A 1967 Russian post stamp depicting an alien spaceship
Elements of fantastical or supernatural fiction have been part of mainstream Russian literature since the 18th century. Russian fantasy developed from the centuries-old traditions of Slavic mythology and folklore. Russian science fiction emerged in the mid-19th century and rose to its golden age during the Soviet era, both in cinema and literature, with writers like the Strugatsky brothers, Kir Bulychov, and Mikhail Bulgakov, among others. Soviet filmmakers, such as Andrei Tarkovsky, also produced many science fiction and fantasy films. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, modern Russia experienced a renaissance of fantasy. Outside modern Russian borders, there are a significant number of Russophone writers and filmmakers from Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, who have made a notable contribution to the genres.
In the Russian language, fantasy, science fiction, horror and all other related genres are considered a part of a larger umbrella term, фантастика (fantastika), roughly equivalent to "speculative fiction", and are less divided than in the West. The Russian term for science fiction is научная фантастика (nauchnaya fantastika), which can be literally translated as "scientific fantasy" or "scientific speculative fiction". Since there was very little adult-oriented fantasy fiction in Soviet times, Russians did not use a specific term for this genre until Perestroika. Although the Russian language has a literal translation for 'fantasy', фантазия (fantaziya), the word refers to a dream or imagination, not literary genre. Today, Russian publishers and literary critics use direct English transcription, фэнтези (fentezi). Gothic and supernatural fiction are often referred to as мистика (mistika, Russian for mysticism).
Imperial period
The titular monster from Nikolai Gogol's gothic story Viy (1835)
While science fiction did not emerge in Russia as a coherent genre until the early 20th century, many of its aspects, such as utopia or imaginary voyage, are found in earlier Russian works.
Fedor Dmitriev-Mamonov's anti-clerical A Philosopher Nobleman. The Allegory (Дворянин-философ. Аллегория, 1769) is considered prototypical to science fiction.[1][pageneeded] It is a voltaireanconte philosophique influenced by Micromégas.[2]
By the mid-19th century, imaginary voyages to space had become popular chapbooks, such as Voyage to the Sun and Planet Mercury and All the Visible and Invisible Worlds (1832) by Dmitry Sigov, Correspondence of a Moonman with an Earthman (1842) by Pyotr Mashkov, Voyage to the Moon in a Wonderful Machine (1844) by Semyon Dyachkov and Voyage in the Sun (1846) by Demokrit Terpinovich. Popular literature used fantastic motifs like demons (Rafail Zotov's Qin-Kiu-Tong), invisibility (Ivan Shteven's Magic Spectacles) and shrinking men (Vasily Alferyev's Picture).
Alexander Veltman, along with his folk romances (Koschei the Immortal, 1833) and hoffmanesque satiric tales (New Yemelya or, Metamorphoses, 1845), in 1836 published The forebears of Kalimeros: Alexander, son of Philip of Macedon, the first Russian novel to feature time travel.[4] In the book, the main character rides to ancient Greece on a hippogriff to meet Aristotle and Alexander the Great. In Year 3448 (1833), a Heliodoric love romance set in the future, a traveler visits an imaginary country Bosphorania and sees social and technological advances of the 35th century.
Mikhail Mikhailov's story "Beyond History" (published in 1869), a pre-Darwinian fantasy on the descent of man, is an early example of prehistoric fiction. Fictional accounts of prehistoric men were written by anthropologists and popular science writers ("Prehistoric Man", 1890, by Wilhelm Bitner, The First Artist, 1907, by Dmitry Pakhomov, Tale of a Mammoth and an Ice-Man, 1909, by Pyotr Dravert, Dragon's Victims, 1910, by Vladimir Bogoraz). Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin's satires use a fantastic and grotesque element (The History of a Town and prose fables). The plot of Animal Mutiny (published 1917) by historian Mykola Kostomarov is similar to that of Orwell's Animal Farm.[5]
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 farcesWomen 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 TatarIsmail Gasprinski is a Muslim utopia. Voluminous A Created Legend (1914) by another SymbolistFyodor 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[clarification needed] (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).
The Soviet era was the golden age of Russian science fiction.[6] Soviet writers were innovative, numerous and prolific,[7] despite limitations set up by state censorship. Both Russian and foreign writers of science fiction enjoyed mainstream popularity in the Soviet Union, and many books were adapted for film and animation.
