From the rise of new rapid forms of transportation in the first decades of the 20th century, planes, trains, and automobiles have formed a universal cornerstone of children’s literature. “Soviet Wings from Aerosleds to Aeroplanes” will explore the visualization of distinctly Soviet power in and around transportation technologies in Soviet children’s books of the 1920s-30s as children ride the rails, fly airplanes over uncharted territories, and zoom across the icy expanse between Moscow and Leningrad on an “Aero-sled.” This contribution will draw on adaptations of English language children’s books into Russian, as well as unique Soviet creations, in order to better understand the imaginative aesthetics of this rapidly changing period in Soviet artistic production.

Sample subjects:

Roman Karmen. Aerosani. Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1931.
Rudyard Kipling. 40 nord—50 west (40 North 50 West). Illus. by David Shterenberg. Moscow: OGIZ “Molodaia gvardiia”, 1931.
Vera Lantsetti. Polet na slet, Moscow: GIZ, 1930.
G. Smirnov. Puteshestvie Charli. Moscow: GIZ, 1924.
Stuchinskaia. Kryl’ia Sovetov, Moscow: GIZ, 1930.
Selections from the journal 30 dnei.