The History of Children’s Literature as Viewed by Socialist Researchers in Croatia Until 1965

Abstract

Even today, research papers dealing with socialist children’s literature written in socialist Yugoslavia are rare. One gets the impression that such literature for children never existed. It is as if children’s literature was either not written in the period of socialist Yugoslavia, or if it was, it had nothing to do with the socialist environment in which it was created. As if children’s literature was being created beyond the existing socialist reality and entirely independently of it. Such a perception of Croatian children’s literature from the period of socialism, presented to us by researchers of children’s literature, has persisted in socialist Yugoslavia as well as in democratic Croatia. However, there was one period in communist Yugoslavia when the topic of socialist children’s literature was addressed in various publications. This happened during a relatively short interval after enough time had passed since the Second World War and the revolutionary change that affected all parts and aspects of society, including children’s literature, and when a sufficient number of literary works for children and practices already existed. There are two authors who marked that period of children’s literature studies: Grigor Vitez and Danko Oblak. Grigor Vitez published theoretical texts that focused mainly on fairy tales and children’s poetry, whereas some of his works were left behind in manuscript form. This theoretical effort was primarily pragmatically motivated, making it easier for him to create editorial policies, which have also influenced the general direction of Croatian children’s literature. Danko Oblak, on the other hand, was interested in the connection of children’s literature with the socialist era in which it took shape. In order to better determine the characteristics of contemporary children’s literature, he had to turn to the past, explore the development, features of certain previous periods of children’s literature, and the circumstances in which one period transitioned to another. In other words, Danko Oblak created an outline of socialist Yugoslav children’s literature, which is the subject of this paper.