Soviet Children’s Literature – an Instrument of Educational Colonisation

Abstract

The article examines the role of Soviet children’s literature as an instrument of indoctrination in postwar Bessarabia. During the Stalinist period, writers were compelled to promote the model of homo sovieticus, along with themes such as the cult of personality, socialist labour, and the denial of national identity. Literature thus became a vehicle of propaganda, sacrificing aesthetic value in favour of ideology. However, after 1953, the Khrushchev Thaw allowed for a degree of liberalisation and the recovery of the Romanian classical tradition. This shift in paradigm was carried out by the generation of the 1960s, represented by authors such as Grigore Vieru and Aureliu Busuioc, who redefined the aesthetics of the genre by replacing rigid slogans with texts that emphasised authenticity and human values.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.52505/1857-4300.2026.1(326).11