“The Crocodile” by Kornei Chukovsky: how a children’s 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 ailing son on a train, is known by heart by millions. But the path of this tale to the reader was strewn with bans, censorship edits, and genuine ideological persecution. “The Crocodile” was banned not once, and behind each ban stood not only bureaucratic whims 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 Tale and the First Suspicions

“The Crocodile” was born in 1916–1917, when Chukovsky was writing the first part for his ailing son Kolya. The 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 tale achieved tremendous success and was reprinted several times. But even then, something suspicious was noticed in it. Censors disliked “Petrograd”, “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 bans.

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 edits, changed “city guard” to “municipal police officer”, but it did not help. In his diary, he described this bureaucratic chaos in detail: “Detained in Moscow by Gublit and transferred to GUS — the State Scientific Council at the People’s Commissariat of Education — in August 1926. Allowed for publication by Leningrad Gublit on October 30, 1927, after four months of delay. But the permit did not take effect, and the book was under consideration by GUS until December 15, 1927”. Chukovsky even had an audience with Krupskaya, who said he was “acting shamelessly”. In the end, the permit was granted, but the print run was limited to five thousand copies, and then Glavlit banned the book again.

Krupskaya’s Article: A Blow from the Kremlin

The climax of the persecution was Krupskaya’s article “On Chukovsky’s ‘The Crocodile’”, published in the newspaper “Pravda” on February 1, 1928. The wife of Lenin’s article was not just criticism — it was a political verdict that effectively meant a ban on the writer’s profession. Krupskaya wrote that “to accustom a child to talk nonsense, to read all sorts of nonsense, may be accepted in bourgeois families. But this has nothing to do with the education that should be given to the growing generation in the country of the victorious proletariat”. She called the tale “bourgeois dross” and declared: “I think we should not give ‘The Crocodile’ to our children”.

But what exactly did “The Crocodile” offend Krupskaya? Firstly, she saw in the tale a parody on the works of Nekrasov, whom Chukovsky deeply admired and whose collected works he was preparing for publication. Secondly, it seemed to her that the poem depicted the people as cowardly, unable to cope with danger on their own, and only the brave Vanya Vasilevich finds the courage to fight the monster. From the perspective of Soviet ideology, such an image of the people was unacceptable: the people should be a heroic collective, not a passive crowd.

“Chukovskism”: a word that became a death sentence

After Krupskaya’s article, a real campaign against Chukovsky began. Even a special term — “chukovskism” — appeared, becoming a pejorative. In 1929, the parents’ council of the Kremlin kindergarten adopted a resolution “We call for a struggle against ‘Chukovskism’”. Not only “The Crocodile” but also “Aibolit”, “Barmaley”, “Moidodyr”, and other works were banned. Critics accused Chukovsky of his tales “divorcing speech from thinking”, “disorienting the preschool child in the environment”, and introducing “bourgeois ideology”.

The writer himself experienced these years as the most tragic page of his life. “My name has become a curse word,” he lamented. In 1929, Chukovsky even published a repentant letter, renouncing his tales and promising to write on “new themes”. However, as he admitted many years later, this repentance was “a terrible mistake in his life, which he regrets and will regret until the end of his days”.

A New Wave of Prohibition: 1934 and the Death of Kirov

It seemed that after all the trials, the tale could finally find peace, but in 1934 it was banned again. This time the reason was even more sinister. After the assassination of Sergei Mironovich Kirov, the secretary of the Leningrad Communist Party regional committee, the lines “Very glad Petrograd” from “The Crocodile” were considered as profanity. In a city in mourning, any mention of joy seemed inappropriate, and the death of the crocodile in the book could be interpreted as a sinister allusion to the assassination of the party leader. Censors wrote: “Leningrad is a historical city, and any fantasy about it will be taken as a political hint”. The tale was again removed from the press until the mid-1950s.

Why “The Crocodile” was so feared

Today, when reading “The Crocodile”, we see only a joyful, absurd, musical tale that has delighted children for over a hundred years. But for Soviet censorship, it was not a children’s text, but a political statement. In it, they looked for hints of class struggle, parodies on classics, ideologically harmful images. The State Scientific Council banned “The Crocodile” from publication, while pedagogical criticism saw it as a “danger” and the “introduction of bourgeois ideology”.

The paradox is that Chukovsky, more than anyone else, updated Russian children’s poetry. He created a language that children heard and understood, rhythms that were remembered for a lifetime. But it was this linguistic freedom that seemed suspicious to the system accustomed to controlling every word. Chukovsky did not write about collective farms and pioneers, he wrote about crocodiles and flies — and that was enough to declare him an enemy.

Return and Eternity

Only after Stalin’s death, during the Khrushchev thaw, “The Crocodile” returned to readers. Chukovsky lived to see this moment and saw his books on the shelves again. Today, his tales are a classic known to all. And the history of their ban has become one of the most vivid examples of how ideology can blind and make one see danger where there is only childlike joy and fantasy. In the 1950s, Chukovsky, recalling the years of persecution, wrote in his diary: “Oh, if only they published my ‘The Crocodile’ and ‘Bibigon’!” Now his “The Crocodile” is published in million copies — and this is the best victory literature can achieve over censorship.

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