a distinction between
working animals and ‘parasites’. Furthermore, the lion is no longer the
king of beasts, but only their chairman.
The bulk of Mayakovsky’s poems for children dates from the second
half of the 1920s. On a number of occasions he performed in front of
school pupils, but he does not seem to have had any closer contact with
children in general. For him, education was ‘the third front’, and behind
many of his children’s poems one sees what the author called ‘a social
demand’. The adult narrator appears openly, addressing the children in a
didactic manner. It has been said that childhood had no intrinsic value for
Mayakovsky, but that he wanted his poems to prepare his readers for the
adult world. ‘Growing’ and ‘growing up’ are words that appear frequently.
It is also significant that the children in Mayakovsky’s poems are always
boys, something the girls were not slow to complain about.
What Is Good and What Is Bad? (Chto takoe khorosho, i chto takoe
plokho?, 1925) surprisingly became Mayakovsky’s best-known poem for
children. The boy’s philosophical question, ‘What is good and what is
bad?’, is answered by his father with the aid of clear-cut and simple exam-
ples. Courage, cleanliness and creative work are honoured, while coward-
ice, slovenliness and idleness are derided. The humourless, dry and factual
teaching results in a firm, but improbable, solution on the part of the boy;
“I shall / do good / and not do / evil.”
Ethical questions are also tackled in This Little Book of Mine Is About the
Oceans and the Lighthouse (Ėta knizhechka moya pro morya i pro mayak,
1927), this time in the form of an allegory, full of drama. The lighthouse
that helps ships in distress to find their way through the storm at night is
meant to serve as an example: “My little book calls upon you: /—Children,
308 chapter six

be like a lighthouse! / Aid with your shining light / all those who have
sailed off course in the night.” In the last verse, the poem takes an unex-
pected turn, as Mayakovsky himself steps forward to point out that the
root of his own name is ‘mayak’ (lighthouse), thus giving him the right to
serve as the ‘signpost’ for the youngest Soviet generation.
In “The Fire-Horse” (“Kon-ogon,” 1927) and “What Shall I Become?”
(“Kem byt?,” 1929), Mayakovsky sought to awaken a love of work by means
of striking examples. “The Fire-Horse” gives an insight into the actual pro-
cess of work, as the child gets to watch how a rocking horse is made. “What
Shall I Become?” presents various professions, all of them of equal value;
the poem stresses that what is important is one’s attitude to work itself. It
was read out for the first time at the Festival of Children’s Books, an event
launched in Moscow in 1928 and organised by the Gosizdat publishing
house and the magazine The Hedgehog. Mayakovsky and Barto appeared
at a meeting of writers with readers, while children with banners made of
enlarged children’s book covers marched through the streets of Moscow.
Ideologically committed poems occupy a prominent place in Mayak-
ovsky’s writing. In the early 1920s he had produced countless propaganda
posters and poems for the Soviet telegraph office, ROSTA. The experience
gained was employed in a series of children’s poems which display the
same simplification and emotional partisanship. The series began with
“The Tale of Petya, the Fat Boy, and Sima, Who Is Thin” (“Skazka o Pete,
tolstom rebyonke, i o Sime, kotory tonky”, 1925), where the fairy-tale bat-
tle between good and evil becomes a conflict between social classes. The
bourgeois Petya is contrasted with the proletarian boy Sima, both owing
much to the clichés of political caricature. Even the animals and birds
understand that Sima is the nicer of the two. The grotesque portrait of the
glutton Petya may be seen as an expression of Mayakovsky’s unease about
the petty-bourgeois traits that the NEP had helped to spread in Soviet
society. The tale ends, true to the demands of the fairy-tale genre, with
a celebration, where Petya’s excessive appetite causes him to burst, scat-
tering the sweets he has eaten all over the workers’ children. The stated
moral of the poem, which does not tally at all with the poem itself, is that
one should love work, defend the weak against the bourgeoisie and be a
staunch communist.
In the poem “The Fire-Horse” Mayakovsky exhorted the boy on the
wooden horse to join the legendary Budyonny’s cavalry regiment. The
fighting spirit is as strong in the militaristic “Let’s Take the New Rifles”
(“Vozmyom vintovki novye”, 1927), in which singing children learn to use
guns. The poem, written for the celebration of Defence Week, has the
 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 309

rhythm of a march. In “Read This and Go to Paris and China” (“Prochti

i katay v Parizh i v Kitay”, 1928) Mayakovsky takes children on a trip
around the world. The outing begins in Moscow, the centre of the political
struggle:
The world begins,
as everyone knows, at the Kremlin.
Beyond the sea,
  beyond the land,
people are listening to the communists.
Those who work
are happy to listen.
But the voices make the bourgeois’ hair
stand on end.
The ‘international outlook’ in this poem consists of Mayakovsky inform-
ing the children about class conflicts in Paris and New York and British
imperialism in China. Still, humour is not forgotten:
You can easily get an idea of
the inhabitants of Japan:
If we are like horses,
then they are
  like ponies.
“A Little May Song” (“Mayskaya pesenka”), published with sheet-music in
The Hedgehog in 1928, expresses children’s feelings of euphoria during a
May Day parade. The vibrant collective mood goes hand in hand with the
joy of spring and the children’s youthful vitality. The poem “The Lightning
Song” (“Pesnya-molniya”, 1929) was written for the first All-Union Young
Pioneer Rally, held in Moscow in 1929. In front of thousands of Pioneers in
the Dynamo stadium, Mayakovsky read out trite lines like “My republic /
is my great mummy”, “We have a great daddy: / the staunch working
class”, and “Forward / side by side / on the Leninist path. / Our leader is /
Comrade C[ommunist] P[arty].”
In the Soviet Union, Mayakovsky as a children’s poet was placed on a
level with Chukovsky and Marshak. His greatest merit was seen to be the
way he introduced social and political subject matter into poetry. Aes-
thetically he was not as innovative as when writing for adults. The ver-
bal imagination is toned down, the imagery more traditional, and only
too seldom can one detect an effort to adapt the structure of the verse
to the readership and to exploit children’s idioms and hyperboles. Some
of Mayakovsky’s children’s books display, however, a subtle interplay
between verse and illustration. In the first edition of What Is Good and
310 chapter six

What Is Bad? one page is left blank, as the writer does not think the unruly
kid is worth a picture.
Among the Moscow writers there was also a promising young female
poet, Agniya Barto (1906–81). She began writing poems early, initially
inspired by Anna Akhmatova, but the decisive impulse came from
Mayakovsky, who had shown that poetry for children could be used as
a medium to address large social questions and that satire was also per-
missible. The material for Barto’s first small volumes was taken from con-
temporary Soviet life. She made her debut with “Mishka the Little Thief ”
(“Mishka-vorishka”, 1925), in which the little vagabond Mishka ends up in
a children’s home and finds a new direction in life thanks to his encoun-
ter with some Pioneers. The hymns to the newly-established Young Pio-
neer organization continued in “Pioneers” (“Pionery”, 1926) and “The First
of May” (“Pervoe maya”, 1926). The Young Pioneer children enjoy life at
the summer camp, and through all the Soviet holidays they march in
perfect step.
A major theme for Barto was internationalism. In her early poems, this
meant urging Soviet children to show solidarity with the unfortunate chil-
dren in capitalist countries. The Chinese boy Van Li languishes under an
excessive burden of work and secretly dreams of running away from his
wicked master to go to the Soviet Union, “where everything is fine, as in
a dream”. The dream becomes reality, and the closing scene of the poem
sees Van Li marching down the streets of Moscow alongside Soviet Young
Pioneers (“Kitaychonok Van Li”, 1925).
Barto won greater renown with The Little Brothers (Bratishki, 1928), yet
another variation on the theme of internationalism. The book was dedi-
cated to “children in different countries, the little brothers, whose fathers
defended their freedom and fought for their children’s happiness”. The
Little Brothers consists of lullabies that mothers in various countries sing
to their children. It is the class struggle that unites the races and the dif-
ferent nationalities. The African, Indian and Chinese mothers sing of their
relentless exploitation and their husbands’ heavy labour, while the Soviet
mothers sing of the fathers’ role in the Revolution, of freedom of labour
and the children’s future mission, when their brothers in foreign countries
have to be liberated. The recurring line “You are not alone” constitutes the
message of the poem. The Little Brothers was one of the books thrown on
the bonfires in Nazi Germany.
Two meetings reinforced Barto’s conviction that she was on the right
track in her writing. At the Festival of Children’s Books in 1928, she got to
know Mayakovsky personally; he stressed the need for a completely new
 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 311

children’s literature, written for those who would one day carry the revo-
lutionary legacy forward. In 1933, Gorky took the same line, telling Barto
that social education was the main task of children’s literature.

Korney Chukovsky

The birth of the major new poetry for children took place not in Moscow,
but in Leningrad. The two leading poets of the 1920s, Korney Chukovsky
and Samuil Marshak, were not driven by any ‘social demands’ or party
resolutions, but by the specific nature and needs of children. Humour
and playfulness were placed ahead of didactic concerns, and both poets
derived their inspiration from Russian folk poetry and English nursery
rhymes. Chukovsky wrote both allegorical verse tales and absurd short
poems, while Marshak’s strengths were picture books, rhyming jokes and
poems about work.
Korney Chukovsky’s real name was Nikolay Korneychukov. He was
born in St Petersburg, but grew up in straitened circumstances in Odessa;
his mother brought him up by herself, but did manage to provide the boy
with a good education. After finishing high school, Chukovsky worked as
a journalist, which enabled him to spend a number of years in Britain
as a correspondent. After the 1905 Revolution, in which he was active as
the editor of a radical satirical magazine, he started work as a literary
critic in St Petersburg. At this stage he had no plans to write for children.
On the contrary, Chukovsky later said that if anyone had predicted then
that he would one day write children’s books, he would have felt insulted.
He considered the artistic standard of Russian children’s literature to be
poor, and his earliest contribution in this area consisted of sharp criti-
cal statements on the most popular children’s authors and magazines of
the time.
The publication of The Crocodile in 1917 made Chukovsky an important
name in modern Russian children’s poetry, even if its mixed reception
convinced him to give up the genre for some years. His next children’s
books came about by chance. In the margins of an academic manuscript,
he wrote the verse-tale The Giant Cockroach (Tarakanishche, 1923), and
the next day he suddenly produced Wash’em’clean (Moydodyr, 1923), a
humorous commentary on his daughter’s refusal to wash her hands. For
Chukovsky the literary critic, these were two days’ work lost, but for Rus-
sian children’s literature, they meant a giant step forward.
It is true that there is also another version of the birth of these two mas-
terpieces. Chukovsky spent the summer of 1921 in Lakhta, a village situated
312 chapter six

Fig. 9. Korney Chukovsky

on the Gulf of Finland. Nearby, there was a children’s home named after
Nadezhda Krupskaya, and to cheer up the orphans he decided to write
some tales in verse for them.24 Told in 1937, this version certainly had a
more acceptable ring then than the alternative story with its emphasis on
an irresistible inspired impulse.
Chukovsky had to wait two years before The Giant Cockroach and
Wash’em’clean found an interested publisher, Lev Klyachko, and a pub-
lishing house, Raduga. For Chukovsky, this was the prelude to a short
but intensive period of work in children’s literature. Over the next few
years, Raduga published, besides The Giant Cockroach and Wash’em’clean,
The Fly’s Wedding (Mukhina svadba, 1924), later called The Chatterbox
Fly (Mukha-Tsokotukha), Murka’s Book (Murkina kniga, 1924), Barmaley
(1925), Fedora’s Misery (Fedorino gore, 1926) and The Telephone (Telefon,
1926). In 1929, The Hedgehog published a loosely adapted verse version
of Hugh Lofting’s Doctor Dolittle, entitled “The Adventures of Aybolit”

24 K. Chukovskii, “Moia rabota i zhizn’,” Detskaia literaturа 22 (1937): 40.

 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 313

(“Priklyucheniya Aybolita”). Chukovsky’s last major poem for children to

be published before the Second World War was The Stolen Sun (Kradyo-
noe solntse, 1933).
The distinctive feature of Chukovsky’s tales in verse is their linguistic
virtuosity: they offer a rich variety of rhythms, assonances and word-
play. The constant changes of verse pattern and meter were a novelty.
Chukovsky always kept his particular audience in mind: the lines are
short and simple with no enjambements and they are characterised by
a fluent language, free of archaisms and poetic excesses. Chukovsky also
created his own apposite words. In Russian, Doctor Dolittle became Dok-
tor Aybolit, a name that literally means ‘Ouch, it hurts’, while the com-
mander of the army of sponges is called Moydodyr, that is ‘Wash Until
Holes Appear’.
Chukovsky’s most advanced nonsense tale is The Telephone. The tele-
phone is constantly ringing in the author’s house, as the animals call to
tell him about their extraordinary problems. The elephant orders choco-
late for his little son, the crocodile wants galoshes for lunch and the apes
need books. The gazelles want to know whether the circus has burnt
down, while the hippopotamus has fallen into a swamp and needs help
to lift him out again. With its whimsical plot and absurd humour, the
carnevalistic The Telephone gives the impression of being driven more by
rhyme and rhythm than by any predefined logical plan. At the centre of
the poem is the stressed writer, overburdened with creative impulses and
ideas, one crazier than the other. On a simpler level, the poem teaches the
children the art of communication, in this case telephone etiquette.
“The Miracle Tree” (“Chudo-derevo”) is written in the same spirit. This
poem, about a tree on which shoes and socks grow, appeared in Murka’s
Book, alongside other short nonsense poems—a ram flies in an aeroplane,
two pigs learn to type, and a sandwich and a bun try to run away but are
denounced by a tea-cup. The source of inspiration for poems like these
could be found in Russian folk poems and riddles for children: in 1924,
Chukovsky also published an anthology of adaptations of Russian folk-
songs, lullabies and puns. Another major influence came from English
nursery rhymes, which Chukovsky had come to know during his time in
England in the early 1900s. In them, he found a kind of humour, imagina-
tion and linguistic brilliance that matched his own outlook as a writer. In
the 1920s Chukovsky, who had taught himself English as a teenager, also
retold a number of nursery rhymes in Russian.
A dominant theme in Chukovsky’s verse tales is the suppression of
tyranny. In most of the works that Chukovsky wrote after The Crocodile,
314 chapter six

there is a recurrent pattern: the seizure of power by a tyrant, the cow-

ardice of his subjects, an easy victory over the oppressor by an outwardly
insignificant hero and a final joyful celebration. As in folktales, the battle
is between good and evil, where the apparently powerful villain turns out
to be no more than a ‘paper tiger’.
Just by twirling his moustaches, the cockroach is able to make himself
master of the whole animal kingdom, and the other animals voluntarily
present their young to the despot. Salvation comes in the form of a little
sparrow, who quite determinedly eats up the nasty insect (The Giant Cock-
roach). A spider turns up at the insects’ celebration, threatening to eat
the hostess, the fly; the guests flee in all directions, but a little mosquito
takes courage and beheads the spider with his sword (The Chatterbox Fly).
In The Stolen Sun, the crocodile swallows the sun and forces the other
animals to live in darkness, but he is overcome by the bear, and the sun
is able to resume its course across the sky. The malevolent figure in Bar-
maley is a bearded African robber, who is forced to turn over a new leaf
and becomes a kindly Soviet gingerbread baker.
The theme of rebellion could also be combined with a didactic ten-
dency. In Wash’em’clean and Fedora’s Misery, objects revolt against their
masters, who have treated them badly. Led by the fantasy figure Moy-
dodyr, “the Commander of the Army of Sponges”, the book, the cushion,
the samovar and the boots chase their owner, the slovenly boy, all over
the town. They are only reconciled when the urchin mends his ways and
is scrubbed clean. The old woman Fedora also mistreats her household
utensils until they run away. Children are shown where selfish and irre-
sponsible behaviour can lead, but the didactic message is presented in a
highly original and entertaining form.
It is tempting to search for an adult discourse in Chukovsky’s verse tales,
although the writer himself vigorously protested against all attempts at
seeking secret political meanings. The cleaning process in Wash’em’clean
has been seen as an exhortation to the Russian futurists, Chukovsky’s old
adversaries, to ‘wash’ their faces and free themselves from their primitive,
anti-cultural poetics,25 but it has also been suggested that the poem carried
a warning of an ideological ‘purge’ that threatened to extinguish the living
literature of Russia. The founder of the Red Army, Lev Trotsky, a staunch
critic of Chukovsky, has been named as a model for Moydodyr, the vain
generalissimus, who ruthlessly uses his power until his victim becomes

25 B. Gasparov, “Moi do dyr,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 1 (1992): 304–319.

 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 315

Fig. 10. Vladimir Konashevich, Wash’em’clean (1923)

an obedient tool.26 The problem with The Giant Cockroach is that it was
published in 1923, much too early for carrying an overt allusion to another
tyrant with a great moustache, Stalin. The critic Igor Kondakov has solved
the dilemma by reading the tale as an allegory of the Bolshevik takeover in

26 I.V. Kondakov, “ ‘Lepye nelepitsy’ Korneia Chukovskogo: Tekst, kontekst, intertekst,”

Obshchestvennye nauki i sovremennost’, 1 (2003): 164.
316 chapter six

Russia. It includes an unflattering picture of the people, easily panicking

and submitting to the usurper, but also prepared instantly to greet any
new leader as their liberator. Read as an example of ‘Aesopian language’,
The Chatterbox Fly may depict a feast during the NEP with hopes of the
restoration of the good old times. The victory of the mosquito over the spi-
der might well be just the replacement of one bloodsucker with another.
And, finally, Fedora’s Misery could illustrate the panicky flight of Russian
writers away from the severe cultural policy of the Bolshevik regime and
their ensuing return in an attempt to find a modus vivendi under new cir-
cumstances. Aleksey Tolstoy, a notorious time-server, has been identified
as the samovar of the poem.
Apart from working on his own poems, Chukovsky made several trans-
lations and adaptations of foreign children’s books. These included Oscar
Wilde’s The Happy Prince (1918), Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories and Rikki-
Tikki-Tavi (1923), Hugh Lofting’s Doctor Dolittle (1925), James Greenwood’s
The True History of a Little Raggamuffin (1926), Mark Twain’s Adventures
of Tom Sawyer (1935) and The Prince and the Pauper (1936), and Daniel
Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1935). Raspe’s Baron Münchhausen (1928) was
translated by him via an English version.
In the 1930s, Chukovsky’s work in the field of children’s literature came
to a stop. Among Soviet children’s authors, he was the first to find himself
in the firing line when militant critics went on the offensive against fairy
tales, anthropomorphism and humour. Chukovsky himself explained that
his writing had dried up because his “inner music” had fallen silent. All his
verse tales had been born in unexpected bursts of inspiration, but he had
already noticed in the mid-1920s that his ability suddenly to experience
“a wave of music in the major key, joyful rhythms and festive words” was
on the wane.27 At that time, his children, for whom the early poems had
been written, were already beyond the age for fairy tales. They included
Nikolay and Lidiya, who were both to make a notable contribution to
Soviet children’s literature: Nikolay Chukovsky (1904–65) became known
as a writer of nautical and historical novels, while Lidiya Chukovskaya
(1907–96) worked in Marshak’s editorial office in the 1930s and later
became a major figure in the Soviet dissident movement.
In the 1930s, Chukovsky produced two autobiographical stories for
young people about his school years and life in a Soviet children’s hos-
pital. He also continued to work on his remarkable book of essays From

27 K. Chukovskii, “Ob ėtoi knizhke,” Stikhi (М., 1961), 11.

 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 317

Two to Five (Ot dvukh do pyati, 1928), a true classic that went through
twenty-one editions in its author’s lifetime. The work, originally called
Little Children (Malenkie deti), was initially intended as a polemic in
defence of the fairy tale. According to the utilitarian view of children’s
literature that prevailed in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, the fairy tale had
a detrimental effect on children’s ideas of reality. Chukovsky, on the other
hand, defended the proposition that the fantastic and absurd elements in
literature actually strengthened children’s sense of realism. Moreover, the
fairy tale was better than any other literary form at teaching children to
overcome self-centred attitudes and to understand and sympathise with
unfortunate people.
Ten years after the October Revolution, Chukovsky was moved to
repeat the criticism he had once levelled at pre-revolutionary Russian
children’s writing; again, he felt called upon to preach respect for the
reader. His motto was “Go to the Kids”. Writers must take an interest in
the child’s mind and imaginative world: “When you stop behaving arro-
gantly towards children, you will find in them a beauty and a wisdom that
you could never have dreamt of.”28
Many of the questions that Chukovsky addressed in From Two to Five
had exercised him for a long time. His book of essays, To Mothers, About
Children’s Magazines (1911) had included a chapter entitled “About Chil-
dren’s Language”. Chukovsky regarded children’s language as the key to
their minds and considered all children aged between two and five to be
linguistic geniuses, in possession of an astounding spontaneous creativ-
ity. Children had a direct, non-mechanical attitude to words, and artistic
creation was a fun-filled activity for them, with poems emerging almost of
their own accord. This was something writers should also strive for, with
the use of puns and the concept of ‘defamiliarisation’, that is, making the
familiar and trite new and absorbing.
When the chapter was first published, many readers and teachers were
upset by Chukovsky’s assertion that children’s language had a value of
its own and was worth serious study. Chukovsky did not allow himself
to be scared off, but continued his investigation of children’s linguistic
world; he picked up new material all the time on his visits to kindergar-
tens, schools and children’s hospitals, and his readers also contributed by
sending in their observations.

28 K. Chukovskii, Sobranie sochinenii v piatnadtsati tomakh. Vol. 2 (M., 2001), 600.
318 chapter six

From Two to Five also provides an introduction to Chukovsky’s own

poetic theory. The starting point for his poetry was a thorough study of
children’s minds and language, and the ideal was to achieve a child’s
spontaneous and imaginative creativity. One concrete piece of advice he
gave to his colleagues was to create ‘graphic poems’, in which every line
offered material for illustration. Movement was an important feature, and
pictures and episodes should swiftly change; Chukovsky’s tales in verse
have also been talked of in terms of cinematic technique. Poems should
be easy to memorise, something that Chukovsky himself achieved by the
use of repetition and by having the rhyming words carry the meaning of
the poem as a whole.
During the Second World War, Chukovsky resumed writing for chil-
dren, but the vehemently negative response to We Will Defeat Barmaley
(Odoleem Barmaleya, 1942) and The Adventures of Bibigon (Prikliucheniya
Bibigona, 1945–46) showed that there was no place for fantasy in contem-
porary Soviet literature. In the last decades of his long life, Chukovsky
was content to remain an observer of children’s literature. In 1957, he was
awarded a doctorate in the Soviet Union for his contributions to literary
studies, and five years later he was given an honorary degree by Oxford
University. As a children’s author, he was already a living classic.

Samuil Marshak

Samuil Marshak (1887–1964) came from the provincial city of Voronezh.

Of the family’s many children, three were to become prominent chil-
dren’s writers—Samuil himself, Ilya (known as M. Ilin) and Liya (Elena
Ilina). Samuil showed an inclination towards literature from an early age.
“Actually, I began to ‘write poems’ long before I learned to write”, he said
later.29 In his high school years in St Petersburg, the boy came into contact
with literary circles and was presented to Gorky as a prodigy. Like Chu-
kovsky, Marshak became a children’s author almost by chance—and the
similarities do not stop there. Marshak also spent some years in England
before the war and came into contact with English poetry and nursery
rhymes. The encounter was to make a deep impact on his early poems for
children.

29 S. Marshak, “V nachale zhizni,” Skazki, pesni, zagadki. Stikhotvoreniia (M., 1981), 530.
 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 319

Fig. 11. Samuil Marshak

320 chapter six

During the First World War and the Russian Civil War, Marshak worked
among refugee children. In 1920, he helped to establish a center for home-
less children in the city of Yekaterinodar, later renamed Krasnodar. In
this colony, called Children’s Town, a kindergarten, a school, workshops
and a library were set up. Resources were also combined to maintain a
newspaper and a theatre. As there was no suitable repertoire for a chil-
dren’s theatre, Marshak tried his hand at writing for the Children’s Town
theatre, together with the poet Elizaveta Vasileva (1887–1928). Their plays,
mainly free adaptations of Russian folktales and poems, were collected
in the book Theatre for Children (Teatr dlya detei, 1922). In the 1940s,
Marshak returned to these early works for children, publishing them in a
new, revised form.
In 1922, Marshak came to Petrograd, where he soon became the cen-
tral figure in most cultural projects for children. At one time or another,
Marshak was head of the Children’s Literature Studio and the repertory
section of the Leningrad Youth Theatre, and editor in the Raduga pub-
lishing house and of the magazines The New Robinson, The Hedgehog and
The Siskin. In 1924, he became head of the children’s literature section of
the state publishing house Gosizdat in Leningrad.
Marshak’s importance to Soviet children’s literature between the wars
was immense. He was an excellent talent-spotter who assembled a group
of young and gifted writers around him at the publishing house and on
the magazines. Older, established authors were encouraged to try writing
for children. And just like Chukovsky’s, Marshak’s own early poems were
trendsetting.
In a 1922 article, Marshak explained his attitude to children’s literature:
Children do not need surrogate art but genuine art, accessible to their level
of understanding, of course. Moreover, more than adults, children also
need meaningful, captivating images, bordering on symbols. A grown-up,
who is more or less familiar with life as a whole, can get by with casual
images, individual details and individual features. A child wants to see all
of life in every tale, every work of art; he is not looking for amusement but
knowledge.30
Marshak had been publishing verse and working on translations of poetry
for almost fifteen years, when he started writing for children. He came to
children’s literature as a mature master. In fact, his twenty or so small
poems from the period 1923–1928 form the high point of his career as a

30 Marshak, “Teatr dlia detei,” Sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 6 (M., 1971), 186.
 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 321

writer. Marshak had the knack of using short, laconic lines and a simple
vocabulary to create clear and cogent images and plots. Adjectives and
awkward metaphors that might get in the way of the plot or the rhythm
are completely absent. The essential goal is to entertain, and Marshak’s
humour and linguistic virtuosity are surpassed only by Chukovsky’s.
Marshak found his inspiration and his prototypes in Russian and Eng-
lish folk poetry, in Pushkin’s fairy tales and in Tolstoy’s stories for the
people. Children’s own riddles and improvised little verses were also of
importance, as can be seen in Marshak’s collections of songs, counting
rhymes, puzzles and puns. The 1920s produced a number of translations
and adaptations of English nursery rhymes, a practice run for Marshak’s
own writing. It was Marshak who gave such well-known poems as “The
House that Jack Built”, “Humpty Dumpty” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb”
their Russian form. Marshak also wrote pastiche folk poems like “The Tale
of the Silly Little Mouse” (“Skazka o glupom myshonke”, 1923). The fussy
little mouse is always complaining about his babysitters’ lullabies. One
after another, he rejects the voices of the frog, the duck and the dog, and
is only satisfied when the cat steps in. Alas, his happiness is short-lived.
Three outstanding picture books are Kids in a Cage (Detki v kletke,
1923), Circus (Tsirk, 1925) and Ice Cream (Morozhenoe, 1925). Kids in a
Cage invites children on a tour of the zoo. Every animal gets its own
humorous quatrain, based on the characteristic features of the individual
creatures. For the émigré poet Marina Tsvetaeva, Marshak’s Kids in a Cage
was proof that the new Russian literature for pre-school children was an
unparalleled phenomenon. She was especially impressed by Marshak’s
solution of focusing on baby animals, thus producing a mirror-like effect
between the child spectator and the inhabitants of the zoo.
The text is equally short and expressive in Circus, a book illustrated
by the leading graphic artist Vladimir Lebedev and using the stylised
and gaudy imagery of the propaganda poster. The circus acts follow each
other quickly. Their inherent energy often explodes in exclamation marks,
expressing both the force of modern advertising and the amazement of
the audience. Vladimir Mayakovsky was reportedly impressed by the line:
“The lady goes along the wire / just like a telegram”, probably because of
its unconventional, modern simile.
In Ice Cream, ‘we’, a children’s collective that knows how to enjoy ice-
cream in small portions, are contrasted with ‘him’, the fat man whose
greediness knows no limits. The fate of this lonely, fanatical ice-cream
lover is to turn into a snowdrift on which the children can sled even in
the middle of the summer. Just as in Mayakovsky’s “The Tale of Petya, the
322 chapter six

Fig. 12. Vladimir Lebedev, Circus (1925)

 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 323

Fat Boy, and Sima, Who Is Thin”, fatness denotes capitalism, the power
of money, and bourgeois traits which were all to be wiped out in Soviet
society.
There is playful exaggeration in the anecdotal poems “Luggage” (“Bagazh”,
1926) and “An Absent-Minded Fellow” (“Vot kakoy rasseyanny”, 1928).
Before going on a train journey, the lady in “Luggage” has made a precise
list of her luggage. This list, which also forms the refrain of the poem, can
easily be memorised by young listeners and readers. At her destination,
the traveller checks her luggage one last time. Everything is there, except
that the little pedigree dog has somehow changed into a huge mongrel.
The lady is consoled with words now familiar to all Russians: “But / on the
journey / the dog / could have grown!”
Soviet literary critics tended to see “Luggage” as representative of the
satirical strand in Marshak’s writing. The butt of the satire was supposed
to be the petty bourgeois with their materialistic concerns. On the other
hand, the setting for Soviet children’s books in the 1920s often displayed
aspects of childrens’ own fantasy world, where everything is possible and
surprising changes become routine. The poem can also be read as critical
of the new Soviet mentality where the individual and his concerns are
met with arrogance and haughtiness. The porters, the masters of the new
Soviet world, cover their poor work ethic with a stupid joke.
Another unfortunate train passenger is the odd protagonist of
“An Absent-Minded Fellow”. Absent-minded as he is, he does everything
backwards. He tries to put his gloves on his feet, while his trousers turn
into a shirt and the frying pan into a hat. At the railway station, he tries
to buy a glass of kvass from the ticket-seller, and then goes and sits in
an uncoupled carriage. The absent-minded man also commits linguistic
blunders. It is an eccentricity that lets children feel superior, but also gives
them the opportunity to exercise their powers of observation. In the Soviet
context the odd fellow is a ‘superfluous man’, lost in time and space, this
at a historical moment when efficiency and collective-mindedness were
fundamental features.
The poems “Fire” (“Pozhar”, 1923), “The Post” (“Pochta”, 1927) and
“Master of Disaster” (“Master-lomaster”, 1927) form a group in themselves.
With their realistic tone and didactic purpose, they anticipate the socialist
realism of the 1930s. In all three poems, it is people’s attitude to work that
constitutes the main theme. Warnings about fire are a well-known motif
in children’s literature, but in his “Fire”, Marshak managed to breathe life
into this hackneyed but always current topic. In the manner of folktales, he
personifies fire, making it into a cunning and powerful being, the enticing
324 chapter six

voice of which little Lena cannot resist. The situation is saved by the
experienced fireman Kuzma, a rare example of a positive adult hero in
early Soviet children’s literature. Like the bogatyr in a Russian bylina, or
heroic epic, the courageous Kuzma is engaged in a struggle against evil.
The emphasis in “Fire” is therefore placed firmly on the tough and heroic
work of the fire brigade.
In “The Post”, it is the efficient and honourable universal postal worker
who is celebrated. By having his readers follow a letter’s journey around
the world, Marshak shows how the postal service operates as a unify-
ing link between people. The changing rhythms of the poem reflect the
national temperaments of the different postal workers. During the Second
World War, Marshak produced a sequel “Military Mail” (“Pochta voen-
naya”, 1944), where the postal worker is the vital link between the front
and the rear. Simultaneously, he removed the German postman from the
original poem.
The boy in the satirical poem “Master of Disaster” (“Master-lomaster”)
represents a contrast to the capable professional. Confident that he can
manage anything without any training or help, the boy takes on one
demanding carpentry job after another. But everything he produces in
the carpenter’s workshop is botched. The Russian title of the poem is a
play on words, a neologism of the kind children themselves like to invent.
The boy is not a master, but an anti-master. As a kind of Comrades’ Court,
a children’s collective is needed to condemn the individual’s activity and
to find a suitable label for the phenomenon.

The Oberiuts

The word OBERIU is an abbreviation of Obedinenie realnogo iskusstva,

the Association for Real Art. The letter ‘u’ on the end was added in order
to destroy the logic, just for fun.31 The term ‘real art’ had nothing to do
with realism; instead, the group represented surrealism and an early form
of absurdism. Its programme statement of 1928 declares, “We are poets
with a new awareness of the world and a new art. We are creators not
only of a new poetic language, but also of a new awareness of life and its
phenomena.”32

31 I. Rakhtanov, Rasskazy po pamiati (M., 1966), 150.

32 N. Zabolotskii, “Poėziia obėriutov,” Sobranie sochinenii v 3-kh tomakh. Vol. 1
(M., 1983), 522.
 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 325

The literary output of the Oberiuts proved far too radical for publica-
tion, and so its outward activities consisted mainly of sporadic eccentric
stage appearances, theatrical shows and recital evenings. Their idiosyn-
cratic plays, prose pieces and poems were perceived as redundant at a
time of growing demands for realism and social relevance. In this situa-
tion, Samuil Marshak’s invitation to the Oberiuts to assist in the editorial
work of the children’s literature section of Gosizdat and to write for the
new magazine The Hedgehog came as salvation.
Children’s literature became a source of livelihood for the Oberiuts and
their sympathisers. At the same time, the field offered a fine opportunity
to implement their aesthetic programme. In the style of writing promoted
by the group and in the particular nature of its individual members, there
were characteristics that made them well-suited to writing for children.
These included humour, an unfettered imagination and an inclination to
regard the world around them as an extraordinary and captivating spec-
tacle. It is worth remembering that the average age of these writers was
not much over twenty.
In the German Peterschule, Daniil Kharms (1905–42) received a solid
grounding in German, and also in English. After completing his schooling,
he applied to the Petrograd Electromechanical Institute. In the evenings,
he earned some money reciting modern poetry in cinemas between film
shows. His multilingual background was the source for his foreign-sound-
ing pseudonym Kharms, which not only suggested ‘charm’, but also—in
the Russian pronunciation of the name—‘harm’.
Kharms was drawn to start writing himself. He joined one of the many
groups of writers active in the 1920s, the Poets’ Union, where he found
himself on the left flank, according to his own assessment. In 1926, when
he was twenty, Kharms saw the first of his poems in print, and there was
to be only one more for an adult audience, published in an anthology
the following year. In the Poets’ Union, Kharms found a soulmate in the
equally young and experimental poet Aleksandr Vvedensky. It was with
Vvedensky and a number of other friends that Kharms founded OBERIU
in 1928.
While Kharms’ works for adults demonstrated an uncompromising aes-
thetic radicalism, his poems and prose pieces for children were stylisti-
cally much simpler. Still his penchant for puns, unexpected viewpoints
and wild plots give them an easily recognisable stamp. Samuil Marshak’s
assessment was: “A man with perfect taste and a perfect ear.”33 One of

33 S. Marshak, Sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 8 (М., 1972), 509. (Letter to A. Makadenov, 1963.)
326 chapter six

Kharms’ most prominent traits was his boyish playfulness; he was a tire-
less joker who loved masquerades, eccentric pranks, games and magic
tricks not only in literature but also in life. In the book From Two to Five,
Chukovsky praises this side of Kharms. Kharms was a children’s author,
writes Chukovsky, who had realised that poetry for children must be play-
ful, because children themselves give almost all their activities the form of
games. In an opinion poll in 1930, the children of Leningrad chose Kharms
as their favourite poet.
“The Game” (“Igra”, 1929) is also the title of one of Kharms’ poems.
When playing, the children do not assume outward roles, but actually see
themselves as a car, a train and an aeroplane, rushing about at frighten-
ing speed. Kharms tries to convey the ecstasy and the rhythmic spirit of
the game. The poem makes use of half-rhymes, but it also has a skilfully
executed symmetrical structure.
The endeavour to see the world through a child’s eyes is the starting
point for almost all of Kharms’ poems and short prose pieces for chil-
dren. A rug and two umbrellas become a dragon in his debut book The-
atre (Teatr, 1928). In epigrammatic verses, which basically comment on
Tatyana Pravosudovich’s illustrations, Kharms conveys the child’s impres-
sion of a theatre production. In “How Kolka Pankin Flew to Brazil, While
Petka Ershov Didn’t Believe Anything” (“O tom, kak Kolka Pankin letal v
Brazilyu, a Petka Ershov nichemu ne veril”, 1928), the child’s imagination
transforms its entire surroundings. The village of Brusilovo becomes Bra-
zil, the pine-tree becomes a palm, the cow a bison, the sparrow a parrot,
and the swearing locals are the wild natives.
A central theme for Kharms is the disruption of order. By selecting an
unusual point of view, he is able to create puzzles and miracles in the
midst of everyday life. The Russian Formalists called this device ‘defamil-
iarisation’. For Kharms, this was not just a literary concept: it is said that,
for example, he used to amuse himself by hanging his pictures upside
down to gauge his visitors’ reactions. This is also the background to the
prose piece “A Mysterious Event” (“Zagadochny sluchay”), in which a por-
trait is turned upside-down during spring cleaning, causing great confu-
sion. Where the narrator’s old friend, the fair-haired Karl Schusterling,
incidentally one of Kharms’ pseudonyms, used to hang, there is now an
unknown, bearded figure. It is a mystery that children are invited to solve;
it is their grasp of reality that is tested. In the same way, Kharms stimu-
lates his readers’ thoughts in “What Was That?” (“Chto ėto bylo?”, 1940), in
which the adult narrator does not recognise everyday objects like skis and
skates, but transforms them into bewildering things that only children
can identify.
 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 327

The child’s feeling of superiority over adults had been cultivated by

Marshak in his poem about the absent-minded train-traveller (“Vot kakoy
rasseyanny”). Kharms’ prose piece “How the Old Woman Bought Ink”
(“O tom, kak starushka chernila pokupala”) from the same year, 1928, is
written in the same spirit. The children know better than the old woman
that you do not buy ink from the caretaker, the greengrocer or the butcher.
Similarly, the adult narrator lacks the most elementary knowledge of life
in “12 Cooks” (“12 povarov”), “The Brave Hedgehog” (“Khrabry yozh”) and
“The Cats” (“Koshki”). His readers are stimulated to identify professions
and types of animal, and explain to the narrator why the cats will not fol-
low him even though he has offered them potatoes and onions.
In other poems, the play principle dominates on a linguistic and rhyth-
mic level. Kharms uses sound effects and wordplay, simple non sequiturs,
repetitions and parallels to reinforce the child’s feeling for the rhythms
of language. These are humorous poems with pronounced elements of
children’s own riddles and folklore, where Kharms is clearly working in
the wake of Chukovsky’s and Marshak’s similar, earlier works.
“Ivan Toporyshkin” (1928) is a nonsense poem in which each verse is a
variation on the original poem, taking it in increasingly absurd and violent
directions. There is a nasty menacing tone lurking over the poem, which
ends with violence and death, like so many of Kharm’s adult texts. Collab-
oration with Marshak produced “The Happy Siskins” (“Vesyolye chizhi”,
1930), dedicated to a children’s home in Leningrad. The poem also cel-
ebrated the new children’s magazine The Siskin, and was published in the
first issue. The story of the forty-four happy siskins and their comical day
is a virtuoso counting song, full of challenging absurdities. Kharm’s own
explanation that “The Happy Siskins” is based on the Allegretto move-
ment from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, with its heavy and gloomy
theme, sounds more like a mystification than a clarification.34 Another
number game is the poem “A Million” (1930), a hymn in marching time
to the numerical large Young Pioneer organisation. Kharms thus occa-
sionally gave in to ‘the social demands’—The Hedgehog was after all an
organ of the Young Pioneer movement, but he did it without betraying his
poetics.
Didactic aims were not completely alien to Kharms, as can be seen
from the poem “Ivan Ivanych Samovar” (1928). The personified samovar
splendidly enthroned in the middle of the table is the focal point of the

34 D. Kharms, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 3 (SPb, 1997), 279.

328 chapter six

family, and the lazy, unwashed boy who turns up late for tea is implacably
excluded from the happy company.
Kharms’ foremost prose work is Firstly, and Secondly (Vo-pervykh i
vo-vtorykh, 1928). The 1929 book edition is especially interesting, as the
publishers GIZ managed to persuade the famous avant-garde artist Vladi-
mir Tatlin to produce the illustrations. The number of copies printed was
10,000. The dry and formal title conceals an absurd story about a jolly walk
without any specific destination. The introduction sets the tone: “Firstly:
I struck up a tune and set off.” By the time we have reached ‘Tenthly’,
Petya and the shortest and the tallest persons in the world have joined
the happy wanderer. The travellers move about in a world subordinated
to their own imagination. If they need a boat or an elephant to keep
them moving, it suddenly appears. The humour is based on the contrasts
between the disparate group of travellers and the difficult adjustments
they have to wrestle with. All their problems are resolved harmoniously,
and they never stop moving forward. Neither the scornful attitude of the
onlookers nor natural obstacles can hinder them on their journey.
In all, Kharms published nine small children’s books, starting in 1928,
while also actively contributing to the magazines The Hedgehog and The
Siskin. Most of his work was on a small scale: four-liners, riddles, jokey
advertisements, captions and contributions to collective serials. Much of
it was published under pseudonyms; around thirty of his signatures are
known.
As a writer of children’s books Aleksandr Vvedensky (1904–41) was more
productive than Kharms. During a period of fourteen years, he published
over forty children’s books of his own, mostly poetry, plus several adapta-
tions of tales by the Brothers Grimm. Hardly any issue of The Hedgehog
or The Siskin passed without a contribution from Vvedensky. The model
for his first children’s book, Lots of Animals (Mnogo zverey, 1928), was
Marshak’s cycle of poems Kids in a Cage; but whereas Marshak wrote
about young animals in the zoo in a carefree, humorous tone, Vvedensky
strove to give a realistic picture of the captive animals. Children are able
to understand that the animals yearn for freedom, away from cages and
keepers.
In his poems about eccentrics and pranksters, Vvedensky also proves
himself to be a true Oberiut when writing for children. The horse in “The
Little Horse” (“Loshadka”, 1929) reveals an unexpected talent, as it fluently
reads the street signs, while the bravery and heroic deeds of the Young
Pioneer Egor (“Egor”, 1935) are unexpectedly exposed as lies; the poem
ends with a confession from the author: together we made all this up, you
 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 329

Fig. 13. Vladimir Tatlin, Firstly, and Secondly (1929)

and I together with Egor. Vvedensky’s best-known and also most original
children’s book is Who? (Kto?, 1930). This is a little detective story with
a search for the crook behind inkblots and scattered toys. The poem is
structured as a kind of interrogation with questions and answers leading
to the unmasking of the culprit. The technique of parallel and repeated
narration creates increasing tension. The simple moral of Who? is that one
should look after one’s belongings.
330 chapter six

On the whole, realism predominates over fantastical and absurd ele-

ments, and the lyrical impulse is stronger than the urge to tell a story.
Without any great drama or obvious didactic purpose, Vvedensky depicts
children’s everyday life, often from their own point of view. He wrote
poems and prose texts about games, little outings and journeys, work,
nature and the seasons. A favourite subgenre of his is ‘song’—everyone
and everything seem to be singing in his world. “Lullaby” (“Kolybelnaya”,
1937) achieves an almost hypnotic effect through its sound pattern and
repetitions. Much of the charm of Vvedensky’s children’s books, as Lidiya
Chukovskaya pointed out, lay in the language itself: “Aleksandr Vveden-
sky’s clear and simple verses lead children not only into the world of
their own nature, but also into the world of classical Russian poetry, like
a preparatory class for the spring times, stars and rhythms of Tyutchev,
Baratynsky and Pushkin.”35
Yury Vladimirov (1908–31) died young of tuberculosis, without fulfill-
ing the promise he showed in his few works. His prose pieces and poems
are often built around a humorous little episode, and they bear witness
to a keen interest in absurd and fantastic situations. Vladimirov shared
Kharms’ penchant for puns and wordplay. Little Nina in his first book,
Little Nina’s Shopping (Ninochkiny pokupki, 1928), memorises a long shop-
ping list, but on the way to the shop, the list undergoes changes in amus-
ing ways. The virtuoso “The Drum” (“Baraban”) is a rhyme playing on the
word ‘baraban’. In “The Orchestra” (“Orkestr”, 1929), the children make an
orchestra out of pots and pans and other kitchen utensils with disastrous,
hyperbolic results.
In “The Cranks” (“Chudaki”, 1930), Vladimirov has a good-natured laugh
with his readers at children’s irrational thinking. He sends three boys to
the market with five kopecks each in their pockets; “The first for a cap, /
the second for a belt, / but the third one is for you.” The boys return in dis-
tress, having failed in their task; on the way to the market, the coins had
changed around, so nobody could tell which was meant for what. Report-
edly, this was a joke that Kharms had played on Vladimirov, and the poem
was Vladimirov’s ‘revenge’ on his friend. Another humorous piece full of
exaggeration is “Evsey” (1929), the story of the sluggard Evsey, who cannot
be woken even by the fire brigade with their hoses or the Red Army with
its cannons. The boy only comes to life when his mother asks if he wants
a piece of gingerbread.

35 Chukovskaia, V laboratorii redaktsii, 272.

 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 331

Nikolay Zabolotsky (1903–58) later came to be regarded as one of the

major Russian poets of the interwar years, but he started out in children’s
literature. It was Zabolotsky who wrote the Oberiu manifesto together
with Vvedensky in 1928. The year before, he had met Marshak and become
associated with Detgiz.
For a time, Zabolotsky was the editor of The Hedgehog, while also pub-
lishing his own stories and poems for children not only in The Hedgehog,
but also in The Siskin, Pioneer and The Bonfire (Kostyor). Zabolotsky was
not only involved with fiction; in 1928, The Hedgehog published his report
on a group of Swedish Young Pioneers making a tour of the Soviet Union
to see with their own eyes how socialism was becoming a reality. Zabo-
lotsky was told how the children’s meetings back home in Sweden were
often broken up by mounted police. Also, on their way to the Soviet Union
they had run into trouble, when at the Polish-Soviet border, the Polish
frontier guard had seized their banner with the text, “Be prepared to fight
for the working class! Always prepared!”36
Often Zabolotsky’s main aim is solely to amuse. The poem “Good
Boots” (“Khoroshie sapogi”, 1928) tells of the browbeaten German urchin
Karlusha, who has received a fine pair of boots from a friendly shoemaker,
but the poem does not develop into a piece of social reportage—instead,
humour and a fairy-tale mood take over. In the verse tale “How the Mice
Fought with the Cat” (“Kak myshi s kotom voevali”, 1933), the mice unite
to drive away the cat, but are ignominiously defeated by the cat’s cunning.
In poems like this, Zabolotsky makes use of features of folktales—anthro-
pomorphism, parallelism, exaggeration and repetitive exclamations. The
changing verse patterns and rhythms give life to the poems. Zabolotsky
had a good understanding of children’s psychology and knew how to
exploit their point of view in a functional way.
In the 1930s, Zabolotsky published many masterly humorous poems in
The Siskin. “The Tale of a Crooked Little Man” (“Skazka o krivom che-
lovechke”, 1933) teaches children not to touch birds’ nests, but the moral
of the poem is almost overshadowed by the imaginative plot and its
extraordinary characters. The hero of “Mister Cook Barla-Barla” (1935) is
the little American boy John, who tames the wild monster, the turkey Cook
Barla-Barla, “heavy as a flat-iron”. In the 1930s, Zabolotsky also worked as
a translator, producing children’s versions of Gargantua and Pantagruel
(1934–1935), Till Eulenspiegel (1936) and Gulliver’s Travels (1937).

36 N.Z., “Pionery shvedskie i pionery sovetskie,” Ezh’ 8 (1928): 22.

332 chapter six

Evgeny Schwartz (1896–1958) came to Petrograd in 1921 with a troupe of

actors. There he met Chukovsky and Marshak, the two pioneers of Soviet
children’s poetry. Marshak offered him editorial positions on The New
Robinson and in the children’s book section of Gosizdat, which opened the
way into literature. During the years 1925–1931, Schwartz worked in the
publishing house and was a regular contributor to The Hedgehog and
The Siskin. There are almost twenty children’s books from this period,
most of them published by Raduga.
Schwartz made his debut in The Sparrow with the story “The Story
of the Old Balalaika” (“Rasskaz staroy balalayki”, 1924). In folk-inspired
rhyming prose, the balalaika, now hanging forgotten on the wall, tells how
the Neva burst its banks in 1824. It is a dramatic story of how the balalaika
managed to save a little child from drowning, but it is also a historical
genre picture.
The main protagonists in “The War Between Punch and Shock-Headed
Peter” (“Voyna Petrushki i Styopki-Rastryopki”, 1925) are characters from
the Russian ‘Punch and Judy’ shows. This verse tale pays homage to cleanli-
ness and ends in spring-cleaning and marriage. The fantastic and dynamic
elements in the work were reinforced by Aleksey Radakov’s colourful illus-
trations. Schwartz also makes use of the grotesque, for example, when the
doctor operating on wounded soldiers allows parts of the body to change
places. The officer who finds his head positioned directly on top of his legs
is consoled with the words: “Now you don’t need a uniform.”
In Schwartz’ first epic poems, the ideological and moral dimension was
not much developed, but his poem “The Camp” (“Lager”) of 1925 brought
in the new Soviet reality. To the sound of drum rolls and song, the Young
Pioneers set off to fight against poverty and backwardness in the Russian
countryside. The farmer Stepan, having first taken the children for idlers,
is forced to change his mind when he sees how quickly they repair a col-
lapsed bridge.
In the 1920s, Schwartz also produced a number of non-fiction books
about subjects like the market trade, road signs, transport and animals. In
The Hedgehog he had a column called “A Map with Adventures” (“Karta s
priklyucheniyami”). There the new neighbour Vasily Medvedev becomes
the favourite of all the children when, with the aid of maps, he starts to tell
of his adventures all over the world. Medvedev, who is both an explorer
and a hunter, has visited many foreign countries, and Schwartz manages
to make the stories both exciting and informative.
Nikolay Oleynikov (1898–1942) came to Leningrad in 1925 from the
region of Rostov and was immediately attracted by his new home’s
 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 333

teeming literary life. As an editor, Oleynikov made an important contribu-

tion to children’s literature. He took a job with Marshak at Gosizdat, and
for a time he edited The New Robinson and The Hedgehog. Oleynikov had
special affection for the OBERIU group and its literary programme. In the
thirties, Oleynikov was one of the key people behind The Siskin, The Bonfire
and the short-lived The Cricket (Sverchok). A recurrent, popular column
of his was “Clever Children’s Club” (“Kruzhok umnykh rebyat”), filled with
problems, riddles, puzzles, tricks, and mathematical tasks which have not
lost their appeal even today. Oleynkov was also one of the first to make
radio programmes for children in the Soviet Union.
Like Kharms and Vvedensky, Oleynikov had great difficulty being pub-
lished as a writer for adults. As his verse parodies and grotesque stories
were badly received, he chose to write realistic prose for children. He had
fought on the side of the Reds in the Civil War and joined the Party in 1920,
and for him it was of importance that the young generation should know
the revolutionary history of their country. In 1925, Oleynikov published
an article in The New Robinson entitled “Young October Witnesses”, which
gathered together children’s memories of the events of 1917. Oleynikov
himself wrote about the Revolution and the Civil War in books like Days
of War (Boevye dni, 1927) and Tanks and Sledges (Tanki i sanki, 1928).
Ideologically devoted to the ideals of the October Revolution, Oleynikov
was nevertheless opposed to Marxist writers and critics who refused to
take into account the psychology of children. He himself always strove,
regardless of the subject, to find a point of view and a narrative mode that
would engage young readers. Oleynikov also had a trained eye for graphic
design; every page in his books and in the magazines he edited is full of
surprises. A good example of Oleynikov’s original approach is the short
story “The Geography Teacher” (“Uchitel geografii”, 1928). A teacher falls
into a lethargic slumber in 1917 and does not wake up until 1928. The head
of the Hospital for Victims of the Revolution is in charge of his case, and
he makes notes on how his patient experiences the world after his awak-
ening. The reader shadows the geography teacher as he sets off for the
Smolny Institute for his usual Wednesday cup of tea with the lady teach-
ers and the young noblewomen of the girls’ boarding school—unaware
that the Bolsheviks made the building their headquarters in October 1917.
In this way, Oleynikov illustrates in an amusing way how the times had
changed.
For The Hedgehog, Oleynikov wrote an adventure series about Makar
Svirepy, one of his own pseudonyms. Illustrated by Boris Antonovsky, the
series was a rare example of Soviet comic strips, a genre which otherwise
334 chapter six

was combatted as “а bourgeois American method of turning young people

into morons”.37 Makar is a dauntless and indefatigable traveller, always
ready to fight wild animals and German fascists. His presence of mind
never lets him down. When he is attacked by a boa constrictor, he takes
out his penknife, cuts the animal open and puts the skin on like a raincoat.
In the first adventure (1929), Makar travels to Africa to promote the new
Soviet children’s magazine The Hedgehog. In a week and a half, Makar
manages to convince the whole of Africa that ‘yozh’, that is, ‘hedgehog’, is
a word that stands for all that is best in the world. The Africans start say-
ing ‘hedgehog’ when they drink cold water or eat sweet dates. Impressed
by Makar’s courage and goodness, they call him “Hedgehog Makar”.
Working in the shadow of the Oberiuts was Vera Inber (1890–1972). She
had written for children even before the Revolution, and in the twenties
Raduga brought out several new works of hers. The most memorable are
the absurd verses “The Little Millipedes” (“Kroshki-sorokonoshki”, 1924).
The millipede’s thirty-three children are personified in a frank way: “All
the little ones are / the very image of their mother: / Exactly the same /
dear face.” When they are about to start school, their father sits up at night
with the abacus trying to work out how many galoshes he needs to buy
for his youngsters. He cannot but envy the stork, whose only child stands
on just one leg.
When the snail in the entertaining and mellifluous verse tale “Flat to
Let” (“Sdayotsya kvartira”, 1941) advertises its apartment, the initial inter-
est is great. But everyone, from the ant down to the bat, has his own
preferences and specific requirements, and eventually everyone is happy
with his own unique living conditions. Children are taught basic biologi-
cal facts in an amusing way, while learning that you should be satisfied
with what you have.
Three female poets who in the 1920s were frequently published but
afterwards almost totally forgotten are Elizaveta Polonskaya, Nadezhda
Pavlovich and Sofya Fedorchenko. Elizaveta Polonskaya (1890–1969) was
one of the Serapion Brothers, an independent group of young talented
Petrograd writers, formed in 1921. She published in The Sparrow and The
New Robinson, and her poems and prose texts were also collected in books.
A cycle of poems, “Watches” (“Chasy”, 1927), presents different ways of
measuring time, from observation of the sun’s position in the sky to the

37 “Istoriia sozdaniia i razvitiia komiksa v Rossii,” accessed Маrch 15, 2013, http://ref
.rushkolnik.ru/v1222/?page=2.
 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 335

crowing of the cock. One metaphor presents the hands of the clock as two
sisters, the bigger one lively and quick, the smaller more dignified in her
movements.
Nadezhda Pavlovich (1895–1980) had more success with her poetry,
prose and games for children than with her works for adults. Fourteen
small volumes were published in the period from 1925 to 1931. In her books
of the mid-1920s, published by Brokgauz i Efron in runs of 5 to 10,000 cop-
ies, we repeatedly meet a prankster, be it a boy or a locomotive (!), who
breaks the rules, creates chaos and needs to be pacified. The most curious
of these cases is the American boy Tom, who because of his bad behaviour
is called “a real Bolshevik” by his aunt. He escapes to the land of the Bol-
sheviks and finds that all bad things said about it were just lies: “The Bol-
sheviks are not cannibals / and nobody here is hanged!” This is his place,
and he becomes a model of diligence and loyalty (Bolshevik Tom, 1925).
Work is the theme in Pavlovich’s books from the early 1930s, published
by Goszidat in runs of up to 200,000 copies. The readers are ordered to
get involved in the work process around them and are offered stimulating
examples both from the life of animals and from the world of adults. Here,
nothing of the modernist touch of Pavlovich’s early booklets is left.
Sofya Fedorchenko (1888–1959) was the president of the children’s
literature section of the All-Russian Union of Writers in the mid-1920s.
She is the author of more than one hundred books for children from the
period between the two world wars. Introduction (Priskazki, 1924) earned
Chukovsky’s praise as a folk-song pastiche, perfect in form.38 The illustra-
tions by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin stressed the rustic connection. The book
includes animal poems for little Vasenka, slumbering in his bed. More
entertaining is the section ‘Rubbish’ in the volume The Whole Year (Krugly
god, 1930) with its wordplay and absurd situations, quite in the spirit of
the OBERIU writers.

The 1920s also saw a number of interesting attempts at children’s books

by established writers. It was at Marshak’s instigation that Boris Pasternak
and Osip Mandelstam tried their hand at the genre. This offer came at
an opportune time, as possibilities to publish adult poetry had become
scarce for both of them by the middle of the 1920s.
Boris Pasternak (1890–1960) wrote only two poems for children. In “The
Carousel” (“Karusel”), published in The New Robinson in 1925, the children

38 K. Chukovskii, “S. Fedorchenko. Priskazka,” Russkii sovremennik 4 (1924): 21.

336 chapter six

go on an outing to the fair and take a ride on the carousel. Surprisingly,

no attempt is made to depict the experience rhythmically or structurally.
In “The Menagerie” (“Zverinets”, 1929), Pasternak made use of another
standard motif, animals in a zoo. The animals’ captivity is observed with
interest and wonder, but without any deeper additional level of meaning.
In both poems, it is striking how Pasternak did not change his intonation,
syntax or vocabulary, but wrote as if for adults. The humorous turns are
sophisticated, and there are no fanciful images. Both poems came out as
separate books in the twenties, but were later passed over in silence. Pas-
ternak does not seem to have minded.
The name of Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938) kept appearing in the early
Soviet children’s magazines and in addition, four small books of poetry
for children came out in 1925–1926. They were all written in an inspired
moment, half as a joke. Mandelstam repeated to his wife the advice he
had received from Chukovsky: “Don’t think of children when you write
poetry for children.”39 As with Pasternak, these are poems that probably
attract adults more than children; they are more descriptive than narra-
tive, more poetic than humorous. No people are to be found in Mandel-
stam’s verses, only personified objects. Everything is brought to life—even
the milk and sugar. In “The Primus Stove” (“Primus”, 1925), “The Kitchen”
(“Kukhnya”, 1926) and “The Balloons” (“Shary”, 1926), kitchen utensils and
items of furniture are given a chance to step forward and present them-
selves and their problems in monologue form.
Mandelstam was most successful with “2 Trams” (“2 tramvaya”, 1925).
The tramcars Klik and Tram are friends who are always ready to stick up
for each other. Klik is old and tired, and his platform aches from bumping
against the rails, while the young Tram is an adventurous soul. One day,
Tram does not return from his route, and Klik goes out to search for his
friend. He carefully tows Tram home, as his friend’s single lamp has gone
out. The personal imagery and the changing metre and line length help to
create a lively whole. “2 Trams” has also been seen as a veiled memorial
to Mandelstam’s friend and colleague Nikolay Gumilyov, who had been
executed as a counter-revolutionary in 1921. The subtle allusion is that
Gumilyov’s best-known poem was entitled “The Tram that Lost Its Way”
(“Zabludivshiysya tramvay”).

39 N.Ia. Mandel’shtam, Кniga tret’ia (Paris, 1987), 137.

 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 337

Unfortunate Orphans and Happy Young Pioneers

The demand for social engagement was strong from the start in Soviet
children’s literature. Writers were supposed to make the young aware of
recent history and the break with the past that the Revolution had brought
about. Life in pre-revolutionary Russia was painted in sombre colours: it
included hardship on the land, crushing work from an early age, abuse
of children. Initially a sentimental, philanthropic tendency could still be
displayed, as the writers pitied their heroes and wrote about honest pau-
pers and their generous benefactors. One Soviet critic complained in 1924
that there was too much humility, non-resistance to evil, and passivity in
works like this. Instead, the writer’s task was “to lead the reader, raise him
up, show him the bright and happy perspectives of the life that is being
created through the principles of work and public spiritedness, awake in
him activity, a striving to be not a passive observer (or a contemplative
bystander), but a participant in the making of this new life.”40
In prose, the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 were popular subjects. Chil-
dren were given the role of active accomplices of the revolutionaries.
There is a lack of individual characterisation, and the plots often follow a
standard pattern. The literary critic Anna Pokrovskaya summarised such
works in 1924: “They paint a picture of a childhood filled with hard work,
poverty and exploitation. In the village there is a kulak [that is, a well-off
farmer], who ruins the hero’s family. This is followed by a life of poverty
in the town as an apprentice to a shopkeeper, by vagrancy, or by a pure
proletarian existence working in mine or factory or at a machine. Then
comes the meeting with politically aware comrades, participation in the
proletarian struggle, in the Civil War, in clandestine work. The finale is
either a glorious death or work in a Young Pioneer group, in the Komso-
mol organisation, study at the factory institute—and in the future, build-
ing the USSR.”41
In the books about the Civil War, the heroes are often courageous
children who carry out dangerous missions and emerge unscathed. ‘Red
romanticism’ was the term given to the superficial, frivolous attitude to
war that some writers displayed. A good example is The Little Red Dev-
ils (Krasnye dyavolyata, 1923–26), extraordinarily popular in its time. The
author was the typesetter and revolutionary Pavel Blyakhin (1886–1961),

40 S. Rogozina, Novaia detskaia literatura (М.-Л., 1924), 12.

41  А.K. Pokrovskaia, Оsnovnye techeniia v sovremennoi detskoi literature (М., 1927), 13.
338 chapter six

a Party member since 1903. In his preface, he emphasised that it was “real
life and the naked truth” that he wanted to convey.42 The audience he
addressed was “the broad mass of non-party young people, feeding on
the rotten flesh of Nat Pinkerton and Tarzan”.43 While the favourites of
yesterday, like Cooper, Aimard and Mayne Reid, had written about how
Europeans, in the name of bourgeois culture, had destroyed native tribes,
Blyakhin wanted to give them a book filled with progressive ideology.
What he actually produced was another out-and-out adventure story. A
twin brother and sister from the country, together with a Chinese boy, are
caught up in the war events on the Ukrainian front, where they want to
live out fantasies from their favourite cowboy books. Their great dream is
to bring the ‘scalp’ of the anarchist leader Makhno, “Blue Fox”, to the ‘red-
skin’ leader, Trotsky. The children display incredible courage and get the
better of their satanic enemy, “the white-skinned dogs”, even in the most
improbable situations. Later Soviet literary historians criticised the book
for its exaggeration and light-hearted attitude to the war, but it was given
credit for its effect in keeping alive a feeling of hatred for the enemy.
When Blyakhin consciously tried to produce a counterpart to classical
American and French adventure literature, he was in fact competing with
works which, in the Soviet Union of the mid-1920s, still dominated the
book market. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan was first translated in 1923,
quickly followed by dozens of other Tarzan books and the author’s science
fiction works. Mayne Reid stood on every Soviet child’s bookshelf, while
Jules Verne was by far the most popular author among Soviet youth.
Another book set in the midst of the Civil War is Lev Ostroumov’s
(1892–1955) Makar the Pathfinder (Makar Sledoput, 1925–26). Makar is
a Ukrainian orphan who likes hunting and, just like Blyakhin’s children,
reading books about Red Indians. His idol is James Fenimore Cooper’s
Pathfinder, and in the Civil War he gets a chance to take the role of the
American hunter. The Civil War is a war between cruel landlords and
good peasants, greedy factory owners and honourable workers, and Makar
has no problem in chosing sides with the Reds. Brave and daring, he does
invaluable, not to say superhuman, work at the front and in the rear,
achieving the status of a legend among friends and foes. Some historical
persons, like Lenin and the White General Denikin, are inserted to give

42 P. Bliakhin, “K iunym chitateliam,” Krasnye diavoliata (Kharkov, 1923), 3.

43 Avtor, “Dva slova druziam-chitateliam,” Krasnye diavoliata: Daesh’ Krym! II-ia chast’.
Kino-povest’ (Baku, 1925), 5.
 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 339

the story a pseudo-documentary credibility. Makar the Pathfinder quickly

reached a third edition, but subsequently fell out from Soviet children’s
reading. A sequel, The Black Swan (Chorny lebed, 1930), in which Makar
gets involved in the Polish-Soviet war in 1920, was a failure. A TV-movie
adaptation, made as late as 1984, did not bring new life to the book.
There is greater realism in Sergey Grigorev’s (1875–1953) short story “The
Red Beacon” (“Krasny baken”, 1924) than in Blyakhin’s and Ostroumov’s
Civil War opuses. A boy fleeing with his family during the war is drawn
into the fighting on the Volga. Grigorev has chosen an exciting episode in
which the boy, without growing into a hero on a superhuman scale, plays
his part for the Reds. “The Red Beacon” was included in school reading
books for many years. Grigorev subsequently became known for histori-
cal novels written for young people about generals and admirals famous
from Russian history.
In From Sea to Sea (Ot morya do morya, 1926), Nikolay Tikhonov (1896–
1979) wrote about a boy’s path to the Revolution. In the Civil War, he
comes into contact with a Bolshevik soldier and begins to understand the
meaning of the class conflict. The same plot would also be used by Arkady
Gaydar in R.V.S. (1926) and The School (Shkola, 1930).
One of the foremost exponents of Young Pioneer life was Nikolay Bog-
danov (1906–89), himself a Pioneer leader. His books took a stand against
the kind of false romanticism that could be found among Soviet youth at
that time. Instead of dreams of great deeds in the fight against saboteurs
or in underground political activities, Bogdanov, himself only a teenager,
highlighted concrete tasks in the transformation of Russia. The young
people in The Pioneer in the Countryside (Pioner v derevne, 1924) and The
Vanished Camp (Propavshy lager, 1925) help with work on the farm (not
without comical misadventures and setbacks), expose bootleggers and
enemies of Soviet power, give political instruction, set up pioneer cells
and campaign for the establishment of collective farms.
Bogdanov’s best known work is The First Girl (Pervaya devushka, 1928),
a story about the first girl to be accepted into the Komsomol organisation.
The book gives a good picture of life in the political youth cells at that
time, with studies in Marxism and life-and-death struggles with ideologi-
cal opponents. A central topic of debate is free love. Bogdanov’s heroine
rises to become the leader of her Komsomol group, but is fated to die of
syphilis, a victim of ‘the new morality’. A similar warning against promis-
cuity can be found in Kostya Ryabtsev’s Diary (Dnevnik Kosti Ryabtseva,
1926–27) by N. Ognyov (1888–1938), a pseudonym of Mikhail Rozanov.
340 chapter six

Originally written to shock adults, this school story became a favourite

with Soviet teenagers.

The realism of early Soviet juvenile prose and the way current events and
themes were treated from the children’s point of view were also noticed
outside the Soviet Union. When L. Panteleev’s The Watch (Chasy, 1928)
came out in Swedish translation in 1931, it was held up as a model for
modern children’s literature in general. The publisher’s summary says:
We have realised that the old stories of cowboys and Indians and pirates are
out of date, and the tearful sentimentality of the old books for girls do not
suit the girls of today. We have been looking for objectivity and realism in
children’s books, but in vain. To find this new objective children’s writing,
we must to go abroad, to Germany and Russia.44
In The Watch, Panteleev wrote about a so-called besprizornik, a street
urchin called Petya who has lost his home and family in the Civil War.
In the 1920s, thousands of homeless children roamed aimlessly around
the country, prey to constant sickness and starvation. They kept them-
selves alive by stealing, and often worked within organised crime. In the
1920s and 1930s, strenuous efforts were made to bring these children back
into society, and the Young Pioneer organization urged people to fight
against the phenomenon. Progress in this area was held up as proof that
the Soviet Union was creating the conditions under which the new ‘Soviet
man’ might be born.
Homeless children were one of the most popular subjects for children’s
books in the 1920s.45 They turn up, for example, in the poetry of Agniya
Barto and Nikolay Aseev and in the prose of Olga Berggolts (1910–75).
While the approach was initially sentimental, romanticised or downright
patronising, the book The Republic of Shkid (Respublika Shkid, 1927) did
full justice to its subject. Writing from their own experience, two teenag-
ers, the abovementioned L. Panteleev (1908–87), a pseudonym of Aleksey
Eremeev, and Grigory Belykh (1906–38) told of a group of delinquent boys
in an institution bearing the impressive name of the Dostoevsky School for
Individual and Social Education. Panteleev and Belykh had found them-
selves at the school in 1921 and seen with their own eyes how re-education
and social training could turn hooligans and petty thieves into a group of

44 L. Pantelejev, Petjka och klockan (Stockholm, 1931), [backcover].

45 On the theme of besprizorniki, that is, homeless orphans, in early Soviet literature,
see Marina Balina, “It’s Grand to be An Orphan: Crafting Happy Citizens in Soviet Chil-
dren’s Literature of the 1920’s,” in Petrified Utopia: Happiness Soviet Style, ed. M. Balina and
E. Dobrenko (Anthem Press, 2009), 53–78.
 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 341

responsible citizens. In the Dostoevsky School, the boys themselves were

encouraged to take responsibility for their studies and for discipline in the
school. They spent their spare time creating their own newspapers and
putting on plays. There was a constant battle going on between the teach-
ers and the unruly boys, with many failed attempts before the delinquent
children could be given a future.
The Republic of Shkid made a strong impression on Gorky, whose own
childhood had been marked by hardship: “For me, this book is a great
event. It confirms my faith in man, the greatest and most fantastic thing
on our planet.”46 Thanks to Gorky’s efforts, Panteleev was given the
opportunity to study. While Grigory Belykh fell victim to the terror in the
1930s, Panteleev went on writing into old age, with his youthful experi-
ences providing an inexhaustible fund of material. In a humorous vein,
his The Watch tells how an abandoned boy is taken into a boarding school
and brought up, against his will, to be a good citizen. His conscience is
awakened and he learns to subordinate himself to the rules and standards
of the collective. The same year saw the story The Portrait (Portret, 1928),
a psychological study of a tough boy who takes up with an old Bolshevik
and gradually returns to a normal life. Panteleev’s autobiography Lyonka
Panteleev (1939, 1952) is written in the same spirit as Gorky’s famous tril-
ogy about a pre-revolutionary childhood and youth. The Christian belief
that Panteleev openly confessed shortly before his death in 1987 could, of
course, not be expressed earlier in the Soviet Union.
In the 1930s, the besprizornik problem was described from the point of
view of the educator in A Pedagogical Poem (Pedagogicheskaya poėma,
1934–36). The author was Anton Makarenko (1888–1939), a teacher who
had won international acclaim for his work with homeless and orphaned
children. In the 1920s, Makarenko founded work colonies embodying the
principles of collective upbringing. The core principles were physical
labour, study, strict discipline and faith in man’s unlimited potential. His
experience of these work camps formed the basis for the novel, which
Makarenko dedicated “with love and friendship” to his “leader, friend and
teacher Maksim Gorky”. In his next novel about life in the children’s colo-
nies, Flags on the Towers (Flagi na bashnyakh, 1938), Makarenko helped
Stalin to whip up a climate of lynch-law against the country’s alleged
internal enemies.

46 M. Gor’kii, Sobranie sochinenii v 30-ti tomakh. Vol. 30 (М., 1955), 17. (Letter, March
1927.)
342 chapter six

A minor classic of the 1920s is Tashkent, City of Bread (Tashkent—gorod

khlebny, 1923). Writing from his own experience, A. Neverov (1886–1923),
a pseudonym of Aleksandr Skobelev, told of a Russian boy’s journey to
Tashkent in search of grain. It was a time of terrible famine and epidem-
ics, described in the novel with the shocking naturalism and expressive
style typical of the decade. The struggle for existence is hard, but twelve-
year-old Mishka encounters not only suffering and death, but also support,
sympathy and friendship. The novel ends on an optimistic note. Mishka
grows up in the course of his travels and returns home ready to farm the
land and live in a new way.

Back to Nature

A popular prose genre in the 1920s and 1930s was nature writing. The
foundations had been laid before the Revolution, with numerous trans-
lations of foreign writers such as Rudyard Kipling, Charles Roberts and
Ernest Thompson Seton. The Soviet writers based their stories on factual
knowledge and their own observations of nature. They wanted to interest
their readers in the lives of animals and birds and to give them an insight
into present-day natural science.
The Soviet Union’s answer to Seton was Vitaly Bianki (1894–1959). He
was the son of a well-known biologist and himself worked for a time as a
teacher of biology. Bianki was widely travelled and had taken part in sci-
entific and hunting expeditions in Siberia. He made his debut as a writer
in 1923, joining Marshak’s group at the Children’s Literature Studio and
becoming one of the biggest names associated with The New Robinson
and Raduga.
Bianki’s major work is The Forest Newspaper (Lesnaya gazeta, 1928), the
first chapters of which were published in the magazine The Sparrow in
1923–24. Bianki told the ‘news’ of the natural world and its inhabitants
in the form of notes, letters, telegrams and advertisements. He expressed
the aim of his ‘newspaper’ in these terms: “There is as much happening
in the forest as in the city. There are jobs to be done, festivities to enjoy,
misfortunes to be endured, and there are heroes and villains; but the city
papers write nothing about all this, so no-one knows all the news from
the forest.”47

47 Vitalii Bianki, “K chitateliam,” Sobranie sochinenii v chetyrekh tomakh. Vol. 3

(L., 1974), 7.
 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 343

Bianki’s writing successfully combined the scientific and the artistic.

He was sensitive to the realistic and poetic sides of nature and knew how
to smuggle factual details into his captivating little stories unobtrusively.
The animals, birds and insects are not given human characteristics, but
they are depicted as individuals. Man appears rarely, but when he does,
it is often in the guise of an intruder violating the harmony of nature and
plundering its riches. One of Bianki’s aims was to awaken children’s inter-
est in the phenomena of nature and to teach them responsibility for safe-
guarding it.
The Forest Newspaper received many letters, frequently from children,
together helping to create this unique ‘nature encyclopaedia’. Bianki con-
tinued to edit and expand The Forest Newspaper for many years, and its
final version consisted of about two hundred short stories and notes. In
the course of his life, he saw around ten editions, and the number has
continued to grow.
Another sharp-eyed observer of life in field and forest was Mikhail
Prishvin (1873–1954). The adult narrator in his sketches tells of his experi-
ences in nature and of his encounters with animals and birds. Prishvin
wrote mainly for grown-ups, but many of the sketches in his works The
Bun (Kolobok, 1923) and A Hunter’s Tales (Rasskazy egerya, 1928) found
a lasting place in children’s literature. Sketches like “The Hedgehog”
(“Yozh”, 1924), “The Talking Rook” (“Govoryashchy grach”, 1924) and “The
Titmice” (“Gaechki”, 1926) combined profound knowledge of life in nature
with brilliant stylistic talent. Prishvin was not detached from his young
readership: “For me, my close encounters with nature are a return to my
childhood, and in my stories for children, I try to see the world through a
grown-up child’s eyes.”48
An international success was Olga Perovskaya’s (1902–61) book Children
and Animals (Rebyata i zveryata, 1925). At the beginning of the century,
Perovskaya’s father, a trained forester, had been exiled to Verny (present-
day Almaty) in Kazakhstan for revolutionary activities. There, he devoted
himself to looking after wounded animals and abandoned children. In her
book, his daughter Olga tells of a childhood spent among horses, tame
wolf-cubs, elk and tigers. Perovskaya would also devote her later books to
descriptions of animals.

The starting point for Soviet popular science writing for children and
young people is linked to the title of M. Ilin’s book How Man Became a

48 Quoted in Kon, Sovetskaia detskaia literatura 1917–1929, 283.

344 chapter six

Giant. While satisfying young people’s thirst for knowledge, the genre was
also a tribute to man who, by his labour and the power of his intellect,
transformed his environment. Knowledge is Power (Znanie—sila) was the
name of a popular science magazine for the young that started publishing
in Moscow in 1926. It was the power bequeathed by knowledge that would
make communism become a reality.
Even in the early magazine Northern Lights, science and technology
had been given their own columns. This legacy was taken over by The
New Robinson, which found in Boris Zhitkov and M. Ilin two able sci-
ence editors with genuine literary gifts. Books began to appear with titles
like “Vanya the Metal Worker”, “Seryozha the Telegraph Operator” and
“Stepan the Chemist”. In many cases, the debt to foreign prototypes was
obvious. One weakness was that the fictional elements were too often
subordinated to the documentary, included only as a pretext for present-
ing the factual material. A boy without any individual features ends up in
a factory, which provides an excuse to run through what he sees there.
There was a better balance between the fictional and descriptive aspects
in Sergey Rozanov’s (1894–1957) The Adventures of Travka (Priklyucheniya
Travki, 1928). Rozanov, the brother of N. Ognyov, wanted to present differ-
ent means of transport and communication. He has the boy Travka lose
his father at the railway station, triggering a search using the telephone,
telegrams and newspapers; father and son are reunited after a journey by
train, tram and taxi.
The literary scholar Viktor Shklovsky (1893–1984) set himself a more
exotic task in A Journey to the Land of Cinema (Puteshestvie v stranu kino,
1926). Little Kolya Petrov goes to Los Angeles and sees at first hand how
a film is made. Shklovsky himself had written film scripts and knew his
subject, but he had problems creating a plausible frame story. Naturally
he could not write about America without also describing the hard lives
of coloured people and the unemployed.
The biggest name in non-fiction was M. Ilin (1895/1896–1953) (whose
real name was Ilya Marshak), the brother of Samuil Marshak. Ilin was an
engineer by training. In 1924, he had been given his own page in The New
Robinson, called “The Chemistry Column: The New Robinson’s Labora-
tory”. When illness forced him to give up work at a chemical plant, he
decided to devote himself to literature.
Ilin’s celebrations of man as a tireless worker and creator gained him
a reputation as “the poet of science”.49 In a long series of books, he wrote

49 E.E. Zubareva (ed.), Detskaia literatura (M., 1985), 189.

 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 345

about the material world, how man discovered the laws of nature and
worked to subjugate nature, how truth is born out of the struggle between
different theories and as the result of centuries of research. Ilin’s first pop-
ular science sketches were still marked by a dry exposition of facts, but his
artistic ambitions grew progressively stronger. He developed a style of his
own with short, simple sentences and functional examples.
When writing about everyday objects, Ilin would start with a specific
item, and then go back in time to show what brilliant but laborious intel-
lectual effort lay behind every invention. In The Sun on the Table (Solntse
na stole, 1927), he wrote about the electric light bulb; What Time Is It?
(Kotory chas?, 1927) was about the clock, Black on White (Chornym po
belomu, 1928) about books, and 100,000 Why’s (Sto tysyach pochemu, 1929)
about domestic appliances like the tap and the oven. How the Car Learned
to Move (Kak avtomobil uchilsya khodit, 1931) covered the earliest history
of the motor-car. In 1936, Ilin combined his short books of the 1920s under
the collective title Tales of Everyday Things (Rasskazy o veshchakh).

