Soviet Children’s Books That Broke the Rules of Propaganda | Hacker News Reader

Soviet Children’s Books That Broke the Rules of Propaganda

atlasobscura.com

70 pointsgotocake31 comments

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 Would be a great resource for anyone trying to teach Telugu to their kids

Edit: Added a line

Same here. I loved the Misha books, and they were a special part of my childhood. I still remember the distinct smell of those books, and was really sad when they stopped arriving. I wasn't mature enough to understand the fall of Soviet union, but I distinctly remember the special TV programs on Doordarshan when PVN opened up the Indian economy. They had a really unique style which was so radically different from the ones available locally. Is there any online archive of these (in English preferably)

The smell yes! This may sound weird and is completely unrelated but I felt the smell of new Apple products comes very close to that of Misha magazines. Noticed it with every Apple hardware I bought so far starting from the 1st generation Macbook.

Science books from Mir, Raduga and Progress publications - https://mirtitles.org/ Children's books - http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/

Last time I checked, I couldn't find any sources for Misha other than a couple of them scattered across file sharing sites.

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.

You can check it out here. https://mirtitles.org/

I used up all my Mishas for covering books unfortunately :/ Have just a couple of them. It's not that difficult to find the Science/Math books - Yakov Perelman, Little Mathematics Library etc in old book stalls in Andhra but you have to be really lucky to find children's story books.

Thanks for sharing. Brought back my memoirs with "MISHA". They were so lively and imaginative. Some copies we can get even now from book stores like "Vishalandhra". Russian books on space has inspired me alot to become an engineer. I used to like story of Yuri Gagarin from one of the Russian books.

I still have a copy of this(in telugu) in pristine condition :) - https://mirtitles.org/2011/12/08/science-for-everyone-this-f... Yes Visalandhra publishes some of the classics even now but the quality is deplorable compared to the originals. :/

I never read these. Is there any place where I could find the English and/or Hindi versions?

This should keep you busy :) http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/

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.

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

Average salary was way more than 35 roubles. 80-90 probably.

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.

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.

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

Here is a great resource for Books. https://mirtitles.org/

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

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.

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

allegory against the ills of capitalism

Really? Why capitalism in particular? The allegories of Animal Farm or Lord of the Flies are a lot more transparent, if this is one.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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

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

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

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