"Thank-You for the Wonderful Book": Soviet Child Readers and the Management of Children's Reading, 1950-1975

According to a patriotic cliché of the post-Stalin era, the Soviet people was "the most given to reading in the entire world" (samyi chitaiushchii narod v mire). As a corollary, reading was, commentators argued, given a central place in the socialization of children by every Soviet family, however humble. A pronouncement by Lev Kassil´ in 1964 is typical: "One can say with absolute confidence that throughout the extent of our motherland there is not a single dwelling with even one child in it where there is not also at least one children's book."¹ But teaching children about reading was not left purely to parents. Enormous efforts were expended by state institutions on circulating children's literature, and on making sure that this was read in the appropriate way. School syllabi dictated not only "set books," in the sense of those discussed in class, but also "extracurricular reading" (vneklassnoe chtenie), which might form the subject of debates organized by the "class supervisor" (grade-level teacher, whose duties included providing moral guidance to pupils and organizing "cultural work" such as theater visits and excursions).² Guides and magazines for parents provided recommendations on how to supervise children's reading, an activity held to require the exercise of great care and responsibility.³ Libraries—as in earlier periods of Soviet history—worked as centers of the Soviet civilizing mission: children's tastes were monitored through the use of record cards, and staff members affirmed their tastes (if these seemed to be moving in the right direction) or, alternatively, tried to nudge them into reading material of different kinds (if the child were unduly fond of adventure stories or some other marginal genre).⁴

By the late 1960s, there was some criticism of excessive controlling behavior on the part of librarians.⁵ But regulation continued by means of strategies such as the use of recommendatory bibliographies, posters, and personal advice. An article about children's reading of Pioneer newspapers published as late as 1983 still emphasized the need to develop "political thinking" above all, and to teach children to read systematically; it advocated methods such as circulating a memo with a list of instructions ("Read every article carefully!" etc.), holding competitions and quizzes about the content of each issue, putting together a display board (stend) of related items, acting out the "plots" of specific stories, and so on.⁶

Alongside schools, libraries, and parents, Komsomol and Pioneer organizations had a role in regulating guidance. Officially speaking, they were shefy (guides and patrons) of the publishing houses for children's literature, issuing directives about major political themes that were supposed to be covered by the printed output of the house and in its outreach work.⁷ By the post-Stalin era, however, the direction was rather "hands off": editors had a fair amount of leeway regarding the themes that they invoked beyond the Soviet political canon and issues deemed topical at the time ("communist education," the space race, etc.).⁸ While Komsomol apparatchiks of the late 1920s and early 1930s had spent a great deal of energy micromanaging the circulation of literature (worrying that children liked adventure stories too much and this or that book was unsuitable and should be removed from the shelves), by the 1960s their efforts were concentrated in the specific field of "Pioneer" and "Komsomol" literature, as represented by, say, the official hagiographies of Pavlik Morozov, Zoia Kosmodem´ianskaia, and Pioneer war heroes such as Volodia Dubinin and Lenia Kotikov, which children were supposed to read as preparation for enrollment in the Pioneers.⁹ Such material was made available in "Pioneer corners" in schools,¹⁰ discussed at Pioneer and...