Reality and Fantasy

Realism was already the dominant force in the 1920s, while fairy tales and
fantasy literature languished in its shadow. A writer who went his own
way throughout the decade, unconcerned about trends, was Aleksandr
Grin (1880–1932). In his novels, he created an exotic fairy-tale world, with-
out any factual historical or geographical basis. His subject matter was of
general human interest, without any direct roots in Soviet society. The Red
Sails (Alye parusa, 1923) became especially popular among young people.
The poor fisherman’s daughter Assol dreams of a ship with red sails, which
will one day come and take her away from the narrow, materialistic world
she lives in. One day, the young captain Grey appears, also on the run
from mundane reality. Instead of prosaic commodities like nails and soap,
his ship is carrying cedar-wood, spices and tea.
The Red Sails is an eloquent defence of fantasy and romantic adventure.
Grin labelled the novel as a feeriya, that is, a play based on fairy tales.
Stylistically also, the work is steeped in exoticism. The similes are highly
original, as for example, “the man watched the ship like an elephant look-
ing at a butterfly it has caught”, “she slept as deeply as a young peanut,
dreamless and without a care” or “my heart is happier than an elephant’s
when it sees a small bun”. The stated message of Grin’s book is that man
himself must create wonder in the midst of everyday life. On another
level, The Red Sails is an allegory, setting the artist as an individual against
346 chapter six

the uncomprehending petty-bourgeois collective with its materialism and

mercantile interests. In Grin’s world, the Christian morality of forgiveness
for one’s enemy is no longer in power; instead he introduced the class-
struggle mentality, in which no compromises between the two camps are
possible.
A favourite book throughout the Soviet period, The Red Sails is marred
by gender stereotypes. While Assol passively waits for her Prince Charm-
ing, the role of the male character is to act and take. Embarrassing is the
only word to describe the scene where Grey slips the wedding ring onto
Assol’s finger while she is sound asleep; his will is hers, even if they have
not yet even spoken to another.
Many attempts were made to depict revolutionary history and the inter-
national political situation in fairy-tale form. The classic is Yury Olesha’s
(1899–1960) Three Fat Men (Tri tolstyaka, 1928), which tells, in a captivat-
ing manner, of the fight for freedom in an imaginary land. The country
is governed by a tyrannical triumvirate, which allows a privileged upper
class to bleed the people and seize the profits from the coal, iron and grain
they produce. Supported by mutineers in the army, the country’s workers
and farmers rise up under the leadership of the swordsmith Prospero, the
tight-rope walker Tibul and the scholar Gaspar Arneri.
The social analysis and ideological message of the novel are crude
and oversimplified, but the book also contains humorous and fantastic
adventures, elements that appeal to children’s imaginations. Olesha does
not make direct use of miracles and magic, but strong affinity with the
works of E.T.A. Hoffmann and Hans Christian Andersen, in particular,
reinforces the fairy-tale mood. Against the view that Olesha allowed him-
self the simple role of a politruk, a political instructor, other critics have
chosen to see Three Fat Men as a modern folktale with literary archetypes
or have focused upon its avant-garde poetics with elements of carnival,
circus and play.50 The book also became known as a radio play, a film
and an opera.
A breath of air from the outside world came with Aleksey Tolstoy
(1882/1883–1945), who returned from emigration in 1923. Even before the
Revolution, he had displayed great interest in children’s literature and had
contributed to a number of anthologies. While in exile in Paris, Tolstoy
published the autobiographical A Tale of Many Wonderful Things (Povest o

50 I.N. Arzamastseva and S.A. Nikolaeva, Detskaia literatura: Uchebnik. Sixth ed.
(M., 2009), 338–339.
 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 347

mnogikh prevoskhodnykh veshchakh, 1920–22), later called Nikita’s Child-

hood (Detstvo Nikity), a nostalgic remembrance of his childhood years on
an estate on the Volga. In 1925, Tolstoy produced some stories for Soviet
children. The main protagonists in As If Nothing Had Happened (Kak ni v
chom ne byvalo) are two spirited brothers who experience adventures in
imagination and in reality. A forbidden boat trip would have ended badly,
if a group of intrepid Young Pioneers had not intervened. With its deep
understanding of the psychology of children, its unconventional narrative
style with frequent comments from the author, and its episodic composi-
tion, this story stands out as one of the freshest children’s books of the
1920s.
Tolstoy’s name also crops up in science fiction. The utopian aspects of
Marxism inspired writers to visions of the classless society of the future
and to dramatic tales of the triumph of progressive ideology not only on
Earth, but also far out in space. In Tolstoy’s Aėlita (1923), a demobilised
Russian soldier leads a revolution on Mars, while Engineer Garin’s Hyper-
boloid (Giperboloid inzhenera Garina, 1925–27) picks up another popular
motif, that of new technical inventions. An engineer tries to use a death-
ray to seize world domination, but comes up against the international
labour movement. Both novels were published in the 1930s in versions
adapted for adolescents.
Aleksandr Belyaev (1884–1942), the first professional science-fiction
writer in Russia, also found his largest audience among the young. He was
called “the Soviet Jules Verne”, but he had also learned from H.G. Wells.
His output is large but uneven. The best works are from the 1920s, includ-
ing Professor Dowell’s Head (Golova professora Douelya, 1925), The Island
of Lost Ships (Ostrov pogibshikh korabley, 1926) and The Human Amphib-
ian (Chelovek-amfibiya, 1928). Belyaev combined knowledge from the
most diverse fields (medicine, technology, biology, physics, cybernetics,
astronomy) with an ability to create exciting plots. In his books, a battle is
often fought between progressive scientists and unprincipled and greedy
villains. The action is moved to the bourgeois West, giving Belyaev the
opportunity to stigmatise capitalism from a Soviet standpoint. His eternal
problem, never convincingly solved, was to achieve a balance between
science fiction and political pamphleteering.
Professor Vladimir Obruchov (1863–1956) gained notable popularity
with his novels Plutonium (Plutoniya, 1924) and Sannikov’s Land (Zemlya
Sannikova, 1926), in which Russian expeditions discover prehistoric settle-
ments and animals in the Earth’s interior and in the far North. Obruchov
348 chapter six

took his example from Jules Verne, and his solid technical background as a
geologist helped him to give his gripping novels a semblance of credibility.

Boris Zhitkov

Short adventure stories of a more realistic nature were written by Boris

Zhitkov (1882–1938). He was a traveller who liked to tell stories of foreign
countries, dangerous sea voyages and unexpected encounters with wild
animals. The ideal is the quick-thinking and courageous man driven by a
sense of duty and love of work. In 1930, when children in Leningrad voted
Kharms their favourite poet, Zhitkov was judged the most popular prose
writer. His stories, which lacked connections to current Soviet life, satis-
fied the eternal thirst for exoticism and excitement.
When Zhitkov began writing, he was already over forty years old, with
an eventful life behind him. His school years were spent in Odessa, where
he also began his studies at the local university. After a year in the mathe-
matics faculty, he switched to natural sciences, with chemistry as his main
subject. Zhitkov could have stayed at university, but he chose a different
route. The sea had always been his great love; while in Odessa, he also
qualified as a ship’s mate, and his studies at the university alternated with
work on Russian ships sailing in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. In
1909, he took part as captain and ichthyologist in a scientific expedition
to the River Yenisey, to study the local fauna. Certain that he had found
his true vocation, Zhitkov started courses in shipbuilding at the Polytech-
nic Institute in St Petersburg in the same year. Alongside his studies, he
lectured in physics and chemistry to evening classes for workers in the
capital. In 1912 he took part in a wide-ranging voyage from St Petersburg
to Vladivostok, taking in Madagascar, India, Ceylon, Shanghai and Japan.
After completing his studies, he was called up. In the War, he served
initially as a shipping inspector in Archangel, but in 1916 he was sent to
England to supervise the production of submarine and aircraft engines
for Russia. By the time of the October Revolution, Zhitkov was back in
his own country, now employed as an engineer in the port of Odessa.
In 1923, his life took a new turn. He moved to Leningrad with the inten-
tion of seeking a job at the port, and while hunting for work, looked up
his old classmate from Odessa, Korney Chukovsky. While he was waiting,
he entertained Chukovsky’s children with exciting tales from his event-
ful life. Chukovsky happened to overhear his stories and asked him to
write something for children right away. The response from the magazine
 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 349

Fig. 14. Boris Zhitkov

350 chapter six

The Sparrow to his first attempt was enthusiastic, and Zhitkov was imme-
diately drawn into literary life in Leningrad. Marshak took him into his
Children’s Literature Studio; he was given his own column in The Sparrow;
his first book was published; he was contacted by the children’s theatre
with a request for a play; and the children’s literature section of Gosizdat
invited him to become editor of its popular science books.
Zhitkov came to literature as a fully-developed writer. His very first
short story “Over the Sea” (“Nad morem”, 1924) contains many features
typical of his later writing. This short piece is limited to a single, very dra-
matic, situation. The setting is the sea, and the circumstances are excep-
tional, with a passenger plane losing height and in danger of crashing into
the waves. The crew has to display both skill and courage. The mechanic
is exposed as a fool, but the apprentice manages to overcome his fear and
go out onto the wing to repair the damage. He loses his life, but succeeds
in saving the others.
The sea was the setting for the stories in Zhitkov’s first two collections,
The Evil Sea (Zloe more, 1924) and Stories of the Sea (Morskie istorii, 1925).
Here, the sea is not merely a background, but a living and perilous ele-
ment. Zhitkov gives children a serious account of the dangerous lives of
adults and does not shy away from tragedy. His characters are caught
up in life-threatening situations which demand drastic decisions: ships
in distress, submarines stuck at the bottom of the sea, or walrus hunters
menaced by ice floes in the Arctic Ocean.
Zhitkov went on to display his versatility as a writer, but he never aban-
doned the sea as a motif. His early stories of the sea were followed by a
constant stream of new ones, most of them included in a later collec-
tion, also entitled Stories of the Sea (Morskie istorii, 1937). Among others,
this contains the fine “Mechanic Salerno” (“Mekhanik Salerno”) of 1932,
in which a fire breaks out in the hold of a passenger ship. The culprit is
the mechanic Salerno, who, unbeknown to the captain, has taken on a
consignment of barrels of Berthollet salt. The growing danger is described
in telling detail, but the focus of the story is not the fire, but the captain’s
dilemma. While the crew is mainly concerned for its own safety, the cap-
tain is conscious of his responsibility towards the passengers. To avoid
panic on board, he tries to prevent the news leaking out for as long as pos-
sible. He shoots an inquisitive, hysterical passenger and secretly throws
the body overboard; his cold-blooded action ultimately allows everyone to
be saved. Salerno also becomes a hero, atoning for his guilt by remaining
on the sinking ship.
 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 351

Another well-known sea story is “Dzharylgach” (1926), rated by Viktor

Shklovsky as one of the best stories in Russian children’s literature.51 The
external composition is noteworthy in itself; the story is divided into very
short chapters, often no more than ten sentences. Each chapter is given a
title summarising its contents. An innocent beginning soon has dramatic
consequences for the boy:
New Trousers
Worst of all are new trousers. You can’t go anywhere without wearing trou-
sers: and you have to be careful the whole time to see that they don’t smell
or anything. When you go out, Mama runs after you and shouts so the whole
stairwell can hear, “Don’t come home if you tear them!” It’s embarrassing.
I didn’t ask for new trousers. The trousers were to blame for everything.
The trousers get dirty, and to escape punishment from his parents, the
boy boards a ship that is leaving port. During the voyage, the ship runs
aground, and the boy has to swim ashore with the mooring rope. He has
also some amazing experiences on land, before he finally returns home.
There is no overt moralising in “Dzharylgach”; instead, Zhitkov writes of
the hero’s reactions to new and unexpected situations and impending
danger.
The stories in the later collections What Happened (Chto byvalo, 1939)
and Help Is on Its Way (Pomoshch idyot, 1939) are compressed into one
page. Zhitkov also simplified his sentence structure, taking his example
from Leo Tolstoy’s children’s stories of the 1870s. Even if he wrote for
children and young people, Zhitkov primarily depicts the world of adults
and their conflicts and moral problems. Again, there are perilous situa-
tions that demand presence of mind and exemplary courage. “The Fire”
(“Pozhar”) celebrates the fire brigade, while “The Post” (“Pochta” praises
the postmen who are ready to defy the forces of nature, even in Arctic
conditions, to ensure that the mail gets through. The hero of “The Red
Commander” (“Krasny komandir”) restrains a bolting horse that is pulling
a mother and child in a carriage.
Altogether, Zhitkov produced about a hundred stories in his relatively
short writing career. They were not all about peril at sea, but also about
fires, avalanches, blizzards, and more. The characters—sailors, fisher-
men, dock workers, people living in the wilderness—are generally lacking

51 V. Shklovskii, Staroe i novoe: Kniga statei o detskoi literature (M., 1966), 109.
352 chapter six

in national characteristics. Zhitkov highlights a number of dominant

traits that are demonstrated in the course of the action. People are tested
in critical situations, and courage and cowardice, as well as loyalty and
deceit, are contrasted. Zhitkov did not set out to create portraits of heroes,
but wrote about people going about their duties and offering themselves
unselfishly to save others; at the same time, cowardly, egotistical and
boastful people are shown up when the situation demands actions, rather
than words.
Drama is the dominant trend, with the emphasis on exciting action,
but Zhitkov does not neglect psychological analysis. The narrative is con-
centrated, with no superfluous details or extraneous episodes. Zhitkov
wrote simple, powerful prose, with a fastidious sense of style borne out
in aphoristic precision and telling details. He liked to use skaz, a first-
person narrative, which not only allowed a natural intonation, but also a
faithful rendering of professional jargon. For Zhitkov, with his first-hand
experience of various professions, accurate terminology was a matter of
honour.
Among Zhitkov’s stories, tales about animals form a group in them-
selves; here, too, the author was able to build on his own experiences.
In “About the Elephant” (“Pro slona”, 1926), a story that Marshak already
called “almost a classic” at the 1934 Writers’ Congress, Zhitkov recounted
an experience in India.52 A Russian sailor sees elephants for the first time
outside the circus, and feels wonder and respect for the animals’ intel-
ligence and capacity for work, but also impotent rage at the way people’s
thoughtless behaviour causes the animals unnecessary suffering.
Zhitkov collected his best animal stories in Tales of Animals (Rasskazy o
zhivotnykh, 1935), which contains exciting and amusing stories about wild
cats, wolf-cubs, apes, leopards, mongooses and kangaroos. These are wild
animals that man tries to tame; contact with the animals reveals their
inner qualities. The animals, which have individual features, are portrayed
by Zhitkov with love and respect. He also detects in them a capacity for
courage and gratitude, human features he admired.
Zhitkov showed his humorous side in the story “How I Trapped the
Pixies” (“Kak ya lovil chelovechkov”). A little boy’s aunt has a cherished
model ship that his imagination populates with pixies. His dream of see-
ing the little sailors becomes overpowering, and he takes advantage of his

52 Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s’’ezd sovetskikh pisatelei 1934: Stenograficheskii otchet (M., 1934
[1990]), 34.
 all the colours of the rainbow (1918–1932) 353

aunt’s absence to break open the deck. Zhitkov cuts the story short at a
dramatic point; the aunt comes home and sees the boy’s fear and worry.
She tries her best to console him. The last sentence reads “She had not yet
seen the model ship.”
The children in the story ‘Pudya’ (1928) manage to tear off part of a fur
coat belonging to a guest in the house. The adults do not notice anything,
and when their initial fear has passed, the children decide to keep the
piece of fur. In their imagination, it becomes a dog, which they call Pudya.
But the game comes to an abrupt end, when the family dog appears in
front of their father with the accursed piece of fur. Faced with the threat
of losing their dog, the children decide to tell the truth. There is a sense
of anti-climax when the event that has filled the children’s lives for so
long turns out to be a trifle in the eyes of the adults. In “Pudya”, Zhitkov’s
insights into child psychology, language and attitudes brought him a great
triumph.
 chapter seven

A NEW SOCIETY—A NEW LITERATURE (1932–1940)

In the late 1920s, profound changes were taking place in Soviet society.
Stalin took power, the New Economic Policy was abandoned, and the
First Five Year Plan, the great industrial projects and the collectivisation
of agriculture came to the fore. Ideologically, there was increasing con-
straint. Within cultural life, the diversity of writers and artists became
progressively more regimented, owing to the formation of all-embracing
organizations and the stiff requirements of socialist realism, the compul-
sory method for all creative work.

The Fairy Tale Controversy

The establishing of a genuine Soviet children’s literature, able to serve

communist goals, was accomplished, partly through a heated debate
about fairy tales and fantasy literature. From the very outset, there had
been critics and teachers who used scientific materialism as a basis for
attacking any departure from realism. Fairy tales, and hence also folktales,
were perceived as promoting an alien, bourgeois ideology. As early as
1919, the pamphlet New Fairy Tales for the New Child (Novomu rebyonku
novaya skazka) argued that folktales were no longer pedagogically signifi-
cant, since they were just “a symbol of coarse pagan superstitions, a cult
of physical strength, greed and a passive striving to escape from the tur-
bulent life into the realms of reverie”.1 What children needed was a new
type of fairy tale, which would form a bridge from dreams and fantasies
to Soviet reality.
Attempts were made to create fairy tales, imbued with a revolution-
ary content, but the results were not encouraging. Sergey Gorodetsky, the
well-known children’s poet from before 1917, wrote The Revolt of the Dolls
(Bunt kukol, 1924), a tale in verse, in which the dolls learn that “all power
belongs to the Soviets” and decide to rise up against their owners, urging

1 S. Poltavskii, Novomu rebenku novaia skazka: Ėtiud dlia roditelei i vospitatelei (Saratov,
1919), 9.
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 355

dolls in all countries to join the world revolution. Books were published
with titles like The Bolshevik Hedgehog, The War of the Toys and The
War of the Matchsticks. School theatres performed an allegorical tale by
T. Morozova, “The October Revolution” (“Oktyabrskaya revolyutsiya”,
1922): “Once upon a time there was a woman. She was old and sick . . .
She was already old when she had a daughter. The daughter was as weak
and fragile as a reed.” The daughter turns out to be the October Revolu-
tion itself and “Wherever she placed her little foot, red flowers sprang up.”
The tale ends on an optimistic note: “She is still walking and will go on
walking among the flowers until her enemies have been overcome and
have surrendered.”2
The conflict culminated towards the end of the 1920s. By that time,
dogmatic Marxists had worked their way into prominent positions on the
Children’s Literature Committee of the People’s Commissariat for Edu-
cation in the Soviet Russian Republic (RSFSR). The body responsible for
pre-school education was also in the hands of extremists. At the Third
All-Russian Congress for Pre-School Education in 1924, a resolution was
passed purging folktales from children’s reading. No personification of
animals and inanimate objects was to be allowed. The reason was that
such an approach “slowed the development of materialistic thinking”.3
The problem with artistic tales was that they expressed the ideology of the
ruling class and denied social conflicts. In the same spirit, recommended
reading lists were drawn up, in which almost all pre-revolutionary chil-
dren’s literature was conspicuous by its absence. The Fourth Congress in
1928 confirmed the earlier resolution in a more cautious way: anthropo-
morphism and fantasy were acceptable only in small doses and only in
work for children of higher pre-school age (6 to 7 years old); for children
of a younger age, fairy tales were directly harmful and should under no
circumstances be allowed.4
In 1928, the magazine Books for Children (Kniga detyam, 1928–30)
launched a discussion about anthropomorphism in children’s literature.
Many contributors expressed a fear that fairy tales took children into an
ideologically alien world and aroused undesirable feelings, such as fear,
humility and pity. The last word was given to Ėsfir Yanovskaya (1876–?),
author of the book The Fairy Tale as a Component of Social Class Education

2 Quoted in N. Sher, “Iz istorii detskoi knigi,” Detskaia literatura 1 (1967): 16.
3 Istoriia sovetskoi doshkol’noi pedagogiki: Khrestomatiia (M., 1980), 168.
4 Ibid., 195.
356 chapter seven

(Skazka kak faktor klassovogo vospitaniya, 1923), the second edition of

which was called Does the Proletarian Child Need Fairy Tales? (Nuzhna li
skazka proletarskomu rebyonku?, 1925). A prominent figure in Narkom-
pros, Yanovskaya was ready to liquidate all fairy tales, as they were only
apt to confuse the Soviet child’s consciousness. Literary tales always
expressed the ideals of the ruling class of their time, while folktales
strengthened only national feelings instead of fostering internationalism.
“Realism is our new slogan” was Yanovskaya’s conclusion.5
In February 1928 contemporary Soviet children’s literature was dis-
cussed at the board of Narkompros. Krupskaya, Lilina, Izrail Razin, Ana-
toly Lunacharsky and others agreed that the present situation was far
from satisfactory. Children’s books were found to be dull and boring, too
often just hastily made compilations. Special attention was given to the
questions of whether Soviet children should be given fairy tales to read
and whether fantasy literature was to be accepted. The opposing voice
was that of the former Commissar for Education, Anatoly Lunacharsky
(1875–1933), who sharply criticised critics and pedagogues who were unfa-
miliar with the basics of the genre. The demand for unadulterated, ‘sober’
realism could not but lead to an artificial and fundamentally uninspiring
literature, Lunacharsky pointed out; the correct approach was to start from
the psyche of the actual consumer of children’s literature. He also asked
for a more benevolent attitude towards pre-revolutionarty children’s lit-
erature. It should not be totally wiped out, as some critics demanded.6
Lunacharsky repeated his arguments in December 1929 at a meeting of
writers and pedagogues at the Moscow Press House. He insisted that fairy
tales, adventure stories and science fiction should not only be accepted
but also supported, not forgetting, though, to point out that the content
and the morals should be purely Soviet.7
Lunacharsky’s lecture was published in Literaturnaya gazeta,8 where it
provoked heated polemics. People were now ready to resort to personal
attacks; in an article entitled “Against Incompetence in Children’s Litera-
ture” (1929), the critic D. Kalm attacked the works of Chukovsky, Marshak
and Kharms as ‘meaningless’ and ‘empty’. Marshak was also a target in

5 Ė.V. Ianovskaia, Nuzhna li skazka proletarskomu rebenku? (Khar’kov, 1925), 95.

6 “A.V. Lunacharskii protiv nadumannogo realizma detskikh knig,” Vecherniaia Moskva.
February 15, 1928.
7 A.V. Lunacharskii, “Puti detskoi knigi,” Kniga detiam 1 (1930): 4–15.
8 D. Kal’meer, “Puti detskoi literatury: Na doklade A.V. Lunacharskogo,” Literaturnaia
gazeta 34 (1929): 1. See also Boris Begak, “On videl budushchee,” Slozhnaia prostota: Ocherki
po iskusstve detskoi literatury (M., 1980), 86–98.
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 357

his capacity as editor of books and magazines. He was accused of being

arbitrary and unprincipled and of not encouraging proletarian writing for
children. Most of the writers published were ‘petty-bourgeois intellectu-
als’ with no contact with current social questions.9 Kalm developed his
criticism of Marshak in a later article: “Ideologically, this writer is quite
clearly remote from us: he is an author whose books are unanimously con-
sidered by all Marxist educationalists and authors as harmful and empty,
despite their formal merits.”10
Kalm was supported by Evgeniya Flyorina (1888–1952), president of the
Children’s Literature Committee of the People’s Commissariat for Educa-
tion. Under the heading “We Should Talk Seriously to Children” (1929),
she condemned the direction that the work of the children’s literature
section of Gosizdat in Leningrad had taken under Marshak’s leadership.
“The tendency to try to amuse the child—with nonsense, jokes, sensa-
tions and tricks, even on serious topics” shows “a distrust in the theme
and distrust and lack of respect for the child, with whom these writers do
not want to talk seriously about serious issues”.11
A catchword for the opponents of fantasy literature was ‘Chukovsky-
ism’ (chukovshchina), a word that stood for anthropomorphism, apolitical
attitudes, escape from the problems of the time, and petty-bourgeois men-
tality. Chukovsky’s first book, The Crocodile (1917), had already met with a
hostile reception from many quarters. The pseudonymous Tumim warned
all parents: “The crocodile’s real victims are young readers, especially
younger children, whom Korney Chukovsky has taken to his heart.”12 The
verse-tale was not only bad, not just ‘idle chatter’, but it was also harmful.
In 1928, The Crocodile cropped up in the debate once again. This time, the
criticism came from no less a person than Nadezhda Krupskaya (1869–
1939), Lenin’s widow, who had occupied a top position in the People’s
Commissariat for Education ever since the October Revolution.
In the Soviet Union, Krupskaya was regarded as one of the major the-
orists of children’s literature. The content must be unfailingly commu-
nist, she demanded. It did not need to set out the Party programme or
resolutions of the Party Congresses, but it should provide children with
concepts and images that might help them to become conscientious com-
munists. The issues of the day should be treated in a concrete and realistic

  9 D. Kal’m, “Protiv khaltury v detskoi literature,” Literaturnaia gazeta 35 (1929): 2.

10 D. Kal’m, “Fakty i avtografy,” Literaturnaia gazeta 37 (1929): 2.
11  Evgeniia Flerina, “S rebenkom nado govorit’ vser’ez,” Literaturnaia gazeta 37 (1929): 2.
12 Tumim, “Dva krokodila,” Kniga i revoliutsiia (Pg) 1 (1920): 53.
358 chapter seven

way, so as to awake in the readers a will to fight. She felt that pessimism
and despondency had to be counteracted and that, in the struggle against
“impoverishment, superstition, ignorance and weakness”, both writers
and editors had to participate.
Krupskaya displayed greater reverence for Russia’s literary heritage,
including folktales, than the majority of proletarian critics. But as an
atheist, she reacted negatively to anything that smacked of mysticism and
religion, and she was on her guard against stories that distorted reality
with thrilling or disturbing scenes. Looking around, she found too much
“mysticism” and “base bourgeois psychology” in contemporary Soviet chil-
dren’s literature.13
In an article in Pravda, Krupskaya observed that Chukovsky’s The
Crocodile did not meet the demands that had to be placed on children’s
literature in the Soviet Union: “Instead of hearing facts about the life of
the crocodile, children are served up pure nonsense.”14 Along with the
fairy tale, children were swallowing a well-disguised bourgeois ideology,
something that surfaced, for example, in the portrayal of the people as
an impulsive mass. Krupskaya also detected an improper parody of the
revered 19th-century poet Nikolay Nekrasov in Chukovsky’s verse tale.
Her conclusion was therefore: “In my opinion, it is not appropriate to
give children The Crocodile, not because it is a fairy tale, but because it
is bourgeois.”15
In Komsomolskaya pravda, a newspaper closely connected with the
militant proletarian writers’ organization RAPP, the critic Izrail Razin
(1905–38), head of Molodaya gvardiya’s children’s literature section, drew
up a strategy for creating the new Soviet man, the Communist, with the aid
of children’s literature. The cherished goals were broad technical knowl-
edge, a sharp social awareness and an international outlook. In order to
reach the proposed utopia, children’s libraries had first to be purged of
all alien literature. Тhе choice was stated in the title of the article: “About
the Cute Little Grey Hare or the First Five Year Plan? Against Apolitical
Children’s Literature.” Chukovsky was accused of doing harm to children
with his funny, ‘empty’ books, while the magazine The Hedgehog was
blamed for its love of ‘gimmickry’. Agniya Barto produced “pseudo-Soviet

13 “Pis’ma N.K. Krupskoi k A.M. Gor’komu,” Oktiabr’ 6 (1941): 24–25. (Letter to M. Gor’kii.
July 17, 1932.)
14 N. Krupskaia, “O ‘Krokodile’ Chukovskogo,” Pedagogicheskie sochineniia v desiati
tomakh. Vol. 9 (M., 1962), 265. (First publ.: Pravda. February 2, 1928, 5.)
15 Ibid.
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 359

and pseudo-pedagogical literature”, and her latest book, About the War
(Pro voynu), even displayed signs of pacifism. At the moment, according
to Razin, the greatest danger for Soviet children’s literature was the large
amount of apolitical literature, devoid of social content and a clear posi-
tion in the class struggle.16 In the same issue, Marshak was taken to task
for not having totally and finally devoted his talent to the task of Com-
munist education. Now it was high time to unmask fellow-travellers and
eliminate the reactionary forces in the field of children’s literature, wrote
V. Yakovlev.17
The radical left critics, mainly congregated in Litfront and RAPP,
demanded the destruction of all pre-revolutionary literature for young
people, including fairy tales. The foremost writers of the 1920s also came
under attack, and it is obvious that Chukovsky could hardly have been
published at all in the 1920s without Klyachko’s Raduga. Marshak also
had difficulty publishing, despite his prominent position within Leningrad
literary life. Works by both writers figured on lists of books ‘not to be
recommended’. As a result, Marshak preferred to devote himself to his
editing work for a time, while Chukovsky was soon ready to give up writ-
ing for children altogether.
The criticism of Marshak came to a head in 1932. The forum this time
was the magazine Children’s Literature (Detskaya literatura). The poems
in Marshak’s Kids in a Cage were deemed too pessimistic and sombre,
while “Luggage”, “An Absent-Minded Fellow” and “Master of Disaster”
lacked any “educational, propaganda or information value”.18 This was
light entertainment that ought not to be published.
Marshak’s “Fire” was also subjected to close scrutiny. Its protagonist is a
girl whose home has burned down. The problem, according to one critic,
was that the cause of the girl’s worry was private, and besides, Marshak
should have made the firefighter into a model worker and placed more
emphasis on the firemen’s attitude to their job and their duties. Marshak
was urged to write a new poem that would make Soviet children realise
what great damage fires were causing to the socialist economy. This would
inspire in children a more careful attitude to fire and a desire to save
socialist builders’ collectives from such great losses. The critic suggested
that a closer study of the resolution passed by the Central Committee of

16 I. Razin, “Pro serogo zain’ku ili piatiletku? Protiv apolitichnosti v detskoi literature,”
Komsomolskaia pravda. January 25, 1930, 3.
17 V. Iakovlev, “Na novye rel’sy,” ibid.
18 М. Semenovskii, [Review], Detskaia literatura 13 (1932): 5.
360 chapter seven

the Party at its plenary session in April 1931 concerning the economy of
communes might help ‘Comrade Marshak’ to find the right line for a new
book on fires.19
The problem with Aleksandr Vvedensky’s Who? was that the little boy
who could not take care of his things and left ugly ink-blots behind him
was instructed and reprimanded within the provincial family and not by
a progressive children’s collective. Because of this, the book could not be
used in the educational process, the critic Freydkina concluded.20 Vladimir
Mayakovsky was attacked for his poem “The Tale of Petya, the Fat Boy,
and Sima, Who Is Thin”, which was described as a “stupid and coarse”
book, pseudo-Soviet literature at its worst.21 The poems “What Is Good
and What Is Bad?” and “Strolling” (“Gulyaem”) were “incomprehensible
to children”, “ideologically unacceptable”, and could only awaken “peda-
gogically negative emotions” in young readers.22 A local library board’s
decision in 1930 led to Mayakovsky’s children’s books being removed from
Moscow libraries.23
Stories and poems about animals were viewed with distaste by dog-
matic Marxists, as they did not reflect current Soviet reality. Next to gran-
diose plans for transforming Russia, it seemed trivial to be writing about
bears and magpies. In 1932–1933, a number of nature stories by Bianki
and Charushin were censored, because they took children into a world of
fantasy and adventure.24
At this time, writers were still able to defend themselves publicly.
Kalm’s attack on Marshak in Literaturnaya gazeta provoked a protest
from Bianki, Zhitkov, Pasternak, Panteleev, Belykh, Zoshchenko, Venia-
min Kaverin and others. Their item in Marshak’s defence bore the telling
title “Against Lies and Slander”.25 In 1933, Marshak published an article
entitled “Literature for Children”, directed at critics with a purely utilitar-
ian view of literature and at tedious moralising in children’s books. The
argument was that in order to educate children, you had to know them.26

19  А. Grudskaia, [Review], Detskaia literatura 10 (1932): 3.

20 Freidkina, [Review], Detskaia literatura 2–3 (1932): 5.
21 Anna Grinberg, [Review], Pechat’ i revoliutsiia 8 (1925): 256. Quoted in Kon, Sovetskaia
detskaia literatura, 179.
22 Instructions issued by the Oblpolitprosvet and the Central Children’s Library. Quoted
in Kon, Sovetskaia detskaia literatura 1917–1929 gg, 179.
23 D. Khanin, “Sozhzhenie Maiakovskogo,” Literaturnaia gazeta 28 (1930): 2.
24 E.O. Putilova, Ocherki po istorii kritiki sovetskoi detskoi literatury: 1917–1941 (M., 1982),
22.
25 K. Fedin et al. “Protiv lzhi i klevety,” Literaturnaia gazeta 37 (1929): 2.
26 S. Ia. Marshak, “Literatura detiam,” Izvestiia. May 23 and 27, 1933, 2 and 3.
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 361

Chukovsky, too, declared that he would rather listen to children than to

teachers. Children learned to understand reality by way of fantasy, and
puns and wordplay facilitated language acquisition.
Nikolay Oleynikov from The Hedgehog signed a statement drawn up
by a group of children’s writers and critics from Leningrad, declaring
that Soviet children’s literature was in danger. The class enemy, led by
the bourgeois writer Korney Chukovsky, was trying to capture Soviet chil-
dren’s literature. Now there was a need for socially significant books that
would be “clear and full of feeling, creatively experienced by the writer
and stimulating to the child”. The education of the ‘new man’ was doomed
to fail, if books became like “pamphlets and dry newspaper articles”.27
Writers under attack could not count on any support from those in
power. A Party resolution of 1928, “On Measures to Improve Literature
for Young People and Children”, while criticising the lack of exciting
adventures and captivating plots in children’s books and the excess of
tendentious propaganda, also complained that socialist content was too
often by-passed or shown in an unsatisfactory light.28 The Party’s dilemma
became still clearer in a resolution of 1931. On the one hand, a fundamental
problem, according to the resolution, was that writers ignored children’s
specific wants, producing dry and uninteresting expositions, but, simulta-
neously, children’s literature was called ‘the sharpest weapon for Bolshe-
vism on the ideological front’. The conclusion left little hope for the future:
“Children’s books should be filled with a cheerful Bolshevik spirit and call
for struggle and victory. Children’s books should use clear and illustrative
forms to show the socialist transformation of our country and our people
and raise children in a spirit of proletarian internationalism.”29
The same attitude dominated the First All-Russian Conference on Chil-
dren’s Literature, held in February 1931. A large contingent of writers was
present, as well as teachers and librarians. Krupskaya gave the keynote
speech, entitled “Children’s Literature—a Mighty Weapon of Socialist
Education”.30 In the Soviet Union children’s literature had turned into
a weapon, with the present situation as the front. Defenceless children

27 Iu. Ditrikh, N. Oleinikov, N. Belenko and V. Ketlinskaia, “Deklaratsiia leningradskoi

gruppy detskikh pisatelei-kommunistov,” Kniga detiam 6 (1929): 4.
28 “O meropriiatiiakh po uluchsheniiu iunosheskoi i detskoi pechati,” О partiinoi i
sovetskoi pechati, radioveshchanii i televidenii: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (М., 1972),
157–158.
29 “Ob izdatel’stve ‘Molodaia gvardiia’,” ibid., 412.
30 N. Krupskaia, Pedagogicheskie sochineniia v desiati tomakh. Vol. 3 (М., 1959),
439–442.
362 chapter seven

should be shielded from the scheming of the enemy and from the bour-
geois morality that still sneaked into children’s books in unguarded
moments. What was needed were books like Ilin’s The Story of the Great
Plan (Rasskaz o velikom plane, 1930), which focused on current events.
The terminology of Krupskaya’s talk was altogether military, just as it had
been in the Pravda article of 1918, “The Forgotten Weapon”. L. Kormchy,
the author of this early programmatic statement, a plea for a strict Bol-
shevik cultural policy, had, incidentally, long since defected to Latvia,
where he gradually moved over to the extreme right, ending up among
the Nazis.

Enter Gorky

In a situation where the best of children’s writing was under attack even
from official quarters, Marshak turned to Maksim Gorky. From his Italian
home, Gorky had followed the first steps taken by Soviet children’s litera-
ture with great interest. In a letter to Gorky in 1927, Marshak complained
of the low standard of new writing. As editor in a large publishing house,
he was well-placed to judge the situation. There were plenty of books
about nature, technology and travel, but within fiction, translations and
adaptations of books for adults had assumed too much importance. The
language used was for the most part impersonal and mechanical. Marshak
spoke of “workaday prose and poetry for children”, synonymous with dry
and boring expositions of industrial life and pseudo-everyday accounts
in pseudo-everyday language. Marshak also took the opportunity to com-
plain about utilitarian-minded teachers who judged children’s books basi-
cally on their subject-matter. Their main question was “What is the writer
trying to say?” Amusing books, particularly where the humour bordered
on the absurd, were accused of confusing children’s minds.
By this time, Gorky had publicly reconciled himself with the Soviet gov-
ernment, and in 1928 he visited his homeland for the first time in seven
years. Back in the USSR, he soon involved himself in cultural life, setting
out to defend the Leningrad writers against ‘vulgar sociological’ criticism.
In his articles “On Fairy Tales” (“O skazkakh”, 1929), a preface to an edition
of the One Thousand and One Nights, “The Man Whose Ears Are Blocked
with Cotton-Wool” (“Chelovek, ushi kotorogo zamknuty vatoy”, 1930)
and “On Irresponsible People and Children’s Books of Today” (“O bezot-
vetstvennykh lyudyakh i o detskoy knige nashikh dney”, 1930), Gorky
made clear where he stood in the current debate.
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 363

Gorky did not fear fairy tales, romantic stories or science fiction. Lit-
erature should not merely reflect reality, he felt; it should also encourage
readers to use their imagination, to think ahead and be creative. “Art lives
by ideas; science makes them come true”, Gorky wrote.31 He also pointed
out that play and humour were indispensable parts of children’s reality.
He felt a genuine respect for folk culture: writers could learn a lot from it
in terms of language and imaginative power.
Notwithstanding this support for Marshak and his followers, Gorky to
some extent shared the opinions of the Marxist fundamentalists. He, too,
stressed that the main objective of writing for children was to promote
communist learning. The genre must not be restricted to a narrow range
of special ‘children’s literature topics’; it should be encyclopaedic in scope,
and teach its readers about mankind and the world. Even small children
should learn to understand social issues and accept heroic ideals.
There was a kind of indissoluble duality in Gorky, an inner conflict
between the artist and the ideologist. He made elevated aesthetic demands
and stressed that writers must avoid becoming too tendentious and didac-
tic, but at the same time, he was ready to hitch children’s writing to the
wagon of socialism. Gorky emphasised that an attraction towards the
unfamiliar was an important characteristic in children, but when he set
out to define what he meant by “the unusual and fascinating”, he spoke of
“the new world created by the revolutionary energy of the working class”.32
When requiring humour, he had in mind satire against the priesthood, the
petty bourgeoisie and capitalism.
Gorky took an active part in practical artistic life. He supported promis-
ing writers, discussed teaching plans and school books, and organised sur-
veys of Soviet children to elicit their interests and dreams for the future.
An opinion poll, carried out by Pioneer in 1929, was headed “What I Want
to Become”. Gorky went through the answers himself and wrote a preface
for adults as the results of the investigation were presented.

A major task was the establishing of a publishing house for children’s lit-
erature, and in the summer of 1933, Gorky and Marshak drew up a plan
for such an enterprise. Chukovsky and Arkady Gaydar were also actively
involved, along with Krupskaya and Lunacharsky from the People’s

31  M. Gor’kii, “Eshche o gramotnosti,” O detskoi literature (M., 1968), 87.

32 M. Gor’kii, “O bezotvetstvennykh liudiakh i o detskoi knige nashikh dnei,” Sobranie
sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh. Vol. 25. (M., 1953), 175. (First publ.: Pravda. March 10, 1930, 2.)
364 chapter seven

Commissariat for Education. In a letter to the Central Committee of the

Party, they stressed the importance of such a publishing house (which
they mistakenly believed had no equivalent in other countries) for the
Soviet Union.
The publishing house Detskaya literatura came into being in the same
year through the merging of Detgiz, that is, the children’s literature sec-
tion of Gosizdat, and Molodaya gvardiya (The Young Guard). Marshak was
offered the top position, but he preferred to go on managing the Lenin-
grad section only. A Party resolution made it clear what was expected
from Detskaya literatura, that is, “to produce books that are attractive and
accessible, but also strong-principled and on a high ideological level, books
which awaken children’s interest in the struggle of the working class and
the work of construction, particularly by issuing a series for Young Pio-
neers; to publish new editions of the greatest works of world literature for
children (Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, Jules Verne, etc.); to produce
attractive books for the very young (fairy tales, games, charades and the
like)”.33
The mentioning of Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels and Jules Verne
is revealing for the situation within the field of translation. Foreign litera-
ture, which had been a vital part of children’s reading in Russia right up
until 1917, had gradually been reduced to a few old classics. Contact with
living children’s literature outside the Soviet Union was cut on the pretext
that this literature was ideologically foreign or even harmful and, as such,
incomprehensible to Soviet children.
Another significant event in the early 1930s was the launch of the maga-
zine Children’s Literature (Detskaya literatura, 1932–41), carrying the motto
“Books for the Builders of Socialism”. After the closing of Books for Chil-
dren (Kniga detyam) in 1930, there was a definite need for a magazine for
professionals. Criticism and theoretical discussions formed the content of
Children’s Literature, which unfortunately soon proved to be a cuckoo in
the nest, no less intolerant and spiteful in tone than the representatives of
the proletarian writers’ organizations. The reviewers were mainly looking
for ideological faults, not hesitating to use the highly serious accusation of
‘vreditelstvo’, that is, sabotage. The first editor-in-chief, Anna Grudskaya
(1902–37), distinguished herself through persistent attacks on Chukovsky
and Marshak. Her successor, for the last years of Children’s Literature,

33 “Ob izdatel’stve detskoi literatury,” O partiinoi i sovetskoi pechati, radioveshchanii i

televidenii (M., 1972), 414.
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 365

was Antonina Babushkina (1903–47), a librarian and an employee of the

People’s Commissariat for Education. When it came to unmasking the
enemies in the field of literature, Babushkina showed as much vigilance
as Grudskaya and the rest of the staff. In 1937 she rejoiced at the news
that Leopold Averbakh (1903–37) and his RAPP colleagues, the ‘leftists’
(‘levaki’), had been exposed and liquidated, read executed.34 By an irony
of fate, one of the executed ‘leftists’ was Anna Grudskaya, Babushkina’s
predecessor at Children’s Literature. The crime of these editors and critics
was—just imagine!—to have divided writers into friends and foes, sup-
porting talentless writers, while persecuting talented ones.
After the Second World War, Babushkina’s voluminous The History of
Russian Children’s Literature (Istoriya russkoy detskoy literatury, 1948)
was published posthumously. In her survey of Russian children’s litera-
ture, from folk poetry to the year 1917, there are not many writers and
works that find favour in her eyes. Literature is divided into progressive
and reactionary, and monarchism and religiosity are detected as recur-
rent flaws. When it comes to commenting on the first decades of the 20th
century, Babushkina’s interest in her subject is already next to nonexis-
tent. In spite of its simplified statements and superficial characterizations,
Babushkina’s work remained the handbook on pre-revolutionary Russian
children’s literature for several decades.
An important step was the publication of a bibliography of Soviet chil-
dren’s literature; the first volume (1933) covered the period 1918–1931. The
editor Ivan Startsev (1896–1967) was also in charge of the next volumes,
the last one (1967–69) being published posthumously in 1973. The tradi-
tion was maintained until the mid-1980s.

The Union of Soviet Writers

Maksim Gorky was one of the leading figures, when the Union of Soviet
Writers was founded in 1932. All existing writers’ associations were dis-
solved, a move welcomed by many with a sense of relief, as all writers
were given equal status in the new union. At the same time, this implied
a major step towards conformity, something that was to have catastrophic
consequences for literature.

34 А. Babushkina, “Averbakhovtsy i ikh podgoloski v detskoi literature,” Detskaia litera-

tura 14 (1937): 2.
366 chapter seven

The first congress of the Writers’ Union was held in 1934, with Gorky in
the chair. In his opening speech, he stressed that the central goal of the
Union must be to make Soviet literature a force for a universal cultural
revolution, aimed at the corrupt bourgeoisie: “We are the world’s judges;
we want to liberate the world from envy, greed, mental staleness and
stupidity.”35 The hero of the new literature should be the worker, hero-
ically struggling for a classless communist society.
The congress adopted socialist realism as its method and aesthetic
standard. This obliged writers above all to describe “the process of the
revolutionary transformation of reality”.36 The new literature (including
children’s writing) should be tendentious and take sides, it should educate
with the aid of positive heroes, and it should instil an optimistic faith in
the power of mankind and of human reason.
From the very beginning, the Union devoted particular attention to
literature for children and young people, and a children’s literature sec-
tion was immediately set up. At the congress, Gorky only touched on
children’s writing in passing, but at his instigation Samuil Marshak had
prepared a longer address on the specific problems of the genre. The title
of Marshak’s speech, “On a Great Literature for the Little Ones”, became
a familiar expression, but the actual speech was less memorable. One
reason for Marshak’s many bland phrases was that the congress had set
out to show that the days of conflict were over and that the point now
was to join forces in creating a genuine Soviet literature. It is against this
background that we should read Marshak’s eulogy of the October Revo-
lution: ‘The Revolution alone taught us to talk to children without false
sentimentality or false idylls, to talk to them about real life, the harsh and
happy life.’37
When Marshak focussed on the specific features of children’s literature,
he spoke more from his own experience:
If there is a clear and rounded fable in the book, if the writer is not just an
impartial recorder of events, but is on the same side as some of his heroes
and against others, if there is a rhythmic movement in the book and not a
dry, rational sequence of events, if the moral of the book is not ‘an optional

35 M. Gor’kii, “ ‘Vstupitel’naia rech’’ na otkrytii Pervogo vsesoiuznogo s’’ezda sovetskikh

pisatelei 17 avgusta 1934 goda,” Sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh. Vol. 27 (М., 1953),
297.
36 “Ustav Soiuza sovetskikh pisatelei SSSR,” Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s’’ezd sovetskikh pisatelei
1934: Stenograficheskii otchet (М., 1934 [1990]), 712.
37 Ibid., 30.
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 367

extra’, but the logical consequence of the facts as presented, and if the book
can be performed as a play or turned into an endless serial with constant
new episodes, then the book is written in the true language of a child.38
In his speech, Marshak commented on a recent survey of readers: “What
kind of books do children read and what else would they like to read
about?” Together with Gorky, Marshak had gone through more than two
thousand replies. Marshak’s general impression was that the new man,
the Soviet man, was actually taking shape. Children displayed impressive
political awareness and almost all asked for more books about building
socialism. It was now up to the writers to live up to this challenge and
Marshak advised them about the direction Soviet children’s literature
should now take: “Every day, life punctually and neatly supplies heroic
plots for our writing factory. They are above and below the ground, in the
mine, in the school, in the fields, in the present and in the past and in the
future, as the future is opening up for us with every day, and as we look
with new eyes at the past.”39
From the highest platform in the land, Marshak—yesterday’s man of
the avant-garde—urged his fellow-writers to stick to socialist realism. Like
Gorky, he wanted to believe that literature could be written on command,
while also meeting high literary standards: “Children’s literature must be
genuine art. Many of us do not yet understand this simple truth. . . . Writ-
ing children’s books is a great honour for our authors.”40
Marshak was accompanied by Agniya Barto, who also alluded to the
great responsibilities of children’s literature. Like the majority of writers
present, Barto had seized upon Stalin’s words that writers were ‘engineers
of the soul’: “This is all the more true of authors of children’s books. We
mould souls, starting from the most primitive state.”41 There was there-
fore a need for deep insights into children’s psychology and development.
Barto also touched on problems that would be taken up time and again
at later congresses and conferences: the lack of writing for small children,
the poor literary standard of most of the books, and the absence of profes-
sional critics.

Great expectations had been raised at the writers’ congress, which also
seemed to clear the air. One good sign was that the attacks on fairy tales

38 Ibid., 25.
39 ibid., 20.
40 Ibid., 25.
41  Ibid., 254.
368 chapter seven

and fantasy literature gradually died away. The Party resolution of 1933
declared in passing that even fairy tales were a necessary part of children’s
literature. The magazine Children’s Literature showed the way with a
spectacular change of course, and the OBERIU-orientated magazine The
Hedgehog was again filled with fairy tales, now competing with two new,
but short-lived humorous magazines for children, The Tumbling Doll
(Vanka-vstanka, 1936) and The Cricket (Sverchok, 1937). From the 1930s
are fine tales by authors such as Aleksey Tolstoy, Valentin Kataev, Evgeny
Schwartz, Veniamin Kaverin and Arkady Gaydar. A replacement for the
now defunct The Hedgehog was given in The Bonfire (Kostyor 1936–47,
1956–91). Marshak was nominally its literary consultant, but for practical
purposes he operated as editor-in-chief of the new magazine during its
first two years.
By January 1936, it was time for a fresh summit, the First All-Union Con-
ference on Children’s Literature, which was held under the auspices of
the Komsomol. Well-known writers like Chukovsky, Marshak, Barto, Zhit-
kov, Panteleev, Ilin, Kvitko, Prishvin, Tolstoy, Lev Kassil, Ruvim Fraerman
and Konstantin Paustovsky met with teachers, critics and illustrators. All
in all, around 120 delegates assembled for a grand review, spending four
days discussing current problems, from the recruitment of new authors to
questions of printing technique.
Children’s literature had now become a Party matter. The keynote
speech was given not by a writer or a critic, but by Stalin’s faithful assis-
tant, Party Secretary Andrey Andreev (1895–1971). He began by quoting
figures: in 1933, the total volume of children’s books published had been
10 million; two years later, this had doubled. However, given that there
were 28 million schoolchildren in Russia, this was nothing like enough.
There was a need to print five to ten times more children’s books.
The current output of books was excessively dominated by the
classics—both Russian and foreign—and re-issues. A disproportionate
number of new books were about animals and nature, Andreev pointed
out. Authors wrote too little about the present-day Soviet Union, as a result
of them being sheltered from ‘real life’. Andreev’s ‘wish list’ demanded
more technical and popular science books, more stories about school life,
the Red Army, and the strength and resources of the Soviet motherland.
There was also a need for more historical novels, science fiction, and biog-
raphies of Marx, Lenin and Stalin. Finally, too little was known of what
was happening in modern children’s writing abroad.
The Party was prepared to give more attention to children’s literature.
Andreev quoted Stalin to the assembled writers: “One should look after
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 369

mankind with the same care and attention, with which a gardener looks
after his favourite fruit tree.”42 The greatest talents within children’s lit-
erature should be summoned and shown the present heroic historical
moment, while adult writers should follow Aleksey Tolstoy’s example and
write for children as well. It was also important to develop criticism of
children’s literature and, generally, establish a more sympathetic attitude
towards the genre.
Organizational approaches were also proposed to tackle these problems.
The state children’s book publisher Detskaya literatura and the magazine
of the same name were now brought under the control of the Komsomol
organisation. The name of the publishing house was changed to Detizdat,
and, later, back to the familiar Detgiz. In his speech, the General Secretary
of the Komsomol, Aleksandr Kosarev (1903–39), promised to discharge
this new responsibility properly. “The Soviet Union is an immense and
powerful country. Such a country must have the best children’s literature
in the world, and that is what we will create.”43 This speech was received
with enthusiastic applause from the writers.
For his part, Aleksey Tolstoy was not slow to accept the challenge. Soci-
ety was in a state of mighty upheaval: “Our children are living in a time
marked by the grandiose execution of grandiose plans, in circumstances
that would have seemed like pure science fiction to many people twenty
years ago.”44 Now it was time to create literature to match this renewal.
One great enthusiast at the conference was the Jewish poet Lev Kvitko
(1890–1952). For him, not only the tractors in the children’s books were
‘Soviet’, but also the sun and the animals. He rejoiced that “the great smith
forging the world’s bright, happy future, our dear Iosif Vissarionovich
Stalin” was looking after the children. The task for writers was to work
together to erect “the wonderful palace of Soviet children’s literature”,
a task that would be accomplished in the near future.45 Like Andreev,
Kvitko regretted the shortage of books about the Red Army; he returned
to the subject himself two years later with a little book of poems, The Red
Army (Krasnaya armiya).
Zhitkov, Barto and Ilin were more critically-minded. Zhitkov agreed
that there were too few new children’s books, blaming publishers who
preferred to concentrate on re-issues and turned all manuscripts into

42 A. Andreev, “O detskoi literature,” Pravda. January 29, 1936, 4.

43 “Rech’ tov. A.K. Kosareva,” Pravda. January 29, 1936, 4–5.
44 “Rech’ tov. Аl. Tolstogo,” Pravda. January 29, 1936, 3.
45 “Rech’ tov. L. Kvitko,” ibid.
370 chapter seven

stereotypical products without any respect for individual stylistic features.

For her part, Barto had observed the dangerous way in which bureau-
cratic models from the adult world had also been taken over by chil-
dren. Children were now holding meetings and presenting reports, while
unconstrained spontaneity had become a rarity. Children’s souls are being
maimed, Barto complained.46
Ilin sought a fundamentally new literature, as children’s writers were
living in exceptional times and writing for an exceptional audience,
unprecedented in history. He could not accept the lack of imagination
that prevailed in his own genre, popular science: “In science books for
children, we still have the omniscient uncle, the professor, wandering
about with his nephew and his dog. Just how much are these scientific
explanations to the accompaniment of a barking dog worth!”47
Benyamin Ivanter (1904–42), the editor of Pioneer, was concerned at the
demand for writers to portray model Young Pioneers, something which
easily lead to false idealisation. “Without catapults, they are not children,
but if they have catapults, what kind of example are they? Under the men-
acing gaze of the teacher, the writer is forced to take a deep breath, look
about him, and sneak the catapult out of the model Pioneer’s pocket, just
as if it had never been there.”48 Pantaleev agreed with Ivanter. The prob-
lem with children’s literature was that it was too well-bred and respect-
able. It had been transformed into ten thousand rules of behaviour, which
threatened to turn into a hundred thousand. Pantaleev pointed out that as
well as ‘social demands’, there were also ‘age demands’.49
In spite of occasional critical voices and complaints, a spirit of enthu-
siasm and goodwill prevailed at the conference, but there was also an
uncomfortable dissonance. When Party Secretary Andreev turned to the
work of children’s book illustrators, he did not mince his words. Instead of
realism, Andreev had too often found “shapeless daubs”. There were books
that caused him “nausea and pain”. This was art that children need to be
protected from, and these ‘leftist artists’ had to be “mercilessly expelled”
from children’s literature.50 Andreev gave no examples, but Lebedev,
Konashevich, Charushin and Nikolay Tyrsa, sitting in the audience, must
have felt a certain unease. In fact, the golden age of Soviet children’s

46 “Rech’ tov. А. Barto,” ibid.

47 “Rech’ tov. М. Il’ina,” ibid.
48 “Rech’ tov. B. Ivantera,” Detskaia literatura 3–4 (1936): 36.
49 “Rech’ L. Panteleeva,” Detskaia literatura 2 (1936): 30.
50 “Rech’ A. Andreeva,” Pravda. January 29, 1936, 4.
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 371

book illustration was already over. One purely superficial change was
that colour illustrations had now become a rarity, partly for economic
reasons.
In December of the same year, it was time for another summit. A key
task of the Second All-Union Conference on Children’s Books was to
review the work of the Detgiz publishing house over the last year and
draw up guidelines for its continuing work. The delegates were pleased
with the provision of factual and humorous children’s books, but asked
for more adventure stories. In the absence of their own exciting Soviet
novels, children were still reading old favourites like James Fenimore
Cooper, Mayne Reid and even the much-maligned American detective
Nat Pinkerton.

Party Secretary Andrey Andreev had ended his speech to the conference
in January with the words: “We must do all we can to ensure that 1936 is
a year of change in the creation of good Soviet children’s literature.”51 1936
was indeed a year of great change, but perhaps not in the sense Andreev
had intended. Behind the fine façade, terrible events were already afoot;
the Great Terror had begun. Aleksandr Kosarev, the General Secretary
of the Komsomol, was arrested in November 1938 and executed a few
months later as part of the great campaign against the Komsomol. Stalin
was dissatisfied with the youth organisation, which had not been ener-
getic enough in rooting out ideological enemies, and he had begun order-
ing its leaders to be executed.
In the space of a few years, almost one hundred of the delegates at the
1934 Writers’ Congress were arrested. Within children’s literature, the trap
closed tighter and tighter around Marshak and his Leningrad ‘academy’.
The Oberiuts had always been out of step with the times, and dogmatic
literary critics did not hesitate to call them class enemies. After a perfor-
mance in a student hostel in 1930, they had been attacked in a Leningrad
magazine under the heading “Reactionary Juggling: An Outbreak of Liter-
ary Hooliganism”, and branded as ‘counter-revolutionaries’: “This is the
poetry of people foreign to us, the poetry of class enemies. Their with-
drawal from life, their nonsense poetry, their trans-rational juggling is a
protest against the dictatorship of the proletariat.”52 Aleksandr Vvedensky’s

51 Ibid.
52 L. Nil’vich (Lev Nikol’skii), “Reaktsionnoe zhonglerstvo (ob odnoi vylazke litera-
turnykh khuliganov),” Smena. April 9, 1930, 5.
372 chapter seven

attempt to adapt to the situation with poems and prose books about
Lenin and heroic Young Pioneers in the Soviet Union or abroad did not
help. In 1931, he and Kharms were arrested together with three colleagues,
accused of disrupting industrial life with their poetry. The Oberiuts were
released after six months, but forced to spend another six months in inter-
nal exile.
Vladimir Matveev, Raisa Vasileva and Aleksandr Lebedenko were
arrested in connection with the murder of the Party leader Sergey Kirov
in Leningrad in 1934. In an article in Children’s Literature in 1937, the juve-
nile stories about the Civil War by Vladimir Matveev (1897–1935), a Com-
munist Party member since 1917 and a veteran of the October Revolution
and the Civil War, were described by Babushkina as “openly Trotskyist
and full of slander”.53 The author was called a counter-revolutionary. By
that time Matveev was no longer alive: he had been executed directly after
being interrogated in 1935. Raisa Vasileva (1902–38), who had been one of
the first girls to join the Komsomol, was the author of a book about the
Communist youth movement and her years as a factory worker. She died
in 1938 in a Siberian labour camp, while the journalist and Communist
Party member Aleksandr Lebedenko (1892–1975), known for his juvenile
books on international themes and exotic travels, survived twenty years in
camps and exile and returned to Leningrad and literary life in 1957.
The great wave of arrests came in 1937, the year of the Moscow Trials.
One victim was Nikolay Oleynikov, a Party member and veteran of the
Civil War. In the previous year he had already been identified in Pravda as
an enemy of the people by a reader who was horrified at finding a 1931 edi-
tion of Oleynikov’s book Tanks and Sledges in the hands of his daughter:
“There is nothing more base than presenting slander about the Red Army
to children under the guise of a story about the Red Army’s past, vulgar-
izing the heroic struggle against the Whites and against our invaders. [. . .]
This book is harmful. It must be withdrawn.”54
Oleynikov himself addressed meetings of the Writers’ Union, complain-
ing of ‘lapses of vigilance’ and himself identifying ‘enemies of the people’.55
In 1937, he was arrested at a committee meeting, at which all those present,
including his old acquaintance Evgeny Schwartz, voted for his immediate

53 Babushkina, “Averbakhovtsy i ikh podgoloski v detskoi literature,” Detskaia literatura

14 (1937): 7.
54 G. Fradkin, “Tanki i sanki,” Pravda. April 6, 1935, 4.
55 V. Voronin, “Primechaniia,” in L. Panteleev, “Dve vstrechi,” Pamiat’: Istoricheskii
sbornik. Vyp. 3 (М.-Parizh, 1980), 321.
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 373

expulsion from the Writers’ Union. In her article “A Magazine Full of

Slander”, published in Literaturnaya gazeta, the critic Lidiya Kon (1896–?)
expressed her satisfaction that Oleynikov had at last been exposed. As
the editor-in-chief of the children’s magazine The Cricket, he had been
carrying out “pernicious activity, aimed at corrupting children and dis-
troying their psyche”. In the magazine Kon had only found “a shameless
distortion of reality”: all the figures depicted were “idiots and degenerates,
with not a single normal person”. To claim that children loved this kind of
humour was nothing but “slander against children”.56 In another article,
published in Children’s Literature, Kon condemned The Cricket for propa-
gating “laughter for laughter’s sake”. Now things had to be corrected: “Our
children need to know who is their friend and who is their enemy.”57
Officially, Oleynikov was accused not only of “acts of sabotage on the
literary front”, but also of participation in a counter-revolutionary Trotsky-
ist organization and of espionage for Japan.58 He was executed in Novem-
ber 1937.
Lidiya Kon, on the other hand, continued working in children’s litera-
ture, as both a translator (tales of the Brothers Grimm) and a critic. In
1960, she published a study, Soviet Children’s Literature 1917–1929 (Sovets-
kaya detskaya literatura 1917–1929), in which her victims, the OBERIU
writers, are granted just a short paragraph. Oleynikov is praised for his
“interesting essays” on the October Revolution and the First of May, while
B. (sic!) Kharms is just mentioned briefly.59
The secretary of the children’s literature section of the Writers’ Union
in Leningrad, Abram Serebryannikov (1909–37), had claimed at a meeting
that there were no enemies within children’s literature. He was arrested
and sentenced to ten years in a camp. David Rakhmilovich-Yuzhin (1892–
1939), a former member of the editorial team of the magazine The Hedge-
hog, was arrested in 1936 and died three years later in a labour camp in
Norilsk, reportedly having lost his mind. 1937 put an end to Sergey Auslen-
der’s (1886–1937) literary career. Author of a popular series of juvenile
novels on revolutionary history, but with a past in the White Army, he
was executed one-and-a-half months after his arrest.
In 1927, The Republic of Shkid, the book about a number of street urchins
making their way back into society, had been greeted by Gorky and others

56 L. Kon, “Кlevetnicheskii zhurnal,” Literaturnaia gazeta 50 (1937): 4.

57 L. Kon, “O iumore,” Detskaia literature 18 (1937): 13.
58 A.N. Oleinikov, “V arkhiv k delu,” Neva 11 (1998): 182.
59 Kon, Sovetskaia detskaia literatura 1917–1929 gg, 311.
374 chapter seven

as a great event in Soviet children’s literature. Eight years later, one of its
authors, Grigory Belykh, was arrested and accused of counter-revolutionary
activity; he died of tuberculosis in prison in 1938. Proceedings were also
under way against L. Panteleev with Chukovsky being summoned to the
headquarters of the secret police to discuss whether the officers of the
NKVD had been slandered in Panteleev’s book The Watch.
Sergey Bezborodov, Tamara Gabbe and Aleksandra Lyubarskaya were
picked up from the Leningrad offices of the publishing house Detskaya
literatura in 1937. Sergey Bezborodov (1903–1937) had served the Soviet
government with The Bolsheviks Discovered Siberia (Bolsheviki otkryli
Sibir, 1932), a book about the fulfilment of the First Five Year Plan in Sibe-
ria. He was executed, while Tamara Gabbe (1903–60), a children’s author
and critic, and Aleksandra Lyubarskaya (1908–2002), who later became
known for her translations of Swedish classics, including Topelius’ stories
and Selma Lagerlöf’s The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, were released after
two years. Nevertheless, these events spelled the end of Marshak’s legend-
ary editorial team. The NKVD tried in vain to force Marshak publicly to
renounce his friends and colleagues who had been arrested and to brand
them as enemies of the people. An influential literary censor reported in
1937: “The unmasking of Marshak’s sabotage activity in children’s litera-
ture and in [the publishing house] Lendetizdat is a pressing task at the
moment. I consider that the time is ripe for exposing this malingerer and
saboteur, regardless of his authoritative position in literature.”60 Sick at
heart and frightened by the wave of terror, Marshak decided to give up
his work as editor and move to Moscow. The magazine Pioneer also suf-
fered a setback, when Benyamin Ivanter, its editor-in-chief since 1933, was
forced out in 1938.
Into a labour camp also went the long-term contributor to The Hedge-
hog, Nikolay Zabolotsky, who had been arrested in 1938. In all he came
to spend a total of eight years in prison camps and exile. Vvedensky and
Kharms were arrested for a second time in connection with the Nazi
attack on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941. Vvedensky had again
done his best to demonstrate his political respectability by extolling the
October Revolution in his book The Happiest Day (Samy shchastlivy den,
1939) and expressing children’s reverence for Stalin in other connections.
Both died shortly after their arrest. The fate of the editor of their magazine,

60 Аrlen Blium, Zapreshchennye knigi russkikh pisatelei i literaturovedov 1917–1991 (SPb,

2003), 127.
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 375

The Siskin, Georgy Ditrikh (1906–43), was also to die in a prison camp. He
was accused for “dissemination of secret information”, a term used when
the authorities could not come up with any better accusation.61
The prose writer Yan Larri (1900–77) was taken in the same year as
Vvedensky and Kharms, but managed to survive his fifteen years in the
camps. His ‘crime’ was sending Stalin a letter, in which he proposed to
become the leader’s private writer. As proof of his talent he included a
few chapters from an unpublished novel, A Celestial Guest (Nebesny gost),
in which a Martian gives his impressions of the Soviet Union of 2034. It
took the NKVD only four months to trace the anonymous writer, who had
the nerve to satirise Soviet life and approach Stalin without the necessary
reverence.62
No one was safe at the height of the Great Terror. The tragic fate of
those who could be suspected of having a critical view of the Stalinist
regime was often shared by the staunchest Marxists. The critic Izrail Razin
proved his loyalty by books on how the Pioneer and Komsomol organiza-
tions were reflected in books for young people. He identified ‘Chukovsky-
ism’ as the greatest threat against the formation of a true Soviet children’s
literature.63 In 1937, Razin was arrested and executed a year later on the
pretext of participation in a counter-revolutionary organization.
All this happened far from the public gaze. On the surface, the accus-
tomed enthusiasm and harmony still prevailed. As a sign of the Party’s
appreciation of the work of children’s authors, the poets Samuil Marshak,
Agniya Barto, Sergey Mikhalkov, Lev Kvitko and Elena Blaginina received
medals in 1939. In the same year, the Stalin Prize for literature was insti-
tuted, a prize which was regularly to be awarded to writers of books for
children and young people.

Poetry and the Social Demands

At a time when the whole of society was going through great changes,
Soviet reality was seen as more extraordinary than any fiction. Most writ-
ers preferred objective experience and ‘serious’ subjects to fantasy and

61  Zakhar Dicharov (ed.), Raspiatye: Pisateli-zhertvy politicheskikh repressii. Vyp. II.
Mogily bez krestov (SPb, 1994), 8.
62 Zakhar Dicharov (ed.), Raspiatye: Pisateli-zhertvy politicheskikh repressii. Vyp. I. Tai-
noe stanovitsia iasnym (SPb, 1993), 212–234.
63 See D. Kal’m, “Psevdo-disput o detskoi literature: Na doklade t. Razina v Dome
pechati,” Literaturnaia gazeta 2 (1930): 2.
376 chapter seven

humour, as they wanted to tell children, too, of the ongoing transforma-

tion of society and the road travelled since 1917. Literature was to help the
young to grasp the international situation and learn to tell friend from foe.
Mayakovsky’s term ‘social demand’ became a reality: literature was allot-
ted its tasks, while the writer’s job was to react.
Poetry for children could no longer just deal with toys and animals and
the joys and sorrows within the four walls of the nursery. Alongside the
traditional poetic motifs, there were now the First Five Year Plan, indus-
trialisation with its grand construction projects, and the transformation of
agriculture. The thirteenth anniversary of the October Revolution in 1930
saw the publication of a series of small books of poems about the events
of 1917. Heroes of the Civil War, such as the cavalry commander Semyon
Budyonny and Vasily Chapaev, were celebrated in print.
In 1926, L. Savelev (1904–41), pen name for Leonid Liparsky, used his
book of poems The Pioneers’ Charter (Pionersky ustav) to urge Soviet chil-
dren to gather beneath the flag and march in step to the drums. High-
spirited Young Pioneers also marched through poems by Marshak, Kharms,
Schwartz and Barto. Much attention was devoted to the international
communist youth movement. The anthology The Lightning Song (Pesnya-
molniya, 1930) was published in connection with the first All-Union Young
Pioneer Rally in 1929, and in it Mayakovsky, Marshak, Kharms, Vveden-
sky and Semyon Kirsanov rejoiced in the growing strength and bright
future of the Soviet children’s organisation. The hero of Mikhail Svetlov’s
(1903–64) poem “The Bugler” (“Gornist”, 1931) is a Chinese Young Pioneer
who sounds the call to rebel. In “Bob Falkland” (1931), Svetlov glorified a
working-class English boy who loses his life in the first May Day celebra-
tions in London.
In the late 1930s, feelings of international solidarity were centred on
the Spanish Civil War. Republican soldiers and homeless refugee children
are found in poems by Marshak, Barto, Mikhalkov and others. In “The
Ship from Spain” (“Parokhod iz Ispanii”, 1938) and “Conversation on Deck”
(“Razgovor na palube”, 1938), Marshak told of Spanish children who found
refuge from the war in the Soviet Union. In spite of their tragic situation,
these children are full of confidence in the future. One of them lies awake
thinking: “There’s a school and a home waiting for him. / The pupil at his
desk and Stalin in the Kremlin / Are surely thinking of him right now.”
According to the poet, there will not be any trouble in finding a common
language with Soviet children, as the words “Camaradas, / Lenin, / Stalin, /
Komsomol, / Madrid, / Moscow” unite them.
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 377

In 1937 Agniya Barto visited Spain in the company of Aleksey Tolstoy

and other members of a Soviet delegation, participating in the Second
International Congress of Writers in Defence of Culture. The journey
resulted in a verse cycle with portraits of Spanish children living in the
shadow of the Civil War. Barto showed the children as politically aware,
doughty little citizens. In the poem “Mamita mia” (1937), she told of the
evacuation of Spanish children to the Soviet Union. The battle is not yet
over, promise the Soviet Young Pioneers in “The Oath” (“Klyatva”, 1937),
as they swear an oath to avenge their fallen Spanish comrades one day.
Typical of the time is also Zinaida Aleksandrova’s poem “Charita” (1939),
in which a Spanish girl loses her parents in a bombing raid but finds a new
home in the Soviet Union.
What is the Red Army for? (Dlya chego Krasnaya armiya?) Nikolay
Smirnov (1890–1933) asked in the title of a 1927 book. The answer was
given many times in the 1930s, as the militarisation of Soviet society also
found its way into children’s literature. Aleksandr Vvedensky’s book Anti-
Aircraft Defence: Be Ready to Defend Your Country (P.V.O.: K oborone
bud gotov, 1932) was commissioned by the Civil Defence Force and was
intended to prepare children for total war. Vvedensky went on to explain
what the war was about: “If you do not want / a tsar on the throne, / if
you do not want / a bourgeois on your back, / always be ready to defend
your country.”
In About the War (Pro voinu, 1930), Agniya Barto foresaw a conflict
between the Red Army and unidentified invaders. The war in the poem
proceeds according to a Leninist scheme: the foreign soldiers begin to
fraternise with the Soviet soldiers and turn the war into a civil war. Barto
allows her poem to end in a utopia, with ships carrying grain instead of
weapons. Lev Kvitko’s book The Red Army (Krasnaya armiya, 1938) was
also bursting with poems about readiness. The recipe for avoiding war
was given by L. Savelev in his prose book On the Ground, on the Water, in
the Air (Na zemle, na vode, v vozdukhe, 1936): “The strongest support for
those in favour of peace is the Soviet Union, the only state that has no
interest in a war. The stronger our fatherland, and the stronger our army,
the greater is the hope of lasting peace. Today, ‘for peace’ means ‘for the
Soviet Union’. Today, ‘against war’ means ‘against fascism’.”
The children in Samuil Marshak’s “Our Detachment” (“Nash otryad”,
1937) and “We Are Soldiers” (“My voennye”) play war games in the play-
room and at kindergarten as part of their general military training. Three
boys with toy guns try to stop the cat from crossing the frontier across
378 chapter seven

the middle of the floor. The teddy bear has been turned into a machine-
gunner, the dolls parachute to the floor and the girls play at being nurses.
In the 1930s, Marshak was actively involved in drawing up guidelines
for the new Soviet children’s literature. His own writing also took on a
different character than before—partly under the influence of his friend
Gorky. A turning point was the poem “The Detachment” (“Otryad”, 1928),
in which Soviet reality forced its way into Marshak’s poetic world for the
first time. “The Detachment” is a celebration of the vitality and work ethic,
the very spirit of the Young Pioneers. The onlooker belongs to yesterday,
which is made clear through Marshak’s use of defamiliarisation. The spec-
tator can only think in terms of individuals, and therefore he perceives the
Pioneer detachment as one mysterious, gigantic person. The voice of the
people is needed to explain the collective Soviet model to the outsider. All
of the children—Vanka, Varka, Larka, Kolka, Seryozhka, Olka, Alyoshka,
Friedrich, Alisa, Tit, and Vasilisa—have now melted together into one big
collective unit.
Where the First Five Year Plan inspired adult writers to produce nov-
els about industrialisation and large-scale construction projects, Marshak
created an equivalent form of children’s poetry with his The War with the
Dniepr (Voyna s Dneprom, 1931). Here, it is no longer the individual, but
the production collective, that forms the focus of Marshak’s interest. To
find inspiration he visited the Dniepr Hydroelectric Station in 1930, at the
peak of its construction. In the poem man confronts nature in a relentless
struggle for power. Man’s plan to tame the river and use it for his own
purposes is met with firm resistance. In accordance with the title of the
poem, Marshak employs military terminology to underline the huge exer-
tion demanded by the process of change. Working life is the new front:
Man said to the Dniepr:
I will tame you.
No, replied the water,
never, on no account.
And so against the river is declared
war,
war,
war!
The poetry of the natural life of yesterday is sacrificed on the altar of
development and the pastoral idyll is annihilated, according to man’s
vision: “Where yesterday rowing boats floated, / winches are working. /
Where the rush murmured, / a steamship passes by. / Where yesterday fish
were splashing, / blocks are blown up with dynamite.” The Mayakovskian
device of staircase lines gives additional force to Marshak’s words. All this
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 379

is happening to provide factories, collective farms and homes with elec-

tricity and to increase grain and steel production. The protest of the water
element is drowned in the victorious roar of the building equipment of
the Soviet workers. The War with the Dniepr becomes a modern story
of creation, where man (implicitly, Soviet man) has taken over the role of
God. The result of his endeavours is light, a new, artificial sun.
When Marshak wanted to present the events of the adult world to chil-
dren in The War with the Dniepr, he did it without taking account of the
outlook of his audience. He is obviously more concerned with fulfilling
current socio-political tasks than with satisfying the young readers’ expec-
tations. In this respect, The War with the Dniepr differs from a poem of the
1920s, “Yesterday and Today” (“Vchera i segodnya”, 1925), which also pon-
dered the events of its time, taking its examples from the child’s imme-
diate environment. The paraffin lamp, the candle, the bucket and the
pen bemoan their lot and express their misgivings about the new inven-
tions that have made them redundant. Marshak gave children an insight
into the technological revolution that also affected their everyday lives.
Anthropomorphism is also employed in connection with the new techni-
cal achievements, but the poetic lustre of yesterday, the soul of things, is
definitely gone.
In The Competition Board (Doska sorevnovaniya, 1931), Marshak cel-
ebrated a foundry that had received an award for its good performance.
Even the repair and machine sections can exhibit capable workers and
first-class products. The message of the poem is summarised in the lines,
“And the whole country / is a superb / team, / where every heroic feat
and every achievement / is an example to all.” There is a disregard for the
child audience here, as the role of the implied reader is restricted to ask-
ing improbable questions concerning which sections were rewarded and
why. Lebedev faithfully assisted with illustrations, and 100,000 copies of
the book were printed.
An essential part of the socialist realist aesthetic was to create exam-
ples, ‘positive heroes’. In The Story of the Unknown Hero (Rasskaz o neiz-
vestnom geroe, 1938), Marshak wrote once again about a dramatic fire.
But this time the hero is not the experienced fireman, but an anonymous
Moscow youth in a white short-sleeved shirt and cap. The boy happens
to pass the site of a fire, plunges into the flames to rescue a child and
then disappears into the crowd. The narrator emphasises the futility of
looking for the unknown hero, as all of Moscow is full of young people
ready to perform similar deeds. What in former times was a feat of an
exceptional individual is now presented as the typical behaviour of any
ordinary citizen.
380 chapter seven

In imitation of Mayakovsky, Marshak also wrote a political pamphlet

for children. The famous Mister Twister (1933) contrasts racial attitudes
in the socialist Soviet Union with those in the capitalist world. This epic
poem was based on a real event, in which an American tourist, refusing
to stay in the same hotel as a person of colour, had been left without a
room for the night in Leningrad. In “Mister Twister”, Marshak dramatised
this episode to show children the curse of racism and the noble example
of Soviet internationalism.
Mr Twister is a former minister, a banker and a businessman, a ship-
owner and newspaper proprietor. When he plans a trip around the world,
he is persuaded by his daughter to include the Soviet Union:
I want to eat
pearl caviar,
catch live sturgeon,
drive a troika on the River Volga,
and pick raspberries
on a kolkhoz.
Mr Twister had made it clear that he did not want to see any dark-skinned
people in their hotel in Leningrad, but the first person he meets at the
Hotel Angleterre is a tall man, “black as the sky on a moonless night”. The
hotel mirrors teasingly multiply his image. The American family looks for
accommodation in other hotels, but without luck. Twister’s millions are
of no help (“You are not in Chicago”), and the family is forced to return
to the Angleterre and accept a room with a Chinese man in the room to
the right, a Malay to the left, a Mongol above and a mulatto and a Creole
downstairs. We have to go back to the original version of the poem to
find out why this international crowd had come to Leningrad. They are
attending a conference for oppressed nationalities, and the hotel guests
thus comprise a double threat to Mr Twister’s world order.
Surprisingly, Mister Twister was not initially seen as topical and was
only published through Gorky’s intervention. There was also concern that
the poem might frighten off foreign tourists, as it implied that any hotel
porter could make life miserable for guests. For this reason, Marshak felt
compelled to omit from later editions the detail that the porter at the
Hotel Angleterre contacts his colleagues at the other hotels in the city to
ask them to hinder the prejudiced American from finding shelter for the
night.
Marshak’s poem “Who is He?” (“Kto on?”, 1938) is written in the
same spirit. The tourist Mr Smith from Michigan is anxious to meet
the immensely rich Soviet capitalist Mr Komsomol, who owns so many
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 381

houses, ships and sports grounds in Moscow. The poem satirises the old
world’s inability to understand the fundamental changes that have taken
place in the Soviet Union.
The 1930s also saw a series of poems by Marshak about the world of
small children: “The First of September” (“Pervoe sentyabrya”), “Friends”
(“Druzya”), “The Children in Our Courtyard” (“Deti nashego dvora”), “Here
Comes the Kindergarten” (“Sad idyot”) and “A Good Day” (“Khoroshy
den”). Many of the poems seem to be aimed at an adult audience, and the
humour and fantasy have been replaced by a lyrical and sentimental tone.
The subject is often an explicitly Soviet childhood; children are urged to
feel pride in their country and to grow up to be useful citizens. Their con-
tribution to the great communal effort going on around the country is to
concentrate on their schoolwork.
Agniya Barto also addressed current social issues in her poems, but at
the same time she showed that it was still possible to ignore ‘the seething
mass of life’. It was in the 1930s that she developed her own particular
subgenre, namely short humorous or satirical poems with quick sketches
of children or scenes from their daily life. Children are seen in relation to
their parents, friends, the school collective, and adults in general, but the
setting is not expressly Soviet. Barto wrote about children’s joys and fears,
about growing up, about friendship and games, encounters with nature
and the different seasons.
Barto’s poems are often aimed at very small children or children in the
early school years. Wordplay, internal rhymes and changing rhythms give
the flavour of children’s rhymes to poems like “We Are Sailors with Broad
Shoulders” (“My—moryaki, plechi shiroki”, 1930), “The Music Started
to Play” (“Zaigrala muzyka”, 1933), “Milochka the Collector” (“Milochka-
kopilochka”, 1935) and “Toys” (“Igrushki”, 1936). The simple, natural style
made her poetry easily accessible to a young readership. Barto was also
skilled at using children as narrators.
Chukovsky addressed Barto with a comment on her unique ability to
empathise: “I know no other writer who has studied the habits and tastes
of this unfathomable tribe in such depth. It is as if you were the same age as
seven- and eight-year-old children and sat on the same school bench with
them. Artistically, you turn yourself into them, you reproduce their voices,
their intonation, their gestures, even their way of thinking, with such vir-
tuosity that they all respond to you as if you were their classmate.”64

64 A. Barto, “Nemnogo o sebe,” Detskaia literatura 3 (1971): 49. (Letter from K. Chuk-
ovskii, February 1956.)
382 chapter seven

