Welcome to the new books network. Hello everybody. This is Marshall Poe. I'm the editor of the new books network and you're listening to an episode in the Grinnell College Artists and Authors podcast and today I'm very happy to say we have Kelly Harold on the show and we'll be talking about a book that she co-authored with Andrea Leno and Olga Bukiina.
I did that right didn't I? I got it right. Yeah, I'm throwing out of communism Russian literature for children and teens from 1991 to 2017 kind of tragically timely book. I think as all the listeners will know given what's going on in Russia and Ukraine generally but let's welcome Kelly to the show.
Welcome Kelly. Thank you. Hi Marshall. Could you begin the interview by telling us a little bit about yourself?
Sure. I've been teaching at Grinnell for 23 years in the Russian Department and in the linguistics concentration. I teach Russian language at all levels and also I'm sort of the primary teacher of literature and translation I teach the novel the short story tell story on a book of and I want to do a new course on Shekhov in the future. I began my career in the late 18th to early 19th century writing on memoirs.
Now more is written in French and I'm a California Californian by Orgin. So you're loving the Grinnell weather? I can't. Even after 23 years I have my happy lamp in my office.
I barely survived till May but usually the fall is nice. Well when I was at Grinnell I graduated in 84 John Mohan. Yes I have taken over a lot of his courses. Yes I took the Tolstoy course from him and it was really wonderful and I should also say that I'm still in touch on Facebook with people who took that course.
That's wonderful. Actually a daily basis. Yes. I'm in contact with many of them who are in that wonderful course.
I didn't think the Despéesky course. Another colleague teaches the Despéesky course. Yeah a little bit too dark for me. Well I could you know I teach Despéesky in the novel but I could not do a whole semester of him.
It's not great. It sounds great. I'm a good story fan. I am too.
Absolutely brilliant. Yeah. Or maybe we should go for Google. I don't know is Google still considered Russian or is it Ukrainian now?
That's a fight over this. That's a really good question that I don't know the answer to. Well if it's not even go there. Yeah.
He was the inventor of kind of modern satiric. Absolutely. It's a real comedy. I was thinking of him as Woody Allen before his time.
Yes that's a nice analogy. When I teach this short story we of course read a lot of Google but and students always really respond. That's what I'd like teaching at Grinnell. I love teaching at Grinnell.
I've stayed here despite the weather and despite living in a small town for this many years. I love working with our students. They're a good group. Yes that was my experience as well.
I came to Kansas and went to Grinnell and I thought well I'm surrounded by smart people. Right. Not that people in Kansas aren't smart. They were playing smart but yeah.
No I was actually my parents are from Kansas. I always say to Kansas action. I know it's not the right adjective. I can't get Kansas.
I think it's what I am. Anyway so let's turn to the book. Why did you write growing out of communism and what were you hoping to accomplish with it? Well it started out almost as a general interest.
So Andrea, Leno and I are very close friends. We went to graduate school together. We both spent a lot of time in Russia in the 1990s and my first trip was in 92. I think hers was she still managed to visit the Soviet Union but I was unable to when I was in college and 92 was my first trip and we would be back every single year throughout the 1990s and we started noticing all of a sudden these books outside Metro stations and children's books and we were both drawn to different aspects of these.
She was really interested in this sort of influx of branded literature and at the time it was brands that had lost popularity in the US. So Barbie was on the downswing in the 1990s. It has since recovered a little bit. My little pony had practically disappeared in the US but in Russia it was a big deal and I was really interested in which translations were coming into Russia and how Russians were translating middle grade or young adult fiction.
