There are many Russian memoirs of childhood, and many theoreticians. The trouble with memoirs is that mainly traumatic childhoods tend to be committed to the record, while those which describe idyllic childhoods – like Nabokov’s Other Shores or Elizaveta Fen’s memoirs – come from exiles remembering a lost Eden. Unfortunately, Russia never had a Peter and Iona Opie to record child folklore (although Russian children’s poets, such as Chukovsky and Marshak, rank alongside Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear).

But we have the dedication, industry and acumen of Catriona Kelly, who has attempted what would seem impossible. She did not have a Russian childhood (though she did play with matrioshkas and Kabalevsky studies in her infancy, as she recalls in her Introduction, explaining why she is such a Russophile), nor did she spend years working with Russian children; these disadvantages are battled with in this largely authoritative and admirable book.

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