Russian children's literature and culture (review)

Russia

Overview studies tend to suffer from the fact that they can only give a superficial introduction to the field. Not so this volume edited by the Russian-American scholars Marina Balina and Larissa Rudova featuring contributions by specialists from the United States, Great Britain, Austria, Finland, and Russia. Their incisive sketch of Russian children's culture, with children's literature at its core, makes no claim to comprehensiveness. There are no essays on the substantive body of Russian children's poetry, for example, or on the art of illustration. Rather, the contributions seek to highlight more general structural aspects of Russian children's culture and the interplay of its actors in order to make them more accessible to Western scholars. Following two historical surveys- one examining state-sponsored and state-controlled children's literature during the Soviet regime (Balina), the other focusing on the Post-Soviet book market (Rudova)- the subsequent contributions center on the interdependence of children's culture and ideology in the Soviet school system, the choice of literary themes (Sputnik, military), and on post-Soviet youth organizations. It becomes apparent that children's culture was able to create and sustain spaces of creative freedom within the ideological-propagandistic system. The articles of the second section offer introductions to well-organized popular culture experiences for children including theater, cinema, animated films, and comic strips. The final section presents some of the foremost Russian-Soviet authors and their work, including Samuil Marshak, Lev Kassil, Pavel Bazho, Sergei Mikhalkov, Evgenii Shvarts, and Grigorii Oster.

Katja Wiebe