Soviet Pinocchio–lecture on December 2
Pinocchio’s Adventures in the Soviet Wonderland: Contexts and Challenges of Soviet Children’s Literature
Guest lecture by Marina Balina (Illinois Wesleyan University)
Wednesday, December 2, 4:15 p.m.
Smith Campus Center 208
If you’re interested, you may also want to go see the film screening: please contact Prof. Rudova (lrudova@pomona.edu) for more information!
One of the most celebrated canonical texts in Soviet children’s literature, Aleksei Tolstoy’s The Golden Key or The Adventures of Buratino (1935), was based on Carlo Collodi’s tale, Pinocchio or The Adventures of the Wooden Puppet (1908). In 1939, the enormous success of Buratino prompted the Soviet director Alexander Ptushko to make a film based on Tolstoy’s book, and the author himself was invited to write a screenplay based on his text. In 1975 the filmmaker Leonid Nechaev returns to Tolstoy’s Buratino once again and produces a two-part TV musical film that unexpectedly leaves the territory of children’s film and attacks Soviet society under Leonid Brezhnev’s regime. In Nechaev’s interpretation, the world surrounding Buratino is thoroughly corrupt, immoral, and cynical. Professor Balina’s talk examines how Tolstoy’s book becomes a vehicle of a social critique of the Soviet state in different historical contexts. Professor Balina is Isaac Funk Professor of Russian at Illinois Wesleyan University. She is the author of numerous articles and co-editor of books on Soviet literature and culture. She is currently working on a book on Soviet children’s literature.
Co-sponsored by the Office of Public Events; History Department/Thompson Fund; English Department; Department of Religion; ID1 Program; German Department (Scripps) FMI contact Prof. Rudova lrudova@pomona.edu