So we just were you know conversing with each other about it in the early 2000s and started giving conference papers mid 2000s and every time we would talk about I gave a few papers on Harry Potter translated into Russian and various sort of scandals and around the translation of Harry Potter as well as multiple fan translations of Harry Potter and it was interesting to me you know what did Russian translators who have sort of a different approach to translations than we do. What were they doing with these works and she was giving presentations on how Barbie was perceived or presented in Russia and when we would get these papers at ACs or at seal or even children's literature association we would get questions like but you know since the Soviet Union there isn't any good Russian children's literature there's no new Russian children's literature and somewhere starting in I think she in 2010 went to Russia and began looking at that question and I followed in 2011 and started interviewing people and what we saw was there was a story here that little by little there was being born a new Russian children's literature that was different from translated literature although that was very influential it was different from the Soviet past which has a very you know prominent and important children's literature canon really it's unshakable right people everyone read the same texts you know Prince runs were in the five million copies all children read the same books they all know Chikovsky's telephone right which we still teach in Russian language classes at Grinnell and but and then I followed the next year in 2011 and started interviewing these new publishing houses that were not Western publishing houses not big Russian ones not former Soviet publishing houses new small publishing houses that were producing original work and essentially we followed these these texts the writers the communities the publishing houses for eight nine years and while writing on them at the same time and sometime around 2014 2015 we brought in Olga Buchina who is formerly from Moscow most of her family is still in Moscow but lives in New York City now and she is one of the most well-known translators of American children's literature and British in to Russian and knows every single person in the community so between the three of us we were able to describe what was happening and this story this book emerged of this essentially the birth of a new literature I want to take a step back just a listener's sake to 1991 I was very 1991 I actually saw the flag come down yeah I saw it yeah and you mentioned subway stops and American this is gonna be very strange because in 1991 subway stops is where all commerce was done that's right like a tell everybody had a stall everyone had a stall people were selling their old some of their I see the Chekhov you know Polnayas the baronya the full works of Chekhov behind me that I bought it at subway station in 1992 and there was a huge number of new titles just yes normless number of titles appear I don't remember my Russian friends were just shocked by what was available yes brought out of the basement or wherever they had them suddenly they were on sale things that would not have been on the market let's say in the Soviet Union but it was all there and very suddenly and there were tons of translations very quickly I remember detective book were hugely popular translated in their thousands yes and also Harlequin which was Harlequin romances where I mean by 1992 93 outside the Metro station in translations yeah yeah so since then I suppose they probably moved into the stores yeah it's probably good so obviously doesn't have to stand outside of the whole box because not excellent I wanted you to set this page a little bit for us and I'm gonna ask you about what children's literature was like in the Soviet Union I understand this is a very broad question because the Soviet Union changed a lot yeah I have own a book that was published in about 1930 and it is it's a primer for I would say probably third or fourth graders and this thing is full blown Marxist Leninist yes it's got lots of classical in it and good guys and bad guys very didactic extraordinarily propagandistic yes probably had a print run of 10 million or something and and and it kind of I so on this book as I say and it really kind of shocked me but then again I imagine things have changed a lot changed a lot after 1953 especially can you talk a little bit about children's literature in the Soviet epoch is other generalizations that can be made absolutely so the first chapter in the book which was primarily co-op primarily written by Andrea Lanue basically chronicles what happens in the Soviet Union and what was this canon that everyone knew and what's interesting about Soviet children's literature is at least in its beginnings it was very innovative it poetry was the primary sort of genre or method and there were a lot of writers who couldn't write adult fiction who were able to write children's literature or to translate so lots of wonderful poetry less didactic from a Soviet point of view although the goal was to create a good Soviet citizen so if you look at Chikovsky's work you know there's a lot of focus on good guys and bad guys how to be a good Soviet citizen how to be clean but they're also really fun in after Stalin and in the 1930s when the Soviet Soviet writers were unionized essentially things take a turn pros become predominant and books like the one you're describing it become very widespread nevertheless there are still some adventure stories that have an element of fun to them although at this period of time in the 1930s a predominant sort of idea comes into Soviet children's literature and that is the notion of a happy childhood so every child should have a happy even magical childhood and you the darkness can't really be a part of it in any real way which is not true of the works in the 1920s and this happy childhood really persists into the post-Soviet Union so you might have kids going on adventures in these books of the 1930s and until the war but they all take place maybe in the forest or on a hiking trip you know there may not be any parents around