One user wrote:
- Was the alphabet really printed abroad? I always thought that in the USSR everything was fine with the printing industry... Well done, the Germans - they succeeded everywhere. They tried for themselves and they helped us
I also racked my brains - why are the letters in the alphabet and primer different in order?)) 
lybimye_knigi
It still remains a mystery to me where this alphabet was used - in school or kindergarten? I remember mine blue primer, they gave it to us right away in first grade, I even have a photo of me with him at my desk. I also remember the alphabet, but when did we learn it? Both books teach reading in the same way, why was it necessary to duplicate?
elenka_knigolub
I think that this ABC was intended for children to study with their parents or in kindergarten.
I looked at the Primer now - it is more complicated: it already contains vowels/consonants, hard/soft sounds, writing, charades, puzzles, and in general it was approved by the Ministry of Education of the RSFSR, unlike the ABC.
And this ABC, by the way, contains, in addition to the letter section, also materials for teaching counting, as well as dedicated to children's creativity.
For those who want to “look through” the ABC online -
Primer, 1987
Almost all Soviet children learned from this primer.
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Primer 1970.
First-graders of the 70s were less fortunate - the cover of the 1970 Primer was simpler and more concise. I studied on it in first grade in 1984.
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8. Printed in the GDR. But why? And "Who is this? What is this?" in two volumes they were also once published in the GDR. 
When I was a child, my husband and I had a two-part textbook that taught us Russian.
Designed for preparatory and first grades of national schools, as well as for foreigners starting to learn Russian.
Russian language in pictures.
Barannikov I.V., Varkovitskaya L.A. Old edition of the textbook. 1971
I had one like this. The second part was not found.
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4.The pages of the textbook reflect Soviet life in the 60s. 
5. Please note - the stove is wood-burning. 
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My husband and I had these publications. We loved leafing through them as children - looking at the pictures and trying to read the words.
1982 First part
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13. For me this garden was like a living creature) 
14. The perfect family lunch. Again, grandma fries, mom cooks soup. 
Second part.
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9. Gas stove. Soviet life of the late 70s and early 80s. 
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12. Soviet supermarket, and previously it was a department store selling a full range of food and drinks. Supermarket. 
13. And the small cake turned out to be a sign - this is “Fairy Tale”! 
14. To this day we remember this when we communicate on the Internet - on forums, in chats: some go to bed, while others are still at work. 
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I've always liked illustrations in this style. Emotional. Animals are like people. Such pictures are in all textbooks and in manuals for extracurricular activities. For a long time I couldn't find the artist's name. By process of elimination, I assumed that it was E.V. Viktorov. I couldn't find anything about him on the Internet. Maybe some of the readers know about him?
E.V. Viktorov also created covers for math notebooks.
This is probably one of the artist's first works. Textbook "Native speech. 1st grade" 1975.
What were the first Soviet alphabets?
On December 26, 1919, a decree was issued to eliminate illiteracy among the population of the RSFSR. Among the points of the decree was the following:
8. Those who evade the duties established by this decree and prevent illiterate people from attending schools will be held criminally liable.
This means that all those who could read and write were obliged to teach the illiterate, and those who could go to school. Apparently, some families did not allow girls and women to go to school - they say it’s not a woman’s business.
However...
5. For students of literacy who are employed, with the exception of those employed in militarized enterprises, the working day is reduced by two hours for the entire duration of training while maintaining wages.
Full text of the decree -
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6. Only when Soviet power women could learn to read and write - after all, it was believed that a “woman” was not capable of learning.
Primer for adults "Down with illiteracy" (1920), beginning with the slogan “We are not slaves. We are not slaves,”
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There were others - "Workers' and Peasants' Primer", the communist primer "The Competent Red Army Soldier" and "Anti-Religious ABC" (1933).
ABC of the Revolution, 1921
The series of posters “The ABC of Revolution”, made by Ukrainian artist Adolf Strakhov, was first published in 1921. main topic This set shows the life of the young Soviet republic in the first post-revolutionary years. "The ABC of the Revolution", despite the not entirely perfect literary form of its subtext poems, was a significant phenomenon in the propaganda art of the 1920s and was subsequently - in 1969 - republished by the Kyiv publishing house "Mistetstvo".
