“We Must Learn More About the Machines”: Materials on Cremation in the Newspapers Pionerskaya Pravda and Leninskiye Iskry (1927–1930s)

Abstract

Industrialization was one of the essential subjects of the Young Pioneer press in the late 1920s. The largest Soviet newspapers for children, the Pionerskaya Pravda and Leninskiye Iskry, continuously published stories on the Five-Year Plan’s construction projects. The periodicals encouraged the Young Pioneers to actively contribute to the Five-Year Plan implementation, learning more about technology and promoting subscription for State loans. One of the topics of the 1927–1930 propaganda campaign in the Young Pioneer press was cremation. In parallel to publications in adult newspapers (such as the Izvestiya, Ogonyok, or Bezbozhnik), the Pioneer periodicals published eight stories on advantages of cremation and on the opening of the Donskoy Crematorium on Moscow in October 1927. The first Soviet crematorium was built before the launch of the Five-Year Plan, but its full-swing implementation into the early Soviet discourse coincided with the first years of industrialization. The Soviet crematorium was presented as one of the Five-Year Plan’s construction projects, on a par with factories. The achievements of the first years of that facility’s operation were communicated to children. The crematorium was viewed as a technical achievement, and as a weapon in the struggle against religion, and as a symbol of new urban pattern (without temples and vast cemeteries). From the day of its opening, Moscow’s crematorium became a sightseeing attraction, in particular for groups of schoolchildren. Young Pioneers from other regions could only “make a tour” to the crematorium with the aid of illustrated newspaper stories or exhibitions. One of such expositions open to the public, the “Cremation” electrical panorama, was in operation in Leningrad in 1929–1930.

Keywords: children’s literature in the 1920s, children’s periodicals, soviet newspapers and magazines, soviet ideology, industrialization, five-year plan