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Re-imagining utopia in post-Stalinist science fiction

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Re-imagining utopia in post-Stalinist science fiction

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RE-IMAGINING UTOPIA IN POST-STALINIST SCIENCE FICTION

by

Inessa Gelfenboym

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMPARATIVE STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND CULTURE)

August 2018

Copyright 2018 Inessa Gelfenboym

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Acknowledgements

The first and most gracious of my thanks belongs to my adivsor Thomas Seifrid, who
helped focus my project, pushing me to always be as concrete and grounded as possible. That my
thoughts ever condensed into ideas is largely a result of his coaching and his insistence that my
work always strive for a larger take-away. I thank Marcus Levitt for taking time away from his
idyllic retirement in Oregon to read and provide incomparably thorough comments on my work
and for challenging my writing to be as clear as possible and my arguments to stand up to the
most thoughtful counter-arguments. I am grateful to Anna Krakus for her kindness and
encouragement, which serve as a reminder to be bolder and more confident in my ideas; and for
teaching the course that inspired me to write what would later become my first complete
dissertation chapter. Roberto Diaz never ceased to amaze me in his ability to provide thoughtful
insight and boundless support, to be a comforting presence during stressful times.
My larger communities in both Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture and Slavic
Languages and Literatures helped shape and support me as a scholar and this project is a product
of years of teaching and discussion. I am immeasurably grateful to John Bowlt, who always
managed to read my chapters where ever in the world he happened to be at the time. I owe a
great deal to Brad Damaré, whose thorough comments and thoughtful suggestions fueled the
progress of this work. I thank Alexander Zholkovsky and Lada Panova for their faith in me,
Sarah Pratt for always making time to have a heart-to-heart, and Tatiana Akishina for her
encouragement and for making sure my Russian was up to the task. I thank Peggy Kamuf for
teaching me that theory was not the enemy and could even occasionally be my friend. Susan
Kechekian, whose tireless efforts, patience, and friendship were essential to this project’s
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completion, has earned my limitless gratitude and devotion. I am grateful for the friendship of
the graduate students in both my communities. Their knowledge and creativity always served as
an inspiration to me in my work and challenged me to think in new ways. I want to give special
thanks to Laurel Schmuck, whose companionship throughout this gauntlet we call graduate
school was essential to my survival and sanity.
Of course, I would never have undertaken this project or pursued scholarship in this field
without the training and mentorship of my professors at Amherst College. I thank Stanley
Rabinowitz for his patience and endurance, and for teaching me that the ideas that are uniquely
mine are often the most interesting ones. I thank Catherine Ciepiela for her thoughtfulness and
sincerity; and for introducing me to “Fotografiia Pushkina (1799-2099),” which found its way
into the core of this project ten years after I first read it in her class. Boris Wolfson has provided
so much support and guidance throughout my time at Amherst College and the University of
Southern California that he should receive credit for being on my committee.
I am grateful to all the friends that supported me, laughed with me, and listened to me
complain throughout this process. Most of all, I want to thank Julia Tokuhama, whose curiousity,
thirst for knowledge, and thoughtfulness are so exemplary that she read nearly every book
featured in this project so that she could talk through my ideas with me.
This dissertation is for and about my parents, Svetlana and Iosif, who loved and
supported me through this project and whose experiences helped to inspire it. Though academia
was never their first choice for me, they always encouraged me to do good work and were
always eager and interested to talk through my ideas, to provide their own input on the Soviet
experience, and, of course, to watch Ivan Vasil’evich Changes Profession many times over.
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Finally, for always telling me to be my best self and for knowing that I had one, I thank
Steven Lee, without whom this dissertation would never have become.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ii
Abstract vi
Introduction: Dreams of Futures Past 1
Chapter One: Utopia, Revisited 27
Chapter Two: Back from the Future 56
Chapter Three: Reframing Utopia 109
Chapter Four: Revolution as Eternal Return 157
Coda: Our Own Post-apocalyptic World 190
Works Cited 211

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Abstract
“Utopia after Stalin,” examines the reconceptualization of utopia after Stalin’s death
instigated a historical collapse in the Soviet Union. Science fiction, the genre of this
reconceptualization, initially flourished during the Revolutionary period in Russia, but receded
into obscurity after Stalinism monopolized the future. After Stalin’s death, science fiction
reemerged as a laboratory for the reanimation of the Revolutionary utopian vision that had been
co-opted by Stalinism. Inspired by de-Stalinization and the dizzying success of the Soviet space
program, the 1960s saw a resurgence in utopian science fiction. However, as the political
authorities’ interest in space travel waned, familiar terrestrial events–such as the persecution of
dissident writers and the military repression of the Prague Spring–suggested that the utopian
future, the promise that the current Soviet generation would live under Communism, had once
again collapsed. In spite of this loss, or perhaps because of it, Soviet writers began to produce
texts and films that sought to reimagine the shape of utopia. These utopias had to take on new
forms that would not fall prey to the faults of their predecessors, which tended toward finality
and stasis, and were easily subsumed by Stalinism. The new science fiction acknowledged the
deleterious link between utopia and totalizing ideologies and aimed to transcend it by
constructing resilient utopias that allowed for dynamism and heterogeneity. Science fiction
works were able to reflect the spatial and temporal forms at the core of Soviet social and cultural
conditions, and to build new structures. Though they were often unimaginable, these structures
were more viable than their predecessors. The most illuminating works aspired to create novel
utopian constructions, constructions that did not abandon the past for the future (or vice versa)
and that did not divorce spatiality from temporality.
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Introduction:
Dreams of Futures Past
Kant distinguished between two kinds of non-conceptual
language: the symbol and the schema. Traditional literature
cleaved to the symbol and its ‘picture-thinking’ […]. But
science fiction had the schema; and it is what we have been
calling literality, the use of visual materials not to represent
the world but to represent our thoughts about the world.
- Frederic Jameson, “In Hyperspace”
As a genre, science fiction is capable of making manifest what would otherwise be
abstract, of representing more clearly the underlying structures of our lives, unencumbered by
the banality of lived experience, which serves only as a distraction from those structures—
cultural, social, and ideological—that shape the world. Science fiction proved to be an especially
acute exploration of the Soviet Union, an entity defined by its reigning ideology and especially
sensitive to ideological shifts. Turn-of-the-century science fiction channeled the ethos of
revolution, the anticipation leading up to it and the potential inherent in its success.
Revolutionary science fiction sought not merely to reflect, but to shape ideology, to have a hand
in defining the future. As Stalin became the sole creator and arbiter of Soviet ideology, science
fiction stagnated, forced to reflect the Stalinist model; science fiction was limited to the near
future and languished under the restrictions of Socialist Realism. It was not until Stalin’s death
and subsequent disavowal that science fiction regained its potential—its ability to experiment
with the shape of the future. Science fiction production surged during the Thaw period
encouraged by the utopianism of official Party rhetoric, such as the Twenty Second Party
Congress and Third Party Program. As Khrushchev re-opened the future for Communism, he
also re-opened it to science fiction. By the late 1960s, however, the Communist future had
become an ever-receding horizon, the deadline for culmination extended ad-infinitum. During
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this period, between the Thaw and perestroika, science fiction flourished, developing a
complexity born of ideological flexibility. The Communist Party had relinquished its hold on the
future and science fiction became a potent means of re-conceptualizing that future, of producing
alternative utopian forms to displace its failed representations. This utopian experimentation
continued until the onset of glasnost re-opened the past and undermined any lingering faith in the
Communist future by allowing its foundations to be shaken. Contemporary science fiction,
trapped in Putinism, has also abandoned utopia, focusing its attentions on dystopia and post-
apocalypse.
This dissertation will trace the trajectory of post-Stalinist science fiction as a reflection of
ideological shifts in the Soviet Union—shifts in the dominant Party ideology as well as shifting
relationships between ideology and the world. The project begins in 1956 and ends in the
present, but primarily focuses on science fiction works produced between 1965 and 1985 that
created non-totalizing forms of utopia, forms that could navigate the empty spaces between
ideology and reality. Having learned from the faults of failed utopias—their totalizing natures,
their stasis, their ahistoricity—writers and artists endeavored to create utopian forms that did not
fall victim to these faults. These forms were often unlike previous utopias, and were therefore
more resilient. However, these forms also failed to come to fruition, to reanimate a dying vision
of mass utopia.
Defining Utopia
Before we can properly analyze the aforementioned alternative utopias, it is critical that
we define the ideological and literary forms within and against which they are functioning.
Utopia, in particular, is a flexible concept—it is at once a literary genre, an ideological concept,
and even a personal dream. Within each category, theorists define utopia differently, imbuing it
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with more or less malleability, with varying goals and intentions, and with an array of
relationships to reality. Other categories that will help us to work through the trajectory of utopia
after Stalin—such as anti-utopia and teleology—will also be discussed alongside illustrative
examples from Revolutionary and early Soviet texts.
The ideological concept that will define the underlying foundation of the following works
is that of mass utopia. According to Susan Buck-Morss, mass utopia was “the dream of the
twentieth century,” the ideological underpinning for both Communism and capitalism. “[This]
collective dream dared to imagine a social world in alliance with personal happiness, and
promised to adults that its realization would be in harmony with the overcoming of scarcity for
all” (ix). She goes on to argue that, with the Soviet collapse and, consequently, the de-facto
victory of liberal democratic capitalism in the ideological struggle of the Cold War, the promise
of mass utopia has been abandoned, burdening individuals with the task of realizing their own
utopian dreams. The works that will be discussed in the following chapters are all in dialogue
with the concept of mass utopia, whether they are reanimating its Revolutionary era incarnations
or trying to redefine Communist mass utopia and therefore endow it with renewed viability after
the onset of stagnation undermined its Thaw-era revival.
Though they are all manifestations of a desire for a viable future for mass utopia
(excepting the anti-utopia works discussed in Chapter Four), the science fiction narratives
discussed in this dissertation vary widely in their adherence to the conventions of the utopian
genre, challenging those conventions and questioning the efficacy of traditional utopian forms.
Even as they lay bare the flaws in traditional utopias, they strive to correct them, to create
utopias for a new world and a new time. Broadly speaking, traditional utopias, including those of
the Revolutionary period in Russia, adhere to the criteria laid out by Gary Saul Morson in The
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Boundaries of Genre: “(1) it was written (or presumed to have been written) in the tradition of
previous utopian literary works; (2) it depicts (or is taken to depict) an ideal society; and (3)
regarded as a whole, it advocates (or is taken to advocate) the realization of that society” (74).
Utopian texts portray societies that are the fulfillment of a set of simple ideals. As the
culmination of these ideals, utopian societies attain a state of transcendent stillness. Having
entered a state of perfection, society no longer needs to change. Consequently, these works are
often mere descriptions of the ideal society, book-ended by journeys through time and/or space,
rather than fully articulated narratives.
The quintessential utopian text of the revolutionary period in Russia is Aleksandr
Bogdanov’s Red Star (Krasnaia Zvezda, 1908). Inspired by earlier turn-of-the-century utopias
such as Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward and William Morris’s News from Nowhere, Red
Star is a prototypical utopia, meeting Morson’s criteria, though not without some nuance. The
ideals on which Bogdanov’s utopian system is based became the objects of emulation by writers
in the 1910s-20s, such as Yakov Okunev and Yan Larri, and in the 1950s-60s, by writers such as
Ivan Efremov. As the utopia ideals and flaws of the text inspired late Soviet utopias, traditional
and alternative, the content and the structure of Red Star warrant some further discussion.
Bogdanov’s novel chronicles, in the form of journal entries, the journey of devoted Communist
and revolutionary Leonid from his native Russia, plagued by revolutionary violence, to a fully
systematized and egalitarian utopia on Mars, and his attempt to assimilate to Martian society.
“Seized with a desire to present a social sketch of the future to the proletariat. Bogdanov created
a Martian-Marxian society that was about three hundred years in advance of Earth in technology,
ideology, and human behavior” (Stites, Revolutionary Dreams 32). Every aspect of Martian
society is marked by the aforementioned concepts of elegant systematization and egalitarianism.
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The Martian language exemplifies these features syntactically and semantically. In his
description of Martian grammar, Leonid notes its simplicity and functionality:
Язык этот очень оригинален; и, несмотря на большую простоту его грамматики и
правил образования слов, в нем есть особенности, с которыми мне было нелегко
справиться. Его правила вообще не имеют исключений, в нем нет таких
разграничений, как мужской, женский и средний род; но рядом с этим все названия
предметов и свойств изменяются по временам. Это никак не укладывалось в моей
голове.
1
(Bogdanov)
If the Martian language lacks features of gender, it is because the Martians are themselves
gender-neutral. Though there exist on Mars males and females, secondary sexual characteristics
have been purged over the course of the evolutionary process. The sexes are not only equal, but
also indistinguishable.
The collective nature of Martian society is similarly revealed to Leonid through an
incompatibility of expressions. When he and Netti, the Martian who recruits him for his journey
to Mars, are discussing another member of the spaceship’s crew, Leonid refers to him as
“nastoiashchi velikii chelovek”; Netti problematizes this description by responding, “Da, esli
vam nravitsia...”, explaining that Leonid’s notions of “genii, chelovek-tvorets, sozdaiushchii
novoe i vedushchii vpered chelovechestvo” are faulty because “tvorets – kazhdyi rabotnik, no v
kazhdom rabotnike tvorit chelovechestvo i priroda . . . Chelovek – lichnost’, no delo ego

1
The language is very original; in spite of the simplicity of its grammar and rules of word formation, it has
particularities that it was difficult for me to cope with. Its rules don’t have any exceptions, it has no distinctions
between the male, female, and neuter genders; but alongside these features, all names of objects and properties
changes according to time. I could in no way wrap my head around this. My translation.
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bezlichno”
2
(Bogdanov). In Martian society, an individual’s accomplishments do not belong to
or define the individual, but rather the society that shaped him and to which he belongs. The
salient features of Martian society are reflected in the Martians’ language: their gender-
neutrality, their equality, their emphasis on the needs and accomplishments of the collective, and
their logical and consistent systematization of everything from labor to government to education.
Yet, Bogdanov’s “model of ameliorating the pernicious effects of scientific management is based
on the autonomy of the work over the standardized clock while accommodating the demands of
highly technologized society” (Banerjee 63). In Bogdanov’s utopia, the needs of the collective
coincide seamlessly with the desires of the individuals that belong to it, so completely does the
spirit of collectivism permeate Martian society.
For all its utopian enthusiasm and genuine belief in the founding principles of Martian
society, Red Star exhibits signs of ambivalence, of awareness toward the cracks in its own
utopian façade. Bogdanov probes these cracks by way of the novel’s plot. Though the first half
of the novel adheres to the trajectory of a traditional utopia–a description of the operation of
Martian society in all of its harmonious synchrony and a history of hardships undertaken and
conflicts weathered before Martian development reached this apex–the specter of Darwinian
competition over resources disrupts this placidity, giving rise to the narrative with which the
novel’s second half is occupied. Leonid, upon discovering that his companion Netti is a
biological female and that he is in love with her, comes to perceive another of his companions,
Netti’s ex-lover, the coldly logical and intensely utilitarian Sterni, as his rival. These feelings of
antipathy intensity significantly when Leonid happens upon a recording of Sterni advocating for

