Andrei Platonov and the discussion of the fairy tale in children's literature of the 1920s

Abstract

The article is devoted to the discussion around the fairy tale, which found a place in the magazine «On the Way
 to a New School», the newspaper «Reader & Writer», its main provisions. In the 1920s pedagogues and children’s
 writers headed by Nadezhda Krupskaya revised old children’s literature and studied the theory of a new Soviet book for
 children, publishing articles and reviews. The connection between work in children’s literature and ideology, anti-religious
 propaganda is traced. Attention is drawn to the discussion of the category of the fantastic in a fairy tale among the authors of
 «On the Way to a New School», «Reader & Writer». Examples of new literature for children, its differences and similarities
 with the previous one are given. Andrei Platonov could also have known about the discussion around the genre of a fairy
 tale in 1926–1927 after moving to Moscow, as indicated by the epistolary, biographical facts and works of art, in particular
 the story «The Ethereal Path», the poem «About Electricity». The episodes from the novel «Chevengur» are considered in
 the context of this discussion.