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[A GLIMPSE INTO NEP ERA CHILDHOOD: IDEOLOGY VERSUS IMAGINATION] Senchyni pryhody. Opovidannia [Senka's Adventures. Stories]

Kopylenko, Ol[eksandr

Item #2620

Second edition. Kharkiv: Persha Drukarnia DVU for Dierzhavnie Vydavnytstvo Ukrainy, 1928. 47 pp., [1] p., ills. in text. 20.5 x 13.5 cm. Illustrated publisher’s wrappers. One of 5000 copies. In Ukrainian. Good. Some rubbing and foxing to the wrappers. Internally good and clean, aside from minor foxing and spotting.

Kopylenko (1900–1958) was a prolific author whose career spanned from his student years and first publication appearance in 1921 well into the 1940s. Navigating the variety of styles and varying degrees of political engagement within literary unions such as Pluh, Hart, VAPLITE and Prolitfront, Kopylenko, unlike many of his contemporaries, managed to avoid the oppressive pitfalls, either through an ability to adjust his texts to period demands or simply a genuine openness to the Bolshevik ideals. An honored Rolit resident, Kopylenko authored plays and novels, yet with time he primarily focused on more “harmless” children’s literature. With its first edition published in 1926, Senchyni pryhody was Kopylenko’s first youth fiction collection, and his third published book overall. The 1920s cemented establishment of the Bolshevik regime on Ukrainian soil, yet it was also a time of relative freedom of speech and an idealistic understanding of the aims to build a classless society, alongside the formation of Lenin’s cult of personality. Those societal changes, surely, necessitated state-supported youth fiction, of which Senchyni pryhody is an exemplary piece. The collection features three stories, each accompanied by a characteristic illustration: Pryhnoblenyi [The Oppressed One], Yurko [Yurko] and the titular Senchyni pryhody [Senka's Adventures].

Pryhnoblenyi tells the story of sensitive Mitko who dreams of Lenin’s intervention in his own struggles. For the teenager, the struggle is not some abstract class conflict, but a very real, physical one: he is beaten up by his peers and by his own father. The triggering indignity occurs when the boy is abused by his own mother. She harshly disapproves of Mitko using gold leaf from her Christian icons to decorate Lenin’s photograph. Mitka hastily embarks on an adventure to Moscow in hopes of meeting Lenin himself.. The boy gets lost and ends up alone and sad on the train station, hungry and in tears. A policeman helps him to get back home, promising that someday Mitko will indeed meet Lenin.

In Yurko, Yurko and his mother are reduced to collecting coal merely to survive. Suddenly, the family gets horrible news: Yurko’s older brother, Stepan, a communist, is arrested during his standoff with the White Army. Yurko quickly decides to help his comrades and undertakes a life-threatening adventure to help his brother escape. A generous reward awaits the heroic boy: not only his brother’s life, but an approved fast track into the coveted Komsomol. The final Senchyni pryhody is a short tale centering on an urban hooligan teenager who mischievously sells cigarettes without a licence and eagerly engages in fistfights. Running away from the police yet once again, Senka dreams of a better life and sees a vision of the future: electric cars, city abundance, wealthy people. But Senka encounters a caricature bourgeois capitalist (exactly the figure featured on Marenkov’s cover art) who wants to devour Senka and… the boy wakes up in fear.

Those stories, some realistic, others featuring a fantastic grotesque setup, all explore the NEP era life of the unsupervised street boys, all symbolically seeking a connection with a “good enough” father figure, embodied by older Komsomol comrades or even Lenin's mythical figure. Despite their ideological underpinning, the first two stories show the boys as active and goal-driven characters; something that is very different from the usual outdated circumstance driven childish narratives.

Ultimately, the edition is much more than a children’s book: it offers a nuanced interplay of early Soviet ideology, local childhood experiences and multiple layers of artistic expression, all of which illuminate the vast changes of the dynamic era.

Scarce. Not in KVK. Not in WorldCat.

Price: $850.00