but the threats are all ones that they can deal with by working as a team as working as you know a group of children together it's all the communal winds in these books and there's always a happy ending in in the war period and in the post-war period Soviet heroes become the primary narratives and in fact right now the three of us are putting together a two-volume set of translations for an English-speaking audience of Soviet and then post-Soviet children's literature and we were we had a hard time selecting texts that would be entertaining enough for an English-reading audience lots of them are about you know young teens who joined the war efforts and are victorious but the pros is all it's pretty boring I'm pretty dull tails and then of course after Khrushchev I mean after Stalin dies and during the thaw we do start to see again sort of lighter touch in children's literature and this holds until the 1980s where darkness starts to creep in and this is also really the first time where we see some attention paid to what we call in the book Adolescence as a adolescent literature as opposed to young adult literature because it's not quite the same as like American young adult literature in many ways but you'll see things like Chuchula Scarecrow where the focus is on kind of a terrible bullying in school and it doesn't quite have a happy ending so you start to see sort of the darkness of the end of the Soviet period and the uncertainty showing up in children's texts as well especially ones for older children but the main thing about the entire Soviet period is that again like the book you had the print run in five million is that there were certain works like Timor and his gang that every child knew so much so that they even formed their own societies of Timorites or whatever we want to call them in English where kids would sort of replicate what these children did in the books yeah and it was all you know so every child read the same books I was very interested in what you said about the happy magical Soviet childhood and I'll make a ridiculous generalization here every one of my friends most of whom probably grew up in the 50s and the 60s were adolescents in the 70s they described their childhoods as nothing but wonderful yes absolutely but just the greatest thing ever that wasn't my childhood I can tell you that right and I think children's books had a lot to do with it and you know there was actually you know as you know a whole system of activities that just like all the same books that all children did right the summer camp experience for a month you were sent away or or spending your whole summer at the Dacha with your grandmother just wandering around the countryside even some people even fondly remember kartoshka the weeks where you had to go date potatoes I mean did that yes always ran away he didn't like that but I have friends now who were fought we'll call that fondly you know you're out there with your 13 year old girlfriends picking potatoes and not sitting in a school what Nick where you go and give your labor away for free to the Soviets I did that too and it was quite fun I gotta tell you yes so let's move a little bit past the Soviet Union so who published books in the Soviet period and just very briefly let's let's kind of lay the terrain there so after 1930s there was basically only one major publishing house called Dittkes and primarily based out of Moscow but also in St. Petersburg they published everything in the 1920s there were still independent publishing houses but in beginning around 1931 that was all over so yes yeah the reason I asked this question is to again set this page for the next question which is how did publishers emerge this was a very monolithic publishing environment right yeah how did new publishers emerge in 1901 I mean how do you even do it I'm just interested in that yes so in the 1990s with privatization and especially with the new laws that allowed for private or joint jointly held enterprises people started forming publishing houses out of their apartments so the two biggest publishing houses in Russia today but at least until February 24 2022 or is it the 23rd 24 I think in any case are ex-mo and esta and and when I say the largest between the two of them they have 30 to 40 percent of the market which is of course not like the Soviet era where Dittkes had 95 percent of the market let's say it was just in one case two people in another case three they created these publishing houses and publishing houses were built in the early 90s mid 90s on translations that's where they earn their money that's how they could make money fast yeah let me I was gonna interrupt you that that leads directly to my next question and that is this is kind of the low-hanging fruit the translation play that's right and I was wondering how they pick the books they would translate how they translated them yes did they bother with copyright I did they're all kinds of questions here when you want to translate Harry Potter or Barbie whatever it is right yeah I'm wondering how they negotiated that okay so in the very beginning what they did was basically fill a pent up demand for books that were not allowed to be translated in the Soviet Union right and a lot of those were in the public domain so they did not have to get rights and in fact I wouldn't say it was until the late 1990s that rights negotiations really began in an international way where Russians were doing conducting publishing business in the same way as everywhere else where you obtain the right set of rights fair or just directly negotiating before then they just published what wasn't allowed to be published right or well or you know I remember this yes Enid Blighton was published in children's literature just immediately into great monetary success right and you think of how many books Enid Blighton wrote I don't know a hundred maybe those were all out there for free I got the Christie I think was brought in as well not that I maybe she came in pre-Soviet but this ability to publish things that were already available but not allowed in the Soviet Union was where the first money-making this is what built these publishing houses and there was a great