1. For quotes from Mister Twister in this article, I use the translation by Sam Raphael Friedman that appeared in Soviet Literature, no. 1 (1948): 7-19, corrected against Marshak, S., Mister Tvister (Moscow, 1933)Google Scholar. The translation was reprinted in the anthology compiled by von Geldern, James and Stites, Richard, eds., Mass Culture in Soviet Russia: Tales,Poems, Songs, Movies, Plays, and Folklore, 1917-1953 (Bloomington, 1995), 201–11Google Scholar. Whenever Friedman's rhythmic translation differs from the original significantly, I have taken the liberty of amending the text.

2. Letter to Matafonov, V. S., dated 7 May 1963 in Samuil Marshak, Sobranie sochineniiv vosmi tomakh (Moscow, 1972), 8:471–72.Google Scholar

3. Cf.: “We need think of nothing more solemn than the average comic strip, which presents quite a number of difficulties to those not familiar with its conventions. The public learns to know the recurrent characters and to recognize them at the merest hint. We are likewise trained by the poster artists to take in and assimilate the most baffling images.“ E. Gombrich, H., Art and Illusion (Washington, D.C., 1960), 234 Google Scholar.

4. Maurice Merleau-Ponty has discussed the bond between the flesh and the idea, between the visible armature, which it manifests, and the interior armature, which it conceals. He claims that no one has gone further than Proust in fixing the relations between the visible and the invisible. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, The Visible and the Invisible (Evanston, 1968), 149 Google Scholar.

5. Lunacharskii, Anatolii, Detskaia literatura: Kriticheskii sbornik (Moscow, 1931), 6 Google Scholar.

6. Tsvetaeva, Marina, “O novoi russkoi knige,” Volia Rossii, nos. 5–6 (Prague, 1931).Google Scholar Quoted in Tsvetaeva, Marina, Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1994), 5:326.Google Scholar

7. Brent Plate, S., Blasphemy: Art That Offends (London, 2006), 156.Google Scholar

8. See also a relevant discussion of the design of children's books in Shteiner, Evgenii, Avangard ipostroenie novogo cheloveka: Iskusstvo detskoi knigi 1920-kh godov (Moscow, 2002), 22–25 Google Scholar.

9. Cf. “Visual culture is predicated on the assumption that contemporary culture has already mixed the elite and the popular, the fine and the vulgar, modernism and kitsch, to the point where it is no longer sensible to treat them separately. In this view, high and low art are names of different discourses, but they are sufficiently impure, mutually dependent, or susceptible to commodification that they can be treated using the same general methodologies.“James Elkins, Visual Studies: A Skeptical Introduction (New York, 2003), 50.

10. Marshak, Samuil, “O bol´shoi literature dlia malen'kikh” (1933), Sobranie sochinenii, 7:300.Google Scholar

11. Letter to Balashov, D. from 1961 in Marshak, Sobranie sochinenii, 8:461 Google Scholar.

12. Highet, Gilbert, The Anatomy of Satire (Princeton, 1962), 190.Google Scholar

13. Ibid., 205. As a reviewer of an earlier version of this article noted, “the travel narrative undergoes a double inversion: die foreigner comes to see us, to tour, so that we learn about the foreigner. It is sadly appropriate that this brilliant Soviet travelogue is one in which the Soviets all stay home: a journey by stationary bike,” thus evoking the classic distinction between second-world foreign language textbooks and American ones, “the standard American textbook scenario has Americans arriving in a new land to learn a new language. In Soviet textbooks, the native speakers come to us.“

14. See Gorsuch, Anne E., ‘“There's No Place Like Home': Soviet Tourism in Late Stalinism,” Slavic Review 62, no. 4 (Winter 2003): 760–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15. As Stephen Norris claims, Efimov's prodigious output proves that “laughter is a sharp weapon and a powerful medicine,” moreover tfiese sharp weapons “created a visual basis for belonging to the socialist experiment… . Soviet cartoons gave citizens a chance to reflect on the meanings of the socialist experiment and individual complicity in building the Soviet state.” See Stephen Norris, “Laughter Is a Very Sharp Weapon': Boris Efimov and Soviet Visual Humor” (paper presented at the “Interdisciplinary Conference on Totalitarian Laughter: Cultures of the Comic under Socialism,” Princeton University, 15-17 May 2009).

16. Gorsuch, ‘“There's No Place Like Home,'” 761.

17. Kostiainen, Auvo, “The Lure of Travel Guidebooks: The Case of Leningrad and St. Petersburg,” in Luukkainen, Matti and Pyykkö, Riitta, eds., ZurRolle der Sprache im Wandelder Gesellschaft (Helsiniki, 2002), 141.Google Scholar

18. Block, L. A., ed., A Pocket Guide to the Soviet Union (Moscow, [1932]), 1.Google Scholar

19. “You will be chiefly interested, probably, in the line which takes you from the heart of London to the heart of Leningrad in four and a half days … diere is no pleasanter and more desirable approach to the Soviet Union than this water route. In an environment half Russian, half European, you receive a gradual transition rather dian an abrupt shock in your transfer from one civilization to another. Furthermore, you are sure to encounter a certain number of fellow-travelers who have been before—contacts from which you will begin to form notions which will enable you to see and judge Russia intelligently… . In Leningrad the boat comes past Cronstadt and up die Neva, not far from the centre of Leningrad.” Lars Moen, Are You Going to Russia? (London, [1934]), 64.

