‘Five Versts from the Truth’: Vasily Knyazev’s Children’s Poetry

Abstract

Ben Hellman's article deals with the development of the poet Vasily Knyazev’s writings for children, from his debut in the field, Boba Skvoznakov in 1913, to his main work, A Terrible Dream (Strashny son) in 1925. In the early 1910s, he created a fairytale world of his own in the volume, Ninka’s Tales (Ninkiny skazki). After the October Revolution, he made an unsuccessful attempt at writing communist utopias for children, later finding his way back to his initial starting point with four comic books and his poem, A Terrible Dream, that was the carnalized version of Soviet reality in the 1920s.   Keywords: fairy tale world, children’s poetry, carnival, October Revolution, comic books