Soviet Childhood Evolution in the 1940s Primers
Soviet Childhood Evolution in the 1940s Primers

Summary/Abstract: The authors investigate specific features and stages through which the “image of the Soviet child” construct was shaped. By analyzing three 1946-1948 Primers they demonstrate the emergence of the social iconography of children’s images, and show how different ideologically-charged constructs were selected. Research is based on the historical and cultural methodology founded on recording a wide range of semantic visual and verbalized meanings. By elucidating the principal block of meanings, one can arrive at when and how the ”image of the Soviet child” was coded and re-coded. The authors define three such blocks: existential, culture-producing, ideological and political. The tenet of the article is that each of these blocks would be foregrounded depending both on the overall ideological situation and on the socioeconomic tasks of a particular post-war year.

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