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[ESTABLISHMENT OF SOCIALIST CHILDHOOD: PLAYTHINGS] Sovetskaia igrushka [i.e. Soviet Toy] #8 for 1936

Moscow: Vsesoiuz. koop. ob’edinennoe izdatel’stvo, 1936. Item #1439

32 pp.: ill. 29x21 cm. In original wrappers with letterpress design and ornament. Good. Tears of spine with fragment lost, soiling of covers and stains on pages, traces of private stamp on front page.

One of 6200 copies produced.
An early issue of the organ of the Committee on Toys at the People’s Commissariat for Education, as well as the Scientific Experimental Institute for Toys. It was published monthly under this title in 1935-1936, then as ‘Igrushka’ until 1939. It is now considered one of the crucial yet little-known sources on Soviet childhood in the 1930s.
More than one generation of Soviet statesmen and politicians, educators, intelligentsia and scientists worked on the creation of a concept “happy Soviet childhood”, including the entire set of symbols, meanings and images. Specialized magazines for and about children were rather effective mediums.
The magazine ‘Soviet Toy’ became a kind of manual for newly formed toy factories and socialist educators. The edition provided various materials from construction itself to recommendations on how toys might bring the communist ideology to young minds. This issue contains articles about Khanty’s national dolls, children’s aeromodelling club under supervision of glider pilot S. Anokhin, playthings in nurseries, American toys, etc. The first mentioned text about Khanty’s national dolls was written after a pedagogical expedition of the Institute of the Peoples of the North. Collected dolls became an important part of the contemporary study of indigenous people.
The back cover features two advertisements of organizations “Mostorg” and “Mossel’promsbyt” that sold contemporary toys for Moscow residents.

Worldcat doesn’t track this edition.

Price: $450.00