20. Ibid., 74.

21. Otdel rukopisei, Rossiiskaia natsional´naia biblioteka, St. Petersburg, S. Marshak's Collection, f. 469, op. 1, ed. khr. 2 (1933), 48 pp.

22. Shubinskii, Valerii, Daniil Kharms: Zhizn’ chelovekanavetru (St. Petersburg, 2008), 345.Google Scholar

23. Freud, Sigmund, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Work of SigmundFreud, vol. 8, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (London, 1905), 102–3.Google Scholar

24. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva, f. 656, op. 5, ed. khr. 5181, manuscript, p. 9.

25. Bergson, Henry, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (London, 1911), 115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26. Berger, Peter L., Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience (New York, 1997), 33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27. Ibid., 158.

28. Mikes, George, Humour in Memoriam (London, 1970), 20.Google Scholar

29. One of his examples is a man running along the street who stumbles and falls; the people who see him fall burst out laughing. Bergson explains that they laugh because the man's action is involuntary. The man could have altered his movements to avoid die fall, but “through lack of elasticity … as a result, in fact, of rigidity or of momentum, the muscles continued to perform the same movement when the circumstances of the case called for something else.” Bergson contends mat this “inelasticity” is the reason for bodi die fall and the laughter which follows. Bergson, Laughter, 66. Emphasis in the original.

30. This kind of comedy is often associated with magical realism. Mary Hartje, however, finds anodier example of this situation in Franz Kafka's novel The Trial. The protagonist, K., literally stumbles into the absurd reality of his “arrest” by a group of strangers. For the duration of the novel, he is unable to alter his own involvement in the meaningless situation leading to his trial. In addition, his “inelasticity,” his inability to recognize the absurdity of his plight, makes him a laughable figure to die reader. See Mary Ellen Hartje, “Magic Realism: Humor across Cultures,” in Harper, Graeme, ed., Comedy, Fantasy and Colonialism (New York, 2002), 114 Google Scholar.

31. Wolfenstein, Martha, Children's Humor: A Psychological Analysis (Glencoe, 111., 1954), 196.Google Scholar

32. Gasparov, Mikhail, O russkoi poezii: Analizy, interpretatsii, kharakteristiki (St. Petersburg, 2001), 414.Google Scholar

33. Mikes, Humour in Memoriam, 98.

34. Kelly, Catriona, Children's World: Growing up in Russia, 1890-1991 (New Haven, 2007), 81, 82.Google Scholar

35. Ibid., 88.

36. Ibid.

37. Petrovskii, Miron, “Samuil Marshak: Vot kakoi rasseiannyi. Strannyi geroi s Basseinoi ulitsy,” Knigi nashego detstva (St. Petersburg, 2006), 210 Google Scholar. Emphasis in the original.

38. As quoted in Glotser, V., Khudozhniki delskoi knigi o sebe i svoem iskusstve: Stat'i, rasskazy,zametki, vystupleniia (Moscow, 1987), 131 Google Scholar.

39. Marshak's technique for working with his illustrators may be seen in the memoirs of M. Miturich (dated to some time after the 1950s): “He made almost no specific comments. … If he reallyjust did not like a drawing, he would start reading die verse to which the illustration was meant to relate, emphasizing the meter, the intonation, and sometimes he would also make me read the poem aloud.” M. Miturich, “Ritm stikha i risunka,” in Papernyi, Z. S., Fadeev, A., Galanov, B., and Marshak, I. S., eds., la dumal, chuvstvoval, ia zhil:Vosopominaniia o S. la. Marshake (Moscow, 1971), 289 Google Scholar.

40. See Glotser, Khudozhniki delskoi knigi, 134.

41. Gerchuk, Iurii Ia., “Udivitel´nye prikliucheniia ‘Bagazha,'” in Marshak, S. and Lebedev, V.V, Khudozhnik V. Lebedev delaet knigu (Moscow, 1982).Google Scholar

42. A less than successful attempt to analyze Lebedev's illustrations to the poem MisterTwister was made by Nina Shantyko, whose analysis resulted in ideological commentary rather than a discussion of Lebedev's artistic technique. Shantyko, Nina, Kogda stikhidruzhat s kartinkami (Moscow, 1983), 16–17 Google Scholar.

43. The changes made to the illustrations of Mister Twister conformed to the overall pattern in which Lebedev's artistic style was evolving at the time, as Gerchuk describes it: “Though Lebedev's characters remain as grotesque as ever, schematic depictions are replaced by individual personalities and psychology. The drawing style itself also changes: it becomes more diverse and more flexible; a style is chosen each time to suit the latest tiling to be depicted … Lebedev came into his own as a satirist in the 1920s and in that capacity he remained there.” Gerchuk, Iu. Ia., Vladimir Lebedev. Al´bom, ed. Viskova, I. S. (Moscow, 1990), 37 Google Scholar.

