Paper short abstract:

In the wake of World War II, the Pioneers/Children's Railway traveled across space from Soviet Russia to the Socialist countries to contribute to the making of the “new Soviet person”. It then traveled across time and traversed regimes to become a community space for children in Budapest, Hungary.

Paper long abstract:

This paper argues that the Children’s Railway can be viewed as a traveling model across space, departing from the Soviet Union after World War II and arriving in Central and Eastern European socialist and Yugoslav countries, to deploy the capacity of infrastructure to “enchant”, promising speed, political integration, and economic prosperity (Harvey and Knox 2012), and contribute to the making of the “new Soviet person” by employing different translations. The Children’s Railway can also be viewed as a traveling model across time, traversing different state regimes and ideologies from the mid-twentieth century to the present day.

Deploying the Spectrum of Translation (Rottenburg, Park, and Behrends 2014), the translation process of the Pioneers Railway from Soviet Russia to the other socialist republics was done under the dominion of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This facilitated the travel of the rationality, as well as the token of the Railway to its different final destinations, with minimal translation. However, when the Railway traveled across time, it adopted a new rationality along the way and underwent radical translation. This translation was driven by the process of decommunization, as well as the structural decoupling of the Railway from other youth-driven Communist institutions. The result was that instead of the Railway being a cog in the bigger machine dedicated to building the ideal Communist citizens, it became a standalone entity that hosts a community and a space for children, for the sake of hosting a community and a space for children.