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In the 1920s, with the end of the revolution, the Soviet government began investing resources and energy into creating a new type of book for the first generation of young Soviet readers. In a sense, these early books for children were the ABCs of Soviet modernity; creatively illustrated and intricately designed, they were manuals and primers that helped the young reader enter the field of politics through literature. Children's books provided the basic vocabulary and grammar for understanding new, post-revolutionary realities, but they also taught young readers how to perceive modern events and communist practices.
Relying on a process of dual-media rendering, illustrated books presented propaganda as a simple, repeatable narrative or verse, while also casting it in easily recognizable graphic images. A vehicle of ideology, object of affection, and product of labour all in one, the illustrated book for the young Soviet reader emerged as an important cultural phenomenon. Communist in its content, it was often avant-gardist in its form.
Spotlighting three thematic threads - communist goals, pedagogy, and propaganda - The Pedagogy of Images traces the formation of a mass-modern readership through the creation of the communist-inflected visual and narrative conventions that these early readers were meant to appropriate.
Show moreIn the 1920s, with the end of the revolution, the Soviet government began investing resources and energy into creating a new type of book for the first generation of young Soviet readers. In a sense, these early books for children were the ABCs of Soviet modernity; creatively illustrated and intricately designed, they were manuals and primers that helped the young reader enter the field of politics through literature. Children's books provided the basic vocabulary and grammar for understanding new, post-revolutionary realities, but they also taught young readers how to perceive modern events and communist practices.
Relying on a process of dual-media rendering, illustrated books presented propaganda as a simple, repeatable narrative or verse, while also casting it in easily recognizable graphic images. A vehicle of ideology, object of affection, and product of labour all in one, the illustrated book for the young Soviet reader emerged as an important cultural phenomenon. Communist in its content, it was often avant-gardist in its form.
Spotlighting three thematic threads - communist goals, pedagogy, and propaganda - The Pedagogy of Images traces the formation of a mass-modern readership through the creation of the communist-inflected visual and narrative conventions that these early readers were meant to appropriate.
Show moreAcknowledgments
Primers of Soviet Modernity: Depicting Communism for Children in
Early Soviet Russia
Serguei Alex. Oushakine and Marina Balina
Part One: Mediation
1. Three Degrees of Exemplary Boyhood in Boris Kustodiev’s
Soviet Paradise
Helena Goscilo
2. How the Revolution Triumphed: Alisa Poret’s Textbook of
Cultural Iconography
Yuri Leving
3. Foto-glaz: Children as Photo-Correspondents in Early Soviet
Periodicals
Erika Wolf
4. Autonomous Animals Animated: Samozveri as a Constructivist Do
It Yourself Book
Aleksandar Bošković
5. The Fragile Power of Paper and Projection
Birgitte Beck Pristed
Part Two: Technology
6. From Nature to “Second Nature” and Back
Larissa Rudova
7. The Production of the Man-Machine: The Child as Instrument of
Futurity
Sara Pankenier Weld
8. Spells of Materialist Magic, or Soviet Children and Electric
Power
Kirill Chunikin
9. “Do It Yourself!”: Teaching Technological Creativity at the
Time of Soviet Industrialization
Maria Litovskaia
10. The Camel and the Caboose: Viktor Shklovsky’s Turksib and
the Pedagogy of Uneven Development
Michael Kunichika
11. Aero-plane, Aero-boat, Aero-sleigh: Propelling Everywhere in
Soviet Transportation
Katherine M. N. Reischl
Part Three: Power
12. Spatializing Revolutionary Temporality: From Montage and
Dynamism to Map and Plan
Kevin M. F. Platt
13. “Poor, Poor Il’ich”: Visualizing Lenin’s Death for
Children
Marina Sokolovskaia and Daniil Leiderman
14. Young Soldiers at Play: The Red Army Solder as Icon
Stephen M. Norris
15. The Working Body and Its Prostheses: Inventing the
Aesthetics and Anatomy of Class for Soviet Children
Alexey Golubev
16. Amerikanizm: The Brave New World of Soviet Civilization
Thomas Keenan
List of Illustrations
Contributors
Marina Balina is a professor of Russian Studies at Illinois
Wesleyan University and holds the Isaac Funk professorship.
Serguei Alex. Oushakine is a professor of Anthropology and Slavic
Languages and Literatures at Princeton University.
"One reason this book makes a significant contribution to studies
on children’s literature and culture is its remarkable
interdisciplinary approach. A persuasive picture of the complicated
conditions in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s and their
influence on children’s literature can only be conveyed if the
political, social, historical, and cultural circumstances are
considered and related to one another –which this collection has
succeeded in doing to a convincing degree."
*International Research in Children's Literature*
"This magnificent, beautifully produced volume contains over 250
period illustrations, bringing the object of its important and
innovative scholarship to life… The enduring value of this edited
volume will be both its scholarship and its stunning visuality and
‘gaze-appeal’"
*The Russian Review*
"For decades to come, The Pedagogy of Images will remain a go-to
resource on the early Soviet picture books for literature scholars,
historians of public education, researchers of totalitarian art,
librarians, and graphic artists."
*Slavic Review*
“Covering important topics about Soviet children’s books, this book
has made brilliant achievements in the study of children’s
literature. It will also open a new horizon for the broader field
of Soviet history if one incorporates it into the study of Soviet
culture in general.”
*Acta Slavica Japonica*
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