Fig. 15. Agniya Barto

 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 383

‘Happy poems’ was a subtitle that Barto often used for her collections of
poems. She preferred to address ethical issues, but the humour helped her
to avoid open moralising. The list of satirical portraits of children is also
a long one. Barto latches on to a negative character trait and shows how
it manifests itself in the child’s dealings with others. In her poems, we
encounter lazy, conceited, calculating, ingratiating, mean, boastful, vain,
unreliable, nagging, whining and jealous children. Sometimes, the title
itself indicates the negative trait: “The Cry-Baby” (“Devochka-revushka”,
1930), “The Dirty Girl” (“Devochka-chumazaya”, 1930), “The Chatterbox”
(“Boltunya”, 1933), or “The Contrary Boy” (“Malchik-naoborot”, 1934).
The boy in the poem “The Bullfinch” (“Snegir”, 1939) is a miracle of dili-
gence until he attains the caged bird he has been dreaming of, after which
he no longer has any reason to behave himself. The girls in “Tamara and
I” (“My s Tamaroy”, 1933) love to play nurses, but flinch as soon as the
game turns serious. Lyubochka, in the poem of the same name (1945), is
everyone’s favourite at school, but outside school she is a different person,
selfish and rude. “Little Lena with the Bouquet” (“Lenochka s buketom”,
1954) satirises a Soviet phenomenon: Lena is the pretty little girl in the
white apron with a big rosette in her hair, who is always asked to offer the
‘children’s greeting’ at congresses and on Soviet holidays. Unfortunately,
her school career and personal development are eventually overshadowed
by her official role.
In some poems, Barto’s satire is directed against adults, something
that gave rise to debate in the 1930s, as there were critics who thought
that children should not question adult behaviour. Ivan Petrovich in “Our
Neighbour Ivan Petrovich” (“Nash sosed Ivan Petrovich”, 1939) is a sullen
old man, permanently dissatisfied and negative towards everything that
happens. The children observe his behaviour with surprise and remark
among themselves: “What a funny neighbour we have! / It is hard to live /
if you look at everything crookedly.”
Barto’s best-known poetry book from the 1930s is The House Has Moved
(Dom pereekhal, 1938). When the Young Pioneer Syoma returns to Mos-
cow from summer camp, he cannot find the big house where his fam-
ily lives. As part of the widening of the city streets, the building which
blocked the traffic has been moved a few blocks away. The action, which
had a precedent in reality, is a concrete symbol of the ongoing radical
transformation of Soviet life. Anything that stands in the way is swept
away without a by-your-leave. Barto made a small concession to a child’s
fantasy world by letting Syoma imagine the house travelling to the coun-
try for the summer or following the family on walks, but these fantasies
384 chapter seven

are interrupted by Syoma’s own would-be-wise comment that man must

be the master of his own creation.
The change in the cultural climate was felt strongly in the OBERIU
group, as well. When Daniil Kharms was able to return to Leningrad in
1932 after his first arrest and exile, he was facing a crisis as a children’s
author. While still actively contributing to The Hedgehog and The Siskin,
he no longer let the fantastic and the humorous elements play the same
prominent role as before. The poems urging children to help the adults
on the farm or teaching them to preserve cucumbers for the winter were
written without any glint in the eye. His poems to the honour of Aeroflot
and the Frontier Guards were purely commissioned works, and so is “A
Song of the First of May” (“Pesnya Pervogo Maya”, 1938), where the chil-
dren rise earlier than all others, so that they will be the first to shout out
“Long Live Stalin!”
Kharms’ work from the 1930s includes a free translation of Wilhelm
Busch’s verse tale Plisch und Plum (1882), published in Russian as Plikh
i Plyukh (1936). The story of the two disobedient dogs had already been
translated into Russian in 1890, and Busch had a prominent place among
little Daniil’s favourite authors.65 The story of how only beatings teach the
wretched dog and their equally depraved young masters some manners
was given new treatment by Kharms: in his version changes are brought
about not by violence, but by kindness. In a Soviet context, Plikh and Ply-
ukh could be read as a commentary on the ongoing brutal campaign of
discipline.
Together with Nina Gernet (1899–1982) and Natalya Dilaktorskaya
(1904–89), Kharms also wrote short verses for the artist Nikolay Radlov’s
picture-book Stories in Pictures (Rasskazy v kartinkakh, 1937). The quality
of cunning is celebrated in these little stories from the animal world. In an
environment where the choice is to eat or be eaten, only the resourceful
survive. In 1938 the book was published in New York in English with the
title The Cautious Carp and Other Fables in Pictures. In an international
children’s book competition in the USA it was awarded second prize. In
the Soviet Union Stories in Pictures became a classic, the only trouble
being that for two decades Kharms could not be mentioned. Only in the
fifth edition of 1962 could his name again be added to its authors.
A late work by Kharms is the short, enigmatic poem “A Man Left His
Home” (“Iz doma vyshel chelovek”, 1937). The story of a man who leaves

65 A. Aleksandrov, “Primechaniia,” in D. Kharms, Polet v nebesa. (L., 1988), 526.

 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 385

his house and disappears into a dark forest, never to be seen again, reads
like an eerie presentiment of the author’s own fate. Kharms was arrested
in the autumn of 1941; it was said that his caretaker asked him to come
into the courtyard for a moment and that he went down in just his slip-
pers. Accused of spreading ‘defeatist propaganda’ he was committed to
the Leningrad prison Kresty, where he died in the internal mental hospi-
tal. The poem “A Man Left His Home” ends with a plea to the reader to
throw some light on the mysterious disappearance of the wanderer. In
Kharms’ case, it took several decades before the final truth about his fate
was revealed.
While Kharms faced publishing problems, the other Oberiuts managed
to find a temporary modus vivendi. Nikolay Zabolotsky produced ideologi-
cal commissions under a pseudonym. Nikolay Oleynikov worked on film
scripts for children, sometimes together with Schwartz. Schwartz himself
had also become more serious and didactic. His “Stop! Know the Rules
of the Road Like Your Multiplication Tables” (“Stop! Pravila ulichnogo
dvizheniya znay, kak tablitsu umnozheniya”, 1931) taught children about
traffic rules, while the prose work Vasya Shelyaev (1932) urged all Young
Pioneers to take part conscientiously in collective summertime work.
The Oberiut who applied himself most energetically to Soviet demands
was Aleksandr Vvedensky. Artistically, this was a disaster, but economically
it was undoubtedly a secure investment. While Vvedensky’s first books
had sold 20,000 copies, runs of 50,000–100,000 were now the norm. There
were poems on the First Five Year Plan with its great railway construction
projects, on the heroic exploits of the Young Pioneers, and on the tragic
fate of workers and communists in capitalist countries. Indicative titles
are “Who was Lenin?” (“Kto byl Lenin?”, 1932) and “October Children—
Lenin’s Children” (“Oktyabryata-lenintsy”, 1932). The poems in October
(Oktyabr, 1930) are uninspired political propaganda, a simple history les-
son about the origins and the first ten years of the Soviet Union: “Even
before, there were fine nights, / but never a night like this: / The night
when the workers rose up / for the might of Soviet labour.” Vvedensky
describes the current situation as intensified labour in industry and agri-
culture. Simultaneously in the capitalistic world, “Abroad, the workers are
rebelling / and the worldwide October Revolution is here.”
Alongside such political works, Vvedensky also wrote books on chil-
dren’s everyday life. Katya’s Doll (Katina kukla, 1936) portrays a day in the
life of a little girl. Vvedensky made use of photographic illustrations, a rare
device in contemporary Soviet children’s literature. The long prose story
The Little Girl Masha, Petushok the Dog and Nitochka the Cat (O devochke
386 chapter seven

Mashe, o sobake Petushke i o koshke Nitochke, 1937) describes five-year-

old Masha’s life, with winter games, summer in the countryside, illnesses
and visits from the doctor, and her first day at kindergarten. The sub-
ject was a risky choice in the schizophrenic cultural climate of the 1930s;
some critics thought that Vvedensky was clinging too tightly to the small
world of children, thus avoiding important social and political questions.
Little Masha’s participation in the May Day parade was held up as a step
in the right direction. Vvedensky’s last book, the lyrical Summer (Leto,
1941) evokes a peaceful rural idyll. Later the same year, the author died
when the Kharkov prison, where he had been detained, was evacuated as
a result of the German frontline offensive.
A new name in poetry for children was Sergey Mikhalkov (1913–2009).
He had started publishing poems in his early teens and came to Mos-
cow in 1930 with the intention of becoming a writer. As a member of
an organisation for proletarian writers, he composed political songs for
adults on current issues, but his breakthrough came in children’s litera-
ture. He found success on his first attempt. Uncle Styopa (Dyadya Styopa),
the first part of which was published in Pioneer in 1935, was to become
Mikhalkov’s best-known children’s book. Fifty years later, the book had
gone though more than a hundred editions in Russian, totalling about
fifteen million copies.
While adults in traditional poetry for children generally figured as
impersonal representatives of various professions, Uncle Styopa is more of
a rounded character. His most conspicuous physical trait is his hyperbolic
height, and the good-natured Styopa uses his fabulous size and strength
to protect and help his young friends. He is a positive hero, watching over
his surroundings like a lighthouse, now taking down a kite caught up in
the telephone wires, now rescuing children from drowning or being killed
in a fire. Nor is Styopa afraid of looking silly, a trait that underlines his
humanity.
In 1935, with Uncle Styopa in his pocket, Mikhalkov was sent by the
magazine Pioneer to see Marshak. The outcome of their meeting was his
first book, Poems (Stikhi, 1936), which turned out to be an overwhelming
success. In Pravda, Aleksandr Fadeev (1901–56) stressed the great educa-
tional value of the poems: “Mikhalkov is an important poet, and the best
of it is that he himself, educated in the Soviet system under Soviet power,
writes poems that educate children in the spirit of the Soviet system
and power. All Mikhalkov’s poems are filled with a warm, earnest, naive
humour and suffused with youthful light. They are full to the brim with
a real and immediate love of life, labour, workers, the mother country,
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 387

Fig. 16. David Dubinsky, Uncle Styopa (1950)

388 chapter seven

and nature.”66 Another person who early took note of Mikhalkov’s spe-
cial talent, “original and brave”, was Chukovsky: “Mikhalkov’s poems are
sometimes intimate, sometimes exuberant, sometimes ironic, indescrib-
ably song-like and lyrical—and therein lies his main strength.”67
The intimate side of Mikhalkov is represented by “Svetlana” (1935), a
lullaby about how everything in nature, from the pelicans in the zoo to
the wind on the steppe, goes to sleep at night. Little Svetlana, sleepless in
her bed, is addressed in a loving voice. The poem attracted the attention
of Stalin, whose own daughter carried the name Svetlana, and from that
moment on Mikhalkov had a powerful protector.
A popular poem is “How Are Things with You?” (“A chto u vas?”, 1935).
In this poem some children are sitting and chatting in the courtyard one
lazy evening. Their simple, natural exchanges have a disarming, naive
charm. The poem takes on a more serious tone when the children begin
to compare their mothers’ jobs. The conclusion is that “We need all kinds
of mothers, / all mothers are important.”
Mikhalkov’s exuberance is seen in “The Watch” (“Chasy”, 1938), “The
Happy Tourist” (“Vesyoly turist”, 1936) and “My Friend and I” (“My s pri-
yatelem”, 1936). The shrewd and skilful watchmaker helps the children to
get to school on time by setting their watches an hour ahead, while the
happy tourist is a fourteen-year-old boy whose singing and joie de vivre
draw everyone to him. The resemblance to Kharms’ Firstly, and Secondly
of 1929 is conspicuous. The charming “My Friend and I” has an episodic
form. Two inseparable schoolboys keep two hedgehogs, two grass-snakes
and two siskins as pets. Their neighbours become fed up with the animals
and take them to the zoo. The boys go to ask for their friends back, but it
turns out that the animals have disappeared into the anonymous crowds
at the zoo. A hundred hedgehogs, a hundred grass-snakes and a hundred
siskins stare back in surprise at the boys.
Irony is to the fore in “About a Mimosa” (“Pro mimozu”, 1935) and
“Foma” (1935). The ‘mimosa’ is the boy Vitya “in flat number six”. He
is spoilt to death by his parents and grows up “like the mimosa plant /
in the Botanical Garden”. It is typical of the writer and of the decade that
the most worrying thing about such an upbringing is that Vitya cannot
become a good soldier. Foma, on the other hand, is a doubting Thomas,

66 A. Fadeev, Za tridtsat’ let (М., 1957), 727. (First publ.: Pravda. February 6, 1938, 4.)
67 K. Chukovskii, “Urozhainyi god: O detskoi literature,” Vecherniaia Moskva. January
13, 1937, 3.
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 389

who always does the opposite of what one expects. In an entertaining and
exaggerated form, Mikhalkov teaches him a lesson. Foma dreams that he
is in Africa; he is warned about the crocodiles in the River Congo, but out
of pure contrariness, he ignores the warning and wades out into the water,
to be swallowed by a crocodile. It is only a dream, but Foma denies even
this when he wakes up, just out of habit. Mikhalkov rounds the poem off
with a request to the reader: “Children, seek out / such a Foma / and read
him / this poem.”
From the very outset, Mikhalkov was also an ideologically committed
poet, filled with Soviet patriotism and eagerness to serve the latest Party
line. He was among the first to write a poem about the Young Pioneer
martyr Pavel Morozov, and he also played his part in honing children’s
military readiness. The navy, the army and the Frontier Guards were
all celebrated. In the poem “The Frontier” (“Granitsa”, 1938), a group of
children expose a spy and take him to the militia. The hero of “Misha
Korolkov” (1938) is a boy from Sakhalin who falls into the hands of Jap-
anese fascists. The fascists’ attempt to bribe Misha with chocolate fails;
instead, he is rescued through Stalin’s personal intervention.
In the autumn of 1939, Mikhalkov took part in the Soviet occupation
of eastern Poland, or “the liberation of the Western Ukraine” as it was
called in the author’s official Soviet biography. Mikhalkov explained
these events to children in the poem “Michasz the Shepherd” (“Pastukh
Mikhas”, 1939). Michasz, the representative of the working people, wel-
comes the Soviet soldiers with open arms, and the sight of a photo of
Stalin in Pravda is the final confirmation of Polish-Soviet friendship.
Twenty years later Mikhalkov found it wiser to change the Stalin photo
to a picture of Lenin.
Mikhalkov quickly carved out a prominent position for himself in
children’s literature. His genre was not only poetry, but also drama. The
musical Tom Canty (1938) is based on Mark Twain’s The Prince and the
Pauper, while The Skates (Konki, 1939) is a kind of Young Pioneer vaude-
ville on a current social and moral issue. A boy cannot resist temptation
and uses money he has found, originally intended to serve the collec-
tive, to buy skates for himself; but with the help of his comrades, he is
able to get rid of this blot on his character. Also from the 1930s comes
Mikhalkov’s popular translation of the English fairy tale about the three
little pigs and the wolf (Tri porosyonka, 1936). The song “Nam ne strashen
sery volk” (“Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”) reveals that Mikhalkov
was familiar with Walt Disney’s animated short film Three Little Pigs of
390 chapter seven

1933. Mikhalkov’s literary activities within the field of children’s literature

won him a Stalin Prize in 1941.
Elena Blaginina (1903–89) studied at the short-lived Briusov Literary
Institute in Moscow in the 1920s. She had been writing poems since her
schooldays, but her real career as a writer did not begin until the 1930s.
Her first poems for children were published in Murzilka, and in 1936 came
her first book—Autumn (Osen). Blaginina started with lyrical poems about
nature and the four seasons. Viewed through a child’s eyes, nature is filled
with poetry and wonder. There are poems about the first flowers of spring,
birdsong, the murmur of the wind, the colours of the rainbow and the play
of the sunbeams reflected on the wall of the child’s bedroom. Trees, plants
and animals—everything is personified in Blaginina’s nature poetry.
A great success was the cycle of poems What a Mother! (Vot kakaya
mama!, 1939). The persona of the poem is the model of a lovable little girl,
telling of her happy, harmonious childhood. Her life is not just made up
of games; she dresses herself, bakes, sews on buttons and tidies her room.
The mother figure is at the centre of her world: she is given respect and
love, and it is her example that has moulded the girl. The catchy refrain
goes: “Oh what a mother—/ she’s pure gold!” (“Vot kakaya mama—/
zolotaya pryamo!”) Irina Arzamastseva, the historian of Russian children’s
literature, sees the publication of Blaginina’s poetry book as an important
step in the bringing back of traditional family values into Soviet Russian
children’s literature.68
Beyond the home and nature there is also another world in Blaginina’s
poetry. The poem “I Don’t Like Sitting at Home” (“Ya doma ne lyublyu
sidet”) gave its name to a group of verses celebrating various professions,
from caretaker to kolkhoz worker, ultimately stressing the importance of
all of them. As always with Blaginina, it is the child who observes the
people at work.
Blaginina’s first major collection of poems, Poems (Stikhi), came out in
1939. A sign of the times was the inclusion of a section with epic poems
and ballads on military themes. In “The Song of the Two Budyonny Sol-
diers” (“Pesnya pro dvukh budyonnovtsev”), a dying cavalryman in the
Civil War sends a last message to the Ukraine with a brother-in-arms, urg-
ing his little son to show bravery in future battles. This kind of poetry was
officially encouraged, and, in the same year, Blaginina was included in the
group of writers awarded national honours.

68 Arzamastseva and Nikolaeva, Detskaia literatura, 274.

 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 391

The early output of Zinaida Aleksandrova (1907–83) also comprised

poems on the world of children, but her usual subject-matter was Young
Pioneer life and the Soviet motherland. Aleksandrova had grown up in
a children’s home and worked at a factory for a time before turning to
literature. Her first collections of poetry, Factory Songs (Fabrichnye pesni)
and October in the Fields (Polevoy oktyabr), were aimed at adults, while
Aleksandrova only found her true audience, small children, with the book
Wind over the Stream (Veter na rechke, 1932). The title poem tells of the
exuberant games of some children in a summer meadow and the wind’s
mischievous game with their clothes when they go swimming in the
stream. The playful feeling is also reflected in the formal side—the com-
position, the rhythm and the images. While Blaginina most often wrote
her poems in the first person singular, Aleksandrova used a ‘we’, a group
of children with shared experiences.
The same year saw the publication of Kolkhoz Spring (Kolkhoznaya
vesna, 1932), the first book of verse for children about life on a collective
farm. A happy collective works in the fields; the young people also help
with the spring sowing. These are humourless poems, filled with agricul-
tural terms, and at the end of the book, Aleksandrova urges her imagined
reader—a girl—to grow up to be a tractor driver. Artek (1939) contains
poems about Young Pioneers at the famous summer camp in the Crimea.
Aleksandrova portrays individual children and their backgrounds.
The 1930s also saw the birth of poems about Russian wildlife, but even
Aleksandrova’s animal poems could have topical political content. In “The
Patrol” (“Dozor”, 1938), a boy finds a puppy. He becomes good friends with
the dog, and it is with a heavy heart that he agrees to give it to his brother,
who is a frontier guard in the Far East. Here the dog finds its true place
and performs heroic feats. With pride, the boy reads a letter telling how
the dog saved his brother from certain death and prevented a spy from
entering the Soviet Union.
Aleksandrova’s poem—and song lyric—“The Death of Chapaev” (“Gibel
Chapaeva”, 1937) became a classic. The last battle of the Red war hero is
full of drama and tragedy. The poem, which is a paean to courage and
duty, ends with a call to take up Chapaev’s banner and avenge his death.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Aleksandrova has been primarily
remembered as the author of the song “The Little Spruce Is Cold in the
Winter” (“Malenkoy yolochke kholodno zimoy”). Claimed to have been
written in 1931, it attained an unexpected topicality two years later, when,
by official decree, New Year was turned into a children’s festival, com-
pensating for the abolished Christmas feast. To a catchy tune by Mikhail
392 chapter seven

Krasev, the song paints a picture of happy children dancing around a New
Year spruce tree, decorated with golden cones, coloured balls, gingerbread
and chocolate fishes.
Elizaveta Tarakhovskaya (1895–1968), a librarian from the Russian prov-
inces, wrote her first piece for children in 1924. The play The Discovery
(Nakhodka), performed in the Moscow Central Children’s Theatre, was
followed in the 1920s and 1930s by a series of poetry books on everyday
themes. One commission was a small volume of prose called Kindergar-
ten Amare (Amarė detsky sad, 1932), which set out to show how national
minorities were cherished in the Soviet Union. Amare is a kindergarten
for gypsies, and Tarakhovskaya, impressed by what she sees there, predicts
that within a short time, all the gypsies in the country will be incorporated
into ‘the great family’. The guarantee of this is the portrait of Stalin in the
kindergarten, with the words: “In our Union, all people are equal. In our
Union, all people are friends.”
Tarakhovskaya became well-known through Metropoliten (1932), a
collection of poems for children about the Moscow metro, one of the
great projects of the 1930s. Seen from a child’s perspective, the metro is a
world full of marvels like escalators and doors that open by themselves.
Tarakhovskaya wanted to instil in the reader a sense of respect for the
labour that lay behind it all.
At the 1934 Writers’ Congress, Marshak identified the international ele-
ment as a distinguishing mark of the Soviet literature for children. How-
ever, the non-Russian writers at this time included only one name of any
great interest. Lev Kvitko wrote in Yiddish, but many excellent transla-
tions into Russian by people like Marshak, Svetlov, Fraerman, Mikhalkov,
Blaginina, Nikolay Chukovsky and Anna Akhmatova assured him of a
wide audience among Russian children as well.
Kvitko lived in Kharkov; he moved to Moscow only in 1936. He had
grown up an orphan, in conditions of poverty and with no opportunity
to go to school. He made his debut in 1918 with a poem about the Red
Army’s advance into Kiev. His first collection of poems for children, Songs
(Lidelak), came out in the same year. Russian readers only discovered him
in 1937, when five books of his poems in Russian were published in Mos-
cow. There were to be many more; even before the outbreak of the Second
World War, Kvitko’s collected poems had appeared in an edition that ran
to several million copies.
A recurring theme with Kvitko is the sense of wonder the child even
experiences in everyday life. The object of the questions and fantasies
of his imaginative and inquisitive heroes may be a flower (“Tsvetok”), a
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 393

penknife with many blades (“Nozhik”), or a litter of piglets (“Porosyata”).

In the poem “The Little Horse” (“Loshadka”, 1938), a little boy finds out
one morning that a wooden horse has mysteriously appeared at his bed-
side during the night. The boy does not know whether it was all a dream,
and pesters his parents with his questions. In the world in which the chil-
dren of Kvitko’s poems live, every morning is full of promise and fresh
possibilities (“Utro”).
Kvitko also felt a strong ideological commitment. He wrote poems
about the Soviet army, about Marshal Kliment Voroshilov (“Pismo k
Voroshilovu”, 1936), and about the great day when the son of the family is
called up (“Provody”, 1938).

Positive Heroes and Base Enemies

A two-volume anthology edited by Samuil Marshak and entitled The Bon-

fire (Kostyor) shows the direction taken by juvenile prose in the 1930s. The
theme of the first volume (1932) was heroism. Writers like L. Panteleev,
Nikolay Tikhonov, Olga Berggolts and Mikhail Zoshchenko contributed
stories of heroes of the revolutionary struggle before 1917, as well as of
the October Revolution and the Civil War. The second volume (1934) was
based on Gorky’s survey of what children wanted to read and offered pop-
ular science articles and nature sketches by M. Ilin, Evgeny Charushin and
others.
The most conspicuous hero figure in the thirties was the fourteen-year-
old Young Pioneer Pavel Morozov, who, according to the official version,
died a martyr’s death in 1932 at the hands of enemies of collectivisation.
Morozov had denounced his own father for sabotage against the kolk-
hoz. He was also a witness at his father’s trial, seeing him as a traitor to
the revolutionary cause. In revenge, the boy was killed by the outraged
villagers.
In Gorky’s eyes Morozov was an ideal figure, the archetype of the
new Soviet man, and he joined in demands for a statue to be erected in
Moscow in the boy’s honour. There was social and educational value
in Morozov’s deed: his example taught children that “a close relative can
easily be your enemy in his inner convictions” and that “such a person
should be given no quarter”.69

69 “Vyshe i vyshe, komsomolets,” Pravda. October 29, 1933, 5.

394 chapter seven

“The memory of Pavel Morozov must never fade”, wrote Gorky.70 As

early as 1933, there were several books about Morozov, loosely based on
documentary material. Vitaly Gubarev (1912–81), the author of Pavel Moro-
zov, had himself taken part in the inquiry into Morozov’s murder. In his
book, which was re-issued in the 1970s, Morozov is a model pupil in the
village school and a social activist, reared on a diet of Gorky’s novel Mother.
Against him are ranged the enemies of the Soviet state, who exploit their
employees and refuse to pay for the upkeep of the school. They dream of
a war breaking out, with foreign bourgeois arriving in to hang the Young
Pioneers by their red scarves. Apart from Gubarev’s book, one could also
mention In the Nest of Kulaks (V kulatskom gnezde, 1933) by Pavel Solo-
meyn and The Young Pioneer Pavel Morozov (Pioner Pavel Morozov, 1936)
by Aleksandr Yakovlev. The twenty-year-old Sergey Mikhalkov weighed in
with “The Song of Pavlik Morozov” (“Pesnya o Pavlike Morozove”, 1934),
designed to be performed by a children’s choir. Pavlik was the best of com-
munists, an example for all Young Pioneers, and his memory should never
be forgotten, Mikhalkov exclaimed. At the Moscow Theatre for Young
Spectators a play version (1940) of Yakovlev’s novel was performed.
Another young champion of collectivisation is Yashka Vosmyorkin in
Nikolay Smirnov’s novel Jack Vosmyorkin the American (Dzhek Vosmyorkin
amerikanets, 1930), a book that every Young Pioneer was reported to have
read. It has a documentary background: in the spring of 1918, a number of
Petrograd families sent their children to the Volga to escape anarchy and
famine. The Civil War severed their ties, and the children were picked up
by the American Red Cross and taken to San Francisco. Smirnov’s main
protagonist is the peasant boy Yashka, who quickly adapts to the new soci-
ety. His great dream is to have his own farm, a dream that he realises can
never come true in the USA. When he hears that land is being distributed
free in Soviet Russia, he decides to return. Unfortunately, Soviet reality
is not as he had imagined. He had dreamed of becoming rich on grow-
ing tobacco, but there is no room in the Soviet Union for free enterprise,
and anyway, it is food that people need. Eventually Yashka overcomes his
individualism and starts to work for collectivisation. As head of the ‘New
America’ collective farm, he welcomes his visitor, a friend from America,
and proudly holds out his fists: “This is the gold that I have paid with. It
is not highly rated on the American Stock Exchange, my friend. But now
there is a country where calluses are worth their weight in gold.”

70 Ibid.
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 395

In an afterword, Smirnov asked his readers for advice on how the book
should continue. No sequel followed, as the author died in 1933. A film
version appeared in 1986, during the perestroika period.

In the 1930s, there was a great demand for popular science writing. Korney
Chukovsky recounts how he came to a Young Pioneer camp in the Crimea
in 1929, bearing Baron Münchhausen, Gulliver’s Travels, The Little Hump-
backed Horse by Pyotr Ershov and tales from the Brothers Grimm with
him as gifts for the children. He was welcomed by a Pioneer leader who
leafed through the books in a preoccupied way before decisively rejecting
them: “We don’t need this sort of thing. What we want are books about
diesel engines or radios.”71
No second bidding was needed, as writers were given the task of cel-
ebrating Soviet scientific achievements. Even Korney Chukovsky was car-
ried along, busying himself with plans for a book about how the Soviet
people had learnt to control the weather. But it was M. Ilin who gathered
all the major themes in his The Story of the Great Plan (Rasskaz o velikom
plane, 1930). “The Great Plan” is the First Soviet Five Year Plan with its diz-
zying goals. In a form calculated to appeal to young readers, Ilin describes
the struggle against nature that was being waged with modern technology
in the deserts and mountains and beyond the Arctic Circle. The book not
only dealt with technology and economics, but also attended to politi-
cal education through recurring comparisons between socialism and
capitalism.
Gorky prized The Story of the Great Plan for its optimistic faith in the
imminent transformation of the world along socialist lines. This feeling
was brought out in the title of the German translation—Fünf Jahre, die
die Welt verändern (Berlin, 1932), that is Five Years that Are Changing the
World. In France, Ilin found an enthusiastic reader in Romain Rolland:
“No other book helps you so directly, easily and clearly to comprehend
the great significance of the heroic work that has been done in the USSR.
It must be spread among the masses in the Western world.”72 The book
became an international success, with translations published in Germany,
England (Moscow Has a Plan: a Soviet Primer), France (L’Épopée du travail
moderne: la merveilleuse transformation de l’Union Soviétique), the USA

71  K. Chukovskii, Sobranie sochinenii v 15 tomakh. Vol. 2 (M., 2001), 189.

72 Quoted in A. Ivich, Tvorchestvo M. Il’ina (M., 1956), 56.
396 chapter seven

(New Russia’s Primer: the Story of the Five-Year Plan), Japan, China and
elsewhere.
The foreword to the American edition, written by the translator George
S. Counts, is full of reverence for the genius of the author and his book. In
his view, the most important aspect is that
it reveals the temper of the revolutionary movement and the large human
goals towards which it is consciously tending. No one can read the last
chapter without being moved by the great social vision which presumably
animates and lends significance to the program of construction. Millions of
boys and girls growing to manhood and womanhood in the Soviet Union
have no doubt already caught the vision and are ordering their lives by it.
Here undoubtedly lies the power of that strange new society which is rising
on the ruins of imperial Russia.73
In Mountains and People (Gory i lyudi, 1935) Ilin wrote about how Soviet
man was taming and transforming nature and meeting the great chal-
lenges on the road to communism. In his foreword to an American edition
of Ilin’s “poem about the present”, Men and Mountains: Man’s Victory over
Nature (1935), Gorky stressed the contrast between collective labour in the
Soviet Union and the crimes of the ‘rotten’ capitalistic world.74
After the war, Ilin turned to issues like atomic energy and the automa-
tion of industry. He also dealt with international conflicts and pursued
his criticism of capitalist society. How Man Became a Giant (Kak chelovek
stal velikanom, 1940–46) was an attempt to give an overview of human
history from the earliest times and of the emergence of culture. The book
was written in collaboration with his wife Elena Segal (1905–80), as was
Ilin’s last work, Stories About the Things Around You (Rasskazy o tom, chto
tebya okruzhaet, 1952). Thematically linked to Ilin’s debut work in the
1920s, the volume informed children about the labour that went into mak-
ing everyday items like pens, knives, exercise-books and ink.
Among the ‘production novels’, Konstantin Paustovsky’s (1892–1968)
Kara-Bugaz (1932) and Kolkhida (1934) stood out from the crowd. The
Soviet exploitation of nature is depicted in a romantic light, with trusts
and combines ushering in a new age in Central Asia and upsetting cen-
turies-old Islamic customs and beliefs. In Kara-Bugaz, Paustovsky used a

73 George S. Counts, “A Word to the American Reader,” in M. Ilin, New Russia’s Primer:
The Story of the Five-Year Plan. Boston, New York, 1931, accessed March 15, 2013. http://
www.marxists.org/subject/art/literature/children/texts/ilin/new/note.html.
74 M. Gor’kii, “Predislovie k amerikanskomu izdaniiu knigi M. Il’ina ‘Gory i liudi’,” O
detskoi literature (M., 1968), 142–144.
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 397

fragmented structure with changes of narrator and different time frames.

It is a tale of adventure and exploration around and near the Kara-Bugaz
Bay, beginning in 1847 and then moving to the Civil War period. A group
of Reds are abandoned to near-certain death on a desolate island, but
they survive thanks to an explorer. Some of the soldiers decide to stay
and assist in the study and exploration of the region’s natural wealth. The
optimism and enthusiasm with which Paustovsky depicted the changes
that man brought to nature have later been branded as an unforgivable
blindness: too often the result was ecological catastrophies.
For younger children, Paustovsky wrote nature sketches and affection-
ate stories about animals, collected in Summer Days (Letnie dni, 1937).
Paustovsky spent his summers in a village near Riazan, and his own
experiences from walks in the country, fishing trips and conversations
with local people provided material for his writing. In “The Thieving Cat”
(“Kot-voryuga”), he told of a wild cat, a pest that a patient summer guest
managed to tame. Dogs, cats, hares, starlings and hens are the main char-
acters in sketches like “The Rubber Boat” (“Rezinovaya lodka”) and “Hares’
Feet” (“Zayachy lapy”).
In the 1930s, classic nature writing was in danger of being overshad-
owed by books on scientific and technical innovation, but there was one
major new name in the field, Evgeny Charushin (1901–65). He had started
out as an illustrator, beginning with a volume by Bianki. In 1929, he pub-
lished his own picture book on an animal theme, followed at Marshak’s
instigation by his first collection of short stories, The Wolf-Cub and Others
(Volchishko i drugie, 1931). Charushin’s nature sketches are always based
on concrete biological material, but he also strove to create lively plots
with humorous elements and surprising turns. His language has been
praised as crystal-clear.
In Nikitka and his Friends (Nikitka i ego druzya, 1938), Charushin tells of
his five-year-old son Nikitka, a lively and inquisitive boy, and his encoun-
ters with nature. Nikitka lives in a world filled with wonder. Charushin
himself never ceased to be fascinated by the beauty and diversity of nature,
and this was also at the root of his writing. This aspect was observed by
the critic Tamara Gabbe in 1940:
Poetic vigilance, that is Charushin’s real talisman, his Aladdin’s lamp. In its
light everything that Charushin writes about—animals, birds, trees,—every-
thing becomes astonishing and unusual, such as it is only in our childhood,
when the human eye sees the world for the first time. And it is this original,
sharp vision, this inspired, wary attention, which Charushin has been able
to preserve. If it was not for this remarkable quality, any of his short stories
398 chapter seven

could easily just melt in the hands of the reader—the core of his narration
is so fragile, so light. But in the light of Aladdin’s lamp the simplest story can
become something wonderful.75
A different perspective on nature is found in Yan Larri’s book The Extraor-
dinary Adventures of Karik and Valya (Neobyknovennye priklyucheniya
Karika i Vali, 1937). A thoughtless brother and sister drink from a strange
bottle on a science professor’s table and are changed into pixies. In the
company of the scientist, they experience many adventures in the world
of insects before returning to their normal size. Larri describes a natu-
ral world filled with dangers and the fight for survival. One problem is
that the balance between plot and facts is often upset, with the professor
launching into impromptu lectures about the natural phenomena that the
children witness. Nevertheless, the novel had qualities that made it a great
success, even at a time when the author himself was languishing in the
Gulag.
Another writer with solid professional expertise was the zoologist Pro-
fessor Sergey Pokrovsky (1874–1945), who wrote about the lives of Stone
Age people in The Mammoth Hunters (Okhotniki na mamontov, 1937). He
had taken part in a number of scientific expeditions and based his novel
on archaeological finds along the Don River. It is the hunts, family feuds,
rituals and religious ideas of our ancestors that Pokrovsky portrays, all
bound together by an exciting plot.

The historical novel underwent a renaissance in the 1930s. Books were

written about the struggle for freedom, from slave revolts to the Octo-
ber Revolution. Dramatic moments in revolutionary history such as the
Spartacus revolt and the Paris Commune were popular themes, and life
under feudalism or capitalism, as seen from the perspective of the people,
was dramatised with a propagandistic purpose. The most important name
in the genre was Sergey Grigorev, who was initially more interested in
the great historical processes than in individual figures. In the 1920s he
brought out three historical narratives, one about the Decembrist uprising
of 1825, another about a soldier’s life under Nicholas I, and a third about
strikes in the 1880s, all seen from the perspective of young people.
There was more of the artist in L. Savelev, who had passed through
Marshak’s ‘academy’ in the early 1920s and subsequently worked for many
years as an editor at Detgiz. His books about the Revolution, The Clock

75 Tamara Gabbe, “Evgenii Charushin,” Literaturnaia gazeta 5 (1940): 4.

 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 399

and the Map of the October Revolution (Chasy i karta Oktyabrya, 1930) and
The Storming of the Winter Palace (Shturm Zimnego, 1938), are graphically
interesting and display the influence of film editing techniques.
Savelev made his contribution to atheistic propaganda with the book
Mr Smith in St. Isaac’s Cathedral (Mister Smit v Isaakievskom sobore,
1932). The American Mr Smith visits Leningrad in search of subscribers
for his magazine The Afterlife Review (Zagrobnoe obozrenie) with its free
supplement, A Full Description of Heaven and Hell (Polnoe opisanie raya
i ada). Much to his dismay, he finds that St Isaac’s Cathedral has been
turned into a museum of atheism and, pursued by laughter and mockery,
he runs out of the former temple of God. In a similar way Savelev was
rejected by Detskaya literatura’s reviewer, who thought that the volume
was “pedagogically harmful”. Since it would only confuse the minds of
Soviet children, it could not be recommended.76
A distinctive Russian patriotism was encouraged, and military heroes
from the past, such as Dmitry Donskoy and Aleksandr Suvorov, were
rehabilitated at a moment when the Soviet Union was faced with a grow-
ing threat of war. Grigorev’s novel Aleksandr Suvorov (1939) consciously
skirts around any controversial question to create a harmoniously heroic
portrait of one of the greatest Russian generals of the 18th century. For
juvenile readers, Aleksey Tolstoy produced an adaptation (1933–36) of his
novel Peter the Great (Pyotr Pervy), with its illuminating portrait of the
great autocrat. The 1930s also saw biographical novels about Russian sci-
entists, writers, composers and artists.
A separate group is made up of books about the leaders of the Com-
munist Party and activists of the October Revolution. The choice of sub-
ject-matter was not accidental, but was dictated by Stalin’s struggle for
power. Some veterans of the Revolution were erased from the nation’s
historical memory, while others were canonised. Among the latter was
Sergey Kirov, the Party leader from Leningrad, the focus of a burgeoning
cult following his murder in 1934. Books about Kirov came from Antonina
Golubeva (1899–1989) with The Boy from Urzhum (Malchik iz Urzhuma,
1936), from the writing team of Andrey Nekrasov, Boris Zhitkov, Boris
Shatilov and Benyamin Ivanter with The Story of Comrade Kirov (Povest
o tovarishche Kirove, 1937) and from L. Panteleev with Tales of Kirov
(Rasskazy o Kirove, 1948). A socialist leader from the turn of the cen-
tury, Nikolay Bauman, was the main protagonist of Sergey Mstislavsky’s

76 Kuper, [review], Detskaia literatura 16 (1932): 9.

400 chapter seven

(1876–1943) novel The Rook is a Spring Bird (Grach—ptitsa vesennyaya,

1936), while Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the notorious founder and first head of
the Soviet secret police, was glorified in Yury German’s (1910–67) Iron
Feliks (Zhelezny Feliks, 1938). This was undisguised hagiography, in which
these revolutionaries were portrayed as models of goodness, honesty and
modesty.
The rapidly growing Stalin cult was also beginning to appear in chil-
dren’s literature. The bibliography Stalin for Children (Detyam o Staline,
1939) lists poems of homage by Sergey Mikhalkov, an article by Benyamin
Ivanter on Stalin’s childhood and accounts by Soviet children of their own
meetings with the father of the country. However, literature about Stalin
still remained in the shadow of the Lenin cult, memoirs and literary works
about the man Mayakovsky in his poem “Vladimir Ilich Lenin” called “the
most alive of all living men”.
Lenin himself did not encourage such worship, and, during his lifetime,
writers had to respect this attitude. There were exceptions, but they were
rare. Nikolay Tikhonov’s Sami (1921) told of a mistreated Indian boy who
hears about ‘Lenni’, who lives far away in Russia and can “even make a
man of a wolf ”. On his knees, the boy worships the Russian, “inscrutable
as a yogi”, but a symbol of freedom and happiness for him. Lenin gives
Sami human dignity; now at last, the Indian boy can stand up straight.
It was after Lenin’s death in 1924 that the cult of the founder of the
Soviet Union began to grow. Writers showed the news of his death as
a turning point in children’s lives. Homeless children settle down, good
children resolve to be still better, and the thought of Lenin’s example
gives them strength in the battle against the enemies of their socialist
homeland. The living Lenin also makes an appearance in children’s litera-
ture, as, for example, in a short story by Nikolay Smirnov, where a peasant
boy finds himself at the Congress of the Soviets in 1917 and hears Lenin
speak. “And Lenin’s words”, according to the historian of children’s litera-
ture Irina Lupanova, “become for the boy the key to a new world, full of
important phenomena and significant thoughts.”77 Other children write to
Lenin or meet him in person. Lenin also has time for the country’s smaller
citizens and sends a toboggan or a pair of felt boots as a present or helps
a poor boy to start school.
By 1926, Lenin’s widow, Nadezhda Krupskaya, had had enough: “Chil-
dren’s books tend to show Lenin as a kind of patriarch, an old man who
loved children. I wish to protest in the strongest terms against such

77 I. Lupanova, Polveka: Sovetskaia detskaia literatura 1917–1967. Ocherki (M., 1969), 614.
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 401

Fig. 17. Vladimir Galdyaev, Lenin and Children (1978)

402 chapter seven

a ‘childification’, if the expression is allowed . . . We must show a living

Lenin, not a fantasy figure or someone who has been adjusted to suit
children.”78 But not even Krupskaya could stem the flood of books about
Lenin as the great friend of children. This continued well into the 1950s,
when recollections of Lenin by the Bolshevik Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich
(1873–1955) were published. Three chapters from his book were chosen
for a separate publication, Lenin and Children (Lenin i deti, 1956). Here we
encounter a Lenin who dances with children around the Christmas tree
and teaches them that they should always eat up their food. Lenin also
amuses the little ones by trying to teach a cat to do tricks.
Another aspect of the topic was seen in stories about Lenin as a child.
In Ilich’s Childhood and School Years (Detskie i shkolnye gody Ilicha, 1925),
his eldest sister Anna Ulyanova-Elizarova recounted episodes from their
family life in Simbirsk. The book, which gives a description of the milieu
that formed Lenin’s character, ran to over two hundred editions. Anna
Ulyanova was not a new name in Russian children’s literature: her first
story had been published in The Spring (Rodnik) in 1896. Soviet critics
reproached her for “idealisation of children’s love for their parents”, and
even in the volume on her brother’s childhood a disturbing ‘sentimental-
ity’ was detected.79 The early memories of Lenin’s cousin and playmate
Nikolay Veretennikov (1871–1955) make up the content of Volodya Ulyanov
(1939), where each chapter illustrates a new and praiseworthy side of little
Volodya.
“There is nothing more annoying than the way Lenin is described in
school books and books for children”, wrote Krupskaya. “They start by
telling how Lenin read his lessons like a good boy, worked hard, did good
deeds for the poor, was a good father to his family, and loved children.
We must honour his memory and follow his commands. They also say
what these commands were: Lenin wanted you to brush your teeth, Lenin
wanted you to be honest and so on and so forth. But what he actually said,
they don’t say a word about that.”80
Krupskaya was against sentimental, moralising scenes from Lenin’s
childhood and exaggerating his attitude to children. At the same time,

78 N.K. Krupskaia, “Ob uchebnike i detskoi knige dlia I stepeni: Rech’ na I Vserossi-
iskoi konferentsii po uchebnoi i detskoi knige (1926),” Pedagogicheskie sochineniia v deviati
tomakh. Vol. 3 (M., 1959), 240.
79 Arzamastseva and Nikolaeva, Detskaia literatura, 274.
80 N.K. Krupskaia, [Review of N. Vengrov and N. Ostolovskii, My v shkole: Kniga per-
vaia, 1925], Pedagogicheskie sochineniia v desiati tomakh. Vol. 10 (M., 1962), 199.
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 403

she herself began to support efforts to present Lenin the revolutionary to

young people. The life and political activities of the adult Lenin were the
subject of Lenin for Children (Detyam o Lenine, 1926), compiled by the
Institute for Children’s Reading. Boris Kustodiev’s full-colour illustrations
dominated the text. Krupskaya’s own contribution to the genre is a short
story of uttermost simplicity entitled “Vladimir Ilich Lenin” (1933). In a
room there hangs a portrait of Lenin; a little boy asks his father to tell
him about the man in the picture. The father immediately launches into a
lecture about capitalism and socialism and Lenin’s role in the revolution-
ary struggle in Russia.
In the 1930s, the Lenin cult was dominated by memoirs. People who
had met Lenin or known him personally told of the man and the politi-
cian, but the two most important works, both dating from 1939 and with
the same title, Stories about Lenin (Rasskazy o Lenin), were written by
authors working with second-hand material. Aleksandr Kononov (1895–
1957) was interested in Lenin as a professional revolutionary and chose
the year 1897 and Lenin’s exile in Siberia as his starting point. In a laconic
and austere documentary style, he recounts various episodes from Lenin’s
life, showing his courage, endurance and organizational abilities. One
feature that is strongly emphasised is Lenin’s down-to-earth character.
Kononov’s book ran to millions of copies and was compulsory reading for
Soviet schoolchildren for decades.
Mikhail Zoshchenko’s (1895–1958) sixteen little anecdotes about Lenin
were aimed at a younger audience. In language and content, they are
designed so that even pre-school and first-year children can understand
Lenin’s greatness. Zoshchenko is mainly interested in the man, not the
politician, and it is not so much Lenin’s biography as certain moral prin-
ciples that he wants to illustrate. Little Volodya breaks a vase and has
no peace of mind until he has confessed his guilt to his mother; while
other stories show Lenin as hard-working, brave, quick-thinking, straight-
forward, fair, correct and modest. A situation that Zoshchenko and oth-
ers liked to portray is one in which Lenin circulates incognito among the
people and makes a great impression by his goodness and easy manner.
This is followed by a recognition scene with cries of amazement. It is an
unsettled debate whether Zoshchenko wrote these Lenin stories tongue-
in-cheek, creating clever parodies of a bizarre genre, or whether he was
genuinely impressed by the Lenin figure. A third, highly believable expla-
nation is that Zoshchenko, like so many of his colleagues, wanted to dem-
onstrate his political loyalty in order to avoid falling victim to the raging
witch-hunt.
404 chapter seven

The year 1937 saw the publication of Works by the Peoples of the USSR
(Tvorchestvo narodov SSSR), a book containing poems about Lenin based
on oral tradition. This was the source for Zoshchenko’s apocryphal story
of the peasant who does not recognise Lenin, but gives him a dressing-
down for trampling the seeds in the field. When two soldiers come shortly
afterwards to fetch the peasant, he thinks his end is nigh, but it turns
out that Lenin can tolerate justifiable criticism, and that in fact he only
needs help with a stove that is smoking. When the job is finished, Lenin
offers the simple representative of the people a cup of tea. Based on
Zoshchenko’s story, Aleksandr Tvardovsky (1910–71) wrote a famous epic
poem for children with the title Lenin and the Stove-Repairer (Lenin i
pechnik, 1940). The emphasis on Lenin’s democratic disposition and lack
of resentment could be seen in 1940 as a comment on Stalin’s isolation
and abuse of power.

Arkady Gaydar

The foremost author of juvenile prose in the 1930s was Arkady Gaydar
(1904–41). He had come to literature straight from the Civil War, and his
military experiences were to form the core of his writing. The element of
adventure is strong in Gaydar’s work, but never at the expense of the ideo-
logical aspects. The connection between the world of children and the
norms of Soviet society is always stressed, as Gaydar strove to educate his
readers to become fully-fledged, patriotic and watchful Soviet citizens.
Gaydar (whose real name was Golikov) was born in the city of Lvov.
He inherited from his parents not only a radical political legacy, but also
a love of literature. As a child, apart from the Russian classics of the 19th
century, he also read Jules Verne and Mark Twain. Gaydar joined in the
work of the Party in the revolutionary year of 1917, and deepened his
political awareness by taking part in a Marxist study circle. A year later,
he volunteered to fight in the Civil War. Gaydar’s career in the Red Army
was unprecedented: when he was appointed to head a regiment in 1919,
he was 15 years old, the youngest in the history of the Soviet army. How-
ever, his war experience came to a traumatic end when he was tempo-
rarily excluded from the Party in 1922 on grounds of cruelty to prisoners
of war.
In 1924, Gaydar took his leave of the army to try his hand at journalism.
He wrote articles for the local press about working life, and his travels as
a reporter brought him into contact with different parts of the country.
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 405

Fig. 18. Arkady Gaydar

At the same time, his interest in children’s literature was aroused, starting
from a desire to tell younger readers about the establishment and early
years of Soviet power. Gaydar had a wealth of autobiographical material
to draw back on, but his modest comment on his background was, “It
was not my biography but the time that was extraordinary; it is simply an
ordinary biography in an extraordinary time.”81

81 A. Gaidar, “Obyknovennaia biografiia v neobyknovennoe vremia,” in Vslukh pro sebia:

Sbornik statei i ocherkov sovetskikh detskikh pisatelei. Vol. 1 (M., 1975), 51. (First publ.: Pioner
5–6, 1934, 6–7.)
406 chapter seven

Gaydar’s first literary venture, actually aimed at an adult audience, did

not attract any great attention. The story R.V.S. (1926), on the other hand,
was to win a notable place in Soviet children’s literature. Two Ukrainian
boys are forced to take sides when their game collides with harsh reality.
The time is fraught with danger, as the Civil War rages with Whites, Reds,
and Ukrainian independence fighters battling for control of the Ukraine.
The boys take care of a wounded soldier, who turns out to be a Bolshevik
commissar. Their choice of sides is not made for political reasons, but
Gaydar tries to show that purely human judgements lead the boys in the
right direction. The mysterious letters R.V.S. turn out to be an abbreviation
for Revolyutsionny voenny sovet, that is, Revolutionary Military Council.
The psychological portrait of the boys was convincing, but Gaydar
found it hard to tone down the idealised picture of the Red commissar
and to do justice to the enemy. He is concerned with out-and-out types,
and the experienced, self-assured Bolshevik, here the boys’ ideal, was to
become a standard figure in Soviet literature.
Gaydar’s breakthrough came with the book School (Shkola, 1930). For
this, his first substantial work, he chose a topic that was popular in the
Soviet children’s literature of the period: a child’s development through
world war, revolution and civil war. Gaydar’s hero is thinly disguised—
the name is Gorikov, and not Golikov, and a few years have been added
to the age of the author—but the many autobiographical details make it
clear that Gaydar was writing about his own younger years. School is the
story of how a collective upbringing frees a Russian youth from naive cre-
dulity and political innocence and turns him into a Bolshevik and Party
member. Gorikov, too, wants to play his part in establishing the “bright
kingdom of socialism”.
School is a Bildungsroman, but Gaydar avoided creating a heroic por-
trait. Gorikov attains ideological maturity and Bolshevik qualities only
after many painful experiences and mistakes. From his school with its
bourgeois values, he goes out into the school of life. His mentor is the
Bolshevik Red Army collective; this is where he acquires group discipline
and becomes part of the movement and the historical process. It is only
through the collective that the dream of a bright future can be realised.
In the book, the Revolution comes to a lazy Russian provincial town
dominated by churches and monasteries. The schoolboy Gorikov has
been a patriot like his classmates, but when his father is executed as a
Bolshevik and a deserter, a new social awareness emerges. The tone of the
book changes, too; the humour diminishes, as the serious life-and-death
struggle comes to the fore. The boy becomes aware of the conflicts in
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 407

society and is ready to carry his father’s ideological legacy forward. When
people at school try to take away the Mauser pistol that his father left him,
Gorikov runs away and joins the Red Army. Even as a fifteen-year-old, he
learns to overcome his distaste for war and death. The message is clear:
the future can only be built by force of arms, and in this struggle there is
no room for mercy.
For his next story, Distant Lands (Dalnie strany, 1932), Gaydar drew on
contemporary material. Two eight-year-old boys experience at first hand
the sweeping social changes of the early 1930s. Their tranquil life in the
provinces is disrupted by industrialisation and the collectivisation of agri-
culture. The poor farmers join a collective farm; a power station and a fac-
tory are built, and a school is established. Gaydar also shows how the class
struggle intensifies in the villages; the rich farmers, the kulaks, sabotage
the power station and murder the chairman of the collective farm.
In Distant Lands the remoulding of Russia affects everybody’s life. The
boys become active participants in events and begin to see themselves as
part of the socialist state. The distant lands they dream about prove to be
in the here and now, as the differences between the centre and the prov-
inces are erased. The heroes the children have seen in propaganda posters
are in their midst, in the shape of veterans of the Civil War, geologists, and
an unselfish leader of a kolkhoz, that is, a collective farm.
The tense international situation and the militarisation of Soviet soci-
ety are reflected in The Military Secret (Voennaya tayna, 1935) and The
Fate of the Drummer (Sudba barabanshchika, 1939). The action in The Mili-
tary Secret is played out in the famous Artek Young Pioneer camp, where
children of different nationalities gather for the summer. All are united in
their love of the Soviet Union and the ideals it stands for, and the mili-
tary secret alluded to in the title is precisely this unbreakable unity. The
picture that Gaydar presents of the bourgeois world—in this case, Poland
and Romania—is shocking: honest people who work for the good of the
people are languishing in prison. The children also witness how the kulaks
try to sabotage an industrial project near the camp.
The Young Pioneers in The Military Secret are educated as good Soviet
citizens with the aid of a fable that the young female superintendent of
the camp tells them. It is about a boy who fights alongside his father and
his brothers against the bourgeoisie and dies without revealing the mili-
tary secret of the title. It is a modern, political fable, but it provokes a
debate among the teachers in the camp, which mirrors the discussions
about the value of such fables that were going on in the Soviet Union at
the time. Some of them feel that, instead of fantasy stories, people should
408 chapter seven

tell how vigilant Young Pioneers prevent railway accidents. Gaydar him-
self takes Gorky’s line and uses the story to defend fables with revolution-
ary romantic elements.
The main character in The Fate of the Drummer is a fourteen-year-old
boy who meets with adventures in the summer holidays. The hero finds
himself in trouble, when his father is imprisoned for embezzlement. The
boy meets some tricksters, who turn out to be hardened criminals. Hon-
estly and artlessly, the boy himself recounts what happens; he is no hero,
but is driven by blind—and dangerous—credulity towards adults. It is
the thought of the revolutionary heritage that ultimately sets the former
drummer in the Young Pioneer corps on the right path. With his songs
and stories, his father has given him a love for the battles of the Revolu-
tion and the Civil War. The intrigues the boy is drawn into are seen as an
extension of the Civil War, with people now fighting spies in their midst.
The villains in the book are after information about new Soviet weapons
and do not shrink even from murder. Gaydar’s story ends in a vision of
imminent world revolution and a happy future in which all provocateurs
and spies have been eliminated. The boy has learnt responsibility and soli-
darity with his country and its ideological struggle. He is also reconciled
with his father, who now honestly repents of his crime.
Needless to say, the story has strong elements of propaganda, and read
against the background of the Moscow trials and the mass arrests of ‘ene-
mies of the people’ that were going on at the time, it has an unpleasant
ring to it. In other respects, it stands out as the most successful of Gaydar’s
works; the adventure-story aspect is strong and Gaydar manages to build
up an exciting plot, full of unexpected turns. The boy’s naive narrative
perspective is skilfully exploited, and there is a refreshing lack of stereo-
types in the gallery of characters. The boy is actually an anti-hero; his
father, who is a veteran of the Civil War, has turned to embezzlement
for the sake of a woman; and although the villain of the piece is a callous
murderer, his imagination and humour make him something of a lovable
rogue, a close cousin to Ostap Bender in Ilya Ilf ’s and Evgeny Petrov’s
Twelve Chairs of 1928.
Surprisingly, Gaydar’s own favourite was The Blue Cup (Golubaya
chashka, 1936), a short story that differs markedly from the rest of the
author’s works. The story line is weak, and the Civil War and the current
political situation are present only as a vaguely sketched-in background.
Gaydar also broke with the notion, common at the time, that children’s
literature should not deal with relations between man and wife. The Blue
Cup is a study of a marital drama with the emphasis on psychological
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 409

analysis. A jealous father goes ‘on the run’ with his little daughter; on their
travels through a lyrically depicted summer landscape, they meet many
people and witness various conflicts. Gaydar uses parallel motifs to show
how the problem of living together can be resolved. The child acts as an
intermediary between her parents, when the man finds his way back to
his wife. The Blue Cup contains dimensions that children can hardly com-
prehend, and at the time of its publication it provoked a heated debate
about whether it was suitable children’s reading at all. Nevertheless, The
Blue Cup has a central part in Gaydar’s output.
Chuk and Gek (Chuk i Gek, 1939) also falls outside Gaydar’s main field.
It is outwardly artless with a simple plot. Two mischievous little brothers
travel with their mother to Siberia at the invitation of their father, who
is a geologist. On the journey, the boys encounter the great wide world
and experience little adventures in the taiga. Gaydar addresses issues like
patriotism and love for the Soviet Union. The Spassky bell, which rings
in the New Year across the whole country, is used as a symbol of Soviet
unity.
In the Soviet Union, the novel Timur and His Gang (Timur i ego
komanda, 1941) was held to be Gaydar’s greatest work. The story of how
the thirteen-year-old Young Pioneer Timur and his friends secretly help
people in distress during the War is a true Soviet classic, and was also
made into a popular film and play. Timur is moulded by the new social
system, and his world is a reflection of the processes that are going in
society as a whole. Like the God he briskly denies, he and his friends lis-
ten in secret to the complaints and prayers of their fellows, and at night
they work to see that people’s wishes are fulfilled. A runaway goat must
be found, firewood must be stacked, and a little girl whose father has died
in the War must be comforted. Special protection is given to those houses
from which someone has been called up into the Red Army.
Timur and His Gang combines children’s gang warfare and exciting
night-time adventures with the demands of reality. Their games have
been subordinated to a constructive goal, and in their struggles against
rival groups, Gaydar demonstrates two opposing principles: selfish and
irresponsible behaviour is contrasted with true public spirit. During the
Second World War, the book inspired ‘Timur groups’ all over the Soviet
Union, with the same objectives as their literary model.
Within Soviet children’s literature, Timur and His Gang also defined a
style, especially in the Stalin years. The novel is the most obviously didac-
tic of Gaydar’s works. The modest and admirable Timur is a positive hero
that Gaydar never really succeeds in bringing to life. The novel also has a
410 chapter seven

rather loose structure, with too few moments of actual suspense. The con-
flicts are shallow and often derive from the accidental misunderstandings
that arise when adults are not aware of the creative work being under-
taken in secret by these young heroes.
Gaydar himself volunteered for service in the Second World War. He
wrote reports for the youth newspaper Komsomolskaya pravda about chil-
dren at the front and about young scouts. They included the little sketch
The Campaign (Pokhod, 1944), which was a Soviet bestseller for many
decades. Gaydar’s fate was to die in the fighting in the Ukraine in Octo-
ber 1941.
Gaydar’s official popularity was based on his ideological orthodoxy.
He gained his readership through his skill in combining political teach-
ing with the element of adventure from the classic ‘boy’s book’. He took
events from the children’s world and showed how they were connected
with adult problems and what role children had to play in the socialist
motherland. Gaydar knew how to arouse his readers’ curiosity and main-
tain the suspense. He often makes use of mysterious elements like secret
languages and codes and enigmatic strangers, and he creates dynamic and
exciting plots that help reveal the character of the protagonists. The titles
of his books are chosen with great care.
Gaydar belonged in the vanguard of socialist realism and made no
secret of his ideological leanings. “Later on, people will realise that there
were once people who cunningly described themselves as children’s
authors, although they were actually raising a powerful Red Guard”, he
said at a Komsomol Congress in January 1941.82 Gaydar aimed to awaken
pride in the revolutionary past and stimulate an ideological awareness of
the conflicts of the present day. Atheism and militarism were important
aspects of this ideology. The picture of the world conveyed by Gaydar’s
books is black and white, in keeping with the Stalinist models of the time.
The harmonious Soviet Union is surrounded by bloodthirsty neighbours
waiting for an opportunity to do away with socialism. The enemy uses
fifth columnists whom the children must help to expose. In the capitalist
world, workers are hanged or thrown into jail, and their only salvation is
to escape across the border to the Soviet Union.
The theme of preparedness dominates Gaydar’s output. Espionage
and the threat of war are an ever-present truth even for children. Their

82 A. Gaidar, “Vospitanie muzhestva,” Sobranie sochinenii v chetyrekh tomakh. Vol. 1

(M., 1955), 19. (First publ.: Detskaia literatura 2 / 1941: 39–40.)
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 411

games and fantasies come up against a brutal reality, and their feelings for
their country develop as a consequence of this conflict. At the same time,
Gaydar’s stories take issue with the adventure stories of the 1920s, in which
youthful heroes performed incredible feats and saved the Red Army.
In the Soviet Union, Gaydar’s position was unshakable. Like his con-
temporary, the crippled communist writer Nikolay Ostrovsky, he was
transformed into a myth, immortalised, for example, by Sergey Mikhalkov
in the poem “Arkady Gaydar” (1946). Still, there were some critical voices,
among them the émigré poet, Professor Lev Loseff, who wrote that
“Soviet militarism, the mania against spies, the omnipotence of the
secret police, political purges, the isolated position of the new class of
bureaucrats—all this Gaydar justified and, even more importantly, falsely
romanticized [. . .].”83
Against this, we could mention the fight against anti-Semitism that
Gaydar waged in his books; there, we find German Jews seeking refuge
in the Soviet Union, along with warnings by the author of a latent anti-
Semitism in everyday Soviet life, too. It is also worth noting that Gaydar
declined to contribute to the cults of Lenin and Stalin.

Lev Kassil

Other authors wrote about everyday conflicts within the family, the col-
lective and school. They addressed questions connected with the inner
life and moral concerns of Soviet youngsters. Lev Kassil (1905–70), with a
background in a radical Jewish intelligentsia family, started writing after
Lenin’s death in 1924. The sorrow that he saw all around him demanded
to be described in words. To begin with, Kassil worked as the Moscow
correspondent for a number of provincial newspapers, but his ambitions
also extended to serious literature. His model in this was Vladimir Maya-
kovsky, and it was to Mayakovsky that Kassil sent the first drafts of a book
based on his memories of school. Mayakovsky saw the young writer’s tal-
ent and had some chapters published in the magazine New LEF (Novy Lef )
in 1928. The continuation appeared in Pioneer, to which Kassil became a
regular contributor.
Conduct (Konduit, 1929) is a lively and humorous depiction of “how the
old school broke up and how we taught ourselves everything they didn’t

83 Lev Lifschitz-Loseff, “Children’s literature, Russian,” in The Encyclopedia of Russian

Literature. Vol. 8 (Academic International Press, 1987), 82.
412 chapter seven

want to tell us in class”.84 The setting is Pokrovsk, a small Russian town

on the Volga, at the time of the First World War and the Revolution. The
main characters are two imaginative, bookish brothers, modelled on the
author and his younger brother. The pre-revolutionary school is portrayed
as stifling. The symbol of the prevailing spirit of blind discipline is the
‘Conduct’, a book in which the pupils’ slightest misdemeanours are noted
down. The teachers are caricatured as soulless bureaucrats. This is the
institution that the Revolution sweeps away. The boys realise that a new
era has dawned, when the old rector is replaced by an uneducated dock
worker, whose only merit is that he is a Bolshevik commissar.
The brothers come from a privileged family, but despite their secure
bourgeois background, they are also seized by the spirit of the new age.
Their patriotic fervour at the outbreak of the World War recedes, when
they realise the sacrifices that the war demands. The idea of class struggle
also impinges on school life. The children carry on political discussions
and expose counter-revolutionary ‘elements’ among their teachers and
classmates. For a time, complete anarchy reigns, until the boys learn a
sense of responsibility and self-discipline.
The sequel to Conduct, Shvambraniya (1931), brought a new structure
to the work. ‘Shvambrania’ is an idyllic fantasy land, dreamed up by the
brothers as a counterbalance to an adult world full of injustice and vio-
lence. The country has its own geography, flag, crest, history and language.
Bit by bit, however, real life makes this dreamland redundant. The boys
become involved in revolutionary work, learn to combat petty-bourgeois
tendencies in the world around them and experience a new closeness to
the broad mass of people. They find new idols in the Cheka, the security
police.
Conduct and Shvambraniya are not just about growing out of fantasies
and stepping forward into the adult world; there is also a significant politi-
cal aspect. According to the author, the Bolsheviks turn dreams into real-
ity. A key exchange takes place between the boys and the ‘boss’ of the
Cheka:
“We’re dreaming”, I said, “that everything is beautiful. In our Shvambraniya,
everything is great! There are pavements everywhere, and everyone has huge
muscles! Parents don’t boss children around. You can eat as much sugar as
you like. There are not many funerals, but there are film shows almost every

84 L. Kassil’, “Popytka avtobiografii,” in Vslukh pro sebia: Sbornik statei i ocherkov
sovetskikh detskikh pisatelei. Vol. 1 (M., 1975), 127.
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 413

day. And then there’s the weather—always sunny and fresh. All the poor
people are rich. Everyone is satisfied, and there are no lice.”
“You are amazing guys!” said the boss seriously and warmly. “Now isn’t
the time to dream, but to work. There will be pavements, muscles and films
every day here as well. We will abolish funerals and lice. Just wait! It takes
only a moment to tell a story, but work takes time. Now the thing is not just
to dream, but to work . . .”
In Pokrovsk, now renamed Engels, even reading habits change, as old
favourites are removed from the library: “Hey there, give me some hot
stuff to read, said Kandrash. Something really good. That Boussenard
Louis, for example! You don’t have it? What about Pinkerton? Not that,
either? That’s a Soviet library, I must say!” “We do not keep such stupid
and worthless books any more”, said Dina. “We have much more interest-
ing things here now.”
Conduct and Shvambraniya, which were published together in 1935,
were a great success. American, French and Polish editions made Kassil’s
name known outside the Soviet Union. His fans included the French
Nobel Prize winner Romain Rolland, who met Kassil personally on a visit
to Moscow in 1935 and expressed his admiration for the book: “I felt like
a little boy again when I read Shvambraniya.”85
In the Soviet Union disapproving voices were also heard: influential
critics found the satire too coarse and the humour too anarchic. New
ideals had been introduced into Soviet schools, and a book in which
schoolboys’ mischievous tendencies were depicted sympathetically, while
teachers were ridiculed, was out of step with the times. Even though col-
leagues like Marshak, Mikhalkov and Boris Polevoy defended Kassil, Con-
duct and Shvambraniya were not re-issued for twenty years. Kassil himself
was generally dissatisfied with the heavy metaphorical style so typical of
the period, and made stylistic changes.
The 1930s were a decade filled with hard work for Kassil. As a jour-
nalist on Izvestiya and a contributor to Pioneer Truth, Pioneer and United
Children, he was intensely involved in current events. Besides fiction, he
published small volumes of popular science and politics for children.
In keeping with Stalin’s motto that “there are no such fortresses in the
world that workers, Bolsheviks cannot take” Kassil created a long series
of heroic portraits of Soviet soldiers, frontier guards, airmen, explorers,
inventors and scientists. In 1933, he joined a delegation of writers led by

85 S. Tret’iakov, “Sovetskie pisateli u Romėna Rollana,” Pravda. July 10, 1935, 3.
414 chapter seven

Gorky that went to inspect the work on the White Sea Canal, and he wrote
blindly enthusiastic paeans to the Soviet ‘system of re-education’, in real-
ity hard-labour camps for political prisoners. Two years later, Kassil went
as a sports reporter to Turkey with the Soviet football team, and in 1936 he
was dispatched by Izvestiya to Spain to report on the ongoing Civil War.
Conduct and Shvambraniya had won Kassil a reputation as a humourist
and satirist. He was urged by no less a person than Vsevolod Meyerhold,
the leading avant-garde director in the Soviet theatre, to write a grotesque
satirical play for adults; but Kassil chose to take a quite different line.
His next three novels for young people were attempts at psychological
realism. Kassil wrote about Soviet teenagers confronted with important
choices in their lives. They are tempted by false ideals and role models,
but grow to maturity under the guidance of the collective and influential
adults.
Goalkeeper for the Republic (Vratar respubliki, 1938) is usually described
as the first Soviet sports novel. The main character is a worker’s son, Anton
Kandidov, who achieves world fame as a star goalkeeper on the Soviet
football team. But the ‘rags to riches’ motif is not the key to the novel. Kas-
sil shows how sudden success and celebrity go to Anton’s head. He gives
up work and his old friends to live a wild life. Alcohol becomes a serious
problem for the one-time model proletarian. It is only when Anton finds
his way back to the workers’ collective that he gets a grip on his life.
The novel has an ungainly structure, but the unusual plot and the foot-
ball background bring it to life. The atheistic angle is striking; the factory
where Anton works is a former church, where they sometimes play indoor
football, with the altar as a goal (in Russian the word ‘vorota’ is used for
both). It is the holy places of the new era that Kassil glorifies.
The action in Cheryomysh, the Hero’s Brother (Cheryomysh—brat
geroya, 1938) takes place in a Soviet school setting. Gesha Cheryomysh
is one of the best pupils in the class, and the leading light on the boys’
ice-hockey team. But Gesha comes from a children’s home and suffers
from not having an older brother to feel proud of, so he fantasises that
he is the brother of a famous airman who happens to share the same
surname. Gesha rises in his classmates’ estimation just as he finds an idol
to try to be worthy of. The conflict between fantasy and reality is brought
into the open when the supposed brother visits the town and is invited to
watch an ice-hockey match between the school’s boys and girls. Gesha’s
initial reaction is to run away from the shame of exposure, but his sense
of solidarity with his own team prevails. The airman, modelled on the
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 415

contemporary record-breaking pilot Valery Chkalov, persuades the boy,

after a severe internal struggle, to confess his lie to his friends.
“It is good to have dreams, but the dream must go hand in hand with
the truth”, says the adult Cheryomysh. One’s own merits are the key, not
outward connections, and fame should not be a yardstick. The airman
himself modestly thanks Stalin and the Party for everything. He demon-
strates that the important thing is to live an honest life and fulfil the obli-
gations one is faced with. Gesha is accepted back into the class collective,
and the famous flyer becomes a loyal friend.
The narrator in Kassil’s The Great Opposition (Velikoe protivostoyanie,
1941) is a thirteen-year-old Moscow girl, Sima Krupitsyna. Her life takes an
unexpected turn, when her outward resemblance to a famous historical
partisan girl causes her to be offered a role in a film about the war of 1812.
Like the footballer Kandidov, Sima becomes famous overnight and starts
dreaming of a career as a film star. She finds a mentor in the director of
the film, who perceives that she does not have sufficient ability, after all.
Setbacks compel Sima herself to realise that the key in art is not overnight
success and cheap popularity, but true talent. The future is built not on a
lucky break, but on honest hard work.
Lidiya Budogoskaya (1898–1984), another author from Marshak’s Chil-
dren’s Literature Studio, placed The Story of the Streetlamp (Povest o
fonare, 1936) in a school setting. A schoolboy breaks a streetlamp through
pure stupidity, but the teacher succeeds in awakening in the children a
sense of responsibility for public property. They begin to see the connec-
tion between the solitary light on their dark street and the First Five Year
Plan and the transformation it brings.
Budogoskaya was one of the first Soviet writers to stress the role of
teachers in children’s upbringing. Also new was the attempt to portray
teenage love, in The Story of the Red-Haired Girl (Povest o ryzhey devochke,
1929). Budogoskaya describes a childhood in a very negatively drawn pre-
revolutionary Russia, with great emphasis placed on the lonely young
heroine’s inner feelings, which are portrayed without too much psycholo-
gising. Some critics found evidence in the book of the kind of sentimental-
ity that belonged more to the children’s books of the Tsarist era.
The romantic novel for girls was a neglected genre in the years between
the wars, and Ruvim Fraerman (1891–1972) set out to fill this gap. In an
article in Children’s Literature in 1938, he wrote about his literary plans:
after short stories about the Civil War and a novel about the collectiviza-
tion of agriculture, he was now ready to address “the secret desires of girls”
416 chapter seven

and write about love. What was missing in contemporary Soviet children’s
literature was reading for fourteen- to fifteen-year-old girls.86 The result
was Dingo the Wild Dog, or A Story of First Love (Dikaya sobaka dingo, ili
Povest pervoy lyubvi, 1939), a ‘girls’ book’ still widely read to this day.
Dingo the Wild Dog is a psychological novel with the focus on the emo-
tional turmoils of a young girl. The heroine of the novel, the fifteen-year-
old Tanya, is a child of divorced parents. Her life changes when her father,
whom she has come to hate, moves with his new family to the town where
Tanya and her mother live. The encounter with her father forces her to
master her aggression and the first complications of adult life. Love comes
into the picture as Tanya falls for her new stepbrother, without being able
to express her feelings. These dizzying experiences cause the previously
well-behaved girl problems at home, at school and with her friends. The
conflict between the individual and the collective is treated in a way atyp-
ical for the time. Tanya is called Dingo, a symbol of the other reality and
the foreign countries that she dreams of. This is the role that Tanya grows
out of in the year through which we follow her life. Her childhood is now
behind her, and she is ready to move on and embark on her youth.
In its time, Fraerman’s book was sharply criticised by teachers who felt
that Soviet youngsters were not mature enough to read about teenage
love affairs and divorce. The same criticism also fell on Gaydar’s above-
mentioned short story The Blue Cup (Golubaya chashka, 1936). It seemed
that children could read about the class struggle and the construction of
power stations, but they needed to be shielded from the conflicts of fam-
ily life.
Under the title “Lyolya and Minka” (“Lyolya i Minka”), Mikhail
Zoshchenko, the popular satirist, collected episodes from his own child-
hood and wrote about practical jokes and mishaps, and about his parents’
interference. The narrative viewpoint is that of the adult who has come to
see the wisdom of his father’s maxims and punishments and now in his
turn wants to drum the same moral rules into his readers. The qualities
he extols are honesty, courage, initiative and self-sufficiency. What distin-
guishes Zoshchenko is his mischievous, slightly whimsical narrative style,
calculated to create a feeling of uncertainty in the reader. The element of
parody is to the fore in The Clever Animals (Umnye zhivotnye, 1939) and
The Most Important Thing (Samoe glavnoe, 1940).

