The Life and Death of Kuz’ka Probkin, or the Story of How the Pionerskaia Pravda Newspaper Took Over Pioneer Magazine

Abstract

This paper introduces, for the first time in Slavic studies, a fictional character from the Soviet magazine Pioneer (1920s) – a funny twelve-year-old boy named Kuz’ka, who prompted a heated debate between the magazine and the Pionerskaia Pravda (Pioneer’s Truth) newspaper. This debate became a crucial point in the history of children’s literature of the late 1920s – early 1930s. Kuz’ka was a joint project of the best children’s illustrators and authors of that time: the graphic artist Alexey Laptev, and writers and poets Lev Kassil, Nikolay Agnivtsev, and Daniil Kharms. This paper focuses on the ideological attack on Kuz’ka led by Pionerskaia Pravda, the magazine’s desperate resistance, and its final defeat, which resulted in the character’s comic death and travesty mourning.