2
A real great man; “Yes, if you say so…” “genius, creator, creating new things and leading mankind forward”
“every worker is a creator and every worker is endowed with the creative forces of mankind and nature… Each man
is a person, but his acts are impersonal” My translation.
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the destruction of Earth and its inhabitants for the sake of the propagation of the Martian race,
which, having consumed nearly all the resources on its own planet, looks to Venus and Earth to
replenish its stores. Sterni’s speech, frightening precisely because of the absence of cruel
intentions, presents a defamiliarized account of some of the vices of humanity – patriotism and
its accoutrements – racism and warfare. (Bogdanov). This speech can be interpreted as an attack
on nationalism, as a means of implicating Earthly existence in its own potential destruction. Yet,
the extermination of one race in order to ensure the survival of another, no matter how deserving,
cannot but tip us off to a crisis of utopia. Though Sterni’s measure is ultimately rejected and the
Martians decide to colonize Venus instead, Leonid’s immediate emotional response exposes his
innate humanity, the impossibility of his assimilation into Martian society. In a fit of irrational
rage, Leonid murders Sterni and is expelled from Mars.
Leonid’s inability to adapt to life on Mars suggests ambivalence and trepidation with
regard to the utopian dream. On the one hand, Martian history is in an advanced stage; the
violence and upheaval of revolution were undertaken in the past and the ideals of Communism
were victorious. As a man of Earth, a planet in the early stages of revolution, Leonid possesses a
mindset that belongs to a different time: “The ethics of war to which he has grown accustomed–
war with nature, with class enemies, and with his fellow party members – is the least suitable for
the sterile atmosphere of Mars. It seems that collectivism and self-sacrifice, having entered the
flesh and blood of the martians, poured out into the mechanical rhythm of life, unbearable for an
earthling” (Kuznetsova 11, my translation). On the other hand, it is not merely Leonid’s atavism
– the violence to which he has grown accustomed – that results in the incompatibility between
himself and Martian society. There are hints of imperfection. Sterni’s speech is perhaps the
foremost embodiment of the dark undercurrent that runs through the novel implying that Mars
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had not actually attained Bogdanov’s ideal state of self-sustaining progress: “An examination of
the term ‘circular development’ which Bogdanov chose to describe evolution on Mars, explains
this view. He contrasted the ‘circulatory’ flow of blood between organisms, which regenerates
and continues life eternally, with the ‘linear’ course of evolution on Earth, in which humanity as
a species is destined to degenerate into bestial struggle and eventually become extinct” (Banerjee
149). Martian utopia is not “circulatory”; it is a bound system that must consume worlds external
to itself in order to guarantee its own survival. The pure, idealized collectivism does away with
hierarchical structures within Martian society, but creates new divisions and a new hierarchy–
those that contribute and belong to the collective and those outside of it. When Sterni describes
in his speech “the possibility of a revolution [on Earth] and the establishment of a few islands of
socialism surrounded by a hostile capitalist sea….beleaguered by capitalist states”(Stites,
Positions 131), he highlights the isolation of Martian society; this is an isolation that necessitates
the rationalization of genocide, which breeds those reprehensible and repugnant qualities that
Sterni uses to justify the destruction of Earth. Martian civilization, in spite of its advanced stage
of development, is driven by the same desire for self-preservation at any cost.
While Bogdanov’s Red Star displays both hope and ambivalence, the novel’s emulators
and detractors chose more often than not to ignore the nuance inherent in Bogdanov’s plot,
responding exclusively to the description of Martian society as the embodiment of Communist
ideology. The science fiction of the 1920s was preoccupied with reworking Bogdanov’s utopian
society for the post-Revolutionary world – projecting utopia into the Communist future of earth.
Utopian texts such as Yakov Okunev’s The Coming World, which “reversed Bogdanov’s
premise and situated the Communist heaven on Earth, not Mars,” and V.D. Nikolsky’s In a
Thousand Years conjured up images of the distant future, while Innokenty Zhukov’s Voyage into
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the Wonderland of the Pioneer Detachment ‘Red Star’ and Yan Larri’s The Land of the Happy
(1931) presented utopia as being within reach, having set their utopian visions in 1957 and the
1980s, respectively (Stites, Revolutionary Dreams 174-79). These same utopian visions would be
resurrected in the form of Ivan Efremov’s Andromeda Nebula a quarter century later. Since
utopia was deemed to have failed as a result of Stalinism, the inherent faults in the utopian ideal
were not acknowledged until utopia’s second coming became mired in the inertia of stagnation.
Subsequently, science fiction attempted to account for the flaws that even Bogdanov
subtly acknowledged in his novel. However, in order to do so, writers would need to transgress
boundaries of the utopian genre as defined by its generic precursors. These works attempted to
resolve the contradictory nature of utopia. Frederic Jameson defines this as “the formal dilemma
of how works that posit the end of history can offer any useable historical impulses, how works
which aim to resolve all political differences can continue to be in any sense political, how texts
designed to overcome the needs of the body can remain materialistic, and how visions of the
‘epoch of rest’ (Morris) can energize and compel us to action” (Jameson, Archaeologies xiv).
Consequently, only one of the works discussed in this dissertation (excepting this Introduction)
adheres to Morson’s standards. The other works are alternative utopias, experiments in utopian
form that attempt to resolve utopia’s paradoxes by positing new shapes for utopia that deviate
from its generic precursors. These works attempt to model the utopian ethos as described by
Ernst Bloch in his essay “The Conscious and Known Activity within the Not-Yet-Conscious, the
Utopian Function”:
[Except] in its usual, mere depreciatory sense, the utopian is used not only in the […]
anticipatory sense but also as a function, in a comprehensive sense. Clearly the breadth and
depth of the utopian is above all not limited to its most popular feature, i.e. the utopian state
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when view historically. Correspondingly, the dream of a better life reaches far beyond its
social utopian origins—namely, it reaches into each kind of cultural anticipation. (118)
Works that exercise the utopian function of art can put forward utopian forms without the
limitations of the ideal utopian state—its stasis, its ahistoricity, and its totality. These works will
be discussed at great length in Chapters Two and Three.
Where Utopia Isn’t
The genre most commonly associated with laying bare the contradictory nature of utopia
is that of anti-utopia. The task of any given anti-utopia is to challenge utopia by undermining its
foundation, exposing its inherent contradictions and leveraging them against either the possibility
of utopia or its desirability. They share with the aforementioned alternative utopias a desire to
return to history. According to Morson, “whereas utopias describe an escape from history, these
antiutopias describe an escape, of attempted escape, to history, which is to say to the world of
contingency, conflict, and uncertainty” (128). The most significant anti-utopia of the early Soviet
period was Evgeny Zamiatin’s We (My).
Written in 1921 but not published in the Soviet Union until 1988, We belongs to the
subset of anti-utopia that Morson defines as dystopia: “a type of anti-utopia that discredits
utopias by portraying the likely effects of their realization” (115-16). A response to the
systematization of labor in Bogdanov’s Red Star and the Russian manifestations of Taylorism
that took shape in the Scientific Organization on Labor (Nauchnaya Organizatsiya Truda; or
NOT) and Gastev’s Central Institute of Labor; and a continuation of a significant body of pre-
revolutionary works in the dystopian genre – Valeriy Bryusov’s Earth and Republic of the
Southern Cross, Nikolai Fedorov’s An Evening in the Year 2217, and Alexander Kuprin’s “The
Liquid Sun,” We warns against the unabashed pursuit of utopia by describing a society built on
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utopian aspirations that degenerates into dehumanizing mechanization and full-scale
authoritarian control. Zamiatin’s future world of the One State confronts utopian prescription
with foreboding; he “offers militant criticism of specific aberrations in [the then-present] social-
political system by pointing out their potentially monstrous consequences in the future” (Gottlieb
13). Unthinking adherence to Taylorist labor philosophy and Bolshevik ideology is traced to a
society of uncaring efficiency and blissful ignorance born of ahistoricity; the formula for
happiness is submission to external control – the willingness to become the oft-fetishized Man-
Machine.
The narrative of We begins as utopia, described in, once again, the journal entries of our
protagonist D-503. His strict adherence to the unerring rationality of the One State renders all
initial descriptions utopian: his genuine admiration for machines and machine-like motions is
aesthetic in nature; he appreciates the rhythmic motion of the machine as a dance:
Нынче утром был я на эллинге, где строится "Интеграл", и вдруг увидел станки: с
закрытыми глазами, самозабвенно, кружились шары регуляторов; мотыли, сверкая,
сгибались вправо и влево; гордо покачивал плечами балансир; в такт неслышной
музыке приседало долото долбежного станка. Я вдруг увидел всю красоту этого
грандиозного машинного балета, залитого легким голубым солнцем.
3
(Zamiatin, My
7)

3
Just this morning I was at the hangar where the INTEGRAL is being built – and suddenly I caught sight of the
equipment: the regulator globes, their eyes closed, oblivious, were twirling round; the cranks were glistening and
bending to the left and right; the balance beam was proudly heaving its shoulders; the bit of the router was squatting
athletically to the beat of some unheard music. I suddenly saw the whole beauty of this grandiose mechanical ballet,
flooded with light of the lovely blue-eyed sun. (Zamiatin, We 5-6)
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D-503 personifies the machine in its dance, ascribing human physicality – closed eyes, swinging
shoulders – and personality – selflessness, pride – to its parts. The machine is given human
features in a perfect union of functionality and beauty. This dance is praised for its lack of
freedom, for the restriction and control under which it is performed. These features are then
traced backwards in time, by way of the dance, to humanity’s ancestors: “I esli verno, chto nashi
predki otdavalis’ tantsu v samye vdokhnovennye momenty svoei zhizni (religioznye misterii,
voennye parady), to eto znachit tol’ko odno: instinct nesvobody izdrevle organicheski prisushch
cheloveku, i my v tepereshnei nashei zhizni – tol’ko soznatel’no...”
4
(Zamiatin, My 7). The act
of dance itself becomes defined by controlled machine-like motion, forging false bonds between
restriction and inspiration and indicating an utter loss of intrinsic connection to ancestors, a loss
of historical awareness.
The dance of the machines is later taken up by the human workers as they continue to the
work of building the Integral – the spaceship that D-503 has helped to design. Again, he admires
their synchronous, harmonious motion as though it were choreographed to music:
Я видел: по-Тэйлору, размеренно и быстро, в такт, как рычаги одной огромной
машины, нагибались, разгибались, поворачивались люди внизу. В руках у них
сверкали трубки: огнем резали, огнем спаивали стеклянные стенки, угольники,
ребра, кницы. Я видел, по стеклянным рельсам медленно катились прозрачно-
стекляные чудовища-краны, и так же, как люди, послушно поворачивались,
нагибались, просовывали внутрь, в чрево «Интеграла» свои грузы. И это было одно:

4
And if it is true that our ancestors gave themselves over to dancing at the most inspired moments of their lives
(religious mysteries, military parades), that can mean only one thing: that from time immemorial the instinct of
nonfreedom has been an organic part of man, and that we, in our present day life, are only deliberately… (Zamiatin,
We 6)
13

очеловеченные, совершенные люди. Это была высочайшая, потрясающая красота,
гармония, музыка...Скорее – вниз, к ним, с ними!
5
(Zamiatin, My 73).
The overt reference to Taylor is an underhanded jab at Gastev, whose Central Institute of Labor
trained workers to resemble machines in the efficiency of their motions. In a clear extension of
the “dance” quoted from earlier in the novel, the affinity between man and machine grows even
stronger – as the machines are personified, the men are machinified. The human workers work in
perfect harmony with the machines, bringing D-503 to a state of aesthetic bliss.
The culmination of this sequence, however, evokes horror rather than ecstasy. The
machinification of men is literalized in the form of fifty actual Machine-men, human-tractor
hybrids who have been lobotomized for the purpose of removing all emotions:
На углу, в аудиториуме -- широко разинута дверь, и оттуда -- медленная, грузная
колонна, человек пятьдесят. Впрочем, "человек" -- это не то: не ноги -- а какие-то
тяжелые, скованные, ворочающиеся от невидимого привода колеса; не люди -- а
какие-то человекообразные тракторы. Над головами у них хлопает по ветру белое
знамя с вышитым золотым солнцем -- и в лучах надпись: "Мы первые! Мы -- уже
оперированы! Все за нами!"
6
(Zamiatin, My 161)

5
I watched the men below, how they would bend over, straighten up, turn around, all in accordance with Taylor,
smoothly and quickly, keeping in time, like the levers of a single immense machine. Pipes glistened in their hands:
With fire they were cutting, with fire they were soldering the glass partitions, angle bars, ribs, gussets. I watched the
gigantic cranes, made of clear glass, slowly rolling along glass rails and, just like the men, obediently turn, bend, and
insert their cargo into the innards of the INTEGRAL. They were the same, all one: humanized, perfected men. It was
the sublimest, the most moving beauty, harmony, music. . . . I wanted to go down to them at once, to them, to be
with them! (Zamiatin, We 81)
6
The door of the auditorium at the corner is wide open and out of it is coming a slow, heavy column of about fifty
men. Or rather, not “men” – that isn’t he word. Those weren’t feet but some kind of heavy, forged wheels, drawn by
some invisible drive mechanism. Not men but some kind of tractors in human form. Above their heads, snapping in
the breeze, was a white banner embroidered with a golden sun, in the rays of which was a device: “We are the first!
We have already had the Operation! Everybody follow us!” (Zamiatin, We 182)
14

The clear parallelism between “k nim, s nimi!” and “Vse za nami!” indicates the clear connection
between the two scenes – that the latter lies at the bottom of a slippery slope which originates at
the former, that Taylorist labor practices alienate man, ultimately seeking to separate him from
his humanity.
Though Zamiatin portrays a bleak future of homogenization and dehumanization, his is
not a novel set against or at odds with the future. As in all classic dystopias, “the protagonist’s
tragic fate is in the conditional mood only: how it plays out in reality depends on whether we
come to understand the historical process that could destroy our society, so that we may break
the impasse of the historical prediction” (Gottlieb 15). Zamiatin’s We is a shield, meant to
protect the future from the destructive consequences of the dominant utopian visions. “Zamyatin
came to conceive of literature as an active instrument for creative intervention in history,
affirming the transience and impermanence of all empirical, objective, and ‘rational’ conceptions
of temporality. He proclaimed a literature gifted with such a perspective on time as a liberating
force” (Banerjee 89). Zamiatin sought to help shape the future – to affirm its openness by
actively striving to prevent a vision of the future based on teleology from becoming manifest in
Soviet society.
Though Zamiatin would not be published in the Soviet Union until glasnost’, anti-utopian
texts re-emerged after the death of Stalin, alongside their utopian counterparts. Shrouded in
Aesopian language, anti-utopias were published throughout the late Soviet period. However, it
was during perestroika and glasnost’ that anti-utopia became the dominant mode of science
fiction within a surprisingly shallow field. “Glasnost’ marked not the end of history but its
rediscovery and its passionate rewriting. The first thing that was voluntarily abandoned at the
time of early glasnost’ was the attempt to build a utopia” (Boym, Common Places 228). With the
15

opening up of the past and the return to history, science fiction was cast aside in favor of
historical fiction, memoirs, or other means of reckoning with the past. Anti-utopia was a means
of manifesting this return to history; it was also an illustration of utopia’s failure, of the failure to
revive or reconceptualize the utopian form. A similar situation has arisen in the realm of
contemporary Russian science fiction. Anti-utopia has become the genre du jour among Russia’s
greatest literary talents. These anti-utopias, however, make no attempt at a return to history,
rather, they establish its impossibility. Anti-utopia at the end of history is as static and ahistorical
as utopia itself. These phenomena and the connection between them will be examined further in
Chapter Four.
Teleology and its Discontents
If utopia is the culmination of history, the end of time’s movement, teleology is the
temporal process by which time achieves its own end, the pathway to utopia. As a temporal
form, it is defined by constant progress toward its inevitable end. During the Revolutionary
period, this teleology took on competing forms—“the sdvig that Futurists envisioned would
liberate humanity from tradition” (Banerjee 63) and the scientific certainty of historical progress
within Marxism-Leninism.
7
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovskii’s “Memories of the Future,” written in
1929, but not published until 1989, could be read as a narrative of competing temporalities in the
Revolutionary period, culminating with the triumph of all-consuming Stalinist teleology. Its
protagonist, Max Shterer, an aspiring time traveler, struggles to bend time into new shapes, to
overcome linear time by reconceptualizing it as three-dimensional space or cyclical movement.
Through this struggle, Shterer comes up against the inherent politicization of time, its

7
Other temporal forms such as Bergsonian duration, counter-utopian nostalgia, or cyclical history were antithetical
to Revolutionary ideology and, though they were tolerated until the late 1920s, they were never embraced or
encouraged.
16

appropriation by ideologico-aesthetic movements, which manipulate temporality in an effort to
prop up a particular worldview. Shterer’s theories of time fall victim to these predatory
appropriations, eventually sanctioning the inevitable forward movement of time which Shterer’s
time machine was meant to disrupt. Krzhizhanovskii’s novella depicts the constriction of open
time and the rise of Stalinist teleology, narrativizing the closing-off of the future.
Shterer’s reshaping of time is a unique blend of Bergsonian and Einsteinian concepts.
The novle’s descriptions of Shterer’s temporal theory feature a component of perception,
evocative of Bergsonian duration and intuition. Intuition, according to Bergson, is how one
comes to comprehend the true nature of time and the means by which “one can grasp the vital
principle within, and unique to, the object of perception” (Fink 6). Shterer’s theory of time
asserts that time appears linear only as a result of man’s limited capacity to perceive it: “vremia
dano s r a z u i vse, no my kliuem ego, tak ckazat’, po zernu, v razderge sekund”
(Krzhizhanovskii, Vospominaniia 311); “Nash mozg t e m p e r i r u e t vremia. Esli
detemperirovat’ tempus, to…”
8
(Krzhizhanovskii, Vospominaniia 312). His time machine
functions by expanding the capacity of the passenger to perceive time and, consequently, to
move through it:
Стоит только втиснуть голову в эту шапку образную — выходным отверстием к
верху — воронку, свои виски и дать контакты и … Мозг наш, как известно, капельно-
жидок, и воронка моя, переливающая его, точнее — растворенное в нем мысление
из пространства во время... это не так легко было сделать: ведь комплекс ощущений
запрятан под три мозговых оболочки плюс костяной футляр […] Я вкючил

8
Time is given to us all at once, whereas we peck at it one grain at a time, in split seconds (Krzhizhanovsky 150)
Our brain tempers time. If one untempers tempus, then… (Krzhizhanovsky 152)
17

элекронный вихорь — и время стало втягивать меня сначала за мозг
9

(Krzhizhanovskii, Vospominaniia 354)
However, the nature of Shtererian time is not mystical, but physical – therein lies the Einsteinian
portion of the theory. Shterer’s spatialization of time in his theory is closer to Einsteinian space-
time than Bergsonian duration. For Shterer, time is something between a field through which one
moves and particles which one perceives. The resulting world is a “block universe” – a world in
which all time exists, has already occurred, but through which man moves as in a straight line.
Shterer’s hope in opening up the temporal dimension is to acquire power over time, to escape the
banality of history, and even to destroy death. However, Shterer’s model of the universe bears
within itself the seeds of his defeat.
From early on, Shterer exhibits an avant-garde inclination - his desire to do violence to
time. The practices of the avant-garde
interrupted the continuity of perceptions and estranged the familiar, severing historical
tradition through the force of their fantasy. Progress for the early Russian modernists
meant stepping out of the frame of the existing order whether toward the "beautiful East,"
back to the "primitive," or through to the "eternal," no matter. (Buck-Morss 49)
Shterer also wishes to do away with linear, uni-directional time, expressing his desire not merely
to control time, but to harm it, declare war against its tyrannical flow. As early as his adolescence
Shterer feels that he must defeat time. “Vidish’ li, tut delo ne v tom, chtoby nravitsia liudiam. A

9
You have only to squeeze your temples into that hat-like funnel – with the exhaust vent up – and make contact, and
. . . Our brain, as we know, consists of liquid drops; my funnel decants these – or, rather, the thinking dissolved in
them – from space to time. . . This isn’t so easy to do: the complex of sensations hidden inside three cerebral
membranes plus a bone case […] I switched on the electron vortex – and time began to inhale me brain-first
(Khrzhizhanovsky 198)
18

v tom, chtob napast’ na vremia, udarit’ i oprokinut’ ego. Strel’ba v tire – eto eshche ne voina”
10

(Krzhizhanovskii, Vospominaniia 302), he says to Ikhya, his first and last friend. This friendship
is also a manifestation of Shterer’s obsession and its avant-garde aspirations: the young Shterer
hopes, and even promises, to come back through time and rescue his friend from his mortality.
The fact that the reader is immediately informed that this does not come to pass represents the
first hint that man cannot override the movement of time.
Shterer is aligned with the avant-garde again, this time quite explicitly, after his return
from the war: “Gde-to iz pestrykh ploskostei plakata mel’knulo skoshennymi bukvami slovo:
avangard. Ostanovivshaiasia bylo mysl’ Shterera, zatsepivshis’ za znaki slova, opiat’ prishla v
dvizhenie”
11
(Krzhizhanovskii, Vospominaniia 327). Encountering the term “avant-garde,”
Shterer finds himself reinvigorated to fight his war against time, seeking out his instruments and
parts. Some time later, he finds himself at a government office, offering up dominion of time, an
occupation of the future, to the inattentive bureaucrat working there:
Штерер начал:
- Я предлагаю рейд в будущее. В обгон дням. Мои точнейшие формулы...
- Так-так. Алло. Сортировочное? Товарища Задяпу.
- В зависимости от результатов разведки во времени вы можете или
занять подступы к будущему, или от...
12
(Krzhizhanovsky, Vospominaniia 328)

10
You see, it’s not a matter of pleasing people. It’s a matter of attacking time, striking and destroying it. Shots at a
shooting gallery do not a war make. (Khrzhizhanovsky 142)
11
From among the poster’s parti-colored platitudes flashed a slant-lettered word: avant-garde. Brought to a near
halt, Shterer’s thoughts latched on to this word and again got under way. (Krzhizhanovsky 169)
12
Shterer began.
“I am offering you a raid on the future. Ahead of time. My most exact formulas—”
“Umm-hmm. Hello! Sorting? Get me comrade Zadyapa.”
19

This offer, victory over time, occupation of the future, represents the avant-garde dream of the
Futurists,
13
an offer Shterer is making because he believes the avant-garde and vanguard share
visions of time and that the new Soviet world will find his machine ideologically useful.
However, this is not the case, the dreams of the avant-garde and the byt of Soviet life lack any
points of contact. Consequently, Shterer's proposal is not only rejected, but is not even registered
by the bureaucrat to whom Shterer is pitching it. There is no place for Shterer's intentions to
occupy the future, the future has already come and Communism represents the inevitable. The
future is, in some sense, already occupied.
Despite the modernist and futurist leanings of Shterer’s conceptualizations of time, the
result of his time flight yields dark implications; it is haunted by determinism and an un-named
and unspeakable tragedy. What Shterer brings back from the future is a hint of teleological
apocalypticism, the expectation of a known future catastrophe, the embrace of determinism,
which is the embrace of death. Shterer's trip to the future reveals very little at first. He remains in
the same room, traveling forward in time, but remaining still in space. However, at a certain
point, his progress through time undergoes a shocking shift, a shift that Shterer implies is
indicative of his own death:
-- Ну вот, например, это произошло как раз, когда ничего не происходило. Я
имею в виду одну из пауз в работе машины. Незачем возвращаться к ощущению,
я уже пробовал вам его передать. Опишу только факт. На этот раз нить секунд
разорвалась в середине яркого дня. Солнечный луч, ткнувшись в столб с разбега в

