Awards

• Winner of 2023 Best Edited Multi-Author Scholarly Volume Awarded by American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages 2024 (United States)
• Winner of 2023 Best Edited Multi-Author Scholarly Volume Awarded by the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages 2024 (United States)

Overview

In the 1920s, with the end of the revolution, the Soviet government began investing resources and energy into creating a new type of book for the first generation of young Soviet readers. In a sense, these early books for children were the ABCs of Soviet modernity; creatively illustrated and intricately designed, they were manuals and primers that helped the young reader enter the field of politics through literature. Children's books provided the basic vocabulary and grammar for understanding new, post-revolutionary realities, but they also taught young readers how to perceive modern events and communist practices. Relying on a process of dual-media rendering, illustrated books presented propaganda as a simple, repeatable narrative or verse, while also casting it in easily recognizable graphic images. A vehicle of ideology, object of affection, and product of labour all in one, the illustrated book for the young Soviet reader emerged as an important cultural phenomenon. Communist in its content, it was often avant-gardist in its form. Spotlighting three thematic threads communist goals, pedagogy, and propaganda The Pedagogy of Images traces the formation of a mass-modern readership through the creation of the communist-inflected visual and narrative conventions that these early readers were meant to appropriate.

Full Product Details

9781487506681

Table of Contents

Reviews

Finally, a thorough and insightful study of the development of children's literature in communist Russia during the 1920s and 1930s! Leading scholars of illustrated Soviet children's literature demonstrate how writers and illustrators contributed to mass literacy, and how this literature became a dynamic laboratory for experiments, revealing how artistic innovation and state propaganda formed the basic tenets of the institutionalized children's literature established during this period. - Jack Zipes, Professor Emeritus, Department of German, Scandinavian, and Dutch, University of Minnesota Soviet children's literature of the 1920s and 1930s is a fascinating topic, and The Pedagogy of Images does it justice. A detailed introduction by editors Balina and Oushakine provides both history and critical foundation, showing how early Soviet children's books were embedded in institutional practices. The book is theoretically sophisticated, flexible in its variety of scholarly approaches, and as fun to read as it is informative. - Sibelan Forrester, Professor, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, Swarthmore College This is an outstanding collection of essays by a group of leading scholars, tightly conceived by the editors. Conceptually ambitious and richly illustrated, it unlocks the extraordinary intersections between children's education and Soviet propaganda. - Emma Widdis, Professor, Centre for Film and Screen, University of Cambridge This smartly organized collection guides scholars of history, visual culture, and children's studies into a deeper understanding of how the stories and images of the 1920s and 1930s sought to inscribe in their young readers a new sense of identity dedicated to the creation of a modern, industrialized, and harmonious Soviet state. This volume offers a wealth of inspiration and exemplary models for researchers seeking to understand the ways a social imagination develops in and through illustrated children's texts. - Karen Coats, Director, Centre for Research in Children's Literature, University of Cambridge

""One reason this book makes a significant contribution to studies on children’s literature and culture is its remarkable interdisciplinary approach. A persuasive picture of the complicated conditions in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s and their influence on children’s literature can only be conveyed if the political, social, historical, and cultural circumstances are considered and related to one another –which this collection has succeeded in doing to a convincing degree."" -- Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, University of Tübingen * <em>International Research in Children's Literature</em> * ""This magnificent, beautifully produced volume contains over 250 period illustrations, bringing the object of its important and innovative scholarship to life… The enduring value of this edited volume will be both its scholarship and its stunning visuality and ‘gaze-appeal’"" -- Megan Swift, University of Victoria * <em>The Russian Review</em> * ""For decades to come, The Pedagogy of Images will remain a go-to resource on the early Soviet picture books for literature scholars, historians of public education, researchers of totalitarian art, librarians, and graphic artists."" -- Olga Voronina, Bard College * <em>Slavic Review</em> * “Covering important topics about Soviet children’s books, this book has made brilliant achievements in the study of children’s literature. It will also open a new horizon for the broader field of Soviet history if one incorporates it into the study of Soviet culture in general.” -- Michiko Komiya * <em>Acta Slavica Japonica</em> *

Author Information

Marina Balina is a professor of Russian Studies at Illinois Wesleyan University and holds the Isaac Funk professorship. Serguei Alex. Oushakine is a professor of Anthropology and Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University.

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