Imagining Socialist Childhoods

Children and childhood were key aspects of processes of social engineering in Stalinist and post-Stalinist Czechoslovakia. The article explores the visual dimension of this discourse on childhood by means of an analysis of children’s photographs that were published in books, brochures and illustrated magazines. The images portray children in three different, sometimes contradictory yet overlapping ways: the pioneer as a role model child; the happy, state-sponsored childhood, and the cute child. Together, they mirror the contemporary notion of childhood, which emerged as a combination of traditional and novel concepts.