Alexander Volkov’s book “The Wizard of the Emerald City” is one of the key works of Soviet culture. This adaptation of the American writer Lyman Frank Baum's tale about the land of Oz, published in 1939, at the height of the most brutal repressions, had incredible reader success and a long literary life. Erica Haber in her work explores the fate of Volkov's fairy tale, which is so similar to the fate of Baum's book, which had a great influence on the development of children's literature in the United States. How did this story manage to overcome cultural barriers and become popular behind the Iron Curtain? And how did Volkov manage to create a book based on an American fairy tale, built into the Soviet pedagogical model and at the same time so beloved by young readers? The author seeks answers to these questions by comparing the biographies of writers and integrating their works into the historical and political context of the era. Erica Haber is a professor at Syracuse University, specialist in Slavic languages and literatures, PhD.