Whenever as a child I came upon a description of people living their daily life during the 1940s, I reacted with disbelief. How can this be, when millions in Europe were experiencing incomprehensible horror? It felt inconceivable. The daily life of Soviet children was infused with a narrative of war — of past and present threat. It was pervasive in children’s literature. No person who grew up in the Soviet Union could forget Malchish Kibalchish, the fictional character in Arkady Gaidar’s 1933 children’s book “The Tale of the Military Secret, Boy Malchish Kibalchish and His Firm Word.” In the s…
