КАРИКАТУРА КАК ИСТОЧНИК ПО ИСТОРИИ СОВЕТСКОГО ДЕТСТВА (по материалам газеты «Пионерская правда» второй половины 20-х годов XX в.)

Abstract

This paper deals with the phenomenon of newspaper caricature and its influence on the life of Soviet children. Caricatures were widely used by the Soviet authorities as a means of official propaganda, in children’s periodicals as well. For children, they were employed to create an image of the “standardized” Soviet child, through cartooning and criticism of antipodes. The analysis of caricatures from the pages of the “Pionerskaya Pravda” newspaper dating back to the second half of the 1920s revealed the ways by which various archetypes developed in the satirical ideological images. Their strong impact on children was demonstrated. The caricatures for young readers of “Pionerskaya Pravda” were considered as a creolized text (binary – verbal–non-verbal) with categorical, simplified, political, and educational purposes. A classification of caricature images based on their genre and content was developed. The value of newspaper caricatures as a source for reconstruction of children’s “sovetization” in the USSR during the second half of the 1920s was discussed.