Malenkiĭ Chon i Dlinnyĭ Dzhon [Little Chon and Long John] is a most unusual flip book. Credited on the cover to N. Lapshin (probably Nikolaĭ Fedorovich Lapshin 1891-1942), it was published by the Soviet state publishing house, Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo (GIZ), in Leningrad around 1928. Cotsen has five other titles illustrated by Lapshin, but this is the only novelty book. The wordless flip book contains a cartoon in 55 leaves and it features a small Chinese girl who tries to get the attention of a tall British man. After she angers him, a chase ensues. Finally she trips him into a river and takes his hat as he floats downstream.
The minimalist pair in printed in four colors are obviously stereotypes, but the choice of characters might be more significant than it first appears. Given the time period of the book’s production in the Soviet Union, I don’t think it’s unfair to see undertones of anti-imperialist and anti-British sentiment in this charming cartoon about a girl finding a new hat.
Painstakingly reproduced below for your entertainment is a gif of the flip book in full:
While processing a new group of early Soviet children's books, I came across two editions of Mikhail Il'in's Kak Avtomobilʹ Uchilsi︠a︡ Khoditʹ. The second edition, pictured above, was published in 1931 by Molodai︠a︡ Gvardii︠a︡, an imprint of the State publishing monopoly OGIZ (unfortunately we do not have the first edition, published…
Polina Popova, Cotsen's roving Russian-language picture book expert, has written a new post about author Vera Smirnova and her contribution to the genre of life "before and after" the Soviets took power from 1930. As always, her continuing interest in introducing non-Russian speakers to the wealth of Russian children's literature…
Polina Popova, our roving correspondent on Russian- and Ukrainian-language children's books, has written a new essay for the Cotsen curatorial blog based on her research when she was in residence at Princeton several years ago. In this post, she looks at how Japan has been represented in the former Soviet…
