Merry Pictures of the Little Folk: The Cartoon Magazine Veselye kartinki, or What’s Left of the Socialist “Children’s World”

• Authors: Gölz Christine
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

My paper deals with Veselye kartinki (Merry Pictures), a monthly children’s cartoon magazine launched by the Komsomol in 1956 and dedicated to the youngest generations of the “new socialists” (age 4–8). In its heydays in the early 1980s the magazine reached a circulation of 9,5 million, which indicates that Merry Pictures had become an essential part of post-Stalinist childhood. Generations of small readers found it attractive for several reasons. The journal was indeed comparatively “merry” und funny – not least because it was exempt from censorship, and so it was the only publication of that kind in the Soviet Union. Moreover, among its illustrators were a number of artists who are today well known for their participation in the nonconformist art scene (for example Ilya Kabakov and Victor Pivovarov), which gave the merry pictures their specific visual quality. The magazine proved to be an “image machine” even after the end of the Soviet Union. It survived the Soviet childhood by a good two decades and granted its characters, the little folks, an afterlife in the mass culture of the new Russia. However, this is not only the story of the magazine and its attempt to visually shape a newly created concept, arising with the Thaw, of a merry childhood that entered the currently emerging canon of visual socialism. Rather, there are two other, contradictory understandings of Merry Pictures and its Merry Folks’ Club that can be found currently. According to one, the Merry Folks are considered the first Soviet comic heroes, who were correspondingly free of politics and harmless for their readership. The other regards them as socialist “pathos formulas” in a format for children that populate the art of Moscow Conceptualists as thoroughly ideological Soviet symbols. This paper attempts to augment these two selective “remnants” with the primary history of Merry Pictures and demonstrate a productive arsenal of images and figures was developed over a half-century, precisely in the tension between everyday free spaces and political stipulations.

Keywords

EN

cartoon magazine; post-Stalinist childhood; illustrations; Merry Pictures

• Publisher: Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT – Wrocławskie Wydawnictwo Oświatowe
• Journal: Filoteknos
• Year: 2019
• Issue: 9
• Pages: 138–155