44. Kichanova-Lifshits, Irina, Prosti menia za to, chto ia zhivu (New York, 1982), 44.Google Scholar

45. Vlasov, V. A., “Iz vystupleniia na vechere pamiati V. V. Lebedeva,” in Lebedev, V. V.. hvospominanii. Zhivopis', grafika 1920-1930-kh gg (St. Petersburg, 1994),23 Google Scholar.

46. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 68

47. Punin, N. N., Vladimir Vladimirovich Lebedev (Leningrad, 1928), 12.Google Scholar

48. Ibid.

49. [D. Zaslavskii], “O khudozhnikakh-pachkunakh,” Pravda, 1 March 1936. As quoted in Protiv formalizma i naturalizma v iskusstve: Sbornik statei (Moscow, 1937), 11. As if foreseeing the wall of misunderstanding diat was being erected, Lebedev tried to explain himself before the official culture, declaring in an interview in 1933: “In his works, an author can break formal grammar rules without compromising the artistic value of his work. The artist can commit a number of errors in anatomy and form, and this likewise does not always ruin his work.” First printed in the journal Literaturnyi sovremennik, no. 12 (1933): 204-6 with the title “Beseda s V. V. Lebedevym.” As quoted in Glotser, Khudozhnikidetskoi knigi, 133

50. Ibid., 14.

51. Ibid., 13.

52. Ibid., 14.

53. Kichanova-Lifshits, Prosti menia, 37.

54. Ibid., 39.

55. In 1933, Marshak traveled in Italy and occasionally asked his wife how Lebedev's work on the illustrations for Mister Twistervizs progressing. “Is Vladimir Vasil´evich finishing up the drawings to Mister Twister” (beginning of June 1933); “Where is Vladimir Vasil´evich now? Thank him, my dear Sofia, for his drawings, and tell him that I will write him soon“ (7June 1933), both from Marshak, Sobraniesochinenii, 8:134-35 and 8:136-38.

56. Mandel´shtam, Osip, “Amerikanka,” Stikhotvoreniia (Ekaterinburg, 1998), 88 Google Scholar.

57. Annenskii, Innokentii, Stikhotvoreniia i tragedii (Leningrad, 1990), 58.Google Scholar In the poem “V otkrytye okna” (In the Open Windows), dtled “Letnim vecherom” (On a Summer Evening) in the autograph, under the crossed outworking tide “Ogonyok papirosy” (The Cigarette Light).

58. At the beginning of the twentieth century in the United States, with the appearance of the tobacco brands known to everyone, cigarettes become part of the soldier's regimen: they are sent for free to the front, thus forming habits and creating future customers. Unlike the sophisticated, old-fashioned, aristocratic pipe, the cigarette is simple, contemporary (an element of modernity), and democratic.

59. Bogdanov, K. A., “Travo kurit': K sotsial´noi istorii kureniia v XX veke,” Povsednevnost'i mifologiia: Issledovaniia po semiotike fol´klornoi deistvitel´nosti (St. Petersburg, 2001), 320.Google Scholar

60. Afnheim, Rudolf, Art and Visual Perception, exp. and rev. ed. (Berkeley, 1974), 45.Google Scholar

61. Kichanova-Lifshits describes Lebedev's technique for selecting material as follows: what “he needed as an artist, he took and assimilated. And what he did not need, he rejected.” Kichanova-Lifshits, Prosti menia, 50.

62. The specifics of this picture are of some interest. It is noteworthy that Mr. Twister is depicted smoking a cigar, even though the underlying reference is to a cigarette pack. This is not as contradictory as it seems, because the cigar was understood as the universal symbol of status. An American millionaire would naturally have been associated with this glamorous detail, which in the Soviet Union in the 1920s (and for a long time thereafter) was identified with the style of Hollywood movie stars. Also noteworthy is that the camel has a single hump. In Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov actually plays with the fact that the Camel cigarette pack depicts a dromedary (one-humped) camel rather than a Bactrian (twohumped) camel. See Abasheva, Marina, “Roman s reklamoi: Nabokov i drugie,” Neprikosnovennyizapas, no. 6 (62) (2008)Google Scholar.

63. Kichanova-Lifshits, Prosti menia, 39, 51.

64. Glotser, Khudozhniki detskoi knigi, 133.

65. Zhitkov, Boris, “Chto nuzhno vzroslym ot detskoi knigi,” Zvezda, 1933, no. 7: 135 Google Scholar.

66. Brodskii, Iosif, “Trofeinoe,” trans. Sumerkin, A., in Sochineniia Iosifa Brodskogo (St. Petersburg, 1995), 4:200 Google Scholar.

67. Oushakine, Serguei Alex, “The Terrifying Mimicry of Samizdat,” Public Culture 13, no. 2 (2001): 192 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68. Petrovskii, “Samuil Marshak,” 213-14.

69. Gor´kii, M., “Chelovek, ushi kotorogo zatknuty vatoi,” Pravda, 19 January 1930 Google Scholar; response to D. Kal´m, “Protiv khaltury v detskoi literature!” Literaturnaia gazeta, 16 December 1929.