hunger for these what what Russians say is Western texts absolutely and you mentioned the detective novel all for adults and also for children this became things that people who had been journalists writers of other kind began writing in the 1990s as well right genre fiction that could be written fairly quickly but already in a Russian setting as opposed to a Western setting these were some of the first works that were original right and there is an endless stream of children's and YA as we call it books available eventually they found Russian authors right that's right probably were a lot of people that wanted to write these things absolutely tough this is and up supply yes and we see this actually first in a group of poets called the Black Hen Collective who some of them were still writing in the Soviet era but they banded together and published a manifesto just like poets did in the 1920s this is what our poetry is going to do for the world and they were some of the first original and original writers in children's literature and they took on like the early Soviet poets a playful tone but they made an explicit statement in their manifesto which was we are going to treat children differently there's going to be a new adult child relationship one in which we respect the child's point of view right we're not going to tell them you know you need to do this you need to do that we're going to respect the child for who the child is and that was a completely different yes idea of child agency right and the relationship to an authority figure yeah I'm wondering how they dealt with certain themes in Western children and YA literature I'm thinking of a specific book and I don't know how to classify it watershed down yes that is a dark book yes that book is dim and I'm wondering did they cotton on to these books were they afraid of them because a lot of Western children's literature is dark I mean again I have a 13 or 14 year old and I'm telling you some of the things they read I'm like wow right it's kind of dark children took to these books but some of their parents did not yeah right and already by the end of the 1990s parents and some educators were saying things like we want the Soviet classics back that's the only place there is good children's literature this stuff from the West it's chair NUHA is shepukha yeah it's it's say other words to it's dark nonsense let's go with that then it's not suitable for our children a lot of American conservatives say that that's true that's true that is also true although I don't think they read watershed down I don't think they don't even know our shit down is a great book by the way very good book maybe fitted more to adults but yeah so yes so you mentioned the classics and and again I'm gonna make ridiculous generalizations here literature with a capital has a different status in Russia than doesn't the United States I don't know about your but it just yes and this notion of classic literature is a real thing it's absolutely they can identify it right not complicated to them right I'm wondering how they squared their understanding of classic literature with a capital out with all of these new books they did not square until very very recently and this is in a way what we describe in this book so everything that was sort of written between let's say until about 2013 was seen as bad literature this is not what we want our children to read with the exception of some of those early poets I mentioned in the Black Hand Collective that this has nothing to do with the children's literature we grew up with and we know and again you mentioned Russians have this idea about literature but children's literature has this additional thing where in every country and in every culture where parents want their children to read what they read and what was important to them so it tends also to be kind of a conservative slow-moving field of literature for that reason push back against these books and we do find a radio oh radio programs in newspapers parents with one another and then you know by the end of the 90s as the internet grows hold you can find endless endless live journal posts especially because Russians at least again till a month ago continue to use live journal as a blogging platform on live live which is Russia's version of good what is it good reads good reads yeah parents teachers other journalists educators talking about how this new literature is harmful to their children yeah well this goes all the way back to Plato corrupting the youth and it's not giving them again the notion of happy childhood and and or and or a happy ending right and that's one thing that they particularly these early readers latched on to which is how can you give a child a book that doesn't have a happy ending yeah that's that's our role and none of the YA books that my kids read have really happy endings oh no I keep using this word dark but it's good to live yes and they love them yes yes yes that's what's I what I find so interesting about children's literature and YA literature and other cultures is that you know they really do take on the the mores of a certain a given culture whatever that is so American YA tends to be although this has changed in the last two years and this is off the topic but American literature tended to be highly individualistic it is about you the teenage individual who has to solve your own problems in the face of extreme adversity but last couple years that's changed a little bit right yeah there's a more sort of communal social justice element to American really recent American YA so are there any particular titles and I don't want to put you on this live it may not be are there any particular titles that really enrage these Russian I wouldn't call the conservatives but something in right in this context with the doc Harry Potter is going to be the end of our youth or 100 games is going to be the end of our youth actually Harry Potter is relatively well received unlike with American conservatives the magic doesn't throw Russian parents they like that element and Philip Pullman's his dark materials also seen as good literature with Russian parents honestly it is detective fiction horror which