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The Pedagogy of Images: Depicting Communism for Children

Edited by Marina Balina and Serguei Alex. Oushakine

© 2021

In the 1920s, with the end of the Revolution, the new Soviet government began investing resources and energy in creating a new type of the book for the first Soviet generation of young readers. In a sense, these early Soviet 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, an object of affection, and a product of labour, 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 – 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 supposed to appropriate.

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Product Details

  • Series: Studies in Book and Print Culture
  • World Rights
  • Page Count: 640 pages
  • Illustrations: 260
  • Dimensions: 6.0in x 0.0in x 9.0in
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SKU# SP006374

  • AVAILABLE JUN 2021

    From: $90.00

    Regular Price: $120.00

    ISBN 9781487506681
  • AVAILABLE JUL 2021

    From: $90.00

    Regular Price: $120.00

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Quick Overview

This collection offers a variety of scholarly views on illustrated books for Soviet children, covering everything from artistic innovation to state propaganda.

The Pedagogy of Images: Depicting Communism for Children

Edited by Marina Balina and Serguei Alex. Oushakine

© 2021

In the 1920s, with the end of the Revolution, the new Soviet government began investing resources and energy in creating a new type of the book for the first Soviet generation of young readers. In a sense, these early Soviet 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, an object of affection, and a product of labour, 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 – 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 supposed to appropriate.

Continue Reading Read Less

Product Details

  • Series: Studies in Book and Print Culture
  • World Rights
  • Page Count: 640 pages
  • Illustrations: 260
  • Dimensions: 6.0in x 0.0in x 9.0in

  • Author Information

    Serguei Alex. Oushakine is a professor of Anthropology and Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University.


    Marina Balina is a professor of Russian Studies at Illinois Wesleyan University and holds the Isaac Funk professorship.

  • Table of contents

    Acknowledgments

    Primers of Soviet Modernity: Depicting Communism for Children in Early Soviet Russia
    Serguei Alex. Oushakine and Marina Balina

    Part One: Mediation

    1. Three Degrees of Exemplary Boyhood in Boris Kustodiev’s Soviet Paradise
    Helena Goscilo

    2. How the Revolution Triumphed: Alisa Poret’s Textbook of Cultural Iconography
    Yuri Leving

    3. Foto-glaz: Children as Photo-Correspondents in Early Soviet Periodicals
    Erika Wolf

    4. Autonomous Animals Animated: Samozveri as a Constructivist Do It Yourself Book
    Aleksandar Bošković

    5. The Fragile Power of Paper and Projection
    Birgitte Beck Pristed

    Part Two: Technology

    6. From Nature to “Second Nature” and Back
    Larissa Rudova

    7. The Production of the Man-Machine: The Child as Instrument of Futurity
    Sara Pankenier Weld

    8. Spells of Materialist Magic, or Soviet Children and Electric Power
    Kirill Chunikin

    9. “Do It Yourself!”: Teaching Technological Creativity at the Time of Soviet Industrialization
    Maria Litovskaia

    10. The Camel and the Caboose: Viktor Shklovsky’s Turksib and the Pedagogy of Uneven Development
    Michael Kunichika

    11. Aero-plane, Aero-boat, Aero-sleigh: Propelling Everywhere in Soviet Transportation
    Katherine M. N. Reischl

    Part Three: Power

    12. Spatializing Revolutionary Temporality: From Montage and Dynamism to Map and Plan
    Kevin M. F. Platt

    13. “Poor, Poor Il’ich”: Visualizing Lenin’s Death for Children
    Marina Sokolovskaia and Daniil Leiderman

    14. Young Soldiers at Play: The Red Army Solder as Icon
    Stephen M. Norris

    15. The Working Body and Its Prostheses: Inventing the Aesthetics and Anatomy of Class for Soviet Children
    Alexey Golubev

    16. Amerikanizm: The Brave New World of Soviet Civilization
    Thomas Keenan

    List of Illustrations
    Contributors

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