AN AFTERWORD BY SOFYA KHAGI
AS RICHARD STITES aptly observed in Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution, “the world of fantasy … reveals and evokes deep layers, archaic dreams and longings that may better describe the feelings and anxieties [of a nation] than some conventional acts of political adherence.” Thus even a necessarily concise sketch of the latest trends in Russian fantastic literature will prove of value to anyone interested in the moral, cultural, and political climate of post-Soviet Russia.
Closely on the heels of the launch of Sputnik in 1957, the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky appeared on the literary scene with their first fantastic fables. It was primarily their oeuvre which, as the writers insisted, was “about adventures of the spirit, and not of the body,” that captivated the heart of the Soviet intelligentsia during the twilight decades of the Soviet state. The influence of their works which, in contrast to mainstream science fiction that was dedicated to sheer entertainment, raised somber ethical questions, remains substantial up to the present. Thus younger practitioners of the genre who claim not to have succumbed entirely to the crude realities of the post-Soviet literary market profess to be inspired by the Strugatskys.
With the advancement of Gorbachev’s reforms in the mid-eighties, Russian fantastic writers (following the general trend in Russian belles-lettres of the perestroika years) engaged in an increasingly open attack on the mythology of the Socialist utopia. It was during this period that the genre of dystopia once again came to the forefront of fantastic literature. As the collapse of the Soviet empire seemed more and more imminent, there appeared a number of parodic treatments of the Socialist experiment. Of these, one ought to mark out Vladimir Voinovich’s Moscow 2042 (1986), a brilliantly farcical account of the protagonist’s time-travel to the dilapidated totalitarian republic of Moscowrep. In contrast to his grimmer classical dystopian predecessors (Zamiatin, Huxley, Orwell), who presented disturbing accounts of triumphant totalitarianism, Voinovich portrayed a singularly inept social structure. The depicted community displays all the trademark features of Orwell’s Oceania, but with a clownish face: “citizens worked poorly, drank heavily, and stole left and right”; “Newspeak” was travestied through the ridiculous jargon of “Komyaz”; technology was too backward to allow for any surveillance; and one could no longer write denunciations because “the paper situation was a total disaster.”
One may be tempted to assume that Voinovich’s hilarious rendition of a totalitarian regime at an advanced state of deterioration implied an exclusively joyful anticipation of impending social change. However, the writer did not merely debunk the corrupt social model, but also undertook to play out alternative social scenarios. It is when Voinovich devalues both back-to-nature and counter-utopian (return to the monarchical past) resolutions that one becomes aware of his darker outlook on the country’s future. Alexander Kabakov’s No Return (1989), another important dystopia of the glasnost era, revealed a similar concern with the menaces attending the looming breakdown of the Soviet state. In the novella, a scientific researcher named “Extrapolator” is forced to travel to post-perestroika Russia. He discovers that the Soviet Union has dissolved into “barbarism and idiocy,” a military dictator conducts mass executions, and crazed terrorist bands are raging on the streets of Moscow.
Whether writing in a primarily satiric vein (e.g., Voinovich, M. Veller), or in a more wistful spirit (e.g., the Strugatsky brothers’ later works), the Sci-Fi and fantasy writers of Gorbachev’s epoch were mainly preoccupied, on one hand, with the deconstruction of Soviet utopia, and, on the other hand, with prognostications of the possible consequences of the country’s breakdown. These attempts to reinterpret the past and to discern possible venues for the country’s future continued after the fall of the Soviet Union. With the faith in an upcoming technological “paradise” shaken no less badly than that in the victory of Communism, and with the country in utter disarray, it became all but impossible to produce futurist eutopian fiction.
Nevertheless, some kind of an antidote to the general sentiment of despondency attending the country’s chaotic transformation had to be found. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the demythologization of the Soviet past, vigorously undertaken during the perestroika years by a host of dystopian writers, began yielding in the nineties to a nostalgic mentality. This kind of nostalgia had to do first and foremost with the glorification of old Russia and of the country’s traditional moral and religious values. In terms of fantastic fiction this suggested several directions. One way was to spin out magic stories of primeval Rus’, an enchanted realm of pagan deities, spell-bound beauties, and supernatural entities following in the footsteps of Tolkien and other famous fantasy writers. Marina and Sergei Diachenko’s Ritual and Skrut, Nick Perumov’s Ring of Darkness (his take on the fabled world of the Middle Earth) and Hiervard’s Chronicles, and numerous similar patchworks of ancient history, mythology, adventure etc., published in the nineties, are representative of this trend.