86 R. Fraerman, “Nad chem ia rabotaiu,” Detskaia literatura 2 (1938): 40.

 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 417

Two other major writers tried their hand at writing for young people in
the 1930s, namely Valentin Kataev (1897–1986) and Veniamin Kaverin.
Kataev’s novel A Lonely White Sail (Beleet parus odinoky, 1936) builds
on the author’s own nostalgically relived childhood in Odessa. Kataev
writes about the revolution year of 1905 as experienced by two charm-
ingly drawn young friends. The boys have taken on aspects of Tom Sawyer
and Huckleberry Finn; one is at a grammar school and has a bourgeois
background, while the other is an orphaned fisherman’s son. By helping a
Bolshevik sailor who has taken part in the mutiny on the cruiser Potyomkin,
the boys are drawn into the events of the revolution. The book contains
romantic adventure elements, clandestine activities and dangerous secrets,
but it also meets the demands of socialist realism with its glorification
of the Bolsheviks and its blacker than black portrayal of the servants of
Tsarist Russia.
A Lonely White Sail was to form the first part of a series of novels, The
Waves on the Black Sea (Volny Chornogo morya, 1936–61), in which Kataev
follows the two friends from Odessa through the First World War, the Rev-
olution and the Civil War. Like Gaydar, Kataev wanted to show how even
children and young people instinctively choose the right side in battles.
In the fourth and final part, The Catacombs (Katakomby), we have moved
forward to the Second World War and the battle for Odessa.
Influenced by the increasing military tension in Europe, Kataev wrote I,
a Son of the Working People (Ya, syn trudovogo naroda, 1937). The title was
taken from the Soviet soldier’s oath. The Russian Civil War is presented as
a patriotic war: the war-weary peasant soldier who returns home from the
German front comes to realise that his personal happiness is inseparable
from the defence of the Bolshevik state, and he goes out as a partisan to
fight against foreign invaders and his White compatriots. The story was
used by Sergey Prokofiev as a libretto for his opera Semyon Kotko (1940).
There are strong elements of the adventure novel in Veniamin Kaverin’s
(1902–89) Two Captains (Dva kapitana, 1938–40). An orphaned boy is
trained by the Soviet government as a polar airman. He lives in a time of
romantic dreams of discoveries in the North, and he becomes obsessed
with the idea of solving the mystery of a vanished pre-revolutionary Rus-
sian expedition to the Arctic Ocean. A powerful motive for the hero is
his love for the daughter of the lost captain, an unexpected theme for
the 1930s in the Soviet Union. The villains in the novel are not kulaks or
saboteurs, but careerists who unscrupulously claim the credit for others’
discoveries and stop at nothing to eliminate their rivals. A significant aim
418 chapter seven

for Kaverin was to build a bridge to the best of pre-revolutionary Russia

and to honour the intrepid voyages of discovery from that time.
During the War, Kaverin worked on a sequel, in which the airman dis-
tinguishes himself in the Spanish Civil War and the World War itself, and
finally reaches the place where the polar expedition came to grief. This
second part (1944) exposed more clearly certain weaknesses that were
already present in Two Captains—the long drawn-out narrative and the
difficulty of creating a coherent whole from the disparate elements.
In the 1930s science fiction became a genre for youngsters in their early
teens. The enemy in these works is either the fascists or ‘internal enemies’,
wreckers; another worthy opponent is nature itself. Soviet scientists look
for new sources of energy and test new inventions in Grigory Adamov’s
(1886–1945) novels Conquerors of the Deep (Pobediteli nedr, 1937), The
Secret of the Two Oceans (Tayna dvukh okeanov, 1939) and The Expulsion
of the Ruler (Izgnanie vladyki, 1941–46). The Secret of the Two Oceans tells
of the trip of a submarine, “a wonder of Soviet science and technology”
from Leningrad to Vladivostok. It contains elements typical of the time,
such as the existence of a traitor among the crew, the struggle against
agents of imperialism, the fulfilling of the Party’s orders and lectures on
the triumphs of Soviet science. The Young Pioneer Pavlik is there for the
readers to identify with.
Aleksandr Belyaev devoted himself to rewriting old works in the spirit
of the new decade, or squandered his talent on optimistic visions of a
happy and affluent tomorrow for the Soviet people. Even when writing
about interplanetary voyages and advanced inventions, dramatic tension
was lacking. This was a conscious choice, which Belyaev defended in a
1939 article:
The easiest thing in the world is to create a gripping science fiction novel
about the class struggle. There you have contrasts, characters, tough strug-
gles and all kinds of secrets and unexpected turns . . . The hardest thing for
a writer is to create a gripping plot for a book that describes the classless
communist society of the future, to anticipate the conflicts between the pos-
itive heroes, and guess at two or three traits of the man of the future. The
task of showing the future society with all its scientific, technical, cultural,
everyday, economical aspects is as important as the description of the class
struggle. I chose the harder task.87

87 A. Beliaev, “O moikh rabotakh,” Detskaia literatura 5 (1939): 25.

 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 419

In his last years, Boris Zhitkov wrote mostly for children of preschool age.
When, in 1934, he moved to Moscow, he became an editor at Pioneer, as
well as involving himself with the science magazine The Young Naturalist
(Yuny naturalist). In an essay written in 1933 he expressed his amazement
at children’s ‘genius’. Their strength lay in the fact that they looked at
things schematically; ignoring secondary features, they picked out what
was essential and central. Their schematisation was creative, it was “bold
and strong”, and had nothing in common with dogma, narrow-minded-
ness or limited thinking.88
Zhitkov was not only at home with short adventure stories, but also
made a name for himself in popular scientific literature. His columns in
The New Robinson in the mid-1920s gave children an introduction to the
world of science and technology, and some of them were later published in
book form. Zhitkov’s publications in this field include Steam Locomotives
(Parovozy, 1925), The Air Balloon (Vozdushny shar, 1926), The Ten-Kopeck
Piece: the Story of a Coin (Grivennik: Istoriya monety, 1927), The Telegram
(Telegramma, 1927), About this Book (Pro ėtu knigu, 1927), Light Without
Fire (Svet bez ognya, 1927), Lithography (Kamennaya pechat: Litografiya
(1931), Eccentrics: The Development of Technology and Inventions (Chudaki;
Razvitie tekhniki i izobretatelstva, 1931), The Steamship (Parokhod, 1935)
and Stories About Technology (Rasskazy o tekhnike, 1942). Zhitkov had the
greatest respect for the power of human reason and professional skill. As
he famously remarked of a colleague: “What sort of children’s writer is
he, if he can’t even knock a nail into a wall?”89 He often wrote about the
creative process itself and how man gradually reached his present level in
the world of technology.
In his popular science books, Zhitkov never neglected the interests of the
child reader. Besides reliable information there is humour and suspense.
He was a tireless experimenter, curious about the latest advances in tech-
nology and always ready to try his hand at new genres. In 1927, he pub-
lished three ‘do-it-yourself’ books, with drawings of an ice-yacht, an Indian
boat and a stroboscope, and the following year, he had sheets printed
with cut-out dolls for girls. He was also interested in the visual media,
commissioning illustrations for some of his animal stories to be watched
as filmstrips. Shortly before his death Zhitkov worked on a children’s

88 Boris Zhitkov, “Chto nuzhno vzroslym ot detskoi knigi,” in Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo B.S.
Zhitkova (М.: 1955), 367–376. (First publ.: Zvezda 7 / 1933: 132–137.)
89 Sergei Sivokon’, Uroki detskikh klassikov (M., 1990), 68.
420 chapter seven

calendar, with each page giving answers to questions of relevance to

children.
Zhitkov’s last work, What I Saw (Chto ya videl, 1939), was published
posthumously. This is a fictionalised encyclopaedia aimed at children
aged 4–6, dubbed by Zhitkov the “why-children”. The book stands out
among Soviet children’s literature, and it was often emphasised that it
had no equivalent in world literature in terms of its scale or target group.
The author himself felt that What I Saw should provide enough reading for
a whole year. The ‘encyclopaedia’ took the form of a story about a journey.
The narrator is an inquisitive boy, Alyosha, who travels with his mother
from Leningrad to Moscow and then with his aunt to Kiev. Zhitkov kept
strictly to the perspective of the young traveller; hence the limited vocab-
ulary, the simple sentence structure and the preference for dialogue, as
well as the limited life experience and the unintentional humour. A recur-
ring phrase in the book is ‘I asked why’.
Alyosha is not just used to move the narrative forward with his naive
questions; the picture of him grows into a living portrait. In the course of
the journey, the boy acquires more and more fresh knowledge. He takes a
ride in a taxi, sees Red Square, the Moscow metro, the zoo, ships, houses
and collective farms. His questions about the things he observes on his
travels are answered in detail. Alyosha also gains an insight into Soviet
society, with the Red Army and the Young Pioneer organisation at its
heart.
Zhitkov enjoyed a renaissance after Stalin’s death. The year 1955 saw
the publication of a book of reminiscences, articles and documents about
Zhitkov and a monograph by Lidiya Chukovskaya. While his popular sci-
ence books had already served their purpose, his stories continued to enjoy
huge popularity. One explanation is that Zhitkov satisfied the thirst for
adventure and exoticism. There was nothing in his work about the Octo-
ber Revolution, the Civil War, collectivisation, the Soviet school or the
life of Young Pioneers. He built constantly on his memories from before
the Revolution; typically, the 1905 Revolution, as Zhitkov experienced it
in Odessa, left a deeper mark than the social convulsions that were to fol-
low. Even when he wrote about animals, he gave priority to wild creatures
from other countries. In his adventure stories, the characters have Russian
names, but otherwise lack any national characteristics. The qualities that
Zhitkov valued—always without open moralising—were not tied to any
particular time or place.
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 421

Buratino and the Golden Key

The second part of the decade also produced some books of a fairy-tale or
fantasy character that have retained their popularity to this day. At that
time, contact with the outside world in the form of translations had been
reduced to a minimum, and there was a widespread notion that a great
part of ‘bourgeois’ children’s literature was unsuitable or even incompre-
hensible for children in the socialist Soviet Union. As a result, Soviet writ-
ers felt free to rework foreign literature, so that it would better serve the
needs and the values of history’s first socialist state. They could also count
on the fact that only a few of their readers would be able to recognise the
prototypes.
The Golden Key, or The Adventures of Buratino (Zolotoy klyuchik, ili
Priklyucheniya Buratino, 1935–36) is Aleksey Tolstoy’s version of Pinoc-
chio. The first Russian translation of Collodi’s famous story had come out
in 1905–1906, but Pinocchio had never really caught on in Russia. Having
emigrated to Berlin after the Revolution, Tolstoy published an adaptation,
The Adventures of Pinocchio (Priklyucheniya Pinokkio), based on a rough
Russian translation by Nina Petrovskaya. Back home in the Soviet Union,
he again set to work on Collodi’s story when the attacks on fantasy had
abated in the mid-1930s. In this way, a Soviet Pinocchio emerged, who
differed from the original in many respects. In order to make the story
more suitable for a young audience, Tolstoy shortened and simplified the
book, toned down the moralising, removed some frightening and super-
natural details and laid a stress on both linguistic and situation comedy.
The hero was baptised Buratino, Italian for a wooden doll, a word that
Tolstoy found in the subtitle of Collodi’s book, and a new central symbol,
a golden key, was introduced. As an excuse for his unabashed retelling
of the Italian classic, Tolstoy explained in a preface that he did not have
access to the original, but had had to try to restore it from memory.
The theme of The Golden Key is not, as in the original, the puppet’s
striving to become a real boy, but rather the revolt of the collective. In
their struggle against the exploiter, the owner of the puppet theatre, the
puppets are welded together into a collective and decide to launch their
own theatre, in which all will be equal. The golden key that Buratino
obtains opens the door not to riches, but to freedom from oppression. Its
humour, fantasy and adventure made The Golden Key into an enduring
favourite among Soviet children. The play version of 1936 also enjoyed
great success at the Central Children’s Theatre in Moscow. The film version
422 chapter seven

(1939), directed by the pioneer of Soviet fairy-tale cinema Aleksandr

Ptashko, was a landmark in the history of Soviet children’s culture.
The original Pinocchio was only published in the Soviet Union in 1959.
In the foreword, the novelist Ėmmanuil Kazakevich (1913–62) quickly
passes over Tolstoy’s ‘free version’, firstly by saying, “He who knows the
copy should also learn to know the original”, then by stressing the many
differences between the two works.90 In 1957, Kazakevich, accompanied
by Zabolotsky and the poet Aleksandr Tvardovsky, had visited Collodi’s
home town in Tuscany and seen the Pinocchio statue. The translation
from the Italian was presumably inspired by this meeting. After the 1959
edition, it took another twenty-four years before a second edition could
appear, and then only in the remote city of Kazan.
In his last years, Tolstoy worked on an anthology of Russian animal
and miracle stories. He explained his working method thus: “From the
numerous variants of a folktale I choose the most interesting, the most
fundamental, and then I enrich it with colourful turns of speech and plot
from other variants.”91 Although he sometimes made radical revisions, he
always strove to retain the tales’ popular language and style. The collec-
tion was published posthumously in 1946.
A translation of Baron Münchhausen in the 1920s had met with a hostile
reception from teachers and librarians, as it was full of lies. The infor-
mation that the Baron gave to children about the moon, for example,
did not agree with the findings of Soviet science. A more restrained and
acceptable braggart was found in Captain Khristofor Vrungel, the main
protagonist of Andrey Nekrasov’s (1907–87) novel The Adventures of
Captain Vrungel (Priklyucheniya kapitana Vrungelya, 1939). The Captain
teaches navigation at the Maritime Institute, where his unassuming exte-
rior proves to be misleading as he starts to tell his students of his fantas-
tic adventures on a voyage around the world. The whole work was like a
parody of Evgeny Schwartz’s more serious The Map of Adventures (Karta
s priklyucheniyami).
Vrungel not only has elements of the inveterate mythomaniac Münch-
hausen; he also has—at least in his own stories—Robinson Crusoe’s
resourcefulness and courage. These two sides are reflected in the name
Vrungel, which alludes partly to ‘vrun’ (liar) and partly to ‘dzhungel’ ( jungle).

90 Ė. Kazakevich, “Iunym i vzroslym chitateliam ‘Pinokkio’,” in Karlo Kollodi, Prikliu-

cheniia Pinokkio (M., 1959), 4.
91  Aleksei Tolstoi, “Predislovie,” Sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 8 (М., 1960), 320.
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 423

The humour in the book is often based on such puns as this. Vrungel’s
ship is originally called ‘Pobeda’ (Victory), but in the course of the voy-
age, the first two letters fall off, leaving the captain and his crew to sail
aboard the good ship ‘Beda’ (Disaster). On his voyage across the seven
seas from the Antarctic to South America, Vrungel encounters cannibals
and Eskimos, English lords and pirates. He has a powerful enemy in Cap-
tain Kusaki, but he always manages to emerge unscathed from even the
most impossible situations.
However, the funniest book of the 1930s is Old Man Khottabych (Starik
Khottabych, 1938) by Lazar Lagin (1903–79). Lagin was inspired by One
Thousand and One Nights with its Oriental fairy-tale world, but, above all,
by the comic novel The Brass Bottle (1900) by the English writer F. Anstey.
Anstey enjoyed popularity in pre-revolutionary Russia, and a translation
of The Brass Bottle had come out as early as 1902, just two years after the
original. From Anstey, Lagin borrowed not only the basic idea, but even
whole scenes, although the setting was the Soviet Union and the time
chosen—the 1930s. And while Anstey had written for adults with a grown-
up protagonist, Lagin used the idea for a children’s book.
Khottabych is a djinn, imprisoned for thousands of years before being
released from his jar by a Soviet Young Pioneer. As the literary tradition
dictates, the djinn is ready to thank his new master by granting his every
wish, showering him with precious stones and giving him power. However,
the idea of happiness turns out to have changed in the socialist Soviet
Union, and the funniest complications arise when the well-meaning djinn
uses his talents to fill the boy’s courtyard in Moscow with elephants and
Indian servants, and other rewards of this kind. The misunderstandings
that arise out of the culture shock are hilarious, but there is also a serious
side. As with the contemporary novel for adults by Ilf and Petrov, The
Twelve Chairs, the moral of Old Man Khottabych is that private wealth
and power have lost their attraction in a socialist society. It is the Young
Pioneer boy who has to re-educate the djinn and initiate him into the
communist view of things.
L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz, the first genuine American fantasy, also
has a Soviet counterpart—The Wizard of the Emerald City (Volshebnik
izumrudnogo goroda, 1939), by Aleksandr Volkov (1891–1977). The girl
from Kansas is called Elly and not Dorothy, the Wizard has the surname
Goodwin, some new chapters have been added and minor details changed,
but, on the whole, it is a relatively faithful translation. Still, it appeared
under Volkov’s name, while Baum’s role was downplayed. Before the Sec-
ond World War three editions came out, running to over 200,000 copies
424 chapter seven

in all, but only after Stalin’s death was a fourth edition possible (1959).
What followed was a story of unshakable success. Like Baum in his time,
Volkov was bombarded with letters from children begging for a sequel.
In the separate parts that followed, Volkov showed that he was capable
of creating enticing adventure stories of his own. Some ideas, motifs and
characters may have been borrowed from Baum’s set of books, but gen-
erally speaking Volkov created a universe of his own in Urfin Juice and
his Wooden Soldiers (Urfin Dzhus i ego derevyannye soldaty, 1963), Seven
Underground Kings (Sem podzemnykh koroley, 1964), The Fire-King of the
Marranos (Ognenny bog Marranov, 1964), The Yellow Fog (Zholty tuman,
1970) and The Secret of the Deserted Castle (Tayna zabroshennogo zamka,
1982). The Soviet bias can be seen in the struggle against invaders or feu-
dalism and oligarchy, where the heroes side with the people.
In the 1930s, Evgeny Schwartz used the fairy-tale form to urge children
to be good, friendly and hard-working. Fairy-tale figures and real people
appear side by side. In “The New Adventures of Puss in Boots” (“Novye
priklyucheniya Kota v sapogakh”), we find Charles Perrault’s famous cat in
a Young Pioneer camp, helping to get rid of delinquents. Those who place
themselves outside the collective and create problems are in the service of
pre-revolutionary Russia, represented in the story by an ugly toad.
For Schwartz, the 1930s also brought a major change of focus, towards
drama. His slightly reworked stage and puppet theatre versions of Little Red
Riding Hood (Krasnaya shapochka, 1937) and The Snow Queen (Snezhnaya
koroleva, 1939) were aimed mainly at children. However, The Naked King
(Goly korol, written 1934, published 1960), based on three tales by Hans
Christian Andersen—“The Swineherd”, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and
“The Princess and the Pea”, as well as Schwartz’s The Shadow (Ten, 1940)
and The Dragon (Drakon, 1944), had a disturbing allegorical dimension
that prevented them from being performed until the 1960s. These were
potentially subversive plays about unlimited power, the abuse of power
and the psychological effects of dictatorship on the citizens’ conscious-
ness. Set in a fantasy realm, they enabled Soviet commentators to identify
the villains in The Dragon as Hitler and his Nazis, and not as Stalin and his
obedient tools. This identification, however, was not sufficiently strong to
make a general distribution of Schwartz’s masterpiece possible.
A less ambiguous message could be found in Veniamin Kaverin’s The
Tale of Mitka and Masha, the Happy Chimney-Sweep and Master Golden
Hands (Skazka o Mitke i Mashe, o vesyolom trubochiste i mastere Zolotye
ruki, 1938). In Kaverin’s tale, the evil wizard of folklore, Koshchey the
 a new society—a new literature (1932–1940) 425

Immortal, is a tyrant with three obedient dogs bearing the transparent

names of Gör, Goeb and Him. He kidnaps a girl from Leningrad and tries
to make her like him. Modern elements such as aeroplanes are mixed in
with traditional fairy tale motifs such as helpful talking animals, as the
girl’s brother sets out to free her from captivity. The wizard is vanquished,
and the town he held in his clutches revives. In a dramatic way, literature
here anticipated reality.
Valentin Kataev also wrote fairy tales, but without any contemporary
associations. The little girls in “The Whistle and the Jug” (“Dudochka i
kuvshinchik”, 1940) and “The Flower of Seven Colours” (“Tsvetik-semits-
vetik”, 1940) are transported to a fairy-tale world where magical objects
are at their service. There is a whistle that entices all the berries out of
the forest and a flower whose petals make every wish come true. But the
girls realise that there is no shortcut to happiness and prosperity—true
happiness is the result of hard work and good deeds.
For “The Hot Stone” (“Goryachy kamen”, 1941), Arkady Gaydar used the
same familiar fairy-tale ingredients, but his intention was different. A boy
finds a magic stone and wants to do a good deed by letting the ailing old
watchman in the kolkhoz garden live his life all over again. But the old
man wants none of it; he is satisfied with his life, because he has been able
to take part in the Revolution. Gaydar wants to make the reader believe
that the stone will lie unused, because everyone in the Soviet Union is
already living a happy life.
Uncanny tales, collectively called The Malachite Casket (Malakhitovaya
shkatulka), came from the pen of Pavel Bazhov (1879–1950). Originally, he
claimed that they were Urals folklore, born before the Revolution among
the Urals working class. They were labelled skazy (true, oral tales) and
not skazki (fairy tales) by the author, but it has been demonstrated that
they were as much the outcome of his own fantasy as anything else. The
first individual publications of these tales, aimed at adults, date from
1936, while the collection, which won the Stalin Prize in 1943, came out in
1942. As many of Bazhov’s stories gained popularity among young readers,
as well, Detgiz gave them their own volume, Tales of the Urals (Uralskie
skazy, 1945).
In his skazy Bazhov celebrated the talents and professional skills of the
Urals workers, while pointing out that traits like these could not be fully
developed in Tsarist Russia. His heroes appropriately dream of a changed
world. In 1953, one critic wrote that “even today Bazhov’s tales help chil-
dren in seeing what is important in life and in distinguishing friends from
426 chapter seven

foes, and they raise passionate fighters for Communism, for peace and
happiness all over the world.”92
Side by side with the seemingly authentic there is, however, a world of
magic, a universe filled with extraordinary events, dark forces, mountain
spirits and hidden treasures. The young hero is tested, and in the quest
he is aided by a magical helper. Seeing Bazhov’s anthology as an example
of double encoding, that is having one layer for the child reader, another
for the adult, Mark Lipovetsky interprets the tales, with their dark fore-
boding and feelings of terror and fear, as glimpses from the Soviet collec-
tive unconscious.93 Bazhov wrote the main part of his tales in 1937–38, a
period when he, accused of “glorification of the enemies of the people”,
was hiding from the authorities and impending arrest. While the tales of
the Urals offered him an escape from reality, they also implicitly brought
out the essence of his time.
Bazhov’s tale “The Stone Flower” (“Kamenny tsvetok”) was the basis of
a film in 1946 and later, in 1950, was turned into a ballet with music by
Sergey Prokofiev. Bazhov’s original mythology also awoke interest outside
the Soviet Union: there are two London editions, one dating from 1944
and the other, The Mistress of the Copper Mountain, from 1974.

92 R. Goldshtein, “P.P. Bazhov kak pisatel’ dlia detei,” Voprosy detskoi literatury 1952
(M., 1953), 91.
93 Mark Lipovetsky, “Pavel Bazhov’s Skazy,” in Russian Children’s Literature and Culture,
ed. Marina Balina and Larissa Rudova (New York-London, 2008), 266.
 chapter eight

“UNDER THE WISE LEADERSHIP OF THE PARTY AND THE

FATHERLY CARE OF COMRADE STALIN” (1941–1953)

The War

In January 1941, Soviet writers and critics of children’s literature assembled

for another conference. This time, there were two topics on the agenda:
military readiness and the work ethic. While the first was dictated by the
times, the second had gained currency from the disheartening results of
the 1930s. Soviet childhood had begun to be portrayed in literature as
a “cloudless sky”. Children had plenty of everything, and nothing was
demanded of them. The Pioneer leaders constantly impressed on children
that they were happy and privileged. Their time at Pioneer camps passed
like a dream; their only disappointments were that they had to go to bed
early and that their football team occasionally lost a game.
Boris Shatilov’s (1896–1955) In the Camp (V lagere, 1938) was mentioned
at the conference as a glaring example of a book that gave its readers a
false sense of carefree ease, turning them into gentlefolk and good-for-
nothings. However, the real problem with the novel was that it was apo-
litical, with the hero’s family relations and his interest in girls receiving
greater attention than any Soviet topoi of immediate importance.1
The new general secretary of the Komsomol, Nikolay Mikhaylov, came
to the conference to give some advice to the writers. The key thing was
to foster respect for labour, an understanding of its social impact and an
ability to feel the romance of the simplest, most mundane work.2 The
assembled writers agreed. Reverence for work had diminished, as had a
sense of responsibility and an awareness of the importance of individual
effort. Viktor Shklovsky also felt called upon to warn writers against nour-
ishing children’s dreams of “instant, heroic deeds”.3 Instead of writing
about achievements that were the result of prolonged hard work, writers

1 V. Shklovskii, “O trudovom vospitanii,” Detskaia literatura 2 (1941): 13–15.

2 N.A. Mikhailov, “Trudovoe i voennoe vospitanie detei,” Detskaia literatura 2 (1941):
4–5.
3 Shklovskii, Detskaia literatura 2 (1941): 15.
428 chapter eight

chose heroes who became famous overnight, by rescuing a comrade from

drowning, for example.
Benyamin Ivanter, the former editor of the magazine Pioneer, spoke
about military training. Too much space in children’s books was given
over to friendship and love, he said, when it was now far more impor-
tant to “promote the spirit and feelings of the future fighter, to harden
his character and prepare him psychologically to meet future difficulties
and dangers”.4 The kind of books whose example helped to form ‘coura-
geous and noble characters’ included Arkady Gaydar’s School (Shkola) and
Timur and his Gang (Timur i ego komanda), Nikolay Ostrovsky’s How the
Steel was Hardened (Kak zakalyalas stal, 1932–34), Veniamin Kaverin’s Two
Captains (Dva kapitana), and the classic The Gadfly (1897), by the English
writer Ethel Voynich.
According to Ivanter, there was also too little non-fiction about mod-
ern warfare. There was a need for more books in the style of Stories of
the Artillery (Rasskazy ob artillerii, 1941) by L. Savelev. At the conference,
Savelev himself put forward a plan for a series of military books for young
people.5 Together with a colonel from the army, he was working on The
Military Book (Voennaya kniga, 1941), with historical examples of Russian
military achievements and presentations of the infantry, the artillery and
the air force.

The Second World War was to affect the whole of Soviet society. Large
parts of the country were occupied by foreign forces. The victims of the
War were numbered in the tens of millions, and the material devasta-
tion was appalling. It was a struggle in which all the resources of society
were mobilised. Many writers took part in the War, some bearing arms
themselves, some becoming war correspondents. Among the authors
and editors of children’s books who lost their lives were Arkady Gaydar,
Benyamin Ivanter, L. Savelev, Doyvber Levin (1904–41 or 1942), a writer
from the OBERIU circle, and Sergey Stebnitsky (1906–41), the author of
stories about life in Kamchatka. Publishing also reached a crisis point on
the outbreak of war in 1941. Among the magazines that closed down were
Children’s Literature (Detskaya literatura), the main theoretical forum for
children’s books, and The Siskin.
Children’s literature was expected to contribute to the war effort. In
Gaydar’s film script Timur’s Oath (Klyatva Timura, 1941), the child’s carefree

4 B. Ivanter, “Voennoe vospitanie i detskaia literartura,” Detskaia literatura 2 (1941): 29.
5 L. Savel’ev, “Chetyre voprosa,” Detskaia literatura 2 (1941): 34–36.
 wise leadership and the fatherly care of comrade stalin 429

existence is interrupted on 22 June 1941 by the news of the German attack.

“We were playing, but now war is raging on Soviet soil, and the game is
over . . .”, says Timur. His gang looks for a place in Civil Defence. Even
small boys, like the one in Aleksandr Vvedensky’s poem “What about
you?” (“A ty?”, 1941), dream of playing their part. Their choice of career
is obvious: cavalryman, tank driver, fighter pilot, infantryman, sailor or
engineer. Vvedensky concludes by pointing a finger at the reader: “And
what about you?”
Writers were expected to instil in their readers a sense of optimism
and the will to win. At a moment when both Leningrad and Moscow were
threatened by the enemy, the anthology For Soviet Children (Sovetskim
detyam, 1941) came out in Gorky (formerly Nizhny Novgorod), with con-
tributions from Marshak, Gaydar and others. Aleksey Tolstoy set the tone
in his article “Fascism Will Be Crushed” (“Fashizm budet unichtozhen”),
in which children were urged to feel pride in the exploits of the Soviet
soldiers and to show a soldier-like tenacity at school and at work.
During the war years themselves and well into peacetime, children’s
literature was dominated by the theme of war. Writers fanned the flames
of patriotism with the aid of historical parallels to the Patriotic War, as
the Napoleonic War of 1812 was known in Russia), with its heroes like
Field-Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov. But it was mainly the present time that
was portrayed, with its heroism and unity in battle and on the home front.
Gaydar and Kassil wrote about the soldiers’ struggle in their sketches for
children from the front. Nikolay Tikhonov’s short stories for young people
(Frontovye rasskazy, 1941), about quick-witted and bold Soviet soldiers on
the Finnish front, presented the War as an exciting adventure. A more
serious tone can be found in Vera Inber’s poems about Leningrad under
siege.
A new heroic ideal was created in the countless portrayals of youngsters
who risked their lives in battles against the enemy. The classic example is
Valentin Kataev’s The Son of the Regiment (Syn polka, 1945). This is how
his colleague Sergey Baruzdin described the novel in the preface to a 1972
edition:
The story of the Son of the Regiment will transport you, my young reader,
back to the difficult but heroic events of the war years, which you know only
from schoolbooks and adults’ stories. It will help you to see these events as
if with your own eyes.
You will meet the simple peasant boy Vanya Solntsev, who has lost every-
thing in the War—his parents and close family, his home and his child-
hood. With him, you will undergo many trials and experience joy at exploits
430 chapter eight

performed in the name of victory over the enemy. You will meet fine people,
fighters in our army such as Sergeant Egorov and Captain Enakiev, Ensign
Kovalyov and Corporal Bidenko, who not only helped Vanya to become a
courageous scout but also gave him the best qualities of a true Soviet man.
And when you have read the story, you will understand that such exploits
are not just a matter of courage and heroism, but of hard work, iron disci-
pline, willpower and infinite love for the motherland.6
Vanya Solntsev joins the regiment with two things in his knapsack: an ABC
book to keep up his reading and a nail to kill fascists with. We encoun-
ter similar precocious little warriors in many other books, most of them
with a documentary background. These are children left without homes
or parents by the War; together with the partisans, they fight against the
Germans and in many cases suffer a horrible death at the hands of the
enemy. Writers did not just dwell upon such dramatic scenes, but also
sought the roots of the children’s patriotism and courage.
Aleksandr Fadeev’s The Young Guard (Molodaya gvardiya, 1945), was
awarded the Stalin Prize in 1946. ‘The young guard’ was a group of Ukrai-
nian partisans consisting of five Komsomol members, who all met mar-
tyrs’ death in 1943. Their leader, the seventeen-year-old Oleg Koshevoy,
also received his own biography, The Story of My Son (Povest o syne, 1948),
written by his mother Elena Koshevaya.
Another legendary war hero was Volodya Dubinin, a fourteen-year-old
partisan from Kerch. Using interviews with relatives and comrades, Lev
Kassil together with Maks Polyanovsky (1901–77) wrote about Volodya’s
short life in The Street of the Youngest Son (Ulitsa mladshego syna, 1949).
Alongside Conduct and Shvambraniya, this is Kassil’s masterpiece. Many
pages are devoted to explaining how a normal Soviet schoolboy could
grow into a fearless fighter. In 1941, Dubinin had remained in the German-
occupied city of Kerch with a group of adults. They lived in inaccessible
tunnels and managed to tie up important German army units until the
city was liberated. Dubinin showed exemplary courage and risked his life
to carry out reconnaissance missions and maintain contact with the out-
side world. The boy was unfortunate enough to be blown up by a mine
after the enemy had already retreated. In Kerch, they honoured Dubinin’s
memory with a street and a statue.
Kassil presents a vital, multi-dimensional portrait of Volodya Dubinin.
He is honourable and talented, but also stubborn and conceited, and he

6 Sergei Baruzdin, [Foreword], in Valentin Kataev, Syn polka (М., 1972), 3–4.
 wise leadership and the fatherly care of comrade stalin 431

often finds himself in situations of conflict. This individualist is trans-

formed into a popular Pioneer leader and a dauntless partisan. An over-
whelming experience for the boy is a visit to the mother of an earlier boy
‘hero’, Pavlik Morozov. Most important, however, is the influence of his
father, a Party member and political instructor: his stories about the Civil
War and his ardent love for the Party and Stalin help to mould the young
boy’s outlook on life. The book was awarded one of the 1950 Stalin Prizes
for literature.
There were also girls among the partisans. Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, a
Moscow schoolgirl, volunteered for the war and was tortured and hanged
by the Germans in 1941; she was posthumously decorated as a Heroine of
the Soviet Union. In literature, her story was taken up for the first time by
Margarita Aliger (1915–92) in the poem “Zoya” (1942), and after the War,
Zoya’s mother Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya (1900–78), with professional
help, wrote a memoir for children entitled The Story of Zoya and Shura
(Povest o Zoye i Shure, 1950). The Shura of the title was Zoya’s brother,
killed on German soil in the last weeks of the War. It emerged from their
mother’s story that the children’s favourite reading included Gaydar’s
books and The Gadfly by Voynich. The Spanish Civil War had made a deep
impression on both children, and this was at the root of their will to fight
and their readiness to give their lives for their country.
Another Komsomol girl who died at the hands of the enemy was Gulya
Korolyova, the heroine of Elena Ilina’s (1901–64) The Fourth Hill (Chet-
vyortaya vysota, 1946). Ilina, the sister of Samuil Marshak and M. Ilin, also
wrote a juvenile book about the young Karl Marx, The Tireless Traveller
(Neutomimy putnik, 1964), a rather uninspiring subject.
In the midst of books such as these, Lev Kassil’s The Light of Moscow
(Svet Moskvy, 1947), a sequel to The Great Opposition (Velikoe protivosto-
yanie, 1941), resounded with everyday realism. At the outbreak of war in
1941 and during the menacing German offensive against Moscow, Sima
dreams of dying a heroine’s death, like the character she has played in a
historical film, but her desire to perform some great exploit in the war is
exposed as naive, when seen against the ferocity of modern warfare. The
majority of readers probably found it easier to identify with the confused
and frightened Sima than with the steadfast Pioneer and Komsomol mar-
tyrs. A new, two-volume version came out in 1947, the same year in which
Moscow celebrated its 800th anniversary. The city is also given a key role
in the second part of the novel, in which Sima’s local patriotism grows in
the face of the German threat.
432 chapter eight

In other books, authors tried to give an insight into life on the home
front. When fathers and older brothers were called up, a great responsibil-
ity was placed on children’s shoulders. They were obliged to help support
the family and take part in the national war effort by doing the hard work
of adults in factories and in the fields. The end of childhood was abrupt.
The boy in L. Pantaleev’s sketch “In the Dinghy” (“Na yalike”, 1943)
looks after his dying father and helps to carry people in a dinghy across
the River Neva during the siege of Leningrad. The adult narrator is full
of admiration for the boy’s tenacity and courage. The same amazement
at children’s invaluable contribution to the war effort can be found in
Sergey Mikhalkov’s poem “Danila Kuzmich” (1944). Mikhalkov portrays
a fourteen-year-old patriot who works in a factory producing tanks for
the front, covering three shifts and getting up at 5:30 every morning. The
adventures of fairy-tale figures pale alongside such wonders, comments
Mikhalkov.
The first novel about young people’s involvement in wartime indus-
try was Lev Kassil’s My Dear Lads (Dorogie moi malchishki, 1944). Kapka
is small of stature, but he does a grown man’s work at the factory. At
the same time, the child in Kapka and his friends lives on, and together
they create a fantasy world, whose symbols and myths give them strength
in inhuman times. The elite within the Pioneer organisation belong to a
secret brotherhood with its home in the fantasy land of Blue Mountain
(Sinegoriya). Under the motto: “Courage, Work, Loyalty and Victory!” they
make their secret contribution to victory over the enemy. Many critics
took a negative view of this solution and spoke of ‘false romanticism’, an
alien Western influence and a flight from life,7 but what Kassil was actu-
ally trying to do was to defend the right of children to draw inspiration
from fairy tales and fantasy, even in times of war. The novel was dedicated
posthumously to Arkady Gaydar, who appears in the book as the much-
loved Pioneer leader Arseny Gay. It is not hard to see that Timur and His
Gang was a literary model for My Dear Lads.
In a steelworks far away in the Urals we find Kostya Malyshev, the
hero of Iosif Likstanov’s (1900–55) novel The Nipper (Malyshok, 1947). His
father and brother are at the front, but the ‘nipper’, who is now alone
in the world, finds a new home within the workers’ collective, where he
develops into a conscientious worker and patriot. The book was awarded
a Stalin Prize in 1948.

7 See Ia. A. Cherniavskaia and I.I. Rozanov, Russkaia sovetskaia detskaia literatura
(Minsk, 1984), 328–329 and I. Lupanova, Polveka, 331.
 wise leadership and the fatherly care of comrade stalin 433

Lyubov Voronkova’s (1906–76) The Little Girl from the City (Devochka
iz goroda, 1943) is an isolated phenomenon in children’s literature of the
war years. Voronkova was a Moscow writer who also dreamed of writ-
ing about heroic Russian partisans and brutal fascists. After a number of
failed attempts, she chose a different approach. The heroine of her book,
little Valya, has lost all her family in the War. With the flood of refugees
she arrives at a kolkhoz, where she finds a new home. Against the prevail-
ing trend for children to get involved in the War, Voronkova portrayed
a woman trying to safeguard her children’s right to a secure upbringing
and even forbidding them to talk about the War. For Valya, the War is
associated with traumatic experiences, and the other children’s curiosity
is painful to her.
Another important theme in The Little Girl from the City is the city
child’s encounter with the countryside. Valya is capable and hard-working
and soon finds acceptance in her unfamiliar surroundings. Her mental
scars begin to heal and she regains the will to live. The climax of the novel
is the scene in which Valya feels able to call the new woman ‘mother’ for
the first time. The book gained Voronkova membership of the Soviet Writ-
ers’ Union and opened the way to a notable career.
During the Second World War, Samuil Marshak worked as a journal-
ist, writing satirical verses for propaganda posters and for Pravda about
Germany’s dreams of greatness. The war experience undoubtedly brought
him closer both to the Soviet people and the Soviet regime. Against this
background, the publication of his fairy-tale play for children, The Twelve
Months (Dvenadtsat mesyatsev), in 1943, looks untimely. Marshak took the
subject from a Slovak folk legend in which a girl meets all twelve months
at New Year. To this fairy-tale morpheme a Cinderella story was added.
With the twelve months and the inhabitants of the forest as helpers, an
unassuming, hard-working girl triumphs over her jealous stepsister and
wicked stepmother. In the play goodness works miracles, a comforting
thought for a wartime work, but The Twelve Months also included a more
provocative theme. It can be summarised with the famous words of the
British historian Lord Acton, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power
corrupts absolutely.” The spoilt and fickle princess of the play asks for total
subservience and blind fulfilment of all her whims. As she is unable to
learn elementary things, she demands a new mathematics and calendar.
Her abuse of power is not an innocent child’s game, as she lightheartedly
passes sentences of death solely on the grounds that ‘execute’ (kaznit’)
is easier to write than ‘pardon’ (milovat’). The ruler is consequentially
434 chapter eight

surrounded by yes-men and sycophants, ready to come up with fantasies

in order to please the ruler. In spite of its subversive content, The Twelve
Months was awarded a Stalin prize in 1946 and gradually achieved the
status of a classic in the repertoire of Soviet Russian children’s plays.

Even during the war years, literary critics did not relax their ideological
vigilance. Once again, it was Korney Chukovsky who found himself the
target of their attacks. In 1942, Pionerskaya pravda published his We Will
Defeat Barmaley (Odoleem Barmaleya), a verse-tale intended as an alle-
gory of the fight against Hitler. The Marxist theorist Pavel Yudin (1899–
1968), writing in Pravda, was upset by the picture of pigs driving tanks
and sparrows shooting down bombers. He described the story as “a harm-
ful mishmash that could distort children’s perception of reality”; it was
“not an artistic fantasy but meaningless humbug”.8 Chukovsky had not
understood the writer’s duty in the present War, but was evidently try-
ing “deliberately to trivialise the important task of educating children in
a socialist spirit”, according to Yudin. The magazine Literature and Art
(Literatura i iskusstvo) seconded this: “What is this poem—is it the fruit
of monstrously confused thinking or a deliberate lampoon?”9
The attacks abated for a while, but the storm broke out again after the
War. The dream of a more open and humane society, raised by victory in
the War, came to naught, as the Party launched a vicious disciplinary cam-
paign against writers and artists. The instigator was the cultural ideologue
Andrey Zhdanov. In August 1946, a Party resolution was published sharply
criticising the magazines Leningrad and Zvezda for printing ideologically
damaging works by Mikhail Zoshchenko and Anna Akhmatova. Both writ-
ers were excluded from the Writers’ Union and so lost any chance of being
published for a long time.
Not many Russians had the courage to stand up in defence of the
two great writers. One of the few was the future children’s writer Rady
Pogodin, who at that time was twenty-one years of age and working as a
fireman. On the occasion, when the editorial board of a local information
bulletin, in which Pogodin published, gathered to support Zhdanov’s reso-
lution, Pogodin protested publicly against the ostracism. The result was a
three-year sentence for ‘anti-Soviet agitation’.10

  8 P. Iudin, “Poshlaia i vrednaia striapnia K. Chukovskogo,” Pravda. March 1, 1944, 3.

  9 Sergei Borodin, “Byl’ i zoologiia,” Literatura i iskusstvo 10 (1944): 3.
10 “Pogodin, Radii Petrovich,” accessed March 15, 2013, http://ru.wikipedia.org (Радий
Погодин).
 wise leadership and the fatherly care of comrade stalin 435

In the same month as Akhmatova and Zoshchenko were branded as

defectors from the general line, Sergey Krushinsky (1909–59), himself a
writer of children’s books, gave an overview in Pravda of the main mag-
azines for children and young people: Pioneer (Pioner), United Children
(Druzhnye rebyata), The Bonfire (Kostyor) and Murzilka.11 Its title alone,
“Serious Flaws of Children’s Magazines”, sounded an ominous note. When
Krushinsky complained that Pioneer published too little material about
the War, the current political situation, economic questions and modern
science, his criticism could still be seen as well-meant advice from a col-
league, but when Murzilka was reproached for “lack of educational prin-
ciples” and “political blindness”, it was clear that the mood had returned
to the witch-hunts of the early 1930s. The difference was that instead of
a radical proletarian writers’ organisation conducting the persecution, it
was now the Communist Party and the Writers’ Union.
The work that most aroused Krushinsky’s displeasure was Chukovsky’s
tale The Adventures of Bibigon (Priklyucheniya Bibigona), which had
been serialised in Murzilka in 1945–1946. Children loved the story of little
Bibigon, who fell from the moon onto Chukovsky’s desk and during his
stay on Earth was constantly becoming caught up in exciting and comi-
cal adventures. In Krushinsky’s eyes, these were ‘idiocies’, and he was
concerned that Chukovsky was encouraging children to love “a repulsive
monster” who was both boastful and cowardly. Krushinsky was supported
by the staff of Detgiz, who by now deeply regretted that they had pub-
lished Chukovsky’s “unprincipled and vulgar” fairy tale.12
In September, the influential Literaturnaya gazeta joined the campaign.
In the same issue in which Andrey Zhdanov dealt with Zoshchenko and
Akhmatova, the leading article was devoted to children’s literature. Its
tone was severe: the magazines had lost sight of their real tasks and been
guilty of serious mistakes. Their readers had been presented with “apo-
litical works, devoid of ideas, alien to Soviet literature”.13 One example
was Chukovsky’s tale in verse; another was Zoshchenko’s short story “The
Adventures of an Ape” (“Priklyucheniya obezyany”, 1945), which had been
published in Murzilka before appearing in the adult journal Star (Zvezda).
An ape escapes from the zoo during the War, but life outside proves to
be full of hardships and dangers, and the ape begins to yearn for his cage.

11  S. Krushinskii, “Ser’eznye nedostatki detskikh zhurnalov,” Pravda. August 29, 1946, 3.
12 “Vospityvat’ sovetskoe iunoshestvo v dukhe kommunizma,” Literaturnaia gazeta 38
(1946): 2.
13 “Moguchee sredstvo vospitaniia sovetskoi molodezhi,” Literaturnaia gazeta 39 (1946): 1.
436 chapter eight

However, he does eventually find a good home, when a boy takes him in
hand and teaches him good manners. “I have brought him up as a person’,
says the boy at the end of the story, ‘and now all children, and a good
many adults, would do well to follow his example.” As children’s literature
this could hardly be more innocent, but the Central Committee of the
Communist Party found that “The Adventures of an Ape” was “a vulgar
libel of Soviet life and people”, full of anti-Soviet jibes.14 The idea that an
ape could teach Soviet citizens good manners was too much to take.
Literaturnaya gazeta also criticised L. Pantaleev for his story “Makar
Telyatnikov’s Amazing Journey” (“Udivitelnoe puteshestvie Makara
Telyatnikova”, 1946). Pantaleev depicted something quite unusual for the
children’s literature of the time, namely a journey into the future. A young
rascal dreams that the local Party committee sends him to the year 1951,
the end of the five-year plan that has just started. In the kolkhoz village
of the future, all is bright and beautiful. A hotel and a café have been built;
the streets are full of double-decker buses, and at home people are watch-
ing television. This was enough for the story to be branded as “pure mad-
ness”, “a distortion of reality”,15 and an expression of a “petty-bourgeois
spirit”.16
The critics had missed the fact that this Utopia was not the central
point of “Makar Telyatnikov’s Amazing Journey”. Makar finds that he has
become a teacher in 1951 and is expected to recount how he was once
a schoolboy himself. Now he is ashamed of his laziness and his pranks
and decides to change his ways, when he returns to his own time. “Makar
Telyatnikov’s Amazing Journey” had appeared in United Children (Druzh-
nye rebyata), a magazine that was criticised for distancing itself from its
main readership, that is, children from the countryside. Its editors, who
included Sergey Grigorev and Valentin Kataev, were forced to make a
public admission of their mistakes.
Before the year 1946 was out, the magazine Culture and Life (Kultura
i zhizn) had managed to sniff out another ‘libel’, and again it was Chu-
kovsky who came out of it badly, this time for re-issuing a pre-revolution-
ary work, The Empire of the Dogs (Sobache tsarstvo, 1946), thus trying to
spread a “zoological morality”. It “offended the feelings of children, their

14 “O zhurnalakh ‘Zvezda’ i ‘Leningrad’: Iz postanovleniia TsK VKP(b) ot 14 avgusta 1946

g.”, Pravda. August 21, 1946, 1.
15 B. Emel’ianov, “Iskazhennaia deistvitel’nost’,” Literaturnaia gazeta 37 (1946): 4.
16 “Moguchee sredstvo vospitaniia sovetskoi molodezhi,” Literaturnaia gazeta 39 (1946): 1.
 wise leadership and the fatherly care of comrade stalin 437

concept of man”. The author of the attack, E. Vatova, head of the chil-
dren’s organizations under the Ministry of Agricultural Engineering, got
her way: Chukovsky’s book was confiscated and forbidden until 1991.17
In contrast to the 1930s, the offending writers no longer paid with their
lives or their freedom—the usual consequence was exclusion from the
Union of Soviet Writers and thus from literary life. But the price paid by
Soviet literature as a whole for these campaigns was still high. What those
in power wanted was realistic literature that openly and unsophisticat-
edly served socialist goals, but what they received was a literature devoid
of any individual features and unable to make any impression upon the
readers.

In Praise of Stalin

On the whole, the standard of children’s literature in the last decade of

Stalin’s rule was low. The tendency to compare life before and after the
October Revolution had already resulted in the 1930s in simplistic, ide-
alised pictures. The post-war years saw the rise of a theory that was at
least as damaging to literature, namely the no-conflict theory. The social-
ist Soviet Union was a classless society, and so there could be no deeper
conflicts. In terms of children’s literature, this meant (to quote a later his-
tory of Soviet literature) that “serious conflicts are replaced by minor mis-
understandings and important moral and ethical questions are resolved
with an unbelievable ease”.18
Influential teachers came forward to maintain that negative character
traits and behaviour in fictional heroes could have a harmful effect on
readers. Writers should therefore create perfect ideal figures and not let
their protagonists display any weaknesses or make any mistakes, as, for
example, Lev Kassil did in The Street of the Youngest Son (Ulitsa mladshego
syna). A well-known pedagogue suggested in all seriousness that Gaydar’s
novel Timur and his Gang (Timur i ego komanda) had lost its relevance for
Soviet children, as there were no longer any selfish children like Kvakin in
existence. All Soviet children were by now involved in meaningful social
activities and studied diligently.19

17 Е. Vatova, “Poshliatina pod flagom detskoi literatury,” Kul’tura i zhizn’. December 10,
1946, 4.
18 I. Lupanova, Polveka. Sovetskaia detskaia literatura: Ocherki (M., 1969), 349.
19 T. Korneichik, “Shkola i detskii pisatel’,” Nachal’naia shkola 10 (1951): 22.
438 chapter eight

The most frequent ideal figure was the leader of the country, Joseph
Stalin. The years following the Second World War were Stalin’s heyday.
Portraits of Stalin and servile poems and stories in honour of the dictator
became an inescapable element in children’s literature. The list of writers
who supported the personality cult was a long one; it includes some major
names, such as Marshak, Barto, Mikhalkov, Zinaida Aleksandrova and
Valentina Oseeva, as well as new young writers, such as Anatoly Mosh-
kovsky and Sergey Baruzdin. The proportion of non-Russian writers is
high; the much-talked-of multinational element in Soviet culture seems to
have consisted in these years of an unanimous song of praise to Stalin.
Where literature about Lenin mainly drew on documented biographi-
cal episodes from his childhood to the early years of the Soviet state, the
object of the Stalin cult was much more unreal and abstract. The few
biographically-based works were filled with examples of historical falsifi-
cation, as they sought to bring out Stalin’s leading role in the key events
of the October Revolution. In books about Lenin, the protagonist is an
active person, moving around among the people, as one of them. Lenin
provides an example to children, both as a private individual and as a
revolutionary. Stalin, on the other hand, assumed divine dimensions. He
does not act; he simply exists, remote and inaccessible, but at the same
time paradoxically close. Stalin is the perfect secure father-figure; he is the
promise of a happy life and a great future. “Stalin Is Thinking About Us”
(“Stalin dumaet o nas”, 1952) is the title of a poem by Sergey Mikhalkov,
typical for the period.
In the children’s literature of the Stalin cult, the largest group of works
is made up of poems expressing praise and gratitude. ‘Thank you for your
genius’, wrote Platon Voronko (1913–88), one of the most enthusiastic
Stalinists in children’s writing. Voronko wrote in Ukrainian, but an illus-
trious team—Elena Blaginina, Vadim Shefner (1914/1915–2012), Vsevolod
Rozhdestvensky (1895–1977), Yaroslav Smelyakov (1912/1913–72) and Alek-
sandr Prokofev (1900–71)—ensured that his poems were also accessible
to Russian children. In the collection The World Is Glorious (Slaven mir,
1951), there is a section called “Our Happiness” (“Nashe shchaste”) entirely
dedicated to Stalin. It was poems like “Glory to Stalin” (“Slava Stalinu”)
that won Voronko a literary prize that year:
To the sun of the people—
to Stalin
be glory
from generation to generation
from age to age!
 wise leadership and the fatherly care of comrade stalin 439

Hail! Thank you

for winged happiness!
We will grow up
and create an immortal story
about you
for all eternity.
Dear Stalin!
You are our honour and our conscience,
You are our happiness
and our Spring.
Stalin is omniscient and omnipresent, and not just with the help of the
secret police. He is even aware of what is happening in the most distant
kolkhoz village. In Aleksey Musatov’s (1911–76) The House on the Hill
(Dom na gore, 1951), the village schoolteacher gathers his dispirited pupils
around him. Their agricultural experiments in the school’s own garden
have not produced the desired results. In this situation, only one thought
can console them:
“I envy you children and I am happy for you.” The teacher let his gaze pass
over the schoolchildren’s faces.
“You are living in a very special time. Any clouds that appear in the sky
are soon dispersed, the sun comes out and everything is again bright and
good. And your friendship will never end; your happiness will never be
extinguished. And this is because there is someone thinking day and night
about your happiness, about your whole life, a great man, the person we
love most of all in the world . . .”
“Stalin!” whispered Varya excitedly, raising her head.
“That’s right, my friends. He knows everything and thinks of everything . . .
He even knows that you were unlucky with the millet.”
“Have . . . have you seen Stalin?” Varya took hold of the teacher’s hand.
“Have you talked to him?”
“No, Varyusha, I have not been granted that joy. But Stalin knows about
your failure with the millet, I am sure of that.”
The theme of the epic stories and poems about Stalin is children striving
to come close to the father of the country. The portrait of Stalin, with his
warm smile as its most prominent feature, plays an active role in many
works. From the walls of the kindergarten and the school, Stalin looks
down with satisfaction on the children playing or busily reading. His por-
trait hangs above children’s beds, and the evening ‘prayer’ includes a con-
fession of the little sins of the day, followed by absolution.
The more active children wrote letters to Stalin, recounting happenings
in school and promising to become good Soviet citizens, worthy of their
leader. In other stories and poems, children meet Stalin in dreams or in
440 chapter eight

their imagination. The October children in Elena Blaginina’s “An Intimate

Conversation” (“Zadushevny razgovor”, 1950) pretend that Stalin comes
to visit them. They drink tea together and offer their pipe-smoking guest
a pirog, a Russian pie. As the winter twilight descends outside, the chil-
dren discuss with Stalin the Chinese revolution and the chances of world
peace. It is an idyllic scene, full of intimacy and warmth.
There were also children who had seen Stalin with their own eyes.
The May Day and October Revolution parades in Red Square formed the
climax of many children’s books of the Stalin period. The little hero is
often taking part in the ceremony for the first time. Although thousands
of people are parading past the Lenin Mausoleum, an intimate contact
is established between Stalin and the children. Each of them knows that
Stalin’s eyes and his smile are directed just at him or her. It is a euphoric
moment, in which the little ones forget everything else. Little Petya in
Barto’s poem “At the May Day Parade” (“Na mayskom parade”, 1949) is so
excited that he no longer knows “whether he is quiet or singing”. Petya
also witnesses the climax of the whole ritual, when some hand-picked
children run forward to the mausoleum to hand over flowers to Stalin and
to report on the work of their school class.
Children who had been lucky enough to meet and touch Stalin recalled
the great moment afterwards. These were not only parading school pupils,
but also members of delegations and congresses in the Kremlin. The con-
versations in themselves lacked interest, with Stalin’s replies mostly lim-
ited to “What’s your name?”, “How are things at school?”, “Good!” and “See
you again”. But the important thing was that the miracle had taken place;
the deity had assumed human form. “At first I was nervous”, reported one
Pioneer girl, “but then when I was standing there in front of Comrade
Stalin and saw how simple and friendly he was, I became quite calm and
started to talk.”20

In Praise of Labour

A popular topic in post-war children’s literature was the educational func-

tion of labour. The devastated industry and agriculture had to be restored,
and this, too, required the efforts of young people. What had been called
for at the children’s literature conference in 1941 was now being realised

20 Nina Zdrogova, “Buket ot pionerov,” in Deti o Staline (M.-L, 1939), 18.

 wise leadership and the fatherly care of comrade stalin 441

on a grand scale. There is no lack of socially useful labour in any book

from this period about Young Pioneers and their lives. The heroes of these
works are worthy heirs to Gaydar’s Timur. Like him, they are drawn into
the adult world and mature into responsible citizens by taking part in
‘the great life’. But one significant difference should be noted: the playful,
romantic elements that were so important for Gaydar are usually lacking
in these works. Children are not encouraged to use their own initiative;
all activity is meant to happen under adult supervision. Even Aleksandr
Fadeev, president of the Writers’ Union, had to rework his war novel The
Young Guard (Molodaya gvardiya), because the role of the Party in orga-
nising the partisan movement among young people was not sufficiently
emphasised.
In 1950, a Stalin Prize went to the story The Cog Wheel (Zvyozdochka,
1948) by Ivan Vasilenko (1895–1966). The pupils in a vocational school
compete in groups to see who can display the best discipline and the
greatest progress in their studies. They perform good deeds, such as mak-
ing a wheelchair for a disabled worker. But the most important thing is
their work experience in the metal industry. Every morning, the young-
sters march to the factory singing (“We are the country’s labour reserve, /
we are the hope for years to come. / The best worker is the one / who is
skilful, learned and clever”), in order to manufacture cog wheels for a new
type of combine-harvester.
The same theme, but set in the country, crops up in Aleksey Musa-
tov’s prize-winning novel Stozhary (1948). Musatov was a village school-
teacher who had published his first work as early as 1930, when he was
only eighteen years old. On that occasion, the subject was class struggle in
the countryside and the opposition of the kulaks to collectivisation. In the
new novel, adults and children in the village of Stozhary are working to
put their kolkhoz back on its feet. The War is over, but military jargon is
still current. Agriculture and land reclamation are the new front line, and
the enemies are the capricious forces of nature and verminous animals.
The dramatic climax is a haymaking contest in the fields. Working for the
common good gives rise to a sense of the collective, while all personal
conflicts are overcome.
The main protagonist, Sanya Konshakov, is known as a hothead and a
leader of the village youth. But when his father dies in the War, the boy
has to shoulder part of the responsibility for the kolkhoz. Now he takes
his father’s scythe and goes out to work with the other boys and girls.
By the last page of the book, Sanya has been elected as the leader of the
442 chapter eight

youth brigade and accepted into the Komsomol. Just as Timur brigades
had sprung up during the War to help families in distress, Konshakov bri-
gades were born out of Musatov’s novel, to help the adults in their work
on the farm.
There is a strong dose of homespun rustic romance in Stozhary. The
same emotional relationship to one’s own kolkhoz is found in Lyubov
Voronkova’s The Village of Gorodishche (Selo Gorodishche, 1947). The chil-
dren refuse to accept the idea of their kolkhoz being wound up after the
War. The houses have burnt down, the livestock has gone and the grain
stores are empty, but the children join with the returning soldiers to start
the rebuilding work. The theme of the book is the heroism of labour. The
children are urged on by the decorated war veteran, Viktor:
Viktor’s brown eyes were suddenly filled with warmth.
“Children, children”, he said. “You don’t yet know yourselves what heroes
you are!”
Raisa just snorted: “Heroes! With rakes and spades!”
Viktor looked at her reproachfully: “Do you think heroes have to have
rifles and machine-guns?”
In the post-war years, city children, too, were to be taught to love nature
and kolkhoz life. Writers sent their heroes out into the country, into an
environment where they could not excel with their own skills and knowl-
edge. The encounter is a shock, but the children soon learn to respect the
work of the peasants and fishermen and to make their own contribution.
Work has an educational function, and at the end of the summer, the
children return home to the city as better Soviet citizens and more mature
human beings.
Lyalya in Susanna Georgievskaya’s (1916–74) story The Granny’s Sea
(Babushkino more, 1949) is only seven years old. Her enriching experi-
ences from a summer spent in a fishing kolkhoz are recounted in a lyrical
tone. Lyalya lives with her aunt, who is no apple-cheeked storyteller but
an energetic brigade leader with the Order of Lenin on her chest. The
book is a good example of the negative consequences of the no-conflict
theory. Georgievskaya describes a prosperous idyll that the Soviet people
unfortunately could only enjoy in books.
The boy in Pyotr Pavlenko’s (1899–51) The Sun on the Steppe (Stepnoe
solntse, 1949) is three years older than Lyalya. Pavlenko was one of the
emphatically communist writers whose main interests were the Party
programme, patriotism and the international labour movement. He wrote
chiefly for adults, but The Sun on the Steppe was his contribution to pro-
duction literature for young readers. The city boy, who helps with the
 wise leadership and the fatherly care of comrade stalin 443

harvest and learns about the grandiose plans to transform the steppe into
a flourishing garden, comes into contact with real life, ‘as endless as the
steppe’.
A more subtle skill in characterisation was shown by Nikolay Dubov
(1910–83). Born into a working-class family in Omsk, he was soon work-
ing for a living. Dubov worked both as a journalist and as a dramatist
for adults before finding his way into children’s literature. His first work
in the genre was At the End of the Earth (Na krayu zemli, 1951), a novel
about a group of schoolchildren in the remote Altay. They dream of great
exploits, but suspect deep down that most things have already been done
and that they will have to settle for dull everyday life. For them, real life
is somewhere else. When a mystical stranger turns up in the village, hopes
are raised that a spy has come into their midst. The man proves to be a
geologist, but their encounter with him helps the children to correct their
false dreams and learn the true romance of labour.
Kostya, in Dubov’s artistically more successful Lights Over the River
(Ogni na reke, 1952), also learns from the experience of meeting a hero
of labour: “Only later would Kostya understand that where he had once
done everything for his own sake, he now did it for others, and that only
work that is necessary and useful for other people brings true happiness.”
Spoilt and insolent, Kostya comes to the country to spend the summer
with his uncle. Here, a new world full of work opens up for him. The vil-
lage schoolchildren line up voluntarily when the kolkhoz needs them,
in between working diligently on their own plots of land. The uncle is
responsible for the buoys on the Dnieper River, a job that does not ini-
tially inspire Kostya’s respect. But after a perilous night, during which he
helps his uncle to save a ship from running aground, he looks at his out-
wardly unassuming relative with fresh eyes. Lights Over the River was also
made into a film.
Behind the lyrical treatment of work on the kolkhoz, there was also
anxiety about the process of urbanisation. The aim was to popularise life
in the country. Trained workers were needed in agriculture, but, given the
chance, many young people preferred to move to the city after ten years
at school, while those who stayed lacked the necessary farming skills. One
of the first to demand closer collaboration between school and working
life was Aleksey Musatov, who dealt with the subject by literary means
in his above-mentioned novel The House on the Hill (Dom na gore, 1951).
Inspired by the work of the officially approved biologist Trofim Lysenko,
the schoolchildren set up a ‘kolkhoz academy’, where their biology teacher
supervises them in experiments to increase the millet harvest.
444 chapter eight

The School Novel

Another major genre in the post-war years was the school novel. Here
again, we find clichés that recur in one book after another. The first Soviet
children’s novels about the world of school had presented the teachers
as ideologically backward or downright reactionary, while the progressive
forces were to be found among the pupils. But in the 1930s, a formula
was drawn up that was to prove its staying power for decades to come. In
poetry we encounter it as early as 1930 in “Kolya Kochin” by the Oberiu
poet Aleksandr Vvedensky. Kolya is the laziest in his class. He thinks that
the Urals are in North America and that the Donbas is a river in Italy. He
adds 5+10+14 to make 350 pigs. But Kolya learns to be self-critical and his
classmates line up to help him with his lessons in the evening.
There is a strong didactic tendency in the school stories of the 1940s and
early 1950s. One or more weak pupils prevent the class from becoming the
pride of the school, but by a collective effort, they manage to improve
their poor grades and build a good class spirit into the bargain. With hind-
sight, this kind of solution, typical of the Stalin period, was also criticised
as unsustainable by historians of Soviet children’s literature. The struggle
for good behaviour and high grades, too often became an end in itself and
ultimately the only conflict was that between good and better.
These words could well apply to Nikolay Nosov’s (1908–76) prize-win-
ning and popular novel Vitya Maleev at School and at Home (Vitya Maleev
v shkole i doma, 1951), although there is an element of humour here.
The inspiration for the novel was a quotation from a teacher: “He who
lags behind will lag behind, however much you try to help him. He just
gets used to you helping him.” In the novel, we meet two lazy and weak-
willed pupils, Vitya Maleev and his friend Kostya, whose lack of progress
at school threatens the reputation of the class. The class teacher and the
other pupils have to put all their energy into helping the two friends, but
the transformation only comes when Vitya forces himself, by an effort of
will, to get to grips with his hated mathematics exercises and overcome
his difficulties on his own.
An important side motif in the novel is comradeship. Fear of a dictation
test in Russian, Vitya’s friend Kostya plays truant from school. Vitya finds
himself caught in a moral dilemma when he protects Kostya by telling the
school about a fictitious illness. His lies are exposed and the moral of the
story comes out in a succinct line: “Real friendship is not excusing your
friends’ weaknesses, but being demanding towards your friends.”
 wise leadership and the fatherly care of comrade stalin 445

For a long time, Vitya Maleev at School and at Home was cited as a
model school novel, but although some critics felt that Nosov had broken
the didactic mould, the novel is still a child of its time. The chief endeavour
of the schoolchildren is to raise the average marks for the class, in a spirit
of socialist competition, and the happy ending consists in the fact that
even problem pupils can boast the highest marks in every subject. Still,
Vitya Maleev at School and at Home is also flooded with humour, and the
psychological insights prevent the portraits of the schoolboys from turn-
ing into stereotypes. Vitya Maleev, who tells his own story, is an expert at
finding excuses and stilling his conscience, in order to devote himself to
football, white mice and the pleasures of the circus instead of doing his
homework. There is a profound discrepancy between the school novel of
the Stalin era and Nosov’s particular style of writing, a discrepancy that
the author had problems bridging in his book.
Vitya’s problem is his laziness, but in school novels we also encounter
another type of anti-hero, the individualist. The reputation of the class
is threatened not by poor grades, but by the self-indulgent behaviour of
a few—often gifted—pupils. By means of meetings and criticism in the
class wall-newspaper, the collective manages to rescue the rebels. The
moral is succinctly expressed in Mariya Prilezhaeva’s (1903–89) novel
Your Comrades Are With You (S toboy tovarishchi, 1949):
In our motherland, people always do everything together—making war,
studying, building. If anyone isolates himself, that person is always deeply
unhappy. He finds it tedious and difficult without his comrades, and he
never achieves anything.
From a later perspective, the causes of conflict in school classes in such
works seem astoundingly shallow, and even Soviet critics used the term
‘pseudo-individualists’ when discussing the school novels of the Stalin
years. Sasha’s crime in Your Comrades Are With You is that he wants to
be the one to give the teacher a present that he has made with his own
hands. The class has broken a voltmeter and takes a collective decision to
make a new one. Sasha is the one who constructs the meter, but instead
of letting his classmates decide who should hand it over, he holds onto his
own handiwork. This is seen as ‘individualism’, and the school Komsomol
group discusses whether Sasha is any longer worthy to be accepted as a
member. But the tone of Your Comrades Are With You is still conciliatory;
the collective decides not to condemn a classmate for a single error, see-
ing the importance of trusting people and supporting them when they go
wrong.
446 chapter eight

In Vasyok Trubachov and His Comrades (Vasyok Trubachov i ego tova-

rishchi. 1947) by Valentina Oseeva (1902–69), the conflict concerns a lost
piece of chalk. The teacher looks in vain for chalk at the blackboard, and
the caretaker is unjustly accused of neglecting his duties. It takes a visit to
Red Square, that most holy of places, to resolve the situation. The oppres-
sive feeling that Stalin is watching him reproachfully from the Kremlin
arouses feelings of shame in Vasyok Trubachov, the leader of the class
Pioneer group, and he hastens to restore class discipline.
Vasyok Trubachov and His Comrades grew progressively into a trilogy,
which was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1952, the year in which the last
part came out. Oseeva’s series summarises all the central motifs of the
period. The first part is a school story, written in the spirit of the time,
even though the action takes place before the outbreak of the Second
World War. The second part is about the fate of the children in the War.
The class is doing summer work on a kolkhoz in the Ukraine when war
breaks out. The enemy occupies the village, and the schoolchildren’s cour-
age and patriotism are put to the test. In the final part, Vasyok and his
friends return to their home town and help the adults at the hospital and
evacuation centers. But the most important goal is to repair the school
and continue their education despite the War. The initiative comes from
the children, and it is their own efforts that prove decisive in the rebuild-
ing work.
Mariya Prilezhaeva remained faithful to the school setting, even where
the action in her novels was shifted to the War years. In The Seventh-Grade
Girls (Semiklassnitsy, 1944), there is an attempt—as in the third part of
Oseeva’s trilogy—to make children tone down their dreams of dying a
hero’s death in the war and to concentrate on their schoolwork instead.
By doing their lessons and assisting the household, they are helping their
country—that is Prilezhaeva’s message. But the children do have their
own front line in school, also. Just as the adults have striven to exceed
production targets, the schoolgirls make a vow to improve their grades in
maths and so outshine the boys: “From now on, anyone who gets a 2 is a
deserter.” (5 was the highest grade in the Soviet Union.)
The schoolchildren are urged on by their enthusiastic young teacher
Darya Leonidovna, who represents the ‘ideal personality’, in the unani-
mous view of the class. The overriding goal of schoolwork is naturally to
turn all the pupils into true communists. With pointer in hand, the girls’
geography teacher explains: “There are Soviet people everywhere. Our
thoughts are the same, our feelings are the same, our goals are the same.
That is what the Motherland is. It begins here.”
 wise leadership and the fatherly care of comrade stalin 447

The main character in Prilezhaeva’s novel Masha Strogovaya’s Youth

(Yunost Mashi Strogovoy, 1948) finds it hard to accept that her main task
in the War is to study. Prilezhaeva follows Masha’s college studies and
her first steps as a teacher of Russian. There is conflict with bureaucrats,
when Masha does not strictly adhere to the teaching plan, but follows
the inspiration of the moment. The novel has an educational value that
extends beyond its own time and was clearly aimed not only at teenag-
ers but also at teachers. Prilezhaeva also stresses the conflicts in Masha’s
private life; an unusual topos for the literature of the time was a woman
torn between two men.
Prilezhaeva was a teacher herself and could fall back on her own expe-
riences of the school environment. The same was true of Frida Vigdorova
(1915–65), whose book My Class (Moy klass, 1949) has a marked documen-
tary character. A teacher talks about her work, about lessons, discussion
meetings, excursions and home visits. Her setbacks and victories engen-
der a deep love for her work and her pupils. With The Road to Life (Doroga
v zhizn, 1954), Vigdorova began a trilogy about an orphanage and its day-
to-day problems. In the sixties, we encounter the author in a new and
unexpected role: it was thanks to Vigdorova’s private record of the trial
of Joseph Brodsky in 1964 that this shameful affair was publicised all over
the world.
There were school stories for small children, too. Evgeny Schwartz wrote
an unpretentious little story, The Girl in the First Grade (Pervoklassnitsa,
1949), about seven-year-old Marusha, who loves her teacher and Lenin
and tries hard to be a good pupil and future Pioneer. Even the begin-
ners at kindergarten were expected to involve themselves in the events
of the adult world. In Our Factory (Nash zavod, 1949), by the same writer,
the little ones look forward to the great day when the town’s steam loco-
motive works will celebrate its centenary. A tour of the factory gives the
author an opportunity to present the various stages that its work goes
through.
Traces of the old Schwartz, the poet from the days of The Hedgehog
and The Siskin, can still be found in the ever-popular The Tale of Lost Time
(Skazka o poteryannom vremeni). Originally a stage play dating from 1940,
it came out in prose form in 1948. In an imaginative and humorous way, it
illustrates the maxim, “Whoever wastes time unnecessarily does not notice
himself getting older”. The schoolboy who always misses his lessons turns
into an old man overnight. Together with his fellow-sufferers, he has to
call upon all his cunning to overcome the wizards who are rejuvenating
themselves with the time they receive from the idlers.
448 chapter eight

Towards the end of the 1940s, the Cold War between the superpow-
ers began to leave its mark on Soviet children’s literature. International
themes became synonymous with outspoken criticism of the USA and
its allies. The major propaganda targets were American racism and the
Korean War. Fascism lives on in the USA, says the teacher in Mariya
Prilezhaeva’s Your Comrades Are With You. Feelings run high in the class
when she describes how the ‘Mister Twister’ types of the day are lynching
black people. On the other hand, the children are proud to hear how black
Americans tell their children about the Soviet Union, the land of dreams
where the law is the same for all.
A writer who specialised in international subjects was N. Kalma (1908–
88), the pseudonym of Anna Kalmanok. Kalma had already written before
the War about racial discrimination in America and about the conditions
under which children lived in Spain, Greece, Italy and Iran. Her interest
was focussed not only on poverty, exploitation and police brutality, but
also on the growth of resistance. Children help adults in the struggle for
peace and justice; they stick up posters at night and sign their names to
Soviet calls for peace.
The Cold War gave Kalma the opportunity to expand her particular
range of topics. According to a Soviet critic in 1969, The Kids of the Mus-
tard Paradise (Deti Gorchichnogo raya, 1950) tears away “all the masks
from the vaunted ‘American way of life’”.21 The “inhuman customs” of
American schools are exposed when a new pupil, the son of a planta-
tion owner from the South, joins the class, and the ruthless persecution
of a coloured classmate ensues. Kalma’s intention was to show that the
conflict is not just an internal school matter, but reflects the real state of
American democracy.
An author who flourished in the atmosphere of the Cold War was Lazar
Lagin. He could not follow the success of Old Man Khottabych; instead,
he started to cultivate national self-righteousness and simple black-and-
white contrasts in fantastical novels and stories. In The Island of Disap-
pointment (Ostrov razocharovaniya, 1951), two characters are set against
each other. They are, to quote a Soviet historian, “a brave, resourceful
and tough officer in the Soviet Navy” and “a powerful American capitalist,
detestable for his cant and hypocrisy”.22

21  Lupanova, Polveka, 470.

22 Boris Begak, “Khottabych i drugie,” Detskaia literatura 3 (1986): 26.
 wise leadership and the fatherly care of comrade stalin 449

The Pioneer leader in Nikolay Dubov’s Light on the River (Ogni na reke)
tells of the activities of the ‘fascists’ in Korea. With bombs and napalm,
the opponents of Communism, “people more terrible than any mon-
ster”, have destroyed Korea’s towns and villages. No wonder little Petya
in Agniya Barto’s poem “Petya Draws” (“Petya risuet”, 1951) reaches for
the black chalk to illustrate life in America, that is exploitation, murder
and aggressive militarism. In response to his sister’s question about whom
has he portrayed, Petya says: “No humans here! / It’s Truman that I’ve
drawn.” But when he wants to represent Soviet reality with its hard-work-
ing peace-loving people, he turns to happy, bright colours. Barto herself
would have liked to see more angry poems and descriptions of “menda-
cious American freedom, and the criminal activities of the Americans in
Korea”. People should not be afraid to tell children about “the awful world
where everything is permeated with a spirit of violence and death”, she
wrote in 1952.23 A later poem, “The Black Newcomer” (“Chorny novichok”,
1963), also painted a critical picture of the USA: black boys on the other
side of the Atlantic are not allowed to go to the same school as their white
contemporaries.
The theatre of the time also sought to teach Soviet youngsters the ABC
of international politics. The fact that it was not only in America that such
an inhuman spirit prevailed was stressed by Sergey Mikhalkov in his play I
Want to Go Home! (Ya khochu domoy!, 1949). Some Russian children who
have been taken to Germany by the Nazis are kept locked up in a chil-
dren’s home by the British after the war. Their captors try to brainwash
them into forgetting their language and their Soviet motherland, but one
boy manages to escape the claws of the ‘fascists’ and make his way to the
Soviet zone. The play also features friendly Germans who share the Soviet
children’s dreams of crossing the border to the East. I Want to Go Home!
won a Stalin Prize for Mikhalkov in 1950.
Another Stalin Prize went to Valentina Lyubimova (1895–1968) for The
Snowball (Snezhok, 1948). A conflict arises in an American school when
a millionaire from the South tries to use his money to remove a coloured
boy from his daughter’s class. The class splits into two groups. Together
with a radical teacher, the positive heroes of the play dream of the Soviet
Union, where equality reigns. They read aloud Fadeev’s The Young Guard

23 Agniia Barto, “Smeshnoe i ser’eznoe: Zametki o detskoi literature,” Sobranie sochinenii

v 4 tomakh. Vol. 4 (M., 1984), 230. (First publ.: Literaturnaia gazeta 54 / 1952: 3.)
450 chapter eight

and are inspired by the example of Oleg Koshevoy to dare to resist the
racists.
The subject of Forward, Valiant Ones! (Vperyod, otvazhnye!, 1952), a
play written by Avenir Zak (1919–74) and Isay Kuznetsov (1916–2010), was
the political struggle in France. In the play, French schoolchildren fight to
stop their school becoming a barracks for American soldiers. A commu-
nist teacher is sacked, while a pupil who asserts that the Russians saved
France in the War is expelled. The pupils listen to Radio Moscow and
dream of life becoming as good in France as it is in the Soviet Union.
Zak and Kuznetsov fanned Soviet hopes of an imminent revolution by
describing a strike among French dockers, who refuse to unload cargoes
of American weapons. There is great rejoicing in the class when they hear
that the soldiers sent to crush the strike have gone over to the side of the
rebels.
The foremost plays about school life from this period are two debut
works: Viktor Rozov’s (1913–2004) Her Friends (Eyo druzya, 1949) and Liya
Geraskina’s (1910–2010) The School-Leaving Certificate (Attestat zrelosti,
1951). Rozov, who was to develop into one of the Soviet Union’s leading
adult playwrights, wrote a tear-drenched text about a schoolgirl who goes
blind but still passes her final exam with the help of her classmates. Her
happiness is complete when a skilful Soviet eye surgeon restores her sight
in the last act. Geraskina’s contribution included yet another warning
against individualism. An artistically gifted boy regards the school wall
newspaper as altogether too modest a forum for him, and when he also
neglects his cultural work in his Komsomol group, he is excluded from
the community. But as the literary tradition demanded, Geraskina’s play
also contained an appeal for support for the outcast. The young artist—
helped by the others—comes to understand his mistake, apologises, and
is accepted back into the Komsomol organisation.
A prominent place in drama was occupied by Sergey Mikhalkov. His
output from this period covers not only the bluntly propagandistic I
Want to Go Home! but also an entertaining fairy-tale play based on Carlo
Gozzi’s The Love of Three Oranges, entitled The Happy Dream (Vesyoloe
snovidenie, 1947), and a popular Pioneer play, The Red Scarf (Krasny gal-
stuk, 1947). In the latter, Mikhalkov portrays the son of a factory manager
as spoilt, rude and selfish. When he does not want to take part in the
shared work, he is excluded from the Pioneer organisation. His friend,
an orphaned working-class boy, is honourable and strong-principled and
is able to help the individualist to become a steadfast comrade, worthy
of the red scarf of the Pioneers. His father is the one who delivers the
 wise leadership and the fatherly care of comrade stalin 451

message: “Anyone who does not value the red scarf as a child will not
respect the Party membership card, either!” The similarity between The
Red Scarf and The School-Leaving Certificate is striking, but Mikhalkov and
Geraskina were by no means the only children’s authors of this period
who sought out individualists to use as salutary examples to impress the
ideas of collectivism on children’s consciousness.

Names of Importance

During the Khrushchev thaw, there was a tendency to view the 1940s and
early 1950s as a gloomy interlude in the history of Soviet children’s litera-
ture. All the worthwhile literature came out before the War, while, after
1945, propagandists and mediocrities took centre stage. Later on, this view
was softened somewhat, and it was rightly stressed that the last years of
Stalin’s rule also saw Lyubov Voronkova, Anatoly Aleksin, Anatoly Ryba-
kov, Nikolay Nosov and Yury Sotnik coming to maturity as writers.
We have already met Lyubov Voronkova as the author of The Girl from
the City and the kolkhoz novel The Village of Gorodishche, but she also
wrote books that had nothing to do with the political situation or cur-
rent social issues. From her debut in 1940 she had dreamt of writing a
book about an untroubled, happy childhood. This idea was realised in
A Sunny Day (Solnechny denyok, 1948), a story about a day in the life of
six-year-old Tanya. The plot is thin and undramatic; Tanya potters about
with her dolls, listens to her grandfather’s stories, helps her mother with
the cleaning, plays out in the courtyard with a friend, and goes to visit
the cowshed. She lives in a wonderful, charmed world, remote from adult
worries, and Voronkova conveys the child’s feelings, thoughts and fanta-
sies. Criticism of its idyllic and sentimental tone did not stop her from
writing a whole series of stories about Tanya. The cycle ran to five books,
finishing with The Leader of the Group (Komandir zvyozdochki, 1959). In
time, the series covers only a year and a half, but it is an important period
in the little girl’s life, as Tanya starts school and becomes an October child
and a group leader.
Sergey Baruzdin wrote about the development of another girl, Svet-
lana. In his stories about Svetlana (1951–62), Baruzdin, unlike Voronkova,
came across as a genuine Party author. The series changed suddenly from
a lively portrait of childhood to an undisguised paean to Soviet society.
The two high points in Svetlana’s young life are taking the Pioneer oath in
Red Square and becoming friends with an old Bolshevik. But children took
452 chapter eight

Svetlana to their hearts and followed her progress from kindergarten to

nursing in Kirghizia with interest. In 1963, Baruzdin collected the stories
under the title The Big Svetlana (Bolshaya Svetlana).
How conventional material can come to life in the hands of a skilful
writer was shown by Anatoly Aleksin (born 1924) in his first novel Thirty-
One Days (Tridtsat odin den, 1950). In the summer of 1945, a group of
Moscow children travel to a Pioneer camp on the Black Sea. Their leader
thinks that their main purpose is to rest; but the children thirst for activ-
ity and excitement. They set up a secret society, which secretly helps the
adults to clear up the war-torn city and to find out new facts about the
local partisan movement during the war. Initiative by children was not
encouraged at that time, and there was also a fear of any form of secrecy.
In Aleksin’s novel, the children are seen as right in their wish to take part
in ‘the great life’ and to insist on doing it on their own terms. Not surpris-
ingly, Timur and his Gang is the young heroes’ favourite book, alongside
Nikolay Ostrovsky’s How the Steel was Hardened and Fadeev’s The Young
Guard.
Thirty-One Days was sub-titled ‘The Diary of Pioneer Sasha Vasilkov’.
Diary-based and epistolary novels are also to found in Aleksin’s later
output. Practically all his books use a first-person narrator, usually 12–13
years old. Aleksin’s main characters are not always positive heroes. For
example, Sasha Vasilkov’s weakness is a lack of staying power; he is easily
fired with enthusiasm, but is prone to overestimate his own abilities. In
the Pioneer camp, he learns that there is no room for individualists, either
on the football field or in the collective.
Aleksin achieved great renown for Thirty-One Days, but criticism gradu-
ally intensified as the author’s attitude to the children’s sense of initiative
and secretiveness was found to be too positive. The young author even felt
compelled to revise parts of the book in 1954.
A fatal concession to the official taste of the Stalin era was The Detach-
ment Marches in Step (Otryad shagaet v nogu, 1952), a novel that the author
himself later wanted to forget. The election of a chairman for the Pioneer
camp provokes a split among the seventh-grade pupils at the school, but
the problem turns out to be based on a misunderstanding and peace soon
reigns again among the friends. Aleksin was unlucky with The Detachment
Marches in Step in that it came out at a time when dissatisfaction with
the standards of Stalinist children’s literature was beginning to be aired.
In Novy mir, Aleksin was confronted with a review filled with sarcastic
remarks; the victory of the collective at the end of the novel no longer
satisfied the critic and fellow-writer Evgeny Gerasimov:
 wise leadership and the fatherly care of comrade stalin 453

Now we really can say that ‘the detachment is marching in step’. All these
Vanyas, Petyas, Levs, Seryozhas, Genyas, Zhoras and Tolyas are now so well-
groomed, well-combed and uniformed that children who were quite dis-
similar and truly alive at the beginning of the novel can no longer be told
apart; they are like mannequins made from the same mould. In school, you
no longer hear the babble of many voices; now they are speaking with the
same voice and about the same thing. Instead of hullabaloo, boyish tricks
and discussions, we see smiles, embraces and boys kissing one another as a
sign of reconciliation.24
In the 1940s, the no-conflict theory presented an obstacle to adven-
ture stories. Anyone who wanted to create excitement had to go back
in time or move the action abroad. In this situation, science fiction, too,
had become impossible in the Soviet Union. Writers were supposed to
keep to plausible predictions and popularise research that was actually
being carried out. Going several centuries into the future or anticipating
the conquest of space could easily be branded as a flight from reality or
‘cosmopolitanism’.
Anatoly Rybakov (1911–98) chose the early twenties as the background
to the dramatic events in his novels The Cutlass (Kortik, 1948) and The
Bronze Bird (Bronzovaya ptitsa, 1956). Rybakov was a trained transport
engineer, but, before he found his way into literature, he had also expe-
rienced exile in Siberia and the upheavals of the War. In Cutlass and The
Bronze Bird, which are linked by the same hero, there is an abundance
of everything that contemporary Soviet children’s writing in general was
lacking: resourceful youngsters overcoming dangerous villains, an exciting
plot where the chapters are cleverly interlinked, mysteries solved with the
help of codes, treasure maps in secret compartments, night-time searches,
and suspicious strangers to be shadowed. The villains are the enemies of
the Soviet state—White Guards, former landowners and kulaks, ignomini-
ously beaten by a handful of energetic kids. The treasure, which is what
the fight is ultimately about, is claimed by society.
The Komsomol leader in The Bronze Bird quotes Lenin: “Children, who
are the proletarians of the future, should help the Revolution.” Rybakov’s
young heroes follow Lenin’s exhortation not only in overcoming the oppo-
nents of the October revolution, but also in setting up Pioneer groups
and work communes for homeless children in the country. But it was the
smooth combination of ideological material with the grip of the classical

24 Evgenii Gerasimov, “Otchego geroi stanoviatsia skuchnymi?,” Novyi mir 2 (1953): 229.
454 chapter eight

adventure story that brought lasting success to The Cutlass and The Bronze
Bird. If we look for sources of inspiration, one must mention Blyakhin’s
The Little Red Devils and Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Gold Bug”.
Vladimir Belyaev’s (1909–90) prize-winning trilogy The Old Fortress
(Staraya krepost, 1937–51) also takes its place among the adventure nov-
els. This heavily autobiographical suite of novels portrays—once again—
“how the steel was hardened” in the battles of the Civil War, the labour
fronts of the 1920s and 1930s, and the German blockade of Leningrad dur-
ing the War. In a romanticising spirit, Belyaev follows the path of three
working-class Ukrainian youths towards political maturity. Nor does he
neglect to show how the socialist collective exercises a beneficial influ-
ence on individualistic characters. One idea behind the trilogy was to cre-
ate an epic of a whole generation, the generation that was carried along
on the revolutionary wave and chose the Bolshevik side in the battles that
ensued. The film version, premiered in 1954, was entitled Restless Youth
(Trevozhnaya molodost).
Much less eventful is Vasily Smirnov’s (1904/1905–79) The Discovery of
the World (Otkrytie mira, 1947–77). The setting is the pre-revolutionary
Russian village as seen by a peasant boy Shurka. Like Belyaev, Smirnov
was a Party member and kept strictly to the official truths. But the poetic
depiction of the child’s experiences gave the first part of the novel in par-
ticular a lasting place among Soviet children’s books. The Discovery of the
World was not intended for young people, but it came to be published
mainly for teenagers.

