VISUAL IMAGERY OF THE CHUVASH SATIRICAL MAGAZINE “KAPKAN” AS AN ETHNOGRAPHIC SOURCE

Anna А. Shevtsova

DOI: 10.47026/2712-9454-2020-1-4-182-191

Key words

caricature, visual satire, humor, magazine “Kapkan”, magazine “Crocodile”, anthropology of Sovietness, Soviet everyday life, Chuvashia

Annotation

The Chuvash literary-fiction illustrated satire and humour magazine “Kapkăn” (“Kapkan”) was chosen as the object of research. Chronological framework of the study covers 1956–1991: published intermittently since 1925in Cheboksary (originally – as a literary appendix to the newspaper “Kanash”), in 1940 the magazine ceased to be published, its issuing was resumed only in 16 years. The rich post-Soviet history of “Kapkan” (its issuing was suspended in 2017) with a changed plot and imagery of the visual series is the topic of a separate study.

The broad narrative and figurative range of illustrations of “Kapkan”, their abundance and quality were determined by the fact that over decades of its fruitful work many masters of the genre who were famous outside the Republic and who were published in the central press, collaborated with the magazine, including publications in the “elder brother” of republican propaganda satirical publications – the subordinate edition of the newspaper “Pravda» – “Crocodile” magazine. The lack of studies on iconography of the Soviet period of the journal “Kapkan” determines the novelty of the research. The aim of the study is to determine the opportunities of using the visual imagery of the mentioned periodical as an ethnographic source and a source on the history of everyday life. The author considered the methods of content- and context-analysis as the most adequate ones in this case. Turning to such subjects as mismanagement, localism, nepotism, bribery, bureaucracy, artists give considerable food for thought to historians who study the problems of everyday life. The visual imagery of “Kapkan” of the postwar period makes it possible to study not only Soviet social problems through aspects of everyday life of an “ordinary Soviet man”, but classical anthropological subjects (kinship and connection by marriage, gift exchange, power, rites of transition, initiation, social experience passing, work ethic, etc.) as well. “Socialist in content”, the graphic art of the Chuvash caricaturists, was nevertheless sometimes “national in form”. At the same time, “Kapkan” did not too much work the pedals of purely national plots, did not strive for spectacular exoticism. The magazine which was published in the Chuvash language knew and understood its readers, their needs, their daily life. The emotional degree of illustrations to the “Kapkan” ranged from mild patronizing humor to hard-edged accusatory satire; it is important that the stated balance – humor and satire – in an uneasy and often ideologized environment was almost always maintained. A wide range of themes and subjects, the skill to combine graphic materials of different artists, professionals and amateur masters with their own creative manner deserve the closest attention of researchers.

References

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Information about the author

Anna A. Shevtsova – Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor of Culturology Department, Moscow Pedagogical State University, Russia, Moscow (ash@inbox.ru).

For citations

Shevtsova A.А. VISUAL IMAGERY OF THE CHUVASH SATIRICAL MAGAZINE “KAPKAN” AS AN ETHNOGRAPHIC SOURCE. Historical Search, 2020, vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 182–191. DOI: 10.47026/2712-9454-2020-1-4-182-191 (in Russian).

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