Cultural transfers in Yiddish and Belarusian children’s literature and illustrations in the BSSR (1921–1939)

Abstract

The article offers an overview of the production of books for children in Yiddish and Belarusian in the BSSR between 1921 and 1939. While situating the study in the wider context of the development of Jewish and Russian/Soviet children’s literature in the early 20th century, it analyses the creation of two corpuses of texts and images in parallel, taking into consideration the specificity of the Belarusian policy towards national minorities. The article evaluates the level of transfers between Belarusian, Jewish, Russian and other children’s literature, through the number and choice of translations, the mobility of the artists that illustrated these books
and the circulation of themes and styles. Although the number of translations between the Belarusian and Yiddish corpora was limited, the author argues that the cultural transfers were visible in the themes of the books and
the style of the illustrations

Keywords: Yiddish literature, Belarusian literature, children literature, book illustration, BSSR, Soviet history, Kultur-Lige, Belarusian history, Jewish history

This work was carried out under a grant from the Sefer Center SEFER for research on Russian Jewry, presented within the framework of the charitable program Support for Academic Judaica in the Post-Soviet Space, organized by the Center on the basis of financial support from the Genesis Philanthropy Group.