An unexpected turn to writing fantasy and fairy tales was made by Vitaly
Gubarev in the postwar period. After his opportunistic celebration of
Pavlik Morozov, the young informer, Gubarev had published sparsely,
working mainly as a journalist. In 1947 he started to work on a fantasy
novel, The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors (Korolevstvo krivykh zerkal), even-
tually to be published in 1951 in a print run of 30,000 copies. Seen against
the prevailing political and cultural climate, both the birth and the publi-
cation of Gubarev’s magnum opus are quite unlikely events.
The novel tells the story of Olya, who goes through a mirror into a second-
ary world, the Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors. Here she meets her inverted
double, Aylo, who is the personification of all Olya’s weaknesses and
vices. The negative example of Aylo helps Olya to attain self-understand-
ing and free herself from the flaws of selfishness, capriciousness, insolence
and laziness. Courage and empathy are needed as the two girls become
 wise leadership and the fatherly care of comrade stalin 455

involved in the struggle for liberty of the oppressed people in the King-
dom of Crooked Mirrors.
The kingdom is governed by a narrow-minded tyrant named Topsed,
with a gargantuan appetite, and his cruel ministers. In the rice fields
Olya sees skinny, sick people slaving for the good of their evil rulers. The
true picture of their situation is distorted by a system of crooked mirrors,
showing a rosy picture of wealth and happiness. Olya has no problem
orientating herself in this fantasy world, as one has only to read all the
names backward to find out the true nature of its bearer, a game in which
the reader is invited to join. In the name of Truth (Pravda), Olya and Aylo
lead the revolt, crushing the lying mirrors and establishing something of
a people’s democracy.
Gubarev mixes humorous scenes, which allow Olya to demonstrate her
cleverness, with exciting adventures in subterranean passages and prison
towers. The motive of a world behind the mirror brings to mind Lewis
Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, while mirrors in the service of evil are
an allusion to Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” (“Sneedron-
ningen”), the Danish writer’s most popular tale in the Soviet Union. The
Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors has something of the pathos of early Soviet
science fiction, where the Soviet man (here a Pioneer girl) helps to spread
the revolutionary message beyond his home planet. There are also distinct
echoes of Yury Olesha’s Three Fat Men, the main political tale in Soviet
children’s literature.
Is The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors actually a daring, subversive alle-
gory? On one level, it alludes to a fascist dictatorship, where the will of
the working people is violently suprepressed. Then again, the crooked
mirrors, which present a blatantly false image of the people’s life, can be
seen as a comment on the Soviet system of propaganda. “Life has become
better, life has become happier”, said Stalin on the threshold of the Great
Terror. Gubarev seems to have decided to evade all such suspicions, as he
ends his novel with a eulogy to the Soviet Union. Aunt Ssendnik (‘kind-
ness’ backwards) presents their liberator Olya to the mirror people: “This
girl comes from a wonderful country, where all the people have a noble
and courageous heart!” Olya, too, holds up her native country as a model
worth following: “I cannot stay with you, dear friends, as there is no coun-
try in the whole wide world more wonderful and better than my country.”
Thus, towards the end of his book, after having Olya fearlessly fight for
the Truth, Gubarev held up yet another crooked mirror to Soviet children,
meekly participating in the official propaganda campaign.
456 chapter eight

The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors was turned into a play, a film, a ballet
and an opera, but for a number of years the book was not republished. In
histories of Soviet children’s literature the novel was always passed over in
silence, a sign of uncertainty concerning its potential message.
Gubarev’s other fantasy books are of less interest. Three on an Island
(Troe na ostrove, 1959) is openly didactic. A magic handkerchief brings
the hero to an island inhabited by pirates, but all the adventurous turns
of the plot only lead up to a simple maxim—“Now I know that the big-
gest wizard on earth is work”. In Journey to the Morning Star (Puteshest-
vie na utrennyuyu zvezdu, 1961), greedy capitalism is contrasted with
communism, all located on faraway foreign planets. The thin storyline
is repeatedly interrupted by authorial comments and explanations. The
idea behind Clock of the Centuries (Chasy vekov, 1965) was to tell readers
about mankind’s early history, from the Stone Age to the Iron Age, by let-
ting a little girl travel in time, but the result is uninspiring and bleak. The
same goes for A Legend from the Historical Past (Predanie strany glubokoy,
1970), where a time machine takes the readers to Novgorod in the 8th
century and the emergence of the concept of Rus. The exclamation—“A
great, wonderful country, where people for the first time in history truly
became brothers”—was clearly intended also to be applied to the Soviet
Union.
Gubarev’s last children’s book, In a Faraway Kingdom (V tridtsat devya-
tom tsarstve, 1994), published posthumously, was an attempt to repeat
the magic formula of The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors. It is a drama of
switched identities in the style of Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper,
where a Soviet girl athlete is mistaken for a princess in a fictitious Western
European country. Before being exposed, she tries to help the workers in
their struggles against their exploiters, reveals ugly turns in the political
life and the rottenness of colonial politics. The Soviet heroine returns to
her native country and her own life without actually having achieved any-
thing lasting, perhaps a sign of the times.

Humour and Laughter

It was not only the fantasy and the adventure novel that felt the pinch
in the decade after the War. There was also little room for humour in a
literary culture whose main function was to keep alive the memory of the
Great Patriotic War and to inspire children to sterling efforts in school,
factory and kolkhoz. But there were exceptions. At the 1954 Writers’
 wise leadership and the fatherly care of comrade stalin 457

Congress, Marshak dubbed Nikolay Nosov and Yury Sotnik the two most
important names in contemporary children’s literature and characterised
them thus: while Nosov combined “humour, lyricism and the powers of
memory and observation of the everyday prose writer”, Sotnik was first
and foremost an author of short, rounded and well-plotted stories. “He
speaks not so much of individuals as of certain typical traits of children”,
said Marshak, praising Sotnik’s knowledge of children.25
Nikolay Nosov had made his debut in 1938, when the short story “The
Pranksters” (“Zateyniki”) appeared in the magazine Murzilka. Nosov came
from an artistic family in Kiev. In 1929, after studying for a short time at
an art institute in his home town, he joined the Institute of Cinematog-
raphy in Moscow. He worked in the film industry for over twenty years,
specialising in educational and animated films, and continued to make
occasional ‘guest appearances’ in the field, in connection with the later
filming of his own children’s books.
In a 1972 article Nosov himself described how he became a children’s
author:
I had always dreamed of doing something really important, and I always
regarded writing as something important—important for people and for
society. But I could not achieve my ambition because I had not yet found
my theme (this is something I understand now, but at that time I didn’t).
My theme decided itself when I found myself, to put it figuratively, in the
Enchanted Land of Childhood. This happened when I became a father and
saw childhood not through the mists of a distant past (from which I thought
I had departed once and for all), but in my immediate presence. I must con-
fess that this enchanted land took me by surprise, and, as a very wise artist
once said, surprise is at the root of creative work. In the child, I saw things
which I had not noticed before and which, it seemed to me, nobody else
had noticed, either. That’s when I wanted to show others what I had seen. I
wanted to write about children and for children.26
Then the War intervened, and it was not until 1945 that Nosov had the
opportunity to collect his early work into one volume. The book Tap,
Tap, Tap (Tuk-tuk-tuk, 1945) already included many of the stories upon
which his reputation as a writer is based. Apart from the title story, they
comprised “The Market Gardeners” (“Ogorodniki”), “Mishka’s Porridge”

25 “Rech’ S.Ia. Marshaka,” Vtoroi vsesoiuznyi s’’ezd sovetskikh pisatelei 15–26 dekabria 1954
goda: Stenograficheskii otchet (M., 1956), 157.
26 Nikolai Nosov, “O sebe i o svoei rabote,” in Laureaty Rossii: Avtobiografii rossiiskikh
pisatelei (M., 1973), 277.
458 chapter eight

(“Mishkina kasha”) and “The Dreamers” (“Fantazyory”). Tap, Tap, Tap was
soon followed by a number of other collections: The Steps (Stupenki, 1946),
Happy Stories (Vesyolye rasskazy, 1947) and On the Hill (Na gorke, 1953).
From the very beginning, it was the humorous aspect, with heroes in
the early school years that Nosov made his own. Two recurring characters
in these little stories are the friends Mishka and Kolya. Their irrepressible
energy and lively imagination constantly land them in comical situations.
Nosov stays within the limits of everyday events, but the inquisitiveness
of the boys makes the simplest event into a great adventure, whether it
is cooking porridge, transporting a puppy or laying out a garden. In their
desire to manage on their own and to distinguish themselves, the boys
overestimate their own abilities and take on demanding tasks in an omi-
nously blithe spirit.
A key part of the humour in Nosov’s stories lies in the way the chil-
dren themselves innocently recount their pranks or mishaps. It is Kolya
who acts as narrator; he lacks Mishka’s self-confidence and imagination
and wants to appear the more sensible of the two, but he lets himself be
led into one unfortunate episode after another. The children in the sto-
ries are not negative figures. Nosov writes about Mishka and Kolya with
good-natured humour and a deep sympathy for their initiative and vital-
ity. Without being openly didactic, his stories urge self-reliance, courage
and honesty. The plots are dynamic, full of sudden twists and turns. The
dialogue and the use of children’s own language are generally admired.
The late 1940s saw the start of a new phase in Nosov’s writing, as he
tried his hand at longer stories, but without stinting on the humour.
Both The Happy Family (Vesyolaya semeyka, 1949) and The Diary of Kolya
Sinitsyn (Dnevnik Koli Sinitsyna, 1950) reflect the general tendency at
that time to prepare children to choose a career and enter working life.
Children’s games have been replaced by useful and enriching occupations.
In The Happy Family, Mishka and Kolya construct an incubator, in which
they manage to hatch hens’ eggs, and in The Diary of Kolya Sinitsyn, the
children spend their summer holidays bee-keeping.
After reading these stories, one could keep hens or bees oneself (and
many children were tempted to do so), but the factual material is not
the key feature. Rather, Nosov stresses the joy of creation and discov-
ery, and an emotional attitude to work. While working, children learn to
show tenacity and strength of will, and also to work together as a collec-
tive. The acquisition of knowledge always happens of the children’s own
volition. The young narrator constructs his own (often absurd) theories
on the basis of his own observations, and he is sensitively corrected by
the adults.
 wise leadership and the fatherly care of comrade stalin 459

The introduction to The Diary of Kolya Sinitsyn is brilliant:

28 May
Today was a good day for me. School finished, and I was moved up to the
next class with the highest grades in every subject. Tomorrow, the summer
holidays begin. I intend to start a diary during the holidays. Mama says she
will give me a ball-point if I manage to write a diary. I have bought a thick
white notebook and I have decided to write down everything interesting
that happens. As soon as something interesting happens, I will note it down.
I will also write down my thoughts. Whenever I hit on some good idea, I will
write it down. Nothing interesting has happened so far today. There are no
ideas to note down either.

29 May
Nothing interesting happened today either. And no good ideas came up
either. This is probably because I played football all day with the boys in
the yard, and there was no time to think. But that doesn’t matter. I will wait
until tomorrow. Maybe something interesting will happen tomorrow.

30 May
Nothing interesting happened today either. For some reason, there are no
good ideas to note down either. I don’t know what to write about. Maybe
I should just imagine something and write it down? But that wouldn’t
be right—to make up something for a diary. If it’s a diary, it should all be
true.
In 1951, Vitya Maleev at School and at Home secured Nosov’s position as
one of the foremost Soviet children’s authors. The novel was a great suc-
cess with readers and also won a Stalin Prize in 1952. This was also the
point at which Nosov finally left the film industry to concentrate entirely
on writing.
Yury Sotnik (1914–97) undeservedly found himself overshadowed by
Nosov. The critic Benedikt Sarnov (born 1927) writes of him: “For Sotnik,
childhood is a precious gift. In his stories, he asserts, persistently, warmly
and persuasively, children’s right to be children, to be as they are—noisy,
unrestrained, incredibly energetic, always ready for the most unexpected
exploits. With easy humour, Sotnik shows that this thirst for boyish pranks
is justified, that this huge store of energy is natural and normal.”27
Sotnik’s first book appeared in 1946. The subject of the story About
Our Affairs (Pro nashi dela) was typical of its time: some children help
to rebuild their school, which has been destroyed in the War. The open-
ing, however, revealed a desire to see things through the children’s eyes.

27 B. Sarnov, “Pisatel’ Iurii Sotnik,” Pioner 6 (1964): 50.

460 chapter eight

The call to work comes not as a decree from on high, but in the form of a
mysterious message to assemble immediately.
In later stories, Sotnik showed that his sympathies were not so much
with the collective as with imaginative eccentrics, young inventors and
reckless little adventurers. Like Nosov’s heroes, these are lively children,
full of initiative, who easily misjudge their knowledge and abilities and so
get themselves into trouble. This is true, for example, of Vovka Grushin,
who builds a submarine but forgets that it is not enough to get to the
bottom of the sea, you have to be able to come up to the surface again
(“‘Arkhimed’ Vovki Grushina”, 1947); of Vasya, who fires his shotgun at
an ‘unknown bird’ that he mistakes for a condor, but which turns out
to be a glider (“Nevidannaya ptitsa”, 1950); of Lodya, who lets everyone
know that he is “a man who never suffers from nerves” and is suddenly
confronted with an untethered, vicious bull (“Chelovek bez nervov”, 1950);
or of Sergey, who has to learn to swim in ten days, if he wants to join his
friends on a Pioneer outing (“Uchitel plavaniya”, 1953). These are humor-
ous stories, without a trace of moralising.

A prominent name in nature writing was Ivan Sokolov-Mikitov (1892–

1975). He was not a newcomer to literature: he had made his debut before
the Revolution, and in the 1920s he had published a number of books for
children, both stories of his own and adaptations of Russian folk-tales.
Sokolov-Mikitov was a hunter and naturalist and had taken part in expe-
ditions in northern Russia and the Asian parts of the country.
However, it was mainly after the Second World War that he began to
publish nature sketches for children and teenagers. Some were adapta-
tions of his adult books, others were written directly for a young audi-
ence. Tales of a Hunter (Rasskazy okhotnika, 1950), Spring in the Forest
(Vesna v lesu, 1952), From Spring to Spring (Ot vesny do vesny, 1952) and
Winter in the Forest (Zima v lesu, 1955) are permeated with a great love of
life in nature. Sokolov-Mitikov’s genre is the plotless sketch. He does not
anthropomorphise the animals, but always communicates facts in a lyri-
cal tone and mellifluous language. Notable among Sokolov-Mitikov’s last
works is A Year in the Forest (God v lesu, 1972), based on his observations
of animals’ lives in different seasons.
In 1945, the Ministry of Education ran a competition for the best chil-
dren’s book. The first prize went to Mikhail Prishvin for his story The Sun’s
Larder (Kladovaya solntsa, 1945). Prishvin had taken up an old idea and
written a modern fairy tale with the action moved to the present time
and a realistically drawn background setting. Two orphaned children are
 wise leadership and the fatherly care of comrade stalin 461

picking berries in the forest, when they come to the marshlands where
a dreaded wolf has his lair. Courage, resourcefulness and steadfastness
are the qualities that enable the children to save themselves from danger.
Prishvin uses an adult narrator, a hunter, who also expresses the deeper
meaning of the story: “The highest truth is people’s fierce centuries-old
fight for love.”

Fairy tales for the smallest children found a new forum in the annual
Fairy-Tale Films (Filmy-skazki). Behind the book, which came out for the
first time in 1950, was the state film organisation Goskino. Cartoon films
for children had experienced a renaissance in the Soviet Union after the
War and also achieved success at international festivals. Fairy-Tale Films
was intended as an anthology of film scripts, but it also benefited chil-
dren’s literature by giving many talented writers and artists the opportu-
nity to realise their ideas. After the austere black-and-white illustrations
of the Stalin years, dominated by the strictly realistic drawings of Aleksey
Pakhomov, the coloured pictures in the anthology seemed positively
extravagant.
The most important name in Fairy-Tale Films was Vladimir Suteev
(1903–64). He had been involved as early as the 1920s, when the first
Soviet cartoon films were released. After the War, Suteev started to
make his own cartoons for children, which formed the basis for a series
of much-loved picture books. Various Wheels (Raznye kolesa, 1953), Who
Said Miaow? (Kto skazal miau?, 1955) and What Kind of Bird Is That? (Ėto
chto za ptitsa?, 1956) are entertaining animal stories, while “The Snow-
man Postman” (“Snegovik-pochtovik”, 1956) is a Christmas—or rather,
New Year—story about how some children get a tree from Father Frost
in the forest, helped by the snowman and Bobik the dog.
Another artist who addressed himself to small children was Aleksey
Laptev (1905–65). His Jolly Pictures (Vesyolye kartinki, 1948) is a picture
book with poems, in which animals in human form appear in absurd situ-
ations, arranging masquerades and swapping roles among themselves.

In the Field of Poetry

Poetry did not develop in isolation during the War and the post-war years,
but also did its best to serve the objectives of the day. In some newly-
written stanzas, Sergey Mikhalkov had his Uncle Styopa called up into the
Navy to take part in the defence of Leningrad. Elizaveta Tarakhovskaya
portrayed the heroes of the War, soldiers who only yesterday were sitting
462 chapter eight

on school benches and were now risking their lives for their country. In
“The Horse” (“Kon”, 1943), she illustrated the cruel fate of animals in the
War. Zinaida Aleksandrova glorified child partisans, from the famous
Zoya to a nameless boy who joins the civil resistance movement after his
mother is deported to Germany (“Partizany”, 1944). In Elena Blaginina’s
poems, children play at war, rejoice at victories over the enemy and vow
to defend their country in the future.
The War was still present long after 1945. The long poem Zvenigorod
(1948) by Agniya Barto describes life in a children’s camp outside Moscow.
Children who have lost their parents in the War have found a new home
here. Barto portrays the war-ravaged children, whose dreams are still
haunted by bombers and ruined buildings. But the tone of Zvenigorod is
optimistic; the camp resounds with happy voices (the name Zvenigorod
means a “city of ringing sounds”). Barto also sets out to show that the chil-
dren are not forgotten, but have been lovingly taken in hand by an older
generation that can guarantee them a happy upbringing and a bright
future. There are always fresh flowers beneath the photograph of their
benefactor, Stalin. Vera Inber wrote about the will to rebuild the coun-
try in allegorical form in “Homeward, Homeward!” (“Domoy, domoy! . .”,
1945). The starlings fly away during the War, but are overcome with long-
ing to return to their Russian homeland. The poem won first prize in a
competition for the best children’s book.
In 1941, Sergey Mikhalkov began an ambitious epic poem, A True Story
for Children (Byl dlya detey), in which he set out to explain the meaning
and course of the War to the youngest readers. The first edition came out
in 1944, but Mikhalkov continued to work on his ‘true story’ for several
decades to come. Hitler wanted to “turn free men / into hungry slaves”,
but the whole country rose against the invaders and the Russians refused
to call their Russian bread ‘Brot’. In Berlin, Soviet soldiers avenged the
destruction of Stalingrad before returning as heroes to their homelands.
Mikhalkov’s A True Story for Children closes with a call to children to hon-
our war veterans and take part in the reconstruction of the country.
Mikhalkov’s development during this period makes sad reading. Traces
of his ‘happy 1930s’ can certainly be found in poems like “My Puppy”
(“Moy shchenok”), “My Street” (“Moya ulitsa”), “The Telephone” (“Telefon”)
and “Important Things” (“Vazhnye dela”), but Mikhalkov largely squan-
dered his talent on blatantly ideological and propagandistic works. He
took a prominent place in the choir singing Stalin’s praises. In 1943,
Mikhalkov wrote the words for the Soviet national anthem, and after the
War came another ‘official’ lyric—“The Song of Soviet Young Pioneers”
 wise leadership and the fatherly care of comrade stalin 463

(“Pesnya pionerov Sovetskogo Soyuza”). His poems for children were also
increasingly filled with Party membership books and Pioneer scarves. The
patriotic Orlov family was set up as an ideal in “I Serve the Soviet Union”
(“Sluzhu Sovetskomu Soyuzu”).
It is surprising to see how blithely Mikhalkov disregarded the need to
tailor his political poems to the readership. The heavy and propagandistic
‘history lesson’ A Conversation with My Son (Razgovor s synom, 1949) com-
pletely ignores children’s experience and language. The lofty introduction—
“My son! Listen to my story / about our country and about us”—is most
reminiscent of the rhetorical writing of the 18th century. In his famous
epic poem “In the Lenin Museum” (“V muzee Lenina”, 1949), two children
take a tour of the great brick building on Red Square, but the attempt to
see the museum through children’s eyes and to convey children’s voices
is not convincing. Mikhalkov tells of Lenin’s life in abstract language, and
it is the adult author rather than the children who is duly moved by the
sight of the items on display: “How dear is every object / preserved behind
glass! / Objects that were warmed / by his warm hand.” Stalin is glorified
as the defender of Lenin’s legacy in lines that abruptly disappeared after
Khrushchev’s showdown with Stalinism in 1956.
After the War, Samuil Marshak mainly wrote poetry for adults and
worked on translations. He only wrote sporadically for children, mostly
favouring larger formats—epic poems and lyrical verse cycles. The two
epic poems A True Story-Fantasy (Byl-nebylitsa, 1947) and The Ice Island
(Ledyanoy ostrov, 1947) represent socialist realism for older children. In
the first, an elderly man tells an astonished crowd of children about Mos-
cow’s capitalist past. His life story, which includes starvation, humiliation,
hard work and lack of educational possibilities, is a perfect model of the
Soviet mythology of a pre-revolutionary Russian anti-childhood. Before
1917, the house on Arbat Street, where these Soviet citizens seek tempo-
rary shelter from the rain, was the property of one single person, Adelaida
Khitrovo (the last name means ‘cunning’ in English). The October Revolu-
tion swept away not only Madame Khitrovo, but also all social injustice,
including the maltreatment of children. In Marshak’s works the roles have
now changed. While the American capitalist in Who Is He? failed to under-
stand that a house could be collectively owned, now, fifteen years later,
the Soviet children have trouble in coping with the fact that one person
alone could be the owner of a big house. Where Mr Smith asked who
Mr Komsomol was, the Soviet children of 1947 take the name Khitrovo for
an institution. The reality of yesterday seems like a fantasy, a nightmare,
which is now being dispersed, just like the heavy storm that passes over
464 chapter eight

Moscow. The old man’s recollections bring about catharsis in the chil-
dren, strengthening in them the feeling of the finality of their reality.
In The Ice Island Marshak added to his earlier heroic figures, the post-
man, the fireman and the worker, another peace-time ideal, that is, the
doctor. The postulate behind the epic poem is that, while in past times
people had to confine themselves to fairy tales and legends, Soviet reality
produces factual stories of astonishing quality. To save an injured scientist
at a polar station, a doctor performs a risky trick, when, in a heavy storm,
he is dropped from a helicopter using a parachute. As he struggles for his
life in the icy ocean, he cannot let go of his parachute, as it is State prop-
erty (a grim, probably unintentional reminder of the primacy of the Soviet
state to its citizens). The young doctor triumphs over the elements and
rescues his patient from death, but he is not given the ultimate honour.
In 1947 it was obligatory to depict Stalin as the driving force behind every
action, and Marshak stuck to the rule:
For this it was worth jumping from high above
Into the gray ocean, on the jagged ice,
On the snow between the dark thawed patches,
To where you are sent to help a comrade,
In the name of the fatherland, by Stalin.
The poems in A Book of Many Colours (Raznotsvetnaya kniga, 1947) are
based around the six primary colours. Green is the colour of summer,
blue of the sea, yellow of the sand and white of the snow. Thus far, Mar-
shak presents the beauty of nature, but the cycle concludes with a Soviet
creed. Red is symbolised by Red Square, while black—the colour of night
and of reaction—is lit up by the red ruby in the Kremlin tower. Marshak
employed the same form of composition in All the Year Round (Krugly
god, 1948), where the twelve months do not just inspire a ‘nature diary’,
but also poems that point up Soviet holidays and underline Moscow’s
status as the absolute centre.
Marshak’s last significant work for children was A Happy Journey from
A to Z (Vesyoloe puteshestvie ot A do Ya, 1953). Like Boris Zhitkov’s What
I Saw, this describes a train journey, with the letters representing the sta-
tions. On his journey through the alphabet, the young traveller picks up
the basics of working life and technology, geography, the world of animals,
life in the city and the country, and Russian grammar. Marshak speaks in
the name of children, using a first-person-plural point of view, but, in spite
of its title, the trip provides little if any childlike humour and fantasies.
The symbolic dimension of the work is that the ability to read opens up a
 wise leadership and the fatherly care of comrade stalin 465

world of learning and brings the child a step closer to the world of adults.
At the end of the journey the innocent little traveller is exposed to the
true meaning of the process of learning: “Then Lenin and Stalin will talk to
you as to a friend.” When this line was cut in the ensuing editions with no
new political direction given, it put Soviet children in the same position as
the absent-minded fellow in Marshak’s famous, early poem, forever stuck
in his forgotten, immobile train carriage.
Patriotism occupies a central position in Agniya Barto’s poems for
children from the post-war years. The 800th anniversary of Moscow was
the occasion for the narrative poem I Live in Moscow (Ya zhivu v Moskve,
1947). Nine-year-old Petya comes to know his hometown, his school, the
telegraph office, the metro, the sports ground and so on. He learns useful
things, like the fact that it is Mossoviet (the city authority) that looks after
construction work, sanitation and electricity in Moscow. At the same time,
there is an emphasis on the legacy of the War, with all its obligations. The
heroic ideal is embodied by Petya’s brother, who is a soldier; at an exhibi-
tion of trophies of war, Petya proudly points out the German tank that his
brother blew up at Stalingrad. Even the boys’ games are militaristic; Petya
dramatises his route to school by pretending to be a partisan charged with
defying the snowstorm to bring important documents to the school build-
ing. The book ends with a euphoric May Day parade. To the tones of the
Spassky Bell, the children hand flowers to Stalin: “And everywhere / all
over the world / you can hear / the sound of the Kremlin bells.”
Young Lyonya’s problem in “He is 14 Years Old” (“Emu 14 let”, 1949) is
that he has not had the opportunity to die a hero’s death of the kind the
War veterans tell of at school. The poem shows that it is still possible to
achieve great feats in small everyday things. Lyonya makes his contribu-
tion to the mother country by overcoming his fear, protecting his little
brother and standing loyally at his classmates’ side.
Barto’s poetic programme can be inferred from the speeches she gave
to Soviet Writers’ Congresses, from the first in 1934 to the seventh in 1976.
Towards the end of her life, this once contentious writer could easily be
seen as just another self-righteous Soviet cultural bureaucrat, conscien-
tiously stressing how children’s literature should be an ideological weapon
for socialist education. Even so, Barto never abandoned her high literary
standards. In 1952, she gave her views on the question of what features
were specific to children’s literature:
Above all, the thoughts and imagery in children’s books must be particularly
clear and concrete, and the language must be crystal-clear and precise. One
466 chapter eight

of the most important features is the need to take account of the children’s
age. You cannot get away from this! If the author does not properly under-
stand the different periods of childhood, the book will miss its target. But
“the child grows every day. The book he or she read today and the same
book read a few days later will find a fundamentally different reader and dif-
ferent ways of reading”, as Makarenko says. He considers that books should
not slavishly follow the demands of a given age, but constitute a step for-
ward, leading the child to heights it has not reached before. Makarenko said
that a book that is only interesting to a specific, precise age is always a weak
book. This view is shared by many authors and teachers.28
Elena Blaginina’s best-known poem from the post-war years is “Alyo-
nushka” (1953), a kind of lullaby, painting a tender picture of the little
child’s world. In the last verse, the socialisation process starts, as Alyo-
nushka takes part in the May Day demonstration, sitting on her father’s
arm with a red flag in her hand. The verbal playfulness of the poem bears
witness to the influence of Russian folklore and Chukovsky’s verse tales.
This period also saw the birth of many rhyming riddles, counting songs,
teasing lyrics and tongue-twisters.
Zinaida Aleksandrova also remained faithful to the world of children.
Her collection In Our Flat (U nas v kvartire, 1949) contains poems about
children in a communal flat. They run down the corridor, play school, feed
birds and celebrate their birthdays. The high point of their year is the New
Year party with a shared tree. Aleksandrova also dealt with the subject of
work. In the poem “The Sarafan” (“Sarafanchik”, 1948), she describes the
labour that has gone into little Tania’s skirt. The whole process is there,
from growing the cotton on a kolkhoz in Uzbekistan to designing the pat-
tern in Moscow.
“Who Built This House?” asked Sergey Baruzdin in his first book (Kto
postroil ėtot dom?, 1950). In realistic and matter-of-fact poems, he fol-
lowed the building work from the architect’s drawing board to the last
stroke of the painter’s brush. Baruzdin celebrated their professional skill,
while giving children their first insight into different jobs.
The ‘wonders’ created by work also interested Elizaveta Tarakhovskaya.
In The Tale of the Living Water (Skazka pro zhivuyu vodu), people man-
age to plant a forest in the steppe, a harvester moves across the field, an
excavator digs a reservoir in the middle of a dry plain. Children who have
lived in a world of fairy tales come to understand the power of the Soviet

28 Agniia Barto, “Smeshnoe i ser’eznoe: Zametki o detskoi literature,” Sobranie sochinenii

v 4 tomakh. Vol. 4 (M., 1984), 225–226.
 wise leadership and the fatherly care of comrade stalin 467

worker and the five-year plan. The refrain sounds a victorious note: “What
was once just a fairy tale / that could only be seen in dreams, / we have
achieved by our labour / in our Stalin country!” Let’s Look at the Exhibition
(Posmotrim vystavku, 1957) contains humorous poems about the experi-
ences of some children at the Exhibition of Economic Achievements in
Moscow.

There was no innovation to speak of in the poetry of the post-war years.

The period was dominated by older, well-known names, authors who had
started out in the 1920s and 1930s. The most significant new names were
Evgeniya Trutneva, Natalya Konchalovskaya and Rakhil Baumvol.
Evgeniya Trutneva (1884–1959) started late. Before writing poems of
her own, she had worked as a librarian and produced plays for a puppet
theatre. Her first collection, The Gift (Podarok, 1940), introduced a new
setting into Russian poetry for children, namely the Urals and their natu-
ral environment. Trutneva remained true to her home district: most of
her fifty and more little books were published in either Perm or Sverd-
lovsk. During the War, many children were evacuated to these areas, and
several of Trutneva’s poems describe the warm reception they received.
The whole country was home to Soviet children at that time. Other key
themes for Trutneva are children’s joie-de-vivre, the seasons and nature,
professional skills and Soviet patriotism.
Natalya Konchalovskaya (1903–88) came from artistic stock on both
sides. Her father, Pyotr Konchalovsky, was a famous sculptor, and her
maternal grandfather, Vasily Surikov, was one of the foremost painters
of the 19th century. Konchalovskaya herself was married to Sergey
Mikhalkov. She began her literary career by translating English poetry in
the late 1930s, and in the war years she published a number of books of
poetry that reflected the influence of Russian folk traditions.
Konchalovskaya achieved fame with the trilogy Our Ancient Capital
(Nasha drevnyaya stolitsa, 1947–53). In 1947, Moscow celebrated 800 years
of its existence, an event that also made its mark on children’s literature.
Konchalovskaya’s long narrative poem was an overview of Moscow’s his-
tory, from the foundation of the city in 1147 to the execution of the rebel
Stenka Razin in Red Square in 1671. Our Ancient Capital is regarded as the
first successful attempt to treat historical material in verse form for the
youngest schoolchildren.
In Our Ancient Capital, Konchalovskaya combines a militant patrio-
tism with a cry for peace. The last stanza opens up a dizzying view of the
future:
468 chapter eight

All the people of the world,

those who do not want war,
look towards Moscow,
the bulwark of peace among men.
Here is the hope of the whole universe.
Hope for those who live in slavery,
for a united, indestructible world,
for brotherhood on Earth.
Another welcome contribution to Russian poetry for children came from
Rakhil Baumvol (Rokhl Boymvol, 1914–2000). In the 1930s, she had pub-
lished poems for adults in Yiddish, but after the War she turned to writ-
ing stories and poems for children in Russian. The obvious reason was
that literature written in Yiddish no longer was to be published in the
Soviet Union. The focus of Baumvol’s writing is clear from titles like A
Doll Takes a Ride (Kukla edet, 1948). Her most popular book was the prose
tale The Blue Mitten (Sinyaya varezhka, 1955), based on the folk heritage,
while Face Towards the Sun (Litsom k solntsu, 1969), a volume of fairy
tales, included in the series My First Little Book (Moya pervaya knizhka),
even reached an edition of 1.75 million copies.

The Conference of 1952

In April 1952, 350 Soviet children’s authors and critics assembled for an
All-Union Conference on Children’s Literature in Moscow. On the surface
a feeling of self-satisfaction dominated proceedings: “We have the best
children’s theatre in the world”, said Valentin Kataev, hastily adding that
it could become even better with the help of the Party and the whole of
society.29 In his survey of poetry for small children, the writer Nikolay
Gribachov (1910–92) stated that the success of Soviet children’s literature
was beyond dispute and that the reason was that it had followed the path
staked out by the Party and had honestly served the people.30
The statistics presented at the conference gave occasion for pride. Since
the October Revolution, about 40,000 books for children and young peo-
ple had been published, totalling one billion and six million copies. The
number of titles published in the year before the conference (1951) was

29 Vl. Kataev, “O dramaturgii dlia detei,” in Sovetskaia detskaia literatura: Sbornik statei
(М.-L, 1953), 139.
30 Nikolai Gribachev, “O stikhakh dlia detei,” Oktiabr’ 7 (1952): 173.
 wise leadership and the fatherly care of comrade stalin 469

1,822. To these could be added ten or more magazines and regular anthol-
ogies. The main magazines were Murzilka for the little ones, and Pioneer,
United Kids (Druzhnye rebyata) and The Entertainer (Zateynik, 1946–53)
for school-age children, along with the anthologies For Children (Detyam)
and Friendship (Druzhba). Altogether, there were around 250 professional
children’s writers, of whom about 100 lived in Moscow.
In the years after the Second World War, the principles of socialist real-
ism had been successfully implemented in children’s literature, with all
that meant for the triumph of mediocrity and the obligatory idealisation
and optimism. So when people at the congress—in the name of social-
ist realism—expressed their dissatisfaction with certain phenomena in
contemporary literature, this had an inevitable tinge of pseudo-criticism.
Literary critics were urged to combat any kind of concealment, any kind
of syropy descriptions of life. Children should be shown the diversity of
life and not be raised like exotic plants. In an article in Pravda on the eve
of the conference, Stalin was eulogised as the ultimate champion of truth:
“Write the truth, Stalin teaches our writer.”31 What did not need to need
to be said was that the ‘truth’ and ‘true reality’ were, of course, the truth
and the reality that the Party acknowledged as such.
Aleksey Surkov (1899–1983), the First Secretary of the Writers’ Union,
also delivered what seemed like stern criticism. In the keynote speech to
the conference, he urged writers to give up any kind of formula and “to
go out into real life”.32 They too often restricted themselves to the kinder-
garten, the school or the college, and isolated their heroes from life outside
these establishments. Again and again, school novels gave their readers
the ‘conflict’ between the gifted boy or girl—the ‘individualist’—and the
sensible but dull and faceless collective, with the inevitable re-education
of the ‘individualist’ in the last chapter.
The criticism was most often directed at drama. Kataev, who had the
task of surveying drama for children, observed that, although almost all
the good plays had come out since the War, the genre was still in crisis.
One reason was writers’ fear of painting negative portraits, because they
could easily be criticised as not ‘typical’.33 Kataev seemed luckily unaware
that this was an inevitable result of the dictatorship of socialist realism.

31 “Preodolet’ otstavanie dramaturgii,” Pravda. April 7, 1952, 2.

32 А. Surkov, “Za bol’shuiu literaturu dlia detei i iunoshestva,” Literaturnaia gazeta 46
(1952): 2.
33 Valentin Kataev, “O detskoi dramaturgii,” Literaturnaia gazeta 47 (1952): 2.
470 chapter eight

Another consequence was cited by Sergey Mikhalkov in his speech about

literature for small children: an editor had felt that “The Black Sea” was too
sombre a title for a children’s book and wanted to change it to “The Blue
Sea”.34 In such conditions, the need for humorous books was bound to
remain unsatisfied—despite the shining exception of Nikolay Nosov and
Yury Sotnik. Authors did not want to risk coming across as light-hearted
entertainers in a country that claimed to realise mankind’s profoundest
dreams.
It was not only humorous books that the conference wanted to see.
People also called for plays about working class and kolkhoz children,
more interesting history and geography textbooks written by writers’ col-
lectives, novels that did not just show Young Pioneers relaxing and going
on trips, but also described how the children’s organisation shaped young
people ideologically. “Millions of Pioneers and schoolchildren expect lit-
erature to portray the Pioneer as a positive hero, a keen patriot and a
true young Leninist, and to give a broad and clear picture of all the teem-
ing activity of the Pioneer organization”, said Natalya Ilina from Pioneer
magazine.35 Many speakers, including Samuil Marshak, criticised the lack
of good biographies of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. However, the situ-
ation was not entirely bleak, commented Mikhalkov, who was pleased to
note that an anthology of poems for children about Lenin and Stalin had
come out in 1951.36
The summary of the discussion showed that it was still too early to
expect more profound changes: the task facing Soviet children’s litera-
ture was to celebrate the heroism of Soviet man and the beauty of labour
and to reflect the struggle for ‘peace’ and ‘democracy’ going on out in the
world under Soviet guidance.

One major name was absent from the 1952 conference, the poet Lev Kvitko.
His last Russian poetry book, To My Friends (Moim druzyam, 1948), had
shown that, at his best, he could still combine a firm communist convic-
tion with high literary standards. Another volume from the same year,
The Fiddle (Skripochka), with poems for pre-school children, covered the
whole repertoire from exuberant joie-de-vivre to Soviet patriotism. The
poem ‘The Harvest’ (‘Urozhay’), translated into Russian by Marshak,

34 S. Mikhalkov, “Literatura dlia malenkikh”, Literaturnaia gazeta 48 (1952): 2.

35 N. Il’ina, “Bol’she khoroshikh knig o pionerakh,” Literaturnaia gazeta 47 (1952): 2.
36 S. Mikhalkov, Literaturnaia gazeta 48 (1952): 2.
 wise leadership and the fatherly care of comrade stalin 471

supported the myth of the socialist Soviet surplus. It contains lines like
“People load onto trucks / and drive from district to district / a record
harvest / for free people.”
Kvitko was absent from the conference because he had been arrested
a year earlier. The Soviet campaign against those ‘rootless cosmopolitans’,
the Jews, had begun, and in August 1952, Kvitko was executed, along with
26 other Jewish writers and artists. This was the same writer of whom a
later Soviet commentator said, “The people and labour, the motherland
and the Party were sacred ideas for the poet. All his writing was perme-
ated with faith in the victory of Communism, and whatever he wrote
about, his eyes were turned to the future.”37 Kvitko himself, at a writers’
meeting in 1937, stated that “only the Great October revolution liberated
me and gave me the possibility to become a writer”.38
Nobody asked after Kvitko at the conference. Instead, they applauded
Marshak’s proposal that the Politburo, with Stalin at its head, should be
elected to the honorary presidency of the conference. Surkov urged his
colleagues to express their gratitude: “Our children’s literature owes all
its success to the wise leadership of our great Bolshevik Party and the
fatherly care and trust shown by the brilliant architect of Communism,
the best friend of Soviet literature, Comrade Stalin.”39

37 S. Mikhalkov, “Lev Kvitko (1890–1952),” in L. Kvitko, Moim druz’iam: Stikhi (M., 1987), 4.
38 “Pisatel’ o sebe: Lev Moiseevich Kvitko,” Detskaia literatura 21 (1937): 67.
39 A. Surkov, “Za bol’shuiu literaturu dlia detei i iunoshestva,” Literaturnaia gazeta 46
(1952): 2.
 chapter nine

Thaw in the World of Children (1954–1968)

In April 1953 Stalin died. All over the Soviet Union, people mourned their
departed leader, and children’s authors filled the pages of newspapers and
magazines with eulogies. “In the whole world, children had not / such a
close and dear friend”, wrote Anatoly Moshkovsky in his poem “The immor-
tal name” (“Bessmertnoe imya”, 1953),1 and Valentina Oseeva, the author
of the Vasyok Trubachov trilogy, affirmed in her obituary for “The Great
Friend of Children” that children had returned Stalin’s feelings “with a
warm and genuine love”.2
Three years later, in 1956, the new Party Secretary, Nikita Khrushchev,
made a speech to the Twentieth Party Congress that contained the first
public disclosures on the millions of innocent victims of the Stalin years.
No Soviet citizen could have been ignorant of the arrests, the executions,
and the existence of a huge system of prison camps, but these horrors
were now unambiguously linked to yesterday’s deity, Stalin. It was a new
page in the history of the Soviet Union.
In cultural life this was the start of a period of revaluation and fresh
thinking, which took its name from a significant novel by Ilya Ehrenburg,
The Thaw (Ottepel, 1954–56). There was a break from the rigid inter-
pretation of socialist realism that had characterised the Stalin era, and
greater scope for individual characterization and social criticism. In some
respects, the period was reminiscent of the 1920s: there was something
of the same enthusiasm and optimism, the same feeling of transforming
everything from the ground up.
One can also speak of a ‘thaw’ in Soviet children’s literature, although it
was expressed in much less spectacular ways than in adult literature. There
were no sensational works to compare with Vladimir Dudintsev’s Not by
Bread Alone (Ne khlebom edinym, 1956) or Boris Pasternak’s banned Dok-
tor Zhivago (1957). The coming to terms with the lawlessness and injus-
tices of the Stalin era left children’s literature practically untouched; there
was no Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn for younger readers. The closest was Nina

1 Druzhnye rebiata 4 (1953): 6.

2 Druzhnye rebiata 4 (1953): 11.
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 473

Kosterina’s Diary (Dnevnik Niny Kosterinoy, 1962), an authentic teenage

diary covering the years 1936–41, in which Nina (1921–41) writes about
school and leisure time, first love and life with her friends in Moscow.
Everything changes when the wave of terror touches her own family, and
her father’s arrest makes her the ‘child of an enemy of the people’, a pariah
class in Stalin’s Soviet Union. The diary could have been important read-
ing for young people, but it was originally published in the adult magazine
Novy mir and subsequently ‘forgotten’ in the Brezhnev era.
The Thaw years saw the emergence of a new generation of writers with
their own aesthetic vision and literary programme. Children’s literature
opened out in terms of subject matter and style. In prose, there was a
break with well-tried models and conventions, allowing writers to give a
psychologically sharper portrayal and a darker but often more plausible
picture of the conditions in which Soviet children grew up. Poetry, mean-
while, offered unique opportunities for experimentation, as it had in the
1920s. It was again opened up to children’s experience of the world, their
fantasies and word games.

Windows Opened Up

After decades of enforced but self-satisfied isolation, a window was slightly

opened to the outside world. Some new foreign writers were introduced,
while some long-since forgotten names of importance were ‘rehabilitated’
through new translations. The best qualities for a foreign writer hoping
for an introduction to the Soviet book market were to have a revolution-
ary background and to be a Communist and a friend of the Soviet Union.
The Italian Gianni Rodari was the perfect case, as he had joined the Ital-
ian Communist Party in 1944, participated in the Italian resistance move-
ment and fulfilled his long-cherished dream of a visit to the USSR in 1952.
Rodari’s poems, both nonsense and agitational verse, were swiftly trans-
lated into Russian by Marshak. In an essay, the Soviet maestro explained
his fondness for his Italian colleague: “Only those who live close to the
people and speak its language can write poems which are worthy of being
placed side by side with folk songs and counting-out rhymes. To my mind,
Gianni Rodari is such a poet. In his poems I can hear the ringing voices of
children playing in the streets of Rome, Bologna and Naples.”3

3 Samuil Marshak, “Stikhi Dzhanni Rodari,” Literaturnaia gazeta 141 (1952): 1.

474 chapter nine

The favourite among Russian children was Rodari’s fairy-tale novel Le

avventure di Cipollini (1951, Priklyucheniya Chipollino), translated under
the editorial supervision of Marshak in 1953. By the end of the century the
book had reached around sixty editions in Russia, with the total number
of copies reaching several million. To this astonishing number must be
added all the performances of the many stage versions, the cartoon (1961),
the ballet (1973), and the musical film (1973). Part of the initial success
belongs to the illustrations by the children’s writer and artist Vladimir
Suteev.
Chipollino is an ever cheerful little onion, who leads the struggle for free-
dom against Prince Lemon, Lord Tomato and their crew. In the fairytale
world of vegetables, fruits, insects and animals, injustice reigns: honest
‘people’ are detained, while the degenerate upper classes live on the work
of the poor. A successful revolution drives the aristocrats away, or forces
them to taste the life conditions of the underprivileged. Baron Orange’s
fate is to grow “thin as a whip”, аn improbable but fanciful image. The uto-
pia presented to the child-reader at the end of the book is the Countess
Cherry’s family castle being turned into a Children’s Palace with a cinema,
a puppet theatre, and rooms for drawing and sports. The main attraction
is, however, the founding of a school, as learning is needed for future con-
flicts and struggles against all the cheats, oppressors and scoundrels that
still thrive all over the world.
Another communist pro-Soviet writer was Julian Tuwim, a Jewish-
Polish poet. Tuwim’s best poems for children, such as “O panu Tralalińskim”
(“Pro pana Trulyalinskogo”), “Słoń Trąbalski” (“Slon Khobotovsky”), “Ptasie
radio” (“Ptiche radio”) and “Lokomotywa” (“Parovoz”), were all written in
the 1930s, but they only found their way into Soviet literature during the
Thaw. Mayakovsky, during his visit to Warsaw in 1927, is said to have urged
Tuwim, his Polish translator, to write children’s poetry.4 Almost all the
big names in contemporary Russian poetry were involved in translating
the Pole’s folk poetry-inspired, joyful verses with their neologisms, catch-
phrases and word play. The list of Tuwim’s translators includes Marshak,
Mikhalkov, Blaginina, Tarakhovskaya, Boris Zakhoder and Ėmma Mosh­
kovskaya. Thanks to them and Tuwim, the theme of eccentricity was
again introduced into Soviet Russian poetry.

4 “Stikhi detiam: Detskie klassiki: Iulian Tuvim,” accessed March 15, 2013, http//:stihide
tyam.ru/child_classics/tuvim_y.php.
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 475

As a result of the Thaw, even children’s books devoid of any ‘progres-

sive tendency’ were now published in Russian translation. Antoine de
Saint-Exupéry’s Le petit prince (1943), with its satirical attitude toward
the adult world, appeared in 1958. Other new acquaintances for young
Russian readers were A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh (1926; Vinni-Pukh i vse
ostalnye) and Pamela L. Travers’ Mary Poppins (1934), both translated by
the eminent poet Boris Zakhoder in 1960 and 1968, respectively. 1968 also
saw Nina Demurova’s (born 1930) new translation of J.M. Barrie’s Peter
Pan. Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland had been translated by Aleksandr
Olenich-Gnenenko (1893–1963) as Alisa v strane chudes in 1940 and pub-
lished only in the translator’s hometown Rostov-on-Don (since Moscow
publishers would never have accepted Carroll’s absurdism then), but now
two new translations saw the light of day—one by Demurova in 1967, and
another, rather a retelling of Carroll’s book, by Zakhoder in 1972. Vladi-
mir Nabokov’s 1923 translation could not yet be published in the USSR,
as most Russian émigré literature was still banned. It finally came out in
1989, sanctioned by Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost.
The reception of Astrid Lindgren’s work in the Soviet Union affords
some surprises. Of all the Swede’s works—and many of them were trans-
lated into Russian in the 1960s—the two most popular, beyond all com-
parison, were the trilogy Karlson på taket (1955–68; Malysh i Karlsson,
kotory zhivyot na kryshe), the first volume of which was translated, or,
rather, adapted, in 1957, only two years after the original, and Pippi Lång-
strump (1945; Peppi Dlinnyychulok, 1968). The bizarre character of Karls-
son-on-the-Roof was, in the apt words of the Moscow critic Olga Myaėots,
“the first positive hero in [Soviet] children’s literature with a complete set
of negative traits”.5 More suitable for children to identify with was Lille-
bror (Malysh), the loner who flees into a fantasy world, where he meets
a magic make-believe friend. Still, Karlsson with his total, unabashed
egotism must have been a fascinating figure for those living in a strictly
regimented world with lofty official ideals. The same goes for the fiercely
independent Pippi Longstocking, another unlikely Soviet favourite. Pro-
fessor Maria Nikolajeva finds the explanation for the tremendous Soviet
success of Pippi Långstrump in its subversive questioning of power. In
the Soviet context, Pippi was a dissident, living out all that children (and

5 Ol’ga Miaėots, “Astrid Lindgren v strane bol’shevikov,” Neprikosnovennyi zapas 1

(2002), accessed March 15, 2013, http://magazines.russ.ru:81/nz/2002/21/miae.html.
476 chapter nine

grown-ups, too, for that matter) only dared to dream about.6 Pippi also
came to life in numerous plays, musicals and cartoons. Astrid Lindgren’s
collected works were published in Russian translation in 1994 and 1998.
The renowned Finnish children’s writer Tove Jansson was a more dif-
ficult case. The translation of her Mumintrollet och kometen (1951, Mumi-
Troll i kometa), written in Swedish, came out in 1967 in 75,000 copies, but
the next book to be translated, Trollkarlens hatt (1949, Shlyapa volsheb-
nika), appeared only in 1976. Included in an anthology of Scandinavian
children’s literature, this translation was not easy to obtain. Rumour has it
that prospective buyers had to hand in twenty kilos of waste paper to get
a coupon that gave them the right to buy the book. Eventually, glasnost
and perestroika were required before Jansson and her Mumi-Trolls could
finally conquer the Russian bookstores.

During the Thaw, contact was re-established with the splendours of Rus-
sian culture from the first three decades of the century. For readers of
children’s literature, as well as for the new generation of writers, the renais-
sance of authors from the 1920s was a major event. Korney Chukovsky
found fresh recognition as the great figure of Russian children’s poetry.
There were also the beginnings of a cautious rehabilitation of the Oberiuts
and their friends. A central role in this return was played by Chukovsky’s
daughter, Lidiya Chukovskaya (1907–96), who in the 1930s had worked in
Marshak’s editorial team at Detgiz in Leningrad. In her book In the Labo-
ratory of an Editor (V laboratorii redaktora, 1960) she recalled that difficult
period, bringing to life many by then forcibly forgotten names. Chukov-
skaya was also responsible for the first individual editions of Vvedensky
and Kharms after the untimely deaths of these authors: When I Grow Up
(Kogda ya vyrastu bolshoy, 1960) and The Game (Igra, 1962), respectively.
A more comprehensive volume with texts by Kharms came out in 1967,
entitled What Was That? (Chto ėto bylo?). Isay Rakhtanov (1907–79),
a children’s writer from the 1930s, told the story of the two magazines,
The Hedgehog and The Siskin and their writers in 1962,7 and two years
later Igor Bakhterev (1908–66), one of the initial Oberiuts, and Aleksandr
Razumovsky published a critical article on Nikolay Oleynikov.8 Taken

6 Maria Nikolajeva, Children’s Literature Comes of Age: Toward a New Aesthetic (New
York and London: Garland, 1996), 40–41.
7 I. Rakhtanov, “‘Ezh’ i ‘Chizh’,” in Detskaia literatura 1962 g. Vyp. 2 (M., 1962), 128–159.
8 I. Bakhterev and A.V. Razumovskii, “O Nikolae Oleinikove,” in Den’ poezii (L., 1964),
154–160.
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 477

together, these were the beginning of a revival of the humour and play-
fulness that Chukovsky had always regarded as key features of children’s
literature.
It was not just the genuine avant-garde that had fallen into an artifi-
cially induced oblivion during the Stalin years. Lidiya Chukovskaya was
also instrumental in returning Boris Zhitkov to the prominent place that
he deserved within children’s prose-writing. Lev Kvitko’s good name was
also restored; five years after his execution, a substantial collection of
poems appeared under the title I Myself (Ya sam, 1957).

The small but influential volume The Game by Daniil Kharms was pub-
lished in Moscow by Detsky mir (Children’s World). During a five-year
period following its foundation, this publishing house stood for the
publication of practically all the important names in the new poetry for
children. Detsky mir employed a number of gifted artists as illustrators,
including Vitaly Pivovarov and Ilya Kabakov, who also harked back to
the interrupted tradition of the 1920s. Detsky mir also produced puzzle
books, painting books, pop-up books and books with added gramophone
records. The firm’s director and inspiration, Yury Timofeev (1923–82), was
to make an impact on children’s literature that can only be compared
with Marshak’s activities between the wars. Like Marshak, Timofeev was
an outstanding talent-spotter.
People had long been aware that the Detgiz publishing house alone
could not meet the demand for literature for children and young people.
It was therefore noted with pleasure that, along with Detsky mir, a large
‘adult publisher’, Sovetskaya Rossiya (Soviet Russia), was starting to take
an interest in the genre and had set up a children’s section. Among the
magazines, Murzilka and Pioneer still held their own, but United Children
(Druzhnye rebyata) and Entertainer (Zateynik) closed down in 1953. The
youngest children were given a new and entertaining magazine in 1956
called Jolly Pictures (Vesyolye kartinki). As the title suggests, the magazine
gave pride of place to pictures, and the artist and children’s-book illustra-
tor Ivan Semyonov (1906–82) was chosen as editor-in-chief. At the begin-
ning of the 1980s the circulation was 9.5 million copies. Afterwards, the
editorial board of Jolly Pictures took pride in having been the only Soviet
publication that evaded censorship and refrained from publishing infor-
mation about changes at the top of the Communist Party. The editorial
board also refrained from publishing Brezhnev’s portrait upon his death.9

9 “Brezhnev i ‘Veselye kartinki’,” (May 5, 2010), accessed March 15, 2013, http://yaxon-
toviy.livejournal.com/6349.html.
478 chapter nine

Another magazine that started to appear again after a ten-year break

was The Bonfire (Kostyor, 1956– ), aimed at younger juveniles. In 1962 the
magazine opened its pages to Joseph Brodsky (1940–96). His debut poem
“The Ballad of the Little Tug” (“Ballada o malenkom buksire”) has an alle-
gorical connotation, as the little boat tells of its meeting with ships from
faraway countries. Its job is to care for them during their stay on the Neva
River, but it cannot follow them as they leave. Beyond its range there is a
big world, but the tug must content itself with the thought that Leningrad
is the place where it is needed. The Bonfire also published other samizdat
writers, like the renowned Sergey Dovlatov (1941–90). The poet Lev Loseff
(1937–2009) was a member of the editorial board of the magazine, right
up to his emigration in 1976.
Adolescents also received their own literary magazine, Youth (Yunost,
1955– ). It was originally intended for readers aged 15 to 20, but in the
1960s it lost some of its specifically teenage character, becoming one of
the main strongholds of liberal writing. The first editor-in-chief of Youth
was Valentin Kataev, succeeded in 1962 by Boris Polevoy, and for many
years the editorial board included Marshak, Nosov and Prilezhaeva. Apart
from Youth, other magazines such as New World (Novy mir), The Banner
(Znamya) and The Star (Zvezda) also opened their pages to writing for
young readers on an occasional basis.
Conditions also improved for the theoretical study of children’s liter-
ature. An important event had taken place in 1950, when the Moscow
publishers Detgiz launched a research institute, the House of Children’s
Books (Dom detskoy knigi), with a branch in Leningrad. The aims of the
institute included promoting research into children’s literature, running
reader surveys, organising seminars and maintaining a specialised library.
For a long time, every book published by Detgiz, later Detskaya literatura,
contained a call to children to send in their views to the House of Chil-
dren’s Books, commenting on what they had read. The number of readers’
letters ran to several thousand a year. One of the visible events in which
the House of Children’s Books took an active role was the annual Chil-
dren’s Book Week.
The House of Children’s Books also started publishing annual antholo-
gies of articles on literary history, criticism and theory: Questions of Chil-
dren’s Literature (Voprosy detskoy literatury, 1952–58), later renamed
Children’s Literature (Detskaya literatura, 1958–90), in Moscow and About
Literature for Children (O literature dlya detey, 1955–91) in Leningrad.
These were complemented by the theoretical magazine Children’s Litera-
ture (Detskaya literatura), which reappeared in 1966 after a twenty-five
year break.
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 479

Writers’ Congresses

In December 1954, the Writers’ Union held its second congress. Two decades
had passed since Soviet writers, led by Gorky, had assembled for their pre-
vious congress, another indicator of how the most elementary forms of
democracy had lapsed under Stalin. The congresses now became a regular
feature of literary life, although their significance as a forum for debate
remained small. More important than criticism and self-examination
was the emphasis on loyalty to the Party and Communist ideals, and a glo-
rification of their own achievements, preferably contrasted with the situa-
tion in capitalist countries. The choice of speakers in itself left little scope
for controversy; it was faithful servants such as Marshak, Barto, Kassil and
Mikhalkov who were allowed to take the microphone, when it came to
commenting on children’s literature.
A broad overview of children’s literature was presented at the 1954
Congress by Boris Polevoy, chosen in his capacity as a member of the
editorial board of Detgiz. According to Polevoy, the “great and glorious
traditions” of Soviet children’s literature had been well looked after since
1934.10 Literature had become more profound, wiser and more interesting,
although its central purpose was still to raise new generations of commu-
nists. Through their works, authors strove to “awaken a love of the mother
country and of their own people, to foster brotherly feelings towards
people in other countries, to prepare children for peaceful, creative work
and to support the best features of socialist humanism, embodied in the
ideas of the Communist Party”.11
Rather surprisingly, Polevoy maintained that the international impor-
tance of Soviet children’s literature had grown since 1934: “The heroes of
these books—the Soviet people—stride across national frontiers, moun-
tains, continents and oceans; all over the planet, they spread the mighty
ideas of socialist humanism and tell the world the truth about our Soviet
life.”12 One explanation for Polevoy’s assertion was that the incorporation
of the Baltic States into the Soviet Union in 1940 and the communist sei-
zure of power in Eastern Europe after the Second World War had created
a large new market for Soviet literature. As these nations broke with their
bourgeois past, it was natural for them to look for new cultural models

10 B. Polevoi, “Sovetskaia literatura dlia detei i iunoshestva,” Vtoroi vsesoiuznyi s’’ezd
sovetskikh pisatelei 1954 g. (M., 1956), 39.
11   Ibid., 45.
12 Ibid., 40.
480 chapter nine

in the world’s first socialist state. In the West, on the other hand, where
such force-feeding was not possible and where there was a general lack
of knowledgeable proponents of Soviet children’s literature, contempo-
rary Soviet Russian children’s literature could no longer point to many
successes.
Polevoy devoted much attention to statistics. While approximately one
thousand books for children and young people had come out in 1934, the
figure for 1953 was twice that. The greatest increase was in the total num-
ber of copies published: 19 million in 1934, rising to 110 million in 1953.
Detgiz alone accounted for 500 titles and 71 million copies. In the whole
twenty-year period, 1,500 Soviet writers, teachers, academics and critics
had between them published 20,000 titles, totalling 911 million copies.
“Almost a billion books!” exclaimed Polevoy. “Just think of it, comrades—
that is five books for every Soviet citizen, babies and old people included.”13
Even so, this substantial growth still did not mean that they could satisfy
demand.
Polevoy’s speech included a ‘top eleven’ list, showing which prose works
had been the most popular with Soviet youth in the years 1934–1954. The
yardstick was the number of editions, which obviously favoured the old-
est titles:

1. Nikolay Ostrovsky: How the Steel was Hardened (Kak zakalyalas stal;
248 editions)
2. Valentin Kataev: Son of the Regiment (Syn polka; 78)
3. Arkady Gaydar: Timur and His Gang (Timur i ego komanda; 72)
4. Aleksandr Fadeev: The Young Guard (Molodaya gvardiya; 72)
5. Veniamin Kaverin: Two Captains (Dva kapitana; 60)
6. Aleksey Musatov: Stozhary (40)
7. Iosif Likstanov: The Nipper (Malyshok; 35)
8. Nikolay Nosov: Vitya Maleev at School and at Home (Vitya Maleev v
shkole i doma; 30)
9. Elena Ilina: The Fourth Height (Chetvyortaya vysota; 29)
10. Lev Kassil and Maks Polyanovsky: The Street of the Youngest Son (Ulitsa
mladshego syna; 25)
11. Boris Zhitkov: What I Saw (Chto ya videl; 24)

13 Ibid., 39.
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 481

According to Polevoy, these statistics showed that the originality of Soviet

children’s writing lay in the fact that its heroes were taken from real life.
They were “normal Soviet people, inspired by the ideas of Communism”.14
Polevoy saw the popularity of these works as a sign that Soviet reality
in itself was more interesting than anything that the imagination could
create. In fact, this impression could equally well be an illusion, because
editions were not driven by demand, but by plans from above. That is
why Aleksandr Belyaev’s science fiction novels, Aleksey Tolstoy’s tale of
the wooden figure Buratino and Aleksandr Volkov’s Russian version of the
Wizard of Oz were missing.
Poetry for children was dominated by an inevitable quartet of authors
(listed with the number of editions in brackets): Samuil Marshak (661),
Korney Chukovsky (450), Agniya Barto (435) and Sergey Mikhalkov (435).
In Polevoy’s view, these were writers who had shown that one could cre-
ate living portraits and deal with big issues even in children’s poetry. As
examples of this, Polevoy cited Marshak’s Mister Twister, with its criticism
of racism, Mikhalkov’s Uncle Styopa, which illustrated ‘socialist human-
ism’, and satirical poems by Barto and Chukovsky.
Polevoy aimed his criticism mainly at the school novel. The weaknesses
of the genre had already been noted on many occasions, most recently by
Evgeny Gerasimov in Novy Mir in 1953. “Why do the heroes turn out to be
boring?” Gerasimov wondered after reading all the previous year’s school
novels, including Mariya Prilezhaeva’s disappointing Over the Volga (Nad
Volgoy, 1952). When writers tried to portray school life, they created “grey,
faceless heroes without any of the qualities that go with youth: imagina-
tion, enthusiasm, keenness, impetuosity”.15 Writers glorified the faceless
collective and condemned anything that could be interpreted as individu-
alism. “We can only wonder that nobody has accused pupils of individual-
ism, if they manage their difficult mathematic homework on their own”,
wrote Gerasimov.16 But the solution he proposed did not inspire confi-
dence: writers should learn from the late President of the Soviet Union,
Mikhail Kalinin, and speak as “honestly and openly” to children as he
had done.17
Polevoy’s recipe for renewal was for authors to write from life and not
from literary stereotypes. School was by no means the only factor mould-

14 Ibid., 44.
15 Evgenii Gerasimov, “Otchego geroi stanoviatsia skuchnymi?,” Novyi mir 2 (1953): 232.
16 Ibid., 229.
17 Ibid., 232.
482 chapter nine

ing children’s awareness, but literature should also reflect ‘the teeming
life’ beyond the walls of the school, recounting incidents from factories,
mines and collective farms, “where the workers are creating the power of
our socialist motherland, its wealth and honour”.18
Another problem that Polevoy addressed concerned ‘revolutionary
romanticism’. The concept was one of the cornerstones of socialist realism,
but in practice it proved difficult to pin down. Writers who used fantasy
elements and adventure-filled plots to make their work more lively and
attractive ran the constant risk of being accused of ‘pseudo-romanticism’
or dismissed as ‘too exclusive’. What Polevoy sought was greater flexibility
on the part of the critics.19
In poetry, Polevoy had too often encountered a didactic tone that was
not an organic part of the poem, but floated like “a spot of fat on top of
soup”.20 Another weakness that Polevoy drew attention to was a deadly
uniformity of subject-matter, artistic method and even titles. He gave a
number of recent titles as examples: “On the Sunny Beach”, “The Sunny
Beach”, “The Sunny Place”, “A Sunny Morning”, “On the Sunny Earth”,
“The Reflection of the Sun”, “The Sun of Home”, “Sun in the Garden”, “Dear
Little Sun”. “Isn’t that rather a lot of sun, comrade children’s poets?” Pole-
voy asked rhetorically.21
In her talk on the new poetry, Agniya Barto worried about the lack of
“a Gaydar-style intonation”.22 The Young Pioneers wanted to be of service
to their motherland, but instead of poems inspiring courage and love of
work, they were often presented with “introverted and sometimes even
mawkish poems”. “Subjects such as happiness, gaiety and parties are nec-
essary and important elements of poetry for our children, but haven’t we
published too many poems that are jolly on the outside but devoid of
content, which talk mainly about leisure, summer holidays and an endless
series of diversions?”23 To lend weight to her demands, Barto told a story
about a lazy boy. Asked by his mother what he wanted to do when he
grew up, “the little philosopher” answered: “I expect Communism to have
been attained, and nobody will need to work any more.”24

18 Polevoi, Vtoroi vsesoiuznyi s’’ezd sovetskikh pisatelei, 46.

19 Ibid., 47.
20   Ibid., 50.
21  Ibid.
22 “Rech’ A. Barto”, ibid., 554.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 483

Sergey Mikhalkov talked about children’s theatre. The Central Chil-

dren’s Theatre (Tsentralny detsky teatr) in Moscow could boast of many
successes, but apart from this the situation was far from satisfactory. There
had been seventy children’s theatres across the country before the Second
World War, but by 1954 the number had dropped to thirty.

Five years later, in 1959, the Third Soviet Writers’ Congress paid little
attention to children’s literature. Aleksey Surkov, who had succeeded
Aleksandr Fadeev as First Secretary of the Writers’ Union in 1954, only
touched on the genre in passing. His speech was prompted by Khrush-
chev’s observation that the young people of the day did not have the same
experience of life behind them as older people. Writers should therefore
step in to help the Party by giving young people “essential knowledge”
of the country’s history. Khrushchev had also defined what this knowl-
edge should be, namely “the struggle of the working people for liberation
[before 1917], and the heroic history of the Communist Party”.25
Surkov started off with praise of the “great, talented” literature for Soviet
children and youth, but he also brought up some pressing problems. Too
many works were grey and boring, leaving the readers cold. In their criti-
cism of the Stalin cult some writers had gone too far. Surkov had also
detected a dangerous tendency to produce pure adventure stories, anti-
artistic works, which could only spoil their readers taste. The main task
now was to portray the modern hero, “the hero of the seven-year plan, the
new construction and the new agriculture”.26 Humorous literature in the
style of Chukovsky’s, Marshak’s and Mikhalkov’s poems and Yury Sotnik’s
short stories was also needed, because the Soviet Union wanted to raise
young people “full of optimism and joie de vivre”.27
Lev Kassil seconded Surkov’s call for “hymns to creative work”, and in
his turn called upon writers to follow in the footsteps of M. Ilin, Boris
Zhitkov and I. Likstanov. One literary critic had observed that the theme
of work had also thrown up its own master plot, in which a spoilt child of
the intelligentsia enters working life and there finds his true self. However,
Kassil urged his colleagues not to attach too much weight to this criticism,
as precisely this pattern was typical of Soviet society.28

25 “Doklad A. Surkova,” Tretii s’’ezd pisatelei SSSR 18–23 maia 1959 g.: Stenograficheskii
otchet (M., 1959), 20.
26 Ibid., 20.
27 Ibid., 21.
28 “Rech’ L. Kassilia,” ibid., 87–90.
484 chapter nine

Sergey Mikhalkov took up a subject that he felt the Writers’ Union had
not tackled decisively enough. On a visit to Kiev’s ancient monastery, the
Kiev Pechersk Lavra, he had witnessed children kissing the icons and
listening to the monks’ ‘fantasies’. “What have we done to ensure that
these children can live a healthy Soviet life and not flounder in the web
of religious obscurity?” asked Mikhalkov.29 “Our state practises tolerance
towards all religions and churches, but we must not forget that as Soviet
writers, we should actively assist the Party in bringing up children in a
communist spirit, which means an atheist spirit.” Incidentally, in 2000,
when Mikhalkov, for the second time, rewrote his text for the Russian,
formerly Soviet, national anthem, he emphasised Russian Orthodoxy, as
the basis of the nation. “I am a believer”, he declared in an interview.
“I have always been a believer.”30
Atheism was very much a current issue, as evidenced by the campaign
against the church that had started a few years earlier under Khrushchev’s
leadership and that forced the monastery in Kiev to close, along with tens
of thousands of other churches. Mikhalkov was by no means alone on the
barricades; among children’s writers, Lev Kassil was a militant atheist, and
the period prior to the Third Writers’ Congress had produced a number
of works with an anti-religious slant: Lyubov Voronkova’s The Big Sister
(Starshaya sestra, 1955), Vladimir Tendryakov’s The Miraculous Icon (Chu-
dotvornaya, 1958), Sergey Baruzdin’s “Novye Dvoriki” (1961), and Vladimir
Zheleznikov’s “May Man Help” (“Da pomozhet chelovek”, 1961). The pat-
tern had been drawn up in a classic of Soviet atheist children’s writing,
Ėduard Bagritsky’s poem “The Death of a Pioneer Girl” (“Smert pionerki”,
1932), in which a Young Pioneer is led into temptation by a believing
mother or grandmother, but withstands the test. In Bagritsky’s poem, the
Pioneer girl Valya is on her deathbed, but she has enough strength left to
push away the cross that her mother holds out to her. She is inspired by
the cheerful song of a passing Young Pioneer detachment.
One setback for progressive forces within children’s literature was the
reorganisation that took place at Detsky mir in 1964. The publishing house
came under new management, and the name was changed to Malysh (The
Little One). Malysh’s target audience was children under nine, but, as it
turned out, it was unable to attain the position Detsky mir had occupied

29 “Rechʼ S. Mikhalkova,” ibid., 45.

30 Interfaks. Religiia. Arkhiv novostei 1989–2004, accessed March 15, 2013, http://www
.interfax-religion.ru/ykr/?act=archive&div=9320.
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 485

under Timofeev. Another organisational change in the world of publish-

ing saw the giant Detgiz being taken over by the publication committee
of the Russian Federation and returning to its original name of Detskaya
literatura.
The Fourth Congress of the Soviet Writers’ Union was held in 1967. This
was the Soviet Union’s jubilee year, a fact that left its mark on all the
speeches. Any real conflict was swept under the carpet, as the delegates
devoted themselves to glorifying fifty years of Soviet power. The task of
presenting an overview of children’s literature had been given to Sergey
Mikhalkov, who suggested that the main aim of writers should be to tell
their young readers about “the daring and noble deeds performed by the
people building the most just and humane society the world has ever
known”.31 In the previous fifty years, three and a half billion Soviet chil-
dren’s books had done just this. Mikhalkov was loudly applauded when
he assessed the quality of these books: “We can justly claim today that the
intellectual nourishment we give to children is rich in calories, and rich in
vitamins such as honesty, courage, unselfishness and patriotism!”32
The same year saw the publication of Irina Lupanova’s Half a Century:
Soviet Children’s Literature 1917–1967 (Polveka: Sovetskaya detskaya litera-
ture 1917–1967), a serious attempt to analyse individual works, thematic
lines and recurring motifs in the post-revolutionary literature. At the
same time, Lupanova was not able to avoid the usual clichés: the history
of Soviet children’s literature is seen as a triumphal march towards ever
higher artistic and humane heights. Half a Century ends in praise of the
Party’s inspiring support of the children’s writers as it was expressed in
the resolutions of the latest, Twenty-Third Party Congress.

The New Poetry

The most interesting elements of the new literature could be found in

poetry. Detsky mir, the children’s publisher that was willing to back new
and unconventional writing, attracted poets such as Boris Zakhoder,
Valentin Berestov, Ėmma Moshkovskaya, Roman Sef, Irina Tokmakova
and Genrikh Sapgir. Writers such as these drew their inspiration from
children’s rhymes, folklore and the avant-garde poetry of the 1920s. Their

31 “Doklad S.V. Mikhalkova,” Chetvertyi s’’ezd pisatelei SSSR 22–27 maia 1967 g.: Ste-
nograficherskii otchet (M., 1968), 46.
32 Ibid., 55.
486 chapter nine

models were Korney Chukovsky, the early Samuil Marshak and Daniil
Kharms, whose childlike playfulness and humour were now being redis-
covered. The poets wanted to reproduce children’s voices, their fantasies
and emotions. A popular title was “Happy Poems”, a heading that also
covered counting-out rhymes and tongue-twisters, two genres which now
experienced a renaissance.
Great emphasis was laid on children’s aesthetic development. Broken
forms, changing rhythms, flexible rhyming schemes and unconventional
word play all added to the degree of difficulty in poems. Once again,
children’s poetry stood out as an area that could offer greater creative
freedom than poetry for adults. Some authors consciously exploited the
opportunity to address a dual audience in the same poem, while others,
such as Sapgir, Igor Kholin (1920–99) and Evgeny Reyn (born 1935), pub-
lished in the Soviet Union for children only, while their adult poetry had
to be smuggled out of the country.
The older generation of writers unreservedly acknowledged the talent
and technical brilliance of their young colleagues. At the same time, they
expressed concern that the new poetry was lacking in civic spirit. Barto
commented at a children’s literature meeting in 1963 that many young
authors now were devoting themselves to “happy trifles” and what she
saw as purely formalistic experiments.33 At the Third RSFSR Writers’ Con-
gress in 1970 she complained about the tendency just to stick to riddles,
tongue-twisters and word play, and quoted with disapproval colleagues
who claimed to write “eccentric poems for children”.34 There is no such
thing, she said, just unsuccessful attempts to copy the talented Daniil
Kharms. What was needed were poems on political issues and lyrical
poems with exemplary heroes for readers aged 11 to 13.
Ideologically and politically orientated poetry was irrevocably set aside,
much to the worry of the defenders of a rigid socialist realism. At the
Fourth Soviet Writers’ Congress in 1967, Barto demanded that children
should be told about the American bombing of Vietnam. To her mind,
modern poems for children were bordering on total disintegration: “Chil-
dren first learn to master sounds, then words, and then they start to think.
With many poets, the development is the other way round; thoughts,
then words, then meaningless sounds.”35 She found support from Sergey

33 Agniia Barto, Sobranie sochinenii v 4 tomakh. Vol. 4 (М., 1984), 269.

34 Agniia Barto, “O literature dlia detei,” Tretii s’’ezd pisatelei RSFSR 24–27 marta 1970
goda: Stenograficheskii otchet (M., 1972), 134.
35 “Rech’ A.L. Barto,” Chetvertyi s’’ezd pisatelei SSSR, 99.
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 487

Mikhalkov: “Word play is fine when it reflects the play of reason, when it is
thought through. But with some young poets, playing with words does not
just lead away from important topics; it also robs their poems of any sort
of sense.”36 Lev Kassil spoke along the same lines: in the prose of young
writers he had found an annoying “cult of elusiveness”, as if “straight talk”
had been deserted together with the Stalin cult.37
But time was on the side of the poets of the Thaw. When Ėmma Mosh-
kovskaya became a member of the Writers’ Union in 1967, the paradigm
shift within Soviet poetry was a fait accompli.

Foremost among the new poets was Boris Zakhoder (1918–2000). His first
poems for children were published in 1947, the year in which he gradu-
ated from the Gorky Institute of Literature, but it was not until the Thaw
that he was able to develop his special gift to the full. His poem “The Let-
ter Ya” (“Bukva ya”) had lain in his desk drawer for a decade before being
published in New World in 1955. It is a virtuoso piece about how the last
letter in the Russian alphabet, ‘Ya’, rebels. ‘Ya’ is not just a letter; it also
means ‘I’ in Russian, and so it feels it really ought to come first. But the
revolt of the selfish letter ends in ignominious defeat; without the help of
the other letters, it can only shout “I, I, I”. The poem is aimed at egotism,
but could apparently also be read as a critique of the Stalin cult.
The same year saw the publication of In the Back Row (Na zadney parte,
1955), which attracted favourable comment from Chukovsky, among oth-
ers. The book contained poems about Vova and Petya, two mischief-
makers who are perpetually in conflict with their surroundings. The boys
neglect their homework, play at naval battles during lessons, argue with
each other, and dream of how much easier life could be with a bit of
magic. In lively colloquial language with a flexible rhythm, the boys them-
selves tell of their pranks. A major part of the humour lies in the innocent
tone, a narrative device that Nikolay Nosov had introduced in his stories
of Mishka and Kolya.
Zakhoder joined the Writers’ Union in 1958. He was the oldest in the
writers’ collective of Detsky mir, yet one of the most vital and modern.
Zakhoder’s poems are full of humour and linguistic and intellectual exper-
iments, quite in the style of Chukovsky. The poem “The Whale and the Cat”
(“Kit i kot”, 1964), first published in Youth, has been seen as Zakhoder’s
artistic credo. The poem describes an upside-down world where all estab-
lished roles are reversed. Order is restored and realism triumphs, but this

36 “Rech’ S.V. Mikhalkova,” ibid., 48.

37 “Rech’ L. Kassilia,” ibid., 206.
488 chapter nine

is clearly not welcomed by the narrator. The same desire to overcome

the boundaries of realism marks “The Shaggy Alphabet” (“Mokhnataya
azbuka”, 1958). Each letter of the alphabet is illustrated by an animal, but
when the narrator cannot find any examples for the letter ‘Yu’, he simply
creates a new species, the “Yuzhny ktototam”, that is, the Southern Some-
one’s There.
One can find examples of pure nonsense poetry among Zakhoder’s
oeuvre, but most of his poems have a distinct message. This is also true
of his many animal poems, where the individualised portraits illustrate
human characteristics and relationships. Zakhoder cultivates satire in the
spirit of Barto. Selfishness, laziness, conceit, envy and cowardice are vices
that become the object of criticism in an entertaining way. The ape in
“The Marmoset’s House” (“Martyshkin dom”) invites guests to his house-
warming party before he has even started building his house. In the after-
word, Zakhoder warns his son against contenting himself with chatter and
empty boasting as the marmoset does. In contrast, there are poems that
glorify hard work and diligence. The children in “The Builders” (“Stroiteli”,
1968) try out different professions, often with dubious results but with a
laudable inclination towards an active and creative occupation.
Zakhoder is also remembered as an accomplished translator of world
literature for children. Now, when it was officially sanctioned, he created
resourceful Russian versions of the classics Winnie-the-Pooh (1960), Mary
Poppins (1968), Peter Pan (1968) and Alice in Wonderland (1972).
Another major name in children’s poetry in the Thaw years was Ėmma
Moshkovskaya (1926–81). Her early ambition was to become an opera
singer, but a period in hospital in the late 1950s led her into children’s
literature. A decisive experience was reading Chukovsky, Marshak and
Kharms. Her poems found their way to Timofeev at Detsky mir, who pub-
lished the first eight small volumes by Moshkovskaya in 1962.
Moshkovskaya’s strength is her total identification with children. In an
interview in 1971, she talked of her ‘infantilism’: “I have never been a poet
for adults. If I write poems for children, it is because I wasn’t able to play
enough in my own childhood. And when I write for children, I am actu-
ally writing for myself. It is a happy coincidence that children also like
the results. The most important thing in art, to my mind, is honesty. If the
children’s poet carries her own childhood inside her, if she does not need
to bend down, children will believe in her.”38

38 “‘Bud’te dobry’. Beseda s Ė. Moshkovskoi. (Vela T. Al’tshul’),” Moskovskii komsomolets.

