Companion to Soviet Children's Literature and Film

Olga Voronina is Associate Professor of Russian at Bard College. She co-edited and co-translated, with Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov’s Letters to Véra (Knopf 2015/ Penguin, 2014), and published on Soviet children's literature, media discourse of the Cold War, Post-Soviet transformation of the Russian literary canon, and Nabokov’s art and metaphysics.

"A Companion to Soviet Children’s Literature and Film is essential reading for anyone interested in Soviet children’s culture. I would also recommend it to readers wanting to widen their perspectives on Russian culture in general. The images of famous avant-garde authors gain new dimensions through their works for children, and making acquaintance with hero narratives and historical fiction for children offers new approaches to the same themes in both literature and cultural studies. The illustrations chosen for the book give the reader a glimpse of the visual abundance of Soviet children’s literature and film."Jenniliisa Salminen, University of Turku, Finland, in Russian Review 79"A particularly attractive feature of the Companion is the inclusion of rare colour and black and white images of book covers, book excerpts, feature film and animation stills. The volume has detailed footnotes, an extensive bibliography and a good index. This Companion makes for engaging and inspiring reading; it would benefit Russian scholars and students, as well as a general audience seeking to expand their knowledge of the complex impact that Soviet children’s literature and film had on the nation and its citizens."Natallia Kabiak, University of Melbourne, in Australian Slavonic and East European Studies, volume 34.“The reader should prepare himself for a fascinating collection of brilliant, thought-provoking essays. This book shows how far scholarly work on children´s culture and childhood in Slavic studies has come in the last few decades and provides insights into an impressive and flourishing field of research [...] This book is a major accomplishment that offers valuable insights into the complex ways in which childhood and children’s culture were dealt with in the Soviet Union. It deserves many readers and will certainly spark further discussions and inspire new ideas.“Martina Winkler, Kiel University (Christian-Albrechts-Universität) in Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, volume 10.

• ContentsAcknowledgementsFiguresNotes on ContributorsIntroduction: ''The Only Universal National Text'': On the Centennial ofSoviet Children's Literature and FilmOlga VoroninaForging a New Children's Culture: (R)evolution, Poetics,Aesthetics1 Unnatural Selection: A Natural History of Early Soviet PicturebooksSara Pankenier Weld2 The Junctures of Child Psychology and Soviet Avant-Garde Film:Representations, Influences, ApplicationsAna Hedberg Olenina3 The Dictionary as a Toy Collection: Interactions between Avant-GardeAesthetics and Soviet Children's LiteratureAinsley Morse4 The Literary Avant-Garde and Soviet Literature for Children: OBERIU in the Leningrad Periodicals Еж and ЧижOleg MininConstructing Socialism, Building the Self: History, Ideology,Narrative5 Re-Imagining the Past for Future Generations: History as Fiction inSoviet Children's LiteratureMarina Balina6 Education of the Soul, Bolshevik Style: Pedagogy in Soviet Children'sLiterature from the 1920s to the early 1930sOlga Voronina7 ''Be Always Ready!'': Hero Narratives in Soviet Children's LiteratureSvetlana Maslinskaya8 Unspeakable Truths: Children of the Siege in Soviet LiteratureTatiana Voronina and Polina BarskovaNew Approaches to the Avant-Garde: Reconstructing theCanon9 Children's Poetry and Translation in the Soviet Era: Strategies ofRewriting, Transformation and AdaptationMaria Khotimsky10 Under the Hypnosis of Disney: Ivan Ivanov-Vano and Soviet Animationfor ChildrenLora Wheeler Mjolsness11 Embracing Eccentricity: Золушка and the Avant-GardeImaginationLarissa Rudova12 The Queer Legacies of Late Socialism, or What Cheburashka and GaryShteyngart Have in CommonAnna FishzonBibliographyIndex