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Raduga Publishers

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Raduga Publishers
Founded1922
Defunct1930 Edit this on Wikidata
Country of originSoviet Union
Headquarters locationBolshoy Gostiny Dvor, Nevsky Prospect, St. Petersburg
Publication typesChildren's books

Raduga Publishers (Russian: радуга, English: "rainbow") was a Soviet publishing house of innovative children's books, which has been described as "one of the most important book publishers of its type" during the early twentieth century.[1]

History

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Lev Moisevich Kliachko

Raduga Publishers was founded in 1922 by the Russian journalist Lev Moisevich Kliachko (1873–1939) who was at one time the chairman of the Committee of Journalists at the State Council.[2] The main office was located in Bolshoy Gostiny Dvor building in Nevsky Prospect, St. Petersburg and the editorial office in the founder's apartment at 14 Stremyannaya Street in the same city.[3]

Kliachko originally intended to publish a magazine called Raduga but instead starting publishing picture books with texts and illustrations.[4] Early books published by Raduga included Moydodyr (Wash'em Clean) and Tarakanishche (The Monster Cockroach)[5][6] by Korney Chukovsky, who would become one of the most popular children's poets in the Russian language,[7] and Morozhenoe (Ice Cream), Pozhar! (Fire) and Tsirk (Circus) by Samuil Marshak, whom Maxim Gorky would proclaim as "the founder of Russia's (Soviet) children's literature".[8]

The text in both Moydodyr and Tarakanishche was poetry written for a preschooler audience. The first was illustrated by I. Annenkov and the second by Sergey Chekhonin, both talented artists. Despite Kliachko having little prior knowledge of poetry and almost no capital invested in his firm, Moydodyr and Tarakanishche were "enormous successes" with print runs of 7,000 in both cases.[1]

The Circus and Ice Cream were a collaboration of the writer Marshak and the artist Vladimir Lebedev, with two books embodying "the beginning of a radically new approach to children's book design" and with Lebedev calling for an "emphasis on the book as a complete unity" and in which "flattened, abstracted planes and geometrical shapes evoke the Suprematism of Kazimir Malevich".[9]

Building on these success, Raduga was able to attract contributions from some of the most talented Russian writers (Agnaia Barto, Vitaly Bianki, L. I. Borisova, Korney Chukovsky, Elena Danko, Samuil Marshak, Evgeny Schwartz, and Boris Zhitkov) and artists (Y. P. Annenkov, Sergey Chekhonin, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Vladimir Konashevich, Eduard Krimmer, Boris Kustodiev, Vladimir Lebedev, Alexei Radakov, Sergeii Rakhmanin, Konstantin Rudakov, Mikhail Tsekhanovskii, and V. S. Tvardovskii) of the time.[10] By 1926 Raduga was able to publish a catalogue of 216 titles.[1][10]

Raduga's first years had coincided with the New Economic Policy era in the Soviet Union, a relatively liberal time for art and literature. However, from about 1925 Raduga was attacked by a number of "proletarian literary critics", such as Anna Grinberg who claimed that the elegant designs in Raduga books willfully ignored the circumstances in which children were being raised and did not provide enough relevant and even comprehensible material for children in the new Soviet society for whom a more scientific method was appropriate. A similar attack was made by Lenin's wife Nadezhda Krupskaya.[1]

On top of this official disapproval, the firm was experiencing increased financial difficulties and restricted access to printing presses which as a private company it was not permitted to own. Its authors and artists were less willing to work for the maverick Raduga and antagonize the Soviet cultural authorities and, when they were not always paid on time, they began to drift away to Russia's state publishing house Gosizdat, taking some of Raduga's "most valuable literary properties with them".[1]

The quality and innovation of Raduga's publications began to decline. In 1927, the Committee of Children’s Literature prohibited Raduga from reprinting 81% of its backlist, claiming those books were "contaminated by harmful bourgeois ideology".[11] Increasing competition was experienced from the government-approved publishing houses. In 1934 it was decreed that socialist realism was the only acceptable artistic method for Soviet literature and art.[11]

Raduga ceased operations in 1930.[1] During its short existence it had published around 400 titles. Its books had become known in Western countries when they were displayed shown in exhibitions in Amsterdam (1929), New York and Cambridge.[4]

From 1973 a new company named Raduga Publishers, with its head office in Moscow, began publishing books, including the series "Russian Classics"[12] and "Adventure & Fantasy".[13][14] During the Cold War years, many books in English and in Indian languages, including Raduga books, were exported to India and neighbouring countries and achieved a wide following there.[15][16][17][18] Some Indian publishers co-published titles with Raduga and groups of Indian translators were invited to the Soviet Union where they translated books into Indian languages[19] which were then published and sold at low prices in India.[20]

In 2022 the Raduga website was selling video and computer games.[21]

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Front covers of some of the books published by Raduga Publishers in the years 1924-25 (click on each image to expand): Note: More images can be seen in pages linked to from "External Links" section below.

