“Of course they do,” he chuckled. “But look at the inside back cover.”
She did. There was a small, rubber-stamped oval: “Allied Publishers Private Ltd., Calcutta – Sole Distributors.”
The books were published by , Moscow, but printed in elegant, flawless Bengali script . The translations were not clumsy. They were lyrical, often done by respected Bengali left-leaning intellectuals of the 1970s and 80s who admired the Soviet Union’s support for anti-colonial movements. raduga publishers bengali books
Here’s a short, helpful story that explores and their connection to Bengali books. In the quiet, book-lined flat of an old professor of comparative literature in Kolkata, a young researcher named Mitali was struggling. She was studying the reception of Soviet children’s literature in post-independence Bengal. Her supervisor had mentioned a name she couldn’t find in any modern database: Raduga Publishers .
Mitali’s research became a small exhibition. Older visitors wept seeing the covers. “This book taught me that snow exists,” one said. “We never saw snow in Bengal, but we felt it through Raduga.” “Of course they do,” he chuckled
Mitali found a gem: a 1985 Bengali edition of The Twelve Months , a Slovak folktale rendered in Soviet style. The paper was thick, almost cardboard-like. The price on the back: Rupees 8.50 . In the colophon, she saw the magic words: “Published by Raduga Publishers, Moscow. Printed in the USSR.”
Why did they do it? The Soviet Union wanted soft power. But the Bengali readers wanted stories. For a few decades, a child in Howrah could read about Russian snow maidens alongside Sukumar Ray’s nonsense verse, thanks to this quiet rainbow. The translations were not clumsy
She called the professor. “They exist,” she whispered.