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 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
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.
Soviet supernatural fiction
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.
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.
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).
In science fiction, with communist censorship gone, many various portrayals of the future appeared, including dystopias. Post-apocalyptic fiction, time travel and alternate history are among the most popular genres, represented by authors like Vyacheslav Rybakov, Yuri Nikitin and Yulia Latynina among many others. Overuse of fish-out-of-water plots for time travel and parallel worlds led Russian SF&F journalists to coin the ironic term popadanets (Rus. попаданец, lit. getter-into) for such characters. There are still many writers of traditional space-related science fiction including space operas, such as Alexander Zorich (Tomorrow War series), Lukyanenko (Lord from Planet Earth) and Andrey Livadny, among others. The late 2000s and early 2010s saw a rise of Russian Steampunk, with such books as Alexey Pekhov's Mockingbird (2009), Vadim Panov's Hermeticon (2011), and Cetopolis (2012) by Gray F. Green (a collective pen name).
Some of the modern Russian-language SF&F is written in Ukraine,[16] especially in its "sci-fi capital", Kharkiv,[17] home to H. L. Oldie, Alexander Zorich, Yuri Nikitin and Andrey Valentinov. Many others hail from Kyiv, including Marina and Sergey Dyachenko[18] and Vladimir Arenev. Belarusian authors, such as Olga Gromyko, Kirill Benediktov, Yuri Brayder and Nikolai Chadovich, also contributed to the genres. Some authors, namely Kamsha, Dyachenkos and Frei, were born in Ukraine and moved to Russia at some point. Most Ukrainian and Belarusian SF&F authors write in Russian, which gives them access to a broad Russophone audience of the post-Soviet countries, and usually publish their books via Russian publishers such as Eksmo, Azbuka[ru], and AST.
In the post-Soviet fantasy and science fiction, the extensive serializing of successful formulas has become usual. Most notable are the two postapocalyptic book series based on the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. computer game and Metro 2033 novel, both of which featured a well-developed universe. The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. book series' features are heavy branding and almost negligible influence of the actual writer's name on individual novels (also, a TV show is in development).[19] And though Metro 2033 raised its creator Dmitry Glukhovsky to national fame, it quickly developed into a franchise, with over 15 books published by various authors[20] and spanned a tie-in videogame.
Movies
Director/actor Feodor Bondarchuk at the set of The Inhabited Island, the most expensive Russian sci-fi film at the time. Bondarchuk also directed the highest-grossing Russian sci-fi film, Attraction
Production of science fiction and fantasy films in modern Russia dropped in comparison to Soviet cinema, due to high costs of visual effects. Throughout the 1990s, virtually no movies in these genres were made. In the 2000s and 2010s, however, Russia once again produced a number of films.
A stand-out in animation is the 2010 steampunk short "Invention of Love" ("Изобретение любви") by Andrey Shushkov.
A number of children's fairy tale films and animations were based on Russian mythology and history, most of them by Melnitsa Animation Studio (most notably, The Three Bogatyrs franchise and Prince Vladimir). In 2014, the Soviet classic Kin-dza-dza was remade into a family-friendly animation Ku! Kin-dza-dza.
Russian video game developers also contributed to the genres. Examples include the fantasy-based MMORPGAllods Online, the turn-based strategy game Etherlords, and the science fiction game RTS Perimeter, among many others.
Science fiction and fantasy magazines, websites and other media became widespread in modern Russia. The largest magazine is Mir Fantastiki, while Esli and Polden, XXI vek have closed down after the Great Recession. Ukrainian magazines, such as RBG-Azimuth or Realnost Fantastiki, were mostly Russophone. Among websites, Fantlab.ru and Mirf.ru are considered the most influential according to Roscon Award.
J. P. Glad, Extrapolations from Dystopia: A Critical Study of Soviet Science Fiction Princeton: Kingston Press, 1982. 223 p.
Scott R. Samuel, Soviet Science Fiction: New Critical Approaches. PhD Dissertation, Stanford University, 1982. 134 p.
Nadezhda L. Petreson, Fantasy and Utopia in the Contemporary Soviet Novel, 1976-1981. PhD Dissertation, Indiana University, 1986. 260 p.