“Depending on the results of my reconnaissance in time, you may either occupy the approaches to the future or re-”
(Krzhizhanovsky 170)
13
For example, his interests are comparable to those of Futurist trans-sense poet and self-declared King of Time,
Velemir Khlebnikov, whose works idealize technology and a future-oriented outlook as a means of attaining the
ideal of non-linear time (Banerjee 78-81).
20

300 000 километров, стал на 0. Пылины в луче не шевелились; казалось, будто
воздух засижен золотыми мухами. Под пятном луча была брошена газета (человек,
оставивший ее; отсутствовал). Это был номер "Известий" от 11 июля 1951 года.
Протянувшийся в бесконечность миг впрессовал в мой мозг, помимо воли, все, от
заголовка до последней буквы впластавшегося против глаз листа, и если угодно...
14

(Krzhizhanovskii, Vospominaniia 357)
Shterer is stopped just short of revealing the fateful newspaper headline that marks his end, but
the date is inscribed in his memory and now belongs to all those to whom he has told this tale.
This discovery implies that the time-stream is a fully plotted course, that events are indeed
predetermined and that Bergsonian free will in “real time” has fallen through. Shterer's desire to
control time, to know time, has put him at the mercy of time rather than vice-versa. The time
structure that this conjures is reminiscent of the “catastrophic chronotope” of early post-
Revolutionary science fiction as described by Rafael Nudelman: “The same destiny is
predetermined by impersonal social forces acting with the certainty of Greek fate. The
protagonists not only submit to these forces but act on their behalf. Therefore, the relationship of
the protagonists within the plot becomes but a reflection of historical processes unfolding in time
and space” (41). The implications of Shterer’s block universe are thus fully realized – the
universe, the past, present and future are complete and the life of any given man has already been
written in the fourth dimension. Time may not be linear in that Shterer is able to move through it

14
Now this, for example, happened just when nothing was happening. That is, during one of the pauses in the
machine’s operation. I won’t return to the sensation, which I’ve already tried to convey. I’ll describe only the fact.
This time the thread of seconds broke into broad daylight. A sunbeam that had banged into a post at a speed of
186,000 miles dropped down to zero. The motes in the beam did not stir; it was as though the air were infested with
golden flies. Beneath the static beam lay an old newspaper (whoever had left it was gone): a copy of Izvestia dated
July 11, 1951. That one instant stretching into infinity impressed everything on my brain, in spite of me–from the
headline to the last letter on the page scrawled opposite my eye, and if you like –”
21

in either direction, but the events that have taken place and will take place are non-negotiable –
history is linear, unshakeable; there is no going against fate.
The results of Shterer’s time flight become all the more devastating when an event even
more troubling than the sensation of his discontinued existence forces Shterer to return:
Я наддал скорости- серая лента дней терлась о мои глаза; я закрыл их и, стиснув
зубы, вслепую мчался на выброшенных вперед рычагах. Не знаю точно, как долго
это длилось, но когда я снова открыл глаза, то увидел такое... такое...
Голос Штерера, качнувшись, стал. Руки его крепко стискивали выступ
подоконника.
15
(Krzhizhanovsky, Vospominaniia 358)
The nature of this event, unspeakable and horrifying beyond words, is never revealed to the
reader and the shadow of its imminence haunts the end of the novel, which, though it is written
from an unknown point in the future, ends before the event can take place.
Determinism is fully affirmed at the end of the novel, when all that was remembered of
the future comes to be. First, Shterer disappears from his apartment, exactly as predicted in his
manuscript and several days later, the expected newspaper date and headline follow, indicating
Shterer's death:
Исчезновение Максимилиана Штерера не было одиночным. Шепоты превратились
в шелесты. Самое молчание боялось слишком громко молчать. Впрочем, ни
Стынский, ни двадцатишестиязыкий молчальник лингвист, ни издатель,

15
“I increased my speed—the gray reel of days chafed against my eyes; I closed them and, gritting my teeth, tore
blindly on with the levers thrown forward. I can’t say exactly how long this lasted, but when I opened my eyes
again, I saw so something so…so…”
Shterer’s voice stuttered to a stop. His hands gripped the edge of the windowsill. (Krzhizhanovsky 202-203)
22

заблаговременно выселивший рукопись "Воспоминания о будущем" из архивов
Центроиздата, не удивлялись: именно это - на ближайшие сроки – и предсказывала
рукопись.
16
(Krzhizhanovsky, Vospominaniia 369)
The implications of Shterer's disappearance are, of course, political. The whispers, the fearful
quiet, the strategic removal of the prophetic manuscript, imply an arrest. The newspaper and the
linguist's final word “Pogibaiushchikh” (“Who perish”) (Krzhizhanovsky 370) confirm what we
already know, that the time traveler is dead, having confirmed the determinism of the Soviet
worldview, Shterer has fallen victim to it. By the late 1920s, the future had lost its openness and
teleology had taken hold.
If Shterer’s death signaled the victory of teleology over all other forms of time, Stalin’s
death ushered in its decline. Though some faith in the teleological structure of time, its inevitable
movement toward the Communist endpoint, was maintained through the Thaw period,
encouraged by Party doctrine and platforms, this faith was undermined by the late 1960s. With
the exception of Andromeda Nebula, the texts in this dissertation challenge Stalinist teleology by
creating non-linear forms of time.
Utopia under Stalin
After Stalinism declared itself the culmination of history, designating itself as its own
telos, science fiction production declined.
17
If the future had already arrived, what need was there
to look any further? In his Red Stars, Patrick McGuire provides a multitude of contributing

16
The disappearance of Maximillian Shterer did not go unremarked. The whispers became whirrs. Silence itself was
afraid of keeping silent too loudly. Then again, neither Stynsky, nor the reticent-in-twenty-six-languages linguist,
nor the publisher, who had promptly removed the manuscript of Memories of the Future from the Central Publishing
archives, was surprised: the manuscript had predicted precisely this outcome—in the nearest term. (Krzhizhanovsky
214)
17
Science fiction would reach the peak of its pre-1953 production in 1927 when 46 Science Fiction titles were
produced. By 1933, production was reduced to two titles. Science fiction production would not surpass this number
until 1958, five years after Stalin’s death. By 1964, production had gone as high as 115 titles. (McGuire 14-20)
23

factors; some are quotidian – loss of markets and changes in censorship – and others are
ideological (14). The regime could not tolerate competing utopian visions and repressed many of
the utopian writers of the 1920s, such as Vivian Itin and Ian Larri. Science fiction cast its sights
too far into the future and in so doing it came up against an inimical “spirit of the times,” one
that “[condemned] cybernetics, Mendelian genetics, quantum theory, relativity, and a large
portion of the other scientific developments of the twentieth century” (McGuire 17). What little
science fiction was written during the Stalinist period was no longer invested in shaping the
future; the future was no longer within its purview. “Science fiction had been expected to
conform to the tenets of Socialist Realism since these were laid down in the early thirties, but [in
the immediate postwar years] a codicil applying specifically to science fiction (already to some
degree implicit during the thirties) was firmly and vigorously applied. This was the theory of the
near target (blizkaia tsel’) or limit (predel)” (McGuire 15), which limited science fiction to the
present or near future. The utopia of the distant future was replaced by the utopia of the
immediate future – Socialist Realism.
Stalinism subsumed into its singular utopian vision some features of Revolutionary
utopianism and avant-gardism, metamorphosing them into congruent components of Stalinism
and discarding what remained. The fascination with speed that preoccupied avant-gardists
became a push for rapid industrialization in line with the goals of the Five-Year Plan: “Speed did
link these two disparate periods, but by 1930, speed signified something quite distinct from the
earlier decades’ experimentation, for Stalinist art offered fast, forward movement without any of
the previous dynamism” (Harte 232). Taylorism, so revered by Gastev and Kerzhentsev, was
“stripped of all dreamlike qualities and aspiration and made into [a tool] of labor exploitation”
(Stites, Revolutionary Dreams 164) and its proponents – purged. Writers of utopia in the vein of
24

Bogdanov also faced arrest; their utopian dreams of egalitarian collectives or harmonious
systematization of labor were rejected outright in favor of Stakhanovism. The project of bringing
life under the influence of art, an aspiration shared by avant-gardists and utopians, was,
according to Boris Groys, coopted and perfected by Stalinism:
This ambition to implement the avant-garde utopian project by non-avant-garde,
traditionalist means constitutes the very essence of [Stalinist] culture and therefore cannot
be dismissed as a superficial pose. The life-building spirit of the Stalin years resists
interpretation as a mere regression into the past, because it insists that it is an absolute
apocalyptic future in which distinguishing between past and future is no longer meaningful.
(73)
The teleology of Stalinism molds history into a part of its complete and unquestionable
representation of the world.
It was not until Stalin’s death undermined the ideological foundation of the Soviet Union,
the conceptions of space and time that reinforced Stalinist utopia, that science fiction reemerged
and reclaimed its utopian legacy. The science fiction published shortly after Stalin’s death
mirrored the ideological shift in Party doctrine. In his “Secret Speech,” Khrushchev promised a
return to Marxism-Leninism, to the ideals of the Revolution, and science fiction re-embraced
these same ideals as they had been manifested in Revolutionary and early Soviet science fiction.
However, the onset of stagnation degraded the certainty of mass utopia so thoroughly that new
dreams, new futures, a new spatio-temporal foundation for the world had to be conceived. Late
Soviet science fiction responded not only to potential futures that emerged from the ideological
and cultural circumstances of any given (political or historical) moment, but to the multiplicity of
lost futures from Russia’s Revolutionary period and the Stalinist appropriation and perversion of
25

these futures – their transformation into the all-consuming vision of the utopian near-future that
defined Stalinism. The resulting utopias eschewed totalizing forms, depicting utopia in
heretofore unseen guises, using science fiction to give otherwise unimaginable utopian forms a
concrete and representable shape.
Though all the works discussed in the following dissertation contain science fiction
devices, after Chapter One, I explore primarily works outside the traditional science fiction
canon. The draw of non-science fiction writers and filmmakers (from mainstream pop culture to
post-modernism to satire) to these forms and devices speaks to their salience as a vehicle for new
kinds of thinking. To that end, my aim is not to provide a comprehensive survey of post-Stalinist
science fiction, but to present revelatory juxtapositions of works whose affinities speak to larger
patterns in utopian imagining that extend beyond the limits of science fiction and into the larger
late-Soviet cultural sphere. The works juxtaposed in the following chapters often emerge in
vastly different contexts, locations, and periods. I endeavor to draw out the resonances between
them, ultimately arriving at their shared utopian ethos.
Chapter One, “Utopia, Revisited,” explores the science fiction boom of the Thaw period
in the context of the Soviet space program. Beginning with Ivan Efremov’s Andromeda Nebula,
the chapter examines how the symbiotic relationship between the space program and science
fiction served to reinforce the ideological message of de-Stalinization. The chapter ends with
Efremov’s more mature work Hour of the Bull, which reflects the disillusionment of the late
1960s and simultaneously maintains its belief in the Communist ideal. A faith in progress
evolves into a belief in the need for action.
Chapter Two, “Back from the Future,” examines works that challenge the teleological
temporality that dominated the preceding decades. The chapter uses Hayden White’s work on
26

history as narrative to analyze time travel narratives, deriving the conceptions of history that
challenged and came to replace Stalinist teleology and the historical revisionism that reinforced
it. Works such as Leonid Gaidai’s Soviet comedy Ivan Vasil’evich Changes Profession and
Andrei Bitov’s short story “Pushkin’s Photograph (1799-2099)” not only challenge Stalinist
historiography, but also redefine the field of possible futures by allowing for private universes
with unique temporalities.
If Chapter Two analyzes temporality that has been spatialized, Chapter Three,
“Reframing Utopia,” examines spatiality that has been temporalized. This chapter explores
works that strive to harmoniously reintegrate temporality with utopian space, which is defined by
its stasis, its completeness. The chapter investigates Chingiz Aitmatov’s novel The Day Lasts
Longer than a Hundred Years and Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Solaris as attempts to establish this
unity. These works seek refuge in neither the future nor the past, but enable a symbiotic
relationship between the two by restoring time to utopian stillness.
Chapter Four, “Revolution as Eternal Return,” juxtaposes fiction produced during
perestroika with works produced after the Soviet collapse, in particular Vladimir Voinovich’s
Moscow 2042 and Vladimir Sorokin’s Day of the Oprichnik. By identifying similar
metahistorical narratives implemented by Voinovich and Sorokin, the chapter problematizes the
distinction between Soviet and post-Soviet and posits Apocalypse as an object of eternal return
rather than transcendence.
The project’s coda, “Our Post-Apocalyptic World,” considers Tatyana Tolstaya’s The
Slynx and Aleksei Alekseevich German’s 2015 film Under Electric Clouds, particularly, in their
search for redemptive structures amidst a post-apocalyptic landscape, and their relationship to
the rise of the post-apocalyptic media (literature, film, television, etc.) as a global phenomenon.
27

Chapter One:
Utopia, Revisited
Нынешнее поколение советских людей будет жить при коммунизме!
18

- Н. С. Хрущев. XXII Сьезд КПСС
Perhaps the most fantastic thing about Khrushchev’s promise that the current generation
would live under Communism was that people actually believed it. After the Stalinist terror and
the hardship of the war, the Thaw period witnessed the disavowal of Stalin, the introduction of
reforms and utopian projects, including the dizzying success of the Soviet space program. Belief
in a utopian future returned, finding expression in the resurgence of science fiction. Science
fiction, re-emerging in the wake of the Secret Speech and the launch of Sputnik, returned to the
principles of Revolutionary science fiction. Late 1950s to early 1960s science fiction embraced a
narrative of social and technological progress, mirroring the official narrative of the Communist
Party under Khrushchev, which cast Stalinism as an aberration and declared itself the genuine
heir of Leninism and harbinger of the Communist future. Subsequently, the Party put forward a
utopian program of development, including the Virgin Lands project and large-scale construction
of single-family housing. The space program and, in particular, the cosmonauts, became potent
symbols for this narrative of forward progress toward utopia. Similarly, the science fiction of the
Thaw period revived the utopian dreams of its Revolutionary forebears, embracing such ideals as
the New Soviet Man, the search for immortality, and man’s conquest over nature, space, and
time. Ivan Efremov’s Andromeda Nebula (Tumanost’ Andromedy), published in serialization
over the course of 1957, as though leading up to Sputnik’s launch in October of the same year,
was a full-scale revitalization of the utopian impulse. Its publication was nothing short of a

18
The current generation of Soviet people will live under Communism! – N.S. Khrushchev, Twenty Second
Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
28

revelation and with the help of plenty of real-life inspiration from the Soviet space program,
triggered a surge in science fiction, inspiring, among others, the Strugatsky brothers and Sergei
Snegov, to write works of utopian science fiction. The seemingly symbiotic relationship between
science fiction, the Soviet space program, and the Communist Party’s program of de-
Stalinization and future development was a tenuous one as affinities with the Stalinist utopian
vision and cracks in the façade revealed the fragility and, ultimately, the unsustainability of such
a totalizing vision. By the mid-1960s, even Efremov’s utopian vision had lost its certainty. While
Andromeda Nebula returned to Revolutionary utopian principles, Efremov’s next great novel
Hour of the Bull (Chas Byka) would acknowledge the need for new utopian forms, in light of the
deficiencies of Revolutionary utopia.
1956-1957: A New Hope
The revival of utopian dreaming begins not in 1957, with the launch of Sputnik, but
during the preceding year 1956 with Khrushchev’s Secret Speech. Delivered in February and
disseminated in March, the Secret Speech condemned Stalin as a traitor to the principles of
Marxism-Leninism, asserting that he and his individual vices, his egotism and megalomania,
were responsible for the Terror. Stalin and his “cult of personality” became emblematic of the
sins of the past and his death and disavowal amounted to a cleansing of these sins, freeing up the
Soviet Union to return to its path of progress toward Communism. The Communist Party was
absolved of any guilt associated with the Terror and given the lofty task of continuing to steer the
Soviet Union in the right direction:
Систематический и последовательно продолжать работу, проделанную ЦК партии
за последние годы, работу, характерную тщательным соблюдением во всех
партийных организациях; низших и высших, ленинских принципов партийного
29

руководства; работу, характерную прежде всего основными принципами
коллективного руководства, характерную соблюдением норм партийной жизни,
запечатленных в уставе нашей партии и, наконец, характерную применением
критики и самокритики.
19
(Хрущев 60-61)
“Khrushchev acted with the conviction of one who, having suffered and profited from Stalin’s
whims, never blamed the system for having empowered Stalin in the first place. Marxism-
Leninism had thrived before the cult of personality and could do so without it, he believed. By
owning up to the mistakes of the past, Khrushchev predicted that the Party would demonstrate its
confidence” (Smith 309-10). The Secret Speech cast Stalinism as being in opposition to
Communism, attempting to shield the narrative of forward progress from the consequences of
Stalin’s disavowal.
The Secret Speech was accompanied by numerous reforms and increased freedoms in the
year 1956 alone. “In 1956 Khrushchev would release political prisoners and recruit youthful
volunteers to replace them in tackling grand economic projects on the outskirts of Soviet
civilization. He would crack open the Iron Curtain dividing the Soviet Union from the West,
allowing travel in both directions, as well as numerous cultural exchanges” (Smith 4). Indeed,
1956 was a year of great optimism for many, especially young people and intellectuals who
enthusiastically welcomed the new freedoms and sought to participate in building Communism.
Droves of university students volunteered to labor in the “Virgin Lands” of the Far East and
Central Asia, where their youthful optimism was frequently met with disdain from the locals and

19
…to continue systematically and consistently the work done by the Party's Central Committee during the last
years, a work characterized by minute observation in all Party organizations, from the bottom to the top, of the
Leninist principles of Party Leadership, characterized, above all, by the main principle of collective leadership,
characterized by the observance of the norms of Party life described in the statutes of our Party, and, finally,
characterized by the wide practice of criticism and self-criticism. (Khrushchev “On the Cult of Personality and its
Consequenes”)
30

a lack of preparation or support (Smith 197-226). Many (though by no means all) writers also
welcomed the reforms of 1956. The Moscow Writers Union met in 1956, following the release
of the Secret Speech to a broader audience: “Their glasnost’ of Stalinism’s defects was unusually
far-reaching, owing to the length of this meeting and the enthusiastic revival of literature’s duty
to provide social commentary. At the same time, it was if anything more emphatically optimistic
about the Leninist future than many other such discussions” (Jones Myth, Memory, Trauma 64).
Though these reforms were not always successful or even permanent, they represented an
irrevocable sea change for the Soviet Union. In Moscow 1956, Kathleen Smith describes 1956 as
a tumultuous year, a year of renewed hopes and disappointments, but a year the impact of which
could not be undone: “The crackdown on critical speech in December 1956 reflected the perils of
reform from above for the ruling party. But it also showed the power of words and ideas in
forming public opinion. There was no going back in terms of restoring a cult of the leader or a
complete monopoly on speech” (333). Though the Thaw period exhibited a lack of consistency
in its policy creation and execution–its reforms often unfulfilled, half-baked, or walked-back– it
briefly inculcated many Soviet citizens with hope for progress.
Among these hopeful Soviet citizens were not merely university students and writers, but
also Soviet scientists. According to Rosalind Marsh, “Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization policy
stimulated writers to lay even more emphasis on the scientific nature of Marxism than before, as
a result of the Party’s claim that it had returned to the true ‘Leninist norms’ of behavior, rejecting
the irrational aberrations of the ‘era of the personality cult.’ This attitude reflects […] the desire
of Soviet scientists to restore their right to objective scientific enquiry after the ignorant
dogmatism prevalent in the Stalin period” (Soviet Fiction 156). Increasingly, science was
31

allowed to flourish, particularly in depoliticized spaces.
20
Gradually, even Lysenkoist genetics
would be undermined through the combined efforts of scientists, many of whom had suffered
persecution during the Stalin years, and tenacious university students (Smith 169-96). The
unbinding of Soviet science and its accompanying success found a striking symbol in the satellite
Sputnik.
Sputnik’s launch gave credence to the narrative of de-Stalinization: that Stalinism was a
betrayal of Leninism, but that this detour from the path of linear progress was only a minor
setback in the Soviet Union’s movement toward utopia, that its new helmsmen would steer it
back on the correct course, back to its founding Leninist ideals, and, therefore, to Communism.
According to James T. Andrews and Asif Siddiqi, “The launch of the Sputnik satellite on
October 4, 1957, signaled not only the birth of the space age, but also evidence of direct state
intervention into the idea of space flight. Sputnik’s trail in the night skies over the Soviet land
mass was clear proof that the Soviet state – the Party and the government – had made possible
the dreams of generations of space dreamers” (5). The Party had designated itself the heir
apparent of the utopian ethos of the Revolutionary period and Sputnik was proof of this
inheritance. The space program became a powerful symbol for the Khrushchev government; its
clear harkening back to the ideals of the revolutionary past helped the state “bypass” Stalinism
by way of a direct link to Leninism, by way of its ability to make revolutionary dreams manifest.
With the achievement of spaceflight came a resurgence in utopian aspiration and the return of
other previous dreams for the future.

