Shoeless Yosuf... One of this westerner's childhood memories is children's books from Europe. They were in French, German, Russian, and thus "unreadable" but beloved just the same, and linguistic barriers contributed to their mystique. This department has a good collection of children's books, many in languages other than English, like this one perfect for the beginning language student. Samuil Marshak was a leader of the Leningrad producers of children's books. He founded, in 1920, one of the first children's theaters in the Soviet Union, and wrote plays for it. But even this group of authors did not escape interrogation, deportment and execution in Stalin's purges of the 1930s when 30,000 Leningraders – scholars, scientists, poets, artists, writers, composers – were sent to labor camps in Siberia and the Arctic. "Kiddie Lit" would not in general serve as a good cover for clandestine operations. Marshak had taken coursework in the art department at the University of London, had translated Shakespeare, Burns, Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Kipling, Lear, and Milne (as well as verse of Ukrainian, Belarusian, Lithuanian, and Armenian poets) and so was as suspect as those Russian ballerinas who might have had a second dance or lingered too long with a western diplomat at an official Leningrad reception. For many Soviet intellectuals, life was nasty, brutish and short. Marshak was one of those who in spite of torture and exile managed to survive, ultimately to receive two Orders of Lenin and a number of medals. AND to live until late into his 70s.
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Rose Celli. Conte de petit poisson d’or. Dessins de I. Bilibine. Paris: Flammarion, 1933. Children 6509
It Takes a Village... When there's talk of Russia – and especially of Petersburg – there's talk of contrasts, opposites, contradictions. This theme is a constant in Biely's novel Petersburg. Petersburg is fog, Moscow is sunshine. Moscow is medieval stave churches and onion domes, Petersburg was planned and executed by the Italians and French. Moscow is ancient, Petersburg is modern. Born on the eve of World War II into a leftist/pacifist family (my uncle sold tractors in Russia in the 30s with a fellow-traveler from Eureka, Kansas), this exhibit-maker was one westerner who grew up with a fascination for the fabrics, wooden toys, phonograph records, and other objects around the house that had been sent from that magical place. My uncle returned, disillusioned with the Communist Experiment. Came the war and my confusion over the contrast of the violent images in the newsreels with the colorful villages of the books like this one of Celli's; the dull black and white images in our Weekly Readers at school against cheery stories of Baba Yaga in my Jack and Jill. (My uncle explained that the real Russian Baba Yaga was not so child-friendly!) If you had shown me pictures of Petersburg in 1945, when I was 7, and told me it was Russia, I would have cried and argued with you that it did not look like the Russia I knew. P.-burg was gray, Moscow was red. I might still argue with you. One of these summers, I'll see Petersburg with the frost melted from my glasses.
Rasseja. [Mit einführenden Aufsätzen von Oskar Bie, Pavel Barchan, Alexander Benois und Boris Grigoriew], 1922. D2463
The Possessed... If you, like the Russian authorities, dislike "the distortion of the images of the Russian peasantry and their social life," in Grigorev's edition of Rasseja, then look to Shchedrovskii's more realistic but much earlier view. This volume was published simultaneously in St. Petersburg and Berlin and the artist was criticized in Petrograd/Leningrad for his "distortions." He had emigrated in 1919 to the West, and this German edition differs from the Russian edition printed in Berlin, and printed there again in 1922 in that it has three times more oils and graphics. Can we assume there was some bowdlerizing of the Russian edition? Alexander Benois, from whose private library our copy comes, wrote part of the text. The art of Grigorev is said to be rather close to the work of later German expressionists such as Otto Dix and George Grosz, and he was one of the first Russian artists to have an exhibition in the U.S. after the war, a successful one at that, at the Brooklyn Museum. The Department of Special Collections had an opportunity some years ago to buy a few of the books from the library of Aleksandr Benois of the Benois dynasty of intellectuals in art and architecture. Benois felt that Petersburg's architecture was not derivative, but rather was unique within the tradition of neo-Classicism and that Petersburg itself should become the subject of Russian art, that it was not inimical to native Russian styles. He was a preservationist of the Old-Guard, a member of the Society for Old Petersburg. But he became a westerner when he emigrated in 1926.
Gordon Anthony. Russian ballet; camera studies. London: G. Bles, 1939. E336
Love and Death. Everywhere in the world, Russian ballet = Russian soul. On the eve of World War I Petrograd's avant-garde artistic community revolted against the stuffy, rigid conservatism of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in what one person called "the revolution before the revolution." It was the period of time when Sergei Diagilev would put Russian musicians and other artists to work turning Russian music, movement, theater design, painting, and intense drama into sumptuous ballets. The royal family, decidedly NOT ahead of its time, however, didn't think much of these productions and before long Diagilev was forbidden to perform in the city's imperial theaters. Stravinsky's Petrushka was yanked up and moved with Fokin's Ballets Russes to Paris. Petrushka, the puppet who comes to life, had been a favorite carnival character of the young Aleksandr Benois, but the people of Petrograd in those days never got to share the nostalgia and longing of this story embodying the soul of Old St. Petersburg.
