“In our great Soviet Union the word comrade is a holy word” — Emotional relationship between children in Soviet culture

Abstract

This article examines how Soviet children were taught about emotions and emotional relationships — love and friendship — with primary reference to the Stalin era. Although self-control was the preferred model for Soviet children (as for adults), the emphasis on the importance of ‘happy’ childhood meant that behavioral codes were, in practice, more flexible than this basic position might have suggested. Children were expected to show emotions as well as to hide these. The situation with emotional relationships was comparable. In the late 1930s, the theme of ‘true friendship’ became more and more important in writing for children, which continued during and after the War. While ‘comradeship’ (disinterested and neutral) was the primary model relationship for children and adults, children’s literature and didactic texts simultaneously propound differently, and in some respects contradictory, models (e.g., in Oseeva’s famous “Vasyok Trubachov and His Comrades” (1947)). And while the handling of love was in many ways puritanical (cf. the general prohibition on writing about children’s sexuality or the introduction of same-sex education), at the same time, the simultaneous need to promote marriage led to tolerance and indeed encouragement of relations between the sexes, both in literature and in school rituals, such as parties.

Keywords: friendship; emotions, history of; childhood; moral education; the daily life of children