Creating Social Reality by Soviet Children's Publishing Companies in Ukraine in the 1920s and 1930s

Abstract

The article deals with the influence of state ideology on children, as carried out through state control/supervision of book publishing. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the peculiarities of creating (a new) social reality by means of children’s literature in the 1920s and 1930s in Ukraine. The research material is a selection of publications of the Ukrainian specialised publishing houses Ditvydav and Molodyi Bilshovyk. The results of the analysis show that 46% of the books in the corpus contain the following keywords: revolution, civil war, Pioneers, Little Octobrists, Soviet holidays, Lenin, Stalin, collective farms, collectivisation, industrialisation, metallurgy, factory, mines, and so forth, that is, they contain an emphasised ideological component. Soviet society’s rejection of the national tradition, even in the face of the policy of Ukrainianisation, is also confirmed. The dominance of Russia and its representatives in comparison with other republics in the USSR and the limitations of gender roles in the constructed worldview are also demonstrated.