Wonderful Far Away And Gender: The Gender Study Of the Future In Kir Bulychev’s Books About Alisa Selezneva

Abstract

The article analyzes the evolution of gender representations in Kir Bulychev’s books about Alisa Selezneva. The author of the article focuses on “The Girl Nothing Happens To” and “The Rusty Field-Marshal”, as well as “Guy-do”, “The City Without Memory” and “The Monster by the Spring”. The study has revealed that gender perceptions in the books are based on the realities of Soviet society. Gender practices describe discrimination against women in the professional sphere, extended motherhood, and a “working mother” contact. Communist gender equality is embodied in the images of Alisa’s “involved father” and career-oriented mother, freed from domestic labour thanks to scientific and technological progress and institutions of “social care”. In the second half of the 1980s, influenced by the conservative gender turn in the USSR, the gender order of the world described by Bulychev in the Alice books changes. Iria Guy, the alien, embodies traditional femininity. The single-career family of Iria and the earthling Tadeusz represents an ideal family life. The new perception of the gender contract is embodied in the images of Alisa and Pashka Geraskin: with the beginning of puberty, Alisa demonstrates feminine qualities, while Pashka demonstrates masculine ones. According to the author of the article, Bulychev’s world changes along with the change in the gender order in Soviet society.

Keywords: Soviet children’s literature, Kir Bulychev, Alisa Selezneva,
wonderful far away, Soviet society, gender studies