SOVIET “BLACK LIST” REVISED

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 2 December 1933, Page 14

SOVIET “BLACK LIST” REVISED

/"YN 'September 14 'the ‘Central ComG mittee of the Communist Party of the UjS.SJR. formally resolved that the youth of Russia is being fed with the wrong sort of reading matter, that it cannot .thrive on propaganda alone, and must be supplied with ‘ ‘classical children’s literature” and fairy tales, writes the Riga correspondent of “ The London Times.” This decision maiiks the achievement of a real miniriture counter-revolution at Moscow. It reverses thfe policy of the last fifteen years and restores to their former place .the works .of writers which have been under a. ban. Old favourites ard to he republished in “hundreds of thousands of copies.” The resolution explicitly requires that the first new 'book shall be a Russian translation of “ißobinson Crusoe,” a work hitherto regarded as*poison for the minds bf budding Communists, being officially described in 1931 as “the testament Of (that imperialist cultuie which teaches coloured races to look up to 'the white man, a book which reflects' the atmosphere of the English bourgeoisie and the spirit of the English type of isailbr-bolonist. ” The' second book prescribed fbr republication is “Gulliver’s Travels,” which has always figured on the Soviet “red-list” as a -woi-k which “violently attacks the bourgeois (system.” It is now to be issued in “mass quantities.” The choice of fairy tales for the- “Oktyabryata,” or Tiny 'Tots, is Ait

Classical Literature for Juveniles

left to a committee. This innovation requires a revision of the ‘‘blacklist,” which has htiherto banned all the fairy tales of Anderson, Grimm, Pcrrault’ and Haug as “likely .to miislead the minds of impressionable children,” who must from the .start be “imbued with the principles of collectivism, socialist construe tavity, and class-warfare.”

To carry out the new reform of reading, matter for children a new Department has been created, called “Dyetzig” (Children’s iState Publishing: Department). 'Comrade iN. I. Smirnog has been appointed Director of the Department, with instructions to work on very broad lines. No edition of any book is to consist of fewer than 20,000 copies. The decision of the 'Soviet authorities to revert to “classical chldren’s literature,” beginning with “ißobinson Crusoe,” and going on to Hans Andersen and Grimm, represents, a very radical change of opinion (remarks “The Observer”). These books have all been condemned as “antirevolutionary,” and certainly’ they are wr.itteri from the “bourgeois” point of view. They deal with kings and queens and princesses; and princesses, in particular, are presented in a highly favourable light. “Cinderella” alone, with its prince and its (finery and its fairy godmother, and ills grievous social inequalities, must tread on half a dozen 'Soviet corns.