has become quite popular and really cheap Western picture books about we discuss one that's about shopping for example about sort of consumerism those are the ones that are really upsetting to parents Barbie right there have even been like anti-barbie events in Russia yeah but this this is not who we are I mean I'm not either I could say it's a combination of you know for the younger children this sort of bright consumerist kind of cheap things that parents find tacky and not offering anything of worth to their children and then for the older kids series fiction genre fiction novels they see without literary qualities yeah right there are some kind of two sort of areas of and you know and when you walk into a bookstore since about I don't I don't know 2012 2013 you go into the children's section it's huge I mean it's it's something you couldn't even imagine in the Soviet period it looks like you know the Barnes and Noble now and the ones that draw your attention are exactly these types of work and I think it's really hard for both children and for their parents to find more of this real quality Russian children's and young adult literature that's being written at home is amongst all of that right are the Soviet titles being republished now and people 100% yes and some with new beautiful illustrations and with you know quality materials so yeah I don't want to deep into this but you know what's going on right now is a kind of culture clash yes I mean people I very much esteem and love in Russia look at some aspects of Western culture and they are scratching their heads right right 100% however they do prefer the paper quality the the binding quality of hardback books of the type that we have in the US great yeah so that is you know so all the Soviet classics are if you look at a top 10 list of what is sold for children the authors are all the same Chukwoski moshok but it's it's like a top 10 of Soviet children's literature and then there might be one other Russian new Russian name in there there's a very very popular fantasy writer called Natalia Sherba and her books are also very well sold right well I mean you pointed I mean I'll be honest with you as a parent I don't pay a lot of attention to what it shows reading yes I think that's true of Russian turns no it is not attention yes a lot of attention until children are about 13 and then those I mean they pay attention to it but it's harder now they read on their phones they read on other devices and they get recommendations from their friends yeah so one thing I noticed about my daughter my daughter my middle daughter she's 13 is fanfiction yes there are a lot of them has that taken off in Russian my daughter no fanfiction so much fanfiction in a way the first translation of Harry Potter was an online activity where multiple people did translation so that into Russia so then and you know JK Rowling is very litigious yes she sort of forced the Russian marketplace to do an official translation because unofficial translations existed in many varieties and teens were reading them and I have lost track of you know that's all right is there a Russian equivalent of JK Rowling I mean is there somebody that a Russian parent would go oh yes this author here this one I think Natalia Sherba is the Russian equivalent at this point and she her first publication I think was in 2013 so it was relatively late how's any of this may be kind of an unfair question but has well I'll put it most directly has Putin had anything to do with this is there is there because in Russia the state is often involved in things and that's the weirdest part of this story is the Russian government paid no attention to children's literature from 1991 until 2013 in 2013 that they they the law on the protection of minors was came into force I think it was written in the year before but basically the law says that you cannot promote homosexuality or alternative lifestyles and anyway to children all my children are interested in and it even took a couple of years until the government started turning to certain work certain writers interviewing them there's one of the few Russian YA novels or adolescent novels that has been translated into English in the US is called in English it's called Play in the Game and it features the young protagonist who's questioning his sexuality but his mentor is a young openly homosexual man and it takes place in a puppet theater which is a little unusual to an American show and in the country but not only does this teen not really know who he is but his best friend is a girl who goes by the name Sashok and she presents herself as almost a non-binary character exactly and so that author no longer lives in the country and while it's manages to still be published it has to be published with these big almost like the British cigarette packets that a big label on them that says 18 plus so this is by the Ministry of Culture I forget the guys name there enough what is it I think it maybe doesn't I don't remember but the only thing I know about the Minister of Culture is to plagiarize my dissertation he played right the book I wrote he played right the book I wrote yeah my friends and Moscow as his dissertation yes that's another I would say that he didn't plagiarize it enough because he got a lot of criticism my book is good I'm going to take more of it yeah so it wasn't really until 1516 17 where actual writers were called in for the contents of their work or certain performances at book fairs which are a very important thing in Russia were censored or shut down so is there a new Sami's got a new kind of so do these are these books truly banned or people are passing them around there people are passing them around they are not banned they're just published as for adults yeah I see one of my favorite stories is a recent novel that's written by a wonderful bill of Russian couple who write write in Russian and travel to Moscow all the time I've met them at several different conferences and they they wrote an introduction to their book this book is marked 18 plus and that is because the heroine is a lesbian now you know that and your own parents and teens it's up to you right so yes but I mean I