Utopias

Nikolai Chernyshevsky's influential What Is to Be Done? (1863) included a utopian dream of the far future, which became a prototype for many socialist utopias. A noted example is the duology by Marxist philosopher Alexander Bogdanov, Red Star and Engineer Menni. Some plays of another Marxist, Anatoly Lunacharsky, propose his philosophical ideas in fantastic disguise. Other socialist utopias include Diary of André (1897) by pseudonymous A. Va-sky, On Another Planet (1901) by Porfiry Infantyev, and Spring Feast (1910) by Nikolay Oliger. Alexander Kuprin wrote a short story of the same kind, Toast (1907).

Among others, Vladimir Solovyov wrote Tale of the Anti-Christ (1900), an ecumenical utopia. Earthly Paradise (1903) by Konstantin Mereschkowski is an anthropological utopia. Great War Between Men and Women (1913) by Sergey Solomin and Women Uprisen and Defeated (1914) by Polish writer Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski (written and published in Russian) is about a feminist revolution. Other feminist utopias include short farces Women on Mars (1906) by Victor Bilibin and Women Problem (1913) by Nadezhda Teffi. In Half a Century (1902) by Sergey Sharapov is a patriarchal Slavophile utopia, and Land of Bliss (1891) by Crimean Tatar Ismail Gasprinski is a Muslim utopia. Voluminous A Created Legend (1914) by another Symbolist Fyodor Sologub is a utopia full of science fictional wonders close to magic.

Genre fiction

An illustration to Tsiolkovsky's educational science fiction story On the Moon (1893)

Entertainment fiction adopted scientistic themes, such as resurrection of an ancient Roman (Extraordinary Story of a Resurrected Pompeian by Vasily Avenarius), global disaster (Struggle of the Worlds, 1900, by N. Kholodny; Under the Comet, 1910, by Simon Belsky), mind reading devices (a recurring theme in works by Andrey Zarin), Antarctic city-states (Under the Glass Dome, 1914, by Sergey Solomin), an elixir of longevity (Brothers of the Saint Cross, 1898, by Nikolay Shelonsky), and Atlantis (1913, by Larisa Reisner).

Spaceflight remained a central science fiction topic since the 1890s in In the Ocean of Stars (1892) by Anany Lyakide, In the Moon (1893) and Dreams of Earth and Skies (1895) by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Voyage to Mars (1901) by Leonid Bogoyavlensky, "In Space" (1908) by Nikolay Morozov, Sailing Ether (1913) by Boris Krasnogorsky and its sequel, Islands of Ethereal Ocean (1914, co-authored by astronomer Daniil Svyatsky).

In the 1910s, Russian audience was interested in horror. Fire-Blossom, a supernatural thriller by Alexander Amfiteatrov and Vera Kryzhanovsky's occult romances, that combined sci-fi and reactionary elitist utopia, were popular. Bram Stoker's Dracula was imitated by pseudonymous "b. Olshevri" (= "more lies" in Russian) in Vampires, even before the original was translated to Russian. Early Alexander Grin's stories are mostly psychological horror (influenced by Ambrose Bierce), though later he drifted to fantasy.

Future progress was described in fiction by scientists: "Wonders of Electricity" (1884) by electric engineer Vladimir Chikolev, Automatic Underground Railway (1902) by Alexander Rodnykh, and "Billionaire's Testament" (1904) by biologist Porfiry Bakhmetyev. Future war stories were produced by the military (Cruiser "Russian Hope" (1887) and Fatal War of 18.. (1889) by retired navy officer Alexander Belomor, Big Fist or Chinese-European War (1900) by K. Golokhvastov, Queen of the World (1908) and Kings of the Air (1909) by navy officer Vladimir Semyonov, "War of Nations 1921-1923" (1912) by Ix, War of the "Ring" with the "Union" (1913) by P. R-tsky, and End of War (1915) by Lev Zhdanov). Threat to the World (1914) by Ivan Ryapasov (who styled himself "Ural Jules Verne") is similar to Jules Verne's The Begum's Fortune. Jules Verne was so popular that Anton Chekhov wrote a parody on him, and Konstantin Sluchevsky produced a sequel - "Captain Nemo in Russia" (1898).

