Lev Kassil
THE TALE OF THE
THREE MASTER CRAFTSMEN'
Once upon a time there was a country called Sinegor–
iya. There, amid the blue mountains, for that
is
what the name
means, lived hard-working and happy people. Nature was kind
to them and the climate was very mild so that the inhabitants
neither froze in winter nor suffered in summer from excessive
heat, since they could always find a cool spot under the palms
and monkeybread trees. And the once terrible volcano Quiproquo
had long been asleep and now only snored from time to time,
which no longer frightened anyone. Children tobogganed down
from its snow-capped top and people roasted chestnuts
in
the
very crater.
Travelers came from far-off countries to gaze with awe
upon the blue mountains, to taste the delicious fruit which grew
there
in
abundance, and to purchase mirrors of peerless clarity
li.
Lev Kasail, like many Soviet Jewish intellectuals, comes from Odessa.
Mainly a writer for children, he il an accomplished stylist who has
perhaps put his subtle mind at the service of children because, like a
number of other Soviet writers, he has found it easier to express certain
political ideas in fairy-tale form, rather than
in
the cramped, plain
language required for adult reading.
This is an independent story within a children's novel calIed
My Dear
Boys,
published in 1947. Only in this form was it possible to put across
the astonishing anti-Stalinist satire which it patently represents. In 1949,
at the height of the campaign against "homeless cosmopolitans," Kassil
was
severely criticized for having given the name "Commandos" (from
the British irregular forces) to the secret society of Young Pioneers
to
whom
this
story is told
in
the book.