Contributors

author

Gölz Christine

• Leibniz-Institut für Geschichte und Kultur des östlichen Europa

References

• A.V. 2001. S’’el “Veselye kartinki“? Poluiubilei. – Nezavisimaja gazeta 10.4.2001 (http://exlibris.ng.ru/fakty/2001-10-14/7_anniversary.html)
• Alaniz, José 2010. Komiks. Comic Art in Russia. Washington: University Press of Washington 2010.
• Aleksandrov, Iurii 2010. Russkii komiks. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 2010.
• Bartenev, Michail 1990. Dorogie vzroslye!. – Veselye kartinki 2 (1990).
• Bienert, Dorothee 2001. Paradigma “Kind” – oder Warum hat das Häschen ein Flugzeug zwischen den Ohren?, – Pivovarov, Viktor: Philemon. Berlin: ifa 2001, 6–18.
• Bol’shaia sovetskaia enciklopedia (BSE) [1978]. Moscow: Izd. Sovetskaja Enciklopedija 1978.
• Chizhikov, Viktor 2010a. [V. Ch.] Kartinki iz detstva. TV-programme, 2010. http://video.yandex.ru/users/listok-v-kletku/view/2/.
• Chizhikov, Viktor (interviewed by Konstantin Agunovich) 2010b. Khudozhnik Viktor Chizhikov ob olimpiiskom myshke, Samodelkine i khudozhnikakh-kontseptualistakh. – afisha.gorod, 14.12.2010, http://gorod.afisha.ru/archive/8184/.
• Condee, Nancy (ed.) 1995. Soviet hieroglyphics: visual culture in late twentieth-century Russia. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana UP 1995.
• Gerasimenko, Pavel 2013. Conceptualists’ Double Life. Ilya Kabakov and Viktor Pivovarov, Children’s Books Artists (05.03.2013). – artterritory. Baltic, Russian and Scandinavian Art Territory. http://www.arterritory.com/en/lifestyle/books_magazines/2088-conceptualists_double_life/.
• Gölz, Christine 2005. Buratino – der sowjetische Pinocchio. Zur Geschichte eines importierten Nationalhelden. – Katrin Berwanger and Peter Kosta (eds.)., Stereotyp und Geschichtsmythos in Kunst und Sprache. (= Vergleichende Studien zu den slavischen Sprachen und Literaturen, Bd. 11). Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang 2005, 385–403.
• Gölz, Christine 2007/8. Kindheit und der “Große Vaterländische Krieg”. Erzählstrategien zur Demythologisierung eines sowjetischen Mythos bei Michail Kononov, Pavel Pepperštejn und Sergej Anufriev. – Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie 65,2 (2007/2008), 327–351.
• Groys, Boris 1991. Jurij Albert. – Groys, Boris: Zeitgenössische Kunst aus Moskau. Von der Neo-Avantgarde zum Post-Stalinismus. München: Klinkhardt & Biermann 1991.
• Harrison, Anya 2014. Past future perfect: the dream worlds of artist Pavel Pepperstein. – The Calvert Journal (13.3.2014), http://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/show/2164/dream-worlds-artist-russian-pavel-pepperstein.
• Kabakov, Ilya 2001. Die 60er und 70er Jahre. Aufzeichnungen über das inoffizielle Leben in Moskau. Vienna: Passagen Verlag 2001.
• Kelly, Catriona 2005. Riding the Magic Carpet: Children and Leader Cult in the Stalin Era. – The Slavic and East European Journal, 49, 2, Special Forum Issue: Russian Children’s Literature: Changing Paradigms (Summer, 2005), 199–224.
• Komar, Vitaly 2010. Pole deistviia. Moskovskaia Kontseptual’naia Shkola i ee kontekst; 70-80e gody XX veka. (exhibition catalogue) Moscow: Fond kul’tury Ekaterina 2010.
• Kukulin, I., M. Lipovetski and M. Maiofis (eds.) 2008. Veselye chelovechki: Kul’turnye geroi sovetskogo detstva. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 2008.
• Lapitskii, Isaak 1958. V teni neboskrobov. Moscow 1958.
• Lipovetskii, Michail 2001. Pamjati Buratino. – Iskusstvo kino 5 (2001).
• Monastyrskii, Andrei (ed.) 1999. Slovar terminov Moskovskoi Konceptual’noi shkoly. Moscow: Ad Marginem 1999.
• Monsurov, Nikolai S. 1986. Children’s Publications in the Soviet Union. – Sibermann, Alphons and Dyroff, H.-D., eds., Comics and Visual Culture. Research Studies from Ten Countries. München–New York–London–Paris: K.G. Saur 1986, 144–157.
• Pepperstein, Pavel 2002. Mifogennaia liubov’ kast. T. 2. Moscow: Ad Marginem, 2002.
• Pivovarov, Viktor 2001. Vliublennyi agent. Moscow: NLO 2001.
• Semenov, Leonid and Iuri Postnikov 1964. Neobyknovennye prikliucheniia znamenitogo puteshestvennika Peti Ryzhnika i ego druzei Mika i Muka. Moscow: Malysh 1964. [Reprint: Postnikov [Druzhkov], Iuri: Neobyknovennye prikliucheniia znamenitogo puteshestvennika Peti Ryzhnika i ego druzei Mika i Muka (Ill.: Ivan Semenov). Moscow: Melik- Pashaev publ. 2014].
• Sergeev, Leonid 2005. Zakoldovainaia. Belyj list bumagi. Povest’ dlia podrostkov i vzroslykh, kotorye zanimaiutsya zhivopisiu ili interesuiutsia eiu, ili prosto liubiat khudozhnikov. – Sergeev, Leonid: Zakoldovannaia. Povesti i rasskazy. Moscow: AGUMA 2005, online: chronos. Vsemirnaia istoria v internete, http://hrono.ru/libris/lib_s/ser153.php
• Shapiro, Feliks 2011. Veselye kartinki. (Videointerview, dir. Aleksandra Kirillina), www.redakcia.ru, 3.2.2011, http://youtu.be/-FBsTc6u-KE.
• Shapiro, Feliks 2012. “Glavnoe k chemu my stremilis’, chtoby bylo smeshno”. – Papmambuk. Dlia tekh kto chitaet detiam, 4.12.2012, http://www.papmambook.ru/articles/428/
• Vail Petr and Aleksandr Genis 2001. 60-e. Mir sovetskogo cheloveka. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. 2001.
• Vasil’eva, Zhanna 2008. Pivovarov i drugie mudretsy. – Lekhaim (Kislev) 12, 2008, http://www.lechaim.ru/ARHIV/200/vasileva.htm.
• Zvezdochetov, Konstantin 2001. Chippoliuciia. 2000. Mul’tipleks. 100x80. ARTchronika. International Edition 3 (2001), 141.