Aesopian Language of Soviet Era Children\u27s Literature: Translation, Adaptation, and Animation of Western Classics

Soviet writers frequently used social critique encapsulated in the form of children’s stories since the beginnings of Soviet children’s literature in 1918. Translation became one outlet for Soviet authors, who for political reasons were pushed to the outskirts of the Soviet literary scene. Russian children’s authors adopted a special form of retelling the stories by retaining the plot line, but by tweaking the characters and original settings to make them more recognizable by the Russian readers. This art of retelling and resettling of western characters onto Soviet surroundings created a space for social critique that was distinguishable to a skillful adult reader. The story that enjoyed the most popularity was Boris Zakhoder’s adaptation of A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh (1960). The central inquiries for my project will focus on how foreign classics were adapted and how they were converted into voice of freedom, democracy, and creative imagination through different media (animation)

“Little Brothers” By Agniia Barto: Gender and Ideology in Soviet Era Picture Books, 1920s-1930s

In the early 1920s, Soviet children’s literature was to provide the blueprint for becoming model citizens of this newly formed society. It became the precursor to the new two-fold ideological discourse: depicting life of Soviet children as paradise, while condemning children’s hardship and exploitation of their less fortunate counterparts abroad. Such educational and ideological tendencies are prominent in Agniia Barto’s poem, “Little Brothers” (1928), as it visually and textually represented the theme of internationalism, which was to nurture and shape a feeling of unity in struggle, as well as compassion toward the fates of foreign children. I will explore the existing imbalance between the verbal and visual messages and demonstrate how the attention of a young reader was constantly shifted from the ideologically correct verbal message to the engaging exotic picture of foreign surroundings, thus subordinating ideology to the entertainment value of these books