20
One such example is the Miassovo Biostation. Miassovo’s status as a depoliticized zone where science could be
pursued for its own sake is discussed by Kathleen Smith in her Moscow 1956.
32

Ivan Efremov’s blockbuster novel Andromeda Nebula (henceforth Andromeda) is a
compendium of these revolutionary dreams. Remarkably, Andromeda, serialized in Molodaia
gvardiia over the course of the year 1957, had already begun doing the work of restoring utopia
when its efforts were bolstered by the launch of Sputnik. The far future depicted by Efremov
drew instantaneously closer as Soviet mankind breached its terrestrial boundaries. Andromeda,
described by Elana Gomel as “an anti-SF novel” because the aim of the text is not estrangement,
but its opposite–familiarization, acquired new vitality in its role as utopian tract (Narrative Space
and Time 134). Though the future portrayed was still distant, it was now imaginable, ostensibly
within reach. In the novel itself, Efremov makes reference to the achievements of the Soviet
space program, suggesting that, indeed, Sputnik’s launch is the beginning of an ever-progressing
penetration into the cosmos: “Dar Veter vsegda s volneniem vsmatrivalsia v litsa skulptur etogo
pamiatnika. On znal, chto liudi, postroivshie samye pervye sputniki i vyshedshie na porog
kosmosa, byli russkimi, to est’ tem samym udivitel’nym narodom […]. Harodom, sdelavshim
pervye shagi i stroitel’stvo novogo obshchestva i v zavoevanii kosmosa”
21
(Efremov,
Tumannost’ Andromedy 152). Efremov makes clear reference to Sputnik and designates this
accomplishment a beginning, a “first step” toward the future of Andromeda, concretizing the
path of progress from hopeful present to utopian future.
Andromeda implied that the dreams of the Revolutionary period were within reach, that
the goal of Soviet science–mastery over nature (human and environmental)–would be
accomplished. In this regard, the novel reflected Efremov’s firm belief in progress, in the
dialectical evolution of human thought: “This is the topic of all the author’s biggest works—the

21
Darr Veter could never look at these sculptured faces without a feeling of excitement. He knew that the first
people to build artificial Earth satellites and reach the threshold of the Cosmos had been Russians […], the people
who had taken the first steps towards building the new social order and towards the conquest of the Cosmos.
(Efremov, Andromeda Nebula 227)
33

topic of time as a dialectical process—from the origins of life and reason to the loftiest heights at
which reason remakes the nature that engenders it and itself” (Britikov 225, my translation).
Efremov’s novel made manifest not just fantasies, but actual scientific aspirations of the Soviet
1910s-20s: “The blurring of the distinction between fact and fiction is evinced by Efremov’s
Andromeda Nebula, which evokes many cherished Soviet dreams: the use of science to increase
life expectancy, reverse the flow of rivers, change the climate and combat pollution” (Marsh
Soviet Fiction 142-43). Efremov’s text is peppered with descriptions of the remarkable
achievements attained by mankind, united in Communism and bound by shared values of labor
and scientific progress. Below are just two examples of the achievements of the current society
as described in Andromeda:
Суровая природа отодвинула рукой человека далеко на север, и живительное тепло
юга пролилось на эти равнины, когда-то стынувшие под холодными тучами.
22

(Efremov, Tumannost’ Andromedy 100)
Только благодаря знанию и творческому труду Земля избавлена от ужасов голода,
перенаселения, заразных болезней, вредных животных. Спасена от истощения
топлива, нехватки полезных химических элементов, преждевременной смерти и
слабости людей.
23
(Efremov, Tumannost’ Andromedy 128-29)
In Efremov’s utopia, scientific and technological innovation have enabled man’s triumph over
nature, creating a world that is perfectly amenable to and tailored for human life.

22
Stern nature had been driven to the far north by the conquering hand of man and the vitalizing warmth of the
south had been poured over these great plains that had formerly lain frozen under a cold, cloudy sky. (Efremov,
Andromeda Nebula 149)
23
Knowledge and creative labour had freed Earth from hunger, overpopulation, infectious diseases and harmful
animals. The world no longer had to fear the exhaustion of fuel and useful chemical elements, premature death and
debility had been eliminated. (Efremov, Andromeda Nebula 194)
34

Efremov restored the full potential of future scientific progress not only via man’s victory
over nature, but also man’s triumph over mortality. This was a revival of the Fedorovian
yearning to defeat death that had captivated utopians during the Revolutionary period and
beyond. Though Efremov does not quite go so far as to do away with death altogether, he
extends the life expectancy into the hundreds and even beyond three hundred years (Efremov
Tumannost’ Andromedy 158). Efremov’s novel is a paean to progress, a restoration of the far
future utopia that reigned as the endpoint of Socialist development before being dethroned and
replaced by the ‘near target’ under Stalin. A society whose goals could not venture beyond the
reach of a Five Year Plan now found the full expanse of future time before it, a field wide open
for utopian dreaming.
The utopian society of the future is not premised exclusively on man’s victory over
nature, the ability to transcend the boundaries of the terrestrial plane and his own physical being,
but also on man’s victory over his own base nature. Man is considered a fragile being, one that
could lapse into selfishness were it not for the guidance of a society whose will is higher than
that of any individual (Efremov, Tumannost’ Andromedy 222; Efremov, Andromeda Nebula 338-
39). However, such degeneration is tightly guarded against by rigorous processes of upbringing,
processes that are at once individual and communal:
Воспитание нового человека – это тонкая работа с индивидуальным анализом и
очень осторожным подходом. Безвозвратно прошло время, когда общество
удовлетворялось кое-как, случайно воспитанными людьми, недостатки которых
оправдывались наследственностью, врожденной природой человека. Теперь
35

каждый дурно воспитанный человек – укор для всего общества, тягостная ошибка
большого коллектива людей.
24
(Efremov, Tumannost’ Andromedy 186)
While acknowledging the inherent insufficiencies of humanity, Andromeda expresses faith in the
capability of a perfectly structured society to produce perfect beings, liberated from their natural
faults. “The Soviet program of the radical restructuring of subjectivity hinged upon the belief in
transforming powers of the environment” (Gomel, Narrative Space and Time 125). Efremov’s
characters are products of this tightly regulated upbringing, reflections of the society that raised
them. Consequently, “[they] differ considerably from people of the present. While [they] feel
deeply, they are highly self-disciplined, and consequently they usually behave in a stiff and
correct fashion” (McGuire 48). This ethically, mentally, and, of course, physically, perfect
specimen is another familiar aspiration of the Revolutionary period–the New Soviet Man.
25

Though representations of the New Soviet Man varied widely among utopian
movements, the most familiar model is the Man-Machine: “In Soviet Russia during the 1920s,
the prophets of [cult of the machine], anguished by the backwardness of Russian work styles in
the factory […] , dreamed of remolding the human psyche and remodeling human society along
the lines of machine and workshop” (Stites 145). Fetishized by Gastev as being the perfect

24
The upbringing of the new man is an elaborate task involving personal analysis and a very cautious approach to
each individual. The time has gone beyond recall when society could be satisfied with people who had been brought
up casually, whose insufficiencies were excused by heredity or by man’s inherent nature. Every badly brought up
person is today a reproach to the whole community, a grave mistake made by a large number of people. (Efremov
280)
25
Though Anatolii Britikov claims that Efremov’s female characters retain their femininity (Britikov 263), Elana
Gomel, suggests otherwise: “But this utopia is in no sense matriarchal; rather it empowers women by making them
“better” men than men themselves. And this empowerment takes the form of phantasmagoric corporeal exchanges,
in which the New Woman is equated with the phantasm of the phallic mother” (Gomel “Gods like Men” 367).
Indeed, though the women in Efremov’s novels are sexualized as women (and much is made of their attractiveness),
they display masculine qualities, indicating that even in a future where the sexes are equal and have maintained their
secondary sexual characteristics, masculine qualities typify the ideal human. This is an echo of a phenomenon of the
early Soviet period, discussed by Eliot Borenstein in Men without Women: “The literature of the period points to one
possible feature of the new society: its masculinity. With the family and femininity in disgrace, the building of the
new world was an implicit task for men and for those women who were willing to adopt traditionally male roles”
(Borenstein 4).
36

worker and member of the collective and decried by Zamiatin as trying to deprive human beings
of their individuality, the Man-Machine concept was an ideal being, perfected by science, the
science of labor and the biological sciences. Stalinism stripped this concept of its utopian
underpinnings and future aspirations, and transformed it into its mundane manifestation of the
Stakhanovite worker. Another major difference between the Man-Machine and the Stakhanovite
was that the Stakhanovite is unique, an exemplary individual from among the masses, whereas
the Man-Machine is part of an idealized collective, an anonymous cog in a seamlessly moving
system. Efremov restores the ideal of the New Soviet Man by way of his characters, almost all of
whom, from the main protagonists to the most forgettable secondary characters, fully commit
themselves to labor for the good of mankind, regardless of discipline.
However, Efremov’s protagonists differ from their Revolutionary predecessors in their
commitment to individual emotions, which are considered essential rather than superfluous. For
example, when Louma Lasvy, the doctor aboard the spaceship Tantra, offers Erg Noor, the
ship’s captain and exemplary New Man, the chance to be relieved of emotional pain, he refuses:
“Ia ne otdam svoego bogatstva chuvstv, kak by oni ni zastaviki menia stradat’. Stradanie, esli
ono ne vyshe sil, vedet k ponimaniiu, ponimanie – k liubvi – tak zamykaetsia krug ”
26
(Efremov,
Tumanost’ Andromedy 132). While the greater emphasis is, of course, on the collective, each
being is regarded as an individual with unique needs and a rich inner being. This could be
regarded as a reflection of society during the Thaw period, which was itself trying to strike a
balance between individual freedom and collective action (Jones, Dilemmas 9). Though they are
not written well enough to be seen as individuals, the emotions of the characters often appearing

26
I would not give up my wealth of emotions, no matter how much suffering they cause me. Suffering, so long as it
is not beyond one’s strength, leads to understanding, understanding leads to love and the circle is complete.
(Efremov, Andromeda Nebula 198)
37

rather flat, the heroes of Andromeda are reflections of a time when privacy and individuality
were attaining greater cultural and social significance.
Though many of the utopian dreams of the 1910s-20s have already been achieved by the
time the events of the novel take place, Andromeda’s narrative is itself a quest to achieve one of
the most significant of these utopian aspirations: the conquest of time. In spite of all of the
achievements that the people of Earth have made since the worldwide adoption of Communism,
the Earth is still cut off from other civilizations across the galaxy by the insurmountable
obstacles of space and time. Communication with other civilizations takes place, but the
civilizations are so distant that the inhabitants delivering them are most likely dead by the time
their messages reach the Earth and vice versa. One of the protagonists, Mven Mass, enlists the
help of a famed physicist, Renn Bose, in an attempt to overcome these obstacles, hoping to
achieve direct contact with distant civilizations for the benefit of mankind. Darko Suvin
describes the narrative as follows: “Freed from economic and power worries, people must still
redeem time, which is unequal on earth and in space, through a humanist dialectics of personal
creativity and societal teamwork mediated – in a clear harking back to the ideals of the 1920s –
by the artistic and scientific beauty of functionality” (Metamorphoses 267). Though their
experiment ends in failure and catastrophe, ultimately resulting in the loss of a satellite and
several human lives, sufficient knowledge is gained through its execution to inspire further
experimentation and progress toward the ultimate goal of triumph over space and time. In this
particular instance, the ends have justified the means.
However, the novel avoids preaching such an overall lesson. As a novel of the de-
Stalinization period, Andromeda aspires not only to restore the utopian socialist vision, but also
to caution against the potential of totalitarianism. Though there is no overt reference to Stalinism
38

in Andromeda, it is a novel promoting the spirit of collectivism against that of totalitarianism.
For example, as he is considering his experiment, Mven Mass warns himself of the need not to
overstep certain limits in pursuit of his end: “Veikaia tsel’, postavlennaia imi, kak budto
opravdyvaet vse eti mery, no… nado by, chtoby dusha byla covershenno chista! Voznikal
drevnii chelovecheskii konflikt - tsel– i sredstva k ee dostizheniiu. Opyt tysiachi pokolenii uchit,
chto nado umet’ tochno opredelit’ perekhodnuiu gran’”
27
(Efremov, Tumanost’ Andromedy 161).
After the failure of his experiment, Mven Mass initially exiles himself to the Island of Oblivion
(Ostrov Zabveniia), where, stricken with guilt, he wonders if he might not be a “bull” (byk), a
person who puts himself above all else and all others, eventually rejecting the notion. “Bulls,”
according to the text, “proclaimed themselves the sole holders of the truth, the rulers, who
claimed the right to suppress all those whose opinions did not agree with theirs, the right to
eradicate all other ways of thought or of life”
28
(Efremov, Andromeda Nebula 315). The covert
reference to Stalin, whose crimes had been exposed and acknowledged only the year prior,
serves as warning for seekers of utopia to remain vigilant in protecting society against further
personality cults and totalizing worldviews. Efremov’s Andromeda Nebula sought not only to
revive the spirit of Revolutionary utopia, but to reshape it in the image of the present moment –
the period of de-Stalinization. In so doing, Efremov attempted to build a more resilient version of
the utopia that came before, to defend against the critiques waged by the likes of Zamiatin on
utopian visions in the 1920s. However, as I will discuss later in this chapter, even Efremov’s

27
It is true that the great objective they hoped to reach seemed to justify the means, but … they had to remain pure
in spirit! The old human conflict between the end and the means of its attainment had arisen: and the experience of
thousands of generations teaches mankind that there is a certain boundary limiting the means to an end that must not
be overstepped (Efremov, Andromeda Nebula 242)
28
Provozglashavshimi sebia v raznykh oblichiiakh edinstvenno znaiushchimi istinu, schitavshimi sebia vprave
podavliat’ vse nesoglasnye s nimi mneniia, iskoreniat’ inye obrazi myshleniia I zhizni. (Efremov, Tumanost’
Andromedy 208)
39

utopia is plagued by its inherent faults and contradictions; these would later become manifest in
Efremov’s The Hour of the Bull (Chas byka).
1961: Return of the New Man
De-Stalinization was by no means a fluid or linear process. Rather, it was a process of
jolting gestures, followed by corrections, walk-backs, and uncertainties in policy. The first of
these shocking gestures was the Secret Speech in February 1956 and the second was Stalin’s
removal from Lenin’s mausoleum in October of 1961. Just as the Secret Speech had a lasting
impact on Stalin’s image, so too did his banishing from Lenin’s tomb: “The congress’ criticisms
and its decision on the mausoleum effected a shift toward shaming and disgrace that had lasting
effects on public and popular memory of Stalin […] even though Stalin’s demonization was not
permanent […]. Still this temporary shaming permanently stigmatized Stalin for many citizens,
and it pathologized the cult of personality, with similar lasting effect” (Jones Myth, Memory,
Trauma 108). Six months earlier, in April of 1961, Gagarin had become the first man in space.
Gagarin’s flight and the overall success of the Soviet space program were powerful tools of the
de-Stalinization effort. Slava Gerovitch describes the mythologizing of the cosmonauts and the
de-mythologizing of Stalin as nearly concurrent processes: “The cosmonaut myth played a major
role in Khrushchev’s attempts to de-Stalinize Soviet society and to reconnect with the original
revolutionary aspirations for a Communist utopia. […] Monuments of the Stalin era were
dismantled at the same time as new memorials to the Space Age were being unveiled. As Stalin’s
statues – forceful and traumatic reminders of Stalinist terror – were being removed, futuristic
visions of space exploration took center stage” (Gerovitch 14). The wild success of the Sovet
space program made Stalin obsolete, superfluous to the narrative of progress toward
Communism. With the future seemingly within striking distance and a utopian ethos on the rise,
40

Stalinism, with its emphasis on the “near target” and its totalitarian baggage, mired in the Earth,
was confined to that same earth while the rest of the Soviet Union looked upward.
Gagarin’s flight was also accompanied by the release, some three months later, of the
Third Party Program in Pravda. Ambitious and highly utopian, the Third Party Program made
pie-in-the-sky promises in the realms of housing and agriculture, as well as the development of
education and scientific research. The program described two stages of Communist development
in the Soviet Union, claiming that by 1970, the Soviet Union, “while creating the material-
technological basis for Communism, would surpass the richest and most powerful country in the
world – the United States,”
29
and that by 1980, this process would culminate in the achievement
of Communism (Programma KPSS). News and images from the space program were used to
assert the viability of this highly idealistic timeline: “In this context, photographs from the
cosmos can be seen as an official but publicly embraced cult of science which viewed
technology as the solution to all social and economic problems” (Kohonen 119). Images from
space and the deeds of the heroic cosmonauts were proof that society was on the threshold of
Communism. The cosmonauts themselves represented the embodiment of this future, the
fulfillment of the dream of the New Soviet Man.
In fulfilling this role of the New Man, reborn for the post-Stalinist age, the cosmonauts
became symbols of the utopian aspirations of the Third Party Program and of the efforts of de-
Stalinization. As such, their public images were carefully crafted and their private lives tightly
controlled and, when necessary, kept under wraps (Jenks 107-132). Photographs and monuments
took on profound symbolic significance as they were intended to convince the public that the

