China and the Chinese in the Russian Soviet children’s literature of the 1920s-1930s

Abstract

The article “China and the Chinese in the Russian Soviet children’s literature of the 1920s-1930s” by Maria Litovskaia and Yao Chengcheng analyzes the dynamics of China’s and the Chinese people’s description
in the Soviet children's literature of the 1920s and 1930s, it depicts patterns in creating the image of the neighboring country, identifies the socialization tasks that were set and solved in the texts for children. It is
shown that the “literary” image of China, based on the “Chinoiserie” tradition, and propagandistic representation of China and the Chinese not only complement each other but also not always consistently di-
verge, which leads to the gap between the image of China as a revolutionary country ready to throw off the “colonial chains” versus a motionless civilization, frozen in its exquisite splendor.

Keywords: Russian children’s literature of the 1920s-1930s, the image of China in literature, N. Agnivtsev, A. Barto, G. Viatkin, B. Zhitkov, P. Iakovlev