Description

This extremely well designed pro-Yugoslavian, pro-Soviet, anti-Nazi and anti-Fascist children’s book in Slovenian language was designed days after the end of WWII as the first grammar book, not only to educate children in new political believes, but also to encourage them to re-build the country and put revenge on any traitors, Fascists and Nazis left in the country. The drawings were designed by the leading illustrators of the time.

The book in divided into 6 parts, 10 pages each. They were designed for 6 classes of the primary school to save on the material. Due to the lack of books and appropriate rooms after WWII, children of different generations were often taught from the same books in the same classrooms.

The illustrations include pro-Yugoslavian iconography, glorifying Josip Broz Tito, Stalin, the Soviet Union, and the victory of the South-Slavic nations in the war against the Axis. The images also glorify the work and encourage children to rebuild the country, after it was destroyed by the enemy.

Many children at the time were orphaned or lived with traumatic memories on the war. The Yugoslavian government’s plan was to keep children and youth on the straight and narrow, by making them feel useful by rebuilding houses and schools, and building new infrastructure.

The didactic illustrations, teaching children the alphabet and cursive script, reflect the images of the war. They showcase children’s parents being murdered by the enemies, a little boy being brought to fight to the partisans by his grandfather, a mother fighting off the Fascist taking away a cow with a fork, enemies being hanged, shot and blown up by a partisan, a horse kicking a traitor, a horse kicking a Fascist, a Fascist killing a woman and beating up a man, starved and beaten prisoners, Fascists shooting male and female hostages, a last letter from a prisoner, male and female partisans standing above shot enemies in a pond of blood, etc.

The ABC book also shows liberation of Trieste in the first days of May 1945.
Slovenska začetnica was only in use from it was published at the end of the war, in May 1945, until the end of the school year, at the end of June. The government forbade using it in the following school year due to its cruel images.

The book was written by Vinko Möderndorfer (1894-1958) and designed by four Slovenian academic painters.

Möderndorfer was born in Dole na Zilji (German: Zellach), at the time in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and today in Austria, to a Slovenian family, and served WWI partly at the Battle of Isonzo and partly as a schoolteacher. In the 1920s he became a determined Marxist and a leader of a regional social democrat party. He was also, still employed as a teacher, an author, publishing books on local stories and legends, as well as on rights of the local mine workers.

In the days following the end of WWII Vinko Möderndorfer published this elaborately designed school book fornchildren, filled with anti-Fascist, anti-Nazi, pro-Yugoslavian and pro-Soviet paroles.

In 1948, after Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito had a massive fallout with Stalin, Yugoslavia blocked all the contact with the Eastern communist countries and the Stalin’s sympathizers were sent to the mass trials. Vinko Möderndorfer was tried for three and half years on the Naked Island (Goli Otok), the most infamous Yugoslavian political prison. Suffering from the consequences of torture, he died in 1958.

The illustrations were made by some of most famous artists of the time Slavko Pengov (1908-1966), known for his frescos in Tito’s villa in Bled and in Yugoslav government palace in Belgrade, Marij Pregelj (1913-1967), an academic painter and book illustrator, Maksim Sedej (1909-1974), an academic painter and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, and Evgen Sajovic (1913-1986), a fresco painter and illustrator.

The letters were designed and drawn by an architect Stane Kovič, an author of several primary schools in the Yugoslav post-war era.

References: OCLC 444935791; Francè KOTNIK, Möderndorfer, Vinko (1894–1958). Slovenska biografija. Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti, Znanstvenoraziskovalni center SAZU, 2013. http://www.slovenska-biografija.si/oseba/sbi372887/#slovenski-biografski-leksikon (14. maj 2018). Izvirna objava v: Slovenski biografski leksikon: 5. zv. Maas – Mrkun. Franc Ksaver Lukman et al. Ljubljana, Zadružna gospodarska banka, 1933; Francè STELÈ, Pregelj, Marij (1913–1967). Slovenska biografija. Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti, Znanstvenoraziskovalni center SAZU, 2013. http://www.slovenskabiografija.si/oseba/sbi458058/#slovenski-biografski-leksikon (14. maj 2018). Izvirna objava v: Slovenski biografski leksikon: 8. zv. Pregelj Ivan – Qualle. Franc Ksaver Lukman Ljubljana, Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti, 1952; Asta ZNIDARČIČ, Sajovic, Evgen (1913–1986). Slovenska biografija. Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti, Znanstvenoraziskovalni center SAZU, 2013. http://www.slovenskabiografija. si/oseba/sbi531993/#slovenski-biografski-leksikon (14. maj 2018). Izvirna objava v: Slovenski biografski leksikon: 9. zv. Raab – Schmid. Alfonz Gspan et al. Ljubljana, Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti, 1960; Asta ZNIDARČIČ. Sedej, Maksim (1909–1974). Slovenska biografija. Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti, Znanstvenoraziskovalni center SAZU, 2013. http://www.slovenskabiografija. si/oseba/sbi555568/#slovenski-biografski-leksikon (14. maj 2018). Izvirna objava v: Slovenski biografski leksikon: 10. zv. Schmidl – Steklasa. Alfonz Gspan et al. Ljubljana, Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti, 1967.