Continuation of the alphabet -
Anti-religious alphabet. Hardly for first graders.
UTILIBURO IZOGIZA.
Moscow 1933 Leningrad.
Artist Mikhail Mikhailovich Cheremnykh.
- Nowadays in Russia they are not able to create any sensible social advertising. No creativity, execution - so-so. And here is a whole alphabet with decent and expressive (I speak as an expert) illustrations!
- “Nowadays in Russia they are not able to create any kind of sensible social advertising” - nowadays everyone has become much “wiser” and almost throws away their rights. That's why you won't see good social advertising.
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Well, who would have thought that we would live to see a time when such a picture would become relevant again.
5.Why did Gandhi not please the Soviet Bolsheviks?
- Well, apparently, during his political maneuvers, various criticisms arose against him.
- These are communists, they always saw only enemies abroad, so they incited the people against India, as well as against other countries...
- Read the story. The USSR always tried to maintain friendly relations with India, as a revolutionary country that rebelled against the yoke of the British colonial forces.
- They shouldn’t talk so much about Gandhi.
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- As far as I remember, Ford supported the Nazis during the Third Reich, so he was assigned to this alphabet
- They dragged it here only because the so-called Ford conveyor belt, in the understanding of the communists, is the most pronounced form of exploitation, where the personality of a person in the production of any object does not matter in the slightest.
Continuation of the primer in
There was the "Soviet Erotic Alphabet", created in 1931 by the future People's Artist of the USSR Sergei Dmitrievich Merkurov (1881-1952). It is interesting that the author of this alphabet was a sculptor-monumentalist, the author of numerous monuments to Joseph Stalin (including the three largest in the USSR) and Lenin, as well as tombstones near the Kremlin wall - F.E. Dzerzhinsky, A.A. Zhdanov, M.I. Kalinin, Ya.M. Sverdlov, M.V. Frunze.
ABC of Vladmir Konashevich- this time for children. Without revolutionary slogans.
As the artist’s daughter recalled, “ABC” was born from letters that Konashevich wrote to his wife: “Dad wrote letters to mom, and sent me pictures. For every letter of the alphabet. I was already four years old, and, obviously, he believed that it was time to know the letters. Later, these pictures were published under the title “The ABC in the drawings of Vl. Konashevich."
Publisher: TV-vo R. Golike and A. Vilborg
Place of publication: Petrograd
Year of publication: 1918
Interestingly, there is no hard sign at the end of words in the alphabet, but the letters Fita and Izhitsa have been preserved.
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Completely alphabet -
Primer 1937
The time is such that we must praise our leaders and dear comrades almost on our knees...
I.S. Belyaev. Primer. 1943.
State Publishing House K-FSSR.
A prominent figure in public education in Karelia. In teaching work from 1930 to 1940. from 1940 - Deputy People's Commissar, and from 1944. to 1951 - People's Commissar - Minister of Public Education of the K-FSSR. In 1944-1949. did a lot to restore the school network in Karelia. Honored Teacher of Karelia, Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, author of more than 20 textbooks. He prepared several textbooks during the war years.
After the war.
"ABC", 1970.
Publishing house "Enlightenment", tenth edition. Authors: Voskresenskaya A.I., Redozubov S.P., Yankovskaya A.V.
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And this is an ABC book for children with limited hearing. Children with degrees 2-4 hearing loss and complete hearing loss were called deaf-mute. At that time there was no special equipment (headphones and microphones) and powerful hearing aids that would help children with degrees 2-4. There were no modern methods of teaching children to speak. Therefore, they were taught to write correctly, read lips - if they can’t say it, then let them write it on a piece of paper. And reading books is a source of knowledge. There were dactylic alphabet and sign language at that time, but there weren’t very many sign language interpreters, mostly hearing children of deaf parents who had lost their hearing after illness (acquired non-hereditary deafness)
Zykov S.A. Primer for deaf schools
Publisher: State. educational and pedagogical publishing house of the Ministry of Education of the RSFSR Year: 1952
This primer is built using the sound (analytical-synthetic) method. Training on it is designed for one and a half years. In order to maintain the interest of students, the primer contains exercises and games, and the texts are accompanied by illustrations. To develop a sense of rhythm, short poems are included in the primer. When reading from the ABC book, children become familiar with such grammar concepts as singular and plural noun, present and past tense of verb, masculine and feminine verb, formation of words by adding a prefix, etc.