September 11, 1971, 2.
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 489

Moshkovskaya shows how children’s inventive imagination transforms

reality in her poem “A Tiger Was Walking in the Undergrowth . . .” (“Tigr v
zaroslyakh khodil . . .”, 1966). Where the mother sees only a broken wash-
ing-line with the washing on the ground, her little son has fought a heroic
battle with a tiger (the cat) and a python (the washing line). Different
points of view are employed in “Mother, Me, the Grasshopper and the
Bird” (“Mama, ya, kuznechik i ptitsa”). The child is first a grasshopper who
sees his mother towering over him like a giant, then a bird who sees his
mother as a dot far below him.
In the fascinating world of the child, anything is possible. When he puts
a piece of green glass in front of his eyes, the winter landscape immedi-
ately takes on spring colours (“Ya videl zelyonoe solnyshko”, 1964). The
hero of “They Pretended” (“Oni pritvorilis”, 1967) wonders what is con-
cealed behind the objects that fill our rooms. “Who is pretending to be a
carpet? / Who is pretending to be a table? / And what do they look like /
when the door closes?” the little thinker asks himself.
Moshkovskaya is never tediously didactic. Her little animal fables are
all fun and adventure. “The Ram Who Didn’t Know the Rules of the Road”
(“Baran, kotory ne znal pravil ulichnogo dvizheniya”) teaches children to
be careful in traffic, while the poem “A Polite Word” (“Vezhlivoe slovo”,
1962/1974) deals with good manners. In return for every polite word, the
animals receive a free ticket to the theatre. A bear cub is left outside, but
his mother teaches him some ‘magic formulae’: “Good morning. Good eve-
ning. How are you? You’re welcome. Thank you.” The bear cub becomes a
model of politeness and when he gets to the theatre and runs through his
whole repertoire, just to make sure, the cashier is so taken that he stands
on his head and gives away five tickets at once.
“The Miser” (“Zhadina”, 1963), one of Moshkovskaya’s best poems, has
elements of the folktale about it. A dog is walking along with a bun in his
mouth. In his wandering, he meets a puppy, a cat, a frog, a chicken and a
duck, who all ask for a bite. The dog sits down to think: “‘Shall I give some
/ or not?’ / Thinks, thinks, / chews, chews. / ‘Why bother?’” When the dog
himself is full, the conclusion is different: “Thinks, thinks, / chews, chews,
/ ‘I’d like to give some away, / but there’s nothing left.’”
The allegory has a social acerbity in “The Bulldog” (“Buldog”, 1962). A
bemedalled bulldog snatches a little girl’s hat, which prompts the poet
to express her indignation that such animals are rewarded. The parallel
to self-righteous and uncaring Party officials and bureaucrats is obvious.
“Once Upon a Time There Was a Little Grey Goat” (“Zhil-byl na svete
serenky kozlik”, 1971), one of Moshkovskaya’s longest and most complex
490 chapter nine

poems, also invites interpretation. The poem’s goat has been seen as a
metaphor for the artist, who uses his art to defeat those in power (the
wolf ).
Experiments with free verse and neologisms, elements of improvisa-
tion and nonsense poetry, and a stress on the visual layout of her poems
all caused Moshkovskaya’s poetry to be regarded with scepticism by con-
servative critics. Agniya Barto felt they were more like rough drafts and
sketches than finished works.39 When Moshkovskaya was admitted to the
Writers’ Union in 1967, it was mainly on the recommendation of the late
Samuil Marshak: “She has the most important qualities that a children’s
poet must have—a genuine and not a feigned exuberance, a poetic imagi-
nation, musicality, and an ability to play with children without making
any special effort to adjust herself to their world.”40
Swedish children’s and folk songs were the way into children’s literature
for Irina Tokmakova (born 1929). In 1958, Murzilka published her transla-
tions of “Bä, bä, vita lamm” (“Baa Baa, White Lamb”), “Tre pepparkaksgub-
bar” (“Three Little Gingerbread Men”), “Lille Lasse går och gråter” (“Little
Lasse Is Crying”) and “Per Spelman” (“Peter the Minstrel”). These were
later collected in The Dance of the Bees (Vodyat pcholy khorovod). Scot-
tish folk poems made up the contents of Wee Willie Winkie (Kroshka Villi
Vinki, 1962). As a translator, Tokmakova followed in the footsteps of Chu-
kovsky and Marshak, retelling the stories in the spirit of the original rather
than offering a literal rendering.
Tokmakova, a trained linguist, tried her hand at a number of genres in
the 1960s: picture books, riddles and counting-out rhymes, tongue-twisters,
lullabies, verse tales and prose stories. The subjects were traditional:
nature, the seasons and the child’s own world. The poems are charac-
terised by playfulness, exciting rhythms and skilful wordplay. Tokmakova
learned from folk songs how to achieve a melodious and lyrical tone. Mar-
shak also noted her sureness of form and the spontaneity of her feelings
and fantasies.
Tokmakova’s first collection of lyrics in her own name, The Trees
(Derevya), was published by Detsky mir in 1962. It comprises nine poems
about nine different trees, all seen through a child’s eyes. The child, feeling
compassion for the weeping willow and wanting to warm the aspen whose
leaves are trembling, experiences nature as an animate thing. The imagery
is simple and clear, taken from children’s own conceptual world.

39 “Rech’ A. Barto,” Chetvertyi s’’ezd pisatelei SSSR, 99.

40 Vladimir Prikhod’ko, “Dom poėta,” in Detskaia literatura 1975: Sbornik (M., 1975), 113.
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 491

The small format predominated in Tokmakova’s next books of poems,

The Seasons (Vremena goda, 1962), Where Does the Little Fish Sleep?
(Gde spit rybka?, 1963) and The Little Grain of Corn (Zyornyshko, 1964).
The volumes were mainly aimed at pre-school children. With understand-
ing and love, Tokmakova writes about their lives, about eating, bathing,
playing, sleeping and discovering the world. The poems are sometimes
given the form of dialogues, riddles or games. In “What a Soup!” (“Ay da
sup”, 1964), the spoon is a fully-laden ship sailing into the child’s mouth.
Central to Tokmakova’s style is a creative attitude to language. She
makes use of assonance and syntactic parallels and invents onomatopoeic
words. Just like Marshak and Yury Vladimirov, she creates a memorandum
list that undergoes comical changes. In “Plim” (1962), the child invents the
word “plim”, which has no meaning but is just as real and fascinating as
‘spoon’, ‘cat’ and ‘cap’. In another poem, Tokmakova revives dead meta-
phors and has the shoe lapping up milk with its tongue and the potato
looking out of the window with its eye. In the experimental inclination of
Tokmakova, there is a stroke of Futurism.
Tokmakova’s verse tales take up elements from the folk tradition, from
literary tales and lullabies. The rooster in “Cock-A-Doodle-Do” (“Kuka-
reku”, 1965) wants to write a poem, but has problems finding a rhyme for
“cock-a-doodle-do”. “An Evening Story” (“Vechernyaya skazka”, 1965) is an
imaginative, didactic poem about a boy who refuses to go to sleep. The
night-birds try to turn him into an owl, but the disobedient child comes
to his senses in time.
The book The Carousel (Karusel, 1967) collected together the best of
Tokmakova’s work from her first ten years as a children’s writer. It was
clear by now that she was one of the foremost and perhaps the most pop-
ular of the new poets. In the 1970s, both the influence of folklore and the
experimental elements diminished, as she moved on from lullabies, games
and nature poems to more serious conflicts and more profound portraits
of children. Tokmakova still addressed herself mainly to pre-school chil-
dren, but their world was now larger and the range of feelings had become
broader. “How Friday Drags On” (“Kak pyatnitsa dolgo tyanetsya”) is about
the deception of a child by an adult, while the bitter child-persona in
“I May Well Stand in the Corner” (“Ya mogu i v uglu postoyat”) is prey to a
false accusation. The child’s emotions are also strong in the oft-reprinted
poem “I Hate Tarasov” (“Ya nenavizhu Tarasova”, 1969), directed at adults’
cruelty towards children.
Genrikh Sapgir’s (1928–99) career started in 1960, when his first book of
poems, a humorous ABC-book, was published by Detsky mir. The choice
492 chapter nine

of field was not altogether voluntary. То quote the author: “I would never
have thought of writing for children, if they hadn’t twisted my arm and
prevented all possibilities of earning a living by ‘adult’ writing.”41
From the outset, it was fairy tales and fantasy that most attracted
Sapgir. He wrote parodies of Russian folktales, but also created worlds
of his own, including the Forest of Wonders and the Land of Laughter,
in which good prevails and laughter rings out. In “The Forests of Won-
ders” (“Lesa-chudesa”, 1967), the protagonist visits the animals in order
to play and sing along with them, while the inhabitants of the Land of
Laughter (Khokhotaniya) in the poem “About the Laughing People” (“Pro
smeyantsev”, 1967) make flutes out of jokes and violins out of smiles, and
bake biscuits made of good humour on Sundays. Their happy laughter
even disarms the tyrant, a dragon who attacks them in an aeroplane.
The theme, the neologisms and the verbal play in “About the Laugh-
ing People” bring to mind the Futurist Velimir Khlebnikov and his poem
“Laughter Incantation” (“Zaklinanie smekhom”), while Kharms is the pre-
siding genius behind the poems, in which Sapgir tries out the children’s
perspectives on their environment. To the child, the constellations of
Ursa Major and Ursa Minor look more like saucepans than bears (“Dve
medveditsy”). The boys in the exuberant poem “About Foma and Eryoma”
(“Pro Fomu i pro Eryomu”, 1971) amuse themselves by doing everything
backwards. The world is also turned upside down in the rather gruesome
verse tale “The Cannibal and the Princess, or Everything Back-to-Front”
(“Lyudoed i printsessa, ili vsyo naoborot”). The children land in absurd
situations that they have to extricate themselves from on their own. Sap-
gir plays with different versions, demonstrating the power of fiction and
the metamorphical possibilities inherent in all words.
One of Sapgir’s best-known poems is “The Lemon” (1962, “Limon”):
What do you mean by ‘LЕ’?
What do you mean by ‘МОN’?
It’s just nonsense.
But just whisper
‘LE-MON’
And immediately it tastes sour.
Sapgir stood out as an inveterate experimenter. Following his debut, he
added several new ABC-books in verse. The Living Clothes (Zhivaya ode-
zhda) opens like a wardrobe and contains poems about clothes and shoes.

41 Quoted in Arzamastseva and Nikolaeva, Detskaia literatura, 424.

 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 493

Sapgir also constructed pop-up books with movable parts. One book con-
tained loose sheets instead of pages. The Health Ministry published his
Golyshi-krepyshi (1965), a book about teeth and their enemies, the tooth
goblins. He also tried his hand at counting-out rhymes—all done with
brilliant technique and child-oriented humour.
Sapgir also used his poetry to comment on modern scientific and tech-
nical achievements. Faith in human reason and the power of knowledge
was one theme of the collection The Star Carousel (Zvyozdnaya karusel,
1964). In one poem, Sapgir asks his readers: “The first man in space was
Gagarin. Then Titov . . . What number will you be?” At the same time, Sap-
gir stressed the importance of not losing sight of the emotional and pro-
foundly human aspect in the age of technology. The collection The Pocket
Mosquito (Karmanny komarik, 1978) is interspersed with a child’s love for
all living things.
In the 1960s, the journalist Roman Sef (1931–2009) wrote three books
on the Russian Revolutions and the Civil War. More important, however,
were the little books of poems for children that he published at the same
time, beginning with Here Come the Giants (Shagayut velikany, 1962). In
these there was no trace of revolutionary history or of realism; as a poet,
Sef belonged, instead, among the new avant-garde. Too radical—this was
the opinion shared by many critics. In private life, too, he knew the role
of an outcast: his father, a Party member, had been executed in 1936, his
mother was sent to the Gulag and he himself spent the years 1951 to 1956
in a prison camp. Officially rehabilitated, he created new difficulties for
himself by signing a letter of protest in defence of the persecuted writers
Andrey Sinyavsky and Yuly Daniėl in 1965.
The key thing for Sef was to transform reality with the help of imagina-
tion, to turn it into a miracle, full of wonder and paradox. Play is based on
the acceptance of fantasies, as Sef observes in the title poem of the book If
You Don’t Believe (Esli ty ne verish, 1968). Surprising juxtapositions create
the desired effect in a poem such as “The Sofa” (“Divan”): “On the ocean
swam a sofa. / There lay Ivan. / It’s great to float on the ocean, / lying on a
sofa.” Often, the very titles of Sef’s poems arouse the reader’s curiosity: two
examples are The River Tram (Rechnoy tramvay, 1971) and The Chocolate
Train (Shokoladny poezd, 1971).
Sef  ’s poetry often contains a polemic against bourgeois complacency.
In order to develop the child’s mental agility, he avoids the clear-cut and
leaves room for the reader’s own thoughts. All routines and all received
truths are challenged. “Completely Incomprehensible” (“Sovershenno
neponyatno”, 1969) is the title of a poem in which a child wonders why
494 chapter nine

water runs downhill, while the grass grows upwards. “Certainly there is a
lot to think about / if you only dare”, the poem concludes.
Valentin Berestov (1928–98), an archaeologist, began writing poems for
children in the mid-1950s. His first books came out in 1957, the same year
in which he joined the Writers’ Union. Berestov was not an innovator, but
his poems maintained a high standard, and he soon became part of the
group of writers attached to Detsky mir.
Children’s games and toys are recurring motifs in Berestov’s poems. In
the title poem of his first book, About the Car (Pro mashinu, 1957), a toy
car has been taken ill and is lying in a doll’s bed. But the ‘doctor’ pre-
scribes work, exercise and fresh air—the only thing to do is to load up
the car, wind it up and let it go. Titles such as A Happy Summer (Vesyoloe
leto, 1958), A Happy Book (Vesyolaya knizhka, 1960) and The Smile (Ulybka,
1964) give an indication of the boisterous, life-affirming mood of Berestov’s
poetry. His heroes find joy and adventure where adults see nothing of
interest at all. The child in “Black Ice” (“Gololeditsa”) enjoys the smooth
ice that has settled everywhere, and he cannot understand the adults’ lack
of enthusiasm.
Berestov wrote many nature poems, rendering children’s lively experi-
ences of nature and interpreting animal behaviour. He is also the author
of animal stories, both in verse and prose. Berestov called Marshak his
master, and in the spirit of the maestro, he produced many playing and
counting-out rhymes. “The Night-Time Counting-Out Song” (“Nochnaya
shchitalochka”) is a combination of lullaby and counting-out rhymes.
There is an underlying philosophical dimension in Berestov’s poem “The
Stilts” (“Khoduli”), which captures a dizzy moment in which the child’s
pride in his achievement is mixed with a fear of falling. If he falls off, the
boy reflects, everyone will forget immediately how splendidly he walked
on stilts, but they will always remember his fall.
Yakov Akim (born 1923) only began writing poems in middle age. It
was Marshak who gave him self-confidence as a poet. However, his first
collection, Always Prepared! (Vsegda gotovy!, 1954), showed little promise,
containing trite poems about Soviet patriotism: for example, about Young
Pioneers planting a kitchen garden in the summer and producing a wall-
newspaper in the winter. But his next book, Helpless (Neumeyka, 1955),
showed that the author possessed a rich, inventive imagination and was
anxious to break away from the Stalin-era clichés. In the satirically tinged
title poem, the postman is in search of “Citizen Helpless”. None of the chil-
dren in the apartment block feel the letter can be addressed to them, but
all of them promise to turn over a new leaf, feeling grown-up and sensible.
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 495

The rhythmic, eventful poem ends by revealing the contents of the letter:
“Helpless, you should be ashamed of yourself  !”
Akim became a member of the Writers’ Union in 1956, and his success
with Helpless was followed in 1958 by What the Doors Are Saying (Chto
govoryat dveri). The doors complain about the children rampaging back
and forth and decide to go on strike, if things do not change.
Akim’s later output is dominated by a lyrical element. He had a strong
feeling for nature; many of his poems are about the delights of the differ-
ent seasons, the excitement of the first snow and the first green leaves.
Other poems convey children’s thirst for goodness and justice. An impor-
tant theme is friendship: the hero of “The Friend” (“Drug”) hurries along by
train, plane and car to see his dear friend again, and “My Faithful Siskin”
(“Moy verny chizh”) gives a tender portrait of the friendship between a
boy and a little bird.
After writing tales in verse, Akim tried his hand at a prose tale, Teacher
So-and-So and His Multicoloured School (Uchitel Tak-Tak i ego raznotsvet-
naya shkola) in 1968. Teacher So-and-So builds a school that is “as colour-
ful as a carousel”, to prepare his pupils for life. They learn to hear the
murmur of the trees, to listen to each other, and to be aware of their
fellows. However, the lack of plot and the uneven mixture of fantasy and
realism weaken the overall effect.

Beside the many newcomers in the field of children’s poetry, some of the
old names, among them Sergey Mikhalkov, Agniya Barto, Zinaida Aleksan-
drova and Elena Blaginina, were still active. They not only dominated the
output of books, but also exerted a marked influence within the Writers’
Union and its magazines. This was especially true of Sergey Mikhalkov,
the writer of poems, fables and plays for adults and children, but now also
prominent as a figure in the cultural bureaucracy.
The ideological aspect—adapted to the current political situation—
always played a prominent role in Mikhalkov’s writing. One important
theme, also employed as the title of one of his poems, is ‘them and us’.
“The Millionaire” (“Millioner”, 1964), a poem about a bulldog who seizes
his mistress’s money and uses it to gain power and influence, is an allegory
aimed at the capitalist world. The concept of the West as synonymous
with inhumanity, a naked quest for profit, and spiritual decadence, is one
that Mikhalkov energetically sought to communicate to Soviet children.
The period of the Thaw saw the birth of satirical portraits of children,
focusing on rudeness, vanity and careless language, but Mikhalkov also
wrote about children’s longing for animals, about little outings and about
496 chapter nine

children who are sick or do not want to go to sleep. The poem “From Car-
riage to Rocket” (“Ot karety do rakety”, 1966), whose title in Russian is a
clever play on words, follows the amazing development of transport. In
keeping with the traditional Soviet pattern, the poem ends with a paean
to man and human reason.
However, it was clear even then that Uncle Styopa would remain
Mikhalkov’s foremost work for children. Mikhalkov had followed up his
success of the 1930s with Uncle Styopa the Policeman (Dyadya Styopa—
militsioner, 1955), in which Styopa maintains order in the town and helps
lost and helpless children. When readers wondered whether Styopa had
any children, Mikhalkov responded with another instalment, Uncle Styopa
and Egor (Dyadya Styopa i Egor, 1968). It turned out that Egor was just as
good and unselfish, and just as tall as his father. Styopa is a grey-haired
pensioner, looking on as Egor distinguishes himself as an athlete, pilot
and cosmonaut. In 1981, a fourth and final part was added to the trilogy,
Uncle Styopa the Veteran (Dyadya Styopa—veteran). Here the old warrior
is already a grandfather, but he is still a friend to children, always ready
to play, but also to be serious. One important task for Styopa is to keep an
eye on secret smokers. A highlight of his old age is a trip to Paris, where
he meets local communists.
On Mikhalkov’s sixtieth birthday in 1973, his colleague Nikolay Tikhonov
wrote: “The trilogy stands alone, just like its giant hero with his resolute
and fair-minded character, his capacity to be happy, wise, humorous and
uncompromising in the face of injustice.”42
Agniya Barto did not give up her international outlook, although it
found new avenues of expression. In the 1960s and 1970s, as an official
representative of Soviet children’s literature, she visited many countries,
including Iceland, Great Britain, France, Greece, Japan, Brazil and the
USA, as well as the Soviet bloc. Many of these trips left their mark on her
poetry, sometimes in the form of sharp criticism, sometimes in the form
of praise for the national character of other peoples. Finland occupied a
special place in Barto’s heart, as shown in the poem “I Went to the Coun-
try of Suomi” (“Ya byla v strane Suomi”, 1967), in which Finnish children
are presented as plucky and sporty, hardened by their fresh outdoor life.
Barto was deeply interested in children’s own writing. The interest-
ing volume entitled Translations from Children’s Language (Perevody s
detskogo, 1977) was based on poems composed by children in different

42 Nikolai Tikhonov, “Mnogogrannyi talant,” Literaturnaia gazeta 11 (1973): 2.

 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 497

countries. Barto strove to retain the ideas contained in the original poems,
but improved the poetic form in the process of translating them into Rus-
sian. The subject-matter of the poems varied from mother-love, nature
and animals, and falling in love to fear of the future.
A few years before her death, Barto published Notes of a Children’s
Author (Zapiski detskogo pisatelya, 1976), which recounts in diary form
her meetings with Mayakovsky, Chukovsky, Marshak, Kassil and Kvitko.
She offered glimpses of her foreign travels and commented on books she
had read. The many scenes from the world of children and children’s con-
versations gave an indication of Barto’s method of gathering material for
her own poems. She also gave her views of what features were specific to
children’s literature:
I must confess that I have never felt I should write only for children. In my
opinion, children’s poems are always aimed at adults, too. In the same way
that folktales contain another layer that children cannot always understand,
poems for children should always contain a hidden text. After all, children
grow a little every day, poems stay in their memory, and when they return
to these poems, they understand them differently each time. There must
always be something to re-interpret.43
Zinaida Aleksandrova always stayed within the bounds of socialist real-
ism. Friendship between Soviet and Czech children was the subject of
her book The Children’s Bus (Detsky avtobus, 1957), in which she tells how
the revolution has transformed life in Prague and given children a happy
start in life. We meet another close-knit group of children—five first-year
pupils—in Five in One Group (Pyatero iz odnoy zvyozdochki, 1959). The
book contains poems about the girls’ games and parties, but Aleksandrova
does not neglect to note that a smiling Lenin watches his “grandchildren”
from the classroom wall. The star they wear on their chests, the emblem
of the October children, lights their way into the future. The climax of the
series of poems is the anniversary of the October Revolution, and the girls’
great dream is to become worthy Young Pioneers one day.
Among Aleksandrova’s last collections—her writing spanned a period
of fifty years—Spring Station (Stantsiya ‘Vesna’, 1963) and We Came to the
BAM (My priekhali na BAM, 1980) must be mentioned. The first book,
with its nature poems and high-flown hymns to the Soviet motherland,
can be seen as a conservative response to Evgeny Evtushenko’s famous

43 Agniya Barto, “Nemnogo o sebe,” Sobranie sochinenii v 4 tomakh. Vol. 4 (M., 1984),
400.
498 chapter nine

anti-Stalinist poem of 1956, Winter Station (Stantsiya “Zima”), while We

Came to the BAM contained poems about work on the Baikal-Amur rail-
way line.
Elena Blaginina displayed a greater capacity for innovation and change.
Her I’m Going to Learn (Nauchus-ka ya chitat, 1964) is an ABC-book with a
gramophone record included. Each letter is illustrated with a small, play-
ful poem. As not all the words of each poem can begin with a given letter,
Blaginina achieves the desired aural effect with dense assonances.
The Thaw years also saw the emergence of new writers who chose to
work with a traditional set of themes and stylistic methods. One of these
was Georgy Ladonshchikov (1916–92), a peasant’s son and war veteran,
who made his debut with a small collection of poems in 1951. These poems
stressed joy in one’s own labour and urged children to work hard. In later
poems, Ladonshchikov wrote about love of nature, home and motherland.
He enjoyed painting pastoral scenes with sunshine, birdsong and rolling
fields of rye. Songs, proverbs and expressions from a folk tradition have
all played a major role in his writing.

Youth Prose

At the time of Stalin’s demise, the Soviet youth novel was in a state of
crisis. At the 1954 Writers’ Congress, Lev Kassil complained that critics
and teachers, with their constant demands for ideal heroes and warn-
ings against “anti-pedagogical” works, had created a well-nigh impos-
sible situation for writers.44 The assumption was that negative traits in
fictional characters could have a harmful influence on readers, so people
only wanted to see strictly didactic and uplifting works. The ‘no-conflict
theory’ had taken the edge off the action, and both language and form
had become impoverished. As a result, literature had become trivial and
boring.
But the revolt against Stalinist aesthetics had already begun, and despite
the constant threat of repression, innovation now pressed forward, though
without any great drama or literary feuds. In a more authentic language
than before, writers allowed children and adolescents themselves to tell
of their relationships with their parents, teachers and friends. A stronger
sense of reality was given to the depiction of conflicts within the family,

44 “Rech’ L’va Kassilia,” Vtoroi vsesoiuznyi s’’ezd sovetskikh pisatelei, 113–114.

 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 499

the school and the workplace, with special attention being given to young
people’s encounters with the outside world. From a sheltered environ-
ment, young people find themselves in a world where they have to learn
for themselves to distinguish good from evil. Soviet schools were criticised
for placing too much stress on outward success and neglecting ethical
values.
Writers no longer fought shy of heroes who had a raw deal from life.
Orphaned children, victims of divorce, remarriage and callous step-
parents, are driven out onto the street; and juvenile crime—previously a
taboo subject—was now discussed openly. Still, it was important to show
how contact with kind-hearted adults could help the offenders regain their
faith in mankind and their belief in life. This is true for Anton in Grigory
Medynsky’s (1899–1984) much-talked-about novel Honour (Chest, 1959).
This story of how a boy from a well-placed family goes off the rails and
ends up in a labour camp for his part in an armed robbery was perceived
as brutal but honest. A sign that Medynsky had addressed vital questions
was the number of letters he received from readers with experiences simi-
lar to those of the novel’s hero.
In his very first books, Nikolay Dubov had written about character devel-
opment and the interplay between young people and adults. During the
Thaw, his material became more dramatic and the conflicts more intense.
Lyoshka in The Orphan (Sirota, 1955) has a tough upbringing. After losing
his parents in the Second World War, he is taken in by cynical, money-
obsessed relatives, who try to shape him in their own image; Lyoshka runs
away and ends up in a children’s home. Dubov’s portrayal of life in the
children’s home is positive, although he does paint a very vivid picture
of the widely differing attitudes among the staff towards key educational
issues. New trials await Lyoshka, now an eighteen-year-old factory worker,
in the free-standing sequel, The Tough Test (Zhostkaya proba, 1960). The
corruption and irresponsible behaviour he witnesses at work impel him
to form strong moral principles and to take a more adult attitude to life.
When, in 1967, Dubov combined the two novels as Hard to Be Alone (Gore
odnomu), the book won a state prize for literature.
After The Boy by the Sea (Malchik u morya, 1963), a story about how
adults reveal their characters in their relations with children, came The
Runaway (Beglets, 1966), Dubov’s best work and one of the foremost chil-
dren’s novels of the period. Fifteen-year-old Yurka’s father is a violent alco-
holic, and his mother an uneducated and coarse woman. Some summer
visitors bring the boy into contact with a world where other standards
of behaviour apply and where cultural values are placed above material
500 chapter nine

ones. Yurka leaves home, but comes back, when he learns that his father
has gone blind. The book was seen as sombre and harsh, even if the end-
ing was optimistic. The running away is represented as a sign of weakness,
while Yurka’s dawning awareness of his own duty and his responsibility
towards his ageing parents and his defenceless younger siblings are an
important step in his growth to maturity.
Medynsky and Dubov both represented an older, established generation
of writers, but the Thaw also helped to bring forth new talents. At the 1959
congress, Valentin Kataev introduced three newcomers from the young
team on the magazine Youth: Viktor Moskovkin, Anatoly Kuznetsov and
Anatoly Gladilin. None of the three had set out to write juvenile prose.
They wrote about their own generation, which would later be dubbed “the
generation of the Twentieth Party Congress”, sharing its aspirations and
expectations. These writers’ heroes stand on the threshold of the adult
world, tormented by uncertainty about the future and filled with defiance
towards their parents’ generation. They are looking for their own path,
and for values that have not been compromised by the Stalin years. For
them too, work is often the only fixed point in their lives.
Viktor Moskovkin’s (1927–2003) story “How’s Life, Semyon?” (“Kak
zhizn, Semyon?”, 1958) was artistically weak, but compared to the glossy
picture of young people’s lives in Stalin’s later years, his subject-matter—
the tale of an orphaned thirteen-year-old hooligan—was distinctly bold.
While the boy’s ‘friends’ are sentenced to up to twenty years, kind-hearted
adults see to it that under-age Semyon is able to start studying at a voca-
tional school.
‘Worker or “intelligentchik”?’ is a topic of discussion, characteristic of
the time, in “How’s Life, Semyon?” At about this time, the Party leader
Khrushchev was trying to reform schools to raise the prestige of physical
labour. Strong support was given by representantives of prose for youth.
Anatoly Kuznetsov’s (1929–79) Sequel to a Legend (Prodolzhenie legendy,
1957) was a hymn to the educational value of labour. Kuznetsov had
worked in a hydro-electric power station after leaving school and chose
the same line of work for the hero of his novel. A directionless youth, ill-
prepared by his schooling for the trials of life, joins a construction project
in Siberia and is transformed into a responsible worker proud of his pro-
fession. His counterpart is a classmate who stays under his parents’ wing
in Moscow and sets about realising his materialistic dreams of acquiring
rock-and-roll records, tape-recorders and scooters. Sequel to a Legend cul-
minates in a scene familiar from countless socialist realist novels about
working life, as the power station is completed and the sluices are opened.
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 501

The energy that will serve the whole people is released, in a wave of
euphoria.
Sequel to a Legend was a great success. In 1959, it had already run
through several editions, as well as being translated and adapted for the
stage and television. What caught the imagination were the stark portrait
of the young man with his tortured soul and the faithful reproduction
of teenage slang. Kisses, drunken brawls and pornographic playing cards
were signs that censorship had relaxed. The portrayal of how work quotas
on the construction project were falsified also had the appeal of novelty.
An artistically more interesting debut was that of Anatoly Gladilin
(born 1935), a writer exceptionally young by Soviet standards. Even the
title of the novel, A Chronicle of the Life and Times of Viktor Podgursky,
Compiled from Diaries, Annals, Historical Events and the Reminiscences of
His Contemporaries (Khronika vremyon Viktora Podgurskogo, sostavlen-
naya iz dnevnikov, letopisey, istoricheskikh sobytiy i vospominaniy sovre-
mennikov, 1956) indicates a tendency towards parody and multilayered
composition. Stylistically, Gladilin worked in what was known as ‘free
style’: short, simple sentences, ironic dialogue and hints of a hard-boiled
attitude. Gladilin had worked as an electrician at a research institute and,
like Kuznetsov, transferred his own experience to the main character of
his first novel. Rejected at the university entrance exam and tormented by
an unhappy love affair, Vitya spends his time on aimless night-time walks
around Moscow. A new job as a laboratory assistant gives some stability
to his life and leads to more mature relationships.
A favourite among Soviet youth was Ticket to the Stars (Zvyozdny bilet,
1961) by Vasily Aksyonov (1932–2009), a novel that also attracted inter-
national attention. Some rebellious teenagers revolt against the values of
their parents’ generation and flee from conformism and lies. Theirs is also
a linguistic revolt: the young people’s speech is stuffed with borrowings
from English. It was mainly this abundant use of slang that raised the
hackles of conservative critics and cultural bureaucrats and prevented the
novel from being published as a book. Viktor Rozov’s ABCDE (ABVGD,
1961), which dealt with the generation gap from the perspective of an inso-
lent seventeen-year-old, also met with opposition, but the stage version,
On the Road (V doroge, 1962) was a success.
Anatoly Moshkovsky (1925–2008), too, dealt with the process of matur-
ing. He had travelled a lot in Siberia, and his novels and stories contained
realistic portrayals of the tough but inspiring life in the North. His books
are low on dramatic events; the main interest is in the young people’s
inner growth, their desire to learn about themselves and to find their place
502 chapter nine

in life. A companion-piece to Kuznetsov’s Sequel to a Legend is Mosh-

kovsky’s The Rock and the People (Skala i lyudi). After leaving school, Yurka
starts work building a power-station in Siberia. He seeks the romance of
the wilderness, of the kind he has found in Jack London’s books, but he
encounters a quite different reality. Under the influence of older workers,
the naive streak in Yurka disappears, to be replaced by a sense of duty and
responsibility. Another story with a similar theme was My Angara River
(Reka moya Angara, 1963).
Irkutsk was the home of Agniya Kuznetsova (1911–96). She made her
debut before the Second World War, but it was not until I Give My Word
as a Komsomolets (Chestnoe komsomolskoe, 1958) that she achieved rec-
ognition. Her subject was the Soviet school and her method—socialist
realism. The hero, Sasha, is a saintly schoolboy, who does not hesitate to
lay down his life when the communal property of the kolkhoz is threat-
ened by fire. Kuznetsova’s purpose is to show that even a simple life in
a Siberian town can produce heroic deeds. Sasha is a peacetime Oleg
Koshevoy or Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. A much more negative character
is Sasha’s classmate, who goes to church and wants to become a priest.
In the author’s eyes, he is a more problematic case than a card-playing,
hard-drinking pupil, who ends up in a reformatory.
But I Give My Word as a Komsomolets also contained unmistakable signs
of the Thaw. These included criticism of the teaching staff for failing in
their task of preparing children for adult life and neglecting unsuccessful
pupils who go off the rails. Another breath of fresh air was the portrayal—
and defence—of teenagers’ first, innocent love. Kuznetsova is on the side
of the young people and shows how they learn from their trials and man-
age to stay true to their Komsomol pledge.
A school story of quite a different kind was Maks Bremener’s (1926–
83) Just Get the Answer Right! . . (Pust ne soshlos s otvetom! . . , 1956), also
called A Broadcast from the Classroom (Peredacha vedyotsya iz klassa).
The idyll of the model class is exposed as a hollow sham, when it emerges
that a group of ninth-graders has been robbing younger pupils at knife-
point. The teachers have ignored all the warning signs and are intoxicated
with propaganda phrases such as, “The Soviet school has won its authority
through its actions, through decades of honest work. I cannot claim to
have been to all the countries in the world, but I don’t believe that there
can be a better school system than ours anywhere. It is the most humane.”
These teachers have not wanted to acknowledge any responsibility for
what happens outside the walls of the school. At the same time, the school
has effectively taught its pupils to keep their thoughts and words apart.
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 503

Just Get the Answer Right! . . .was a major literary event. Its criticism of
formalism, not to mention hypocrisy and demagogy, was in tune with the
demands of the time. With his profound understanding of young people’s
minds, and his evident desire to take them seriously, Bremener was gen-
erally expected to have a brilliant future as a writer, but these expecta-
tions were not fulfilled. His most important books are mostly to be found
among those from the early years of his career.
One of Bremener’s foremost short stories is “The First Step” (“Pervaya
stupen”, 1957), later called “Stop, That’s Enough!” (“Chur, ne igra!”), which
dealt with the same subject as the author’s famous novel: the difference
between a purely superficial code of behaviour and genuine humanity.
Little Yurik is his mother’s pride and joy; he is obedient and treats adults
with respect. He knows what one should and should not do, and he likes
to lecture his classmates. Bremener presents Yurik as a deeply unsympa-
thetic character: his perfectionism is combined with boorish insensitivity,
and he hurts his friends deeply without being aware of it. Characters like
Yurik appear repeatedly in Bremener’s writings.
The short story “Dedicated to you” (“Tebe posvyashchaetsya”, 1962)
gives an interesting glimpse of the last Stalin years. A poetry competition
triggers a discussion at school: must all poems be optimistic and glorify
the motherland, or should poetry also express teenagers’ depression and
the pangs of love?

A quieter line with less obvious, visible drama was represented by another
group of writers. The work of Anatoly Aleksin, Yury Yakovlev, Rady Pogo-
din and Vladimir Zheleznikov can be described as psychological realism.
Instead of following the whole process of personal development, they
concentrated on some particular decisive episode. They preferred short
stories to full-length novels. The children in their works are aged 10–13,
but here, again, they address important ethical problems, particularly in
relation to the adult world. These writers aimed their works at adults, too,
while for readers of the same age as the heroes, the analysis may be per-
ceived as too subtle and the plots too undramatic.
A prominent feature of Anatoly Aleksin’s earliest stories was their
humour. It is through the prism of play and fantasy that the children in
his first books approach serious questions. After a few obligatory conces-
sions to the demands of the Stalin era, Aleksin made his breakthrough
with Sasha and Shura (Sasha i Shura, 1956). A boy from Moscow spends
the summer with his uncle and cousins in a small town. He has an embar-
rassing secret: he has failed his exams in his mother tongue and should be
504 chapter nine

spending the summer practising his spelling. Like Khlestakov in Gogol’s

play The Inspector General or, to take an example closer to home, the
schoolboy in Lev Kassil’s Cheryomysh, the Hero’s Brother, Aleksin’s hero is
put into a false position. He is mistaken for a namesake who has published
a poem in Pioneer Truth (Pionerskaya Pravda), and his relatives start to
regard him as a star pupil. This is flattering, and the boy cannot resist the
temptation. The outcome is a series of comical situations, in which he is
forced to use all his imagination to avoid ignominious exposure. At the
same time, the city boy is changed by the experience: he learns both to
spell properly and to stand by his own actions. Another important event
for Shura is the chance to assist his uncle, who is a doctor, in his work.
In the trilogy The Unusual Adventures of Seva Kotlov (Neobychaynye
pokhozhdeniya Sevy Kotlova, 1958–63), we meet another thirteen-year-
old who sets off a series of events he cannot control. Seva is an energetic
prankster, but his love of mystery and fantasy lands him in awkward situ-
ations. The hard-won lesson is that adulthood implies not only increased
rights, but also greater personal responsibility. In the second part, Seva
and his friend learn that socially useful activities provide deeper satisfac-
tion than any number of extravagant notions. It is actually more fun to
help pensioners than to stuff hedgehogs into girls’ pockets.
In the final part of the trilogy, Aleksin made his contribution to the
prevailing romance about Siberia. Seva’s family has moved north of the
Arctic Circle. In letters to his friends in Moscow, the boy lets his imagina-
tion run away with him, as he tells of life in the North and his own part
in the momentous work going on there. He does not deliberately lie, but
is simply carried away by his dreams and his mastery of the high-flown
language of Soviet reportage. To escape from this fix, he is compelled to
involve himself and others for real and, as the well-known Soviet slogan
runs, “turn the fairy tale into reality”.
The playful and the serious meet in The Sixth Floor Speaking (Govorit
sedmoy ėtazh, 1959). Some children set up a radio station with loudspeak-
ers in the courtyard of their block of flats. They are driven by an interest
in technology, but their exciting game soon takes a serious turn, as they
begin to use their equipment to educate the adults in the building. They
fight against petty-bourgeois attitudes and selfishness, and urge the pen-
sioners to be active and work together. The stated idea behind the book
is a startling one: all negative phenomena, such as gossip, discord, laziness
and rudeness, are only remnants of the period before 1917. Society is now
being transformed from the bottom up, starting with the smallest cell, that
is, the domestic collective. The role of children is to act as the collective’s
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 505

conscience. Behind The Sixth Floor Speaking, one senses the Khrushchev
Thaw, which brought not only a shocking exposure of the horrors of the
Stalin years, but also a revival of utopian thinking and a new-found belief
in the ideals behind the October Revolution.
Aleksin took on more of an artistic challenge with Kolya Writes to
Olya, Olya Writes to Kolya (Kolya pishet Ole, Olya pishet Kole, 1965). Two
contrasting natures are paired together, when the Young Pioneer camp
suggests that Olya, who is moving North with her parents, should stay in
touch with her old schoolfriends via Kolya. The girl Olya is extroverted
and popular, while the boy Kolya is a sullen loner, at odds with every-
body. While Olya is idealised and impersonal, the book presents a subtle
portrait of Kolya, whose problems are rooted in his domestic situation.
The boy has trouble finding his feet in his father’s new family, where he is
constantly in the shadow of his musically gifted stepsister.
Like the most skilful of teachers, Olya manages to transform Kolya by
means of her letters, setting him tasks that force him to abandon his isola-
tion and face the problems in his surroundings. As in earlier works, help
is given to those in distress in an exciting and playful form, with no short-
age of humorous elements. A profound friendship grows up between the
former antagonists Olya and Kolya. Kolya’s transformation is sensitively
reflected in the contents of the letters, but Aleksin’s choice of the epis-
tolary novel genre also gives rise to unavoidable weaknesses—a certain
inertia, an imbalance between the two writers, and a lack of credibility in
places, particularly in the copious dialogue.
Aleksin made an unexpected but successful detour into fairy tales with
In the Land of Eternal Holidays (V strane vechnykh kanikul, 1966). He dedi-
cated the story to Lazar Lagin, the author of the classic Old Man Khotta-
bych. The common strand between the two books is the blend of fantasy
and realism, with the most extraordinary events taking place in everyday
surroundings. The wish of Aleksin’s hero, a twelve-year-old schoolboy,
comes true at a New Year party, and he is transported to the land of eter-
nal holidays, a fantasy land that offers an endless succession of pleasures
and diversions. The sense of wonder begins the very next morning, when
his mother warns her son severely not to go to school, serves him ginger-
bread, caramels and chocolate for breakfast, and has a serious talk with
him because he does not go to the cinema often enough. In the long run,
it becomes boring to be celebrating holidays all the time, and the boy
returns, older and wiser, to his school and his group of friends. Thus, In
the Land of Eternal Holidays is also a Bildungsroman, in which the author
tries to strike the right balance between play and reality, entertainment
and social action.
506 chapter nine

In the Land of Eternal Holidays has a slightly strained and unmotivated

frame story, peppered with nostalgia for lost childhood. The book was
also Aleksin’s farewell to the boyish humour and ingenuity that domi-
nated his ‘Young Pioneer stories’. In the mid-1960s, Aleksin entered a new
phase. His heroes are still in their early teens and still tell their own stories
as before, but it is fair to say that Aleksin now took the step forward to
writing for adolescents rather than children. The often dramatic plots of
his early works now grow weaker and are accompanied by a somewhat
naive optimism and a sentimental emphasis on the intrinsic goodness in
all people. The problems become more profound, the tone more serious,
the style more expressive and precise and the composition more open,
devoid of dramatic climaxes and most often with open endings.
Childish mischief is absent from Meanwhile Somewhere Else . . . (A tem
vremenem gde-to . . ., 1966), My Brother Plays the Clarinet (Moy brat igraet
na klarnete, 1967) and other works that followed in the 1970s and 1980s.
Aleksin takes an interest in the relationships within a modern city family.
The meeting of the children’s and the adults’ worlds generates conflict,
with the children reacting sensitively and trying, not always adequately,
to defend their own experiences as just and good. The ending of A Late
Child (Pozdny rebyonok, 1968) could stand as a motto for many of Alek-
sin’s stories from this period: ‘After about an hour and a half, I returned
home. For the first time in my life, I had to go up the stairs to our flat on
the second floor as an adult, quite grown up. I never thought it would be
so hard . . .’
Yury Yakovlev (1922–96) was named by Kassil at the 1954 Writers’ Union
Congress as one of the most interesting new poets. In Our Little Andrey
(Nash Andreyka, 1951), he had painted a picture of a day in kindergarten,
but he was also the author of poems about Young Pioneer life. The book
‘Boys’ Station (Stantsiya ‘Malchiki’, 1961) established Yakovlev as a writer
of short stories, a genre in which he later displayed continuous productiv-
ity. In the title story, he was one of the first, after Arkady Gaydar, to deal
with marital problems from a child’s point of view.
Yakovlev has been described as a representative of “a lyrically-
orientated psychological realism”.45 One feature of the heroes of his stories
from the 1960s is indeed a poetic disposition. On the outside, they come
across as taciturn and gawky, but they lead a rich inner life. A lively imagi-
nation lends a romantic lustre to reality. One boy “collects” different cloud

45 I. Motiashov, Masterskaia dobroty: Ocherki sovremennoi detskoi literatury (M., 1969),
292.
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 507

formations (“Sobirayushchy oblaka”), while another searches for a fallen

star in the forest, as his friends pick mushrooms. For the problem chil-
dren at a Young Pioneer camp the song of the nightingale is a unique
experience of beauty (“Razbuzhonny solovyami”). The boy in “Wild Rose-
mary” (“Bagulnik”) yawns through his lessons, but the teacher’s view of
him changes when she learns of his philanthropic activities and his all-
embracing love of animals. Yakovlev writes about children who demand
great sensitivity from adults, but often meet with indifference and incom-
prehension.
There is a great faith in goodness in Yakovlev’s books. Most of his sto-
ries have a happy ending, even if it does sometimes seem tacked on. The
encounter with a ‘real’ person gives life a new direction and reinforces
the child’s mental development. For the unruly, fatherless hero of “The
Boy with the Skates” (“Malchik s konkami”), getting to know a sick war
veteran in need of help brings out a new and unexpected side of his char-
acter. The boys in “The Horseman Galloping Over the Town” (“Vsadnik,
skachushchy nad gorodom” manage to overcome their fear and perform
feats that strengthen their self-esteem. In stories such as this, the plot is
dynamic, but Yakovlev also includes lyrical, meditative elements, or lets
nature underline the prevailing mood.
A major theme for Rady Pogodin (1925–93), from the time of his debut
in 1954, was that of mutual relations between children and adults. The
children in his books cannot stand aside from the complications of the
adult world. “Before, it was so simple. Now it isn’t simple any more”, says
Dubravka in the story of the same name. She is a headstrong girl with
strong feelings, but her ideas of right and wrong, loyalty and betrayal are
put to the test in her relationship with an admired adult. In their desire
to assert themselves, to be heard and accepted, the children in Pogodin’s
books often behave thoughtlessly.
The Brick Islands (Kirpichnye ostrova, 1958) is subtitled “Stories about
Keshka and His Friends”. The narrator describes them as “slightly comi-
cal, slightly sad” stories about friendship, courage and resignation. Little
Keshka grows up with his mother, surrounded by good friends and nice
neighbours. His happiness is tarnished when he realises that his parents
are divorced and that his mother was abandoned by the father he does
not remember. The boy jealously observes his mother’s male friends and
tries to influence her choice. The triptych Waiting (Ozhidanie, 1963) also
presents variations on the same situation: children observe adults’ splin-
tered lives, are separated from one of their parents, feel anxious about
their own inadequacy, and strive to win adults’ trust.
508 chapter nine

Nor do the stories in Pogodin’s Tales of Happy People and Fine Weather
(Rasskazy o vesyolykh lyudyakh i khoroshey pogode, 1960) avoid com-
plex situations, although the underlying tone, as the title suggests, is life-
affirming. After his mother’s death, the boy in “Time Says It’s High Time”
(“Vremya govorit—pora” is forced to watch as his father turns to alcohol
and loses his job at the factory. Salvation for the boy lies in remembering
his father as he was in earlier years and trying to attain the same profes-
sional skill that his father used to possess. Pogodin, who had tried his
hand at a wide variety of jobs, wrote in other books, as well, about how
people are drawn to the world of work and the mastery of a profession.
Pogodin seldom made use of first-person narrative, but he always tried
to get inside children’s thoughts and feelings. Opinions were divided as to
what audience he was really writing for. In his efforts to convey a complete
inner world, he not only shunned over-explicitness and a didactic tone,
but also straightforward plots and elements of tension and humour.
A more conventional writer is Vladimir Zheleznikov (born 1925). The
action in his books takes place within the family or among people from
the same building, between friends or at school. He prefers to place at the
centre a somewhat odd little boy, a dreamer, for whom truth and false-
hood or reality and fantasy are shifting concepts. The hero’s way of look-
ing at life often lands him in conflicts.
Zheleznikov’s breakthrough came with The Oddball from 6B (Chudak iz
shestogo ‘B’, 1962), a study in goodness. Thirteen-year-old Boris Zbanduto
is a self-sacrificing and unassuming boy, an example to others. He is put in
charge of the second-year pupils at his school (an established educational
principle in the Soviet Union) and discharges his duties with enthusiasm.
Zbanduto’s unconventional, improvised approach drew protests from for-
malists, but Zheleznikov shows that the boy is guided by an ‘inner voice’
that shows him the right way to act.
In 1963, The Oddball from 6B won a children’s book prize, but Zheleznikov
himself was dissatisfied with the story and rewrote it, changing the title
to The Life and Adventures of an Oddball (Zhizn i priklyucheniya chudaka,
1974). Here, Zbanduto is no longer a truly good person, but a notorious
liar, irresponsible and unreliable. On principle he does everything quite
contrary to the way others take: because his classmates are hard-working,
he stops preparing his lessons. In an attempt to introduce some stabil-
ity into his life, the teachers give him the responsible job of helping the
second-graders. Zbanduto again betrays their trust and finds the whole
staff against him, but he has won the children’s love, and they help him
to grow up and change.
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 509

The world of adults and their complicated relationships forces its way
into The Life and Adventures of an Oddball. The tone of the indepen-
dent follow-up story, “Uncle Shura’s Wedding” (“Zhenitba dyadi Shury”),
is serious. A widower in the same building as Zbanduto has found a
new woman, but his young daughter refuses to accept his choice and
decides to run away from home. Zbanduto’s main role in the drama
is to act as observer, although he also has to overcome his own self-
centredness. The Life and Adventures of an Oddball also won a state prize
for literature.
Zheleznikov presented another variation on the theme of maturity in
Everyone Dreams of a Dog (Kazhdy mechtaet o sobake, 1966). A fatherless
boy feels betrayed, when his mother goes out with other men, and he
does his best to scare off her male friends. The accumulation of themes
and unmotivated changes of narrative voice turned Everyone Dreams of
a Dog into a disappointment. Traveller with Luggage (Puteshestvennik s
bagazhom, 1963), a touching story of a boy in search of his father, is a
more coherent book. The boy is a lively and talkative little rogue, whose
teacher calls him callous, but who calls himself Baron Münchhausen.
“I have no father. That’s my weak point”, he says. The boy finds his father
in Moscow, but the longed-for meeting is a disappointment, as the man
proves unworthy of the boy’s secretly cherished love.
When Sergey Baruzdin (1926–91) finished his studies at the Writers’
Institute in 1958, he was already a popular name in Soviet children’s lit-
erature, known particularly as the author of the ‘Svetlana’ stories. Other
successes were Ravi and Shashi (Ravi i Shashi, 1956) and How Snowball Got
to India (Kak Snezhok v Indiyu popal, 1957). The Indian Prime Minister
Nehru had presented Soviet children with two baby elephants, and Baru-
zdin described the animals’ eventful journey from Bombay to their new
home in Odessa. The main character in the second book was a polar-bear
cub, the Soviet Union’s return present to the children of India.
The 1960s saw several stories written for adolescents. For Baruzdin, who
had become a Party member at twenty-three, a communist upbringing
was of crucial interest. He stresses the patriotism and unity of the Soviet
people and the different generations, this in contrast with American
imperialism and the evils of the West. In his own society, Baruzdin comes
down hard on what he regards as petty-bourgeois tendencies. In an often
schematic way, he draws a distinction between true communists and their
fellow citizens, whose neat facade conceals selfishness and greed. These
people’s attitude to work and to various professions also reveals their
510 chapter nine

warped character. By observing the adult world through a child’s eyes,

Baruzdin shows how parents’ example can influence and guide.
The child acts as a representative of conscience in the stories “New
Dvoriki” (“Novye Dvoriki”, 1961) and “The First of April, One Day in Spring”
(“Pervoe aprelya—odin den vesny”, 1964). The mother in ‘Novye Dvoriki’
takes her son, a first-year pupil, into town, where she sells home-produced
milk, fruit and vegetables illegally on the street. The boy, who learns to
keep an eye out for the police and to vary the price according to the cus-
tomer, also develops a taste for profit. Baruzdin uses the story to express
his condemnation of the way ‘nature’s gifts’ become objects of specula-
tion. The boy has a nightmare about a world in which everything in nature
shouts out its value in terms of money. The conflict between the boy’s
untarnished ideals and his mother’s greed leads him to rebel. As a militant
atheist, Baruzdin explains the woman’s moral degeneration (as he sees it)
in terms of her religious background. Although the lamp in front of the
icon has gone out and the pictures of saints have been thrown out with
the rubbish, the old reflexes are still there deep inside her.
For the architect’s family in “The First of April, One Day in Spring”, too,
the major topic of conversation is money. Collective obligations like sub-
botnik, that is, voluntary, unpaid work on Saturdays, are seen as a chore to
evade. “The most important thing is to know how to live”, says the father
of the family, and for him this means unbridled egoism. The ideal Soviet
attitude to life is represented by his son, who gradually comes to recognise
his parents’ true nature.
Like Sergey Mikhalkov, Baruzdin was richly rewarded by the Soviet gov-
ernment. He occupied a prominent position in the Writers’ Union from
the 1960s, and in his capacity as editor of Pioneer and a magazine for
grown-ups, Friendship of Peoples (Druzhba narodov), he was in a position
to influence what was published during the Brezhnev years. By 1963, Baru-
zdin’s books had sold a total of 12 million copies and had been translated
into 30 languages, and after that the figures steadily increased.
Even in the period of the Thaw, suspense and mystery were rare ele-
ments in realistic prose writing for children and young people. The only
author prepared to meet readers’ demands in this regard was Anatoly
Rybakov, but even he had considerably toned down these elements in
the “Krosh” trilogy (1960–70), an attempt to address pressing moral ques-
tions of the day. The three parts of ‘Krosh’ are all independent and quite
dissimilar in character. They are united by the main protagonist Krosh, a
sympathetic teenager with a free and open-minded nature. Rybakov said
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 511

of his hero: “Krosh is the young man I would like to have been in my own
youth, the young man I could have been and sometimes even was. He is
my dream of myself.”46 Parents and school play a subordinate role in the
books; rather, it is his circle of friends, his own inner strength and his work
that shape the boy’s development. Krosh himself is the narrator, which
allows Rybakov to make use of young people’s slang.
In The Adventures of Krosh (Priklyucheniya Krosha, 1960), Krosh and his
school-mates are on work experience in a car factory, a milieu of which
Rybakov had professional experience. The detective element appears in
the form of mysterious thefts of spare parts, but the more important aim
is to reveal the pupils’ characters when the work calls not only for enthu-
siasm, but also for persistence and a sense of responsibility. For Rybakov,
too, work is the most important force for improvement.
Rybakov’s Krosh’s Vacation (Kanikuly Krosha, 1966) is one of the few
examples of an attempt at examining the country’s Stalinist past in Soviet
children’s literature. Krosh helps some art collectors obtain old Japanese
sculptures, but his new acquaintances turn out to be unscrupulous swin-
dlers and speculators. Krosh’s desire to get to the bottom of the affair
takes him back to the post-war years when denunciation and deceit were
rife. People’s roles and their true identities are revealed by shedding light
on the past.
In The Unknown Soldier (Neizvestny soldat, 1970), too, Krosh strives
to reconstruct hidden history, this time from the Second World War. A
road-building project comes across the grave of an unknown soldier, and
Krosh, who is now eighteen, sets out to track down the facts about the
battles fought in that place in 1942. He is driven by a sense of duty to the
dead man’s memory and refuses to accept half-truths.
In the 1970s, Rybakov went over to writing for adults, but he also took
time to expand The Cutlass and The Bronze Bird into a trilogy. In the new,
concluding part, The Shot (Vystrel, 1975), he returned to the 1920s, with
a house in the Arbat district of Moscow acting as a microcosm of the
conflicts of that time. This time, Misha Polyakov joins the fight against
NEP-period issues: speculation, fraud, lust for profit, and internal enemies.
Enticed by dreams of an easy life, restaurants and Western dance music,
young people are drawn to their ruin. Rybakov employs a hard-boiled
detective-story style, dominated by dialogue, and greater realism than in
the first two novels.

46 A. Rybakov, “Chtoby pisat’, nado pisat’,” Literaturnaia Rossiia 5 (1974): 8.

512 chapter nine

One novel never mentioned in Soviet literature on juvenile reading and

seldom republished, in spite of its qualities and enthusiastic admirers, is
Robert Shtilmark’s (1909–85) The Heir from Calcutta (Naslednik iz Kal-
kutty, 1958). The extraordinary story of its origin explains its problematic
path to its readers. In a foreword to the novel’s first edition in 1958, the
authors (besides Shtilmark, a certain Vasily Vasilevsky is credited as co-
author) tell how their novel was written during an expedition of Soviet
construction workers to the Polar region. According to this account, in the
evenings after a hard day’s work, the Komsomol youth gathered round the
campfire and entertained each other with stories under relaxed circum-
stances. Shtilmark’s and Vasilevsky’s novel allegedly took shape through
such collective discussions and friendly criticism and was typed out
by helpful bookkeepers. Upon their return to ‘the cultural centres’, the
authors supposedly both used the possibility to check facts and rewrite
some episodes.
The true story is quite different. Shtilmark was a descendant of the
nobility, and his father had been executed as an “enemy of the people”.
Shtilmark himself was arrested at the front in 1944 for a harmless joke and
sentenced to ten years for “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda”. A good
storyteller with literary interests, he was given the possibility to write in
the labour camp in the Krasnoyarsk district by Vasily Vasilevsky, a crimi-
nal, who was working for the camp guards. Vasilevsky’s plan was to get
rid of the real author and present the novel to Stalin as Vasilevsky’s own
work in hope of an amnesty. Even though this plot did not work out, the
first two editions of The Heir from Calcutta bore the names of both the
prisoner and his supervisor. It was only thanks to perestroika that it could
be published, after decades of silence, with Shtilmark rightfully credited
as the sole writer.47
The Heir from Calcutta is a voluminous historical adventure novel of
800 pages. Originally written without any sources other than Shtilmark’s
encyclopaedic knowledge, it is an astonishing feat. The events are located
in the late eighteenth century and move through England, Spain, Italy,
America, Africa and the Indian Ocean. The story’s building blocks include
stolen jewels and missing children, false identities and mysterious strang-
ers, mutinies and attacks by wild animals, the black priests of a cult and
sly Jesuits, noble bandits and Red Indians, viscounts and pirates, scenes

47 Feliks Shtil’mark, “Nebol’shoi detektiv o bol’shom romane,” V mire knig 4 (1987),

44–47; A.V. Polynskii, “Naslednik iz Kupavny,” Russkii dom 10 (2005): 48–50.
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 513

of sea battles and fencing. The mottos and quotations from Lord Byron,
Shakespeare and James McPherson reveal that Shtilmark was well-read,
especially in English literature. In Soviet Russian literature, the novel has
no counterpart. The Soviet view and Marxist social analysis, mentioned
in the foreword to the first edition as important elements, are expressed
in criticism of the slave trade, colonial politics and child labour, but they
are never allowed to dominate the fluent narrative. On the last pages of
The Heir from Calcutta a utopian dream is expressed. Employing Tom-
maso Campanella’s image of Civitas Solis of 1637, the image of a new,
transformed world, a Sun City on a Sun Island, takes shape. The vision
of a world without greed, violence and slavery is in itself moving, but the
concept of freedom must undoubtedly have had a more concrete meaning
for the Gulag prisoner Shtilmark.
Of Shtilmark’s later works, The Tale of a Russian Traveller (Povest o
strannike rossiyskom, 1962) and Passenger on the Last Voyage (Passazhir
poslednego reysa, 1974) are worth mentioning. The former had a his-
torical background, telling of a seventeenth-century Russian merchant, a
religious patriot who is forced to spend decades away from his beloved
fatherland, travelling all over the world. Passenger on the Last Trip deals
with the Civil War, sticking to the official line of Soviet history writing in
its portrayal of a revolt in 1918.

Girls’ Stories

During the Thaw, the girls’ story crystallised into a distinct genre of its
own. No new authors of any significance emerged, but the genre was
dominated by woman writers with their roots in the Stalin years. The
tendency was to avoid sentimentalism and pseudo-romantic scenes and
concentrate on psychological observation. Any detachment from the sur-
rounding world was shunned, as the girls’ story, too, was supposed to treat
problems of social significance.
Vera Inber and Valentina Oseeva both wrote semi-autobiographical
stories of childhood before the Revolution, but their approaches differed
in both method and ideology. Inber’s parents were representatives of the
Russian-Jewish liberal intelligentsia, and her What I Was Like As a Child
(Kak ya byla malenkaya, 1954) contains episodes from a happy, sheltered
childhood in Odessa. Inber portrays herself as a cheerful, talkative, slightly
thoughtless girl with her heart in the right place. Her encounter with
music, literature and the world of knowledge receives as much attention
as traditional motives, such as friends, pets, games and parties.
514 chapter nine

What I Was Like As a Child ends with an inescapable concession to

the contemporary convention, a dream of a future (by implication, a
Soviet future) in which all children will eventually have the chance to
go to school. The same utopia also concludes Valentina Oseeva’s bulky
novel Dinka (1959). Dinka is an independent little girl whose childhood
is played out against the background of the revolutionary struggle in the
1910s. House-searches and Bolshevik pamphlets are part of her everyday
experience. Dinka’s father is a revolutionary and always on the run from
the Tsar’s henchmen. Oseeva built on the legacy of Gaydar and Kataev,
showing how the correct political choice was self-evident even to small
children. A sequel came out ten years later, entitled Dinka’s Farewell to
Childhood (Dinka proshchaetsya s detstvom, 1969).
Lithuanian-born Aleksandra Brushteyn (1884–1968) became popular
with a strongly autobiographical trilogy—The Road Leads Far into the Dis-
tance (Doroga ukhodit v dal, 1956–62), At the Hour of Dawn (V rassvetny
chas, 1958) and Spring (Vesna, 1961). These books tell the story of the girl
Sasha, from her early childhood in Vilnius to her move to St Petersburg in
1902 to study. A central image in the novels is that of the father, a Jewish
doctor with pronounced humanitarian convictions. From an idyllic child-
hood, Sasha enters a world full of social injustices and conflicts. While the
worker’s families barely make ends meet, the upper classes live in luxury.
The tsarist school cripples the souls of the pupils, and Sasha receives her
real education in politically radical circles. Important stages in her coming
of age are the Dreyfus affair, the May Day demonstrations, strikes and the
hanging of revolutionaries.
Brushtein shows considerable powers of observation, as she gives a
broad, memorable panorama of life in Vilnius at the turn of the century.
The novels are composed as monologues, but there are actually two voices
to be heard in them, that of the little girl and that of the grown-up writer,
looking back. The trilogy The Road Leads Far into the Distance is consid-
ered to have been of importance as a preserver of the cultural traditions
and codex of values of the pre-Revolutionary Russian Jewish intelligentsia,
even if the Jewish theme is treated in a subdued Soviet manner.
Before 1917, Brushteyn had been active in the St Petersburg organisation
of the Political Red Cross, aiding political prisoners and deported revolu-
tionairies, and after the October Revolution she participated in the Soviet
campaign to eradicate illiteracy. Between the wars she wrote more than
sixty plays for children, both original texts and dramatisations of world
classics, such as Don Quixote and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but unlike her trilogy,
these have not survived the test of time.
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 515

The most talented and versatile of the female prose-writers was Lyubov
Voronkova. In the Thaw years, she produced a little satirical story for
small children called Careless Masha (Masha-rasteryasha, 1956), written
in a mixture of verse and prose. Masha’s morning is spent looking for
clothes and shoes, and the kindergarten children have already finished
breakfast and gone out to play in the court yard, when she finally appears.
Voronkova addressed a slightly older audience in Wild Geese (Gusi-lebedi,
1966), one of her foremost works. Like Yury Yakovlev, Voronkova comes
to the defence of the loner. Little Aniska’s deep love for nature makes her
seem strange to her classmates. Rather than playing doctors and nurses,
she likes to observe the life of birds or talk to trees. At the same time, she
dreams of friendship, the door to which is opened when she is accepted
into the Young Pioneers.
An interesting picture of the time is presented in the novel The Big
Sister (Starshaya sestra, 1955) and its sequel, Private Happiness (Lich-
noe shchaste, 1961), both very popular in their day. Voronkova herself
recounted how her writing had started from a street scene one spring,
with Young Pioneers in red scarves passing a church where old women
dressed in black were gathering. For a communist like Voronkova, religion
was an abomination. In the novel, the aunt from the countryside is given
the role of temptress: the old lady moves to the city to help her son keep
house after her daughter-in-law’s death, and in the flat, where previously
only Pushkin and Lenin adorned the walls, icons now appear. For the
thirteen-year-old Pioneer Zina, this is the start of a difficult time. She sees
her little brothers and sisters exposed to persistent religious indoctrina-
tion, and for the sake of peace in the house, she herself is forced to fetch
the Easter bread from the church for her sick aunt. Zina’s alert classmates
observe the scene and are not slow to pass on the news; but at school they
‘temper justice with mercy’, and the Young Pioneer girl is given a fresh
chance to prove her ideological reliability.
To Voronkova, Zina is a positive heroine. After the death of her mother,
she takes on a greater burden of work and responsibility at home, and
she has to summon up all her strength and call upon her real friends to
pass the test. Zina, the worker’s daughter, is contrasted with Tamara, the
spoilt, materialistic daughter of an engineer. Tamara loves fine phrases
and poses but, like her mother, regards all work as a curse and breaks her
promises without any scruples. She is a child of the new ‘red’ bourgeoisie,
a phenomenon that Sergey Mikhalkov had already highlighted in his play
The Red Scarf in 1947.
516 chapter nine

Another picture of the time was provided by Mariya Prilezhaeva’s The

Pushkin Waltz (Pushkinsky vals, 1961). The romantic dream of ‘building
Communism’ in Siberia is set against prosaic everyday reality. Instead of
going North with her classmates from the ninth class, Nastya is forced
to stay at home and look for work in a factory. It is her parents’ unex-
pected divorce that has intervened. Her youth is gone for good, but Nastya
matures in the face of these trials.

The Theme of War

War literature maintained its position as a strong genre. Many readers

looked to war books for excitement and adventure, features that were
generally rather lacking in Soviet writing for young people. However,
authors themselves preferred to see their writing as a way of promoting
peace. Young people needed to be reminded of the harshness of the War
years, of the German occupation and the price that had been paid for
peace. War and violence formed the tragic background to examples of
moral strength and heroism.
Some authors of war books, such as Yury Yakovlev, had taken part
in the War as young soldiers, while others drew on their memories of
childhood years spent in the shadow of the War. The most popular books
were those that used documentary methods to tell of the struggle and
martyrdom of Young Pioneers and Komsomol youth. In his novel Klava
Nazarova (1958), Aleksey Musatov celebrated a Komsomol girl who was
hanged by the German occupiers, while his The Night-Time Wagon-Train
(Nochnoy oboz, 1971) recalled Tanya Skvortsova, who risked her life help-
ing Soviet children escape deportation to Germany. Larisa Mikheenko in
Lara the Partisan (Partizanka Lara, 1963), by Nadezhda Nadezhdina (1905–
92), is a Leningrad girl who acted as a scout for the resistance movement
before being captured and shot. The closing lines of the book held up her
life and death as an inspiring example to the young people of the 1960s.
Nadezhdina could also have told a personal story of importance. In 1950
she was arrested on information given by a writer-colleague; her crime
was Trotskyist sympathies as a student in the 1920s. Only after six years
in prison camp did she return to literary life. Nadezhdina’s prison-camp
poetry was only published after the fall of the Soviet Union.
In Zoya Voskresenskaya’s (1907–92) novel The Girl on the Stormy Sea
(Devochka v burnom more, 1969), the action moves to Sweden in the War
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 517

years. This writer’s merits were more political than literary. Voskresen-
skaya had joined the Komsomol at an early stage, and in the 1920s, she
worked as a politruk, a political commissar, in a labour colony for home-
less children. She joined the Party in 1929 and graduated from a textile
institute in Moscow in the following year. But it was not as a textile worker
but as a spy that she went on to earn her living. For over twenty-five years,
Voskresenskaya worked for the Soviet intelligence service, where she rose
to the rank of colonel and was posted abroad with her husband, a diplo-
mat. Voskresenskaya did not begin writing until she was in her forties.
In the 1940s, Voskresenskaya had served in the Soviet embassy in Stock-
holm, where she met Aleksandra Kollontay, who plays a major role in The
Girl on the Stormy Sea. The heroine, Antoshka, comes to Sweden in 1940
with her father, a Soviet engineer. She encounters an alien world: “In this
country, everything was new and interesting, but also unjust.” At home,
there are ‘palaces of culture’ for Young Pioneer children, but in Sweden
Antoshka finds only one palace, namely the residence of the king. She
is upset by notices about private property and by all the lies she sees in
advertisements. The only preconception she is forced to adjust is the idea
that capitalists are fat: they keep trim, in fact, as they are able to spend
their time playing sports.
During the Second World War, Antoshka defends the honour of Rus-
sia in this hostile environment. The honest working people love and
believe in the Soviet Union, while the fascists tell lies about conditions
there. Antoshka makes friends with Swedish communists and helps them
receive and distribute the news from Moscow. Voskresenskaya reveals
how class solidarity becomes a vital concept for the girl. From Sweden,
Antoshka accompanies her father to London, where the highlights of her
stay are a visit to Karl Marx’s grave and the venue of the 1908 Bolshevik
Party Congress.
In the Soviet Union, there was much talk of international awareness
in connection with The Girl on the Stormy Sea. In fact, the novel is a clas-
sic example of crude political propaganda, nationalistic self-righteousness
and an inability to understand other realities. The novel came out during
the Thaw, but the picture it paints of recent history and the world defi-
nitely belongs to the Stalin era.

Voskresenskaya’s true metier was the Lenin cult. Like a cuckoo in the
nest, Stalin had gradually displaced Lenin in Soviet mythology in the post-
war years, but in 1956 the situation abruptly changed. Stalin’s name was
removed from children’s literature, and books about him were gathered
518 chapter nine

up and stored away. The Stalin Prize became the State Book Prize. To
fill the ideological vacuum, the Central Committee of the Party passed a
resolution in the same year, calling for a more intensive output of litera-
ture about Lenin. The writer Mariya Prilezhaeva likened the reaction to
a dam bursting. The classics of the genre came out in new editions, and
publishers of books and magazines were flooded with Lenin literature in
prose and verse. Writing about Lenin’s life was especially encouraged in
connection with national celebrations. Two high points were the fiftieth
anniversary of the Soviet Union in 1967 and Lenin’s centenary in 1970. It
was a lucrative genre for writers, with large print runs and constant new
editions, as well as state prizes and decorations.
There was now almost no period in Lenin’s life that was not used
as the basis for a literary work. Memoirs were the starting point for all
writers, and there was inevitably a great risk of repetition. The tendency
in the Thaw years was to praise not only Lenin’s greatness as a person,
but also his influence as a politician and ideologue. Instead of present-
ing isolated incidents from his life, there were attempts to construct a
larger whole.
During the whole history of the Soviet Union, unprecedented promi-
nence was given to writing about Lenin. In histories of children’s litera-
ture, the genre was always given a comprehensive chapter to itself, and
surveys of the development of children’s literature presented at writers’
congresses took the vitality of the Lenin cult as a key yardstick. Titles such
as Lenin for October Children and Stories for the Young by Communists of
Different Generations were seen as a guarantee that the ideological legacy
was being well looked after. The genre had its specialists, among whom
were the abovementioned Voskresenskaya and Prilezhaeva.
While working in Finland and Sweden in the 1930s and 40s, Voskre-
senskaya came into contact with people who had known Lenin, and she
visited the places where he had lived. These experiences went into her
debut work, “Through the Icy Darkness” (“Skvoz ledyanuyu mglu”, 1959),
a story that began a series about Lenin in Finland in the revolution years
of 1905–07. Chapters about clandestine meetings, house searches and
sudden flight alternate with political discussions. Voskresenskaya’s work
eventually covered the whole of Lenin’s life, from little Volodya at play to
Vladimir Ilich, the leader of Soviet Russia. The Secret (Sekret, 1967) pres-
ents idyllic family scenes from his childhood. “The whole Ulyanov family
represents a model for the family of the future”, wrote Voskresenskaya. In
Morning (Utro, 1967), we move forward to the autumn of 1917, with plans
taking shape for a revolt against the Provisional Government.
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 519

Voskresenskaya took a special interest in the women in Lenin’s life: his

mother Mariya Ulyanova, and his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya. A Mother’s
Heart (Serdtse materi, 1965) portrays the atmosphere in Lenin’s childhood
home and describes his parents’ concerns about their child’s development,
while The Meeting (Vstrecha, 1963) contains a description of Lenin’s last
meeting with his mother in Stockholm in 1910. In Voskresenskaya’s novels,
there are emotional outpourings about Lenin’s close ties to his mother
(“Mama! The most beautiful word in the world is mother . . . Little Mama
was Vladimir Ilich’s tender name for his mother in childhood”); there is
also homage to Mariya Ulyanova’s “wisdom, inexhaustible appetite for
life, great human goodness and motherliness”. Krupskaya, “the woman of
the future”, was placed on a pedestal in the novel Nadezhda (1972–77).
Besides biographical facts about her heroine’s childhood and youth,
Voskresenskaya aimed to give an insight into the formation of revolution-
ary consciousness.
Krupskaya also plays a major role in Mariya Prilezhaeva’s trilogy about
Lenin. The Beginning (Nachalo, 1957) is set in St Petersburg at the turn
of the century, with agitation in factories, people forming underground
study groups and the first socialist fighting organisation. An Amazing Year
(Udivitelny god, 1966), which won first prize in a competition for the best
children’s book, follows Lenin and Krupskaya into exile in Shushenskoe,
a generally happy period in their life together. The title of the final part,
Three Weeks of Peace (Tri nedeli pokoya, 1967), has an ironic ring, as for
Lenin the revolutionary there was no rest. Around the turn of the century,
we find him travelling abroad with the material for the first Russian Marx-
ist newspaper, Iskra, in his false-bottomed suitcase.
The Life of Lenin (Zhizn Lenina, 1970), a literary biography for younger
readers, was published for the centenary of Lenin’s birth and was duly
awarded the Krupskaya Prize. Prilezhaeva concludes with a sigh of regret
that Lenin cannot be present to see everything that has been achieved in
the Soviet Union.
Prilezhaeva never lost her faith in the Soviet political system. As late
as July 1987, during the Gorbachev perestroika, she declared her total
support:
I have lived many years on this earth. I remember the heroism of the Soviet
people when building, creating and defending peace, I also remember the
difficult time of inner disorder. Today the Party, the press speaks about the
crimes of Stalin, about the evil deeds of his time. When reading publications
in the press we learn about the numerous vices which in those years amazed
different layers of our society. These vices have now been exposed.
520 chapter nine

I am happy about all the new and honest features that are typical of our
life today, all at the command of the Party, actively supported by the people.
And I am sure that Lenin would have accepted our Today.
All the very best to his faithful disciples and followers! Again and again
I feel happy about having lived to see the year of 1987—the seventieth
anniversary of the October Revolution, the sixty-fifth anniversary of the for-
mation of the USSR, lived to see the reconstruction, the perestroika, of the
whole Soviet society, in fact a Second Revolution.48
As a writer, Prilezhaeva was especially attracted by the ‘romantic youth’ of
the Communist Party, as is clear from her two novels about the Bolshevik
Mikhail Kalinin. From the Banks of the Medveditsa (S beregov Medveditsy,
1956) and Under a Northern Sky (Pod severnym nebom, 1959) describe the
hero’s journey from rural poverty to a factory in St Petersburg, his encoun-
ter with Lenin and the revolutionary movement and his first experience
of exile.
Sergey Mikhalkov also accommodated himself to the demands of the
time, transferring his love from Stalin to Lenin. In his long narrative poem
“In V.I. Lenin’s Home Town” (“Na rodine V. I. Lenina”, 1969), he describes
a visit to the Lenin Museum in Ulyanovsk (the former Simbirsk). He tells
how he “holds his breath”, when he comes into Lenin’s childhood home,
but the description of the objects and photographs in the house is wordy
and uninspired. Yury Yakovlev is similarly unconvincing in his writing
about Lenin, which includes the novel The First Bastille (Pervaya Bastiliya,
1965), in which Lenin takes part in student uprisings in Kazan University
in the 1880s. Yakovlev also boosted Soviet patriotism with simple texts for
children about the motherland.

Non-Fiction

The Thaw years saw a growing interest in non-fiction for children. The
category generally extended to cover books on civics, or, more accurately,
propaganda works about the realisation of Communism in the Soviet
Union. On the occasion of the Twenty-First Party Congress in 1959, Lev
Kassil’s A Really Good Life (Pro zhizn sovsem khoroshuyu, 1959) answered
children’s questions about communist ideology and the resolutions of the
Party Congress. By means of comparisons between capitalism and social-
ism, Kassil tried, like M. Ilin in the 1930s classic The Story of the Great Plan,

48 “Mariia Prilezhaeva,” Sovetskie pisateli: Avtobiografii. Vol. 5 (M., 1988), 382.

