Album culture of schoolchildren in the 1920-1930's: traditions and innovations

In spite of the growing interest in studying the students' album tradition, hand-written gymnasium students' albums of the late 19th century have been most developed. To say about schoolchildren' album culture of the first half of 20th century, it is still not studied enough. Therefore, the study of the structure, symbols, meanings of hand-written albums created by students in the 1920s, is of current importance. In the 1920-1930-ies there were serious changes in the student's album culture. The changes were related to shifts of social status and the decrease of the album owner's educational level. They were also concerned with the modifications in value orientations and the dramatic changes in cultural life. In the albums of the 1920s album traditions of gymnasium girls were still preserved for a long time. The most important of them were love letters. Notably, before the revolution young men had written love letters to girls, but then girls became authors and addressees. Some albums of 1920-1930's kept containing their traditional pictorial form - paintings of hearts and flowers, ornaments, portraits of girlfriends, local landscapes. But at the same time a new illustration technique started being used: cut and pasted pictures from books and postcards, as well as ornaments from foil. In the late 1920's there was an anti-album campaign launched in the country, which also expended into the ranks of schoolchildren. The student album became stigmatized as philistinism, which was a dangerous ideological label. The active role in the campaign was played by "The Pioneer" magazine. Literary collections (student legal journals) began to be published in many schools and wall newspapers. In the 1920 -1930-ies the massive album was finally established as a specific form of written folklore. The main feature of the album tradition in the early Soviet society was a tough ideological control, carried out by both "above" and "below".