
Soviet Children’s Books That Broke the Rules of Propaganda - gotocake
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/soviet-children-books-propaganda
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yantrams
I was raised on these Soviet books in India and remember feeling sad and angry
when Soviet Union broke up because all these amazing magazines (Misha anyone
?) stopped coming from Russia all of a sudden.

PS: I uploaded about 50 of these books (in Telugu language) at
[http://linkdot.link/sooviytt-prcurnnlu-childrens-
books.html](http://linkdot.link/sooviytt-prcurnnlu-childrens-books.html) Would
be a great resource for anyone trying to teach Telugu to their kids

Edit: Added a line

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raj2569
Same here, raised on a diet of Soviet books in Kerala, India. Misha was a
favorite of mine. Still remember the publisher's names, Mir and Raduga
publishers. There are other books like Firebird, some nice books about night
sky and recreational mathematics ...

I really miss those books and wonder if some copies could be found for my
daughter who is now of the same age when I used to read these books.

~~~
ai_ia
You can check it out here. [https://mirtitles.org/](https://mirtitles.org/)

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brunkerhart
I was a kid during soviet time. Propaganda books, i.e. books about revolution
was a minority.

Most of the books were regular children books about how to make friends, how
to behave, how to study. There were books about science and fairy tales. Prose
and poetry. There eas translation of books from authors from capitalist
countries.

The kid books was very cheap like 3-5 kopeck (0.03-0.05 of rouble) with the
average salary of abou 35 roubles.

The only problem was that most interesting books, teens books were rarely
available in book shoops, but you could borrow it at a library. Libraries were
available at every school as well as at district and city level.

~~~
iliaznk
True, children's books without any propaganda was something we didn't lack
back then

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paleotrope
This is a strange article.

The first book discussed, Baba Yaga, isn't even Soviet, it was published in
France by an organization that could be described as anti-soviet if you look
at it's history.

The second book, is claimed to be non-revolutionary, for some reason. Labeling
a mosque as a "museum" is the result of fairly standard communist dogma. Not
sure how that's "breaking the rules of propaganda". It is in fact propaganda.

~~~
pandaman
Publishers of Baba Yaga, indeed, seem to be so much against the Soviets that
they even use pre-1918 Russian orthography just because the switch to the new
one happened after the Revolution despite it being prepared by the Imperial
Academy of Sciences long before that.

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ai_ia
I grew up reading physics from Mir Titles. Really effective in teaching.

Here is a great resource for Books.
[https://mirtitles.org/](https://mirtitles.org/)

~~~
raphlinus
Same here. Plus for some reason Yakov Zeldovich's books on calculus really
sang to me, much more than American textbooks.

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billfruit
There was a soviet childrens short novel 'Disobedience Holiday' by Sergei
Mikhalkhov, while I was a child I read it like a normal kids book, but now it
looks to me, an allegory against the ills of capitalism, in the same way that
Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies have their deeper meanings. It is a good
story, It should be more popular.

~~~
iliaznk
That one I'm not sure about, but "Neznaika on the Moon" sure was.

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v_lisivka
First image on the page: is communist propaganda, second and third are printed
by anticommunists in Paris, fourth and fifth is propaganda again.

Where are pictures of these children books that broke the rules of propaganda?

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IWeldMelons
Soviet children's books were normal books pretty much like American: fairy
tales, adventures etc. Not only that, the most popular children's books were
the ones written by Western authors: A.A. Milne, Astrid Lindgren, Rodari,
Lewis Carrol, Frank Baum, H.C. Andersen.

~~~
Fins
To be fair, for pretty much the entire existence of the USSR, Frank Baum was
present only as a retelling that had very little to do with Oz, and never even
mentioned Baum's name anywhere.

~~~
IWeldMelons
Or really? Very little? How is that? There were some deivation from Oz but
overall it is quite close to the original. Like 90% close. Anyway, a friend of
mine when he was a child, had a bool actually wiritten by Baum, about the
wooden soldiers.

~~~
Fins
Volkov's first book, "Wizard of the Emerald City" follows Baum somewhat
closely. "Urfin Dzhus and his wooden soldiers" has nothing to do with anything
Baum wrote other than a basic setting, and further sequels even less so.

~~~
IWeldMelons
Hmm. Yes you right about the sequels. However "The magician of Emerald City"
is very close to the original. Anyway my original claim holds - the children's
literature of the USSR was very international and mostly free of ideology.
There might have been a reason for retelling the Wizard of Oz - Baum had bad
reputation as a racist AFAIK, and probably the Soviet government did not want
to look bad leaving his name on the book's cover.

~~~
Fins
It was international (it was probably easier to find an American children's
book in USSR than a Soviet one in US, but then US is pretty insular in that
regard) but I would not call it free of ideology. Translated books were often
selected based on how "progressive" or friendly to the USSR author was, not on
literary merit, and domestic ones pretty much had to give at least lip service
to the ideology. Mind you, some of them were quite good (The Little Golden Key
is probably better than Pinocchio, and surprisingly less didactic)but the
ideology was omnipresent.

Honestly, I doubt that the government cared much about Baum's racial views.
They just did not want to make it too obvious that "Emerald City" was stolen,
fair and square, and that no matter how much you might want to read the
original, and however many dozens of sequels Baum wrote, you ain't gonna get
them.

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sologoub
Article missed another remarkable thing about the 1932 Baba Yaga book - the
text appears to be pre-1917 reform!

Communists did quite a hack job with the written part of Russian, purging many
Latin letters:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_Russian_orthograp...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_Russian_orthography)

I don’t know whether this would call the books authenticity into question or
show some cracks in the state control, but the use of the old “czarist” print
would definitely not have been ok. Anyone that was being taught the reformed
orthography would struggle to read it. I’m guessing this was a major selling
point - you essentially make all non-communist state controlled printed media
unreable.

~~~
Fins
There weren't many Latin letters in Russian at that point. Greek, maybe.

~~~
sologoub
Yeah, it’s a combo of Latin and “archaic”. “i” was the most prominent one.

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Fins
Фита and ижица are Greek, though. Ять is archaic.