Teaching writing is carried out simultaneously with teaching reading, so the primer also contains exercises for writing.
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6. Articulation of the lips with the sound "a".
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Donskaya N.Yu., Linikova N.I. Primer for schools of the hearing impaired.
Second edition. M.: Enlightenment, 1986. It was from it (first edition) that I studied in first grade, right after the primer in the blue cover.
Cover artist E.V. Viktorov.
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The hardware for controlling headphones and microphones appears to be built into the desk. Just added. Today I spoke at work with a deaf man who has the child is walking to a school for children with hearing loss. He said that in such schools there has been no equipment for a long time; now everyone wears hearing aids of varying power.
5. This is the same equipment on the teacher’s desk, but it’s hard to see. The teacher does not sing into the microphone, she speaks. Desk for two students. The students have headphones, but they don’t stand out. Apparently, the walker did not emphasize them for aesthetic reasons. Usually these are black rubber headphones on a black flexible hoop.
8. Emphasis on each word. Funny and cautionary tale. The artist is still the same E.V. Viktorov.
Well, that's it, I end the post here.)
And what kind of primers are now for modern schoolchildren? ABCs?
I was sorting through old books and came across my old school primer from 1984. I skimmed through it and, to be honest, I was stunned. This children's book, from which children should learn to read with joy and pleasure, turned out to be so densely saturated with communist propaganda that it is even surprising how we, born in the USSR, managed to avoid final and irrevocable zombification.
The trash starts from the very first page. I quote: “Today you begin your journey to a wonderful, extraordinary country - the Land of knowledge. You will learn to read and write, for the first time you will write the words that are dearest and closest to all of us: mother, Motherland, Lenin.”
Further more. Lenin, the party, the Great October Revolution, the USSR - the best country in the world, veterans, the Second World War, and - a rather persistent push for the idea of becoming an astronaut. It seems that the USSR was planning a large-scale space expansion.
So don’t be surprised by the amount of cotton wool in the brains of your compatriots. Rather, one should be surprised that even with such grandiose and systematic efforts of state propaganda, normal people remained.
Primer - the beginning of the beginning. The primer is the first book of a first-grader. Almost every Soviet boy and girl began the difficult path of knowledge with this book. The primer is a book that was the first to give Soviet children education and love for the Motherland and loved ones. Maybe that’s why, in order not to forget our first textbook, we first-graders were photographed with the primer on the desk or in our hands. Many people probably have such photos. And many years later, I accidentally came across this book. After looking through the primer, I shed a tear from the surging nostalgia. Seeing illustrations remembered from childhood in a textbook, the associations with which they are associated emerge in my memory. On this page, I read a poem about mittens to the whole class, syllable by syllable, and looking at the picture of cheerful children sliding down the slide, I wanted classes to end quickly and run to the ice-frozen pond to ride down the huge slide. You may also, after viewing the primer, recall some memories of your childhood and school years.
In the Land of Soviets, education was very high level and at the same time (it’s hard to believe now) free. Every Soviet schoolchild knew that by focusing only on one’s own knowledge, one could enter higher education. educational institution without a bribe or a “hairy” hand. Therefore, many children strived to graduate from school with honors. Where did a schoolchild’s education begin? Of course, from him - from “ Primer»!
Now almost all children are sent to school from the age of six. At the same time, teachers require that the child already be able to read fluently and master counting. Nowadays, kids are simply forced to grow up early, and not because their childhood is devoid of balloons and toys, but because children’s serene carefreeness ends exactly at the age of five, when “hopeless” schooling begins. preparatory courses... But this was not the case in the Union: they assigned fewer lessons and had enough time for sports and yard games. I remember that we went to first grade at the age of seven or eight, without knowing how to read or count. And we were given fewer lessons than now. For example, my first-grader, after serving seven years in school! lessons, brings home “mountains” homework in writing, mathematics, natural history, English, labor...