A somewhat different mode of alleviating the ache occasioned by the dire economic and political circumstances of Russia’s present (as well as of reassessing the country’s tortuous path into the third millennium) was to engage the subgenre of alternative history. Andrei Lazarchuk, Khol’m van Zaichik, Kir Bulychev, Sergei Lukianenko, and a host of other Russian fantasts tried their hand at imagining “what would have been if….” Of those, Kir Bulychev’s River Chronos (1992) may be singled out as an epic contemplation of historical possibilities that might have taken place had the “River of Time” but slightly changed its course. One should also mention van Zaichik’s (Viacheslav Rybakov’s) highly popular series about the country Ordus’, founded in the Middle Ages, and representing a curious symbiosis of Russian and Eastern cultures (2001-).
As the ideological control of Soviet times was replaced in the nineties by the no less tyrannical demands of the market, huge masses of hack science fiction and fantasy began to be produced. Writing such works (along with detective stories and romances) became one of the most lucrative pseudo-literary venues. At present there exists in Russia, just as in the West, a well-established industry that clones innumerable stories of spaceships, matrixes, cyber-beauties and mythical brawny proto-Slavic warriors. Simultaneously, a number of trendy younger writers have been experimenting with the genre. Given fantastic literature’s probing of alternative states of consciousness, the grotesque, the absurd, and the phantasmagoric, it offers a peculiarly rewarding domain for postmodernist play. Dmitry Lipskerov’s unashamedly Marquez-inspired Forty Years of Chanddzoe (1996) and Vladimir Sorokin’s provocative, if distasteful Blue Lard (1999), are examples of postmodernist engagements with the genre.
The postmodernist works mentioned, though highly conspicuous on the literary market, can hardly be deemed sterling expressions of Russian fantasy. Recent years have witnessed an appearance of several productions that deserve to be placed alongside those excellent Russian and Soviet fantastic works that are gathered in this anthology. One of these works is Tatyana Tolstaya’s novel The Slynx (2001), a first-rate dystopia that draws a striking picture of a primitive post-nuclear war society. Moscow is transformed in her novel into a feudal village inhabited by physically and mentally deformed citizens. The people, ruled by petty tyrants, survive on a diet of mice, are forbidden to have books, and are pursued by a frightening monster wandering in the forest. Like the Strugatsky brothers, as well as classical modernist dystopian writers, Tolstaya employs fantastic discourse to explore burning social, historical, and ethical issues. As her readers realize in the course of the narrative, the mythical monster of the title symbolizes the human “heart of darkness.” The work is a bitter, thought-provoking meditation on Russia—past, present, and future.
No survey of recent Russian sci-fi and fantasy, however succinct, would be adequate without saying a few words about Viktor Pelevin, one of the most popular contemporary Russian writers. Pelevin’s socio-metaphysical fantasies, compared by some critics to those of Mikhail Bulgakov, Abram Tertz, and even Nikolai Gogol, blend hilarious parody and the blackest absurd, supernatural twists of plot and meticulous observations of the everyday, the occult and the surreal. Blue Lantern (1992), his early collection of short stories, presented a darkly phantasmagoric vision of Russia during the era of perestroika. In the course of the nineties he published other short stories, as well as several novellas and a novel. One should mention The Yellow Arrow, a novelette about a train that rushes into nothingness, while uncomprehending passengers go about their mundane lives; Omon Ra, the story of a young Soviet astronaut, named by his father after the OMON (a special division of the Soviet police), who renamed himself Ra after the Egyptian God of the Sun; a satiric parable The Life of Insects; Buddha’s Little Finger, a fascinating exploration of realities and illusions; and finally, Generation ‘P’, a scathing fin-de-siècle consumer dystopia in the spirit of Huxley’s Brave New World.
Of those works, Omon Ra (1992) would prove particularly pertinent for the companion volume to this anthology. Written three and a half decades after the Soviet Union dumbfounded the world with the launch of the first Sputnik, this is a story of a young boy dreaming of space exploration. Having undergone training, he is sent to the moon to pilot a supposedly unmanned moonwalker. There is no way for him to return to Earth. As the narrative progresses, the young protagonist gradually comes to perceive all of existence as “a life sentence in a prison car on an endless circular railroad.” As for the reader, he just as gradually comes to comprehend that what seems to be on the surface a mere phantasmagoric send-up of Soviet space exploration has a greater depth to it. In Pelevin’s own words, he “did not write a satire on the Soviet space program, as the book was branded both in Russia and abroad.” Rather, “[this] was a novel about coming of age in a world that is absurd and terrifying. His part of this frigtening world was Russia.” The novelette, thus, explores profound existential and moral concerns in the guise of science fiction. As such, it follows the time-honored tradition of the best examples of Russian fantastic literature presented in this volume.