“The Crocodile” by Kornei Chukovsky: how a children’s fairy tale became a victim of ideological war It is hard to imagine a children’s library without Kornei Chukovsky’s “The Crocodile”. This lively, rhythmic poem, written for his sick son on a train, is known by heart by millions. But the path of this fairy tale to the reader was strewn with bans, censorship changes, and real ideological persecution. “The Crocodile” was banned not once, and behind each ban stood not only bureaucratic caprice but an entire system that saw children’s literature as a tool of class struggle. Why did an innocent crocodile strolling through Petrograd become more dangerous to Soviet ideologues than any political opponent? The Birth of the Fairy Tale and the First Suspicion “The Crocodile” was born in 1916–1917, when Chukovsky wrote the first part for his sick son Kolya. The fairy tale was first published in 1917 under the title “Vanya and the Crocodile” in the supplement to the magazine “Niva”, and in 1919 it was published as a separate book “The Adventures of Crocodile Crocodileovich” by the Petrosoviet publishing house. The fairy tale achieved immense success and was reprinted several times. But even then, something suspicious was noticed in it. Censors disliked “Petrograd”, “the city guard”, and the bourgeois girl Lalya. What could be more innocent? However, in the new Soviet reality, even geographical names and pre-revolutionary realities became a reason for a ban. In the mid-1920s, the pressure intensified. In August 1926, the publication of “The Crocodile” was banned. Chukovsky tried to save the book: he made changes, changing “the city guard” to “a militia officer”, but it did not help. In his diary, he described this bureaucratic chaos in detail: “Detained in Moscow by Gubitom and transferred to GUS — the State Scientific Council under the People’s Commissariat of Education — in August 1926. Allowed to be published by the Leningrad Gubitom on October 30, 1927, after four month ... Read more