So I keep grumbling, probably because even honey seemed sweeter in childhood. I still remember with a joyful feeling my first call, my first teacher Lidia Ivanovna, how she, standing at the blackboard, held the “Primer” in her hands and solemnly said: “this is the most important book in your life, with it you will begin your journey to world of knowledge..." Thinking like this, I was clearing out the bookshelves for my first-grader’s new books and in the very corner I found, believe it or not, “A Primer”! Hello old friend! I open the first page... oh yes Lidiya Ivanovna... she borrowed her speech from there, she just forgot to add that “thanks to the Primer, you will learn to write your first words “mother”, “Motherland” and “Lenin”!” And somewhere, from the depths of my memory, a memory emerges that there was such a tradition: all first-graders were seated at their desks with an “ABC book” in their hands for a photo. Probably every Soviet schoolchild had such a photograph, which he then proudly signed. back side“September 1, 1969. Vania". Do you remember the joke: “mother washed the frame, and the frame washed mother”? So, it turns out that the sentence “mom washed the frame” was only in the 1959 Primer. And, returning to my schoolboy son, in his modern “ABC” by Zhukova there is the phrase “Vova is washing the frame.” Is it clear where the legs come from?
In general, I began to wonder, how many “Primers” were published in the Union, who was the author? Come on, old friend of my Red Banner childhood, tell me your secrets. Officially, in the Country of Soviets, the “Primer” was “born” in 1937, under the authorship of the honored teacher Nikolai Golovin. People immediately “joked” at his expense: the whole country taught children using Golovin’s “Primer.” Then, this publication was revised and supplemented with new examples, copybooks, pictures from folk tales about “Kolobok”, “The Ryaba Hen”, “Turnip” and so on. Moreover, only pictures were given in order to develop oral speech child (he had to, looking at the textbook, recite the given fairy tale by heart). I remember how we told the story “About the Goldfish” to the whole class, one by one, one sentence at a time. The story was a little funny and not always believable. Moreover, it was quite easy for children to navigate the “ABC”: vowels were indicated by a red rectangle, consonants – by a green rectangle. There were also socially useful images: here is a girl watering flowers, and here she is leading her grandmother across the road. There was always a page with a portrait of Lenin and a description of how he takes care of children (no matter how many times I looked through the first textbooks, I never found a portrait of Stalin). There was always a section “about the Motherland”: a picture with a map of the Union and images of children in national costumes.
So, the Primer was published in Moscow, by the Prosveshchenie publishing house. The editorial board took a very responsible approach to the book’s illustrations. The expert commission reviewed the Primer's drawings in detail: they should not be overloaded with details. They must have a positive educational and expressive character, because it was believed that the child’s psyche is very vulnerable and has a figurative, not logical thinking. Therefore, it is not surprising that experienced, even famous artists were involved in painting the Primer, for example V. Ezhkova, V. Bogdanov, T. Nikulina. The Primer was published in 1943, 1945, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1959, 1962,1963, 1967, 1970, 1983, 1987. As a rule, each edition of the textbook was created by a team of authors. However, the most famous in this area were: Golovin N. (“Primer” 1937-44), Voskresenskaya A. (“Primer” 1952, 9th edition and “Primer” 1959, 16th edition), Arkhangelskaya N. (1967 and 1970 5th edition), Svadkovsky I. (1962 10th edition), Gorbushina A. (1983 23rd edition), Goretsky V. 1987 (7th edition). I just want to say “thank you!” with love! for this first book in my life and for the age-yellowed photo of that curly-haired first-grader from 1970, who smiles so proudly in her arms with her ABC book. And we all know where the Motherland begins!
Download "Primer"
Primer 1937.Author: Golovin N. M.Publisher: Uchpedgiz Year: 1937 Format: PDF Size: 171.6 MB Number of pages: 72 « » |
Primer 1946.Author: Redozubov S. P.Publisher: Uchpedgiz Year: 1946 Format: DjVu + program for viewing .djvu files Language: Russian (pre-reform) Number of pages: 98 Size: 2.72 MB |
Born and raised in the USSR, what do you think: how much of what you think their beliefs and values, indeed yours, and what was simply driven into your head in childhood and became a part of you against your will? What do you really value and what have you just been trained to love? Why were you proud of some things and ashamed of others? How did you determine what was good and what was bad?
Don't rush to answer. Let's look through the 1984 primer together, which I (and you, probably) were once taught.
