1
The entirety of the text accompanying the illustrations appears on the inside front cover in long form, and a summary is included in the
context entry. The text follows two pioneers – Sergei Litkov of the USSR, and Hans Stuve of Germany – on May 1st, celebrated in many nations as “International Workers’ Day”. The scene depicted on this page is part of the journey Sergei experiences on May 1st. In the USSR, the day is celebrated by all kinds of songs and a parade of tractors that “shone and pounded loudly, like machine guns” (an odd description for a work of children’s fiction!) – “everywhere,” we are told, “music was played.”
2
The tractors, as pieces of relatively modern, mechanized farming equipment, connect to the contemporary political reality of collectivization. After having moderate success convincing peasants to join collectivized farms, in 1930 the Soviet Central Committee expanded its Five Year Plan collectivization goal, calling for the incorporation of the “huge majority of peasant farms” by the autumn of 1930. Modern farming equipment was offered as an incentive for peasant enrollment. Understood in this context, these tractors are a display of the merits of modern farming.
3
Head coverings or kerchiefs were part of the traditional outfits worn by Russian merchants and peasant women. The transformation of the traditional kerchief into the Red kerchief represented Communist female liberation. The red kerchief appears as a feminist symbol for the newly liberated Soviet woman in Fyodorov Gladkov’s Russian Realist novel, Cement. Dasha, a proletariat activist and the novel’s female protagonist, wears a red kerchief. In the 1960 edition of the novel, the red kerchief has become metonymic for the Soviet woman; when Dasha first finds the Red Soldiers, during the process of her recruitment into Communism, they shout “Hurrah for the Red kerchief! Hurrah for the Red woman!” (170). Red is capitalized because it is a symbol for Communism.
