Marina Solomonova, owner of the Dickens and Marianna (Books and Postcards) shop room (St. Petersburg), talks about new children's books about Stalinist repression on the Rara Avis website.
Stalinist repression is trending
Stalinist repression has been trending in literature for a long time — in ours, as in Western literature, the Holocaust, such a new black one, a good decoration for events, to test the characters for internal reinforcement. Children's literature also does not hush up the topic; rather, it fails. But whoever you ask — there is almost no doubt that you need such books — both parents and teachers are ready to read and talk; “Well, what's going on? Here's what's going on, propaganda again, talking in the kitchen, you need to remember — or rather, know that we forgot ourselves — the generation has changed — because history repeats itself.” The ignorance of the younger generation about Stalinist repression is not only terrifying, but is already touching: happy people are growing up. As a genuinely young man of beautiful, confident appearance told me: “Unless it's your fault, you weren't put in jail” — with words straight from those times. It's like I didn't watch Kina — I'm not talking about Stalinist repression, I'm talking about detective stories, noir — you didn't kill, but you don't have an alibi... Today we have several children's books about the 1930s, and all of them have failed in one way or another. Why is that?
The famous “Sugar Baby”
The most famous, “Sugar Child” by Olga Gromova (“CompassGuide”, 2014), is an absolutely remarkable book in many respects: written by a modern author for modern children — a tabula rasa reader who may not know anything about Stalinist repression at all — and suddenly she enters this world, in detail, in the whole sequence of events, will go all the way with the heroine: from arrest to adulthood. A reader who is “familiar with the topic” — an adult — will also read it, because it is about rare things; there are not so many books about the childhood of “enemies of the people”, and here are the details: camp and after, where they lived and how, work, study, people nearby. To my shame, I didn't think about where all these families “went” — they were half the country in general... The disadvantages of the book are that it is a documentary, not a fiction, not a genre text, not a tightly twisted plot that makes you bite your nails on the subway, but memories; it is difficult to recommend it to children who still love little about literature. The downside of documentaries is that it is difficult for children to associate themselves with the heroine. In documentary text, it is the only one, but in artistic text it turns into an archetype embedded in the scenery of real history: most children are still more comfortable reading “the artist”; they have not yet developed the values of memory. All workshops choose fiction books based on real events rather than memoirs. You can compare “The Sugar Baby” with Annika Thor's tetralogy “Island in the Sea”: the story of Jewish sisters who came to Sweden during the war. First of all, this is the story of her older sister, Steffi, a girl, then a girl, a young woman; her personal growing up, with all the girlish troubles on the way: first love, first hate, finding herself in life — against the background of war and Jewry, parents who remained captive to Hitler's regime, anxiety and horror for them. The reader cares about the heroine as if she were herself, learning all her feelings and thoughts, and at the same time getting acquainted with the history of Europe during World War II through characters and their dialogues. The girl in The Sugar Baby doesn't care about the boys—she's not Anne Frank, she talks about her life from the perspective of an adult, and therefore talks not about the personal, but about the universal, which reduces the interest of young innocent and selfish readers.
And boys don't read it either; according to gender laws, they don't read about girls. Such things: children's literature is sheer chauvinism: girls are willing to read about boys, but boys almost never read about girls.
The most scandalous book, “Stalin's Nose” by Yevgeny Yelchin (“The Pink Giraffe”, 2013), is based on the pattern of “immersion” and role-playing: we fall into the past with almost no prefaces. The boy, the son of a KGB officer, is waiting for his dad from work and dreams of being accepted as a pioneer tomorrow, and not someone, but his dad will be invited to be the guest of honor at the festival. But dad doesn't come home, he's under arrest. The nimble neighbors kick the boy out of the room—and what's the best to waste, anyone in need will soon come for the boy, and the hero, having experienced a mixed night of hope and horror, goes to school in the morning, where no one suspects that he is no longer the pride of the class, but an enemy of the people... The characters are schematic, black and white, as are the illustrations — creepy and caricature. In fact, there is something unconcealed parody and mocking about “Stalin's Nose”; for all the gloom of the story, it concerns the absurdity of what is happening. All the characters have been pushed to the limit — so scary, so scary: the neighbors are mean, the teacher changes her mind on request. John Boyne uses the same scheme in the famous Boy in the Striped Pajamas, an example of narrating the Holocaust from a completely unexpected angle. Yelchin's heroes, who live in the backdrop of the Stalinist regime, as the elite, do not understand the true meaning of what is happening: that the prepared reader gets some legitimate, yet morally free, pleasure of horror. But what do these books give to the unprepared? The paradox is that we talk so much about the fact that “nothing is forgotten”, but I insist that children don't know what we're talking about at all. Most of them. They're not stupid, they're just lucky. The school didn't tell me so in passing that I didn't even remember it. Unfortunately, our children are poorly educated. We have to talk in three minutes about the Third Reich, the Holocaust, Schindler's List, The Belsky Brothers, Inglourious Basterds to sell Boyne. What to do with Stalin's Nose? Too bad, “Stalin's repression in three minutes for your children” is not such a nice pamphlet. But you can take the risk and try to follow the book's “game of history” principle, ask what you understand and discuss it.