29
Советский Союз, создавая материально-техническую базу коммунизма, превзойдет по производству
продукции на душу населения наиболее мощную и богатую страну капитализма — США.
41

future was, indeed, nigh. “Soviet propaganda often used the Soviet space project as a symbol of a
much larger and more ambitious political/engineering project – the construction of the new self,
and the cosmonaut was often regarded as a model for the ‘New Soviet Man.’ The Soviet
cosmonauts publicly represented a Communist ideal, an active human agency of sociopolitical
and economic change” (Gerovitch xvi). According to Iina Kohonen, the cosmonauts were
representatives of the future made present. Though “the present had been a permanent
progression towards the future since the 1930s, […] now the future was something that was
comprehensible to all” (123). The cosmonauts embodied the promise of the utopian future. Their
representations had to tap into this future, connect to the present, and draw on the dreams of the
past.
As the cosmonauts were themselves the resurrection of a Revolutionary era ideal – that of
the New Man – their representations often harkened back to those of the Revolutionary period.
For example, Gagarin stood as the fulfillment of the ideal of the man-machine, an idea
mentioned earlier in this chapter. In a 1980 Moscow monument to Gagarin, “the cosmonaut and
his rocket are symbolically fused, presenting Gagarin as a superhuman blend of a man and a
machine” (Gerovitch 15). Yet Gagarin’s image was also a very human one – youthful, smiling
and affable. Just as the media put the cosmonauts forward as ideals of Soviet Man- and
Womanhood, it also portrayed them as normal people, no different in upbringing or origins from
those around them, and yet somehow better, and therefore indicative of the potential within every
Soviet citizen (Gerovitch 134-39). Gagarin’s public image navigated contradictory identities,
uniting them seamlessly. Though Gagarin the man could in no way be thought to live up to this
42

ideal,
30
Gagarin the symbol synthesized “the two parts of [the utopian] project – technological
and human,” which constituted the inherent tension of the Soviet project since the Revolutionary
period (Gerovitch 65-66). The cosmonauts also embodied a return to and moving forward from
the principles of Leninism. In a 1963 photograph, they are pictured atop Lenin’s mausoleum:
“When placed on top of Lenin’s mausoleum, the cosmonauts stood not merely for the Soviet
space program but for a much larger enterprise – the construction of Communism” (Gerovitch
12). With Stalin’s removal having taken place only two years prior, this symbolic gestures
became all the more potent, indicating once again that Stalin was out and the cosmonauts were
“in.”
Trouble in Paradise
The cosmonauts and Gagarin, in particular, were asked to maintain the inherent
contradictions of the utopian ideal within themselves. They had to be at once normal and perfect,
representing the future while drawing on the ideals of the past, preaching sincerity while lying
for the sake of the country. In addition, though the rise of the cosmonauts and their cultural myth
intentionally coincided with the efforts of de-Stalinization, the means of establishing these myths
were Stalinist in nature. “The cosmonaut myth drew on the established canon, imagery, and
ritual of Stakhanovism, the aviator myth, and the arctic myth of the Stalin era. […]
Paradoxically, Khrushchev’s cultural policy of de-Stalinization drew on quite traditional,
Stalinist rituals of hero worship and organized mass celebrations” (Gerovitch 152-53). The
contradictions carried by the Soviet cosmonauts are emblematic of the contradictions inherent to
Soviet utopia.

30
Gagarin’s penchant for drinking and carousing almost cost him his life before a scheduled appearance as a
delegate to the Twenty-Second Congress of the Communist Party. (Jenks 118-19)
43

Even Efremov, while tacitly acknowledging the dangers of Stalinism and reviving the
utopian impulses that it quashed, borrowed from Socialist Realism. Mven Mass’s narrative could
be broken down into the master plot of the production novel as laid out by Katerina Clark in The
Soviet Novel (Clark 255-60):
Setting up the task: Mven Mass comes up against the limitations of cosmic
communication and sees that it is hampering the potential development of society. He joins
forces with Renn Bose to devise an experiment to overcome these limitations. They run the idea
by Darr Veter and he advises against it. They nonetheless recruit volunteers and prepare to
conduct the experiment.
Transition (Trials): Mven Mass struggles with ethical concerns and with his feelings for
Chara Nandi. He questions the purity of his intentions in seeking to conduct his experiment.
Climax (Fulfillment of the Task is Threatened): Mven Mass’s experiment fails,
destroying a satellite, killing four volunteers and severely injuring Renn Bose. Mven Mass,
stricken with guilt, banishes himself to the Island of Oblivion.
Incorporation (Initiation): While on the Island, Mven Mass successfully reforms his bull-
ish double, Beth Lohn. He is saved and returned to society by his love interest Chara Nandi.
Finale (or Celebration of Incorporation): When on trial for his actions, Mven Mass
learns that, though the experiment failed, a great deal was learned, perhaps enough to fulfill his
goals in the future. Because of his lofty intentions, he is absolved of guilt and allowed to rejoin
society.
Though the narrative does not fit perfectly into the masterplot that Clark lays out, it bears
a close resemblance in both form and even in content. Mven Mass’s aim – the conquering of the
limits of time – is the literalization of the essential goal of the production novel. Efremov’s
44

utopianism, like that of the space program, disowns Stalinism, but borrows its methods,
highlighting the utopian nature of Stalinism, and exposing the affinity between Stalinism and
Revolutionary utopia.
This affinity is also exposed in the contradictions inherent to the heroes in Andromeda
Nebula. In her essay “Gods Like Men,” Elana Gomel discusses the eugenicist strain that can be
read into the descriptions of future men and women in Efremov’s novel. She asserts that “the
biological superiority of the New Man in The Andromeda Nebula and The Hour of the Bull is the
result of the in-built tension between humanism and perfectionism, between history and utopia,
in Soviet ideology itself. […] The inhuman beauty of Efremov’s protagonists is the obverse side
of the inhumanity of the camps” (“Gods Like Men” 373). This contradiction extends beyond the
bodies of Efremov’s perfect Soviet beings and into their relationship with time, history, and the
evolutionary process. “If, as Soviet ideology confidently promises, utopia is to arise out of the
bloody chaos of class struggle, war, and state violence, it must be both the consummation and
negation of the historical process. The perfect body of the utopian subject, which simultaneously
sums up and repudiates the evolutionary process that has brought it into being, is this paradox
made flesh” (Gomel “Gods Like Men” 365).
The struggle that must take place in order to create the preconditions for utopia is effaced
in the physical and emotional perfection of these characters as it is effaced in their history.
During Veda Kong’s lecture on the history of Earth, the transition from Cold War to
International Communism is largely elided and described in the vaguest possible terms: “No
neizbezhno ustroistvo zhizni rasprostranilos’ na vsiu Zemliu, i samye razlichnye narody i rasy
45

stali edinoi, dryzhnoi i mudroi sem’ei”
31
(Efremov, Tumanost’ Andromedy 39). In the preceding
paragraph, some of the struggles of the Cold War are described, but when it comes time for the
world to make the shift from ideological division to unity, the transition just happens without any
indication as to how. This empty space in the narrative erases the messiness of time, the violence
and destruction essential to the installation of a utopian system, replacing the struggle for utopia
with the passive notion of progress. However, though the past can be elided in retellings of
history, its legacy is manifested in the Island of Oblivion. The Island of Oblivion is an example
of what Gomel describes as a heterotopia, “a space of exception, both indispensable to the
dominant social space and subversive to it” (Narrative Space and Time 136). Its inhabitants,
individuals incapable of being within the utopian system, live according to the rules of the past.
It is a testament to the failure of utopia to reform all men; it willingly accepts utopia’s cast-offs,
protecting the utopian space from its own failures. In Efremov’s 1968 sequel, The Hour of the
Bull, this space will expand to fill an entire world.
1965 onwards: Dystopia Strikes Back
The late 1960s witnessed widespread disillusionment and a decline in the utopian
enthusiasm of the preceding decade. The trial and subsequent imprisonment of writers Yuri
Daniel and Andrei Sinyvasky in 1965-6 and the repression of the Prague Spring in 1968 served
as reliable indicators that the period of reform had come to an end and it was back to business as
usual for the KPSS (CPSU). The end of the Thaw and the slide into stagnation were also
accompanied by a partial rehabilitation of Stalin and his reintegration into the canonical narrative
of Soviet historical progress. Though Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization effort had lasting effects on

31
With inevitable persistence the new way of life had spread over the entire Earth and the many races and nations
were united into a single friendly and wise family. (Efremov 61)
46

the historical narrative (Smith 307), especially among intelligentsia (Jones, Myth, Memory,
Trauma 230),
such moral revulsion had been slowly, but surely eliminated from Soviet public memory
of Stalinism since Khrushchev’s ouster ultimately giving rise to a ‘soft-focus view of the
dictator.’[…] Soviet collective memory was now supposed to be bigger than the sum of
individual citizen’s memories (however traumatic), just as Stalin’s entire posthumous
reputation now transcended isolated character flaws. (Jones, Myth, Memory, Trauma 255)
Though the narrative of uninterrupted progress was restored to history by Stalin’s re-
canonization, there was a clear sense that forward progress had ceased, that movement into the
future had stalled—evidenced by the indefinite suspension of Khrushchev’s deadline for
Communism—and that the present was slipping back into the past.
As Stalin returned to the fold and Stalin’s repressive tactics re-emerged in blunted forms,
the status of the cosmonauts and the space program declined. The public grew wary and weary of
official news of Soviet successes in space. According to Gerovitch,
alternative representations of the space age began to emerge on the margins of public
discourse—rumors, jokes, and readers’ letters to newspapers and magazines. With the
decline of the cosmonaut myth in the late 1960s, the triumphal tone of official reports,
which had not changed since the time of Gagarin’s flight, began to sound pathetic. The
deaths of Komarov and Gagarin led to widespread cynicism toward official reports. (25)
The space program and its status as a symbol of Soviet technological superiority suffered
numerous blows from technical issues and unconvincing cover-ups. Soviet dominance in the
cosmos, and therefore in the realms of technology and ideology, took its most crushing blow
when the United States successfully sent a manned mission to the moon in 1969. The utopianism
47

that emerged amidst the reforms and technological triumphs of the Thaw period could not sustain
itself on the inertia and deception that the Brezhnev government offered, and so, disillusionment
took hold.
Efremov’s Hour of the Bull (Chas byka), published in 1968, is a testament to this
disillusionment. According to Gomel, “the structure of [Hour of the Bull] reflects the gradual
weakening of the Soviet utopia’s self-confidence. Heterotopia can no longer be confined to an
inclusion within the utopian chronotope; now it has grown to the size of a planet, utopia’s rival in
a magnitude if not power” (Narrative Space and Time 137). At once darker and more complex
than its prequel, Hour of the Bull presents its readers with a gradually unfolding narrative (rather
than a poorly-disguised utopian treatise), which revolves around the totalitarian society on the
planet Tormance. The crew of the spaceship Dark Flame, led by their commander, the beautiful
and intelligent historian Faj Rodis, is sent to Tormance in order to study it and, if necessary,
assist its inhabitants. Specialists on Earth suspect, and Rodis later confirms, that the Tormancians
are the descendants of Earthlings who, fleeing Earth during the turbulent Era of the Disconnected
World, got lost in space-time and emerged near the fortunately habitable planet. Though the
humans of Tormance share ancestry with those of Earth, their society is its polar opposite.
Governed by totalitarian ruler Chojo Chagas, the people are separated according to a strict
hierarchy, which consists of the worker class, the educated class, and a small, elite ruling class.
Each class is limited in knowledge and life expectancy, with working class citizens facing
mandatory termination by their twenty-fifth year. Though the crew of Dark Flame is at first
denied entry, Rodis’s clever manipulations grant them access to the planet. Though Rodis is
sequestered, first, at the Zoan Gardens, and later, at the Depository of History, the remaining
crew members explore the planet and disseminate information about the Earth and its utopian
48

society to the Tormancians with assistance from Tormancian engineer Tael’. Though some
members of the crew, including Rodis herself, perish on Tormance, the others are able to return
to Earth and report on their mission.
The mere existence of Tormance undermines the inevitability of Communism implied in
Andromeda Nebula. On Tormance, history refuses to play by the rules set forth on Earth. Though
the Tormancians have the same ancestry as their Earthling counterparts, the path of their political
development took the opposite turn, resulting in what the crew’s sociologist Chedi Daan
describes as ‘oligarchical dictatorship’ (Efremov, Tumanost’ Andromedy 452). Initially, this
course of development is deemed an aberration: “My znaem, chto chelovek Zemli v svoei
psikhike pocherpnul ogromnuiu silu, realizovavshuiusia v postroenii kommunisticheskogo
obshchestva: udivlenie I preklonenie pered krasotoi, uvazhenie, gordost’,tvorcheskuiu veru v
nravctvennost’, ne govoria uzhe ob osnove osnov – liubvi. To, chto Tormansiane prervali etu
preemstvennost’ – nenormal’no”
32
(Efremov, Tumanost’ Andromedy 419). Later, Rodis explains
that Tormancian society fits neatly into the historical category of the ‘Inferno’ (Efremov,
Tumanost’ Andromedy 432-34) and, consequently, their model of development is not
teleological, as it had become on Earth, but follows the ‘arrow of Ariman,’ which leads not to
unity, peace, and utopia, but, rather, follows the brutal path of natural selection, survival of the
fittest. The resulting society reflects the brutality of its development. The Earth underwent an
‘infernal’ phase as well. However, Earth society forcibly dragged itself out and beyond this
experience, transcending the struggles that preceded Communism and were likely necessary to
arrive at it.

32
We know that the Earthling has acquired great mental strength, realized in the process of building a Communist
society: astonishment and reverence of beauty, deference, pride, creative faith in morality, not to mention the
foundation of foundations – love. The fact that Tormancians interrupted this continuity is an aberration. My
translation.
49

Tormance, however, in spite of its more favorable environmental circumstances,
remained an Inferno, exposing the precariousness of utopia even as utopia and its ideals
challenge the stability of the Tormancian system. Tormance reveals to the Earthlings the
ineluctability of their own origins, the darkness of their history: “Teper’ Chedi znala, chto,
nesmotria na neizbezhnoe vozrastanie dobroty, sostradaniia i nezhnosti, ot summy perezhitykh
millionov let, infernal’nykh stradanii, nakoplennykh v gennoi pamiati, vsegda vozmozhno
poiavlenie liudei s arkhaicheskim ponimaniem doblesti, s dikim stremleniem k vlasti nad
liud’mi, vozvysheniiu sebia cherez unizhenie drugikh”
33
(Efremov, Tumanost’ Andromedy 439).
The creation and maintenance of utopia is a struggle against time and against nature, human and
otherwise. The teleology of the previous novel, and therefore the previous decade, is undermined
and even utopian stasis is revealed to be a state of tension, one which necessitates the emergence
of heterotopian spaces.
The Earthlings endeavor to catalyze the struggle for utopia on Tormance by screening
films about Earth to small groups of trusted intellectuals. These films fulfill the function of
utopian tracts by introducing a previously unimaginable, but possible world – a world superior to
that of the viewers. Suvin explains that utopia functions “by an explicit or implicit comparison of
an imagined community with the author’s environment, by example or demonstration. At the
basis of all utopias is an open or hidden dialogue, a gesture of pointing, a wide-eyed glance from
here to there, a ‘traveling’ shot moving from the author’s everyday to look out to the wonderous
panorama of a far-off land in space or time” (Positions 33). That the films from Earth are
representations of an already-existing utopia makes them all the more potent as instigators of

33
Now Chedi knew that, in spite of the inevitable increase in kindness, empathy, and tenderness that results from the
the sum of millions of years of infernal suffering endured, accumulated in genetic memory, it is always possible for
people with archaic understandings of prowess, savage yearnings for power over others, the elevation of themselves
at the expense of others, to appear. My translation.
50

estrangement, their legitimacy underwritten by the perfection of the Earthlings themselves. The
film’s viewers emerge from the experience with an intense desire to initiate change, to begin the
process of transforming their society. Having been exposed to a possible alternative, the
Tormancians arrive at a negative evaluation of their own society when weighed against the more
perfect world of the film. The result is a call to action.
Hour of the Bull therefore becomes an instruction manual for reading utopia (and anti-
utopia). By juxtaposing a utopian and an infernal society, Efremov provides his readers with two
points of comparison and outlines the appropriate responses to each. The Tormancian,
confronted by the possibility of utopia, must see the faults of her world and aspire to correct
them. The Earthling, confronted by the reality of the ‘Inferno,’ must take steps to introduce
utopia in societies that have not yet attained it. The Earthling’s responsibility to Earth is to
struggle against forces and individuals that are always threatening the fragile system. An
illustrative counter-example is Chojo Chagas, whose response to the revelations about Earth, her
people, and her society, is to hide the information in order to maintain the static misery and
imperfection of his state. Upon discovering that the crew of Dark Flame have been
disseminating the films against his wishes, a fuming Chogo Chagas calls Rodis in for an
interrogation reminiscent of Dostoevky’s Grand Inquisitor (though, unlike Christ, Rodis speaks
rather a great deal) (Ефремов 583-87). The stark contrast between the two societies makes the
choice of comparison quite simple, in spite of the author’s use of Aesopian language. The Soviet
reader is intended to see in Tormance a reflection of his world and, in Earth, an alternative, a
world of possibility.
Though Efremov explicitly connects Tormance to the United States and Maoist China,
the reader, Soviet and otherwise, cannot help recognizing aspects of the Soviet Union in
51

Tormancian society (McGuire 65). Most obviously, the denial of information to average citizens
and the enclosed nature of the society, which is hostile to outsiders, immediately evoke
comparison with Soviet Russia. The information to which Tormancians do have access is
carefully curated and sometimes utterly false. When Rodis begins her studies, she, first,
discovers that many historical periods are off-limits for study and that no raw data is available
for the study of the permitted eras: “Dannye vychislitel’nykh mashin nikomu ne pokazyvaiutsia I
ranee ne pokazyvalis’. Dlia kazhdogo perioda oni obrabatyvaiutsia cpetsial’nymi liud’mi v
sekretnom poriadke. Obnarodovalos’ tol’ko pozvolennoe.”
34
Raw historical data is safeguarded
from the public and accessible only to those working it over, transforming it into a narrative that
pleases the rulers. Any potentially damaging information is withheld from the public; the
veracity of Tormancian history is questionable and unverifiable. This description evokes Soviet
tampering with historical information in order to produce a narrative consistent with ideology.
The secretive and insulated nature of Tormance is also conducive to a culture of denunciations.
Even Tael’, the first genuinely good person that Rodis encounters on Tormance, informs on her
to Chagas (Efremov, Tumanost’ Andromedy 586; 594).
Like their Soviet counterparts, Tormancians came up with alternative means of narrating
history and preserving memory. When Rodis asks Tael’ where, if anywhere, one can find the
truth, he responds: “Lish’ kosvennyv putem, v pukopisnykh memuarakh, v literaturnykh
proizvedeniiakh, izbezhavshikh tsenzury ili unichtozheniia”
35
(Efremov, Tumanost’ Andromedy
471). The phenomena that Tael’ describes have their equivalents in Soviet samizdat and the use
of Aesopian language, respectively. The latter is an act of cautious self-reference, since Hour of