The primer is the book that children opened first, without doubt or criticism, absorbing everything that was written in it or read between the lines. Each of his words formed the foundation of their future worldview as the ultimate truth. It takes years, a flexible and inquisitive mind, the habit of healthy reflection and a supportive environment to rethink and revise beliefs formed in early childhood. Many people never manage to get rid of the clichés imposed in childhood, and they don’t even consider it necessary.
What lesson did the primer begin with? What was written on its first page?
Mother, Motherland, Lenin. These are the words that should have become the closest and dearest to us. Have you forgotten anyone? Where's dad? What, didn’t even make it into the top three? But Lenin was not forgotten - here they are, clearly set priorities.
I wonder what they will write in the primers after 2017, when Putin and, perhaps, his powers will be significantly expanded? Mom, Crimean, Putin? Or will mom be thrown out as unnecessary, replaced with something more useful - “Orthodoxy,” for example?
Lenin’s malicious face spans the entire page (there are no other such large pictures in the book at all)—the first thing the child saw after the word “primer.” Later, the child was informed that Lenin “ardently wanted” the children to grow up to be staunch communists. Competent and hardworking citizens. Intelligent and unpretentious cogs, in a word. So that even sanctions, even stones from the sky - it doesn’t matter. After this, is it any wonder that Lenin’s mummy still lies on Red Square, and the population patiently endures any government experiments on the long-suffering domestic economy?
Homeland is the second most important words in the primer this is the USSR - united, powerful, great, beautiful and generally the best. A coat of arms, a flag, an image on a map - all to show how important this thing is - the state. It is not for nothing that for many, the collapse of the USSR is a personal tragedy, the actual loss of the Motherland. Now nostalgia for the USSR is successfully fueling aggression against Russia’s closest neighbors under the guise of unifying the “Russian world.” So what if people die? This is for the Motherland!
And here there is a funny exercise: “the pilot is sawing; carpenter - swims; captain - flies." You need to arrange the words correctly so that they correspond to each other. I don’t remember what I thought about when I saw this exercise many years ago, but now for some reason it immediately occurred to me that Shuvalov was flying with us (on his Bombardier), Usmanov was sailing on the world’s largest yacht, and they were sawing. .everyone is sawing who can get to the budget money. Alas, such is the time.
The fate of the Soviet schoolchild was predetermined from birth: child of October - pioneer - Komsomol member - communist. It is no coincidence that everything began in October, or more precisely, with the Great October Revolution. The date of the banal coup became a reference point, a sacred event, and even a kind of “thing in itself.” Is it possible to say: “glory to September” or “glory to the New Year”? Sounds stupid. But “glory to October”, it turns out, is possible.
And here, in general, the entire spread is dedicated to the symbols of communist ideology: Leningrad, Aurora, pioneers and a demonstration that demonstrates nothing but the controllability of the herd that voluntarily and forcibly entered it.
One gets the feeling that the USSR was purposefully preparing for large-scale space expansion - otherwise why invest in children the desire to become astronauts? We still need to look for a more exotic profession: for 300 million inhabitants of the USSR there are less than 120 cosmonauts, including 33 who have already died. Less than one astronaut for 2 million people—was it worth running such a long-term advertising campaign for?
Moreover, the topic of cosmonautics is raised more than once, despite the fact that by 1984 leadership in space had long been lost, and the Soviet space program was special towards its participants. with his dream of colonizing Mars, it’s worth taking note of the idea - it will be useful for educating future Martians.
Militarism, of course, was not spared either. Those volunteers who are now fighting in the DPR/LPR were also brought up in the spirit of respect for the glorious Soviet soldiers.
Children learned to honor veterans and took for granted the idea that for peace you can (and should) fight, no matter how absurd and hypocritical it may sound.
After looking through the primer, I realized where a whole bunch of other, harmless cliches came from in my head: a dog is a man’s friend; Pushkin is a great Russian writer (why, by the way, not a poet?); Tolstoy is a brilliant Russian writer; Mayakovsky is great Soviet poet; Marshak, Mikhalkov, Barto are wonderful Soviet writers.
Everything in the primer has ready-made labels. Instead of simply signing this or that work and giving the children the opportunity to form their own opinion about it, they are persistently informed that these particular authors are great and brilliant. The ability to evaluate and think critically has always been a superfluous skill for those who were destined to stand in line and obey the wise instructions of the party and government.
