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Reviewed by:
  • Russian Children’s Literature and Culture, and: Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood: In History and Society, and: Children’s World: Growing Up in Russia, 1890–1991, and: Russkie deti: Osnovy narodnoi pedagogiki. Illiustrirovannaia entsiklopediia
  • Steven A. Grant
Marina Balina and Larissa Rudova, eds., Russian Children’s Literature and Culture. 390 pp. New York: Routledge, 2008. ISBN-13: 978-0415978644. $95.00.
Paula S. Fass et al., eds., Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood: In History and Society, 3 vols. 1,055 pp., numbered sequentially through all 3 vols. New York: Macmillan Reference USA/Thomson-Gale, 2004. ISBN-13: 978-0028657141, ISBN 0028657144 (set); 0028657152 (vol. 1); 0028657160 (vol. 2); 0028657179 (vol. 3). $454.00.
Catriona Kelly, Children’s World: Growing Up in Russia, 1890–1991. 714 pp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. ISBN-13: 978-0300112269. $45.00.
Izabella I. Shangina et al., eds., Russkie deti: Osnovy narodnoi pedagogiki. Illiustrirovannaia entsiklopediia [Russian Children: The Foundations of Popular Pedagogy. An Illustrated Encyclopedia]. 566 pp. St. Petersburg: Iskusstvo-SPB, 2006. ISBN-13: 978-5210015013, ISBN 5210015017.

“All happy childhoods are alike,” one might be tempted to paraphrase Tolstoi, “every unhappy childhood is unhappy in its own way.” The idea that childhood is not so immutable, however—that it is a social construct that changes with time—has energized the historical (and even the sociological) study of the family for nearly two generations. 1 All the books under review here take it as a given that childhood is a nearly autonomous time of life, deserving of attention and understanding. Taken together, they can be seen to present a thorough, comparative, and diachronic view of childhood in Russia over the past century or two. As a whole, they convey the impression that the number of happy childhoods in Russia may have increased in this span, though far from in a straight, linear fashion. Such improvement occurred both because and in spite of substantial regime change. What is of most interest in perusing these various works, moreover, is the way in which the content of a “happy childhood” changed over time. A childhood that extended beyond infancy was naturally the first barrier [End Page 730] to overcome, and infant mortality tended to improve with time. Then, overcoming hunger, deprivation, violence, and fear became increasingly central.

Catriona Kelly’s massive study of childhood in Russia over the course of a full century has the purpose, as stated early in this dense compendium, to provide “a history of daily life as experienced by Russian children.”2 She is concerned with “the effects of institutions on children,” school curriculums, “what children wore, where they slept, and what they ate.” Divided into three parts, the book explores successively “the development of attitudes to children” and some of the “general forces shaping childhood” (part 1) and then the lives of children from birth to adolescence (parts 2 and 3) (13 for all quotations).3

The aim is simply stated; the research done to accomplish that aim is prodigious. Kelly in fact employed a small army of assistants to help her. This is scholarship as enterprise, along the lines of other British academics like Orlando Figes. Not only have written sources—official, public, archival, and private—been utilized to the hilt, but a large number of personal oral histories (interviews) have been incorporated to excellent effect. One can only marvel at the wonderful collection of photographs and other graphic material that illuminate a large number of pages. It seems unlikely [End Page 731] that any source escaped examination by one or another of the persons engaged in this formidable enterprise. The result is not, however, a typical production by committee. The sure hand of the author is everywhere visible, kneading and shaping the raw material into a seamless whole. The style is lively and personal, familiar to any who have read Kelly’s previous excellent works on etiquette and manners, women’s writing, and other cultural topics.4

How well has Kelly succeeded in her task? Very well indeed. It is magisterial, but not in the stuffy sense; painstakingly thorough, comprehensive; it is, in a word, encyclopedic. This is not a volume—its heft comes to about 600 pages...

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