Bookvica

Chastushki Leningradskogo fronta [i.e. Chastushki of the Leningrad Front]

Kolpakova N.P.

Item #2149

Leningrad: Goslitizdat, 1943. 88 p. 12x7 cm. Original illustrated wrapper. Mint condition.

First and only edition. The only book on chastushkas (ditties) printed during in 1941-1945 in USSR.

Natalya Pavlovna Kolpakova, the complier of this book was a folklorist, and scholar of modern folk art in rural and urban areas, endured the entire duration of the Leningrad blockade.
Throughout this period, she dedicated herself to academic pursuits at the philological faculty of Leningrad State University. Among her notable accomplishments is the authorship of the monograph "Russian Folk Household Song," which stands as the first extensive scholarly investigation on the subject. Throughout her career, Natalya Pavlovna managed to amass an astonishing collection of 40,000 texts. Prior to working on this compilation, she also conducted research on regional Karelian chastushkas.
The designer of the book is Vera Zenkovich, a graduate of VKHUTEIN, the design of the book stands out among the usually modest and simple books, printed in Leningrad in 1941-1943. Leningrad historian Naum Sindalovsky wrote on the importance of chastushka in the sieged city: «Despite the fact that by September 1941 more than 350 plants and factories had been evacuated from Leningrad, about 70 enterprises continued to operate in the besieged city.
In total, they produced more than a hundred types of military products; chastushkas that appeared in Leningrad in 1943 were not accidental […] Chastushki, which amateur artists willingly and in huge numbers sang from improvised stages on the front line, in the hospital wards of military hospitals and simply at rest stops to the trophy harmonica, well illustrate the situation at the front during this period of the war».

The author distributes 375 chastushkas collected into well-thought-out thematic blocks with a single semantic dominant – here are the chastushkas as if from the face of the Fritz, some – on behalf of the soldiers seeing off to the front, some - in the form of letters from the front to relatives (Milka, do svidaniya – lechu bombit' Germaniyu [i.e. Milka, goodbye – I'm flying to bomb Germany]). It is especially worth noting the abundance of chastushkas about women in battle:

225

I'm not a grandmother's jacket -
I wear a gymnastics.
I'm not in the cellar carrots -
I crumble a German in a field.
[Я не бабушкину кофту –
Гимнастерочку ношу.
Я не в погребе морковку –
Немца в полюшке крошу.]

245

I'll cut the enemy's stomach
With pitchforks of dung, -
Wouldn't swear forward
Above the collective farm women.
[Распорю врагу живот
Вилами навозными, –
Не ругался бы вперед
Над бабами колхозными.]

The book is printed in November of 1943, still 2 months before the siege was fully over.

Rare. Only three copies recorded in the Worldcat.

Status: On Hold