As a result, if you look at Russians aged 30 to 50, it turns out that most of them have their heads filled with attitudes and clichés, the price of which is not even a penny, but 45 kopecks - that’s how much a Soviet primer, stuffed to capacity with communist ideology, cost.
Of course, although he was the first, he was not the only link in the chain. After him, other books, films, newspapers, television shows, plays, public events and God knows what else came into play. All this had one goal - to educate a man of the future, a builder of communism.
I don’t know who first came up with the idea that it is permissible to manipulate children, gradually pushing the “correct” ideas and values into their heads, but we see the result of this now in all its glory: an infantile population with thickly powdered brains, trying in vain to find the points contact between objective reality and the program laid down in childhood, nostalgic for a great and beautiful country that in fact never existed.
Publications in the Literature section
Primer for educational purposes
On October 10, 1918, the decree “On the introduction of a new spelling” was signed, which excluded the letters Ѣ, Ѳ, I from the alphabet, abolished the spelling of Ъ at the end of words - and in general brought Russian spelling to the form in which we know it today. "Kultura.RF" talks about the main post-revolutionary primers of different years.
“ABC” by Vladimir Konashevich, 1918
The ABC of Vladimir Konashevich (cover). St. Petersburg, publishing house of the Partnership of R. Golike and A. Vilborg. 1918
ABC of Vladimir Konashevich. St. Petersburg, publishing house of the Partnership of R. Golike and A. Vilborg. 1918
The illustrated “ABC” by Soviet artist Vladimir Konashevich became one of the first manuals of the new spelling (without the letter “yat”). The idea for the book was born during the artist’s correspondence with his family, who were stuck in the Urals, cut off from the Soviet Republic by Kolchak’s army. “Dad wrote letters to mom, and sent me pictures for each letter of the alphabet, recalled Konashevich’s daughter Olga Chaiko. - I was already four years old, and, obviously, he believed that it was time to know the letters.". Later, Konashevich, on the advice of friends, decided to publish these drawings - and in 1918, “ABC” was published. It included 36 pictures painted in watercolors. Objects and phenomena in the ABC were very different, from animals and plants to vehicles and toys. They were depicted simply, without perspective distortions, since Vladimir Konashevich believed that “a child should understand the picture at first sight.”
Vladimir Mayakovsky. Soviet alphabet (cover). Moscow, 1919
Vladimir Mayakovsky. Soviet alphabet. Moscow, 1919
“An intellectual does not like risk. / And moderately red, like a radish"- and so on from “A” to “Z”. This topical alphabet was first published in 1919, and Vladimir Mayakovsky was the author of not only its epigrams, but also cartoon illustrations for each of the letters of the alphabet.
The main audience of this primer were Red Army soldiers, whom Mayakovsky wanted to accustom to poetic language with the help of such a satirical publication. “There were such jokes that were not very suitable for the salon, but which went very well in the trenches”, he recalled. Mayakovsky personally colored about five thousand copies of the alphabet, printed in the empty Stroganov printing house when Tsentropechat refused to publish the book for the poet. Later, Mayakovsky transferred many couplets from the “Soviet ABC” to the iconic “ROSTA Windows”.
“Down with Illiteracy”, 1920
Dora Elkina. Down with illiteracy! (A primer for adults). Moscow, Extracurricular department of MONO, 1920
Dora Elkina. Down with illiteracy! (A primer for adults). Moscow, Extracurricular department of MONO, 1920
Under this name, in 1919–1920, the first editions of the Soviet primer for adults, developed by Dora Elkina and a team of co-authors, were published. These manuals taught the basics of reading and writing based on political slogans: for example, students had to read syllable by syllable the phrases “Councils of the alarm of the people,” “We bring freedom to the world,” and the famous palindrome “We are not slaves, slaves are not us.” The first Soviet alphabets were illustrated by bright propaganda posters and scenes from the life of the proletariat.
A few years later, the “Down with Illiteracy” society was created, the goal of which was to eliminate mass illiteracy. Its work was supervised by major government figures: Mikhail Kalinin, Nadezhda Krupskaya, Anatoly Lunacharsky. Under the leadership of the society, not only teaching aids, but also cultural and educational magazines, such as “Kultpohod” and “Let’s Increase Literacy.” According to historians, over the 13 years of its existence, the “Down with Illiteracy” society educated about 5 million Soviet citizens.