34
The raw data from the computing machines is not shown to anyone and never has been. For every period, the data
is worked over by special people in a secret manner. They publish only what is permitted. My translation.
35
Only in an indirect manner, in hand-written memoirs, in literary publications that have avoided censorship or
destruction. My translation.
52

the Bull is itself an exercise in Aesopain language, a nearly failed attempt to evade the censors.
In an act of unrealized irony, the Soviet censors functionally highlighted the similarity between
Tormance and Soviet Russia by attempting to put a stop to the novel’s circulation. In so doing, of
course, they were making the comparison all the more apt.
Through numerous references to the repressive measures of the Soviet system – terror,
censorship, propaganda, and denunciations, among others – Hour of the Bull expresses a loss of
faith in Soviet ideology as a path to utopia. However, as Gomel asserts, “Efremov’s worldview
had not changed; he was as committed to Communism as before” (Narrative Space and Time
137). What changes is the path to Communism. Tormance flouts all the rules of development
that inform Earth history. Though it is easily categorized as an ‘inferno,’ Tormance does not
develop predictably. In fact, it does not develop at all. It neither emerges from the ‘inferno’ state
nor destroys itself:
Не понимаю, почему эта цивилизация еще существует. Ведь здесь нарушен закон
Сидена Роба. Если они достигли высокой техники и почти подошли к овладению
космосом – и не позаботились о моральном благосостоянии. Куда более важным,
чем материальное, - то они не могли перейти порога Роба! Ни одно низкое по
морально-этическому уровню общество не может его перейти, не
самоуничтожившись,–и все же они его перешли!
36
(Efremov, Tumanost’ Andromedy
601)
Tormance exists in complete stasis. When Grif Rift, the ship’s second-in-command utters the
quoted passage in consternation, Rodis explains that Tormance’s “monolithic” state enables it to

36
I don’t understand how this civilization can still exist. The law of Siden Rob is broken here. They have achieved
advanced technology and have nearly mastered the cosmos – but have not concerned themselves with their moral
well-being. What’s more important than the material– they could not cross the Rob’s threshold! Not one morally and
ethically inferior society can cross it without destroying itself. And yet they crossed it! My translation.
53

buck developmental laws. The political system, labeled an oligarchy by the Earthlings, prevents
progress and degradation alike, or rather, allows for technological progress without the
accompanying social progress. Tormance is stuck in time, caught in a phase of history that had
long passed on Earth, but which had attained a state of permanence on Tormance. However, this
state, a reflection of the Soviet Union’s own halt in progress toward the Communist end goal, is
not taken as an impasse, but as a challenge.
Even as Hour of the Bull expresses a loss of faith in teleology, it illustrates faith in action,
in the ability of a group to change society. Efremov’s protagonists still believe in Communism,
believe that it is possible even on Tormance, but know that it will not occur naturally. The
epilogue makes clear that Tormace emerges from the state of inferno, but not without first
describing the struggles and sacrifices that this required. Though the story of the crew of Dark
Flame is framed as a history lesson for high school students, the teacher does not reveal the fate
of Tormance and its society until the very end, thereby refusing to present the eventual success
of Tormance’s development as inevitable, enabling the students to question what would become
of the planet. When it is revealed that Tormance liberated itself from its oligarchical form of
government, the Tormancians are credited with acting to bring about this change, and the
Earhlings with inspiring it:
Обитатели Торманса сделали это сами, и только они сами могли подняться из
инферно. Жертвы олигархического режима Торманса даже не подозревали, что они
жертвы, находящиеся в незримой тюрьме замкнутой планеты. Они воображали
себя свободными, пока с прибытием нашей экспедиции не увидели истинную
54

свободу, обновили веру в здравую человеческую натуру и ее огромные
возможности.
37
(Efremov, Tumanost’ Andromedy 781)
Without the utopian narratives of Earth presented by Rodis and her crew, Tormance could have
and would have remained in its infernal state with no end in sight. The epilogue asserts the
necessity of utopian narratives as a counterpoint to reality, capable of inspiring individuals to
enact change. However, only action from within the flawed system can hope to have any
meaningful impact. Though it is not itself a utopia, Hour of the Bull justifies the writing of
utopian texts in distinctly un-utopian times.
In this regard, it reads like a response to Hard to be a God (Trudno byt bogom, 1964) by
the Strugatsky Brothers (and to the turn away from utopia in general). Hard to be a God also
follows a space traveler from Earth, in its future state as a Communist utopia, to another planet in
an earlier, more brutal and authoritarian stage of historical development. The world depicted in
this text is darker and crueler, and the main character, known on the planet as Don Rumata, is
forbidden from interfering in its development. As he observes how history takes its course, it
becomes increasingly clear that the laws of historical development hold no sway there. As
conditions worsen, Rumata degrades along with the filthy, vile, and selfish denizens of the
planet. Everything good is destroyed, from the innocent soul with whom Rumata falls in love to
the last vestiges of his own conscience and any lingering faith in humanity. Hour of the Bull is a
positive spin on this narrative, countering the hopelessness and degradation that remain at the
end of Hard to be a God with insistence on the need for utopian alternatives. However, it would
be naïve to read Efremov’s novel in such an unequivocally pro-utopian light.

37
The inhabitants of Tormance did this themselves and only they could lift themselves out of the inferno. The
victims of the oligarchical regime of Tormance did not even suspect that they were victims in an invisible prison on
a sequestered planet. They fancied themselves free until, with the arrival of our expedition, they witnessed genuine
freedom, renewed their belief in healthy human nature and its immense possibilities. My translation.
55

Though Efremov’s Earthlings present the Tormancians with what would seem to be
traditional utopian forms – films illustrating daily life on Earth – the fact that Efremov himself
abandons the traditional utopian form should give us some pause regarding his faith in its
efficacy. The utopian tract is no longer sufficient, too much a holdover from the Revolutionary
past, it no longer serves its intended purpose, eliciting not optimism or action, but cynicism and
doubt. Science fiction writers who worked within the utopian form in the immediate wake of
Andromeda Nebula turned away from it, some, such as the aforementioned Strugatsky brothers,
displaying an aversion to the utopian form, rooted in disillusionment. Though Efremov’s text
maintains a real connection to the Earthly utopia, which is described throughout, the choice of
setting and narrative amounts to an admission that the utopian form that inspires the
Tormancians is not sufficient on the Earth of the late 1960s. As Hour of the Bull calls for the
continued production of utopias, its form implies a need for alternatives. In this case, the
alternative amounts to an instruction manual – a meta-utopian text calling for new utopian texts.
As the Soviet Union lurched toward stagnation, this call for alternative utopias was answered by
writers and filmmakers, within and beyond the boundaries of the science fiction canon.

56

Chapter Two:
Back from the Future: How Time Travel Rebuilt History
После смерти Сталина мы вступили в полосу
разрушений и переоценок. Они медленны,
непоследовательны, бесперспективны, а инерция
прошлого и будущего достаточно велика. Сегодняшние
дети вряд ли сумеют создать нового бога, способного
вдохновить человечество на следующий исторический
цикл. Может быть, для этого потребуются
дополнительные костры инквизиции, дальнейшие
«культы личности», новые земные работы, и лишь
через много столетий взойдет над миром Цель, имени
которой сейчас никто не знает.
- Абрам Терц
38
«Что такое
Социалистический
Реализм»
39

Though utopia is primarily a spatial term, referring to a space that has achieved
atemporality, a state of finality and completeness, in its Soviet context, it implies a teleological
temporality of which it is the inevitable endpoint. According to Soviet ideology, utopia (referring
to the achievement of Communism) is the telos and time moves inexorably toward its
fulfillment. According to Abram Tertz, Stalin’s death in 1953 (and the mere fact of his mortality)
undermined the teleological foundations of Soviet ideology, effectively collapsing the formerly
certain future of the Soviet project. The history of Russia and the Soviet Union, a history that had
been made to lead directly and undoubtedly to the fast-approaching Communist future had been
called into question. Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin at the Twentieth Party Congress

38
Abram Tertz is a pseudonym and alternate persona for Soviet literary and cultural critic Andrei Sinyavsky.
Sinyavsky used this pseudonym to publish his fiction abroad, a transgression for which he was arrested, tried, and
imprisoned.
39
After Stalin’s death, we entered a region of destruction revaluation. They go slowly, inconsistently, hopelessly,
while the inertia of the past and future is sufficiently great. Today’s children will scarcely be able to conceive of a
new god, capable of inspiring mankind toward the next historical cycle. Perhaps, this will require additional bonfires
of inquisition, further “personality cults,” new earthly labors, and only after many centuries will a Purpose arise
before the world, the name of which no one yet knows. – Abram Tertz “On Socialist Realism”
57

unleashed a flurry of debate among Soviet historians, quickly displacing the canonical role of
Stalin’s Short Course. Writers rushed to correct history, producing fictional works and memoirs
that aspired to depict the truth of Stalinism. Many writers – Bulat Okudzhava and Viacheslav
P’etsukh, to name a couple – wrote historical novels set in imperial Russia, jolting Russian
historical moments from their positions in the teleological scheme established by Stalinist
historiography.
Time travel narratives represent a manifestation of this impulse, in particular, travel back
in time possesses the unique ability to break open linear time, creating movement in time that is
not bound by the Modern, and, in particular, Marxist, assumption of linear progress. The past-
oriented time travel narrative experiments with contact between present and past; and past and
future. A drastic shift from the often future-oriented science fiction of the early twentieth
century, the past-oriented time travel narrative was especially well-suited to redefining the
movement of history; to rewriting the past to reflect the discoveries of the present; and to
reformulating the future in the wake of its collapse. Two such time travel narratives–Leonid
Gaidai’s classic comedy Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession, released in 1973, during a period
of increased artistic and political repression under Brezhnev, and Andrei Bitov’s short story
“Pushkin’s Photograph (1799-2099),” completed in August of 1985, shortly after Mikhail
Gorbachev had become general secretary–use time travel to lay bare the historical revisionism
that subordinated Russian history to Stalinist teleology. These narratives also contend with
teleology’s opposite—fixed unchanging time. While constructing temporalities that differ from
those of the dominant ideology, Gaidai and Bitov make of these temporalities a refuge from
teleology and from its antipode, stasis. When utopia is conceived of differently, a temporal form
can serve as a utopian space.
58

Unlike the past-oriented time travel deployed by Gaidai and Bitov, the future-oriented
time travel of the Revolutionary period affirmed linear progress toward utopian futures. The
“radiant future,” the utopian conclusion of socialist development, is a dream defined by assured
progress, a dream with its origins rooted in modernity. Though modernity in the Soviet context
had a very particular manifestation, its general form closely matched that of modernity in the
Western European context. According to Reinhart Koselleck, the advent of modernity altered the
relationship between expectation and experience from one of exact coincidence to one of an
ever-increasing difference. Faith in progress–social and technological–and human striving
toward a more perfect world displaced living on the basis of nature’s cycles (259-66). The time
travel of the turn of the century was grounded in the same assumption of progress accompanying
the forward movement of time. Typically utopian (or anti-utopian) in nature, these fin-de-siècle
narratives used time travel as the framing device that motivated the exploration of utopian
society.
40
Russian and early Soviet time travel depicted visions of the future based on the
premises of modernity in order to either praise or critique a particular course of development.
Progress was assumed, and science fiction endeavored to plot the most humane course for this
forward movement, tweaking its definition, but implying, nonetheless, its inevitability.
In the late 1920s this march of progress was subsumed by Stalinism, which appropriated
the linear narrative and leveraged it toward the goal of establishing the legitimacy of the regime.
However, the defining narratives of the Stalin period were not those of the distant utopian future,
but, rather, those of the near future and the past. Rather than rejecting Russia’s tsarist past, this

40
In particular, Looking Backward (1888) by Edward Bellamy, News from Nowhere (1890) by William Morris, and
The Time Machine (1895) by H.G. Wells were very popular in Russia and served as models for similar works in the
Soviet Union, for example, The Coming World (1923) by Yakov Okunev and In a Thousand Years (1927) by V.D.
Nikolsky. Vladimir Mayakovsky also famously used time travel in The Bedbug (1929) and The Bathhouse (1930) to
draw unfavorable comparisons between the banal present and the utopian future.
59

past was emptied of its proper context and appropriated as a means of legitimation. Evgeny
Dobrenko dubs this “new temporality”–“the concluded future.” He elaborates further:
In order to free the ground for this new future, the present was shifted into the past, and
the future directed future was transformed into the present […]. The completed
construction of the past turns out anew to be an ideal, a model for the future (either as a
direct projection or ‘in reverse’). The same role which was played by the future in
revolutionary culture was played in Stalinist culture by the past.
41
(6)
Insofar as Stalinism represents the ultimate fulfillment of the Revolutionary utopian project,
future-oriented narratives of the Revolution become superfluous. The temporality of Stalinism is
that of a teleology that has attained its telos. Consequently, the gaze shifts backward; if Stalinism
is the inevitable endpoint of a scientifically determined history it must construct a history that
leads inexorably to itself.
After Stalin’s death, the Stalinist myth and its concomitant roadmap to Communism
disintegrated, creating vacuums in the realms of past and future alike. The Party’s compensation
for debunking the dominant historical myth of the last quarter century was to sever Stalinism
from the future it promised by describing Stalinism as a betrayal of Marxist and Leninist
principles and reclaiming those principles, and the future, for itself (Jones 29). According to
Polly Jones, “the Secret Speech originated in a belief […] that repressed memories had
dysfunctional, unhealthy effects on the present. […] The collective exposure of the whole truth
was also imagined as useful, helpful to cleanse the Party, and resurrect Lenin” (20-21). Indeed,

41
Examples of these historical narratives include Sergei Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible, as
well as Minin and Pozharsky, directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin and Bogdan Khmelnitsky directed by Igor Savchenko.
These films utilized historical narratives and figures as vehicles for Soviet ideology and as a means of legitimating
Stalinism. For more thorough discussion of these films, see: Dobrenko, Evgeny. Stalinist Cinema and the
Production of History. New Haven & London: Yale UP, 2008.
60

the late 1950s witnessed a legitimate revival of the utopian impulse, buoyed by the successes of
the Soviet space program and the publication of heretofore unpublishable literary texts such as
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Vladimir Dudintsev’s Not
by Bread Alone. The reinvigoration of the Revolutionary utopian ideal manifested itself in the
resurgence of utopian science fiction ushered in by the publication of Ivan Efremov’s
Andromeda Nebula in 1957. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, now the most famous writers of
Soviet science fiction, produced their early utopian works during this period. The utopian revival
emerged as a sign of renewed devotion to the ideals of Communism and belief in its imminence.
Though the Speech triggered the desired response in some, leading individuals to reject
Stalinism while maintaining faith in Communism and its future, overall responses were varied.
Some individuals expressed dismay at Stalin’s disavowal; others demanded a more thorough
reckoning with the past, its origins, and its implications (Jones 17-56). These variegated
responses ultimately triggered the emergence of a more tentative and less satisfying historical
narrative: “the outcome of the tumultuous year that followed the Secret Speech was the
entrenchment of a much more conservative interpretation of de-Stalinization in Party history
[…]. Nationally, attacks on Stalinism had now ground to a halt [and] praise for Stalin cautiously
resumed” (Jones 80). Rather than allow de-Stalinization to destabilize Soviet teleology, the Party
tempered the revelations about Stalin’s cult of personality with praise of his accomplishments.
However, within less than a year’s time, this teleology was irreparably damaged. According to
Kathleen Smith, “December [1956] would bare the Party’s commitment to controlling the public
sphere but show that it was operating in a new context of its own creation. The Secret Speech
had disrupted the Soviet narrative of constant progress. Details of unjust arrests and executions
could not be forgotten; nor could the soul-searching that followed be undone” (307). Just as
61

Stalin’s body could not be returned to the mausoleum after being disinterred in 1961, his place in
the Soviet narrative could not be restored after the disclosures in the Secret Speech.
Consequently, historiography under Brezhnev reintegrated the accomplishments of the
Stalin era into the Soviet narrative of progress, but stopped short of rehabilitating Stalin. Stalin’s
responsibility for the Terror was not denied, but was downplayed as one part of a complex, but
ultimately positive, picture: “Soviet collective memory was now supposed to be bigger than the
sum of individual citizens’ memories (however traumatic), just as Stalin’s entire posthumous
reputation now transcended isolated character flaws and ‘mistakes’” (Jones 255). The
confrontation with repressed, traumatic memories that threatened to undermine Soviet teleology
was once again under wraps and the continuity of the Soviet narrative of progress was nominally
restored. However, this historical narrative failed to permeate the zeitgeist as it had during the
early years of Khrushchev’s reign. Under Brezhnev, Soviet expectations of progress deflated and
the relationship between experience and expectation became increasingly open to interpretation.
A space for alternative narratives and new futures emerged and time travel filled that space with
historiographical experiments, exploring new shapes and movements of time. Among the goals
of these time travel experiments was the laying bare of Stalinist historical revisionism in order to
undermine the Stalinist historical narrative. Consequently, history became open to re-emplotment
according to alternative narrative models that complicated the established relationships between
past, present, and future.
Ivan Vasil’evich Changes Profession performs just such a historiographical experiment.
In an interview following the film’s release, Gaidai expressed his hopes for the way the film
would be viewed: “It does not frighten me at all for a person to just laugh for a whole hour, while
watching how the activist house manager plays the tsar in Rus’ and how Ivan Vasil’evich is
62

afraid of everything and apprehensive of everyone. But someone, looking at this, laughs at
something else and begins to think about something” (qtd. in Pupsheva et al. 307-308, my
translation). Indeed, Gaidai’s narrative and artistic decisions imply intentions well beyond those
of laughter for its own sake. The already controversial decision to adapt Bulgakov’s previously
banned play is compounded by the decision to refer to a very particular iteration of the tsar, that
found in Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible films. The play and films are significant not only
as references to the Stalin period, but also as illustrations of particular historiographical forms
that were ultimately designed to subvert the grand narrative propagated by Stalin. As Ivan the
Terrible was central to the Stalin-era effort to construct a new all-consuming historical narrative,
he was also a potent means by which to undermine it.
“Pushkin’s Photograph (1799-2099)” had similar aspirations, endeavoring to undermine
Stalinist teleology by way of another canonized figure—Pushkin. Bitov accomplishes this by
granting primacy to Pushkin’s loftier authorial myth and squaring it off against the Soviet myth
of Pushkin. He invokes narratives of the 1937 Pushkin Jubilee in order to undermine them, to
create an alternative historical narrative that questions the Stalinist narrative without claiming to
be correct or objective. History’s status as narrative, vulnerable to incursion by ideology, is
established. The creation of equally questionable counter-narratives to oppose such incursions
grants history opacity and uncertainty. For both works, creating historical narratives that run
counter to Stalinist teleology is the key to the conceptualization of a new present, and
consequently, a new future.
Past and Future under Stalin
63

The temporality of Stalinism was founded on the assumption of an already-arrived-at
future. Having achieved the future, Soviet teleology, as it was being shaped during the Stalin era,
turned to the past in order to affirm its acquisition of Socialist futurity. The Soviet government
adopted a rather opportunistic approach to history: “In line with the Party hierarchy’s emerging
preoccupation with Russian state-building and legitimacy, a number of figures previously
denigrated as representatives of the old regime were reevaluated. Perennial establishment
favorites like Peter the Great and Aleksandr Nevskii were elevated into a reconstituted pantheon
of Russian national heroes” (Platt and Brandenberger, “Terribly Romantic” 637). The past
became another weapon in the battle for the future, a means of deriving legitimacy for the Soviet
state. The actions of Russia’s tsars and other historical figures were not accepted as unavoidable
steps in the steady march of history toward Communism, but celebrated as exemplary, worthy of
praise and emulation.
Among the figures rehabilitated and canonized by Soviet artists and historians on orders
from the Party was Ivan the Terrible. According to Kevin M. F. Platt and David Brandenberger,
depictions of Ivan the Terrible varied based on a combination of two categories: “temporal
interpretive frame and choice of narrative form” (“Terribly Romantic” 642). The relationship of
the portrayal to the present day could be allegorical or historical and its emplotment could be
Tragic or Romantic. “The Romance is fundamentally a drama of self-identification symbolized
by the hero’s transcendence of the world of experience, his victory over it, and his final
liberation from it… it is a drama of the triumph of good over evil, of virtue over vice, of light
over darkness, and of the ultimate transcendence of man over the world in which he was
64

imprisoned by the Fall”
42
(White 8). While there can be no hope of complete transcendence in a
Tragic emplotment, it does not preclude the possibility of partial liberation. However, all
progress comes at a price: “The fall of the protagonist and the shaking of the world he inhabits
which occur at the end of the Tragic play are not regarded as totally threatening to those who
survive the agonic test. There has been a gain in consciousness for the spectators of the contest.
And this gain is thought to consist in the epiphany of the law governing human existence which
the protagonist’s exertions against the world have brought to pass” (White 9).
According to the Party, a successful rehabilitation combined a Romantic emplotment
with an allegorical interpretation, implying a highly optimistic interpretation of the movement of
history and of the political achievements of the present day. Shcherbakov’s 1942 memorandum
to Stalin aptly illustrated the Party’s position vis-a-vis Ivan: “Ivan IV was an outstanding
political figure of sixteenth-century Russia. He completed the establishment of a centralized
Russian state, a progressive endeavor initiated by Ivan III. Ivan IV fundamentally eliminated the
country’s feudal fragmentation, successfully crushing the resistance of representatives of the
feudal order” (180). Shcherbakov’s description draws a clear parallel between Ivan IV and I.V.
Stalin; “he clearly conceived of the ‘cult’ of Ivan as an auxiliary to Stalin’s own personality cult”
(Platt and Brandenberger “Terribly Romantic” 644). The aforementioned parallel between the
two men, when imbued with a Romantic narrative, represented the prescribed formula for the re-
mythologization of Ivan the Terrible and Stalin with him.