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  Alexander Grin
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  Alexander Bogdanov
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  Valery Bryusov

Early Soviet era

The birth of Soviet science fiction was spurred by scientific revolution, industrialisation, mass education and other dramatic social changes that followed the Russian Revolution. Early Soviet authors from the 1920s, such as Alexander Belyaev, Grigory Adamov, Vladimir Obruchev and Alexey N. Tolstoy, stuck to hard science fiction.^[8] They openly embraced influence from the genre's western classics, such as Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle and especially H. G. Wells, who was a socialist and often visited Soviet Russia.

An illustration to Professor Dowell's Head, by Alexander Belyaev, a novella about mad scientist reviving a disembodied head

Science fiction books from the 1920s included science predictions, adventure and space travel, often with a hue of working class agenda and satire against capitalism.^[9][10][11] Alexey N. Tolstoy's Aelita (1923), one of the most influential books of the era, featured two Russians raising a revolution on Mars. Tolstoy's Engineer Garin's Death Ray (1926) follows a mad scientist who plans to take over the world, and he's eventually welcomed by capitalists. Similarly, the main antagonist of Belyaev's The Air Seller (1929) is a megalomaniac capitalist who plots to steal all the world's atmosphere. Belyaev's Battle in Ether (1928) is about a future world war, fought between communist Europe and capitalist America. The novel Professor Dowell's Head (1925), also by Belyaev, is about a mad doctor who performs experimental head transplants on stolen bodies in a hospital, which he operates solely for profit, and where the patients aren't really sick at all.

Soviet authors were also interested in the distant past. Belyaev described his view of "historical" Atlantis in The Last Man from Atlantis (1926), and Obruchev is best known for Plutonia (written in 1915, before Revolution, but only published in 1924), set inside hollow Earth where dinosaurs and other extinct species survived, as well as for his other "lost world" novel, Sannikov Land (1924).

Two notable exclusions from Soviet 'Wellsian' tradition were Yevgeny Zamyatin, author of dystopian novel We (1924), and Mikhail Bulgakov, who contributed to science fiction with Heart of a Dog (1925), The Fatal Eggs (1925) and Ivan Vasilyevich (1936). The two used science fiction for social satire rather than scientistic prediction, and challenged the traditional communist worldview. Some of their books were refused or even banned and only became officially published in the 1980s. Nevertheless, Zamyatin and especially Bulgakov became relatively well-known through circulation of fan-made copies ( Samizdat ).

The following Stalin era, from the mid-1930s to the early 1950s, saw a period of stagnation in Soviet science fiction, because of heavy censorship that forced the writers to adopt socialist realism cliches. Science fiction of this period is called "close aim". Instead of the distant future, it was set in "tomorrow", and limited itself to anticipation of industrial achievements, inventions and travels within the Solar system. The top "close aim" writers were Alexander Kazantsev, Georgy Martynov, Vladimir Savchenko and Georgy Gurevich.

In films the "close aim" era lasted longer, and many films based on "close aim" books and scripts were made in the 1950s and 1960s. Some of these films, namely Planet of the Storms (1962) and The Sky Beckons (1959), were pirated, re-edited and released in the West under different titles.^[12]

Late Soviet era

Memorial stone at the Alisa Selezneva alley in Moscow is dedicated to the main character of Kir Bulychov's sci-fi franchise

