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Abstract:

The State Publishing House of children’s literature “Detgiz” (since 1936 “Detizdat”) was founded on September 9, 1933. In that day was issued the resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) on its creation. M. Gorky was the main initiator and organizer of the publishing house and took part in its serious preparatory work. “Detgiz” was created on the basis of the children’s sector of the publishing house “Molodaia Gvardiia” and the school sector of the State Publishing House of Fiction. The new publishing house was organized in Moscow and Leningrad at once. Gorky witnessed the change of directors and editors of the publishing house. Before 1936 “Detgiz” (especially its Leningrad branch) was under the patronage and protection of the writer. The involvement of the epistolary, the memories of eyewitnesses of those events and documents that had not previously come to the attention of researchers, preserved in A.M. Gorky Archive at IWL RAS, Moscow, allowed us to restore the chronology of the origin of the children’s publishing house, determine Gorky’s role in his fate and recall the names of the first ascetics of “Detgiz”. The article introduces significant amount of archival materials into scientific circulation.