 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 521

to convince his readers that the future lay with Soviet society. There is a
humorous side to this, seen, for example, in the girl from Alma-Ata who
wondered whether everyone will receive a free kilo of chocolates every
day when Communism becomes a reality. After all, by definition, Commu-
nism meant “to each according to his needs”. Raya from Stalino dreamed
of becoming a teacher on Mars and telling the little children there how
Communism was achieved in the Soviet Union.
Nevertheless, Kassil’s intention was serious. By telling children about
the basics of Marxism and the development of modern science, he wanted
to instil in them a Soviet sense of civic spirit and a communist world-
view. The book was inspired by a firm faith that “the shining heights” were
already within reach. In the course of the current seven-year plan, the
Soviet Union was expected to overtake the USA, at least in the produc-
tion of meat, butter and milk. After this, Communism would be attained.
According to Kassil, this meant, among other things, that money would
be abolished. There would no longer be any disease, or any vices, such as
meanness, jealousy and falsehood.
Kassil’s last novels, The Gladiator’s Cup (Chasha gladiatora, 1961) and
Be Prepared, Your Highness! (Budte gotovy, Vashe vysochestvo!, 1964) are
a curious mixture of Soviet chauvinism and phobias about the outside
world. Discussion of the Stalin era and criticism of ‘the new class’, that is,
the privileged nomenklatura, are also there, but only as a feeble echo. The
more central point for Kassil was to reinforce the confidence of children
and young people in socialism and the uniqueness of their country at a
time of ideological crisis.
The Gladiator’s Cup is a real cock-and-bull story. A Russian émigré, a
world-famous wrestler and circus strongman, returns to his homeland
after several decades abroad. The western ‘slander’ against Stalin’s Soviet
Union has never convinced him, and he returns like the prodigal son,
full of remorse and ready to place his energy at the service of the Soviet
Union. He leaves behind him a world ruled by money and organised crime.
The grandiose projects and plans for the future that he encounters leave
him dizzy. In the Soviet Union, miracles are becoming reality, as when
the town with the expressive name of Sukhoyarka (roughly translated as
‘Dry Ravine’) is provided with a reservoir that furnishes running water to
every household. The wrestler’s stepson Pierre is also re-educated; once he
grows out of his racist tendencies and hunger for profit, he will become a
model Soviet Young Pioneer.
Kassil combined this simplistic world-view with a skilfully constructed
plot, with remarkable coincidences, hardened former prisoners and hunts
522 chapter nine

for hidden Nazi treasure. The novel reaches a climax in a scene in which
the strongman saves school children from certain death by holding up
a wall with his shoulders, stopping it from detonating an old mine. He
sacrifices his life and, thereby atones for his supposed offences against
his country.
Kassil’s last novel, Be Prepared, Your Highness!, is another rather
improbable story, this time about a foreign prince who spends a summer
at a Soviet Young Pioneer camp and turns into a fully-fledged Commu-
nist. Kassil created a fantasy land, albeit with concrete social and politi-
cal features; the prince comes from the land of Yungahory, a developing
country that is being exploited by multinational companies and foreign
capital. From the Soviet children he learns high ideals such as peace and
friendship, equality, honour and justice. Together, the children draw up a
programme of political reform, which the prince promises to implement
in his own country.
The prince’s political education includes voluntary work on Saturdays
and stories of legendary Soviet hero figures, such as Budyonny, Pavel
Morozov, Valery Chkalov, Volodya Dubinin and the first cosmonauts. He
is also influenced by his communist compatriot Tongoara Bayrang, a poet
who has been imprisoned in his homeland, but who finds asylum in the
Soviet Union following international protests.
In Be Prepared, Your Highness! Kassil was mainly concerned with talk-
ing seriously to his readers. The result is whole pages of abstract reasoning
and fine aphorisms at the expense of excitement, mystery and humour.
Kassil had come a long way since Conduct.
Kassil loved to quote Gorky’s words about ‘romantic realism’. In prin-
ciple, he saw no conflict between fantasy and reality, and, in a 1966 article,
he defended his right to romantic fantasies:
As I see it, romance is the driving force in the effect of dreams on reality. For
children, romance is initially found in their play. Later, play can gradually
give birth to a dream.
Children do not like flat front lighting on characters in literary works
about our own time. They want to look at today’s life with its reflections
and shadows either in an amusing light, or in the alarming glow of frighten-
ing events. Front lighting that flattens relief weakens the view for all readers,
not least the young, who, with hungry eyes, impatiently look at life and its
reflection in the book.49

49 Lev Kassil, Uvidet’ budushchee: Sbornik statei (M., 1985), 187–188. (First publ.: Detskaia
literatura 1 / 1966: 15–17.)
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 523

“It is boring to live without dreams; they help to make life happy and easy
in reality, too”, wrote Kassil in a letter, shortly before his death.50 The
great dream for him was the bright Communist future of the Soviet Union.
For that reason, he was faithful to the Party line, glorified Lenin and Stalin
and supported campaigns for atheism when necessary.
Evgeny Permyak (1902–82) wrote in the same vein. His The Tale of the
Land of Terra-Ferro (Skazka o strane Terra-ferro, 1959) offered a lesson in
politics, thinly disguised as a fairy tale, in which workers, oppressed by
capitalists, start a revolution. Permyak named Pavel Bazhov as his ‘teacher’
and inspirational figure. Ilya Kabakov, later a world-famous conceptual
artist, illustrated Permyak’s book, one of his first works for children. Up
till his emigration to the United States in 1988, Kabakov was a successful
artist in the field, illustrating around eighty books and participating in the
main children’s magazines. Distinctive marks of his art were the division
of the pictures in boxes with strongly marked black borders and the usage
of marginal drawings.51
In The Tale of the Grey Wolf (Skazka o serom volke, 1960), a Russian
émigré visits his brother in the Soviet Union and begins to understand
the invincibility of the kolkhoz system. The renegade is, however, unable
to overcome his own capitalistic ‘wolf’s nature’, and returns to his farm in
the USA with his tail between his legs.
In An ABC of Our Life (Azbuka nashey zhizni, 1963), Permyak set out to
tell children about “the most important thing in our life”, which turned out
to be Soviet manufacturing, agriculture and industry. The author looked
at the future with confidence: “We believe, we are convinced that capital-
ism is not forever. Communism will win all over the world, and mankind
will start to live like a big happy family.”52 To back up his thesis, Permyak
describes how Western visitors who come to the Soviet Union are amazed
at the prosperity they encounter there and the achievements of the cur-
rent five-year plan. The young readers were also reminded of their duty to
work on themselves in order to become “a Great Man of Great Days”.
Sergey Alekseev (1922–2008) called for a patriotic upbringing in a Rus-
sian spirit. History was his forte; in 1958, Alekseev produced History of the
USSR (Istoriya SSSR) for use in schools, and the same year saw the pub-

50 Quted in S. Borisov, “Delat’ zadumannoe sbyvaiushchimsia . . .,” in Gody i liudi.

Vypusk 2 (Saratov, 1986), 111.
51  Albert Lemmens and Serge Stommels, Russian Artists and the Children’s Book 1890–
1992 (Nijmegen, 2009), 309–319.
52 Evgenii Permiak, Azbuka nashei zhizni (M., 1963), 124.
524 chapter nine

lication of his first historical stories. His motto was taken from Pushkin:
“It is right and proper to feel pride in our forefathers’ honour.” Alekseev’s
books about Russian history, the October Revolution, the Civil War and
the Second World War are full of public spirit and heroism. Among his
heroes, often taken from military history, are Aleksandr Nevsky, Peter the
Great, Pugachev, Suvorov, Kutuzov and Lenin. In 1971, Alekseev won the
Krupskaya Prize for his book One Hundred Stories from Russian History
(Sto rasskazov iz russkoy istorii, 1966).
An indication of Alekseev’s position as a writer can be seen in his
address to the Writers’ Congress in 1976: “Today’s children’s literature
speaks out, like the sailor on the Aurora in October 1917, about the most
important things: the great construction projects, the five-year plans, the
friendship between the peoples of our country, our international friend-
ship, Vladimir Ilich Lenin, and our Communist Party.”53 This was the
writer chosen in 1967 as editor-in-chief of Children’s Literature, the lead-
ing magazine for theoretical debate and reviews, a position he occupied
for over twenty years.
The conquest of space was one of the main topics of discussion at this
time. The sputniks and Yury Gagarin’s spaceflight had demonstrated that
Soviet technology had reached a high level. One example of the general
space fever was the children’s book Chapa, Borka and the Rocket (Chapa,
Borka i raketa, 1962). Inspired by the dog Laika’s journey into space, Evgeny
Veltistov (1934–89) and his wife Marta Baranova (born 1924) wrote about
two boys experimenting with home-made rockets, while their runaway
dog was being trained at a nearby space research institute to be the hero
of the next mission. Boyhood dreams and facts, romance and technology
are combined. The Moscow publisher Progress saw to it that the book was
translated into some twenty languages.
Veltistov went on to write other children’s books about the triumphs
of modern science. The subject of Elektronik, the Boy from the Suitcase
(Ėlektronik—malchik iz chemodana, 1964) was cybernetics and artifi-
cial intelligence. The robot Elektronik has been described as a modern
Buratino. In the rooms of the professor who created him, he meets his
double, a schoolboy. The robot takes the boy’s place at school, where he
amazes everybody with his phenomenal memory and ability to learn, with
fatal consequences for the boy’s character. The switch of identities is then

53 Sergei Alekseev, “O znachenii i roli khudozhestvennoi literatury v grazhdanskom

vospitanii detei,” Detskaia literatura 11 (1976): 34.
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 525

revealed in comical circumstances, and man is again master of his own

creation. There were altogether four books about Elektronik, the robot
who became every child’s friend. Elektronik, the Boy from the Suitcase was
also made into a cartoon film.
Modern nature-writing was represented by Gennady Snegiryov (1933–
2004) and Nikolay Sladkov (1920–96). Snegiryov, a much travelled writer,
was active from 1955 writing stories and sketches about the lives of ani-
mals and nature in various parts of the Soviet Union. The illustrations
played a major role in his mainly factual books. Nikolay Sladkov also
placed great emphasis on pictorial material, often making use of his own
nature photographs, as in The Brave Photo-Hunter (Smely fotookhotnik,
1963). The Underwater Gazette (Podvodnaya gazeta, 1966) was a deliberate
parallel to Bianki’s The Forest Newspaper. The book won a Krupskaya Prize
in 1976, when it came out in a new edition. While Sladkov’s first books
mainly focussed on the fascinating ‘secrets’ of the forest, his later works
also showed how nature was being ravaged and destroyed. He said of his
writing: “To safeguard the earth and nature, you also have to love it, and
to love it you need to know it. When you get to know it, it is impossible
not to love it. This is at the heart of my work.”54

Neznayka and the Others

The forerunners of the new humorous prose writing were Nikolay Nosov
and Yury Sotnik. In their post-war stories, they had created a pattern that
worked well: some enterprising and imaginative children land themselves
in a tricky situation, which they then recount in candid terms. While Nosov
moved into writing tales, Sotnik continued as before during the Thaw.
Some of his stories were about his favourite type of child, the discoverer
and inventor, while others were satires, for example, about cowardice.
Denis, or Deniska, as he is also called, is the hero of Viktor Dragunsky’s
(1913–72) stories. Before he began writing, Dragunsky had tried many pro-
fessions, including the theatre and the circus—settings he was able to use
in his stories. The first stories about Denis, modeled on the author’s son,
date from 1959; they were first collected in 1961 under the title It’s Alive
and Shining (On zhivoy i svetitsya). In time, the number of stories rose to
around a hundred.

54 N. Strashkova, [Afterword], in N. Sladkov, V lesakh schastlivoi okhoty (L., 1969), 234.
526 chapter nine

Denis and his steadfast friend Mishka are two active, reckless boys in
the first year of school. They are not rowdy or practical jokers, but they
do get into comical little adventures and make a great commotion. They
get carried away in their games and create chaos, when they are only try-
ing to help. Unintentionally, but to the great amusement of the audience,
the boys sabotage the theatre plays they take part in. In a language that
reflects a child’s limited vocabulary and way of thinking, Denis tells about
his experiences; adults’ reactions are often a puzzle to him.
Dragunsky’s range is wide: he can adopt a satirical tone to show how
laziness, cheating and lies are their own punishment; he can be sentimen-
tal about touching childhood memories, or wax poetic about the world
of children. In some stories, there is a slight flavour of the time or place
of the writing, as when Denis and Mishka pretend to be the cosmonauts
Gagarin and Titov or lose their bearings in the neighbour’s room while
playing hide-and-seek in the communal flat, but in general Dragunsky’s
stories about Denis mainly deal with timeless insights into typical traits
of seven-year-old boys.
Viktor Golyavkin’s (1929–2001) first—and best—books also view real-
ity through the eyes of energetic and inventive boys. Exercise Books in
the Rain (Tetradki pod dozhdyom, 1959) and My Conversations with Vovka
(Nashi s Vovkoy razgovory, 1960) contain short, mildly humorous scenes
from everyday life. Episodes which may consist of nothing but dialogue
are recounted without any comment from the author or any openly didac-
tic intention. The style is laconic, with short simple sentences. Many of
the original illustrations were initially by Golyavkin himself, who had first
trained as an artist. His heroes do not experience any great adventures at
home, with their friends, or at school, but from the viewpoint of a child of
seven or eight, everyday life is full of exciting events and surprising situ-
ations. The author is able to find humour and drama in situations which
others just pass over. Golyavkin also wrote about tricksters, whose jokes
and attempts to succeed by cheating often rebound on them. One of his
books has the telling title Amazing Children (Udivitelnye deti, 1972).
Golyavkin went on to write longer, more serious stories, aimed at a
slightly older audience. The semi-autobiographical My Kind Father (Moy
dobry papa, 1963) and Stripes on the Windows (Polosy na oknakh, 1971) are
set during and after the War, with children’s dreams of war heroes and
great exploits changing when they come into contact with the difficulties
of the adult world. Golyavkin does not shy away from tragic endings; in
Drawings on the Asphalt (Risunki na asfalte, 1965), for example, an artisti-
cally talented boy experiences the death of his teacher.
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 527

Realism and fantasy are combined in Valery Medvedev’s (1923–97) Be

a Man, Barankin! (Barankin, bud chelovekom!, 1962), one of the great
successes of the 1960s. The book was also turned into a play, a film and
even an operetta. Be a Man, Barankin! begins as a conventional Soviet
school story: Barankin and his friend are a disgrace to their class, and at
the pupils’ meeting they are told off by their hard-working classmates.
However, the exhortation to “Be a man, Barankin!” has the opposite effect.
Barankin wishes he were a sparrow, with no lessons to worry about. As
in a fairy tale, his wish comes true, and the two boys try life as sparrows,
and also as butterflies and ants. They realise that the lives of birds and
insects are not at all carefree, but full of hard work and danger. The title
takes on a new and deeper meaning, as the two friends see how lucky
they are to be human. Simultaneously, Be a Man, Barankin! is not just an
amusing and instructive thought-experiment: it also gives a practical les-
son in zoology.
In Medvedev’s novel, miracles allow the author to test the child’s char-
acter in an unusual and interesting situation. This is also true of Yury
Tomin’s (1929–97) best-known book A Wizard Walked About the Town
(Shol po gorodu volshebnik, 1963). Here again, the fairy-tale motif of ‘the
wish come true’ plays a central role. A box of magic matches gives the
dishonest and lazy Tolik from Leningrad the opportunity to realise his
innermost dreams, but the boy uses the matches for selfish and thought-
less ends. The parallel to Pogorelsky’s nineteenth century classic The Black
Hen is obvious. The most important thing for Tolik is to shine in the eyes
of his friends. There is a boyish joy and humour in the scenes where Tolik
outshines the others at ice-hockey and knows all his lessons without
opening his schoolbooks. Less effective is the science-fiction episode, in
which the incorrigible Tolik is banished to a sterile and frightening ‘yes-
terday’ as a punishment. The epilogue succinctly expresses the moral of
the novel: “Real happiness comes from miracles that people create with
their own hands.”
In the 1960s, it became something of a fashion to attack lazy and
thoughtless schoolchildren by means of humorous fantasy stories. Anatoly
Aleksin made his contribution to the subgenre with In the Land of Endless
Holidays (V strane vechnykh kanikul, 1966). There are many parallels with
Medvedev and especially Tomin, as the boy who likes school holidays best
of all is sent to “the land of endless holidays”, a Utopia which palls in the
long run. Aleksin also plays the collective against the erring individual—
the main theme of the Stalin years, although Aleksin does so in a more
humorous form.
528 chapter nine

Aleksandr Raskin (1914–71) hit on a happy angle from which to approach

the question of education in When Daddy Was a Little Boy (Kak papa byl
malenkim, 1961) and When Daddy Was in School (Kak malenky papa uchil-
sya v shkole, 1963). A father tells his daughter amusing and instructive
stories from his own childhood. These are archetypal situations, in which
the adult is not afraid to depict his own role as blameworthy or comical.
The satire is directed against meanness, extravagance, boastfulness, over-
confidence and cowardice. Raskin, incidentally, was married to another
children’s author, Frida Vigdorova.

The Thaw also produced a number of interesting tales in which the action
takes place entirely in a fantasy world or where fantasy figures are placed
in a recognisable, realistic setting. First into the field was Nikolay Nosov,
who in the 1950s abandoned realism for a series of fantasy novels. His
trilogy about the Lilliputian Neznayka and his adventurous travels reha-
bilitated the fantasy genre and demonstrated its possibilities. It comprises
The Adventures of Neznayka and His Friends (Priklyucheniya Neznayki i
ego druzey, 1954), Neznayka in the City of the Sun (Neznayka v solnechnom
gorode, 1958) and Neznayka on the Moon (Neznayka na lune, 1964–65).
In 1969, the trilogy was awarded a new literary prize, named, ironically
enough, after Nadezhda Krupskaya, one of the fiercest opponents of fan-
tasy literature in the 1920s.
Nosov took the basic idea for the trilogy from the popular pre-revolu-
tionary books of Palmer Cox, or rather from their Russian versions. His
childlike Lilliputians, who are not bigger than gherkins, live in an alter-
native world, beyond all conventional time and place conceptions. They
have telling names such as Znayka (Inquisitive), Toropyshka (Hasty),
Avoska (Maybe), Sakhar Siropchik (Sugar Syrup), Vorchun (Grumpy) and
Molchun (Silent). Neznayka (Ignoramus, or ‘Dunno’) knows very little,
but hides the embarrassing fact behind a self-confident and swaggering
exterior. He believes he can do most things without any practice, but his
actions generally end in fiasco. These bitter experiences teach Neznayka
to be modest, honest and hard-working, making the trilogy into a kind of
Bildungsroman for children. The main obstacle in this process of growth
is the belittling name Neznayka. The hero cannot free himself from the
burden of his name, no matter how hard he studies, and his behaviour
will always be provocative.
In The Adventures of Neznayka and his Friends, the Lilliputians travel
by balloon to a neighbouring town populated by similarly miniature girls.
While the choice of names gives the boys a distinct identity, either of a
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 529

Fig. 19. Aleksey Laptev, The Adventures of Neznayka and His Friends (1954)
530 chapter nine

professional character or of some personal quality, the girls’ names with

just a few exceptions refer only to their pretty looks.55 Incidentally, the
exception among the male Lilliputians is the poet Tsvetik (Blossom), a
‘floral’ nickname which stresses his femininity and the low status of his
occupation. Neznayka takes a fancy to Sineglazka (Blue Eyes), but all his
attempts to impress her with his skills come to grief. On the pattern of
Gogol’s Khlestakov, Neznayka also attempts to usurp the role of Znayka,
his annoyingly brilliant, eternal alter ego, and to stand out as the leader
of the Lilliputian collective.56 It is only when Neznayka has been humbled
by defeat and stricken by something of a bad conscience that he is again
accepted. The other male Lilliputians are also supposed to undergo the
same process of socialization, or re-education, as it is called by Nosov; in
practice, this means taking their model from the well-behaved girls.
Factual material takes a more prominent place—at the expense of
plot—in the next part, Neznayka in the City of the Sun. The city where
Neznayka finds himself is a futuristic Utopia, full of amazing technical
advances. Nosov here openly alludes to the classical Utopia by Tommaso
Campanella, Civitas solis (1637). For Nosov, it is not just work, living condi-
tions, clothing and leisure that have been revolutionised: the inhabitants
of the City of Sun have also achieved moral perfection. Into this paradise
comes the undeveloped, impulsive Neznayka, causing unrest and confu-
sion. The future is thus not created by highly developed technology and
scientific discoveries alone, but also through human perfection. It is these
insights that Neznayka takes back to his own society, ready to make his
contribution to its development, not through hocus-pocus tricks, but
through industrious effort.
In the final part, Neznayka on the Moon, inspired by the space proj-
ects of the time, Nosov sends his hero to the Moon. The focus here is not
on the technology, as the Moon proves to be the opposite of the City of
the Sun, in other words, an anti-Utopia, and the novel turns out to be a
thinly disguised political allegory, as Nosov sets out to shock children with
the abominations of the capitalist world, and particularly America. The
naive and credulous Neznayka now comes across as very sympathetic and

55 Olga T. Yokoyama, “Gender linguistic analysis of Russian children’s literature,” Slavic

Gender Linquistics. Ed. Margaret H. Mills (Benjamin: Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1999),
68–70.
56 Marina Zagidullina, “Vremia kolokol’chikov, ili ‘Revizor’ v ‘Neznaike’,” Novoe lite-
raturnoe obozrenie 76 (2005): 205–217.
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 531

human in his bewilderment at caricatured moon-Lilliputians with telling

names such as Skuperfield (Greedy), Gadkins (Repulsive) and Zhulio
(Swindler). In Davilon (Oppression) and Grabenberg (Robbery), money
and violence reign. Taking his example from early Soviet science fiction,
Nosov makes Neznayka into a freedom fighter on the side of the poor and
the oppressed. After establishing a workers’ government on the Moon,
Neznayka and his Lilliputian friends are able to return to Earth with a
good conscience.
Nosov concluded his trilogy with a dissonance, an uneasy mixture of
innocent fairy tale and opportunistic political pamphlet. More in keeping
with his talent were a number of less pretentious shorter works written
alongside the Neznayka trilogy. Bobik Visits Barbos (Bobik v gostyakh u
Barbosa, 1958) is an edifying tale of two dogs who want to play at being
masters. There is an echo of the short stories of the 1940s in the eventful,
humorous narrative The Adventures of Tolya Klyukvin (Priklyucheniya Toli
Klyukvina, 1961). Tolya’s attempts to avoid a black cat set off a train of
accidents, which help him to see the absurdity of his superstition.
Yury Druzhkov (1927–83) chose to place his fantasy figures in a real-
istically drawn urban setting. The Adventures of Pencil and Experimenter
(Priklyucheniya Karandasha i Samodelkina, 1964) is a humorous tale of
the Pencil’s and Experimenter’s escape from a toyshop and their exciting
adventures among pirates, spies and Soviet children. Pencil can draw liv-
ing pictures, while the metal Experimenter’s strength is his dexterity, but
their inexperience leads them into some tight spots. Good triumphs over
evil only after man’s intervention on the side of the fantasy figures.
The never-ending battle between good and evil is also the subject of
Veniamin Kaverin’s tales from the 1960s and 1970s. The author cheerfully
mixed conventional and unconventional fairy-tale elements, without
always achieving sufficient originality. The most successful tale is “Many
Good People and One Envious Person” (“Mnogo khoroshikh lyudey i odin
zavistnik”, 1960), in which the kind-hearted and brave girl Tanya and her
friends manage to vanquish not only a misanthropic wizard, the Great
Envier, but also Death himself, who comes to fetch her father. In 1982,
Kaverin collected his best tales under the title The Night Watchman
(Nochnoy storozh).
For small children, there was The Adventures of the Grey Mousekin
(Priklyucheniya serogo Malamysha, 1968) by Natalya Dilaktorskaya. Her
roots were in the pre-war period, when she had worked for the Theatre
for Young Spectators, published in The Siskin and The Hedgehog and,
in the 1930s, been an employee at the Leningrad branch of Detizdat, the
532 chapter nine

so-called “Marshak’s academy”. A hungry Mousekin sets out to search for

his mother and experiences many adventures among human beings, dolls
and animals, before he safely returns home. Every episode of the dynamic
plot is illustrated by Nikolay Radlov, giving the little volume a cinemato-
graphic touch, rare for late Soviet children’s literature. The Adventures of
the Grey Mousekin had in fact already been published in The Hedgehog in
1936, but afterwards totally forgotten.

Like literature in general, science fiction for young readers had been
greatly hampered by administrative interference in Soviet cultural life in
the 1940s. Now, in the 1950s, it was not only the revolt against Stalinist
dogma that pushed back the boundaries of the possible: Soviet achieve-
ments in space exploration also promised to make real what had been
regarded as fantasy just ten years earlier.
Soviet science fiction took a new start with the novel The Andromeda
Nebula (Tumannost Andromedy, 1957). With a bold leap into the future,
the writer and scientist Ivan Efremov (1907–72) revived the idea of a social
Utopia. The Andromeda Nebula is a loosely structured work about the
world of the future and its inhabitants. Human nature has been refined
and the nations and races have become united, but this does not imply
that history has come to an end. Intellectual development continues to
advance, and people work together to master the forces of nature and to
bring the progressive ideology of Homo sapiens to other planets and solar
systems.
Efremov was a leading figure in orthodox socialist realism within Soviet
science fiction, employing idealised characters and an optimistic, ideo-
logically based view of mankind and its future. Soviet critics saw his The
Andromeda Nebula not merely as an interesting speculation, but as a
scientifically founded prediction of the future of mankind.
A few years into the 1960s, the output of Soviet SF had already reached
several hundred titles a year, including magazine publications. Especially
significant were such series as Library of Modern Science Fiction (Biblioteka
sovremennoy fantastiki, 1965–68) and SF: A Collection of Science Fiction
(NF: Almanakh nauchnoy fantastiki, 1964–92). The range of magazines
also grew, with traditional forums such as Technology for Young People
(Tekhnika—molodyozhi, 1933–) and Knowledge is Strength (Znanie—sila,
1926–41, 1945– ) being joined by literary magazines, particularly those
directed at a younger audience. The year 1961 saw the launch of Seeker
(Iskatel), for many years the Soviet Union’s only equivalent to the pulp
magazines in the West.
 thaw in the world of children (1954–1968) 533

Modern foreign science fiction was gradually beginning to be accessible

to Russian readers in translation, and new Russian SF writers with a more
flexible attitude to the Soviet tradition also emerged during the Thaw.
These include Ilya Varshavsky (1908–74), Anatoly Dneprov (1919–75) and
the brothers Arkady (1925–91) and Boris Strugatsky (1933–2012). Of the
many writers who tried their hand at the genre, it was the Strugatsky
brothers who achieved the widest recognition and gradually built up an
international reputation. Their early novels still followed in the footsteps
of The Andromeda Nebula, with Soviet cosmonauts in the late 20th and
early 21st centuries exploring the planets in our solar system. These are
conventional ‘positive heroes’, dedicated to the Party and to their work.
Space missions are seen as a step in mankind’s constant striving to con-
quer the unknown. The Return: Midday, 22nd Century (Vozrashchenie:
Polden, 22–y vek, 1962) is the Strugatskys’ contribution to the category of
‘communist Utopias’. Mankind has been united under a global council,
people are physically and spiritually beautiful, and daily life is made easy
by advanced technology. The idyll is watched over by a gigantic statue of
Lenin: “It was his world, shining and beautiful, the way he had seen it two
centuries earlier.”
Works such as this were the Strugatskys’ trial pieces, with straightfor-
ward plots, a simple structure and stereotypical characters, written mainly
for young people, but from the mid-1960s, the Strugatskys, together with
the avant-garde within Soviet SF, entered a new phase. The heyday of
socialist realism was over as far as SF was concerned. In the hands of the
best writers, the genre moved on from writing for adolescents to become
a medium for philosophical enquiry, with authors using allegory to com-
ment on the development of Soviet society and important ideological
problems.
The major theme for Arkady and Boris Strugatsky was the issue of
‘intervention versus passive observation’. Their most important novels
from the 1960s, Hard to Be a God (Trudno byt bogom, 1964) and The Inhab-
ited Island (Obitaemy ostrov, 1969), ask whether beings from more highly
developed planets have the right to intervene in the social and political
life of less advanced worlds. Is there a shortcut to Utopia, or must all soci-
eties accomplish the journey by themselves? These were questions with
specific relevance to the Soviet Union in the 1960s, with latent unrest
within the Socialist bloc.
 chapter ten

Years of Stagnation (1969–1985)

Cultural Policy

The cultural Thaw that began after Stalin’s death did not give way to a
summer. The campaign of harassment against the Nobel prize-winner
Boris Pasternak and his novel Doktor Zhivago in the late 1950s showed
that the Party had no intention of relaxing its ideological monopoly, and
the fall of Nikita Khrushchev in 1964 meant a serious setback for all hopes
of liberalisation. Two trials in the mid-60s imposed further boundaries
on the freedom of writers. The future Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky was
sentenced to internal exile for ‘parasitism’, while Andrey Sinyavsky and
Yury Daniėl, who had dared to publish uncensored works in Western
Europe under pseudonyms, received seven and five years hard labour,
respectively, for ‘anti-Soviet behaviour’. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, hailed
as a great bearer of truth on his debut in 1961, found himself five years
later deprived of the opportunity to conduct his examination of Stalin-
ism in public. The year 1970 saw the fall of the last bastion of the Thaw,
the magazine New World (Novy mir), when its editor-in-chief Aleksandr
Tvardovsky was forced to resign.
In the field of children’s literature, events were not quite so spectac-
ular. The magazine Youth did suffer a setback in 1969, when a number
of prominent figures from the Thaw years were purged from its edito-
rial team, but, on the other hand, Youth could by then no longer be seen
as a forum for youth literature. Nor did the wave of emigration in the
1970s and 1980s have the same devastating effect on children’s literature
as it had on adult writing; Anatoly Kuznetsov, Anatoly Gladilin and Vasily
Aksyonov had already given up writing for young people before they
decided to leave the Soviet Union. Children’s literature did suffer a loss
when Rakhil Baumvol moved to Israel in 1971. After the forced emigration,
her name and her books were purged from the libraries and pages of Soviet
literature. Vladimir Maramzin (born 1934), arrested in 1974 and offered
the possibility to leave the country a year later, and Yuz Aleshkovsky
(born 1929), who emigrated in 1979, also had a number of children’s books
behind them.
 years of stagnation (1969–1985) 535

Still, the changes in the Soviet cultural climate could not fail also to
leave their mark on children’s and juvenile literature. Voices were raised
for a return to the principles of socialist realism, as when in 1969 the
critic Vladimir Nikolaev asked for strongwilled, combative and idealistic
heroes, inspired by civic awareness, instead of all the apolitical dream-
ers and weak outsiders that threatened to take over children’s literature.1
But even if there was no turning back to the aesthetics and ideological
commitment of the Stalin years, much of the optimism and vitality of the
Thaw years was gradually lost. The stagnation manifested itself alarmingly
in the increasing age of the writing corps: as the 1970s and 1980s passed,
the youngest writers of any significance were still those born around 1940,
who had made their debut in the 1960s. For new writers it became harder
to break in, as publishers preferred to rely on established, trustworthy
names.
The writers’ congresses lost all semblance of a forum for debate, as the
main task was to maintain the consensus. An indication of the prevailing
mood was the constantly repeated praise for a speech made by the new
Party Secretary, Leonid Brezhnev, in 1968. Brezhnev had addressed an All-
Union teachers’ congress in a speech that set out what the Party expected
from writers:
Artistic creation requires a variety of styles, devices and genres. We decry
any attempt to reduce artists’ individual characteristics to uniformity. The
Party and the people want only one thing: for works of art to reflect the truth
of life, manifest the greatness of the Soviet people’s heroic feats, educate
all people in the spirit of Communism’s high ideals, and help them realise
those ideals. Of course, this does not rule out any depiction of difficulties,
negative phenomena or even mistakes, but an artistic rendering of the pro-
found processes of life with all its contradictions, and the conflict between
new and old, is not the same as a one-sided display of the dark side alone,
which our opponents hold up as the height of ‘free’ artistic creation.2
The claim that the Communist Party was the benevolent protector of lit-
erature passed without critical comment, despite forty years of experience
of how this protection worked in practice. The basic dichotomy of social-
ist realism was also unresolved: on the one hand, a call for the truthful
depiction of reality; on the other, a normative definition of what this true

1 Vladimir Nikolaev, “. . . I master, i grazhdanin,” in Detskaia literatura 1969: Stat’i i

issledovaniia (M., 1969), 89–91.
2 L.I. Brezhnev, “Rech’ na Vsesoiuznom s’’ezde uchitelei,” Leninskim kursom: Rechi i
stat’i. Vol. 2 (M., 1970), 234.
536 chapter ten

reality should look like. Writers and critics of children’s books passed over
problems such as these, grasping instead at Brezhnev’s brief estimation of
Soviet children’s literature as ‘excellent’. At the Fifth Congress of Soviet
Russian Writers in 1980, Anatoly Aleksin ended his speach by quoting
Brezhnev’s praise of Soviet children’s literature, which had always been
teaching children “justice, diligence, courage and a wish to live in peace
and friendship with all people”.3 A true Soviet writer could not but be
proud to be held in such esteem by the Party.
By the end of the 1970s, the Brezhnev cult had reached its peak. It was
hard to discuss children’s literature without quoting the General Secretary,
and the magazine Children’s Literature played its part by frequently pub-
lishing the leader’s photograph. Brezhnev’s memoirs were issued by the
publishing house Detskaya literatura and, at a teachers’ congress, Sergey
Mikhalkov advised his audience to use them in their work to foster “Party
soldiers”. As for modern Soviet children’s literature, he complained, not
enough talented works about the “heroic road of the Soviet people”, аbout
Lenin’s party, and the Komsomol were being written and published. 4
In 1969 the Communist Party and the Council of Ministers passed a
resolution called “Measures for the Development of Soviet Children’s
Literature”. After the usual praise for the ‘high artistic level’ and the sup-
posedly prominent position of Soviet children’s writing on the world stage
came the criticism: not enough copies were being printed, the graphic
side was underdeveloped, and besides: “Too little is produced, and too few
really talented works are published about the heroic path of the Soviet
people, the Leninist Party and the Komsomol organisation.”5 Writers
were urged to expand their range of subject-matter and raise artistic and
ideological standards. One of the most important tasks was to write still
more books for young people about Lenin’s life and work. A concrete
result of the Party resolution was the establishment of two new prizes for
children’s books, reliable instruments for the guidance of literature.
The number of children’s magazines grew with the launching of The
Bun (Kolobok) in 1968 and Misha in 1983, both aimed at pre-school chil-
dren. The colourful illustrations and the attached flexible gramophone
records took pride of place in both. Among the older magazines, Jolly Pic-
tures was eventually to reach a circulation of around nine million, while

3 “V s’’ezd pisatelei RSFSR,” Literaturnaia gazeta 51 (1980): 4.

4 S. Mikhalkov, “Vysokii dolg uchitelia,” Detskaia literatura 12 (1978): 3–4.
5 “O merakh po dal’neishemu razvitiiu sovetskoi detskoi literatury,” in O partiinoi i
sovetskoi pechati, radioveshchanii i televidenii (M., 1972), 495.
 years of stagnation (1969–1985) 537

Murzilka ran to about five million copies. Children aged 11 to 13 had their
long-established monthly Pioneer.

Troublesome Youth

A literary-sociological study conducted in the early 1970s showed that war

novels, or ‘patriotic literature’, as they were labelled in the Soviet Union,
were firmly rooted in the taste of young people. Even among girls aged
12–14, the majority preferred to read about thrilling events and heroic
deaths in the Second World War.6 The classics were written in the 1940s,
but to these were now added a number of books by writers eager to meet
the demand. They included Maks Bremener’s Presence of Mind (Prisutstvie
dukha, 1969) and Rady Pogodin’s Live, Soldier (Zhivi, soldat, 1969).
Simultaneously, this obsession with the Great Patriotic War also became
the object of criticism. In an exceptional article, “Children’s Literature and
Humanism” (“Detskaya literatura i gumanizm”) the prominent children’s-
book specialist Miron Petrovsky (born 1932) spoke of an “anti-humanist
tendency” in Soviet war writing. Books in which the young heroes gave
up their lives in the battle with the enemy were provocatively dubbed
“textbooks in dying” and “guides for young martyrs and little suicides”.7
The article never saw the light of the day, as the volume in which it was
supposed to be included, Children’s literature—Great and Small (Detskaya
literatura—bolshaya i malenkaya) was destroyed in 1968, just before its
publication, by a decision of the board of the RSFSR Union of Writers.
An attempt to break with the general line and offer a new perspective
on the events of the Second World War was made by Bulat Okudzhava
(1924–97) in The Front Is Coming to Us (Front prikhodit k nam, 1967).
Okudzhava was well-known as a bard, and many of his song lyrics and
poems already displayed an anti-authoritarian and pacifist tone. As war
breaks out in 1941, the two boys in The Front Is Coming to Us dream of
going to the front and riding against the enemy with sabres drawn, like
Budyonny’s legendary cavalry. But instead, the front comes to them, and
the boys are forced to watch as the Red Army retreats, carrying a flood of

6 Kniga i chtenie v zhizni nebol’shikh gorodov: Po materialam issledovaniia chteniia i chi-

tatel’skikh interesov. Ed. Ė.B. Kuz’mina (M., 1973), 197–199, 316.
7 Miron Petrovskii, Knigi nashego detstva. Zaochnoe interv’iu s S.A. Lur’e, accessed March
15, 2013, http://prochtenie.ru/index.php/docs/2918.
538 chapter ten

panic-stricken fugitives before it, and witness how greed and selfishness
flourish among the civilian population at a moment of national crisis.
The child’s perspective was also employed by Albert Likhanov (born
1935), a notable name among the new realists. Likhanov, who had a jour-
nalistic background, started writing for children and young people in the
early 1960s under the direction of Lev Kassil and Anatoly Aleksin. In his
first and best books, he wrote about the Soviet family during and after
the Second World War. Family Circumstances (Semeynye obstoyatel-
stva) is the collective title of three otherwise free-standing novels: Clean
Rushes (Chistye kamyshki, 1967), The Labyrinth (Labirint, 1970) and Fraud
(Obman, 1973). The road to maturity and independence is a hard one for
Likhanov’s heroes, as their parents do not live up to the children’s uncom-
promising demands for goodness and justice, but display traits like selfish-
ness, meanness and callousness.
The revered father in Clean Rushes turns into a black-marketeer during
the war. He has fought at the front and so feels entitled to compensa-
tion, even if it has to be obtained by dishonest means. In The Labyrinth,
the grandmother sows dissent in the family and drives her son-in-law
to abandon his wife and children. In the final part, Fraud, a boy learns
that his father did not die a hero’s death, but is living a pathetic petty-
bourgeois existence in the same town as his mother and himself. All
the concepts that the child has built up around his vanished father are
exposed as lies.
The conflicts are not quite as painful in Likhanov’s second trilogy, Music
(Muzyka). The theme of the three novels, Music (1968), Steep Hills (Krutye
gory, 1971) and Wooden Horses (Derevyannye koni, 1971), is the mark left
by the War on a child’s soul. Likhanov made use of some of his own early
memories of life on the home front. Little space is given to description
of outward events; instead, the books are dominated by dialogue and the
child’s own thoughts. The sorrow felt when the father leaves to join the
army and the first shocking realisation of the real tragedy of war set their
stamp on Steep Hills, while the child in Wooden Horses learns to transcend
private concerns and share in other people’s sorrows.
The tone of Likhanov’s later books is more sentimental. My General
(Moy general, 1975), a “novel for children”, presents an idealised portrait
of an officer of the old school, while The Solar Eclipse (Solnechnoe zatme-
nie, 1977) depicts the friendship between a disabled girl and the son of
an alcoholic. In the 1970s, Likhanov also began writing for adults, exhib-
iting a special interest in educational issues. Based on correspondence
with adults and young people, Dramatic Pedagogy (Dramaticheskaya
 years of stagnation (1969–1985) 539

pedagogika, 1985) discusses relations within the family. Likhanov came

to occupy a prominent position in Soviet cultural life, and his books were
frequently awarded prizes, such as the Komsomol Prize (1976) and the
Krupskaya Prize (1980). After Agniya Barto’s death, Likhanov was elected
her successor as Chair of the Association for Literature and Art for Chil-
dren and Young People, a Soviet organisation which aimed to inform a
foreign audience about aesthetic education in the Soviet Union.
Like Likhanov, Anatoly Aleksin gradually distanced himself from his
original readership. In novels such as Call Me and Come! . . (Zvonite i
priezzhayte! . ., 1971), The Day Before Yesterday and the Day After Tomor-
row (Pozavchera i poslezavtra, 1974) and Third in the Fifth Row (Trety v
pyatom ryadu, 1975), he delved deeper into the problems addressed in his
earlier works. The psychological portraits became more complex and the
style more expressive, while the humour took on ironic overtones. In the
mid-1970s, Aleksin abandoned children’s literature altogether, although
Soviet critics continued to place him in this category out of habit. Simul-
taneously, his official reputation grew immensely, as he was awarded the
Komsomol Prize, the Krupskaya Prize, the State Prize for Literature (1978)
and the socialis countries’ Gorky Prize for the best children’s book (1980).
On his sixtieth birthday in 1984, Aleksin received the Order of Lenin.
Unexpectedly, Aleksin left Russia in 1993, moving to Israel at the invita-
tion of Yitzhak Rabin, the country’s former Prime Minister.
A contemporary of Aleksin is Mikhail Korshunov (1924–2003). He made
his debut in the 1950s, but did not achieve recognition until the 1970s. His
large output encompasses both novels and short stories for young people
and covers the whole Soviet period. The subject-matter ranges from the
Second World War to first love, to portraits of technical-college pupils and
music students. For young children, Korshunov wrote the farcical school
stories The Tragic Hieroglyph (Tragichesky ieroglif, 1966) and Help! Tigers!
(Karaul! Tigry!, 1973). Korshunov received several literary prizes, but his
often artistically refined and subtle books do not appear to have gained
any wider popularity. His last works, written in the 1990s with his wife,
dealt with the tragic history of the Moscow House on the Embankment,
the home of the Soviet political and artistic elite in the 1930s.
Vladimir Amlinsky (1935–89) made his debut in 1958 in Youth. In terms
of age, he was one of the “children of the Twentieth Party Congress”,
but even in his first story, “The Station of First Love” (“Stantsiya pervoy
lyubvi”), critics saw traits that set him apart from his contemporaries. First
love and the eternal triangle drama were described in a bittersweet lyrical
tone reminiscent of the émigré writer Ivan Bunin, the last great represen-
tative of pre-revolutionary Russian realism.
540 chapter ten

In his first longer work, Clouds Gathered Over the Town (Tuchi nad
gorodom vstali, 1964), Amlinsky told of an upbringing during the Second
World War. The teenage narrator, an evacuee, lives in a shattered world.
His parents have separated, his new classmates are hostile toward him,
and a gulf threatens to open up between him and his father. The need to
grow up quickly is acute. Vasily Aksyonov saw the book as the portrait of
a generation; in an appreciative review, wrote that Amlinsky described
“the cloud over our childhood”.8
The Life of Ernst Shatalov (Zhizn Ėrnsta Shatalova, 1968), a novel writ-
ten in a documentary style, presents a hero-portrait of a teenager who is
injured in an ice-hockey match and gradually becomes completely paraly-
sed. But the boy does not lose the will to live and continues his studies
even though he is bedridden. By his personal example, he gives his fellows
a lesson in inner strength before his untimely death. There were obvious
parallels with the fate of the war veteran and writer Nikolay Ostrovsky,
and with Boris Polevoy’s novel about an indomitable Second World War
fighter pilot, The Story of a Real Man (Povest o nastoyashchem cheloveke).
Polevoy, at that time the editor of Youth, rated Amlinsky’s novel very
highly: “Ernst parts from life, not complaining bitterly about his fate, but
like a strong person, full of ideas and unfulfilled plans.”9 It taught Soviet
youth to live a full life under all circumstances, even the toughest.
One problem that Amlinsky devoted much attention to was juvenile
crime. He tackled the subject in literary form in The Brother’s Return (Voz-
vrashchenie brata, 1973), in which a fatherless, weak-willed boy is drawn
into a gang after the war and receives a long sentence in prison and labour
camp. The novel depicts his difficult return to freedom and his encounter
with a younger brother. Amlinsky was anxious to stress the possibility of
moral rebirth, and he confronted his young hero with memories of people
who had exerted a positive influence on him. In his last books, Amlinsky
moved away from writing exclusively for young people, instead taking on
his former role as the voice of his generation, in novels like The Neskuchny
Park (Neskuchny sad (1979) and Handicraft (Remeslo, 1983), later called
Borka Nikitin.

Traditionally, Soviet Pioneer children aged between 10 and 14 had their

own writers, who wrote about home and school life, Pioneer activities
and leisure. From the 1960s onwards, one of these writers was Vladislav

8 V. Aksenov, “Tuchi nashego detstva,” Literaturnaia Rossiia 4 (1965): 10–11.

9 B. Polevoi, “Neskol’ko slov ob ėtoi povesti,” Iunost’ 12 (1968): 19.
 years of stagnation (1969–1985) 541

Krapivin (born 1938), who had always been in close contact with the
younger generation. Observations from his work as a youth-club leader in
Sverdlovsk found their way into many of his books. The action in Kashka
the Spear Carrier (Oruzhenosets Kashka, 1966) takes place at a Pioneer
camp. Krapivin offers a sensitive portrayal of the unusual friendship
between the uncrowned king of the camp, the winner of an archery con-
test, and his ‘spear carrier’, the underdog Kashka. The book glorifies loyal
friendship and the defence of the weak.
Krapivin’s speech to the 1970 RSFSR Writers’ Congress can be seen as
a manifesto. He considered it important to teach children that they, too,
could show public spirit and make a contribution to the common cause. As
for the kind of heroes that children needed, Krapivin explained, “It seems
to me that children are not interested in the ideal boy that some critics
praise, or in strong twelve-year-old personalities (as has been expressed
by some critics). The heroes they want to see in modern literature are
their own classmates, pupils like themselves who love to play, who chase
impossible dreams, make mistakes, sometimes fail the test and perhaps
weep with frustration. But in serious questions, they are unbending and
hold fast to their principles. They must not ignore nastiness, and they
must not forget honour, but must remain ours, Soviet children, citizens
of our country.”10
We meet precisely such a hero in the trilogy The Boy with the Sword
(Malchik so shpagoy, 1973–75). Seryozha Kakhovsky of the Espada fencing
club has the Three Musketeers as his role-models: he believes in honesty
and goodness and is ready to fight for justice. He is faced not only by
ruthless hooligans, who extort money from the schoolchildren, but also
by grudging adults, who want to rob the children of their clubroom, and
teachers, who regard him as too self-willed. Krapivin grabs the reader’s
interest with highly-charged conflicts and a narration dominated by
dialogue.
Krapivin is also the author of several books of fantasy. In Flying Tales
(Letyashchie skazki, 1978), a boy hunting for a lost ship in a bottle ends up
in a fairy-tale world. In another tale from the same collection, the dream
of a flying carpet comes true; it is just a matter of believing in it and
wanting it sufficiently. At a deeper level, the book is about the grown-up
narrator’s nostalgia for childhood fantasies and adventures.

10 “Rech’ V.P. Krapivina,” Тretii s’’ezd pisatelei RSFSR 24–27 marta 1970 g.: Stenografi-
cheskii otchet (M., 1972), 342.
542 chapter ten

Among the writers from the 1960s, Medvedev and Tomin remained
productive throughout the Brezhnev years, now concentrating on real-
istic prose-writing. Valery Medvedev’s attempt to follow up the success
of Barankin, Be a Man! with The Super-Adventures of a Super-Cosmonaut
(Sverkhpriklyucheniya sverkhkosmonavta, 1977), a novel about another
schoolboy of the same name, was a failure; the satire directed at the con-
ceited know-it-all Barankin lacked the spontaneity and fun of the earlier
book. Medvedev was more successful with The Wedding March (Svadebny
marsh, 1974), a story of first love. Yury Tomin painted an interesting pic-
ture of life in a small town on the Karelian Peninsula in Vitka Murash,
the Conqueror of Everyone (Vitka Murash—pobeditel vsekh, 1974), featur-
ing a father who likes to drink, a mother who is always nagging, and an
unemployed sister who falls in love with a long-haired idler. At the centre,
opposed to them all, stands Vitka. The peace of their provincial life is
interrupted, when a new teacher comes to the school and encourages his
pupils to take the initiative in dealing with important questions.

The outstanding school novel, and one of the most important of all Rus-
sian books for young people from the 1980s, is Vladimir Zheleznikov’s The
Scarecrow (Chuchelo, 1981), originally published as Just a Few Days (Vsego-
to neskolko dney). Its artistic deficiencies are offset by the depth of the
ethical problem that the author addressed. The heroine, Lenka Bessoltseva,
takes the blame for a friend and is picked on by her classmates. The cruelty
of the collective towards a dissenter had never received such penetrating
treatment before, nor had the mechanisms that bring out the evil that is
latent even in children. Faced with the tragedy taking place in the seventh
class of this provincial school, the adults come across as blind and preoc-
cupied with their own problems. The Scarecrow was originally intended as
a play, but it was the film version (1983) that brought Zheleznikov’s novel
to a really wide audience.
In Sergey Ivanov’s (1941–99) extensive output, Olga Yakovlevna (1976) is
generally considered one of the high points. In the main character, a nine-
year-old orphan girl, Ivanov created a modern positive heroine. He liked
to write about children and young people faced with difficult choices; his
books conveyed a strong sense of anxiety about the breakdown of the fam-
ily in modern society. In the school novel He Is No Longer Among Us (Ego
sredi nas net, 1985), Ivanov followed in Zheleznikov’s footsteps, pointing
out negative tendencies in children themselves. Tanya is a schoolgirl with
a lust for power, fanatically interested in solving mysteries and crimes.
She exerts a hypnotic and harmful influence over her classmates, but she
 years of stagnation (1969–1985) 543

lacks the capacity to display humanity and to choose the right approach.
When crime is countered with criminal methods, the representatives of
justice are themselves turned into criminals. Ivanov addresses an impor-
tant issue, but the excessively strong narrative voice and the lack of any
sense of form weakens He Is No Longer Among Us.
Ivanov also contributed to the wave of rural romances that made its
mark on the 1970s and 1980s, and not only in literature for adults. Authors
such as Viktor Astafev, Vasily Belov and Vladimir Krupin also aimed at
a young audience, without, however, attracting the same following as
they did among adult readers. Their nostalgia for past times and their
lyrical sketches of nature met with a muted response. There was also an
obvious element of idealisation in their attempts to introduce city chil-
dren to hard-working country children helping the grown-ups with
potato-picking and weeding the vegetable garden. This is especially true
of Sergey Ivanov’s Burenka, Yagodka, Krasotka (1977), a description of a
harmonious, peaceful day in the life of an old kolkhoz-worker. Ivanov’s
contribution to ‘BAM literature’, The Tree of Happiness (Derevo schastya,
1983), also lacked a personal imprint. The BAM was the new Baikal-Amur
branch of the Trans-Siberian Railway, the great romantic construction
project for Soviet youth from the early 1970s onwards.

The General Line

Within ideologically committed prose-writing, there was still a lot of

energy expended on explaining Communism and the Soviet model to
children. The propagandists of the Party congresses included Mariya Prile-
zhaeva and Anatoly Aleksin, who glorified what they saw as historic Party
resolutions in At the Twenty-Fourth Congress (Na dvadsat chetvyortom
sezde, 1971) and On the Road to National Happiness (Dorogoy narodnogo
shchastya, 1976), respectively. The acceptance of the Brezhnev Constitu-
tion in 1977 impelled Zoya Voskresenskaya to write a collection of jour-
nalistic stories for children about the Party and the Soviet government,
entitled The Song of the Great Law (Slovo o Velikom Zakone, 1977), and
inspired Evgeny Permyak to popularise Soviet history, ideology and soci-
ology in Our State (Nashe gosudarstsvo, 1977).
The Lenin cult also continued to flourish, with new contributions for
the centenary of his birth from Voskresenskaya with The Precious Name
(Dorogoe imya, 1970), and from Prilezhaeva with The Life of Lenin (Zhizn
Lenina, 1970). Ten years later, in 1980, the decision was taken to collect the
544 chapter ten

literature about Lenin for young people into a series of ten volumes, an
investment by the publishers that were applauded at writers’ congresses.
Some writers were carried away in their desire to glorify the founder of
the Soviet state. In 1970, Agniya Barto had occasion to criticise a colleague
who had suggested in a children’s book that Lenin invented practically all
the games played by modern Soviet children.11
There, Far Beyond the River (Tam vdali, za rekoi, 1967), by Yury Kori-
nets (1923–89), raised ideological fiction to a new level. The book was
awarded first prize in a children’s literature competition when the Soviet
state celebrated its seventieth anniversary. Using his father’s biography as
a model, Korinets paints a loving portrait of an old Bolshevik who fought
in the Russian Civil War, served as a diplomat in the 1920s and partici-
pated in the collectivisation and industrialisation process during Stalin’s
rule, and who now wants to hand the Communist legacy on to a younger
generation. The Great Terror and the tragic fate of the Bolshevik old guard
(Korinets’ father was executed in 1938 and his mother deported to Siberia,
never to return) were still passed over in silence.
There is little by way of plot in There, Far Beyond the River and its
sequel, A White Night by the Bonfire (V beluyu noch u kostra, 1968), but
Korinets’ romantic approach, lively characterisation and humour bring his
subject-matter to life. The best pages are devoted to praise of the beauty
of Nothern Russian nature with fishing, hunting, encounters with wild
animals, and travels through the taiga and along the big rivers.
Korinets’ two next novels—Greetings from Werner (Privet ot Vernera,
1972) and Gisi’s Song (Pesnya Gizi, 1974)—can also be seen as a whole. The
time is the end of the 1920s, the place—Moscow and Berlin. The fact that
the hero shares the author’s name, Yury, and age, six years old in 1929,
indicates that Korinets was at least partly revisiting his own childhood.
It is a time of early ideological training, with Young Pioneer congresses,
May Day demonstrations, meetings with true Communists and clashes
with class enemies. The core of Volodya’s Brothers (Volodiny bratya, 1975)
is the vindication of the ruthless campaign against the kulaks during col-
lectivization. Eleven-year-old Volodya learns from his grandfather that
these well-off peasants were the people that had to be exterminated so
that Communism could become a reality. Volodya’s ‘brothers’ are the wild
inhabitants of the Siberian taiga, from ants to bears, and it is with the help

11 Agniia Barto, “O literature dlia detei,” in Tret’ii s’’ezd pisatelei RSFSR, 116.
 years of stagnation (1969–1985) 545

of these friends that he can make his way through the wilderness to his
beloved grandfather.
Korinets’ books were also favorably received in Western Europe, rec-
ommended by UNESCO, popular in Scandinavia and Finland, and given
prizes in Holland and Italy. One explanation for this surprising success
was that the political and ideological passages had, with the author’s per-
mission, been toned down or even excluded, letting a Western audience
see in Korinets only a nature lover and a skilful depicter of a friendship
across the generation barrier. In the Soviet Union he was regarded as a
staunch Communist writer, firmly building on the Gaydar tradition. When
Korinets finally came to tell the whole story of his background truthfully,
it was in a book written for adults. A Whole Life and One Day (Vsya zhizn
i odin den, 1983) is marked by disillusion and a fixation with death. All
loyalty towards the first generation of Bolsheviks with their idealism and
dreams has vanished, as a conscience-stricken Korinets now asks forgive-
ness from all those who were killed in the name of the worldwide revolu-
tion and Communism.
The sole work by Korinets still to be read after the fall of the Soviet
Union is probably The Most Clever Horse (Samaya umnaya loshad, 1976).
Based upon his own situation during the Second World War—as an
orphan deported to Kazakhstan—it tells about the friendship between a
lonely boy and a horse. Both have been treated harshly by life, but together
they manage to survive. The dialogue between man and animal and the
parallels between their fates bring to mind Chingiz Aitmatov’s Goodbye,
Gulsary! (Proshchay, Gulsary!, 1966).
Mariya Prilezhaeva also set out to remind young people of the ideologi-
cal basis of the Soviet state. In The Green Branch of May (Zelyonaya vetka
maya, 1975), she wrote about a young orphaned girl, who enters a convent
just before 1917. Here, she encounters fanaticism and hypocrisy, a world of
crippled souls, but the October Revolution rescues her from this perilous
environment. The critic Vladimir Razumnevich (1928–96) wrote that “the
Revolution enters the girl’s life like a fresh spring breeze, like the longed-
for sun of May, shining on the road to happiness, goodness and justice”.12
Working as a schoolteacher in the country, and guided by her Bolshevik
brothers, the girl comes into her own. Razumnevich was a writer himself
and had been producing exciting, but ideologically orthodox novels for

12 V. Razumnevich, Vsem detiam rovesniki: Zametki o knigakh sovremennykh detskikh

pisatelei (M., 1980), 342.
546 chapter ten

young people about the Revolution and the Civil War since the 1950s. Dur-
ing the Brezhnev years of stagnation, he twice won the prize for the best
children’s book.
In The Consul (Konsul, 1971), Zoya Voskresenskaya offered political
propaganda in the guise of fostering internationalism. Based on her own
memories of her time at the Soviet embassy in Helsinki, she wrote about
Finland in the 1930s. Local communists are ruthlessly persecuted, while
Russian émigrés hatch plots against the Soviet state. Local children learn
Russian in secret in order to read Lenin and find out the truth about
the Soviet Union, the country of the future. While the main protagonist,
the Soviet consul, fights for justice and truth in a lawless, “semi-fascist”
Finland, his wife (a self-portrait of the author herself) devotes herself to
researching the time Lenin spent there.
Agniya Kuznetsova also felt called upon to maintain the frightening
image of the capitalist world. In A Golden Cloud Lay Sleeping (Nochevala
tuchka zolotaya, 1971), we meet a Soviet girl who is invited to Western
Europe by a relative. Her revulsion at what she sees awakens her politi-
cal awareness and helps her to mature into a Soviet patriot. She is torn
between the urge to return home as quickly as possible and the desire to
take up the fight against the inhumanity of the capitalist world.
Kuznetsova is also the author of a historical trilogy, starting with the
novel Under the Storms of Cruel Fate (Pod buryami sudby zhestokoy, 1979),
dedicated to Pushkin and his circle of friends. Lyubov Voronkova went
even farther back in time, crowning her long writing career with mate-
rial from ancient history. Alexander’s Youth (Yunost Aleksandra, 1971),
later renamed Son of Zeus (Syn Zevsa), and In the Depths of the Centuries
(V glubi vekov, 1973) follow the life of Alexander the Great from cradle
to grave. In The Hero of Salamis (Geroy Salamina, 1975), Voronkova wrote
about the battle of Salamis in 480 BC. Her books, based on thorough study,
also won praise from historians.

Cheburashka and the Others

In the 1970s, it was observed that prose writing had become more prob-
lem-oriented, intellectual and analytical than before. This did not mean
the end of humorous literature, fairy tales and fantasy literature, even
though vital, durable contributions to the genres became less and less
frequent. One hot topic of the time was “conformism versus revolt”, or
“respect for authority versus individualism”. It was no coincidence that
 years of stagnation (1969–1985) 547

Sergey Mikhalkov’s story ‘Festival of Disobedience’ (‘Prazdnik neposlush-

aniya’, 1971) was published simultaneously in Pioneer for young people
and in New World for adults. In a humorous guise, the author deals with
the ‘crazy sixties’. From his position as chairman of the Russian Writers’
Union, he showed how badly things turn out when children—read indi-
vidual writers—become too self-willed and disobedient, and think they
can manage without adults—read the Party apparatus. Children gain free-
dom and independence, but soon realise that they cannot cope on their
own and that reconciliation with their elders is essential. Mikhalkov him-
self wanted to see the book as a contribution to the educational debate:
his explicit aim was to show the importance of raising children without
them realising or noticing it was happening.
Anarchy also threatens in the prose tale by the poet Irina Tokmakova,
Alya, Klyaksich and the Letter A (Alya, Klyaksich i bukva A, 1967). Klyak-
sich (literally, Blotman) scrambles the letters of the Russian alphabet,
and the girl Alya has to help track down the villain and put everything
back to rights. The book turns into an original and amusing adventure,
in which children themselves can use a pencil and ruler to help catch the
culprit. Tokmakova aimed it at children who were just learning to read.
The intended audience for See You, Ivanushkin! (Schastlivo, Ivanushkin!,
1983) is a few years older. A city girl, who does not want to say farewell
to her horse, when autumn comes, escapes into a fairy-tale world, where
she has adventures together with the horse. But her flight turns out to be
superfluous, as her parents had already arranged a place for the horse in
the city. The explicit message is that children should not distrust their
parents. The wizard in See You, Ivanushkin! says: “You must never talk
about mother and father the way you talk about other people, and never
use the world ‘they’ about them!”
When the interests of children and adults collide in Yury Koval’s (1938–
95) very successful The Little Silver Fox (1974, Nedopyosok), the solution
is not so straightforward. Napoleon the Third is a freedom-loving silver
fox, who takes an opportunity to escape from his cage. The whole village,
presented in a gallery of amusing portraits, participates in the hunt for
the valuable animal. The situation turns dramatic, when the children side
with Napoleon the Third and shelter him from the adults. In the eyes of
the manager of the fur farm, the fox represents only money, but the chil-
dren are driven by love for animals. Koval’s problem is that no satisfying
compromise is possible, even if the book does attempt to show a way out
of the conflict.
548 chapter ten

There is a subtext in The Little Silver Fox accessible only to a grown-

up. In 1969 Evgeny Evtushenko had written a poem, ‘The Monologue of
a Blue Fox’ (‘Monolog golubogo pestsa’), a disillusioned comment on the
dreams of freedom during Khrushchev’s short-lived Thaw. The Blue Fox,
a symbol for the young Soviet rebel, manages to run away from the farm,
but he cannot cope with unlimited freedom and, instead, returns to his
cage, wretched and miserable. “He, who has been born in a cage, cries
for it. / And, anguished, I realised that I love / my steel-wire cage as my
home, / the gray fur farm as my fatherland,” Evtushenko writes. Koval’s
novel can be seen as a comment on the poem. The author partly sticks
to the point of view of the fox and eloquently demonstrates the difficult
choice between a sheltered life in a warm cage and insecure, basically
frightening freedom.
Koval’s sympathies are also on the side of the children in his mystery
novels The Adventures of Vasya Kurolesov (Priklyucheniya Vasi Kurolesova.
1971) and Five Stolen Monks (Pyat pokhishchennykh monakhov, 1976). In
both books Vasya Kurolesov, a brave and quick-witted country lad, traces
bands of thieves and helps the militia to arrest the guilty ones. The two
novels signified a new turn for Soviet Russian children’s literature. Previ-
ously, when children were depicted as involved in the struggle against
criminality, the outcome was always connected to serious, ideological
training. The reader was supposed to learn vigilance against the enemies
of the state. Koval, turning to a younger audience, struck a humorous
note. There is no psychological subtlety or ambiguity, but everything is
exaggerated and stylised; the villains are not particularly shrewd, and they
easily fall into the trap. However, in both novels there are strong artistic
ambitions behind the composition, the metaphors and the poetic descrip-
tion of nature.
One of the most remarkable books of the 1970s was Rady Pogodin’s
A Little Book about Grishka (Knizhka pro Grishku, 1977). In some of his
earlier works, such as A Step from the Roof (Shag s kryshi, 1968), the
author had already displayed a leaning towards the fantastic. In the story
of Grishka, a thin little boy with big eyes who spends a summer with his
uncle in the country, he went all the way. Grishka is a dreamer with the
soul of a poet, living in a fantasy world, where anything is possible. He
communicates with animals and takes flying lessons from a sparrow; he
talks to his double and strides out into the future. At one level, the book
is a philosophical allegory about the battle between good and evil, but
there are also elements of the grotesque, of parody and surrealism, which
 years of stagnation (1969–1985) 549

completely defy all attempts at interpretation. The most enigmatic char-

acters in the book include a talking goat, who asks for beer outside the vil-
lage tavern and who has only one friend, a mystical bream called Trifon.
Unlike Rady Pogodin, who was awarded several literary prizes in the
last decades of his career, Ėduard Uspensky (born 1937) never received
any medals or honorable mentions. Instead of official recognition, how-
ever, he gained a conspicuously enthusiastic audience. Uspensky started
with cabaret lyrics for student theatres, and humorous poems and stories
for adults, but he was most comfortable writing for children. His first book,
The Funny Elephant (Smeshnoy slonyonok, 1965), a volume of poems for
children, caught the attention of Agniya Barto, among others. At the 1967
Writers’ Congress, Barto cited Uspensky as a promising new name in chil-
dren’s poetry. In the next twenty years, Uspensky produced more than
ten volumes of poetry. Like the other ‘Thaw poets’, he built on the legacy
of the 1920s, especially that of Daniil Kharms. The joy of imagining and
telling stories is a strong feature, and if the poems have a message, it is
presented in a form that children can enjoy.
The mathematician Ivanov, a venerable academic who loves to skate
(“Gololyod”), is a memorable poetic hero. He is regarded as a comical odd-
ball, but he becomes a hero when a dangerous sheet of ice settles on the
city pavements. It has been accurately observed that the adults in Uspen-
sky’s work are like children in disguise. If the reader does not immediately
realise that academic Ivanov belongs in this category, it becomes clear
when he is rewarded for his help by the gift of a baby elephant from the
chairman of the city council.
Uspensky’s first prose work, Gena the Crocodile and His Friends (Krokodil
Gena i ego druzya, 1966), was an unparalleled success. The book saw many
translations and adaptations: it was also dramatised and turned into a
cartoon film. Cheburashka, an exotic little animal unknown to the world’s
zoologists, was produced as a soft toy and turned into a circus character;
cafés and children’s cinemas were named after him. The character origi-
nated as a toy animal made up of different parts, so that it was impos-
sible to say whether he was “a hare, a dog, a cat or a kangaroo”. Like his
prototype, Cheburashka lacks an identity. He has also been torn away
from his own environment, arriving from the tropics by mistake in a case
of oranges. He is a lonely and defenceless creature, who appeals to chil-
dren’s protective instincts and makes them feel strong. His Russian name,
derived from the verb ‘cheburakhnutsya’ (to crash down), also underlines
his helplessness.
550 chapter ten

Fig. 20. Gennady Kalinovsky, Gena the Crocodile and His Friends (1986)

Cheburashka is not the only one to suffer from loneliness; so, too, does
Gena the crocodile, the book’s other unforgettable fairy-tale character. In
an interview, Uspensky claimed that Gena the Crocodile and His Friends
actually originated from the sentence, “There was once a crocodile called
Gena who worked as a crocodile in the zoo.”13 Gena’s strange double life
is just one of the many humorous aspects of the book. Like Chukovsky’s
Krokodil Krokodilovich, Gena has two roles, one traditional and one fan-
tastical. In the daytime, he lies by his pond in the zoo, but in the evening,

13 Ben Hellman, “Uspenskij-feber,” Hufvudstadsbladet (Helsinki). October 30, 1980, 5.

 years of stagnation (1969–1985) 551

he puts on a suit and a tie and goes home to read the newspaper. He
spends some of his spare time at the children’s theatre, where he is a
great hit as an unconventional Red Riding Hood. Here again, the humour
is based on turning familiar models upside down.
In Gena the Crocodile and His Friends, loneliness turns into friendship.
Cheburashka and the little girl Galya start a friendship agency, which
brings together the most unlikely couples, but equally important is their
intimate collaboration on a House of Friendship. It is at this stage that
the villains of the story appear, an old woman with the absurd name of
Chapeau-claque and her tame rat. She loves to subject the friends to lit-
tle assaults, but here again it is as if a child were hiding behind the adult
character. Chapeau-claque is more mischievous than diabolically wicked,
and her evil deeds are more of a game.
What Uspensky glorifies is true friendship; the most ill-matched char-
acters come together to build the House of Friendship, and together they
manage to overcome both bureaucrats and saboteurs. In the spirit of Chu-
kovsky’s verse epics, it is the weak but good-hearted who carry off the vic-
tory. Uspensky’s humour is varied: he tries his hand at situation comedy,
linguistic jokes and absurd turns. The humour is paired with an irreverent
way of playing with conventions and expectations.
Uspensky based his next prose work, Down the Enchanted River (Vniz
po volshebnoy reke, 1972) on Russian folktales, but although the charac-
ters and motifs were familiar, the approach was new. Uspensky freshened
up the traditional folk setting by introducing a new and unconventional
hero. The modern city boy Mitya spends some time with his aunt in the
country, where he listens to stories of the witch Baba Yaga, the Grey Wolf,
Koshchey the Immortal, the Three-Headed Dragon and Vasilisa the Fair.
Mitya’s imagination carries him into this world, and he becomes actively
involved in the wonderful events there.
The folk material in Down the Enchanted River is used with an irrever-
ence that did not please all the critics. The rational Mitya sets the ‘house
on hen’s feet’, a well-known element in the Russian folktale, marching on
the spot, and later uses it as a convenient means of transport. The river of
milk in the fairy tale also becomes a source of great happiness, where one
can fetch cream or pick up bits of cheese washed up on the bank. Every
spring, instead of the ice, the curd breaks. The element of slapstick and
parody is to the fore, as the author assumes that the reader is familiar with
the elements being parodied.
There is a mischievous defence of children’s rights in Uncle Fyodor,
the Dog and the Cat (Dyadya Fyodor, pyos i kot, 1974), a variation on the
552 chapter ten

theme of ‘disobedience’. When Uncle Fyodor, a six-year-old boy who has

earned his nickname for being so serious and independent, is not allowed
to keep any pets at home, he runs away. With his dog and cat (who both,
incidentally, can talk) he settles in a cottage in the country. It is not hard
to see that Uspensky is on the side of the freedom-loving friends. With
irrepressible imagination, he helps them to manage on their own. When
they are short of money, they simply go out into the garden and dig up
some treasure. The cat takes care of the electricity supply by ordering a lit-
tle ‘home sun’ from the Institute of Solar Physics in Moscow. The appear-
ance of a tractor that runs on sausages and potatoes instead of petrol
comes as no surprise, nor does the way the dog sublimates his predatory
instincts to go hunting with a camera instead of a gun.
The unlikely collective is able to overcome all inner and outer conflicts.
Each character is allowed to preserve his individual features and likings
without upsetting the necessary balance. Of the two animals, the carefree
and irresponsible dog has traits of Fyodor’s father, while the order-loving
nature of the cat corresponds with that of his mother.
The representative of social constraint and the prosaic world of adult-
hood in Uncle Fyodor, the Dog and the Cat is the postman Pechkin. How-
ever, this bureaucrat and guardian of order—who also has a child’s
weaknesses—comes up short, when faced with such spirited anarchists.
Only when Uncle Fyodor falls ill is he brought home again. It is time for
reconciliation, but on terms that also satisfy the child. The book is thus an
amusing contribution to the never-ending debate about upbringing and
parental authority.
Uncle Fyodor, the Dog and the Cat, which was also made into a car-
toon film and a play, is rightly regarded as Uspensky’s foremost work.
In comparison, the next book, The Little Warranty People (Garantiynye
chelovechki, 1975), despite its many merits, might be considered a failure.
The book starts in a time-honoured fashion: alongside our reality, there
exists another world, populated by Lilliputians. Uspensky’s Lilliputians
belong to the present day, in the sense that they are mechanics, whose
job is to see that technical equipment works as long as the guarantee
holds. After this, they are taken back to the factory in little helicopters
and given new assignments. Uspensky follows up this idea, the irony of
which is more appealing to adults than to children, by creating a whole
social environment for these so-called Warranty People.
Tension is introduced into The Little Warranty People by having war
break out between the Lilliputians and the mice in the house. In the eyes
of the mice, the little technicians are intruders who must be chased away.
 years of stagnation (1969–1985) 553

More interesting than the rather routine depiction of the battle is the
contrast between two different types of collective. The mice live under a
military dictatorship, which fails even before the first test, while the Lil-
liputians, on the other hand, learn the value of solidarity and voluntary
cooperation in the course of the struggle.
Uspensky’s later children’s books do not reach his earlier standard; many
of them give the impression of being written in haste, or on a half-digested
impulse. They include School for Clowns (Shkola klounov, 1983), which
is most interesting as an attempt to create a multifaceted puzzle book
for children; Bun Follows the Trail (Kolobok idyot po sledu, 1987), a chil-
dren’s detective story, more amusing than thrilling; and Masha Filipenko’s
25 Professions (25 professii Masha Filipenko, 1988), a perestroika book and
an attempt to engage children in the problems of adults.
Uspensky described his aims as a writer in an interview: “As a story-
teller, I fight against evil—in stories and in life . . . And for me, the great-
est evil is slavery and obsequiousness, to regard oneself as something not
very important. Furthermore, I also detest opportunism.” As for how to
account for the profound understanding between author and children
that we find in Uspensky’s books, his own explanation is that “Children
instinctively know that I will not force my opinion on them. I just play
with them.”14
Another creator of secondary worlds is Sofya Prokofeva (born 1928).
Trained to be an artist, she turned to children’s literature in the 1950s,
publishing her first book in 1957. She is the author of more than thirty
fairy tales and fantasy books, but she has also occasionally been active
in the fields of theatre and cartoons. Prokofeva defined the addressees of
her books as children between nine and twelve. The plots are dynamic
and exciting, the settings concrete and modern, and the cast of characters
includes both realistic and fantasy figures. The narration displays clear
sympathies and antipathies.
Prokofeva’s first successes were The Stranger with a Tail (Neizvestny
s khvostom, 1963) and The Adventures of the Yellow Suitcase (Priklyu­
cheniya zholtogo chemodanchika, 1965), happy and carefree stories about
ordinary children in today’s world. The 1970s saw a definite move into
the fantastic with the appearance of books like The Rag and the Cloud
(Loskutik i Oblako, 1972), In an Old Attic (Na starom cherdake, 1974) and
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Uchenik volshebnika, 1980). Captain Tin Tinych

14 Quoted in I. Vasiuchenko, “Igra vzrapravdu,” Detskaia literatura 2 (1984): 27.

554 chapter ten

(Kapitan Tin Tinych, 1981) is a defence of fantasy; the child hero creates
his own adventures, as he follows his toy boat into a fantasy world full of
surprises. The cycle Master of the Magic Keys (Povelitel volshebnykh
klyuchey, 1986–96) comprises five books, united by the figure of the magi-
cian Alyosha. Together with his young friends and a cat, he sets out to
perform heroic deeds in a magic world where courage, goodness and
friendship are put on trial.
In fairy-tale books with titles like Clean Birds (Chistye ptitsy, 1969) and
The Amazing Barrel (Udivitelnaya bochka. 1970), Sergey Kozlov (1939–
2010) dealt with the world of animals. The hedgehog, the bear cub, the
elephant, the donkey and the hare are odd, naive characters in the style
of Winnie-the-Pooh. Quietly contemplating natural phenomena and the
changing seasons, they stand out as representatives of different views of
life. The atmosphere and the lyric feeling are of greater importance than
a swiftly moving plot. Kozlov’s central themes, friendship and helpfulness,
form the core of The Hedgehog in the Fog (Yozhik v tumane. 1981), also
familiar as a highly artistic cartoon film. In How the Lion-Cub and the Tor-
toise Sang a Song (Kak Lvyonok i Cherepakha peli pesnyu, 1979), Kozlov
tried his hand at fables. He is also the author of poems and plays on fairy-
tale themes. The many translations of his works, even outside the socialist
bloc, indicate his merits as a writer.
Kir Bulychov (1934–2003), the pseudonym of Igor Mozheyko, was a
favourite among children in their early school years. He was a science-
fiction writer, whose series of stories about little Alisa was aimed directly
at children. Alisa made her appearance in the mid-1970s in The Girl from
Earth (Devochka s Zemli, 1974), which contained “The Girl Nothing Hap-
pens To” (“Devochka, s kotoroy nichego ne sluchitsya”), “Alisa’s Journey”
(“Puteshestvie Alisy”) and “Alisa’s Birthday” (“Den rozhdeniya Alisy”).
Their success led Bulychov to continue the series with further books,
including The Girl from the Future (Devochka iz budushchego, 1984). In
1982, Bulychov was awarded a state prize for literature.
Alisa lives in the 2070s, in a future where the dreams of our time have
been turned into everyday reality. Robots help with the housework, so-
called flyers transport people from Moscow to the Black Sea in forty
minutes, and the school holidays can be spent travelling back in time or
visiting friends on other planets. Through her father, who is a professor of
zoology specialising in the fauna of alien planets, Alisa comes into con-
tact with fantastical creatures and goes on exciting expeditions into outer
space. Alisa is an active and inquisitive girl, whose impulsiveness some-
times lands her in dangerous situations, but whose quick thinking also
 years of stagnation (1969–1985) 555

enables her to help the adults solve problems. It is not a coincidence that
she shares her name with the famous heroine of Lewis Carroll’s books.
Eventually, as in Carroll’s work, there is more whimsical humour than real
excitement in Bulychov’s books.

Poetry

After the brisk vitality of the 1960s, interest in poetry waned in the decades
to follow. Even if every fourth children’s book was still a collection of
poems, there was a grain of truth in the child’s complaint that is heard
in Sergey Mikhalkov’s self-ironic poem “Dreams that Do Not Come True”
(“Nesbyvshiesya mechty”, 1975). The child is disappointed at never being
given what he really wants—a cycle, a sledge or a puppy. Instead, the
parents bring him books of poetry by Mikhalkov and Barto.
Mikhalkov’s official career reached its peak during the years of stagna-
tion. In 1970, he was elected to the chair of the Russian Writers’ Union,
and he received many honours for faithful work in the service of the Party:
the Order of the October Revolution (1971), the Order of the Red Flag of
Labour, and the Order of the Red Star. His books were awarded the Lenin
Prize (1970), the State Prize of the Russian Federation (1977) and the State
Prize of the Soviet Union (1978). He was elected to the Soviet Academy
of Sciences and received the honorary titles of ‘Hero of Socialist Labour’
(1973) and ‘Distinguished Artist’.
In the mid-1970s, Mikhalkov completed his verse cycle A True Story for
Children (Byl dlya detey), in which a father tells his son about the history
of the Soviet Union and about communist ideology. The Party is glorified
in phrases like “Our Party leads us, / and the people follow behind”. In the
section entitled “Be Prepared” (“Bud gotov”), the son and his friends are
exhorted to military readiness. For capitalists greedy for profit, the word
‘peace’ is a knife to the heart, and the American generals dream of see-
ing Russia subjugated and laid waste. In the capitalist countries, children
go naked and barefoot and have no access to schools, honest people die
in prison and at war, there are no laws, presidents are assassinated and
students are tortured.
At the same time, A True Story for Children expresses the conviction that
Communism will soon triumph all over the world. The Soviet Union is an
inspiring example, a harmonious, happy, peace-loving and truly demo-
cratic country. Where similar poems from the 1940s ended in a paean to
Stalin, Mikhalkov now glorified Leonid Brezhnev as he had seen him at
556 chapter ten

the Twenty-Fifth Party Congress. In Mikhalkov’s eyes, Brezhnev was a

man with the honour of a partisan, experienced in battle, a man whose
words people of all nations, races and peoples seek to follow.
It was poems like this that drove the émigré writer, the philosopher
Aleksandr Zinovev (1922–2006), to launch a satirical attack on Mikhalkov
and the tradition he represents. In his novel The Radiant Future (Svetloe
budushchee, 1978), Zinovev talks about Malkov, a name that also refers
to another of the leading lights of Soviet literature, the President of the
Writers’ Union, Georgy Markov:
The lists of new Lenin Prize winners have been published. Naturally, it was
Malkov who took the literature prize. He got it—to quote Lenka—for his
nonsense poems for tiny tots:
Hushaby, hushaby, hushaby baby.
My Party is worth more than gold.
And for pre-school children:
Even the smallest children
Do their bit for the five-year plan.
By the 1970s, many of the poets of the Thaw had seen their best years
and were often content with reprints. Valentin Berestov’s School Poems
(Shkolnaya lirika, 1977) contained nostalgic poems looking back at child-
hood and youth. The collection won first prize for Berestov in a children’s
book competition in the year of its publication. There was also a sense of
closure in the personal anthologies of poetry that came out in the 1980s
from Irina Tokmakova (1980), Boris Zakhoder (1981), Yakov Akim (1983)
and Roman Sef (1984).
Genrikh Sapgir was expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers in 1968,
a fact which strangely did not hamper his activity as a children’s poet.
Between 1960 and 1978, he managed to publish about forty collections
of poetry for children, this while his poems for adults circulated in type-
written copies and were printed only in the West. In 1979, Sapgir’s situa-
tion worsened dramatically, when he took part in a campaign of protest
against Soviet censorship. The platform was Metropol, an anthology of
texts banned in the Soviet Union.
It is worth noting the interest in children’s poetry shown by some
established poets during this period. The first moves had been made in
the 1960s by Novella Matveeva (born 1934). Her first book for children,
The Flash of Sunlight on the Wall (Solnechny zaychik, 1966) was not very
promising, but Rabbit Village (Krolichya derevnya, 1984) revealed her as a
full-blooded romantic with exotic dreams, fearless heroes and a love for
 years of stagnation (1969–1985) 557

open, multifaceted worlds. The folksy tone links Matveeva with Yunna
Morits (born 1937), whose first collection for children, The Happy Beetle
(Schastlivy zhuk) came out in 1969. One impulse was the birth of a son,
another, the greater freedom children’s writers were given in those years.
The poems in The Crimson Cat (Malinovaya koshka, 1976), Jump and Play
(Poprygat-poigrat, 1978) and Come and Visit! (Zakhodite v gosti!, 1982)
are filled with an exuberant carnival mood. Looking at animals and toys,
games and friends through the eyes of a child, Morits made everything
fascinating and fantastic. Shunning all linguistic clichés, Morits always
strives towards renewal and inimitability. A Big Secret for a Little Company
(Bolshoy sekret dlya malenkoy kompanii, 1987) gathered together her best
poems in the field.
The Leningrad writer Aleksandr Kushner (born 1936) also made sur-
prise visits to children’s literature. Even in the first of his poetry books
for children, The Secret Wish (Zavetnoe zhelanie, 1973), there is the same
musicality and clarity that characterises Kushner’s adult poetry, but also
something new, that is, an effervescent humour and a solid understand-
ing of children’s minds. Pranks—real and imagined—are a major theme,
another is the child’s fascination with the adult world. What a little girl’s
pocket may contain was revealed in the poem “What’s in Her Pocket?”
(“Chto lezhit v karmane?”), while “The Magician” (“Fokusnik”) shows how
a child sees the conjurer’s tricks from his own perspective.
Although the need for new poetic voices was generally acknowledged,
it had also become increasingly difficult for young poets to be published.
One attempt to prod the literary establishment was an anthology of poems
for children called Between Summer and Winter (Mezhdu letom i zimoy,
1976). The editor was Vsevolod Nekrasov (1934–2009), an aesthetically
radical samizdat poet. The list of contributors included Genrikh Sapgir.
Valentin Berestov was responsible for the introduction and Ilya Kabakov
for the illustrations, but, on the whole, this experimental book of poems
attracted little attention.
Few of the new poets had the ability to create their own poetic world.
One of the most significant of the younger generation of poets was Marina
Boroditskaya (born 1954). After her debut in print in 1981, her first two
books came out in 1985. The themes were traditional: the family, games
and outings, animals and birds, but she avoided a simplistic tone when
writing about children. Boroditskaya is very aware of language and likes
to use word play. One example is the almost untranslatable title of one
of her books, Ubezhalo moloko (“The Milk Turned Sour”, but literally
“The Milk Ran Away”).
 chapter eleven

Perestroika Reaches Children’s Literature (1986–1991)

Mikhail Gorbachev’s ascent to General Secretary of the Soviet Communist

Party in 1985 heralded a time of profound change. The catchwords were
perestroika (rebuilding) and glasnost (openness). The Eight Congress of
Soviet Writers in the summer of 1986 was a first chance to assess how
ready writers were to respond to the challenge. As was now the custom, a
special commission dealt with children’s literature. The chairman, Sergey
Mikhalkov, opened proceedings by saying, “There are many unsolved
problems . . . Let us solve them in a spirit of unanimity, as true friends and
like-minded people.”1 This sounded like a last, panicky appeal from the
establishment before the storm broke, and indeed, although the people
allowed up to the microphone were all the old and faithful servants, criti-
cism was sharper than ever before.
A barometer of the situation was the serious decline in the status of the
genre. This was remarked on not only within the Writers’ Union, but also
by the critics. Despite all appeals, the major literary journals continued to
ignore children’s literature, and even Pioneer Truth (Pionerskaya Pravda)
did not see fit to review what was published. There is something of a “cru-
sade” against the writers of children’s books, complained Rady Pogodin.2
One result was that a number of children’s authors had decided to switch
to writing for adults; another was that young talents shunned such a dis-
paraged and poorly paid genre.
The critic Igor Motyashov (born 1932) observed that the standard was
low in those books that dealt with the present day. Мany sides of young
people’s life were not reflected in literature, or were treated in an exces-
sively light vein. Motyashov demanded that deviations from communist
or universally accepted morals be resolutely condemned. And where had
the positive heroes disappeared to?3

1 Sergei Mikhalkov, “Vstuplenie,” Vos’moi s’’ezd pisatelei SSSR. 24 iiunia–28 iiunia 1986:
Stenograficheskii otchet (M., 1988), 297.
2 “Doklad R. Pogodina,” ibid., 329.
3 “Doklad I. Motiashova,” ibid., 297.
 perestroika reaches children’s literature (1986–1991) 559

One reason for the decline of children’s literature—at last it was

openly acknowledged—was censorship. Major works remained unprinted
or were published only on the periphery. The bureaucratic souls in the
publishing houses gave no-one the benefit of any doubt, concerned that
they might be taken to task for an over-hasty decision. Criticism of the
publishers Detskaya literatura and Malysh continued after the congress,
as the monopoly enjoyed by these two giants within the field was called
into question. Their publication policy was highly debatable, and the large
print runs of some books surely did not match the actual demand. It was
also taking longer and longer to print books—three to seven years was the
norm for a children’s book, according to Vladislav Krapivin.4
It had been axiomatic that children were a privileged group in the
Soviet Union. Comparisons with other countries now exposed the empti-
ness of this claim, at least if one looked at the situation with books and
theatre. Fewer children’s books were being published than before: based
on the number of titles, they accounted for 4–5 percent of the total out-
put, well below the figure for Sweden, for example. People recalled that,
before the October Revolution, there had been around twenty magazines
for children published in Moscow and St Petersburg alone, including some
weekly newspapers. The Soviet principle of centralisation, with a few
million-selling giants, was no longer perceived as a functional solution.
The problem within children’s theatre was similar in nature: the emphasis
was on the few large, ‘official’ theatres, while small theatre groups were
neglected. The study of children’s literature had also fallen behind. The
institute The House of Children’s Literature (Dom detskoy knigi) had grad-
ually been reduced to a lending library, and there were now calls for a
new centre for the study of children’s literature, similar to those in the
capitalist countries.
Within children’s literature, there were few contemporary books com-
parable in importance with the foremost works of adult literature. The
school library series mainly reprinted major novels for adults. There was a
great demand for the classics in the field, and the first years of perestroika
saw an increased output of long neglected writers, including Pantaleev,
Zhitkov and Belyaev. The situation of foreign literature also became an
object of discussion. At the 1970 RSFSR Writers’ Congress, Agniya Barto
had claimed that the best of world literature for children was accessible
to Russian readers, but her examples—Charles Dickens, Jules Verne and

4 “Rech’ V. Krapivina,” ibid., 324.

