Ideological Censorship in Children’s Literature in Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic: 1940s–1990s (using children’s literary magazine “Mateřídouška” as an example)

Abstract

During the entire period of the communist reign (1948–1989), Russian children’s literature on Czech Republic territory had experienced significant censorial restrictions. However, such heavy censorship was part of the ideological pressure extended to the entire body of literary texts. Only those works that had supported the leading ideological trends of the Soviet Union were translated and published. After 1989, Russian children’s literature still remained the subject of heavy censorship, but today it is rather an internal process. Czech editors and publishers continue to look at the works of children’s literature with suspicion. They continue to view it as a product of ideological pressure. The article by Eva Malenova.    Keywords: children’s literature, children’s magazine, censorship, censorial restrictions, Soviet ideology, Russian literature, Czech Republic, Russia