42
These notions of emplotment are borrowed from Hayden White’s Metahistory (and consequently Norton Frye’s
Anatomy of Criticism) and belong to a set of four modes of historiographical emplotment: Romance, Satire,
Tragedy, and Comedy.
65

The burden of rehabilitation and canonization was placed squarely on the shoulders of
artists and historians; new textbooks and artistic works were requested if not outright demanded.
Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible film trilogy was conceived as a part of this effort:
In the middle of January 1941 it was suggested to Eisenstein that he make a film about
Ivan the Terrible. The suggestion was made to him personally and directly by Andrei
Zhdanov. It was understood that cinema was now destined to play its part in the
glorification of Tsar Ivan IV as a great and wise autocratic ruler that was already to be
discerned in a number of works by Soviet historians and in the projects of playwrights
and prose-writers. It was clear that, as 1941 dawned, the figure of Tsar Ivan was being
subjected, not only to a justification, but also to official canonization. That was what
Stalin wanted. (Kozlov 110)
Despite some deviation from the state-sanctioned formula, the first installment of Eisenstein’s
trilogy fulfilled the Party’s request and was well received by the Party and Stalin himself,
winning a Stalin Prize in 1946. However, that same year, Part II was screened at the Kremlin and
was subsequently rejected. Stalin himself expressed disappointment in Ivan the Terrible’s
portrayal as a Hamlet-type character. Where the Party had mandated Romance, Eisenstein had
given them Tragedy (Platt and Brandenberger “Terribly Romantic” 652).
Having discussed a successful canonization of Ivan the Terrible (and its less successful
sequel), we must travel back in time to discuss two plays by Mikhail Bulgakov that made no
attempt to rehabilitate Ivan the Terrible just as Soviet historiography was coming to demand it. If
Eisenstein’s film could not be released because of its Tragic depiction of Ivan, these two plays–
Blazhenstvo (Bliss) and Ivan Vasil'evich–earned the ire of Soviet critics by portraying history as
Satire. “Satire,” according to White, “is the precise opposite of [the] Romantic drama of
66

redemption; it is, in fact, a drama of diremption, a drama dominated by the apprehension that
man is ultimately a captive of the world rather than its master” (8). Whether read separately or as
a pair, the aforementioned plays present a world that undergoes only superficial change,
remaining, at its core, untouched by progress. Blazhenstvo, the first of the two plays, was
completed in 1934, but was quickly deemed too subversive to be staged. The play features two
acts of time travel: Engineer Evgenii Nikolaevich Rein builds a time machine and subsequently
traps Ivan the Terrible in the Soviet present while stranding himself and his companions–house
manager Bunsha and clever thief Miloslavskii–in the future. The bulk of the play is spent in this
future, in a land called Bliss, a dystopia extending from Bulgakov’s fear that “in the process of
building a new society arises the threat of effacing individuality, and on these grounds a different
kind of despotism is conceived (the despotism of collectivism or ‘communal’ despotism)”
(Babicheva, “Fantasticheskaia Dialogiia” 129, my translation). Following the play’s rejection,
Bulgakov thoroughly revamped it, excising any hint of the future dystopia and focusing
exclusively on his heroes’ mix-up in the past: Miloslavskii and Bunsha are trapped in Ivan IV’s
time while Ivan is trapped in the present.
Ivan Vasil'evich was tentatively approved by the censors and began rehearsals. However,
this new play was also banned before it could ever be staged. Maureen Perrie suggests that the
reason behind this ban is not the potential analogy between Ivan IV and Stalin, but a shift in the
official Soviet attitude toward history: “At the beginning of 1936, criticism of the draft textbooks
on USSR history focused on their negative depiction of the Russian past: articles in the central
press stressed the ‘positive’ and ‘progressive’ character of many aspects of tsarist history” (150).
Consequently, Bulgakov found himself on the wrong side of official Soviet doctrine vis-à-vis
history. Movement into the future required neither an understanding of history nor a complete
67

break from it, but the canonization of its so-called “positive” aspects. Though he is not an
altogether negative figure, Bulgakov’s Ivan is no heroic bastion of forward progress; the comic
Ivan is at once ridiculous, tyrannical, and mercurial. In addition, Ivan Vasil’evich Bunsha, Ivan’s
typological descendant, is pathetic, but no less tyrannical in his bureaucratic realm and even
displays his own terrible potential when trapped in the past. The interchangeability of the two
Ivans is indicative of history’s inherent stagnation.
Taken together, the plays form a duology that creates a metaphorical ancestral link
joining Ivan the Terrible, House Manager Bunsha, and Director of the Institute of Harmony
Savvich–the past, present, and future of tyranny. The implication of Bulgakov’s duology–that the
petty tyranny of countless bureaucrats and house managers has its origins in the movement of
history and that this behavior will continue to evolve into new and ever more egregiously petty
forms–clashes not only with Bolshevik history and its cherry-picking of ancestors and
predecessors, but with the strictly teleological progression of history espoused by the Bolsheviks.
Though time has indeed moved forward, the three tyrants share a static internal quality whose
manifestation changes but whose essence remains the same. Bulgakov’s duology is Satire at its
most caustic–it underscores the speciousness of historical progress. The two works actively
undermine Soviet teleology, implying that, though technological progress can be expected in the
future, such progress would not amount to substantive change.
Another figure canonized by the Soviet establishment, Alexander Pushkin, found himself
the object of intense praise and celebration during the notorious 1937 Pushkin jubilee. Mandated
by the Soviet state at the height of the Stalinist terror, the 1937 Pushkin jubilee was an event that
juxtaposed Pushkin with violence: “Newspapers in January and February 1937 featured two
stories that received equally intense coverage: the trial, sentencing, and execution of Karl Radek,
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Iurii Piatakov, and fifteen others; and the Pushkin celebration” (Sandler 199). Pushkin’s life and,
even more so, his death were rebranded to suit the political needs of the state, serving as a means
of glorifying the state and of justifying its violence:
During the years and months leading up to the “1937 jubilee,” Pushkin was brought into
the public discourse as a politicized entity, forced to represent a version of his own past
which supported the legitimacy of the proletarian and peasant Party…. The rhetoric of
Pushkin as a “people’s poet,” murdered by enemies, dovetailed nicely with the rhetoric of
the Great Purges, according to which enemies of the people had to be rooted out, arrested
and removed from public spaces in order to ensure that they would not harm Soviet
Russia or her citizens. (Brintlinger 4)
The coincidence of the celebration of Pushkin’s art, “its spirit of vitality, energy, and optimism”
(Sandler 194) with the darkness and pressure of life during Stalin’s terror left such a troubling
imprint on the public consciousness that subsequent jubilees – even those following Stalin’s
death – could not erase it (Sandler 205).
Pushkin’s glorification served the general ideological purposes of fortifying the Soviet
future with the Russian past. Pushkin was deemed a “forerunner of Communism and herald of
the glorious socialist present” (Levitt 163) and his “‘shining image’ was singled out as a model
for ‘the new Soviet man’” (Levitt 165). Much of the artistic work produced in honor of the
jubilee embodied this impulse to build a direct line from Pushkin to the Soviet present. In his
article “Pushkin Now and Then: Images of Temporal Paradox in the 1937 Pushkin Jubilee,”
Jonathan Platt asserts that “memorialization and resurrection frequently came together in the
jubilee, linking present to past both at the level of historical continuity and mystical rupture.
Indeed, the seeds of this paradoxical image of Pushkin can already by [sic] found in the images
69

of his contemporary, resurrected life” (651). The construction of this link between past and
present was often used to facilitate direct contact between the two – to assert Pushkin’s foresight
with regard to socialism; to fantasize about Pushkin’s salvation from premature death; to bring
him into Soviet life as a revolutionary and a contemporary. Among the artistic works to which
Platt refers is Sergei Spirt’s “On vechno s nami byl…” (“He was with us forever…”) a poem in
which the author yearns to prevent Pushkin’s death with his own hands:
As Spirt’s Faustian cry to stop time cuts into the depiction of Pushkin’s duel, the reader
finds a direct appeal to temporal rupture. But, at the same time, Spirt’s imagined leap into
the duel scene seamlessly weaves the moment of rupture into time’s unbroken flow. Time
does not halt forever, having reached some paragon of beauty, as in the Goethean model.
It stops only for a moment, allowing the future to penetrate and redeem the past. Once
transfigured, time resumes its forward motion. Pushkin’s murderer, d’Anthes, is killed,
and the poet is saved, able to continue his life in the new age, where he is literally
“eternally with us.” (652)
In Spirt’s poem, the present is able to interfere with and alter the past without changing the flow
of time. A similar interpenetration of past and present is evoked by Nadezhda Shvede-Radlova’s
painting “A.S. Pushkin” (Figure 1): “Pushkin’s posture is unmistakably that of a man posing for
a portrait, and the fact that he meets the immortalizing gaze of the artist with a smile cannot help
but transport the portrait into the anachronistic idiom of photography. Instead of the labored
representation of painting, Pushkin now appears before us with the instantaneousness of the
photograph, with the time-halting power of the shutter’s click” (Platt 653). The historical
Pushkin is made to live and breathe through this imagined contact with the contemporary
70

medium. The 1937 Pushkin jubilee sought to reconcile Pushkin and Soviet society by projecting
the present into the past and the past into the present by figuratively correcting the errors of time.

Figure 1: Nadezhda Shvede-Radlova, A.S. Pushkin (1937). Ogonek 2-3 (1937): 21.
Image from: Platt, Jonathan Brooks. “Pushkin Now and Then: Images of Temporal Paradox in
the 1937 Pushkin Jubilee.” The Russian Review, vol. 67, no. 4, 2008, pp. 638–60.

Another way in which Stalinist officialdom sought to manipulate the past can be seen in
the Pushkin Campaign of 1949. The Party attempted to consolidate Soviet ownership of Pushkin,
further distorting his image for political ends:
The next great Pushkin Jubilee, of 1949, was institutionally a massive replay of 1937 and
ideologically a heavy handed attempt to make Pushkin conform to a narrow Party line.
[…] In 1949 the process of “Sovietizing” Pushkin and asserting a monolithic socialist
culture under his aegis may be said to have reached its saturation point. The Pushkin
propaganda of 1949 made hyperbolic claims about the superiority of Russian culture…,
and at the same time histrionically “unmasked” ideological deviators and doubters.
(Levitt 166-167)
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Despite having been forcibly thrown from the steamship of modernity by the Futurists in 1912,
during the jubilees of 1937 and 1949, Pushkin was forcibly dragged back on board and installed
as its helmsman. For several artists (Nabokov, Tertz,
43
and Bitov among them) the overt
manipulation of Pushkin’s image by the state evoked a Pushkin who needed saving, not from
d’Anthes and others who, according to the Soviet narrative, conspired against him and took his
life, but from the historical revisionism that threatened to taint his immortality.
After Stalin’s death, confronted by a history that had been vigorously edited in order to
conform to, justify, and support Stalinist cultural and ideological maxims, artists and writers
began the difficult task of disassembling Stalinist history. Leonid Gaidai adapted Bulgakov’s
play, combining it with elements of Eisenstein’s film in order to unfetter these unacceptable
depictions of Ivan the Terrible. He confronted the audience not only with their existence, with
the fact of historical revisionism, but with what these intolerable Ivans implied about Soviet
society and Russian history. Twelve years later, Andrei Bitov created a Pushkin so unlike his
canonized self that he appeared to actively oppose the desires and ambitions of jubilee culture.
These two works made assertions not only about the Stalinist rewriting of history, but about the
nature of history itself, about its shape and movement, and about the future implied therein.
Iosif Vissarionovich Changes Profession
As an adaptation, Ivan Vasil'evich meniaet professiiu (hereafter IVMP) lacks the
pessimistic bite of its predecessor, successfully shrouding its confrontation with Stalinism in
physical comedy, slapstick and musical, creating the semblance of innocent, inoffensive humor.

43
Though it will not be discussed here, Abram Tertz’s controversial Strolls with Pushkin represents the ultimate
attempt to subvert the canonization and deification of Pushkin by Soviet power and other forces.Tertz, Strolls with
Pushkin.
72

The effect is one of both subversion and reconciliation, evoking at once indignation and
resignation. The film begins in the apartment of Aleksandr “Shurik” Timofeev, an inventor in the
process of building a time machine. After a test-run gone wrong, Timofeev is knocked out and
awakens to find he has been cuckolded and is being abandoned by his wife, Zina. After her
departure, he demonstrates the workings of his machine to house manager Ivan Vasil'evich
Bunsha and clever thief Dzhordzh Miloslavskii, inadvertently stranding the two in sixteenth-
century Muscovy while trapping Ivan the Terrible in the Soviet present. The close resemblance
between the tsar and the house manager creates confusion, resulting in the authorities being
summoned to the housing complex to apprehend a confused Ivan the Terrible. Finally, all are
returned to their proper time and Timofeev awakens to find he was dreaming.
The film is a comedy of errors whose stage is the space of experience. By combining
time travel and transposition, IVMP is able to explore Russia’s tsarist past, its recent Stalinist
past, and its post-Stalinist present within a single arena. The film curates an amalgam of pointed
references from the past and makes them present, molding them into a system geared toward the
fulfillment of a critical mission: laying bare the manifold devices of Stalinism, exposing its
continued presence, and rendering it harmless and ineffectual in order to move beyond it. The
film engages with Stalinism by way of its acknowledged source material–Bulgakov’s play Ivan
Vasil'evich–and its unacknowledged, but no less obvious source material–Part II of Eisenstein’s
Ivan the Terrible. Despite a blatant difference in genre and atmosphere, the two works share one
key feature, aside from their mutual preoccupation with the terrible tsar: both were banned
shortly after completion, resurfacing once de-Stalinization had taken place–artifacts of Stalinism,
disinterred only after Stalin himself was buried and disavowed. Though outright discussion of
Stalinism was taboo, referring to the artists of the Stalin era became a potent means of examining
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the Stalinist project. Gaidai carefully folds Eisenstein into Bulgakov, but displaces the scenario
forty years into the future, forging a link between the early Tsardom of Russia during Ivan’s
reign, Stalin’s Russia, and late Soviet Russia under Brezhnev. Though he creates and sometimes
foregrounds this link between the present day and the not-so-distant Stalinist past, the
transposition of the narrative from past to present also serves to counter the Stalinist element,
neutralizing the threat it poses to the film’s protagonist. The film proposes a shape for
historiographical movement that runs counter to both the linear movement of Stalinist teleology
and the purely cyclical movement of Bulgakov’s satirical duology, undermining the future utopia
supposedly guaranteed by progress, but intimating the possibility of futures independent of
history’s cycles.
Gaidai’s first allusion to Stalinism occurs during the opening credits, directly preceding
the film’s title screen. Here, Gaidai establishes the connection between his film and Bulgakov’s
play: “Based on the play Ivan Vasil'evich by Mikhail Bulgakov” (“Po motivam p’esy Mikhaila
Bulgakova ‘Ivan Vasil’evich’”). The relationship between play and film is especially significant
within the cultural context of the 60s and 70s. At this time, Bulgakov had been rediscovered and
his works were allowed to be published, including Ivan Vasil'evich in 1965. Though his work
had not yet reached the cult status that it attained in the 1980s, “for readers of the 60s,
[Bulgakov] was a victim of Stalinist repression. The revival of his name symbolized a victory of
creative authority over soulless tyranny” (Vail' and Genis 356, my translation). However, as
readings of Bulgakov’s texts became more nuanced, readers came to understand his texts beyond
the limiting binary of good vs evil: “Bulgakov performed an upheaval in the consciousness of the
1960s precisely because he refuted the essential societal process of the time–the declaration of
the value and inevitability of progress. The blasphemous idea, extricated from Bulgakov’s work
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by a critic–‘history does not develop it merely lasts’–deprived the furious battle for the radiant
future of its meaning” (Vail' and Genis 372, my translation). Gaidai’s swift and deliberate act of
name-dropping is an act of prompting; by establishing a firm link between his film and
Bulgakov’s play, Gaidai highlights the film’s origin within Stalinism, but external to the official
Soviet literary canon. The viewers are meant to be aware of the source material and of its author.
They are also meant to know that the adaptation is not entirely loyal to its source. The title screen
that follows vividly proclaims, “Ivan Vasil'evich meniaet professiiu,” as if to assert that it is not
merely the character, but the play itself that is changing along with its title.
Gaidai’s adaptation was indeed a change of profession for the play; though it was written
as a Satire, it is recast in the mode of Comedy. Comedy, the obverse of Tragedy, lies, like its
counterpart, between Romance and Satire: “In Comedy, hope is held out for the temporary
triumph of man over his world by the prospect of occasional reconciliations of the forces at play
in the social and natural worlds” (White 8). However, Gaidai does not hide or downplay the mere
lasting and recurrence of history; the struggle for reconciliation takes place in a world that is
resistant to change, a world that limits possibilities for heroic transcendence without precluding
them. By choosing to adapt the recently rediscovered play and set it not in the 1930s but in his
own Soviet present, Gaidai further advanced the notion of history as inclined to repeat rather
than progress.
Gaidai strengthened this link by incorporating aspects of Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible
films into his own. Like Bulgakov’s play, Part II of Eisenstein’s film was not screened during its
creator’s lifetime; the film was released in 1958, five years after Stalin’s death and ten years after
Eistenstein’s. The film’s iconic images had only been present in the Soviet consciousness for
fifteen years when Gaidai’s film premiered. Among the similarities is Ivan himself; the styling of
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Gaidai’s Ivan–his hat, beard, and robes–closely resembles but does not duplicate the physical
appearance of Eisenstein’s Ivan at the end of the first film and the beginning of the second (see
Figure 1; Figure 2). This borrowing of Eisenstein’s Ivan serves to link the film more closely to
the Stalinist origins of its source material. The image of Ivan the Terrible crafted by Gaidai
invokes not only Stalin, but Stalinist historical revisionism, the careful crafting and rebranding of
history to suit the Party’s needs.
In addition to Ivan’s dress and styling, Gaidai borrows from Eisenstein the scene that was
most reviled by Party officials–the dance of the oprichniks. The only part of the film shot in
color (due to a limited supply of color film), the sequence features the frenzied, violent
movements of Ivan’s red-clad oprichniks as they engage in a chaotic dance. After the Kremlin’s
screening of the film, “Beria compared the scene of the feast and dancing to a Witches’ Sabbath,
while Stalin likened it to the Ku-Klux-Klan” (Kozlov 127). Though oprichniks terrorize the
characters in Bulgakov’s script, Gaidai removes all mention of oprichniks from his film,
replacing the word oprichniki with the less objectionable voiska (troops) wherever it appears in
the play. However, he performs an ambiguous adaptive alchemy by dressing these characters in
red and choreographing their farcical chase as an echo of Eisenstein’s carnivalesque dance.