Mariana Kozyreva's The Girl in Front of the Door (Scooter, 2015) is retro, with exquisite reflexive language (which failed only in the title). It was published in the 90s, but was lost and has now been reprinted. The plot is about me and my family, in history — repression and war. Adults are happy to read it, but not children. Let me emphasize once again that by “children” I mean an average student with a gadget in his pocket who reads something if he is interested. Since Kozyreva's book was published, in months, not a single child has bought it from me, only adults for themselves. The form of “memoirs” is spiritual twins with “The Sugar Baby”, which, of course, slightly devalues it, despite the social significance of the reissue in the series by the magnificent Ilya Bernstein. Child customers don't like the cover, they don't like the memoir style, they don't like the lack of a clear plot — and where does it come from, if these are memories that matter everything in them. And again, the hero is a girl.
Yulia Yakovleva's Children: 1938 (Scooter, 2015) is Yulia Yakovleva's attempt number four to solve something about Stalinist repression in modern children's literature. A very unexpected form has been chosen — a radical artistic one — a mystical novel. You could even try to play with the definition of “magical realism”. Parents and younger brother mysteriously disappear. The older sister and middle brother (the sister was a Soviet schoolgirl who was obsessed with finding spies; her brother was an ordinary half-street boy) were sleeping in the next room when the parents disappeared — the arresters had no idea that the door between the rooms in the closet was such a dark Narnia who saved the children. After catching a crazy neighbor's phrase about a “crater” in the hallway, the boy decides that crows have taken their family away. The children begin to desperately search for the crow: they will talk to the birds, turn into transparent ones, end up in an orphanage for the enemies of the people — the children of the crow, where they will be given new names, and where there will be a mess that dulls feelings and erases memories and personality... There's nothing in this book. So much has been read — and I want to fit it all in: everyday writing about Ligovka, a description of Leningrad in the thirties, and the housing problem (I wonder if all the denunciations were written solely with a desire to grab someone's room?) , propaganda, dystopia, and the hero's general maturation, the evolution of his conclusions, and the breaking of an intelligent character, turning him into a criminal hero, and family drama — longing and fear for loved ones... So many stories, so many borrowings — a piece from Chukovskaya, a piece from Kochergin — and a multi-piece gun doesn't shoot at this one; sometimes details, the unity of the plot, the joy of description disappear. The text “floats”, people appear and disappear without a trace — not because they have become victims of the regime, but rather because of the author's arbitrariness. Where did the friend from the first chapters go, with whom they pressed coins on the rails and found a note? Why then is there so much about him and the fact that they live in every way or how many of them are in the same room? Why are dialogues so miserable, general, and most importantly, modern? Why, anyway, is all ornithology an allusion to Maxim Gorky's The Thunderbird, Art Spiegelman's Mouse, or a chapter about the twins from Pamela Travers's Mary Poppins, in which children first talked to birds and then didn't understand a word when they grew up? Such a rich idea that lacked an evil editor—to finally come out the same thing, all in one piece. There are islands of unusual beauty: an episode with a popsicle — “only a spy can give you”, or a description of the life of street boys — how good it is to sleep in warm boilers, and cats still jump from above — but the mainland is still far away.
The Holocaust against repression
The genre of a story about repression automatically suggests the following constructions:
The hero's feat.
A dystopia.
Horror.
A story about love.
Family drama.
An urban legend.
The adventures of the name.
However, Russian authors in the contemporary children's literature market have to compete not with each other, or even with the Soviet heritage, but with foreign authors. I've already mentioned Annika Thor and John Boyne, and then there's Markus Zuzak, who is dearly loved by all teenagers. In other words, an alternative setting is the Holocaust, which is being actively developed down to the form of a women's novel. Boyne's new book is an example of a “goldmine” work, “The Boy at the Top of the Mountain”. Again, the “immersion” scheme — but what's wise, does it work? Boy at the top of the mountain — Boyne returns to the theme “inside the Third Reich, through the eyes of a child” (Phantom Press, 2015). The plot is the same — young souls and massive propaganda of an inhumane regime. The main character is a boy of roughly the same age as the characters in “Stalin's Nose” and “The Raven's Children”. But Boyne didn't lose a single detail, and his tone didn't change. In general, a good and ordinary child finds himself in the midst of a massive moral attack. Boyne, of course, got sophisticated again and placed the hero right next to the Fuhrer, the boy, the son of a housekeeper in Hitler's country house — wow, it's terribly interesting — and what's going to happen to this kid — you go and bite your notorious fingernails on the subway... But the Fuhrer is called Fuhrer here, not Raven — how is a child who doesn't know anything about repression supposed to decipher metaphors?
And this is where we hit a wall: how else can you write about the thirties so that the children get angry and understand that this should not happen anymore, and that there are plenty of people around who want to scare them to death again?
