Article

Name: PROPAGANDA MYTHS IN «SIBERIAN CHILDREN’S MAGAZINE»: «LENIN’S PUPILS», YOUNG PIONEERS AT A SHAMANISTIC SÉANCE, «TELBES»

Authors: E. V. Kapinos

Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section

Abstract: The article analyzes the first issue of «Siberian Children’s Magazine» whose structure and subjects served as a model for all subsequent issues of the journal. A review of the texts included in the first issue demonstrates the composition of a provincial avant-garde children’s magazine of the 1920s, its main subjects and their sequence, and the aesthetics of «the literature of fact» in its children’s journal variety. A sequential analysis of the issue’s materials shows that virtually all of them reflected certain key ideas of the Soviet propaganda. While each individual text is relatively straightforward and sketchy, the selection and arrangement of the various texts in the journal create the impression of a multifaceted and thoroughly thought through ideological construct. As a result, the issue presents itself as a striking unified text that is grounded in history. In addition to an overview of contemporary politics (V. Vegman’s article «Lenin and His Pupils» tells schoolchildren about Lenin’s «pupils» Bukharin, Kalinin, Voroshilov and Kuibyshev), it includes a discussion of the Siberian past and the myth of Telbes. The subject of Siberia’s ethnic peculiarity (Gleb Pushkarev’s article «In the Mountain Ranges») combines negative connotations with an attractive couleur locale. M. Kravkov’s article «What is Telbes» makes use of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s recipes to create a Siberian industrial neo-myth. Specifically, the treatment of the subject of Telbes follows pre-existing literary sources such as Mayakovsky’s poem «To the Workers of Kursk Who Extracted the First Ore» (1923). According to its initial concept (which was not realized in the 1920s), the poem was to exist not as a pure text but rather as a text-image or a poster poem consisting of verses embedded into a series of photomontages by Yuri Rozhkov. Recently, a reconstruction of «To the Workers of Kursk» as a poster poem was published as part of European University’s «Avant-Garde» book series. The text of «Siberian Children’s Magazine », similar to the text of Mayakovsky’s poem and numerous other avant-garde texts, is inseparable from its illustrations. Not only Kravkov’s essay on Telbes but the whole journal issue is a collage which consists of deliberately arranged texts, photographs and drawings and which reminds one, both in its overall design and in particular details, of Rozhkov’s photomontages.

Keywords: avant-garde, «siberian children’s magazine», a. anson, a. kurs, «the literature of fact», poster collage, photomontage, m. kravkov, g. pushkarev, v. vegman, yu. rozhkov, v. mayakovsky

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