Algis Budrys described postwar Russian science fiction as akin to the style of Hugo Gernsback: "Ah, Comrade, here among the marvels of the year 2000 ... we are free to discuss dialectical materialism in total tranquility".^[13] In the second half of the 20th century, Soviet science fiction authors, inspired by the Thaw period of the 1950 and 1960s and the country's space pioneering, developed a more varied and complex approach. The liberties of the genre offered Soviet writers a loophole for free expression. Social science fiction, concerned with philosophy, ethics, utopian and dystopian ideas, became the prevalent subgenre;^[14] Budrys said in 1968, when reviewing a collection translated into English, that Russian authors had "discovered John Campbell", with stories that "read like they were from the back pages of circa 1950 Astoundings".^[13] Most Soviet writers still portrayed the future Earth optimistically, as a communist utopia - some did it frankly, some to please publishers and avoid censorship. Postapocalyptic and dystopian plots were usually placed outside Earth – on underdeveloped planets, in the distant past, or on parallel worlds. Nevertheless, the settings occasionally bore allusion of the real world, and could serve as a satire of contemporary society.

The breakthrough is considered to have been started with Ivan Yefremov's Andromeda (1957), a utopia set in the very distant future. Yefremov rose to fame with his utopian views on the future, as well as on Ancient Greece in his historical novels. He was soon followed by a duo of brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, who have taken a more critical approach: their books included darker themes and social satire. The Strugatskies are best known for their Noon Universe novels, such as Hard to be a God (1964) and Prisoners of Power (1969). A recurring theme in Strugatskies' fiction were progressors: agents of utopian future Earth who secretly spread scientistic and social progress to underdeveloped planets. Progressors often failed, bitterly recognizing that society is not ready for communism. The brothers are also credited for the Soviet's first science fantasy, the Monday Begins on Saturday trilogy (1964), and their post-apocalyptic novel Roadside Picnic (1971) is often believed to have been a prediction of the Chernobyl disaster. Another notable late Soviet writer was Kir Bulychov, whose books featured time travel and parallel worlds, and themes like antimilitarism and environment protection.

The space opera subgenre was less developed, because both state censors and "highbrow" intelligentsia writers viewed it unfavorably. Nevertheless, there were moderately successful attempts to adapt space westerns to Soviet soil. The first was Alexander Kolpakov with "Griada" (1960), followed by Sergey Snegov with the Humans as Gods trilogy (1966–1977), among others.

A specific branch of both science fiction and children's books appeared in the mid-Soviet era: the children's science fiction. It was meant to educate children while entertaining them. The star of the genre was Bulychov,^[8][15] who, along with his adult books, created Alisa Selezneva, a children's space adventure series about a teenage girl from the future. Others include Nikolay Nosov with his books about dwarf Neznayka, Evgeny Veltistov, who wrote about robot boy Electronic, Vitaly Melentyev, Yan Larri, Vladislav Krapivin, and Vitaly Gubarev.

Films and other media

Ksenia Moskalenko as a cosmonaut in the sci-fi film Cosmic Voyage (1936). The film featured one of the first realistic portrayals of spaceflight and was overseen by rocket scientist Tsiolkovsky

Soviet cinema developed a tradition of science fiction films, with directors like Pavel Klushantsev, Andrey Tarkovsky, Konstantin Lopushansky, Vladimir Tarasov, Richard Viktorov and Gennady Tischenko.

Many science fiction books, especially children's, were made into films, animation and TV.^[12] The most adapted Russian SF author was Bulychov; of the numerous films based on Alisa Selezneva stories, animation Mystery of the Third Planet (1981) is probably the most popular. Other Bulychov-based films include Per Aspera Ad Astra (1981), Guest from the Future (1985), Two Tickets to India (1985), The Pass (1988) and The Witches Cave (1990). Andrey Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979) was written by the Strugatskys, and is loosely based on their Roadside Picnic; there were also less successful films based on Dead Mountaineer's Hotel (1979) and Hard to Be a God (1989). Aelita (1924) was the first Soviet SF film, and Engineer Garin was made into film twice, in 1965 and in 1973. Amphibian Man (1962), The Andromeda Nebula (1967), Ivan Vasilyevich (1973), Heart of a Dog (1988), Sannikov's Land (1974) and Electronic (1980) were filmed as well.

