Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful people known as the Rowers who sang stories of old, played triangle guitars and danced without standing. They wore hats shaped like cups and made buildings shaped like onions and drank potions they called “little water.” They were a merry folk who loved to dance, play games and tell stories. In fact, they were the best dancers and best game-players in all the land—and best storytellers too. There were northern Rowers and southern Rowers and eastern Rowers, and each had their own songs to sing and dances to dance and stories to share by the fire.
But one day, an angry little bald man came along, leading his gang the Majority, and they stopped all the singing and dancing and fun. They took the Rowers from the north and the Rowers from the east, and made everyone dance the same dance. They took the Rowers from the south and the Rowers from the west, and made everyone sing the same song. Then they stopped all the stories and stomped out the fires because, you see, what that little man feared most was the spreading of truth, and nothing spreads faster than a really good tale. But what he didn’t know is, stomping out stories turns them into secrets and secrets spread fastest of all.
As I’ve already argued, communism and fascism are built on the same three pillars. First, revolutionary violence. Communists think it should come from the people while fascists think it should come from the State. Second, forced community. Communists choose a group and force everyone into it while fascists choose a group and push everyone else out of it. Third, totalitarianism. People usually define this as total State power, but a better definition is total ideological influence. That is, the State touches all aspects of life—everything is political, everything is a wedge issue dividing in-group from out-group, politically correct citizens from politically incorrect citizens. Slowly, the politically incorrect are not merely criticized but vilified, not merely opposition but evil.
Problem is, folks tend to resist this kind of thing. That’s why totalitarianism requires the indoctrination of children. Adults push back but children are impressionable, and if you get folks when they’re young you can keep them for life. Think of the Hitler Youth. Or the Great Japan Youth Party. Think of the Communist Youth League of China. Or the Komsomol, the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League.
Part of this indoctrination process includes doing away with classic children’s stories, which may seem a bit silly because children’s stories are totally harmless, right? But think of the stories you loved as a child. I’m willing to bet many of them were instructional tales designed to impart certain values. This is certainly true of almost all fairly tales, Aesop’s fables, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, anything by Shel Silverstein, Rudyard Kipling or Hans Christian Andersen. These stories represent societal values that both communism and fascism seek to erase in their respective revolutions.
So then you need to replace those stories with new ones that will impart new values. Proper communist and fascist values. But classic children’s stories are usually folk tales that evolved over centuries and contain the received generational wisdom of entire populations. They are also often told and retold by the finest authors of their cultures and you cannot simply wipe this away and manufacture replacements. Well, it turns out you can, but the results are fairly pathetic. Fun to read about though!
Nazi children’s literature is a subject all its own, and maybe I’ll do a future post on that, but today let’s have a quick look at some Soviet children’s literature, starting with this illustrated announcement below. It’s not a kid’s book, but it is relevant.
The left panel features characters from traditional Russian fairytales. The Firebird, the witch Baba Yaga (not that Baba Yaga), Fearless Ivan and his horse Double-Jump, Krokodil Krokodilovich. At the bottom it says, “OUT with the mysticism and fantasy of children’s books!!”
The right panel features Vladimir Lenin giving orders as little Soviet comrades in red communist scarves toil on collective farms, in factories and prepare for war. Every parent’s dream. The caption reads, “Give us the new children’s book!! Work, battle, technology, nature — the new reality of childhood.”
The New Reality of Childhood. That could be the title of a science-fiction horror movie.
Here’s a page from a book titled Vaniushka the Red Army Soldier, which reads:
I will know about everything in the world
reading about it in the newspaper
In our club, look,
there is a loudspeaker.
You really have to chuckle at the notion that Vaniushka will know everything in the world by reading about it in a Soviet newspaper. But if I’m being honest, there’s an aesthetic appeal to all this art. The messaging is disturbing, but the artists, who would not have been allowed to produce different work, were clearly talented.
This page is from a book titled October 1917-1918: Heroes and Victims of the Revolution, in which the thoughtful Soviet propagandists took time to tell kids about the nation’s heroes—a Red Army soldier, a sailor, a worker—as well as the villains—a factory owner, a prosperous farmer, a landlord, a merchant, priest. The page above reads “Worker” at the top and then at the bottom:
Slaves become eagles.
From what?
Ask a worker.
That’s a ghoulish message for a kid. Yes, there are examples of grisly children’s stories in other literary traditions—in the original story of The Little Mermaid she commits suicide at the end—but it takes on a far darker tone when the purpose is essentially a sort of political brainwashing.
The above page, from How the Revolution Was Won, reads:
The interim government was living out its last hours in the palace. All day long shots were heard outside the palace windows. At night the guns hit. From the roar, the glass rang and fell from the palace windows.
Look at their faces, sitting in misery, one with his head in his hands, the whole scene drenched in bloody red, all of them waiting to be slaughtered by the mob, separated from the vicious crowd by nothing more than a thin pane of glass. Now imagine being a young child and pondering these things as you stare at the page, and being told all this is very good and as it should be.
As noted above, manufactured art is awful, but so far the examples we’ve seen have been morally awful, but with pretty decent art. Here’s one that is awful in another way, being boring as hell. The title is 80,000 Horses, a rhyming story that tells children the abolsutely thrilling story of the Volkhov Hydroelectric Plant. The title refers to the horsepower of the plant. This is a common kind of Soviet children’s literature. The examples above mostly justify the Revolution or talk about how things are better now. Another obsession, as we see with this book, was celebrating Soviet achievements. Look, we have a big military. Wow, check out this hydroelectric plant.
Another kind of Soviet children’s literature involves books that teach kids to make things, such as their own toys, because they certainly weren’t going to be buying toys in a toy store. The above image is a layout from the 1930 title Chimpanzee and Marmoset, which showed kids how to make their own toy monkey. Looks very fun.
Okay, two more examples. This one, the 1931 book Mochin the Pioneer’s Heroism, is an example of celebrating the glories of the Soviet Union. In it, a Young Pioneer (think Soviet Boy Scouts) helps the Red Army in Tajikistan. It’s full of colorful illustrations and tells an adventurous tale. A good piece of propaganda, and the illustrator and author were no doubt proud, although within a few years, Stalin purged them both.
Finally, we have the 1930 book The Subbotnik which, like Mochin, tells kids to take part in Soviet glory. But instead of signing up to literally fight, some books tell kids to work in a factory or slave themselves in the farms. This book describes the story of a faceless young boy, which is disturbingly appropriate, who wants to help the railroad workers and finally gets his big moment when the railroad boss tells him to help unload a car of potato sacks. The boy is happy to help and the boss barks orders at him, telling him, “Eyes straight ahead! Straighten your back! Lift your chest! Look happy!”
Now isn’t that just a perfect picture of childhood joy?
By the way, if you’d like to browse some Soviet children’s book illustrations, I recommend the Princeton archives, where you can search by subjects such as “America,” “women” or “boots.” Also, here are two book recommendations: