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Trutor, Clayton J.

History

2006

MA

A comprehensive examination of overtly Communist children's literature remains a neglected thread in the history of the American left. A trio of scholars have touched on the subject of American radical children's books. Kenneth Teitelbaum discusses the primers published for use in the socialist Sunday schools affiliated with the Socialist Party of America in Schooling for "Good Rebels:" Socialist Education for Children in the United States, 1900-1920 (1993). Julia Lynn Mickenburg examines radical and progressive children's books beginning in the era of the Popular Front in her dissertation, Educating Dissent: Children's Literature and the Left, 1935-1965 (2000). Paul Mishler surveys radical children's literature and summarizes a number of the texts in a chapter entitled "Primers for Revolution" from his book, Raising Reds: the Young Pioneers, Radical Summer Camps, and Communist Political Culture in the United States (1999). This thesis addresses one aspect of this topic by analyzing the portrayal of the Soviet Union, "the Workers' Paradise," in the children's texts produced by the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) prior to the Popular Front. This analysis of the children's literature produced by the CPUSA contributes to both major schools of thought in the historiographical debate concerning American Communism. It contributes to the revisionist school, which conceives of American Communism as a grassroots movement, by focusing on a cultural production of a largely autonomous party organ and the meaning of this work in the broader context of American radical social movements. This thesis contributes to the Draperian school by recognizing Moscow's influence, both direct and indirect, on the party's cultural productions. The children's literature of the CPUSA mirrored a trend that proved constant in virtually every party organ: in spite of the numerous policy shifts and purges of the party apparatus, the children's books of the CPUSA created a common vision of the Soviet Union as the one paradise on earth. To paraphrase a common slogan in party literature, the Soviet Union was a young country where dreams came true. The single-minded zeal found in the children's texts shows a party firmly engaged in the idea of educating youth. By giving youth a vision of"the great country," the children's literature of the CPUSA encouraged its readership to build a Soviet America.