don't again sometimes I wonder is this book a closed circle did we just describe a real flourishing of new texts for children's and teens that presents a new reality for them they have a different agency than they had in Soviet books they have a new sort of identity as a child what does it mean to be a child it needs to be a thinking person who is separate from your authority figures is is it over now well that leads exactly to my next question and question actually yeah it is has Russian children's literature escaped its Soviet past yes no which is where the title comes from growing out of childhood of communism to some degree it has escaped its Soviet past in that the texts are more global they resemble more of what's written throughout the world and no in that some of the themes remain some of the themes of whereas American texts are very individual and adults may or may may or may not be able to help you in Russian texts for teens and older children the community remains important yeah adult figures remain important so it's a kind of a two-way street yes they have but no they're still part of that so it's such an interesting juxtaposition or contrast because there are many as you know many children's books that were written in I don't know 40s 50s books that I might have read when I was growing up that now are kind of you know they have stereotypes and themes like we don't really want to go there anymore absolutely yeah 100% and you know I teach a course on American young adult literature at the college and I have to begin the course with you are gonna see something that you were gonna find offensive but they are part of the development of the shot are like Bob are you know or what's the not asterisk but um 10 10 oh yes yes some of those yes you look at them and you just scratch your head yes 100% yeah my colleague Raquel Green teaches a course on American picture books and in the 20th century and she begins with a lot a lot of these texts that are so overtly racist yeah really are hard to even believe yeah I should I shouldn't be laughing because they really are yeah and so now those are kind of being weeded out I mean it's you have to explain to kids exactly what's going on here right books I mean you kind of have to teach them to be historians like well people thought different things back then yes yes okay you just want a story about a troubled adolescent that's right who happens to be an elephant that's right and again that's what makes children's literature hard because grandparents remember reading the bar right and I don't want to let it go and the same thing is true in Russia but what is also true about children's literature is that there's always good new books there really are we have a children's literature channel and the NBA now I get to see the regular guy in Israel who he loves children's books he's actually a biochemist and he interviews people who write children's books so there's always a great number of them coming out and it is terrific to see all the new titles that's right and in other words the racist text can be replaced yeah I think you're absolutely right well anyway we take a lot of your time thank you very much for being the show we have a traditional talk to you yeah a traditional final question on the book that is what are you working on now okay so I mentioned the two-volume translations that we're working on so I'm doing that but my next project may or may not happen I've always as you can see but you'll I've always been interested in maybe this is because of what you said about Russians know what literature is I've always been interested in text related to literature so I started my work on memoir literature and I've you know in teaching Russian literature and in doing working late 18th early 19th I've been interested in the French teacher the French governance the French teacher in Russia so and I've always wondered what their lives are like so I'm beginning a project that the first chapter is on the Russian governor or teacher in 19th century Russian literature kind of 19th we can include in a book of at the end with his his short story or chapter in his memoirs about his French governess which is a very sad tale but essentially these people and it's an interesting power dynamic right who what culture does Russia respect more than its own there's only one I would think and I think it's France right I think right yes so these rich Russians the aristocrats would bring a French teacher into their home they are at once an employee but also respected for their culture and these people also lived out who knows where on a Russian estate where they saw no other French person for nine months at a time until the season when they go to Moscow or St. Petersburg so any case I'm gonna be looking at letters and memoirs memoir fragments written by these teachers from France Switzerland and Belgium and that's the other thing too is that almost none of them are from Paris right so these these are not prominent French people right who became these governesses and tutors my dissertation advisor to go back to my dissertation he had a French governess oh my goodness yes he did and they were chased out of Moscow probably and ended up in hard-being they were hard-being see yeah French governess with them you know I was a country class with him in Berkeley when I was an undergrad yeah he was a very old man then and he still maintained his habit of chewing stuff while yeah I don't think a wonderful person but yes I mean I remember I walked into a seminar with a speaking French and I was like these guys how many languages did this guy know and explain well I grew up I had this French woman they lived she lived with us and taught me French right yeah I civilized people know French right that's right yeah I want to know about the Kansas man I want to know about these French people who were they and what did they experience when they were in Russia well that's fantastic starting the research in the West we'll see if I can go to Russia at some point yeah yeah that's sad but anyway we're done with the book if it turns out people will have you on the books network all right wonderful okay thanks for being on the show bye bye