РейтингиThe end of the 19th century had already seen a new interest in children’s education, and as public education became increasingly universal, educational theories were hotly discussed and disputed. The pioneering work of the Czech educational reformer Comenius found new readers; Froebel created the first kindergartens; Montessori developed the innovative system of early childhood education; a former Director of Brera wrote ‘The Art of Children’ in 1887.
In the late 19th century, the momentum for universal public education increased, as did the drive for increased literacy. In Imperial Russia, according to the 1897 census, literate people made up 28 percent of the population. There was a strong network of universities for the upper class, but next to nothing for everyone else – the vast majority of Russia’s population. By the time of the Russian Revolution, faced with the challenges of transforming a largely illiterate, agrarian society based on serfdom into a modern industrialized society able to compete with the decadent West, the newborn USSR was a hotbed of educational innovation. Futurism, imported from Italy and the homegrown Russian avantgarde had flourished before the First World War, and in the 1920s there was an increased interest in childhood and education. In 1919 Lenin proclaimed the major aim of the future Soviet government would be the abolition of illiteracy. There was definitely need for a new system of early childhood education as the society broke free from the old world. The children of the October Revolution were of real interest as they were the first generation born into a new value system and ideology. The new Socialist paradise needed new citizens, and in the spirit of the Jesuit maxim widely attributed to Ignatius Loyola “Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man” the Soviet authorities began to place a major emphasis on what the youngest comrades were doing and reading. The world of the 1920s was one of artistic ferment, and Futurists, Constructivists, Supremacists and other champions of the pre-war avantgarde jostled to create new projects for children: books, games, theatre and graphics.
As the ideological war raged alongside the civil war, the writer Lev Kormchy described children’s literature as the “forgotten weapon”, writing in Pravda in 1918: “In the great arsenal used by the bourgeoisie to fight against Socialism, children’s books occupied a prominent role. In choosing our cannons and weapons, we have overlooked those that spread poison. We must seize this ammunition from the enemy hands.” But what was the right subject matter for this “forgotten weapon”? Definitely not princesses or fairy stories. In 1925, Soviet educationist EV Yanovskaya published an influential article, “Does a Proletarian Child Need a Fairytale?”, in which she argued that fairytales such as Cinderella prevented children from developing an understanding of historical materialism. “The bourgeoisie needs these fairytales to support their exploitation …so children who are hungry and cold can escape into the world of fantasy and feel imaginary happiness,” she wrote. Lenin’s widow, Nadezhda Krupskaya, weighed into the argument, demanding that fairy stories promoting “the wrong kind of emotional and ideological influence” be removed from public libraries. Books should educate as well as entertain, she said[i]. What were the right kinds of influence? For the artists of the Russian avantgarde, inspiration often came from local folk traditions, primitive art entering the museums of St. Petersburg from expeditions to the outer edges of the Russian Empire, and the crudely printed block prints known as lubki (sing. lubok). To these artists, children’s art – like primitive and folk art – had an immediacy and power that was not captured by the Mir Isskustva artists orientalist fantasies. Corrado Ricci’s Children’s Art had been published in Russian in 1911, and the grown-ups of the Russian avant-garde understood children’s literary creativity to be equal to that of adults. Children’s collages had even been included in the famous avantgarde exhibition ‘The Target’ in 1913 organized by Mikhail Larionov. Alexander Shevchenko, who supplied some of the children’s drawings for the exhibition, underlined the connection in his manifesto on neo-primitivism that appeared the same year, and in 1914 Alexei Kruchonykh published a book on the children’s drawings. The child was to be considered a creative artist in her own right.
In the late 1920s a new publishing trend emerged - ‘samodelka’ [do-it-yourself] books. There were other types of illustrated books at that time like books-riddles, books-toys, coloring books but samodelka soon replaced the fairy tales which had dominated the market before the Revolution. The end of 1920s and the beginning of 1930s experienced an industrial boom as Stalin put pressure to achieve the First Five-Year Plan. Future builders of socialism were supposed to get involved as soon as possible, starting with hands-on activities. That was the task that publishing houses faced – to introduce young readers to modern technologies, professions and manufacturing. Books with the same format and layout were favored at the expense of individual editions. The small format of school notebooks already familiar to children prevailed. Chromolithography was the main method for printing these books. Despite the low-quality paper used, the high quality of this new type of book is due to the talent of their author-illustrators (including Vera Ermolaeva, Vladimir Konashevich, Eleonore Kondiain, Konstantin Kuznetsov, Natalie Paren, Lidia Popova and others) and writers (Boris Zhitkov, Mikhail Ilyin, Samuil Marshak, Yakov Perelman). These heady days were not to last. In 1929, Lunacharsky was removed from his position and sent first to the League of Nations, then to Spain as ambassador. Of the artists and writers, Marshak, Chukovsky and Lebedev were among the survivors of the next decade but Mandelshtam and Bulatov perished in the gulag, Nikolai Zabolotsky and Ilia Zdanevich survived the gulag but died later of ill health, Mayakovsky was found dead with a bullet in his chest, Tretyakov died in prison, and Kharms died in a psychiatric ward. The brief Spring of the 1920s was followed by a cruel summer.