Engineers of Soviet Souls: The Problem of Arkadij Gajdar
Ann
Komaromi
Soviet writers were, as Stalin said, engineers of the
soul,
and this applied doubly to Soviet children's
writers. Children's literature in the Soviet Union received
significant attention as the Party tried to find ways to properly
educate Soviet children according to the tenets of Socialist Realism
and to prepare this new generation to inherit the bright
future
in store for them. As Lidija Ginzburg and others have
noted, however, many established writers turned to children's
literature not only out of civic altruism, but also out of
self-preservation: children's literature offered a safer, freer venue
for their talents. In the works of these authors, readers sometimes
found double-voicedness or aesopian criticism: Kornej
&Chachek;ukovskij's Tarakani&shachek;&chachek;e is one
famous example. Lev Loseff also treated Evgenij &Shachek;varc's
Drakon in this vein. Arkadij Gajdar constitutes an
original example of a Soviet writer for children. A former Red Army
officer, Gajder willingly carried the Soviet struggle off the
battlefield and to the writing desk. Aside from war correspondence, he
wrote exclusively for children, penning, not without talent, inspiring
tales of correct Soviet moral development based on his own
biography. In contrast to the traditional view of Gajdar as a model
Soviet writer, Marietta &Chachek;udakova explored in detail evidence
of double-voicedness in Gajdar's later tale Sud&soft;ba
baraban&soft;&shachek;&chachek;ika (The Fate of a
Drummer Boy). Indeed, a comparison of the relatively flat
Soviet propaganda of an early work like &Shachek;kola
with the complexity of Sud&soft;ba
baraban&soft;&shachek;&chachek;ika suggests that Gajdar's
conception of his responsibility to young readers changed and became
more problematic in the context of Party control. In contrast to the
underground
messages found in &Shachek;varc and
&Chachek;ukovskij, which are of an ideological and political nature
more easily read by adults, Gajdar's hidden
meaning is
still directed specifically at children. In several
ways,Sud&soft;ba baraban&soft;&shachek;&chachek;ika
polemicizes with the ethos of Pavlik Morozov and, arguably, addresses
the confusion and alienation felt by children of compromised
parents. In this way, Gajdar remained, even as a
problematic
writer, a writer for Soviet children.