Russian Children's Literature After Communism (Research Brief)

My research examines the enormous and transformative changes in the children’s literature industry since the fall of the Soviet Union, with special attention to the representation of social values, individualism, and visual materials in post-Soviet children’s literature. What was once a highly regulated, centralized system and an ideological priority under the Soviet regime has since given way to a decentralized industry promoting new genres, literary forms, and new Russian heroes, many of which have been heavily influenced by Western models. The resulting “new tradition” of post-Soviet writing for children is marked by a conscious connection to the Russian and Soviet cultural legacy, and ambivalent treatments of such themes as freedom, individualism, and pluralism. One aim of this project is to explore how the new children’s literature has shaped developing notions of agency and “everyday democracy” among new generations of Russians, while reasserting a vision of post-Soviet Russian identity and culture. This project also seeks to fill the significant gap in knowledge concerning the effects of economic collapse, globalization, and social change on Russian youth after 1991.

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Andrea Lanoux, of Connecticut College, was a 2010-11 Short-Term Travel Grants (STG) fellow.