“A Threat to the Childhood”: Civil War in the Pyrenees in the Coverage of Soviet Periodicals for Children

Abstract

In 1936–1939, the Spanish Civil War was a hot topic used for military-patriotic upbringing and political socialization of children. This article shows has the events in Spain were portrayed in periodicals for preschoolers and primary schoolchildren, including texts and visualizations. While the official perspective of the Spanish events in the USSR was dictated by the Party, children’s optics was tuned using its own means and methods, customized to the psychology of this age group. The article discloses the goals of exploiting this topic in the Soviet child-targeting discourse, reveals the most common plotlines, pinpoints the specific emotion-inciting tricks. In propaganda work with children, the extreme polarization of good and evil was used, embodied in two political forces — fascists and republicans. The theme was adapted for children through the extensive use of peer images, central among which were child heroes and child martyrs. The image of the Spanish child-hero corresponded to the Soviet concept of a child walking in the forefront of society. At the same time, attention was focused on the difficulties experienced by the children of Spain, who experienced a “threat to childhood”, which fed the ideologeme of “happy Soviet childhood”, the exclusivity of Soviet children. The participation of powerful artistic forces in the information campaign resulted in the construction of a sublimely romantic image of Spain and the Spaniards with an aura of inflexibility and fortitude, corresponding to the ideal of a Soviet person. There was a feeling of connection between the Soviet and Spanish loci of heroism and people of heroic professions, among which pilots and border guards came to the fore. The figures selected to create the pantheon of Civil War heroes and the ways to fit the images of Franco and Stalin into the context are demonstrated.