«...Sinless people, almost ‘holy’»: “Mister Twister”, Samuil Marshak and taboo

Abstract

In contribution by Valery Vjugin, entitled «...Sinless people, almost ‘holy’: “Mister Twister”, Samuil Marshak and taboo», examines Samuil Marshak’s famous poem in the light of explicit and implicit taboos typical of Soviet culture. Why the poetic strategy employed by Samuil Marshak was so successful in the context of political terror and various forms of censorship? How this strategy was tied to literary practices of the Symbolist movement and avant-garde, resisting them, and how it was connected to socialist realism. These are the questions the author tackles by rereading this text.   Keywords: works by Marshak, soviet poetry for children