Primer "Pioneer", 1925
Ivan Sverchkov. Pioneer. Children's ABC book (cover and title page). Leningrad, GIZ, 1925
Ivan Sverchkov. Pioneer. Children's ABC book. Leningrad, GIZ, 1925
The purpose of this manual was to teach schoolchildren not only the basics of literacy, but also the structure of the world around them and Soviet life. “Pioneer” told young readers about life in cities and villages, about various proletarian professions, about domestic and wild animals, about measurements of length, weight and time with the help of illustrations in an engraving style. Of course, the book’s ideological component was also strong. One of the main images of the primer were the October Revolution and Vladimir Lenin: many poems in the primer were dedicated to them.
And “Pioneer” inextricably linked childhood itself in the young Soviet country with the concept of “ours”: kindergartens, schools, camps and even the revolution were depicted as common.
“Primer” by Nikolai Golovin, 1937
Nikolai Golovin. Primer (cover). Moscow, Uchpedgiz, 1937
Nikolai Golovin. Primer. Moscow, Uchpedgiz, 1937
“The whole country taught children / According to Golovin’s ABC book”, they said in the Soviet Union, and not without exaggeration. Perhaps there was no school in the late 1930s - early 1940s where they did not read this textbook, compiled by Honored Teacher of the RSFSR Nikolai Golovin. The material in the book ranged from simple to complex: from reading syllables to copybooks, from short stories about ordinary children's activities to poems dedicated to Lenin and Stalin, with obvious political overtones.
A distinctive feature of the Primer were its illustrations, for which the editorial board had special requirements. The images were bright, positive and simple, not overloaded with details, and also had a very clear didactic and educational tone, showing readers patterns of correct behavior.
“Primer” by Alexandra Voskresenskaya, 1944
Alexandra Voskresenskaya. Primer (cover). Moscow, Uchpedgiz, 1956
Alexandra Voskresenskaya. Primer. Moscow, Uchpedgiz, 1956
“The Primer,” authored by methodologist and teacher of the Russian language Alexandra Voskresenskaya, was one of the most successful manuals for junior school: It was reprinted twenty times. The secret to the success of the primer was a successful combination of tasks to develop memory, imagination and train writing and reading skills. The material in the manual became more complex smoothly and gradually: from combinations of sounds to syllables, from them to short words, small phrases, and so on. The main motif of the illustrations in the book was a measured and happy village life (initially, according to Voskresenskaya’s “Primer,” they studied in rural schools).
Alexandra Voskresenskaya also paid special attention to preparing for teaching preschoolers and created the famous “ABC with a stork” for teaching children in the family.
“Primer” by Sergei Redozubov, 1945
Sergey Redozubov. Primer (cover). Moscow, Uchpedgiz, 1946
Sergey Redozubov. Primer (cover). Moscow, Uchpedgiz, 1956
Sergey Redozubov. Primer. Moscow, Uchpedgiz, 1950
The post-war primer was illustrated with scenes of peaceful work and leisure: young pioneers were depicted doing extracurricular reading, games, sports and cleaning. By describing these pictures and relying on auxiliary ones, schoolchildren learned to invent short stories for every lesson. Towards the end of the Primer there were poems and stories for reading, including revised Russian ones folk tales. True, the manual was difficult for children: it did not always follow the gradual complication of phrases and texts for analysis, and each page was overloaded with columns of words with the same or similar syllables.
Vseslav Goretsky. Primer. Moscow, publishing house "Prosveshchenie", 1993
Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences Vseslav Goretsky built his primer not according to the alphabet, but according to the frequency of use of letters in speech and writing: they opened the book with “a” and “o”, and closed it with “b” and “b”. It was also the first primer that was published along with copybooks and didactic material.
The special feature of the Primer was its game uniform. Popular characters shared the journey to the “land of knowledge” with the students: Pinocchio, Dunno and Murzilka, and the tasks were often funny riddles and puzzles. The book also contained many easy-to-memorize poems, including those by Alexander Pushkin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Korney Chukovsky and Samuil Marshak.
Goretsky’s “Primer Book” turned out to be so popular and beloved among children that it continued to be published and reprinted for 30 years, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
