ZAPORIZHIA AS A BATTLEFIELD BETWEEN THE FUTURE AND THE PAST IN UKRAINIAN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE OF THE 1920S AND 1930S
ZAPORIZHIA AS A BATTLEFIELD BETWEEN THE FUTURE AND THE PAST IN UKRAINIAN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE OF THE 1920S AND 1930S

Summary/Abstract: The article highlights the image of Zaporizhia in Ukrainian children's literature of the 1920s and 1930s, embodied in avant-garde sketches and traditional adventure and historical novels. The aim of the study is to present one example of the ‘colonisation’ of children, directed at forming a new identity for future citizens of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The results of the study show that Ukrainian children's literature at that time did not appeal to the real experience of children, but replaced it with a constructed reality. In particular, the space of children's literature is urbanised, and factories become an important topos – outposts of industrialisation, among which the most important was Dniprelstan. However, the construction of this plant threatened the national memory of the Cossack past. In children's literature of that time, the image of Dniprelstan and Zaporizhzhia took on the features of an industrial utopia, with which children were supposed to associate the future. Travelogues and essays about construction drew children into the discourse of power, blurring the line between adult and children's literature. At the same time, writers who were supporters of national tradition sought to fill the image of Zaporizhzhia and the Dnipro banks around it with images of the Cossack past and to affirm its value. Since children's literature of that time was generally aimed at forming a new identity, historical novels, as part of the counter-discourse, were aimed at defending the national component in it, emphasising the historical unity of the nation and preserving the system of democratic values attacked by the Bolsheviks.

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