Lenin (V.I. Ulyanov), [Moscow]: OGIZ, State Publishing Hitical Literature, 1939. E1283
A Raw Youth ... This samovar-table book compiled from material in the Central Lenin Museum in Moscow is chock full of wonderful color as well as black and white plates, facsimiles of party documents, and photographs, with uniformly high-quality reproductions. A student of the art of agitation and propaganda should begin with perusal of this volume and then of the revolutionary posters. Journalists consider it a milestone of the genre. The book was produced "not for sale," but for distribution at the New York World's fair and was aimed at a western audience. Our copy was a gift from John H. Langley, former Director of the Regents Press of Kansas.
Auguste Racinet (1825-1893). Le costume historique. Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1888. 6 vols. J20, v.6, fasc.2, pl.443
Friends of Soviet Russia (Irish Section). The U.S.S.R. through Irish eyes. Dublin: Issued by the Friends of Soviet Russia (Irish Section), 1930. O’Hegarty C4267
When Irish Eyes Aren't Smiling. This little pamphlet contains the impressions of an Irish delegation of their six-week tour at invitation of the All-Russian Trade Union Council to investigate conditions in the Soviet Union. A number of days were spent in Leningrad at both beginning and end of the trip. It is reported that on the boat trip back to that city they sat in the "Lenin Corner" of the recreation room, along with a bust of Lenin and a piano. "They ... put us ashore early one morning at Leningrad, to, I believe, the regret of the entire delegation." The writer remarks further, that, "It [Leningrad] lacks the life and colour of Moscow, but architecturally it is a much finer city."
Revue russe d’art et de littérature, Jar-ptitza, 1923. E874, no. 1
Come on Baba, Light my Fire... The Zhar Ptitsa, or Firebird, is one of the most important of the ex-patriot magazines of art, literature, and dance published in the Russian diaspora after World War I. The title is a no-brainer: it's one of the best known images from Russian folk-lore known around the world in Russian literature, painting, folk-art and, of course, music. The firebird's fiery feathers glow in the dark. The tale of the firebird was first published in an 18th century Russian folktale in which three brothers are sent to catch the bird (to help keep the frost off the windows?) How many of you Lawrence Free State High Scholars know the story behind your mascot?
E. de Taskine. L’industrie houillère dans le basin du Donetz. St. Petersbourg, 1900. Howey C2112
Coals From Newcastle. Near the end of the 18th century the English replaced the French in Peterborough as the ethnic group to imitate. The English were fewer than the Germans and French and they were almost non-existent in the provinces, that is to say, anywhere but Peterborough. Scots naturalists and physicians were of great significance, if not in great numbers. The British brought everything with them and set up their own quarters with their own churches, social clubs, and even their own coal for their own use, and yes, it was from Newcastle. It is said that English imports (with the exception of coal), e.g. horses, beer, fabrics, pottery, optical instruments, all to sell, soon became necessities rather than luxuries for the Russian upper classes and began to be produced in factories founded and run by the British. It was even said by the Brits themselves that beer and porter brewed in Peterborough was superior to the English product. Other sorts of British craftsman were in great demand in the city: watchmakers, stonemasons, shoemakers, saddlers, and, of course, teachers of the English language.
We've Come a Long Way, Baba. Leningrad, aiming as it was to be a new place in a new time with a new government and society was a natural for the ferment of a literature of science fiction. Strongly influenced by H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, 20th century Petrograd/Leningrad/Petersburg represented to the literary avant-garde a futuristic, revolutionary utopia. It's fun to contrast this image with that of a hot air balloon in a Russian physics manual in our collections, by Petr Ivanovich Gilarovskii, published in 1793. We have come a long way, in spite of the recent Columbia disaster. Spencer Library began collecting science fiction in 1969 with a gift from lunar geologist Larry Friesen and through the efforts of Kansas University's own James E. Gunn, writer and head of the KU Center for the Study of Science Fiction, the Department of Special Collections is now the North American repository for world science fiction; it includes many Leningrad/St. Petersburg imprints. Both the printed books and manuscripts get heavy use by scholars from around the world. This diagram, from a volume about the Russian space station "Saliut," is, of course, science fact rather than fiction. "Saliut" was actually the name of a series of Soviet space stations orbiting Earth since 1971. Cosmonaut V.I. Sevastianov, who was one of the crew of Soyuz 18, launched to deliver cosmonauts to the station, spent 63 days in space and inscribed our copy to Sci Fi writer Frederick Pohl who in turn gave it as a gift to our WSF (World Science Fiction) collection.