Winning hearts and minds – children’s books in the Soviet Union

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Beautifully designed and illustrated books were used to nurture good Soviet citizens from a tender age

Inside the Rainbow: Russian Children’s Literature 1920–35: Beautiful Books, Terrible Times edited by Olga Budashevskaya and Julian Rothenstein

This is a delightful album of children’s books from a dynamic moment in modern history – a view that is shared by Philip Pullman in his enthusiastic foreword to the book.  At a time of social and economic revolution, all the inherited practices of the past are deemed to be suspect and possibilities for the future are likely to attract favour. In interwar Russia, the rising generation of children had to be encouraged and informed so that they might fulfil the hopes and expectations of the Revolution. This priority, coupled with the advances then recently made by Futurist and Constructivist artists, led to a level of creative innovation in the design of books for children in the Soviet Union during a brief period in the 1920s, that is surely without parallel.

The most radical design, formally speaking, must be El Lissitzky’s Suprematist-derived primer on mathematics. A more nuanced application of these principles is found in Vladimir Lebedev’s bold integration of word and image in his book about ice-cream. David Shterenberg also achieved a dynamic melding of text and drawing but with a gentler, more lyrical touch in his setting of the poet Mayakovsky’s book for children.  On occasions photography was creatively employed, either as montage, or, in the case of a book entitled, ‘What is This?’, to present puzzling close-ups of everyday objects.

Animal subjects formed a constant subject and more conventional but engaging techniques were employed in rendering the various features of fluffy bears and prickly hedgehogs in the work of Yevgeny Charushin. But charm can equally be found in the brightly coloured buses and trams, liners and submarines, produced by less sophisticated illustrators.

Inside the Rainbow also includes sample extracts from the book texts, such as the totally surreal absurdity of Dannil Kharms: ‘the four legged crow bought a cup of coffee and asked itself, What am I supposed to do with it now?’. This approach was taken up following the example of English 19th-century nonsense verse, but on the other hand, it was officially frowned upon. An educational psychologist insisted that, ‘this nonsense upon gibberish … only fosters silliness in children’.

In case the modern reader might become too won over by the apparent romance of a generation of idealistic artists and writers enthusiastically aiming to shape and delight the emerging children of the Revolution, the few grim and growingly forceful directives from Lenin and then Stalin, which are also included, should add a sufficient counterweight.  A grainy police photograph of Osip Mandelstam gives ample poignancy to his bitterly ironic remark, ’Only in Russia is poetry respected…it gets people killed’. 

Julian Rothenstein at the Redstone Press is devoted to the mission of producing original and beautiful books and Inside the Rainbow  is no exception. Its appeal would extend beyond professional and student designers and illustrators, to include those interested in modern social and political history, particularly of Russia of course, and the wider congregation of booklovers.

Inside the Rainbow: Russian Children’s Literature 1920–35: Beautiful Books, Terrible Times,  edited by  Olga Budashevskaya and Julian Rothenstein, foreword Philip Pullman, is published by Redstone Press, 2013. 312pp., 250 illus. ISBN  978-1870003-95-7