Translated texts are furnished by relatives. The phrase “is it well written?” it's still an empty phrase for a middle school student — they are reading stories. A well-structured plot is much more important than language at this so-called “reading little” stage. Most adults, oddly enough, are also in this phase. Hence the popularity of the English-language masslet. In this case, literature about the Holocaust and the Third Reich can become a model for our authors and editors for writing texts about repression; the moments in history are quite close in terms of intensity and number of victims; but the difference is that the Holocaust and the Third Reich were officially tried — the opinion on them is unanimous and binding — there are no sympathizers, their consequences are terrible, repetition and imitation are prosecuted by law.
Problems of comprehension and the experience of the topic
With Stalinist repression, things are very complicated here. The most difficult thing is the absurdity of what happened at that time. The Third Reich system was monstrous, but it had a clear logic: resentment against sanctions after the First World War, which resulted in a search for the culprits, and a mathematical and biological classification of these “culprits”. The novel about the Holocaust is so commercially successful that it has been worked out to the level of women and children — and there is nothing blasphemous about it — rather, it is an indicator of the persistence of the topic when the experience is so elaborate and developed that it fits into a commercially successful scheme.
This is the paradox of totalitarian regimes: they are terrible, but people are raised to be impeccable
The most terrible and incomprehensible thing about Stalinist repression is that there was no system: the extermination of a large number of people is not logically justified. This is pure paranoia. The reason was the real protection of the “red” state from internal enemies — but anyone (absolutely anyone!) could become a reason for bullying, that is, an enemy a person is what is difficult to explain even to oneself. Moreover, there was an order, a plan, and it had to be implemented. Kafka is nervously smoking on the sidelines. And no “The Wave” by Tod Strasser, a novel about a pedagogical experiment by a history teacher of the 1960s who in practice showed students how the totalitarian system works (Scooter, 2015), will still explain what it means not to stand up, not to say it out loud, not to take up arms — are we all crazy here, comrades? The fear of those times is irrational, immoral. Our generation doesn't even have to think we can understand this. That's why we can't pass it on to our children in books. Is it fear, irrationality, that defies description?
Perfect people of totalitarian regimes
Antoine de Saint-Exupery said that, in general, he doesn't care what kind of political regime is in his yard; the main thing is what kind of person he raises in the end — if that person is brave and noble — applause and respect. This is the paradox of totalitarian regimes: they are terrible, but people are raised to be impeccable and aesthetically perfect: a textbook on Soviet children's literature writes about the mission of new children's literature in the 1920s and 1930s — to educate a Soviet person ready to fight for the ideals of the new state and to fight any enemy (Soviet Children's Literature, ed. C. D. One-time). It was a time of Red Terror and then political repression — but against the background of all that was happening, we raised a pioneer hero, an October hero, remember Valentin Katayev from Son of the Regiment: “We are not slaves, we are not slaves” — children who survived hunger, war, hard work, and torture. Today's army children are as afraid as fire, and they only know about war from George Martin's books.
— I love “A Song of Fire and Fire”, have you read it? I think this is the best book anyone should read,” the sweetest girl with glasses and braces, fourteen years old, categorically tells me.
— Why are you... what is so useful for everyone there? — I'm asking, who read it, thank God.
— War, how people behave in harsh conditions.
— Why are books about the Great Patriotic War not good for you? It's also war and guts across the branches. And the Third Reich — where should the Lannisters go to them.
What a blessing our children have nothing to fear except ineradicable fears like darkness or heights. They hardly distinguish between real fear and invented fear. And we don't differentiate either. We're scaring ourselves in our thirties like Stephen King. We understand that it's different now. Thank goodness. Fear is now an attraction, a commodity.
We need real stories. With real names. What we can name our fears by looking them in the eye, turning them from real ones into bookmarks
What is the right thing to fear Stalin?
I will say in a Soviet cliché: this is what all of us involved in children's literature — children's writers, publishers, critics, teachers, librarians, psychologists (sorry, I missed) — should think about — what do we want from a little man? Laughed by advanced methodologists, “what will this book teach you?” It does exist — we believe so much that books change children that, perhaps, if it's a massive attack on the young brain, one after another, with a message, they'll really believe in something. It has been proven by international experience, both positive and negative: puritanical and Soviet. I look at a girl with braces and think, OK, Martin, so what kind of stories does she love? Scary. For the little man to read and think how great it is to be alive, that this is not the case with me, let me pour another tea. The pleasure of reading is just as much a shock as a life experience.
So fewer reflections. We need real stories. With real names. So that we can name our fears, looking them in the eye, turning them from real ones into bookmarks. Profitable. For a massive hit. The most nerve-wracking thing for adults — let's say — “will it happen again”? No, we're afraid kids will listen to the wrong people and think the wrong way. This means that we must take matters into our own hands — decisively. Fight with your own money — with cool books. The biggest childhood fear is boredom. Are they afraid of zombies? They love to be afraid of zombies, let them learn to fear Stalin as a zombie leader. There is no need for abstractions. Stalin made monsters out of people. Whether the hero is afraid or not, let him fight. And even if he dies — or rather gets saved — by a miracle, what else would they say, “We're not zombies. We're not zombies.” A modern child, like in Soviet times, needs heroic children. The laws of good literature do not depend on time and regime.
Somebody write us a good children's novel about bad Stalin.
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