“I want to be a movie actress": reflections on one pioneer discussion (1929)

Abstract

Children’s communicative space of the readers of the “Pioneer” journal and the use of the media in the late 1920s is described and interpreted through the example of the discussion "Whom I want to be".The discussion began when a pioneer from Barnaul Shura Klimova wrote to the editor-in-chief that she wanted to become a movie star and to earn 2 million dollars per year, as Mary Pickford did. Shura also wanted to build the private house with fireplace, carpets and a grand piano. Shura Klimova's biographic scenario caused a huge response from the pioneers. Over 500 letters came to the editorial office of the “Pioneer” journal.Two big camps were designated among the readers of the “Pioneer” such as Klimova's allies and her opponents. The most part of the letters reflected life projects of schoolchildren. Many of them wanted to become engineers, pilots, technicians and agronomists but every tenth correspondent wanted to become a movie star as well as Shura. This discussion showed two various cultural types of the Soviet schoolchildren – “bourgeois and democratic” and “egalitarian and socialist” ones.The editorial office of the journal obviously supported the second camp and stigmatizated the first one. The senior companions demonstrated to pioneers that it was necessary to think politically correctly and the totalitarian discourse and external social control were formed in that way. In the late 1920s “the Great return” occurred not only in the village, but also in habitus of a new generation.