  • Яшка из кармашка : сказочка (English: "Yashka from a Pocket: A Fairy Tale") by N. Ognev. 1924.
    Яшка из кармашка : сказочка (English: "Yashka from a Pocket: A Fairy Tale") by N. Ognev. 1924.
  • Тараканище (English: "The Monster Cockroach") by Корне́й Ива́нович Чуко́вский (Korney Chukovsky). Illustrated by Sergey Chekhonin. 1925.
    Тараканище (English: "The Monster Cockroach") by Корне́й Ива́нович Чуко́вский (Korney Chukovsky). Illustrated by Sergey Chekhonin. 1925.
  • Книжка про книжки (English: "A Book About Books") by С. Маршак (Samuil Marshak). 1925.
    Книжка про книжки (English: "A Book About Books") by С. Маршак (Samuil Marshak). 1925.
  • Война Петрушки и Стёпки Растрёпки (English: "War of Parsley and Stipples Ripples") by Evgeny Schwartz. 1925
    Война Петрушки и Стёпки Растрёпки (English: "War of Parsley and Stipples Ripples") by Evgeny Schwartz. 1925
  • Вороненок (English: "Voronenok") by Evgeny Schwartz Illustrations by E. Belukha and Konstantin Ivanovich Rudakov. 1925.
    Вороненок (English: "Voronenok") by Evgeny Schwartz Illustrations by E. Belukha and Konstantin Ivanovich Rudakov. 1925.
  • Ледниковый человек (English: "Ice Man") by С. В. Фарфоровский (= S. [Sergei] V. Farforovsky). Illustrations by Fedor Vogt. 1925.
    Ледниковый человек (English: "Ice Man") by С. В. Фарфоровский (= S. [Sergei] V. Farforovsky). Illustrations by Fedor Vogt. 1925.

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f Andrea Immel, "Cotsen Children's Library: The Anna Baksht Benjamin Family Collection of Raduga Books", The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 65, No. 2, Winter 2004, pp. 343-356. Retrieved 3 January 2022.
  2. ^ S. A. An-Sky (Polly Zavadivker, tr.), 1915 Diary of S. An-sky: A Russian Jewish Writer at the Eastern Front, Indiana University Press, 2016, p. 180. Retrieved 4 January 2022.
  3. ^ M. V. Zakharova, Rainbow Publishing House, 1922-1930, Saint Petersburg Encyclopaedia (online edition). Retrieved 4 January 2022.
  4. ^ a b Serge Aljosja Stommels and Albert Lemmens, "The 1929 Amsterdam exhibition of early Soviet children's picturebooks", in: Elina Druker, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, eds., Children's Literature and the Avant-Garde, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2015 (Children's Literature, Culture, and Cognition, 5), p. 142ff.
  5. ^ Philip Shishkin, Watching the Mighty Cockroach Fall, asiasociety.org. Retrieved 9 January 2022.
  6. ^ Olga Kerziouk, Was Stalin "The Monster Cockroach"?, bl.uk. Retrieved 9 January 2022.
  7. ^ Daria Aminova, Korney Chukovsky: The children’s author who wrote against all odds, rbth.com. Retrieved 8 January 2020.
  8. ^ Marina Lewycka, "Inside the Rainbow: how Soviet Russia tried to reinvent fairytales", Financial Times, 28 September 2013. Retrieved 8 January 2022.
  9. ^ Marshak and Lebedev: The Avant-Garde Picture Book, washington.edu. Retrieved 7 January 2022.
  10. ^ a b Archival Collections: Slavic Languages and Literatures, princeton.edu. Retrieved 7 January 2022.
  11. ^ a b Alla Rosenfeld, Does the Proletarian Child Need a Fairytale? The Soviet-production book for children, cabinetmagazine.org. Retrieved 5 January 2022.
  12. ^ Alexander Pushkin, Selected Works in Two Volumes: Volume One: Poetry, Moscow: Raduga Publishers, 1974 (Russian Classics). Retrieved 30 October 2022.
  13. ^ Adventure & Fantasy (Raduga Publishers) - Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 7 January 2022.
  14. ^ Raduga Publishers, publishersglobal.com. Retrieved 7 January 2022
  15. ^ Palash Krishna Mehrotra, "Red Century: Baba Yaga on the Ganges", The New York Times, 14 October 2017. Retrieved 8 January 2022.
  16. ^ Deepa Bhasthi, Growing Up with Classic Russian Literature in Rural South India, lithub.com. Retrieved 8 January 2022.
  17. ^ "From Russia With Love", The Hindustan Times, 21 May 2012. Retrieved 8 January 2022.
  18. ^ Anuradha Sengupta, "Let's talk Pushkin", The Hindu, 20 May 2017. Retrieved 8 January 2022.
  19. ^ Divya Sreedharan, How Soviet Children’s Books Became Collectors’ Items in India, atlasobscura.com. Retrieved 9 January 2022.
  20. ^ Anushree Majumdar, "Red Letter Days", Indian Express, 8 August 2018. Retrieved 8 January 2022.
  21. ^ Raduga, raduga-publ.ru. Retrieved 7 January 2022

Further reading

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  • Robert Bird, ed., Adventures in the Soviet Imaginary: Soviet Children’s Books and Graphic Art, University of Chicago Press: 2011
  • JoAnn Conrad, "Inside the Rainbow: Russian Children’s Literature 1920–1935: Beautiful Books, Terrible Times, ed. by Julian Rothenstein, Olga Budashevskaya (review)", The Lion and the Unicorn, Vol. 38, No. 2, 2014, p. 223-227
  • Albert Lemmens and Serge Strommels, Russian Artists and the Children’s Book, 1890–1992, Nijmegen: L.S., 2009
  • Vijay Prashad, ed., The East Was Read: Socialist Culture in the Third World, New Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2019
  • Julian Rothenstein, Inside the Rainbow: Russian Children's Literature 1920-1935: Beautiful Books, Terrible Times, London: Redstone Press, 2015
  • Evgeny Steiner, Stories for Little Comrades: Revolutionary Artists and the Making of Early Soviet Children’s Books, University of Washington Press, 1999
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