Grandpa Frost, Pioneers and Political Subjectivities: A Historical Analysis of Childhoods in Totalitarian Czechoslovakia through Children’s Literature
Grandpa Frost, Pioneers and Political Subjectivities: A Historical Analysis of Childhoods in Totalitarian Czechoslovakia through Children’s Literature

Summary/Abstract: This paper is an historical analysis of practices to conceptualize childhoods in Czechoslovakia during communist governance. Through the lens of the children’s magazines and literature, it explores the microcosm of everyday governance against the backdrop of the political changes of the 1950s, and then the 1970s and 1980s. The production of political subjectivities occurred as early as kindergarten age, and children’s literature and magazines were important carriers of these notions. This paper argues that the youngest children were productive powerful actors that shaped their own totalitarian childhoods, and not merely passive recipients of the strong, punitive, ideologically charged dogma of education. Through their use of literature, children in kindergartens are shown as agenting citizens, in totalitarian Czechoslovakia.

• Details
• Contents