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