“What to Fight and What to Welcome” in Children’s Literature According to a Secret Glavlit Bulletin (1924)

Abstract

Among the numerous secret documents kept in the archives of Moscow, the article investigates the bulletin of 1924, which is stored in the State Archives of Russia (GA RF) and describes the situation of children’s book production based on the books issued in 1924 and published in Moscow and Leningrad. The document is remarkable for its thorough description of the activities of publishing houses, for the assessment of both individual authors and books written by them during that year. The bulletin contains reviews and statistical statements, suggests practical actions to improve the quality (including ideological) of book for children, and indicates the activities that the authors of the bulletin advise to carry out in the due time. The conclusions made by the authors of the bulletin are particularly interesting, since they show a general tendency of Soviet censorship institutions (especially of Glavlit) to increase systematic control over the publishing business in general, and children’s book production in particular. The materials of this voluminous document make it possible to see the mechanisms of the formation of the principles of Soviet censorship in the field of children’s literature and to understand what criteria — aesthetic, pedagogical, and ideological — were used by those who organized the creation and publication of the “new children’s book”.

Keywords: censorship, Soviet children’s book, Glavlit, Samuil Marshak, Kornej Chukovsky