Planets, Comets and Meteors: Foreign Writers in Soviet Children's Book Publishing
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2317-4765.rus.235893Keywords:
Book market, Children's literature, Classics, Translation, USSR, World literatureAbstract
The article is devoted to the dynamics of representation of world literature in Soviet children's books. The analysis is based on the data of the bibliographic indexes "Children's Literature" (1918-1984), compiled by I. I. Startsev and his followers. We consider general fluctuations in the intensity of publishing translations from European languages in Soviet Russia and the USSR. We start by analyzing the market share occupied by "classics" translated in the pre-Soviet era. We further discuss which European authors and texts fell into the orbit of Soviet children's book publishing and how their composition changed over time during the Soviet era. The article provides general quantitative data for the entire period. The selection of authors for translation during the NEP and Khrushchev’s Thaw is considered in somewhat more detail.
Downloads
References
ARNAUTOV, V. Notes on the Role of Romance in Working with Children (Zametki o roli romantiki v rabote s det'mi). The Path of Enlightenment, Moscow, 10, 1925. P. 146-154.
BALINA, Мarina. A Proletarian Fairy Tale in Children’s Literature of the Weimar Republic: On the Specificity of the Genre (Proletarskaja skazka v detskoj literature Vejmarskoj respubliki: k voprosu o zhanrovoj specifike). Children’s Readings: Studies in Children’s Literature (Diestkie Tchtienia), Saint Petersburg, 12(2), 2018. p. 6–19.
GOODWIN, Elena. Translating England into Russian: The Politics of Childrens Literature in the Soviet Union and Modern Russia. London: Bloomberg Publishing, 2020.
GROMOVA, Maria. Translations of slovenian children’s poetry into russian. (Slovenskaja detskaja pojezija v perevodah na russkij jazyk). Children’s Readings: Studies in Children’s Literature (Diestkie Tchtienia), Saint Petersburg, 18(2), 2021. p. 364–381.
GROMOVA, Maria. Bibliography of Slovenian Folk Tales in Russian (1861–2020) (Bibliografija slovenskih narodnyh skazok na russkom jazyke (1861–2020)). Children’s Readings: Studies in Children’s Literature (Diestkie Tchtienia), Saint Petersburg, 19(1), 2021а. p. 387–402.
HEILBRON, Johan. Towards a sociology of translation: Book translations as a cultural world-system. European journal of social theory, v. 2, n. 4, 1999, p. 429-444.
HEILBRON, Johan et SAPIRO, Gisèle. Translation: Economic and sociological perspectives. In : The Palgrave handbook of economics and language. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016. p. 373-402.
MELNIKOV, Аlexandr. On Russian Translations of Charles Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood. Children’s Readings: Studies in Children’s Literature (Diestkie Tchtienia), Saint Petersburg, v. 13(1), 2018, p. 285–309.
MASLINSKY, Kirill; MASLINSKAIA, Svetlana. “Into the Canon through Circulation: on the Inequality of Writers’ access to the Printing of Children’s Books in the Soviet era”. Children’s Readings: Studies in Children’s Literature (Diestkie Tchtienia), Saint Petersburg, 2(12), 2022. p. 145-173. https://doi.org/10.31860/2304-5817-2022-2-22-145-173.
MASLINSKY, Kirill. Bibliography of books for children 1918–1984 (Bibliographiya detskoy knigi 1918–1984). In: Repozitoriy otkrytykh dannykh po russkoy literature i fol’kloru (Institut russkoy literatury (Pushkinskiy Dom) RAN). https://doi.org/10.31860/openlit-2022.12-B010P0
MASLINSKY, Кirill. Translation of Books for Children from the Languages of People of USSR: Bibliographic Statistics (1918–1984) (Perevody detskih knig s jazykov narodov SSSR: bibliograficheskaja statistika (1922–1984)). Children’s Readings: Studies in Children’s Literature (Diestkie Tchtienia), Saint Petersburg, v. 25(1), 2024, p. 49–73. https://doi.org/10.31860/2304-5817-2024-1-25-49-73
MOREVA, Olga, Children's reading at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries (based on materials from the V.G. Belinsky Yekaterinburg Public Library). Observatory of Culture. Moscow. n. 5, 2015. p. 103-106.
RUBTSOVA, Pavla. Children's book production in 1926 (Produkcija detskoj knigi v 1926 g). New children's books, Moscow, n. 5, 1928. p. 69-77.
SAPIRO, Gisèle. Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur mondial? Le champ litteraire transnational. Paris, EHESS, Gaillimard, Seuil, 2024.
SIMONOVA, Olga. The Policies Observed in the Publication of German Literature in the Detgiz Publishing House in the Late 1940s – Early 1960s. In: Russian-German Contacts in Children’s Literature: XVIII–XX centuries. ed. Svetlana Maslinskaya. Saint Petersburg, Rostok Publishing House, 2020. p. 592–597.
SMIRNOV, Sergey. Science fiction novel by Jules Verne (Nauchno-fantasticheskij roman Zhjulja Verna). Children's and youth literature. Moscow, n. 11. 1934. p. 1-6.
STARTSEV, Ivan. Children's Literature: Bibliography [1918–1984] (Detskaja literatura: bibliografija [1918–1984]). 18 volumes. Moscow, Leningrad. 1933–1989.
TRANSCRIPT of the Editorial Council of Detgiz. March 26, 1962. (Stenogramma Redakcionnogo Soveta Detgiza. 26 marta 1962 goda). Archive of the publishing house "Children's Literature". Moscow, 1962.
TRUEL, Мyriam. Are Gavroche and Cosette Soviet Stories? Russian Adaptations of Victor Hugo’s novel “Les Misérables”. Children’s Readings: Studies in Children’s Literature (Diestkie Tchtienia), Saint Petersburg, v. 6(2), 2014, p. 366–380.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Svetlana Maslinskaia, Kirill Maslinsky
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish in RUS agree to the following terms:
a. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.
b. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal’s published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
c. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
