BLOOMINGTON, Ill.— Illinois Wesleyan University’s Marina Balina is forging the way to a rediscovery of children’s literature written in Soviet Russia.
For years, scholars ignored children’s literature written during the Soviet regime as merely a tool of propaganda. “Seventy-five years of Soviet children’s literature should not be dismissed that easily. It’s a shame,” said Balina, the Isaac Funk Professor of Russian Studies at Illinois Wesleyan, who recently co-edited Russian Children’s Literature and Culture (Routlegde, 2007). Almost no books have been written about Soviet children’s literature, and the few that were looked at single authors rather than trying to analyze the complex body of texts written during this time.
With her co-author Larissa Rudova, a professor of Russian at Pomona College in California, Balina is breaking new ground with the book, which is a collection of critical articles about children’s literature in Russia both during and after Soviet rule.
Balina is familiar with the children’s literature both as scholar and from her days growing up in Soviet Russia before immigrating to the United States with her family in 1988. “Soviet Russia was not the best place to have free ideas, in fact it was a challenge to remain a free thinker in that country. But Soviet children’s literature played a unique role in creating free minds, and this fact should not be ignored,” said Balina, who noted that the entertainment value placed on children’s literature gave authors more leeway in their choice of creative expression. “It was a much freer space for Russian writers to use alternative artistic devises, such as playful poetry similar to Dr. Seuss, but their work would still be publishable and considered politically correct.”