Karla A. Cruise. Soviet Science Fiction, 1909-1926: Symbols, Archetypes and Myths. Master's Thesis, Princeton University, 1988. 71 p.
Matthew D. B. Rose, Russian and Soviet Science Fiction: The Neglected Genre. Master's Thesis, The University of Alberta (Canada), 1988.
Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution. Oxford UP, 1989.
Richard P. Terra and Robert M. Philmus. Russian and Soviet Science Fiction in English Translation: A Bibliography, in: Science Fiction Studies #54 = Volume 18, Part 2 = July 1991
Anindita Banerjee. The Genesis and Evolution of Science Fiction in fin de siecle Russia, 1880-1921. PhD Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2000. 324 p.
Vitalii Kaplan. A Look Behind the Wall: A Topography of Contemporary Russian Science Fiction, Russian Studies in Literature 38(3): 62-84. Summer 2002. Also in: Russian Social Science Review 44(2): 82-104. March/April 2003.
Matthias Schwartz. How "Nauchnaya fantastika" Was Made: The Debates About the Genre of Science Fiction from NEP to High Stalinism, in: Slavic Review 72 (2) = Summer 2013, pp.224–246.
Science Fiction Studies #94 = Volume 31, Part 3 = November 2004. SPECIAL ISSUE: SOVIET SCIENCE FICTION: THE THAW AND AFTER.
Park Joon-Sung. Literary Reflections of the Future War: A Study of Interwar Soviet Literature of Military Anticipation. PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan, 2004. 198 p.
Oleksandr Zabirko, The Magic Spell of Revanchism. Geopolitical Visions in Post-Soviet Speculative Fiction (Fantastika). In The Ideology and Politics Journal, Issue 1(9)/2018, p.66 – 134.
Related Research Articles
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References
↑ Suvin, Darko. "Russian Science Fiction and Its Utopian Tradition", in Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (Yale UP, 1979).
↑ McGuire, Patrick L. (1985). Red stars: political aspects of Soviet science fiction. Issue 7 of Studies in speculative fiction. UMI Research Press. "The Soviet Union has more professional science fiction writers than any country in the world except the United States and possibly Britain, and many of these writers are talented".
1 2 Stableford, Brian (2004). Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Literature. Scarecrow Press.
↑ McGuire, Patrick L. (1985). Red stars: political aspects of Soviet science fiction. Issue 7 of Studies in speculative fiction. UMI Research Press.
↑ Oldie, H.L.; Dyachenko, Marina and Sergey; Valentinov, Andrey (2005). Пять авторов в поисках ответа (послесловие к роману "Пентакль")[Five authors in search for answers (an afterword to Pentacle)] (in Russian). Moscow: Eksmo. ISBN978-5-699-09313-7.
Г. Л. Олди: "Украиноязычная фантастика переживает сейчас не лучшие дни. ... Если же говорить о фантастике, написанной гражданами Украины в целом, независимо от языка (в основном, естественно, на русском), — то здесь картина куда более радужная. В Украине сейчас работают более тридцати активно издающихся писателей-фантастов, у кого регулярно выходят книги (в основном, в России), кто пользуется заслуженной любовью читателей; многие из них являются лауреатами ряда престижных литературных премий, в том числе и международных".
H. L. Oldie: "Speculative fiction in Ukrainian is living through a hard time today... Speaking of fiction written by Ukrainian citizens, regardless of language (primarily Russian, of course), there's a brighter picture. More than 30 fantasy and science fiction writers are active here, their books are regularly published (in Russia, mostly), they enjoy the readers' love they deserve; many are recipients of prestigious literary awards, including international".
↑ Oldie, H.L.; Dyachenko, Marina and Sergey; Valentinov, Andrey (2005). Пять авторов в поисках ответа (послесловие к роману "Пентакль")[Five authors in search for answers (an afterword to Pentacle)] (in Russian). Moscow: Eksmo. ISBN978-5-699-09313-7.
Марина Дяченко: "Я считаю себя носителем русского языка, живущим в Украине. По-украински говорю и пишу свободно, но книги сочиняю – на родном".
Marina Dyachenko: "I consider myself a native Russian speaker who resides in Ukraine. I can freely speak and write in Ukrainian, but my books I write in my native language".
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