560 chapter eleven

Mark Twain—showed how the clock had stood still.5 In an article in Chil-
dren’s Literature in 1989, the critic Vladimir Akimov now admitted that
foreign literature was actually seen through a narrow slit. “It is time to
open the window”, he wrote.6
To lend impetus to the process of renewal, an All-Union competition
for the best children’s book was announced in 1987. The result reinforced
the impression of a genre in crisis, as the winner Yury Koval took advan-
tage of the publicity to deliver a stinging criticism of the situation. “It is
not stagnation that we see in children’s literature, but a swamp”, he said.
Prestige was low and interest feeble, there was a dearth of new writers and
the leading lights were forced to fight a constant battle against bureau-
cracy.7 Koval revealed that his own The Little Silver Fox had only been
published in its entirety under perestroika. His winning book, Wormwood
Stories (Polynnye skazki), a lyrical depiction of a childhood in the country
side before the Revolution, had itself been censored when it first came out
in 1985. One reason for the interference was that the original manuscript
had given an overly prominent role to the Orthodoxy church.
The attitude to religion was, in fact, the first thing to be re-evaluated.
At the 1986 Writers’ Congress the Azerbaijani Maksud Ibragimbekov said:
“We will combat religious beliefs, but in no circumstances the Bible.” Chil-
dren should be educated in atheism, but they should also know the Ten
Commandments and Revelation, the Bible, the Koran, the Talmud. This
was all part of indispensable general knowledge.8 Sergey Mikhalkov could
not but agree: “In order to fight, you have to know your enemy.”9 It now
emerged that, in the 1960s, Korney Chukovsky, together with Valentin
Berestov and others, had compiled a children’s book entitled The Tower of
Babel and Other Ancient Legends (Vavilonskaya bashnya i drugie drevnie
legendy), which had been banned on the eve of its publication.10 The idea
was now taken up by the magazine Jolly Pictures, which started printing
Bible stories in serial form in 1989. This time the argument was that the
Bible formed a central part of general culture and that there was profound
wisdom to be drawn from it.

5 Barto, Tret’ii s’’ezd pisatelei RSFSR, 113.

6 Vladimir Akimov, “Deti zhdut chteniia i ne chtiva,” Detskaia literatura 4 (1989): 9.
7 Iurii Koval’, “Talant zreet trudno i dolgo,” Detskaia literatura 4 (1988): 17.
8 “Rech’ M. Ibragimbekova,” Vos’moi s’’ezd pisatelei SSSR, 316.
9 Ibid., 316.
10 Valentin Berestov, “Ob ėtoi knige,” in Vavilonskaia bashnia i drugie bibleiskie preda-
niia (M., 2001), 3–9.
 perestroika reaches children’s literature (1986–1991) 561

What no children’s book competition could overcome was the chasm

that existed between real life and the life depicted in all too many books
for children and youth. Now the dose of reality was to be increased, as
the ‘rough prose of life’ was to find its way into contemporary literature.
Images of young people had been idealised; now books which would
reflect moral degeneration, with materialism, apathy, prostitution, drug
abuse and senseless violence, were wanted. Mendacious, propagandistic
historical writing had to go, and instead, writers should fill in the blank
spaces of history. In 1987, Vladimir Zheleznikov told his colleagues how
perestroika had driven him to start rewriting a novel that had already been
ready for publication. “This is the start of a period of ‘critical realism’  ”,
he said.11
Now it was clear to everyone that the optimism with which central
control of literature, aimed at a communist education, was embraced in
the Soviet Union of the 1930s had not been justified. The application of the
principles of the planned economy to literature had offered undreamt-
of opportunities to control its development and content. Unfortunately,
this had not just meant an opportunity to mould a new literature; it also
led to the persecution of individual writers, who deviated from the norm,
and the repression of talented works. The price paid in careers frustrated
or cut short had been a heavy one. Much Soviet writing for children and
young people appeared subsequently to be just a product of the prevail-
ing political situation and ideological atmosphere. The truth that writers
believed they were describing remained elusive. One unsolvable conflict
was to combine the demand for ideological purity with a high artistic
level. In accordance with the command mentality, the official view was
that the qualitative side could be improved through exhortations or pious
wishes from the Central Committee of the Party, or from the podium of
the Writers’ Congresses. This was not the case.

The years of perestroika were a period of discussion and self-criticism, but

in terms of new children’s and youth literature they were not productive.
Nevertheless, in poetry, the publication of The Talking Crow (Govorya-
shchy voron, 1989) by Oleg Grigorev (1943–92) known as the last Soviet
underground poet, became a landmark. After two small booklets, Odd-
balls (Chudaki, 1971) and Growth Vitamin (Vitamin rosta, 1980), Grigorev
had become the target of heavy criticism and persecution, and it was only

11 Vladimir Zheleznikov, “ ‘Ryzhii’ nazlo vsem,” Literaturnaia gazeta 24 (1987): 7.

562 chapter eleven

thanks to the policy of glasnost that he was able to publish again. Grigorev
had a sharp eye for the absurdities in the everyday life of children and
grown-ups, often mingling the comic with a touch of cruelty and black
humour. Hooligan Poems: Forbidden Reading for Children Older than 96
Years Old (Khuliganskie stikhi: Detyam starshe 96 let chitat zapreshchaet-
sya, 2005) brought together the best of Grigorev’s oeuvre, thirteen years
after the death of this underground figure.
 chapter twelve

The New Russian Children’s Literature (1991–2010)

The end of the Soviet era put Russian children’s literature in a completely
new situation. The ideological monopoly of the Communist Party was
broken and censorship formally abolished. With the shift to a market
economy, commercial success and reader demand outweighed a con-
scious, planned culture policy. Small, independent publishers started to
compete with the few big publishing houses, and improvised magazines
challenged the old Soviet favourites. The number of children’s titles on
the market rose visibly, but the average print run decreased radically from
a few hundred thousand to 10–20,000.
For the first time since 1917, mass culture and light reading competed
with high culture for readers’ attention. Donald Duck, the Walt Disney
comics hero, was introduced in 1988 in the form of the magazine Miki
Maus. By the mid-1990s, the magazine reached a print run of 150,000 cop-
ies. It should be noted, though, that this initial success eventually faded,
and in 2009 Miki Maus was turned from a weekly into a bi-weekly pub-
lication. Another result of commercial thinking was the emergence of
follow-ups and book series, phenomena almost unknown in the Soviet
Union. Popular characters like Buratino, Neznayka (Dunno) and Pencil
and Experimenter were revived and sent out on new adventures long after
the death of their authors. Also, genres like fantasy and children’s detec-
tive fiction were taken over by serial publications.
Intensive translation activity strove to fill the many gaps that seven
decades of a restrictive culture policy had created. By the year 2000 around
half of all children’s titles were translations. The wave brought with it not
only contemporary literature, but also neglected classics, never or seldom
published in the Soviet Union, such as Pinocchio, Little Lord Fauntleroy,
Little Women, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Secret Garden, Win-
nie the Pooh, Emil und die Detektive, The Wind in the Willows, Histoire de
Babar, The Story of Doctor Dolittle, Mary Poppins, Daddy-Long-Legs, Peter
Pan, The Wizard of Oz and so on. The adventure books by Mayne Reid,
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Louis Boussenard and Gustave Aimard came back
in new translations. All the books for girls which had enjoyed popularity
before the revolution were reintroduced, now with the addition of Kate
564 chapter twelve

Wiggin’s Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903), L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of

Green Gables (1908) and Eleanor Porter’s Pollyanna (1913), books which had
been overlooked in the pre-revolutionary period. Enid Blyton, who was,
according to UNESCO statistics, more translated than Lenin, appeared as
another new name for Russian children, and her The Famous Five and The
Secret Seven became important trendsetters.
Pre-revolutionary Russian children’s literature, which had by and large
been harshly condemned by Soviet critics, was given a fresh chance
through new editions. Lidiya Charskaya’s work was able partly to regain
something of the popularity and cult position it had once enjoyed. A Rus-
sian Orthodox publishing house even decided to bring out her collected
works in 54 volumes. Simultaneously, the Soviet literary canon was re-
examined, with some classics being rejected, while other works, forgotten
or forbidden, were rehabilitated.

New Russian children’s literature had difficulty living up to great expecta-

tions. Some established writers deserted the field for more prestigious and
profitable literature, while others made desperate efforts to adjust them-
selves to a life of creative freedom. New literary talents stepped forward,
but their number was as restricted as their choice of genres and themes.
The most interesting and representative children’s author of the period
is Grigory Oster (born 1947). He had already started to publish in the
1970s, but it was only in the post-Soviet years that he was able to real-
ise the full potential of his talent. His versatility, ironic attitude, taste for
literary parody and open challenge to common taste make him the prime
example of a post-modernist trend within contemporary Russian chil-
dren’s literature.
Oster’s short, early volume А Kitten Called Woof (Kotyonok po imeni
Gav, 1976) has remained a favourite among small children. The charming
innocence and naivety of the kitten Woof saves him from getting into
trouble, as he sets out to discover the surrounding world. A most unlikely,
unprecedented hero was introduced in Petka the Microbe (Petka-mikrob,
1979). Petka, the smallest of all microbes, works at the dairy, where his task
it is to turn milk into prostokvasha, a kind of yoghurt. A mischief-maker,
Petka still becomes a hero, as he prevents a catastrophe from happening.
A similar deconstructive tendency can be found in Legends and Myths
of Lavrov Lane (Legendy i mify Lavrogo pereulka, 1980). In opposition to
Classical and Soviet mythology, Oster chose to retell the urban legends
of an ordinary Moscow street, poking fun at a classic genre, while giving
mythical dimensions to ordinary children’s lives.
 the new russian children’s literature (1991–2010) 565

Fig. 21. Grigory Oster

566 chapter twelve

Oster’s most elaborate work is A Tale with Many Details (Skazka s podrob-
nostyami, 1989), reportedly also his own favourite. The owner of a carou-
sel tells his seven wooden horses a goodnight tale about a stubborn boy,
but the horses’ never-ending demands for more details about the second-
ary characters of his tale leads the story astray. The linear, chronological
structure is broken and the narrator’s authority is tested, as the doings of
human characters, such as the poet Pampushkin, and animals, including
apes and rhinoceroses, are woven together in an unpredictable way. The
illustrations by Nikolay Vorontsov interact with the narration, adding yet
another dimension to this ‘novel for small children’.
Harmful Advice: A Book for Disobedient Children and Their Parents (Vred-
nye sovety: Kniga dlya neposlushnykh detey i ikh roditeley) is Oster’s most
popular work. First published in 1990, it has generated several sequels and
altogether been sold in millions of copies. Harmful Advice is also Oster’s
sole international success so far. The basic thought of the book is that chil-
dren by their nature tend to do the opposite of what they are told, always
acting contrary to all prohibitions and warnings. The author’s strategy is
therefore to give the children bad advice, to present them with a moral
in reverse. They are openly incited to unethical behaviour like being dis-
obedient and rude, teasing others, playing with sharp knives and matches,
refraining from washing themselves, and so on. Some of the advice offered
was so openly harmful that many critics and parents questioned Oster’s
bizarre approach to upbringing with its black humour and advocacy of
violence and intimidating methods. The explicit wish of the writer is to
stimulate critical thinking and a sceptical attitude, partly in opposition
to the still-thriving Soviet mindset. Using the same concept, Oster has
written similar volumes for adults, with titles such as Harmful Advice for
Disobedient Businessmen (Vrednye sovety neposlushnym biznesmenam,
2009) and Harmful Advice for Fathers of Growing Children (Vrednye sovety
ottsam podrastayushchikh detey, 2009).
The relationship between parents and children attracts ironic, pseudo-
scientific comments in books like Papamamalogy (Papamamalogiya, 1999)
and Bringing Up Adults (Vospitanie vzroslykh, 1999), in which Oster unfail-
ingly sides with the younger generation. Parody is the main device in the
small volumes Fortune-Telling by Hands, Feet, Ears, Back and Neck (Gadanie
po rukam, nogam, usham, spine i shee, 1994), The ABC-Book (Azbuka,
2009), Tasty and Healthy Meals for a Cannibal (Kniga o vkusnoy i zdorovoy
pishche lyudoeda, 2001), The School of Horrors (Shkola uzhasov, 2001) and
Sweeteology (Konfetoedenie, 1999). All are written without any fears about
breaking inhibitions and overstepping the bounds of good taste.
 the new russian children’s literature (1991–2010) 567

A critical attitude towards school as an institution is displayed in Math-

ematical Exercises (Zadachnik po matematike, 1992), Oster’s provocative
proposal for a new mathematics book. Many of these hilarious and absurd
mathematical tasks take situations from the world of naughty children: “A
boy writes a dirty word composed of fifteen letters on the fence. Three let-
ters take up 62 centimetres. Is there room for the whole dirty word if the
fence is three meters and sixteen centimetres long?” Gradually, new tasks
have been added to the first edition, while Oster even composed a similar
volume for adult readers, Disgusting Exercises (Protivnye zadachi). Some
of the tasks covertly reveal the author’s attitude to Soviet literature and its
ideals. One task reads as follows: “During the years of Soviet power, Soviet
writers used 120 thousand tons of paper for their literary works. During
the same period, Soviet writers used three times as much paper on denun-
ciations of each other. How much paper did Soviet writers use during the
years of Soviet power?” And yet another: “In the Pioneer squad named
after Pavlik Morozov there are 300 Pioneers. They all dream of repeating
Pavlik’s heroic deed (that is, denouncing their father), but not all of them
have the chance, as two thirds of the Pioneers are raised by single moth-
ers. How many Pioneers can repeat Pavlik’s heroic deed?”
In spite of his disrespectful, almost anarchistic attitudes, Oster was
asked by the Putin administration to create a Kremlin website for chil-
dren. The political education offered on the site, The President of Russia
for Citizens of School Age (Prezident Rossii grazhdanam shkolnogo voz-
rasta, 2004), also includes a section about political opposition and why it
is needed in a democracy.
The literary output of Ėduard Uspensky, the other significant name
from the first two post-Soviet decades, has been extensive in a situation
in which restrictions and boundaries no longer exist. Three publishers
participated in the publication of his Collected Works in 16 volumes in
1992–2007. The total circulation of Uspensky’s books amounts to millions
of copies, and, additionally, many of them have also been turned into car-
toons or plays. Translations into 25 languages make Uspensky the interna-
tionally best-known contemporary Russian children’s writer.
Unfortunately, the artistic level of Uspensky’s writings has not been
correspondingly impressive. His main characters, Uncle Fyodor with his
cat and dog, and Crocodile Gena and Cheburashka, appear in volume
after volume, but whether Fyodor has started school or fallen in love, or
Gena has joined the army or travelled to Sochi to look at the preparations
for the Olympic Games, the results leave an impression of haste and lack
of true inspiration. Like their creator, Uspensky’s characters have been
568 chapter twelve

thrown into a changing world, as their rural village or small town has
become part of the global village through TV, the Internet and tourism
and as Soviet socialism has been exchanged for rampant capitalism. The
most curious volume in these series is Crocodile Gena’s Business (Biznes
krokodila Geny), a dry introduction to the world of enterprise, which gives
no hint of a possible ironic attitude towards the theme.
In post-modernist fashion, Uspensky tried his hand at many untradi-
tional but trendy genres, giving serious themes a humorous treatment.
The books about inspector Bun (Kolobok) are detective stories for small
children, while Plastic Grandpa (Plastmassovy dedushka, 1990) represents
science fiction for children. In Reading and Writing: a Book for One Reader
and Ten Illiterates (Gramota: Kniga dlya odnogo chitayushchego i desyati
negramotnykh, 1992), folktale heroes come to present-day Moscow in
order to learn to read and write; simultaneously, the book functions as an
alternative textbook, presenting a progressive, slightly parodical pedagogic
model. A True Mirror for Youth (Yunosti chestnoe zertsalo, 2008) updates
the famous eighteenth century book of courtesy. In Go I-Don’t-Know-
Where, Bring Me I-Don’t-Know-What! (Podi tuda, ne znayu kuda, prinesi to,
ne znayu chto!, 1998), Uspensky makes fun of traditional folk- and fairy-
tale motives. The collections of children’s scary stories Red Hand, Black
Bed-Sheet, Green Fingers (Krasnaya ruka, chornaya prostynya, zelyonye
paltsy, 1991), Gruesome Children’s Stories (Zhutkie detskie strashilki (1995)
and Scary Children’s Folklore (Zhutky detsky folklor, 1998) were composed
together with the author’s writer-colleague Andrey Usachov.

Post-Soviet children’s poetry has definitely shown more vitality and exper-
imental vigour than prose. The atmosphere of freedom also gave fresh
impetus to the writings of an older generation, as can be seen from the
case of Roman Sef. The short, simple poems of The Brave Flower (Khrabry
tsvetok, 1991), a book to be read to small children, catches impressions
and moments of amazement and bewilderment in a child’s early life. The
rhythm and the rhymes are as important as the actual substance of these
poems. Modelled after My Book About Me by Dr. Seuss, Sef ’s Me Myself
(Ya sam, 1992) helps the child discover himself and the surrounding world
through poems and stimulating tasks and questions. The bilingual song
book Carnival (Karnaval, 1994) teaches both English and music in a fanci-
ful way. Actually, an explicit wish to participate in the educational process
has been a recurrent feature in contemporary children’s literature in Russia.
New names have appeared, many of them with a modern, or, rather,
post-modern programme. Open genres, mosaic form, parody, intertextuality,
 the new russian children’s literature (1991–2010) 569

word play, blurred morals and a happy, carefree attitude are characteris-
tic of many of these writers. Kharms and the other Oberiuts are impor-
tant sources of inspiration, but so are the playful, non-didactic poems of
Oleg Grigorev.
The new avant-garde of children’s literature gathered in the writer’s
group Black Hen (Chornaya kuritsa). In their manifesto, published in
Pioneer in 1990, these young writers asked for “play, paradox, dark alley-
ways and unpredictable everyday events, adventures of the soul”, all in
the spirit of the Oberiuts.1 Children’s literature should not be didactic,
but questioning and challenging. The publication of the anthology Cock-
a-doodle-doo (Ku-ka-re-ku, 1990) was a major literary event; it included
stories and poems, illustrations and comics of high quality, many of them
having a dual audience. In addition to representatives of the new, post-
Soviet generation of children’s writers, the volume included classics, such
as Kharms, Sasha Cherny, Evgeny Schwartz and Marina Tsvetaeva, as a
reminder of a valuable tradition. Cock-a-doodle-doo heralded a new era, a
definite step away from the Soviet model.
Established children’s magazines such as Pioneer and The Bonfire
(Kostyor) continued into the post-Soviet era, now freed from their origi-
nal, ideological task, but new writers also had a magazine of their own.
The Tram (Tramvay, 1990–95), edited by Tim Sobakin, was to achieve a
cult status thanks to the broad range of its contributors. The initial print
run was 100,000, an impressive number now that Soviet print-runs of sev-
eral million copies had long ago become history. When its financial basis
collapsed, The Tram was followed up by Free-For-All (Kucha-mala (1995–
98), edited by Oleg Kurguzov. The ‘new wave’ also had its own publishing
house, Samovar.
In Soviet times, Andrey Usachov (born 1958) had only been able to
publish sporadically in children’s magazines. The turning point came in
1990, when he won first prize in a competition for young children’s writ-
ers. His first poetry books, such as A Very Strange Conversation (Ochen
stranny razgovor, 1991) and If You Throw a Stone Upwards (Esli brosit
kamen vverkh, 1992), already demonstrated his paradoxical way of looking
at the world, skilfully rendered through humour and word play. In later
work, Usachov has shown an untiring yearning for experiments, teach-
ing the alphabet and the multiplication table, traffic rules, geography, the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Russian idioms, Russian folklore,

1 “Chernaia kuritsa,” Pioner 4 (1990): 5.

570 chapter twelve

and Russian art in an alternative, poetic way. Usachov has also produced
song texts and plays for puppet theatre. The cartoon The Wise Dog Sonya
(Umnaya sobaka Sonya) is based upon his popular prose book of 1996.
Sonya is a little dog, ready to adopt the common rules of behaviour.
Sergey Sedov’s (born 1954) first book, Once There Lived a Boy Named
Lyosha (Zhil-byl Lyosha, 1991), was an instant success. Lyosha is able to
turn himself into anything he wants, be it a professor, a poet, a pigeon,
a loaf of bread or simply a number. The author clearly identifies with his
imaginative young hero; in the foreword he confesses how he as a child
loved to indulge himself in fantasies, ultimately deciding to become a chil-
dren’s writer.
In other works, Sedov uses standard literary material such as classical
myths, Russian folktales, fairy tales, and Biblical tales, giving them a per-
sonal, fanciful treatment. His Tales About Mothers (Skazki pro mam, 2006)
provoked protests from adults because of its portraits of forgetful, irre-
sponsible, and even alcoholic, mothers. Sedov’s point was that even moth-
ers such as these love their children and deserve to be loved in return.
To the names of Usachov and Sedov can be added Georgy Yudin (born
1943), Mikhail Yasnov (born 1946), Oleg Kurguzov (1959–2004) and Tim
Sobakin (born 1958), writers of poems and short prose full of surprises,
topsy-turvy situations and word play. Five new translations of Lewis
Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark (1876; Okhota na Snarka) showed the
potential supremacy of absurdism. The same kind of eccentric nonsense
prose, with a flippant attitude toward all linguistic rules, is to be found in
Puski Byatye (1984–92), a collection of ‘linguistic tales’ by the well-known
writer Lyudmila Petrushevskaya (born 1938). Only neologisms are used,
but even so the general meaning of these short texts can be understood
and enjoyed by a reader of any age.

Prose for older children saw no corresponding creative outburst. The most
popular subgenre was fantasy. Kir Bulychov continued to produce books
about the miraculous girl Alisa, who experiences adventures in the past
and in the future, at the bottom of the sea and in outer space. The last
volume of the popular series came out in 2003, shortly before Bulychov’s
death. Another active writer with a Soviet past is Vladislav Krapivin. The
relationship between the child and society is often treated in dark, slightly
pessimistic colours in his works of fantasy.
The translations of the Tolkien trilogy and C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of
Narnia set a new standard, while also inviting imitation. Mariya Semyo-
nova (born 1958), sometimes called the Russian Tolkien, created Slavonic
 the new russian children’s literature (1991–2010) 571

fantasy, in which Slavonic mythology is mixed with German and Celtic

myths. Ancient Russian history, sorcery, paganism and violent fights are
the ingredients of her series Wolf-Hound (Volkodav, 1995), the first volume
of which was also turned into a popular film. Harry Potter acquired a Rus-
sian equivalent in the shape of the sorcerer girl Tanya Grotter, a charac-
ter created by Dmitry Emets (born 1974), but also in the openly parodic
doubles Porry Gatter and Parri Khotter.
The belated introduction of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books brought
forth a wave of children’s detective stories in which Russian school chil-
dren, without much help from adults, solve crimes during their holidays.
The heroines of Ekaterina Vilmont’s (born 1946) series Kvartet form a
detective bureau which they call ‘Quartet’. Professor Larissa Rudova has
pointed out that these children’s detective stories, with their nostalgia for
a stable past and their ambition to foster and pass on middle-class morals
and values, paradoxically form a continuation of Soviet literature.2

Overall, the two decades following the break-up of the Soviet Union have
been a troublesome period for children’s writers to come to terms with a
genre in transition. Party intrusion and restrictions are gone, but demand
for youth literature has soared. The process of establishing the canon of
Russian children’s literature and making contact with the young readers
of today is still under way. There is a lack of big names among a younger
generation of writers, but the readiness for experiment and renewal still
promises a bright future for a literature which can look back at a history
of four hundred years.

2 Larisa Rudova, “From Character-Building to Criminal Pursuits: Russian Children’s

Literature in Transition,” in Russian Children’s Literature and Culture, ed. M. Balina and
L. Rudova (New York, London, 2008), 29–38.
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Abbreviations

M. Moskva
SPb Sankt Peterburg
Pg Petrograd
L. Leningrad
 INDEX OF NAMES

d’Abrantès, Laure Junot, Duchesse 55 Andreeva, Vera 166, 181, 245, 250

Acton Lord 433 d’Angoulême, Marie Thérèse Charlotte 
Adamov, Grigory 418 102
Aesop 5, 17, 89 Anna Ioannovna, Tsaritsa 20, 185, 211
Afanasev, Aleksandr 42, 114, 274 Annenkov, Yury 292, 298
Aikin, John 42 Annenskaya, Aleksandra 6, 77, 100,
Aimard, Gustave 78. 156, 157, 173, 249, 103–106, 146, 156, 157, 158, 161, 163, 165,
282, 287, 338, 563 263, 287
Aitmatov, Chingiz 545 Annensky, Innokenty 104
Akhmatova, Anna 33, 166, 243, 310, 392, Anstey, F. 423
434, 435 Antonovsky, Boris 333
Akim, Yakov 494–495, 556 Arzamastseva, Irina 132, 390
Akimov, Vladimir 560 Aseev, Nikolay 274, 301, 306, 340
Aksakov, Sergey 10, 13, 40, 116, 117, 295 Ashkenazi, Vladimir, see Azov, V.
Aksyonov, Vasily 501, 534, 540 Astafev, Viktor 543
d’Aktil 252 Audubon, John 152, 153
Alchevskaya, Khristina 133, 159–160 Auerbach, Berthold 247, 268
Alcott, Louisa May 100, 173, 245, 267, Auslender, Sergey 373
269, 563 Avdeeva, Ekaterina 41, 75, 131
Aleksandr Nevsky 524 Avenarius, Vasily 142–145, 156, 157, 158,
Aleksandrova, Zinaida 377, 391–392, 438, 161, 209–212, 257, 258, 264, 267, 271, 273
462, 466, 495, 497–498 Averbakh, Leopold 365
Alekseev, Sergey 523–524 Averchenko, Arkady 272
Aleksey Mikhaylovich, Tsar 210 Azadovsky, Mark 32
Aleksin, Anatoly 451, 452–453, 503–506, Azov, V. 252
527, 536, 538, 539, 543
Aleshkovsky, Yuz 534 Babushkina, Antonina 365, 372
Alexander I, Tsar 43 Bagritsky, Ėduard 484
Alexander II, Tsar 193, 211 Bakhterev, Igor 476
Alexander the Great 546 Bakst, Léon 113, 293
Aliger, Margarita 431 Balanchine, George 176
Allegro, see Solovyova, P. Balmont, Konstantin 165, 228, 230–231,
Almedingen, Aleksey 158, 212, 258, 259, 257, 261, 270, 275
273 de Balzac, Honoré 146
Almedingen, Natalya 259, 273 Baranova, Marta 524
Almedingen, Tatyana 273, 274 Baranovsky, Stepan 71
Altaev, Al. 173, 205–207, 257, 258, 260, Barantsevich, Kazimir 176, 209, 276–277
261, 262, 263, 275, 282 Baratynsky, Evgeny 330
de Amicis, Edmondo 78, 171, 247–248, Barbauld, Anna 42
259, 260, 264 Barrie, James 252, 475, 488, 563
Amlinsky, Vladimir 539–540 Barto, Agniya 298, 305, 306, 308,
Andersen, Hans Christian 26, 69, 70, 72, 310–311, 340, 358, 367, 368, 369, 370,
77, 81, 84, 90, 114, 131, 132, 133, 135, 141, 375, 376, 377, 381–384, 438, 440, 449,
143, 145, 150, 152, 156, 161, 169, 172, 183, 462, 465–466, 479, 481, 482, 486, 488,
186, 190, 201, 205, 223, 224, 225, 262, 263, 490, 495, 496–497, 539, 544, 549, 555,
281, 295, 303, 346, 424, 455 559–560
Andreev, Andrey 368–369, 370, 371 Bartram, Nikolay 225
Andreev, Leonid 166, 181, 215–216, 223, Baruzdin, Sergey 429–430, 438, 451–452,
229, 245, 289 466, 484, 509–510
578 index of names

Bashutsky, Aleksandr 68 Boniface, Joseph 84

Baum, L. Frank 253, 423, 424, 481, 563 Bonnėr, Elena 181
Bauman, Nikolay 399 Boroditskaya, Marina 557
Baumvol, Rakhil 467, 468, 534 Bostrom, Aleksandra 254–255, 267
Bazhina, Serafima 112–113 Bouilly, Jean-Nicolas 19, 49, 67, 68, 74
Bazhov, Pavel 425–426, 523 Boussenard, Louis 170, 214, 245, 249, 253,
de Beaumont, Mme J. M. Leprince 8, 40 272, 282, 413, 563
Bedny, Demyan 266, 306 Bremener, Maks 502–503, 537
Beethoven, Ludwig van 205, 327 Brentano, Clement 27
Beketova, Elizaveta 245 Breshko-Breshkovsky, Nikolay 174
Belinsky, Vissarion ix, 17, 24, 30, 34, Brezhnev, Leonid 477, 535, 536, 543, 555,
39–40, 42, 43, 47, 49, 51, 59, 60, 61, 69, 556
72–76, 78, 79, 80, 131, 160, 165, 193, 258, Brodsky, Joseph 447, 478, 534
284 Bronnitsyn, Bogdan 41
Belousov, Ivan 228, 299–230, 257, 259, Brontë, Charlotte 260
260, 262, 264, 266, 270, 273, 274, 275, de Brunhoff, Jean 563
277, 293, 304 Bruno, Giordano 205
Belov, Evgeny 155 Brushteyn, Aleksandra 514
Belov, Vasily 543 Brusyanin, Vasily 273, 277
Bely, Andrey 162, 228, 270, 274 Bryullov, Karl 28, 145, 205
Belyaev, Aleksandr 274, 347, 418, 481, 559 Bryusov, Vasily 228, 230, 268, 292
Belyaev, Vladimir 454 Budishchev, Aleksandr 275
Belyaevskaya, Olga 232, 233–234, 266, Budogoskaya, Lidiya 415
273 Budyonny, Semyon 305, 308, 376, 390,
Belykh, Grigory 340–341, 360, 374 522, 537
Benois, Alexandre 65, 162, 172–173, de Buffon, Georges 23
280–281, 284, 292, 293 Bulanzhe, Pavel 265
Benua, Aleksandr, see Benois, Alexandre Bulgakov, Mikhail 57
Berestov, Valentin 485, 494, 556, 557, 560 Bulgarin, Faddey 67
Berggolts, Olga 340, 393 Bulwer-Lytton, Edward 101
Berquin, Arnaud 11, 15, 18, 47, 49, 55, 67, Bulychov, Kir 554–555, 570
74, 76, 98 Bunin, Ivan 223, 228–229, 243, 257, 260,
Bers, Pyotr 262 261, 539
Bertall 66, 162 Bunin, Leonty 3
Beskow, Elsa 285 Burnashov, Vladimir, see Buryanov, Viktor
Bettelheim, Bruno 41 Burnashova, Ekaterina 166
Bezborodov, Sergey 374 Burnashova, Sofya 55–56, 60, 154
Bezymensky, Aleksandr 306 Burnett, Frances Hodgson 103, 170, 173,
Bianki, Vitaly 298, 300–301, 302, 342–343, 190, 245–246, 268, 563
360, 397, 525 Burroughs, Edgar Rice 338, 563
Bilibin, Ivan 172, 218, 270, 281 Burtsov-Protopopov (Vasily Fyodorov) 1
Biron, Ernst 211 Buryanov, Viktor 24, 26, 55, 59–63, 67,
Blaginina, Elena 375, 390–391, 392, 438, 74, 154
440, 462, 466, 474, 495, 498 Busch, Wilhelm 228, 237–239, 240, 262,
Blanchard, Pierre 21, 22, 55 384
Blavatsky Madame 111 Butashevskaya, Sofya 97–98
Blok, Aleksandr 65, 133, 228, 231–232, Byom (Boehm), Elizaveta 198, 259, 278,
245, 270, 283, 293 285
Blyakhin, Pavel 337–338, 339, 454 Byron, George 70, 513
Blyton, Enid 564, 571
Bogdanov, Modest 147, 158 Campanella, Tommaso 513, 530
Bogdanov, Nikolay 339 Campe, Joachim Heinrich 5, 11, 13, 55, 67
Bolotov, Andrey 8 Carroll, Lewis 170, 251–252, 268, 271, 273,
Bonch-Bruevich, Vladimir 402 455, 475, 488, 555, 563, 570
 index of names 579

Catherine I, Empress 185 Cox, Palmer 177–178, 268, 304, 528

Catherine II the Great, Empress ix, 7, 9, Crockett, Samuel 163–164, 167
13, 52, 58, 144 Cui, César 150, 230
Cervantes, Miguel 29, 76, 78, 114, 167,
205, 514 Dal, Vladimir 41, 78, 114, 139–140, 155
Chamisso, Albert von 60 Daniėl, Yuly 493, 534
Chapaev, Vasily 376, 391 Danini, Kamilla 252
Charskaya, Lidiya 169, 173, 174, 178–191, Daragan, Anna 83
192, 198, 245, 267, 268, 269, 275, 278, 282, Darwin, Charles 136, 204
284, 286, 288, 564 Dashkova, Ekaterina 22
Charushin, Evgeny 300, 360, 370, 393, Daudet, Alphonse 138, 157, 164, 257, 259,
397–398 260, 261, 263
Chatrian, Alexandre 260 Defoe, Daniel 5–6, 21, 52, 76, 88, 116, 225,
Cheglok, Aleksandr 255–256 271, 316, 364
Chekhonin, Sergey 244, 289, 292, 298 Delafaye-Bréhier, Julie 60
Chekhov, Anton ix, 158, 164, 223, 252, Demurova, Nina 475
257, 271 Denikin, Anton 338
Chekhov, Mikhail 251, 252, 272 Derzhavin, Gavrila 13, 22, 43, 145, 243
Chekhov, Nikolay 100, 118, 119, 127, 149, Desbeaux, Émile 202
192, 206, 213, 217, 282–283, 284, 285, Desbordes-Valmore, Marceline 60
299 Destunis, Nadezhda 78, 95
Chernov-Plessky, Leonid 237 Destunis, Sofya 95–96
Cherny, Sasha 144, 228, 241–244, 283, Devitte, Nikolay 40
289, 292, 299, 569 Devrien, Alfred 170
Chernyshevsky, Nikolay 53, 78, 79–80, Dickens, Charles 46, 69, 80, 81, 116, 146,
152, 157, 247 152, 156, 157, 164, 171, 245, 260, 281, 295,
Chertkova, Anna 265 559
Chirikov, Evgeny 220–221, 262, 293 Dilaktorskaya, Natalya 384, 531–532
Chistyakov, Mikhail 71, 77, 78, 117–119, Disney, Walt 279, 389, 563
131, 155, 156, 158, 161 Ditrikh, Georgy 375
Chistyakova, Sofya 155 Dits, Evgeniya 254
Chkalov, Valery 415, 522 Dixon, Walter Hepworth 214
Chukovskaya, Lidiya 245–246, 316, 330, Dmitrieva, Valentina 203–204
420, 476, 477 Dmitry Donskoy 399
Chukovsky, Korney 163, 167, 176, 187–188, Dneprov, Anatoly 533
189, 190, 216, 235, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, Dobrolyubov, Nikolay 43, 48, 49, 70, 71,
250, 265, 288–293, 298, 299, 300, 309, 72, 78, 79, 80–81, 82, 93, 94, 97, 157
311–318, 320, 321, 326, 327, 332, 335, 336, Dobuzhinsky, Mstislav 65, 66, 226, 227,
348, 356, 357, 358, 359, 361, 363, 364, 368, 289, 292
374, 375, 381, 388, 395, 434, 435, 436–437, Dodge, Mary 246
466, 476, 477, 481, 483, 486, 487, 488, Dolgorukov, Yakov 20, 58, 115
490, 497, 550, 551, 560 Dolgorukova, Natalya 20, 58, 115
Chukovsky, Nikolay 167, 245, 316, 392 Don Aminado 279
Chulkov, Georgy 262 D’Or, O.L. 227–228, 273
Collodi, Carlo 252, 268, 421, 422, 563 Dostoevsky, Andrey 5
Columbus, Christopher 145, 146, 155 Dostoevsky, Fyodor ix, 5, 12, 77, 127, 139,
Comenius, John Amos 5, 85 144, 214, 340
Constantius I Chlorus 9 Doyle, Conan 174, 176, 245, 253
Cooper, James Fenimore 61, 72, 76, 78, Dragunsky, Viktor 525–526
114, 165, 168, 245, 281, 287, 295, 338, 371 Drozhzhin, Spiridon 149, 150–151, 155, 157,
Cornwell, John Russell 174 158, 228, 257, 259, 263, 264, 266, 277
Cortés, Hernán 257 Drukovtsov, Sergey 14
de Coster, Charles-Theodore-Henri 331 Druzhkov, Yury 531
Counts, George S. 396 Dubinin, Vladimir 430–431, 522
580 index of names

Dubinsky, David 387 Frölich, Lorenz 96

Dubov, Nikolay 443, 449, 499–500 Furman, Pyotr 24, 56–59, 74
Ducray-Duminil, François 5, 15, 49, 67 Fyodorov, Aleksandr 264, 267, 275
Dudintsev, Vladimir 472 Fyodorov, Boris 24, 30, 47–49, 54–55,
Dumas, Alexandre fille 81 67, 74
Dumas, Alexandre père 76, 81, 185, 245 Fyodorov, Ivan 1, 259
Durova, Nadezhda 186 Fyodorov-Davydov, Aleksandr 173, 208,
Dzerzhinsky, Feliks 400 224–226, 237, 257, 262, 273, 277–278,
280, 282, 289, 304
Ebers, Georg 156, 257, 264
Edgeworth, Maria 55, 60, 68, 69, 76, 78 Gaaz, Fyodor, see Haass, Friedrich
Efremov, Ivan 532 Gabbe, Tamara 374, 397–398
Ehrenburg, Ilya 472 Gagarin, Yury 493, 524, 526
Ėikhenbaum, Boris 245 Galdyaev, Vladimir 401
Elachich, Evgeny 256, 283 Galileo 205
Eliot, George 260 Galina, G. 228, 262, 267, 273
Elizaveta Petrovna, Tsaritsa 185, 211 Gallen-Kallela, Akseli 274
Emets, Dmitry 571 Gan (Hahn), Elena 107
Engel, Friedrich 301, 470 Ganzen, Anna 132
Ėngel, Yury 242 Ganzen, Pyotr 132
Erasmus of Rotterdam 4 Garfield, James 145
Erckmann, Émile 260 Garibaldi, Giuseppe 205, 257
Ermak, Timofeevich 184–185 Garin-Mikhaylovsky, Nikolay 214–215,
Ermolov, Aleksey 109 271
Ershov, Pyotr 24, 31, 37–40, 75, 224, 283, Garshin, Vsevolod 140, 144, 158, 159, 248
295, 395 Gay, Sophie 60
Esenin, Sergey 234, 274, 277, 278, 293 Gaydar, Arkady 302, 339, 363, 368,
Estrange, Roger 5 404–411, 416, 417, 425, 428–429, 431, 432,
Evtushenko, Evgeny 497–498, 548 437, 441, 480, 482, 506, 514, 545
de Genlis, Stéphanie-Félicité 12, 15, 47,
Fadeev, Aleksandr 386, 430, 441, 449, 74, 76
452, 480, 483 Georgievskaya, Susanna 442
Falileev, Vadim 242 Gerasimov, Evgeny 452, 481
Falkenhorst, Carl 170 Geraskina, Liya 450, 451
False Dmitry 185, 210 German, Yury 400
Fedorchenko, Sofya 334, 335 Gernet, Nina 384
Fénelon, François 6 Gertsen, Aleksandr, see Herzen, Alexander
Feoktistov, Ivan 160 Gippius, Zinaida 116, 228, 270, 271
Ferry, Gabriel 249, 281 Gladilin, Anatoly 500, 501, 534
Fet, Afanasy 152 Gladkova, Mariya 16
Flammarion, Camille 253 Glassbrenner, Adolf 66
Flinzer, Fedor 200 Glinka, Fyodor 22
Flygare-Carlén, Emilie 153 Glinka, Mikhail 145, 205
Flyorina, Evgeniya 357 Glinka, Sergey 17, 19–22, 58
Flyorov, Aleksandr 287 Godunov, Boris 185, 210
Foa, Eugénie 68, 76 Goethe, Wolfgang 16, 87
Fonvizin, Denis 8, 259 Gogol, Nikolay 8, 36, 76, 81, 144, 145, 146,
Forsh, Olga 207–208, 270 149, 174, 189, 193, 197, 209, 223, 504, 530
Fraerman, Ruvim 368, 392, 415–416 Golubeva, Antonina 399
Franay, Gabriel 170 Golyavkin, Viktor 526
Franklin, Benjamin 71, 145, 146, 263 Goncharov, Ivan 77, 86, 152, 223, 267
Franz, Agnes 70 Gorbachev, Mikhail 475, 519, 558
Frenkel, Anatoly, see d’Aktil Gorbunov-Posadov, Ivan 171, 247, 248,
Fröbel, Friedrich 122, 130, 142, 156, 160, 250, 258, 264, 265, 266
169, 193, 203 Gordeeva-Shcherbinskaya, Irina 99–100
 index of names 581

Gorky, Maksim 163, 165, 167, 223, 242, Homer 69, 166

251, 252, 261, 262, 272, 290, 292, 293, Horace 18
295–296, 297, 307, 311, 318, 341, 362–363, Horn, W.O. von 78
365, 366, 367, 373, 378, 380, 393, 394, Horwitz, Heinrich 66
395, 396, 408, 414, 429, 479, 522, 539 Hughes, Edward 85
Gorodetsky, Sergey 228, 234–236, 237, Hughes, Thomas 209
267, 270, 272, 283, 289, 292, 354 Hugo, Victor 46, 76, 89, 245, 260
Grahame, Kenneth 253, 563 Huss, Jan 205
Granovsky, Timofey 68
Granstrem, Ėduard 132, 170 Ibáñez, Vicente Blasco 259
Granstrem, Matilda 132, 170, 251 Ibragimbekov, Maksud 560
Grech, Nikolay 17, 67 Ilf, Ilya 408, 423
Greenwood, James 126, 162–163, 167, 271, Ilin, M. 301, 318, 343–345, 362, 368, 369,
316 370, 393, 395–396, 431, 483, 520
Gren, Aleksandr 67–68 Ilin, Nikolay 18
Grétry, André 40 Ilina, Elena 318, 431, 480
Gribachov, Nikolay 468 Ilina, Natalya 470
Griboedov, Aleksandr 74 Inber, Vera 203, 298, 334, 429, 462,
Grigorev, Apollon 26, 45 513–514
Grigorev, Oleg 561–562, 569 Irving, Washington 33, 152
Grigorev, Sergey 339, 398, 399, 436 Ishimova, Aleksandra 24, 42–45, 53, 64,
Grigorovich, Dmitry 17, 119, 152, 260 69–71, 73, 75, 76, 80, 83, 85, 93
Grimm, Jacob 25, 27, 31, 32, 35, 36, 55, 78, Istomin, Karion 1–2, 19
80, 131, 150, 152, 224, 303, 328, 373, 395 Ivan the Terrible 43, 157, 185, 206
Grimm, Wilhelm 25, 27, 31, 32, 35, 36, 55, Ivanov, Georgy 244–245
78, 80, 131, 150, 152, 224, 303, 328, 373, Ivanov, Sergey 542–543
395 Ivanov, Vyacheslav 228, 270
Grin, Aleksandr 292, 345–346 Ivanova, N. 189
Grot, Yakov 64–65, 70, 155 Ivanter, Benyamin 370, 374, 399, 400,
Grudskaya, Anna 364, 365 428
Grzhebin, Zinovy 295
Gubarev, Vitaly 394, 454–456 Jacolliot, Louis 156, 214, 249
Guizot, Elisabeth Charlotte 54, 55, 60, 76 Jamison, Cecilia V. 245, 246, 259, 266
Gumilyov, Nikolay 166, 228, 336 Jansson, Tove 476
Gusev-Orenburgsky, Sergey 261, 273 Jauffret, Louis-François 47, 49, 67
Gustafsson, Richard 172 Jerome, Jerome K. 259
Gustavus II Adolphus 71 Joan of Arc 186, 257

Haass, Friedrich 196 Kabakov, Ilya 477, 523, 557

Haggard, Rider 249, 250, 253, 260 Kalinin, Mikhail 481, 520
Handel, George Frideric 275 Kalinovsky, Gennady 550
Hanhart, Brigitte 92 Kalm, D. 356–357, 360
Harding, Emily J. 204 Kalma, N. 448
Harte, Bret 128, 157, 209, 260, 261 Kapitsa, Olga 300
Hauff, Wilhelm 26, 55, 78, 80, 143, 152, Karamzin, Nikolay 11–13, 14–15, 16, 21,
169, 281, 295 42, 43
Hawthorne, Nathaniel 152 Karazin, Nikolay 113, 285
Hedin, Sven 146, 259 Karrik, Valery 285
Herzen, Alexander 8, 263 Kashpireva, Sofya 155
Hoffmann, E.T.A. 26, 27, 30, 50, 61, 69, Kaspari, G. 233
75, 76 Kassil, Lev 368, 411–415, 429, 430, 431,
Hoffmann, Franz 152, 156, 166, 167–168 432, 437, 479, 480, 483, 484, 487, 497,
Hoffmann (Donner), Heinrich 65, 66 498, 504, 506, 520–523, 538
Holder, Mig 92 Kataev, Valentin 368, 417, 425, 429–430,
Holmgren, Beth 183 436, 468, 469, 478, 480, 500, 514
582 index of names

Kaverin, Veniamin 170, 360, 368, 417–418, Kovalenskaya, Aleksandra 136–137

424, 428, 480, 531 Kozlov, Sergey 554
Kaygorodov, Dmitry 155, 156, 158, 171, Krapivin, Vladislav 540–541, 559, 570
254, 259, 264, 271 Krempin, Valerian 152–153
Kazakevich, Ėmmanuil 422 Kruglov, Aleksandr 77, 78, 127–130, 137,
Keller, Helen 196, 264 156, 157, 158, 161, 163, 173, 258, 262, 263,
Kharms, Daniil 238, 289, 302, 303, 277, 279–280
325–328, 330, 333, 348, 356, 372, 373, 374, Krummacher, Friedrich 70, 86
375, 376, 384–385, 388, 476, 477, 486, Krupin, Vladimir 543
488, 492, 549, 569 Krupskaya, Nadezhda 65, 157, 165, 265,
Khlebnikov, Velimir 492 312, 356, 357–358, 361, 362, 363, 400, 402,
Khmelnitsky, Bogdan 113 403, 519, 528
Khodasevich, Vladislav 130, 292 Krushinsky, Sergey 435
Kholin, Igor 486 Krylov, Ivan 17, 75, 86, 89, 172, 190
Khomyakov, Aleksey 68–69 Krylova, Nadezhda, see Destunis,
Khrulyov, Stepan 198–199 Nadezhda
Krushchev, Nikita 463, 472, 483, 484, 500, Kryuchnikova, Anna, see Sakharova, Anna
534, 548 Kudasheva, Raisa 238, 239–240, 275
Khvolson, Anna 170, 177, 201–203, 267 Kulikovsky, Vyacheslav 238
Kingsley, Charles 168, 268 Kuprin, Aleksandr 144, 174, 218–219, 223,
Kipling, Rudyard 244, 250, 253, 257, 259, 243, 260, 261, 271, 273
260, 261, 262, 264, 271, 316, 342 Kurbsky, Mikhailo 210
Kireevsky, Ivan 68 Kurganov, Nikolay 7–8
Kirov, Sergey 303, 372, 399 Kurguzov, Oleg 569, 570
Kirsanov, Semyon 307, 376 Kurnin, Sergey 287
Klodt, Mikhail P. 138, 285 Kushner, Aleksandr 557
Klyachko, Lev 298, 312, 359 Kustodiev, Boris 216, 298, 403
Knebel, Iosif 171–172 Kutuzov, Mikhail 429, 524
Knyazev, Vasily 236–237, 272 Kuzmin, Mikhail 174, 241
de Kock, Paul 75, 81 Kuznetsov, Anatoly 500–501, 502, 534
Kollontay, Aleksandra 517 Kuznetsov, Isay 450
Koltsov, Aleksey 79, 165 Kuznetsova, Agniya 502, 546
Komenský, Jan Amos, see Comenius, John Kvitko, Lev 368, 369, 375, 377, 392–393,
Kon, Lidiya 373 470–471, 477, 497
Konashevich, Vladimir 298, 315, 370 Kästner, Erich 563
Konchalovskaya, Natalya 467–468
Konchalovsky, Pyotr 467 Ladonshchikov, Georgy 498
Kondakov, Igor 315 de La Fontaine, Jean 17
Kondrashova, Elizaveta 100, 106, 112, 170 Lagerlöf, Selma 171, 253, 257, 259, 264,
Kononov, Aleksandr 403 266, 273, 276, 374
Koretsky, Nikolay 273 Lagin, Lazar 423, 448, 505
Korinets, Yury 544–545 de La Motte Fouqué, Friedrich 27, 69
Kormchy, L. 276, 294, 362 Landau, Georgy 272
Korolenko, Vladimir 119–120, 158, 271 Laptev, Aleksey 461, 529
Korolyova, Gulya 431 Larri, Yan 375, 398
Korshunov, Mikhail 539 Lauckhard, Carl Friedrich 96–97
Kosarev, Aleksandr 369, 371 Laurie, André 282
Koshevaya, Elena 430 Lavrenteva, Sofya 200–201, 275
Koshevoy, Oleg 430, 450, 502 Lazarevsky, Boris 267, 273
Kosmodemyanskaya, Lyubov 431 Ldov, Konstantin 228, 238, 239, 267
Kosmodemyanskaya, Zoya 431, 502 Lebedenko, Aleksandr 372
Kosterina, Nina 472–473 Lebedev, Vladimir 272, 292, 298, 321, 322,
Kostyukhina, Marina 11 370, 379
Koval, Yury 547–548, 560 Lemke, Mariya 287
 index of names 583

Lenin, Vladimir 294, 297, 301, 303, 305, Malot, Hector 248

306, 338, 357, 368, 372, 376, 385, 389, Malyutin, Sergey 281
400–404, 411, 438, 440, 447, 453, 463, Mamin-Sibiryak, Dmitry 77, 121–124,
465, 470, 497, 515, 517–519, 520, 523, 524, 140–142, 159, 173, 176, 257, 260, 261, 262,
533, 536, 543–544, 546, 564 264, 271, 275, 277, 282, 284, 285
Leonardo da Vinci 205 Manaseina, Natalya 240, 270
Lermontov, Mikhail 76, 193, 205 Mandelstam, Osip 301, 335, 336
Leskov, Nikolay 59, 63, 264 Maramzin, Vladimir 534
Levin, Doyvber 428 Maria Aleksandrovna, Grand Duchess 
Levshin, Vasily 14 155
Lewis, C.S. 570 Maria Feodorovna, Grand Duchess 48
Librovich, Sigizmund 177–178, 188, 267 Markov, Georgy 556
Likhanov, Albert 538–539 Markovich, M.A., see Vovchok, Marko
Likstanov, Iosif 432, 480, 483 Marryat, Frederick 166, 282
Lilina, Zlata 300–301, 356 Marshak, Samuil 128, 173, 190, 240, 241,
Lincoln, Abraham 205 272, 291, 298, 300, 301, 302, 309, 311, 316,
Lindgren, Astrid 475–476 318–324, 325, 327, 328, 331, 332, 333, 335,
Linnaeus, Carl 157, 205 342, 344, 350, 352, 356, 357, 359, 360,
Lipetsky, Aleksey 273 362, 363, 364, 366–367, 368, 371, 374,
Lipovetsky, Mark 426 375, 376, 377, 378–381, 386, 392, 393, 397,
Livingstone, David 72 398, 413, 415, 429, 431, 433–434, 438, 457,
Lofting, Hugh 312–313, 316, 563 463–465, 470, 471, 473, 474, 476, 477,
Lohmeyer, Julius 200 478, 479, 481, 483, 486, 488, 490, 491,
Lomonosov, Mikhail 22, 58, 59, 204, 211, 494, 497, 532
243 Marx, Karl 368, 431, 470, 517
London, Jack 256, 257, 259, 271, 272, 502 Masalsky, Konstantin 80
Long, William Joseph 250, 266 Masson, Michel 76
Longfellow, Henry 229, 271 Matveev, Artamon 58
Loseff, Lev 411, 478 Matveev, Vladimir 372
Louis XIV 71 Matveeva, Aleksandra 186–187
Louis XVI 102 Matveeva, Novella 556–557
Lukashevich, Klavdiya 116–117, 171, 173, Mayakovsky, Vladimir 248, 290, 306,
176, 190, 192–200, 257, 258, 262, 264, 267, 307–310, 321, 360, 376, 378, 380, 400, 411,
275, 277, 278 474, 497
Lukhmanova, Nadezhda 170, 191–192, 264 Maykov, Apollon 144, 152
Lunacharsky, Anatoly 199, 200, 356, 363 Maykov, Vladimir 151–152, 155
Lundahl, Julius 26 McPherson, James 513
Lupanova, Irina 400, 485 Medvedev, Valery 527, 542
Luther, Martin 4, 205, 263 Medynsky, Grigory 499, 500
Lvov, Vladimir Nikolaevich 264 Mee, Arthur 253
Lvov, Vladimir Vladimirovich 24, 45–46, Meksin, Yakov 300
68, 161 Menshikov, Aleksandr 20, 58, 115, 211
Lyalina, Mariya 161, 204–205 Merezhkovsky, Dmitry 228, 270
Lyubarskaya, Aleksandra 374 Merzlyakov, Aleksandr 16, 19
Lyubich-Koshurov, Ioasaf 221–222 Meyerhold, Vsevolod 414
Lyubimova, Valentina 449 Mikeshin, Mikhail 285
Mikhalkov, Sergey 375, 376, 386–390,
Maeterlinck, Maurice 232 392, 394, 400, 411, 413, 432, 438, 449,
de Maistre, Xavier 64 450–451, 461–463, 467, 470, 474, 479,
Makarenko, Anton 341, 466 481, 483, 484, 485, 487, 495–496, 510, 515,
Makarova, Sofya 78, 114–115, 159, 167, 170, 520, 536, 547, 555–556, 557, 560
267, 268 Mikhaylov, Nikolay 427
Makhno, Nestor 338 Mikhaylovsky, Nikolay 153
Maksimovich, Pavel 82–83 Miller, Fyodor 66, 152
584 index of names

Milne, A.A. 475, 488, 554, 563 Nikon, Patriarch 205

Milyukov, Aleksandr 144 Nosov, Nikolay 178, 444–445, 451,
Minaev, Dmitry 151 457–459, 460, 470, 478, 480, 487, 525,
Minin 199 528–531
Mitrokhin, Dmitry 172 Novikov, Nikolay x, 7, 9–11, 13, 15, 18, 21,
Mitropolsky, Ivan 222–223, 277 86
Modzalevsky, Lev 87
Montgomery, L.M. 564 Obruchov, Vladimir 347–348
Monvizh-Montvid, Ėduard 261 Ochkin, Amply 68
Moor, D.S. 293 Odoevsky, Vladimir 24, 26, 30–31, 35,
Moravskaya, Mariya 228, 241, 244–245, 49–52, 67, 68, 75, 83, 176, 242
270, 272, 273, 289, 292, 293 Ognyov, N. 339–340, 344
Morits, Yunna 557 Okudzhava, Bulat 537–538
Morozov, Pavel 389, 393–394, 431, 454, Olenich-Gnenenko, Aleksandr 475
522, 567 Olesha, Yury 346, 455
Morozova, T. 355 Oleynikov, Nikolay 302, 303, 332–334,
Moshkovskaya, Ėmma 474, 485, 487, 361, 372–373, 385, 476
488–490 Olga of Kiev, Princess 22
Moshkovsky, Anatoly 438, 472, 501–502 Opie, Amelia 60
Moskovkin, Viktor 500 O’Reilly, Augustine J. 101
Motyashov, Igor 558 Oreshin, Pyotr 273
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 76, 145 Orlov, Dmitry, see Moor, D.S.
Mstislavsky, Sergey 399–400 Orsher, Iosif, see D’Or
Muhammed 259 Orzeszko, Eliza 161, 259, 271
Murzaev, Vsevolod 287 Oseeva, Valentina 438, 446, 472, 513, 514
Musatov, Aleksey 439, 441–442, 443, 480, Osorgin, Mikhail 243, 278
516 Oster, Grigory 564–567
Musäus, Johann Karl August 25 Ostrogorskaya, Anna 260
Myaėots, Olga 475 Ostrogorsky, Aleksey 157
Münzer, Thomas 206 Ostrogorsky, Viktor 137, 157, 161, 193
Ostroumov, Lev 338–339
Nabokov, Vladimir 162, 166, 252, 475 Ostrovsky, Nikolay 251, 411, 428, 452, 480,
Nadezhdina, Nadezhda 516 540
Nansen, Fridtjof 146, 257 Ouida 157, 248–249, 260, 271
Napoleon 19, 22, 45, 114, 115, 162
Narbut, Georgy 172 Pakhomov, Aleksey 461
Narbut, Vladimir 273 Panafidina, Aleksandra 278
Nazhivin, Ivan 221, 257, 265, 273 Panov, Ivan 280, 285
Nekrasov, Andrey 399, 422–423 Panteleev, L. 66, 191, 302, 340–341, 360,
Nekrasov, Nikolay 148–149, 152, 247, 358 368, 374, 393, 399
Nekrasov, Vsevolod 557 Passek, Tatyana 263
Nemirovich-Danchenko, Vasily 77, Pasternak, Boris 191, 301, 335–336, 360,
124–127, 158, 257, 258, 262, 277, 282 472, 534
Nero 107 Paul I 48
Nesbit, Edith 253, 277 Paulson, Iosif 192
Neverov, Aleksandr 342 Paustovsky, Konstantin 368, 396–397
Nevzorov, Maksim 18, 22 Pavlenko, Pyotr 442–443
Nicholas I 63, 398 Pavlenkov, Florenty 146, 169–170
Nicholas II 199 Pavlovich, Nadezhda 334, 335
Nieritz, Gustav 78, 81, 82, 156, 263 Pchelnikova, Avgusta 78, 81, 82, 96–97,
Nikitin, Ivan 158, 165 154, 267
Nikolaev, Vladimir 535 Pechkovsky, Aleksandr 274
Nikolajeva, Maria 475 Perkins, Lucy Fitch 171, 266
Nikolay Nikolaevich, Grand Duke 71 Permyak, Evgeny 523, 543
 index of names 585

Perovskaya, Olga 343 Prokopovich, Feofan 4

Perrault, Charles 14, 25, 35, 36, 55, 78, 132, Propp, Vladimir 37
143, 424 Prus, Bolesław 263
Peshkova-Toliverova, Aleksandra 193, Przhevalsky, Nikolay 204
263, 264, 276 Ptashko, Aleksandr 422
Peter I, the Great 2, 4, 5, 22, 32, 43, 57, Pugachev, Emelyan 13, 44, 524
58, 63, 67, 115, 210, 211, 271, 399, 524 Puni, Ivan 292
Peterson, Karl 70 Pushkin, Aleksandr 8, 24, 31–35, 36, 37,
Petrov, Aleksandr 11 39, 40, 43, 47, 61, 75, 76, 79, 80, 81, 86,
Petrov, Evgeny 408, 423 109, 144, 145, 171, 172, 174, 186, 193, 209,
Petrov-Vodkin, Kuzma 298, 335 210, 222, 271, 283, 295, 321, 330, 515, 524,
Petrovskaya, Nina 252, 421 546
Petrovsky, Miron 537 Putilova, Evgeniya 229
Petrushevskaya, Lyudmila 570 Pyast, Vladimir 270
Pirogov, Nikolay 145, 218
Pisarev, Dmitry 78–79, 81, 82, 153, 280 Rabelais, François 146, 331
Pivovarov, Vitaly 477 Radakov, Aleksey 272, 289, 292, 293, 332
Pleshcheev, Aleksey 149–150, 156, 157, Radlov, Nikolay 272, 384, 532
158, 193, 260, 263 Ragoza, N. 256
Plutarch 21–22, 144 Rakhmilovich-Yuzhin, David 373
Poe, Edgar Allan 69, 272, 454 Rakhtanov, Isay 476
Pogodin, Mikhail 68, 257 Raphael 205
Pogodin, Nikolay 154 Raskin, Aleksandr 528
Pogodin, Rady 434, 503, 507–508, 537, Raspe, Rudolf Erich 316
548–549, 558 Ratomsky, Nikolay 238
Pogorelsky, Antony 24, 26–30, 46, 116, Razin, Aleksey 71, 78, 83–84, 117, 155
176, 527 Razin, Izrail 356, 358–359, 375
Pokrovskaya, Anna 298, 300, 337 Razin, Stepan (Stenka) 210, 467
Pokrovsky, Sergey 398 Razumnevich, Vladimir 545
Polenov, Vasily 281 Razumovsky, Aleksandr 476
Polevoy, Boris 413, 478, 479–482, 540 Redkin, Pyotr 68, 69, 75
Polevoy, Nikolay 42, 75 Reid, Mayne 78, 126, 129, 153, 156,
Polonskaya, Elizaveta 334–335 165–166, 173, 217, 222, 245, 281, 287, 295,
Polonsky, Yakov 150, 158, 205, 259 338, 371, 563
Polotsky, Simeon 1 Reinhardt, Carl 66
Popov, Nikolay 263 Remezov, Sokrat 15–16
Porter, Eleanor 564 Remizov, Aleksey 226–227, 243, 270, 273,
Potanin, Grigory 204 292, 293
Potapenko, Ignaty 262, 273 Remizov, Nikolay (Re-Mi) 291, 292
Potemkin, Grigory 58 de Renneville, Sophie 49, 67
Potter, Beatrix 268 Reyn, Evgeny 486
Potyomkin, Pyotr 236 von Rhoden, Emmy 114
Pozharova, Mariya 232–233, 259, 262, Roberts, Charles G.D. 250, 257, 264, 266,
267, 272, 273, 277, 292 342
Pozharsky 199 Robertson, Theodore 97
Poznyakov, Nikolay 161, 173, 208–209, Rodari, Gianni 473–474
258, 262, 264, 277 Rodnikov, Viktor 176, 284–285
Pravosudovich, Tatyana 326 Rogova, Olga 113–114, 115, 137, 160–161
Prilezhaeva, Mariya 445, 446–447, 448, Rogozina, S. 252
478, 481, 516, 518, 519–520, 543, 545 Rojankovsky, Feodor, see Rozhankovsky,
Prishvin, Mikhail 258, 343, 368, 460–461 Fyodor
Prokofev, Aleksandr 438 Rolland, Romain 395, 413
Prokofeva, Sofya 553–554 Romanov, Mikhail, Tsar 185
Prokofiev, Sergey 417, 426 Rostopchin, Fyodor 162
586 index of names

Rostovskaya, Mariya 98–99, 145, 155, 161, Seuss, Dr. 568

168, 247 Severtsev, Nikolay 204
Roubo, André 51 Shaginyan, Mariėtta 270
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 7, 9, 12 Shakespeare, William 71, 152, 165, 224, 513
Rozalion-Soshalskaya, Anna 248 Shamil, Imam 145, 186
Rozanov, Sergey 344 Shatilov, Boris 399, 427
Rozenblyum, Vitold-Konstantin, see Ldov, Shchepkina-Kupernik, Tatyana 207, 252,
Konstantin 257, 264, 267, 278
Rozhankovsky, Fyodor 244 Shefner, Vadim 438
Rozhdestvenskaya, A. 251 Shishkov, Aleksandr 13, 48, 52
Rozhdestvensky, Vsevolod 438 Shklovsky, Viktor 190, 301, 344, 351, 427
Rozov, Viktor 450 Shmelyov, Ivan 219–220, 230, 243, 257,
Rudakov, Konstantin 298 258, 259, 285
Rudova, Larissa 571 Shostakovich, Dmitry 200, 251
Rusakov, Viktor, see Librovich, Sigizmund Shtilmark, Robert 512–513
Rybakov, Anatoly 451, 453–454, 510–511 Shuysky, Vasily, Tsar 185
Rückert, Friedrich 120 Shveder, Evgeny 222, 267, 275
Sienkiewicz, Henryk 260
Saillens, Reuben 92 Simashko, Yulian 156
de Saillet, Alexandre 76 Sinyavsky, Andrey 493, 534
de Saint-Exupéry, Antoine 475 Skabichevsky, Aleksandr 153
Sakharov, Ivan 41, 114 Skitalets 230, 273
Sakharova, Anna 117, 156 Sladkov, Nikolay 525
Saltykov-Shchedrin, Mikhail 57, 59, 164 Slivitsky, Aleksey 130–131
Samarin, Dmitry 52 Smelyakov, Yaroslav 438
Samokish-Sudkovskaya, Elena 259, 285 Smirnov, Nikolay 377, 394–395, 400
Samoylovich, V. 137–138, 161 Smirnov, Vasily 454
Sand, George 76, 80, 81, 146, 152, 264 Snegiryov, Gennady 525
Sandunov, Nikolay 8–9 Sobakin, Tim 569, 570
Sapgir, Genrikh 485, 486, 491–493, 556, Sobakina, Marfa, Tsarevna 206
557 Sobolev, Mikhail 202, 287
Sarnov, Benedikt 459 Sofya Alekseevna, Tsarevna 204
Saunders, Margaret Marshall 248, 271 Sokol, Elena 291n
Savelev, L. 376, 377, 398, 399, 428 Sokolov-Mikitov, Ivan 460
Savvaty 1 Sologub, Fyodor 190–191, 228, 267, 270
Savvin, Nikolay 206, 221, 285–286 Solomeyn, Pavel 394
von Schmid, Christoph 49, 55, 67, 76, 78 Solovyov, Sergey 68, 69, 75
Schmidt, Olga, see Rogova, Olga Solovyov, Vladimir 228
Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Julius 96 Solovyova, Poliksena 208, 228, 232,
Schwartz, Evgeny 300, 301, 302, 332, 368, 240–241, 251, 260, 264, 270, 271, 273
372, 376, 385, 422, 424, 447, 569 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr ix, 472, 534
Scott, Walter 42, 76, 78, 80, 113, 152, 245 Sotnik, Yury 451, 457, 459–460, 470, 483,
Sedov, Sergey 570 525
Sef, Roman 485, 493–494, 556, 568 Stahl, Pierre-Jules 246
Segal, Elena 396 Stalin, Joseph 303, 315, 341, 354, 367, 368,
de Ségur, Louis-Philippe 68 369, 371, 374, 375, 376, 384, 388, 389, 392,
de Ségur, Sophie 78, 161–162, 281 399, 400, 404, 411, 413, 415, 420, 424, 431,
Semyon, Avgust 68 438–440, 451, 455, 462, 463, 464, 465,
Semyonov, Ivan 477 469, 470, 471, 472, 483, 487, 498, 500, 512,
Semyonova, Mariya 570–571 517, 519, 520, 523, 534, 555
Serafimovich, Aleksandr 215, 216–217, Stanyukovich, Konstantin 212–214, 257,
230, 257, 275, 285 258, 260, 261, 271, 282, 285
Serebryannikov, Abram 373 Startsev, Ivan 365
Seton, Ernest Thompson 173, 245, 250, Stebnitsky, Sergey 428
256, 257, 260, 262, 266, 271, 342 Sterne, Laurence 16
 index of names 587

Stevenson, Robert Louis 167, 245, 260 Toll, Feliks 55, 56, 65, 82, 97, 131, 159
Stowe, Charles Edward 145 Tolmachova, Mariya 208, 273, 275
Stowe, Harriet Beecher 78, 81, 88, 145, Tolstaya, Aleksandra, see Bostrom,
152, 165, 211, 271, 514 Aleksandra
Stoyunin, Vladimir 59, 147 Tolstaya, Sofya 131
Stravinsky, Igor 237 Tolstoy, Aleksey Konstantinovich 27
Strugatsky, Arkady 533 Tolstoy, Aleksey Nikolaevich 248, 252,
Strugatsky, Boris 533 255, 270, 272, 279, 289, 292, 302, 316,
Stupin, Aleksey 114, 173 346–347, 368, 369, 377, 399, 421–422,
Sudeykin, Sergey 289 429, 481
Sukhovo-Kobylin, Aleksandr 101 Tolstoy, Leo ix, 5, 6, 12, 30, 77, 78, 80, 84,
Surikov, Ivan 149, 150, 156 87–92, 98, 115, 116, 121, 124, 128, 131, 145,
Surikov, Vasily 467 146, 148, 152, 158, 160, 162, 164, 171, 190,
Surkov, Aleksey 469, 471, 483 197, 199, 203, 221, 226, 247, 257, 258, 262,
Susanin, Ivan 20, 185 264, 265, 266, 271, 273, 321, 351
Suteev, Vladimir 461, 474 Tolstoy, Lev Lvovich 258–259, 264
von Suttner, Bertha 261 Tomin, Yury 527, 542
Suvorov, Aleksandr 22, 57, 58, 399, 524 Topelius, Zacharias 77, 132–133, 157, 170,
Svetlov, Mikhail 376, 392 259, 262, 263, 292, 374
Svirsky, Aleksey 219, 258, 261 Travers, Pamela L. 475, 488, 563
Swift, Jonathan 5, 76, 78, 114, 116, 331, Trotsky, Lev 314, 338, 372, 373, 516
364, 395 Trutneva, Evgeniya 467
Sysoeva, Ekaterina 77, 100, 103, 106–107, Tseydler, Avgusta, see Pchelnikova, A
145–146, 155, 157, 158, 161, 170, 245, 258, Tsvetaeva, Marina 167, 181, 321, 569
259 Tumim 357
Sytin, Ivan 170–171, 231, 253, 255, 278 Tur, Evgeniya 77, 100–103, 107, 161, 173,
183, 262
Tarakhovskaya, Elizaveta 392, 461–462, Turgenev, Ivan 77, 81, 86, 97, 99, 100, 131,
466–467, 474 132, 152, 164, 193, 211, 247, 271
Tastu, Amable 76, 83 Tuwim, Julian 474
Tatlin, Vladimir 328, 329 Tvardovsky, Aleksandr 404, 422, 534
Tatyana Romanova, Grand Duchess 96 Twain, Mark 78, 156, 161, 166–167, 173,
Tchaikovsky, Pyotr 26, 76, 205 174, 214, 245, 259, 264, 268, 271, 284, 293,
Tėffi, Nadezhda 292 295, 316, 389, 404, 417, 456, 560
Teleshov, Nikolay 217–218, 230, 257, 264, Tyrsa, Nikolay 370
271 Tytler, Ann Fraser 70
Temryukovna, Mariya, Tsarevna 206
Tendryakov, Vladimir 484 Ulyanova, Mariya 519
Tenier, David 63 Ulyanova-Elizarova, Anna 247, 248, 402
Teplov, Grigory 4–5 Usachov, Andrey 568, 569–570
Terebenyov, Ivan 19 Ushakov, Nikolay 153, 168
Thayer, William 145 Ushinsky, Konstantin 35, 78, 84–87, 88,
Thomson, James 12 90, 121, 131, 147, 169, 192
Tieck, Ludwig 25, 27 Usov, Stepan 67
Tikhomirov, Dmitry 122, 124, 218, 220, Uspensky, Ėduard 549–553, 567–568
221, 257–258
Tikhomirova, Elena 258 Vagner, Nikolay 77, 133–136, 141, 144, 147,
Tikhonov, Nikolay 301, 339, 393, 400, 150, 158, 161, 176, 198, 207, 215, 258, 263,
429, 496 282, 283, 285
Timofeev, Pyotr 14 Vagner, Yuly 253
Timofeev, Yury 477, 485, 488 Valuev, Dmitry 68, 69
Titov, German 493, 526 Vanenko, Ivan 41
Tkachov, Pyotr 104 Varshavsky, Ilya 533
Tokmakova, Irina 485, 490–491, 547, 556 Vasilenko, Ivan 441
Tolkien, J.R.R. 570 Vasilev, Boris 184
588 index of names

Vasileva, Elizaveta 320 Wurst, Raimund Jacob 83

Vasileva, Raisa 372 Wyss, Johann David 5, 52
Vasilevsky, Mikhail 286
Vasilevsky, Vasily 512 Yakovlev, Aleksandr 394
Vatagin, Vasily 256 Yakovlev, V. 359
Vatova, E. 437 Yakovlev, Yury 503, 506–507, 515, 516, 520
Vavilov, Pavel 16 Yamshchikova, Margarita, see Altaev, Al.
Veltistov, Evgeny 524–525 Yanovskaya, Ėsfir 355–356
Vengrov, Natan 292 Yartsova, Lyubov 52–53
Veretennikov, Nikolay 402 Yasnov, Mikhail 570
Verne, Jules 78, 116, 156, 162, 164–165, 173, Yudin, Georgy 570
174, 188, 217, 245, 253, 259, 260, 262, 263, Yudin, Pavel 434
268, 269, 281, 338, 347, 348, 364, 404, Yushkevich, Semyon 260
559
Verner, Anna, see Voronova, Avgusta Zablotsky, Andrey 302, 331, 374, 385, 422
Victor Emmanuel II 257 Zabolotsky, Nikolay 83, 302, 331, 374,
Vigdorova, Frida 447, 528 385, 422
Vilmont, Ekaterina 571 Zagoskin, Mikhail 76, 78, 80, 130
Vladimirov, Yury 298, 302, 330, 491 Zak, Avenir 450
Vodovozov, Vasily 146–147, 152, 156 Zakhoder, Boris 474, 475, 485, 487–488,
Vodovozova, Elizaveta 262 556
Volf, Mavriky 65, 78, 83, 169, 170 Zamiraylo, Viktor 172, 281, 292
Volkov, Aleksandr 253, 423–424, 481 Zasodimsky, Pavel 77, 120–121, 133, 157,
Voronko, Platon 438–439 158, 161, 173, 176, 257, 258, 260, 261, 262,
Voronkova, Lyubov 433, 442, 451, 484, 263, 264, 277, 285
515, 546 Zelenko, Aleksandr 250
Voronova, Avgusta 70, 71, 92–95 Zelenko, Anna 250
Vorontsov, Nikolay 566 Zelenko, Vasily 286
Voroshilov, Kliment 393 Zhdanov, Andrey 434, 435
Voskresenskaya, Zoya 516–517, 518–519, Zheleznikov, Vladimir 484, 503, 508–509,
543, 546 542, 561
Vovchok, Marko 162, 164 Zhelikhovskaya, Vera 76, 77, 100, 106,
Voynich, Ethel 251, 428, 431 107–111, 156, 161, 170, 173, 174, 257, 262,
Vvedensky, Aleksandr 302, 325, 328–330, 263, 267
331, 333, 360, 371, 374, 375, 376, 377, Zhibul, Vera 230, 232
385–386, 429, 444, 476 Zhitkov, Boris 298, 300, 301, 302, 344,
348–353, 360, 368, 369, 399, 419–420,
Wagner, Richard 201 464, 477, 480, 483, 559
Wallace, Lew 273 Zhukovsky, Rudolf 38
Washington, George 146 Zhukovsky, Vasily 24, 25, 31, 34, 35–37,
Webster, Jean 563 40, 43, 53, 54, 64, 75, 171, 172, 192
Weisse, Christian 18–19 Zilov, Lev 237, 266, 275, 277, 304
Wells, H.G. 190, 253, 347 Zinovev, Aleksandr 556
Wiggin, Kate 246, 563–564 Zinoveva-Annibal, Lidiya 270
Wilde, Oscar 259, 262, 316 Zinoviev, Grigory 301
Wilmsen, Friedrich 82 Zontag, Anna 24, 25, 26, 53–55, 60, 70
Wiseman, Nicholas 101, 108 Zoshchenko, Mikhail 360, 393, 403, 404,
Wolgast, Heinrich 286 416, 434, 435
Zvorykin, Boris 227