Russian Children's Literature and Culture

Marian Balina is Professor Russian at Illinois Wesleyan University. She has co-edited a number of collections, including Politiciing Magic: Russian and Soviet FairyTales (2005), Dictionary of Literary Biography: RussianWriters Since 1980 (2003), and Endquote: Sots-ArtLiterature and Soviet Empire Style (2000).LarissaRudova is Associate Professor of Russian at Pomona College. She is author of Pasternak's Early Fiction andthe Cultural Vanguard (1994) and Understanding BorisPasternak (1997).

"This volume is the first book-length study of Russian children's literature in English, and as such it is particularly welcome."-- Children's Literature Association Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 1, Spring 2009

• Series Editor’s ForewordPrefaceINTRODUCTION: Reading Soviet and Post-Soviet Children’s Culture: Contexts and Challenges1. Creativity through Restraint: The Beginnings of Soviet Children’s Literature Marina Balina 2. From Character Building to Criminal Pursuits: Russian Children’s Literature in TransitionPART I Ideology, Literature, and Culture: Genres, Themes, and Issues 3. The Whole Real Children’s World: School Novella and "Our Happy Childhood"Evgeny Dobrenko 4. Between Sputnik and Gagarin: Space Flight, Children’s Periodicals, and the Circle of ImaginationAnindita Banerjee 5. Crafting the Self: Narratives of Pre-Revolutionary Childhood in Soviet LiteratureMarina Balina 6. Literature and Cultural Institutions By and For Soviet and Post-Soviet YouthLisa Ryoko Wakamiya PART II Popular Children’s Entertainment 7. Arresting Development: A Brief History of Soviet Cinema for Children and AdolescentsAlexandr Prokhorov (College of William and Mary) 8. Comforting Creatures in Children’s Cartoons Birgit Beumers (U of Bristol)9. Juggernaut in Drag: Theater for Stalin’s ChildrenBoris Wolfson (USC)10. ‘Nice, Instructive Stories Their Psychology Can Grasp’: How to Read Post-Soviet Russian Children’s ComicsJose Alaniz (U of Washington) PART III: Authors and Texts 11. Samuil Marshak—Yesterday and Today Ben Hellman (University of Helsinki) 12. Lev Kassil’: Childhood as Religion and IdeologyInessa Medzhibovskaya (Eugene Lang College, The New School) 13. Pavel Bazhov’s Skazy: Discovering the Soviet UncannyMark Lipovetsky (U of Colorado) 14. A Traditionalist in the Land of Innovators: the Paradoxes of Sergei MikhalkovElena Prokhorova (University of Richmond) 15. Evgenii Shvarts’s Fairy Tale Dramas: Theater, Power, and the Naked TruthAnja Tippner (University of Salzburg) 16. Invitation to a Subversion: The Playful Literature of Grigorii OsterLarissa Rudova (Pomona College)ContributorsIndex