There were also numerous adaptations of foreign science fiction books, most frequently, by Jules Verne, Stanislaw Lem and Ray Bradbury. Of the movies based on original scripts, the comedy Kin-dza-dza! (1986) and children's space opera duology Moscow-Cassiopeia (1973) and Teens in the Universe (1974) should be noted.

Despite the genre's popularity, the Soviet Union had very few media dedicated solely to science fiction, and most of them were fanzines, released by SF fan clubs. SF short stories were usually present in either popular science magazines, such as Tekhnika Molodezhi, Vokrug sveta and Uralsky Sledopyt, or in literary anthologies, such as Mir Priklyucheniy, that also included adventure, history and mystery.

Literature

An illustration to Master and Margarita, the most famous Soviet supernatural novel

Supernatural fiction in the Soviet Union was represented primarily by children tales and stage plays. Some of the early Soviet children's prose was loose adaptations of foreign fairy tales unknown in contemporary Russia. Alexey N. Tolstoy wrote Buratino, a light-hearted and shortened adaptation of Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio. Alexander Volkov introduced more Western fairy tale stylings to Soviet children with his loose translation of Frank L. Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published as The Wizard of the Emerald City, and then wrote a series of five sequels, creatively unaffiliated with Baum. Another notable author was Lazar Lagin with Old Khottabych, a children's tale about an Arab genie Khottabych bound to serve a Soviet schoolboy.

Any sort of literature that dealt seriously with the supernatural, either horror, adult-oriented fantasy or magic realism, was unwelcomed by Soviet censors. Until the 1980s very few books in these genres were written, and even fewer were published, although earlier books, such as by Gogol, were not banned. Of the rare exceptions, Bulgakov in Master and Margarita (not published in author's lifetime), the Strugatskies in Monday Begins on Saturday and Vladimir Orlov in Danilov, the Violist introduced magic and mystical creatures into contemporary Soviet reality in a satirical and fabulous manner. Another exception was early Soviet writer Alexander Grin, who wrote romantic tales, both realistic and fantastic. Magic and other fantasy themes occasionally appeared in theatrical plays by Evgeny Shvarts, Grigory Gorin and Mikhail Bulgakov. Their plays were family-oriented fables, where supernatural elements served as an allegory. The supernatural horror genre, by contrast, was almost completely eliminated by censors' demands for every media to be modest and family-friendly.

Films

Fantasy, mythology and folklore were often present in Soviet film and animation, especially children's. Most films were adaptations of traditional fairy tales and myths, both Russian and foreign. But there were also many adaptations of stories by Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Rudyard Kipling, Astrid Lindgren, Alan Alexander Milne, among many others.

There were numerous fantasy feature films by Alexander Rou (Kashchey the Deathless, Maria the Magic Weaver, Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors, etc.) and Alexander Ptushko (The New Gulliver, Sadko, Ilya Muromets, Sampo, etc.). Ptushko also wrote Viy the most famous (and arguably the only "true") Soviet supernatural horror film. Fantasy animated features were produced by directors like Lev Atamanov (Snow Queen, Scarlet Flower, etc.), Ivan Ivanov-Vano (Humpbacked Horse, Snow Maiden, etc.), and Alexandra Snezhko-Blotskaya (The Enchanted Boy, Golden Cockerel, numerous adaptations of Greek mythology).

The late Soviet era saw a number of adult-oriented fabulous films, close to magic realism. They were written by Shvartz (An Ordinary Miracle, Cain XVIII), Gorin (Formula of Love, The Very Same Munchhausen), and Strugatskies (Magicians); most of them were directed by Mark Zakharov.

Several Soviet fantasy films were co-produced with foreign studios. Most notably, Mio in the Land of Faraway (1987, co-produced with USA and Sweden) was shot by a Soviet crew in the English language, and featured Christoper Lee and Christian Bale. Other examples include The Story of Voyages (1983, co-produced with Czechoslovakia and Romania) and Sampo (1959, co-produced with Finland).