“I WISH THE BOYS WERE DEAD, AND COMRADE LENIN LIVED”: CHILDREN AND THE LEADER’S DEATH

The article deals with the phenomenon of "leader's death" as an effective tool of Soviet educational practices. Vladimir Lenin became a cult figure; the attitude to his death differentiated the degree of "sovietization". The study is based on verbal and non-verbal texts of the mid-1920s, both of adult and child origin. The use of typologically diverse sources created by children helped reconstruct the unique children's experience of perceiving and experiencing the death of "Grandfather Ilyich" and fix it in the memorial practices of future generations. The transformation of children's perception of the phenomenon of death from "terrible" to "familiar" in the epoch of wars and revolutions in Russia in 1914–1922, which occurred as a result of their vulnerability to its traumatic influence, is traced. The author concludes that the Soviet culture of childhood of the 1920s tremendously reproduced adult mortal practices adapted to the children's world. It is shown that children's memorial texts reflected both ideas produced by Soviet regime and typically children's fairytale and mythological ideas about the death of the "hero" and "eternal immortality" prepared for him. The analysis of ritualism and symbols of mourning events with the participation of children dedicated to Lenin's death, children's playful practices in the "Ilyich's funeral", children's prose and poetic memorial art testifies to the active involvement of children in the new Soviet political culture that was being formed. It was the culture of participation as a special model of interaction between the authorities and society, which provided for the active inclusion of all Soviet citizens in politics.