Issue 2 (59)

A NEW SOCIAL REALITY IN SOVIET CHILDREN’S LITERATURE: ANTHOLOGY “BOYEVYE REBIATA” [“FIGHTING CHILDREN”] (1942–1944)
Year 2018 Number 2(59)
Pages 94-101 Type scientific article
UDC 82:087.5 BBK 83.801.1
Authors Litovskaya Maria A.
Topic SELF DESCRIPTION LANGUAGES
Summary The content of the anthology “Boyevye rebiata” [“Fighting children”] (Sverdlovsk, 1942–1958; the audience — teens aged 10–13 years living in the Urals) during the period of the great Patriotic war is reviewed. The specifics of interpretation of military reality by collective eff orts of the editor-compiler of the anthology K. V. Rozhdestvenskaia and its authors with various experience of the appeal to children’s literature are analyzed. The socialization task of the anthology is allocated as the major is to cause in the teenager respect for the Urals as the place of his full-time or temporary residence, to emphasize the importance of this rear area for military operations, to take off effects of the young reader’s inferiority because of his living in the rear. On the basis of literary analysis it is proved that creators of the almanac are based in their creative activity on the state “order” to comprehend war of 1941–1945 as domestic and being guided by a precedent event of Patriotic war of 1812. Making a start from the image of civil war created in pre-war Soviet children’s literature, authors of the almanac place emphasis on the image not of the internal conflict ours/others, but on conflict the ideal our /external disgusting stranger. They consistently form the theme of the unity of the Soviet world through development of motives of unity of the front and rear, continuity of traditions of the Russian patriotic wars, emphasize stability of structure of the Soviet society with its characteristic hierarchy of the generations, creating images of the “Fighting children” as disciplined, but initiative pupils and assistants of the seniors members of society.
Keywords literature of the Great Patriotic war period, the Soviet children’s literature, periodicals in the Urals, the anthology “Fighting children” (“Boevyie rebiata”)
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