Figure 1: Eisenstein’s Ivan IV Figure 2: Gaidai’s Ivan IV

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When they first enter the tsar’s chambers, Gaidai’s not-oprichniks are alarmed by the presence of
intruders and begin to chase them in circles, with more not-oprichniks joining the chase as they
trickle in through the door. The dizzying, cyclic blur of motion is reminiscent of the cyclical
frenzy of the oprichniks’ dance. One segment of the dance involves oprichniks falling on top of
each other in a tremendous pile. Gaidai also repeats this scene, though he transforms it with
physical comedy: the not-oprichniks approach a suit of armor that is inhabited by Miloslavskii
and are knocked out, one-by-one, by his sturdy metal gauntlet. Incorporating these iconic
moments from the recently rediscovered Part II of Ivan the Terrible brings Stalinism to the
forefront of the film before neutralizing it with humor. Though absolute power threatens the
film’s heroes, the threat of potential violence is defused in a flurry of slapstick comedy. The
world is still plagued by violent potential, but new avenues of liberation have emerged.
Gaidai invokes Stalinism in order to diffuse it by means of its own devices. Stalin’s terror
is described by some scholars as a manifestation of the carnivalesque.
44
The terror was an
equalizing force, which brought low the powerful and channeled popular distrust for authority
into violence. Only Stalin himself was truly immune from its effects. In order to overcome its
trauma, Gaidai’s humor subjects the terror itself to the power of carnivalesque reversal: the
oprichniks, harbingers of terror, are felled by a man hiding inside a suit of armor and Ivan the
Terrible, who presides over the terror, is deprived of his royal garb and is arrested and nearly
institutionalized. Carnivalizing the terror becomes an act of mourning–the film portrays terror in
order to mock it, and to create distance from it. According to Alexander Etkind, repetition
performed at a distance is essential for effective mourning: “Mimetic mourning emulates but

44
See Fitzpatrick, “How the Mice Buried the Cat”; Ryklin, “Bodies of Terror.”
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does not reproduce the loss, and the differences between the lost past and its mimetic model are
no less important than their similarities. With the help of magic, humor, or analysis, the mourner
develops markers of difference that enable her to vary the serial re-presentations of the past”
(21). Gaidai effectively carnivalizes Stalinist terror by rendering it hilariously ineffective. Elena
Prokhorova aptly describes this process as it occurs in many of Gaidai’s films: “The terrifying
aspects of the ‘normal’ Soviet experience – surveillance, lack of privacy, disregard for human
life, state violence, arbitrariness of power – are diffused through slapstick and dialogue and
transposed into the safe, consumer oriented late socialism” (523). One such example is the
arrival of the police and the men from the mental institution. Though they represent a real
danger, their pursuit of the two Ivans is made comical: first, when they trap Ivan the Terrible by
knocking on the door and hiding; again, when they find that there are not one, but two Ivans;
and, finally, when the Ivans break free and the police give chase to the accompaniment of music.
The threat of Stalinism is made ridiculous, enabling audiences to laugh even as they recognize its
continued presence in their own lives.
Gaidai also undermines Stalinism through an assemblage of its banned art, i.e., references
and borrowings from Eisenstein’s film, which appear in his adaptation of Bulgakov’s play.
Gaidai repurposes Eisenstein and Bulgakov in an effort to develop an understanding of the
Stalinist conception of history. These repurposed relics subvert Soviet Romantic teleology at
every turn, serving as reminders of discarded historical narratives that are no more eradicable
than Stalinism itself. He makes excellent, if subtle, use of Repin’s Ivan the Terrible and His Son.
An early victim of Stalin’s efforts to rehabilitate Ivan, the painting appropriately surfaces in
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Gaidai’s film.
45
It spends the bulk of the film hanging idly, yet intently in the dream version of
Timofeev’s apartment, waiting for its inevitable confrontation with the tsar himself (see Figure
3). A moment that has the potential to rend history via paradox is diffused in a matter of seconds
when Ivan, after a quick glance at the painting, turns his attention elsewhere and wanders away.
Ivan’s turning away from the painting defuses the tension, but makes him the butt of the joke,
willfully ignorant of his own tragic future and the potentialities of his own cruelty; and,
consequently, fated to live through them. Effaced for the sake of Stalinist teleology, Repin’s
painting challenges the revised historical narrative both by its presence and by Ivan’s offhand
dismissal of it.

Figure 3: A Moment of Potential Temporal Rift

45
A painting famous for inciting physical violence in its viewers, Ivan the Terrible and His Son also became a target
of Stalin’s historical revisionism: “Stalin himself initiated revisions of the draft textbook with even greater specific
significance for Ivan and Peter. In one of the earliest drafts showing the general secretary’s markup, he excised
Repin’s painting Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan, likely objecting to its gory depiction of despotic violence…”
(Platt Terror and Greatness, 199). According to Platt, this painting is recreated time and again in Eisenstein’s film:
after Vladimir’s death when Efrosynia cradles his dead body in her arms and sings to him; earlier in the film, during
the death of Ivan’s mother; during Efrosynia’s plotting; and during Vladimir’s confession to Ivan. In this way,
Eisenstein forces the history that he depicts to confront its own future and Stalinism to confront the past that it has
chosen to excise from its textbooks. For more about the presence of Repin’s painting as a statement on historical
allegory in Eisenstein’s film, see Platt, Kevin M. F. “Repetition.” In Terror & Greatness: Ivan & Peter as Russian
Myths. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell UP, 2011. 208-52.
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Gaidai’s film undermines teleology on two fronts: it confronts Stalinism with its own
flotsam, the subversive narratives that survived and resurfaced once Stalinism itself was being
repressed; and it reveals how Stalinism lingered into the later Soviet period. After Stalin’s death,
the Soviet Union experienced several brief periods of thaw, often induced by the gradual
disassembly of Stalinism and its ubiquitous symbols. By the early 1960s, Stalin’s name was
associated strictly with the preceding era, an era which had finally come to an end: “The 1960s
began with the Twenty Second Party Congress, which declared the end of one period of Soviet
history and the beginning of another. The name of the first period was Stalin; the second was
dubbed Communism” (Vail' and Genis 352, my translation). The general consciousness of the
1960s embraced this dichotomy between Stalin and Communism, believing that with the death
and disavowal of Stalin, real progress toward Communism could finally begin. Via the Secret
Speech, Khrushchev hoped to excise the tumor of Stalinism from the body politic and enable it
to return to its Leninist roots: “Khrushchev acted with the conviction of one who having suffered
and profited from Stalin’s whims never blamed the system for having empowered Stalin in the
first place. Marxism-Leninism had thrived before the cult of personality and could do so without
it, he believed” (Smith 309-10). Like Bulgakov’s plays and novels, Gaidai’s film finds itself at
odds with this dichotomy, suggesting not only that the Stalinist cancer had metastasized, but that
its source lies deep within the Russian organism.
Though Stalin lost his place in Lenin’s mausoleum and was disavowed and buried, the
Stalinist machinery was by no means completely dismantled. Stalinism’s presence lingered in the
bureaucratic juggernaut that continued to govern much of people’s lives. Though the Soviet
leadership shunned bureaucrats, initially blocking them from joining the Communist Party,
Soviet bureaucracy underwent significant bloat during Stalin’s reign, as his policies and
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repressive measures required the establishment and expansion of government offices. Though
they were inexperienced, inefficient, and reviled by citizens and Party leaders alike, bureaucrats
gained significant power and influence during the Stalin years (Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism
25-39). Khrushchev attempted to curb that power, but his efforts had no lasting effect on the
deeply entrenched bureaucracy. Brezhnev, on the other hand, made no such attempt to shake up
the system and was essentially “pro-bureaucrat.” With no check on their power, bureaucrats of
all levels came to dominate the Soviet state (Ryavec 22-23).
Ivan Vasil'evich Bunsha is the representative of this distended and overreaching
bureaucracy. Though much of Bunsha’s dialogue changed in the conversion from play to film,
the essence of Bunsha’s character–his dedication to a strict bureaucratic order and his
cowardice–remains intact, linking him to his Stalin-era prototype and to a slew of petty
bureaucratic types crafted under Stalin and before him. Bunsha distinguishes himself from his
predecessors by way of a small-minded devotion to ideology and his fervent belief in the system;
it is not corruption that inspires contempt for Bunsha, but his stubborn and unquestioning
commitment. He is more concerned with the statistics, the bureaucratic upkeep of the housing
complex than with the humanity of those that live in it. When he finds out about Timofeev’s
divorce, he pleads with him to wait until the next quarter so as not to “drastically lower [the
complex’s] indices” (“rezko snizhaete nashi pokazateli”). He insists that Timofeev register his
time machine with the proper authorities and nearly calls the police after the machine
successfully creates an opening into another time. He is not unlike what Alexei Yurchak calls an
aktivist (activist), a person who “privileged the constative dimension of [the authoritative]
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discourse, reading it as a description of reality and evaluating that description for truth” (104).
46

Though he is a small, bungling person, because of his strict interpretation of the authoritative
discourse (and his intrinsic authoritarian capabilities), Bunsha is a threat to the privacy and
individuality of the people living in his housing complex. Meanwhile, the character Shpak
represents a different trace of Stalinism–the threat of informers. Just as he does in the play,
Shpak threatens Ivan the Terrible (believing him to be house manager Bunsha) with a “collective
complaint” and later phones the police after learning from Timofeev that the real Ivan the
Terrible is inside their housing complex. If Stalinism is the ghost that haunts the film, Bunsha
and Shpak are the possessed.
Bunsha’s status as a remnant of Stalinism is affirmed by his resemblance to Stalin’s
stand-in: Ivan the Terrible. Bunsha is a menace and petty tyrant in his mundane garb, but his true
despotic potential is realized only after he dresses in the tsar’s robes. Initially, Bunsha, too much
the aktivist, categorically refuses to don the tsar’s garb, exclaiming, “Not for anything!”
Nevertheless, when his life is threatened by Miloslavskii, even he yields. At first, he has
difficulties producing the appropriate responses, still worried about stating what is true. For
example, when Theophan asks him who Miloslavskii is, he answers honestly, “He is a friend of
Anton Semionovich Shpak” (“On drug Antona Sem’enovicha Shpaka”). However, after a few
drinks with the tsaritsa, even Bunsha begins to act the part, slamming his fist down on the table,
and even insulting Miloslavskii with the same word applied by Ivan the Terrible to Shpak–

46
In Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation, Alexei Yurchak analyzes the
authoritative discourse of the Soviet Union, indicating that for most Soviet citizens (or “normal’nye liudi”) the
speech of Soviet officialdom underwent a “performative shift” in the late Soviet period. People ceased to interpret
the authoritative discourse as constative, as an accurate description of reality, but rather as performative, as an act of
participation, which allowed for opportunities and freedom within the system. Aktivisty, unlike normal’nye liudi,
interpreted the authoritative discourse constatively.
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kholop (serf or lackey)–earlier in the film. The uncanny physical resemblance between the house
manager and the tsar is revealed to be an essential kinship. According to A Zorkii’s review of the
film, this scene is a biting invocation of Bulgakovian satire: “When the luxurious meal, the
generous dose of cardamom vodka, and the closeness of the tsaritsa Marfa untie Bunsha’s tongue
and force him to express class solidarity with the Crimean tsar, we understand what has
occurred: a satirical portrayal of the philistine has been written and Bulgakov’s cruel comedy has
returned to the screen, masked by the jolly chiming of Gaidai’s jocular bells” (83-84, my
translation). This scene also implies a Satirical historical emplotment. As the bureaucrat and the
autocrat are rendered interchangeable, so too are the epochs from which they hail.
Though the film rejects Stalin’s heavily doctored history and the linear temporality it
propped up, it nonetheless refuses to embrace fully the infinite loop of history implied by
Bulgakov’s play. Gaidai’s system of symbols and references engenders a world of deeply
entrenched power structures, of historical narratives and personages that emerge in different
guises but are otherwise indistinguishable from their predecessors. However, Gaidai’s film is
Comedy, not Satire, and ephemeral reconciliation between individual and world is how Gaidai
closes his film. The alternative temporality evoked by the film is a plurality of temporalities.
Both history and time lose their universal quality and become personal–dividing society, but
protecting its denizens from the destructive generalization of universal temporality, of all-
encompassing utopia. Mass utopia is replaced by the utopian enclave, which “by emphasizing a
freedom from state power does not so much involve a seizure and destruction of the latter as the
exploration of zones and enclaves beyond its reach, [which] would seem to valorize a life in the
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present and in the everyday” (Jameson 213).
47
The ramification of temporality grants primacy to
the individual and his possession of the present. The individual is not swept up in the
overarching movement of history toward the inevitable future, nor is he trapped by the eternal
recurrence of history; he resides in a private universe where utopia exists on the level of the
quotidian, where individual decisions and actions create the future rather than merely correspond
to it.
Timofeev’s apartment is a zone of private temporality and a sanctuary from the dangers
of Soviet society and of Russian history. The apartment’s status as enclave is established in the
opening scene of the film as Timofeev vacuums while watching a televised version of
Musorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov. This scene represents a significant change from Bulgakov’s
play. In the play, Timofeev is listening to a communal radio playing Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera
“Maid of Pskov,” tuned to that station by Bunsha. Gaidai replaces the communal radio with the
personal television set, signaling a shift from communal housing to private apartments.
Timofeev’s apartment sanctuary is the culmination of a concerted effort to rapidly build and
move families into private housing undertaken by Khrushchev in 1957. According Christine
Varga-Harris, the idea that each family would have a private apartment was intended as a
fulfillment of the utopian promise of the Revolution: “even though official rhetoric touted the
comfort and conveniences awaiting new residents, unwavering advancement toward
Communism, evocative of continuous forward motion, remained a prominent goal throughout
the Khrushchev years. Novostroika thus signified more than an altruistic gesture on the part of a

47
In Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions, Frederic Jameson
considers utopian models constructed on notions of plurality rather than universality, such as Robert Nozick’s idea
of meta-utopia, a “proposal for a pluralism of Utopias”and Yona Friedman’s “multiplicity of utopian communities
scattered across the globe” (219).
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reforming, paternalist state; it also represented and validated socialism” (12-13). Timofeev’s
apartment represents not only the sanctuary of private space, but also the fulfillment of the
promises of socialism–access to comfort, consumer goods, and, indeed, privacy. The utopian
nature of this space is not a turn away from socialism, but its late Soviet embodiment, its
existence and possibility serve as a salve for the lingering dangers of Stalinism.
48

The existence of this private universe is made possible by way of embedding, a device
described by Elana Gomel as “a narrative strategy whereby the diegetic space of the text is
doubled by enclosing a separate mini-universe within the main chronotope” (93). The space of
Timofeev’s apartment represents such an embedded universe. As a place in the physical world, it
follows the same universal laws as all other physical spaces (except, of course, when it becomes
the arena for time travel mishaps in Timofeev’s dream). As a social-ideological space, it is
independent, subject to a different set of rules and laws from the world outside its door. The
apartment is the space of a distorted temporality, independent of the two hazardous
temporalities–teleology and recurrence–that emerge in opposition within the world of
Timofeev’s dream. Timofeev’s movement through time by way of his dream and his awakening
creates a surplus of extradiegetic time that becomes the space of an alternative timeline. The
dream takes Timofeev not only into the past, but also a kind of future–the future of a world in
which his device is a success. When he awakens from his dream of the “future,” he returns to the
present, to the point at which his dream began, and a different chain of events, leading to a

48
The Party tempered the inherently bourgeois nature of private space by turning the communal spaces in the new
buildings into spaces for collective utopian projects. Unfortunately, the utopian promise of one apartment per family
was never realized in the Soviet Union: “Symptomatic of the inability of policy to meet the intractable need for
housing, by the 1970s, the expression beskvartir′e had entered colloquial discourse for ‘the state of being without an
apartment.’ Further indicating the seemingly insurmountable dearth of living space, at the beginning of this decade,
the average wait for an apartment ranged from a year and a half to three years, and although the housing deficit had
declined since the 1950s, there was still a 10 percent shortfall of available apartments” (Varga-Harris, 5).
85

different future, begins to unfold. Timofeev’s return to the “present” effectively undoes the
damage done in his dream. The apartment emerges as a space of temporal exploration without
the deleterious consequences of Zina’s infidelity or Bunsha’s institutionalization.
Though the dream is a part of the unique temporality experienced by Timofeev in the
privacy of his home, the apartment also protects him from the consequences of this dream–the
stark awareness of merely lasting, recurring time. This is a protection that is not afforded to
Bulgakov’s characters. The apartment in Bulgakov’s play is vulnerable to the incursions of
Timofeev’s dreamworld. In Ivan Vasil'evich, Zina returns, as she does in the film, and informs
Timofeev that his suspicions about her fidelity are baseless and fictitious. He is happily
convinced that the catastrophic time travel mishap was merely a dream. However, Shpak soon
knocks on their door to inform them that he has been robbed. The dream and reality coincide and
the boundary between the two is called into question; the danger and catastrophe of the dream
are suddenly imbued with possibility and the implications of the dream can no longer be easily
dismissed. In the film, Timofeev’s apartment remains safe and the dream remains exactly that
and nothing more. Its status is challenged only once, briefly, when Timofeev sees the
Monomakh’s Cap next to his television; however, this is quickly dismissed as a lingering trick of
the eyes when the cap turns out to have been the cat. The sanctuary of Timofeev’s home is
maintained.
Just as the embedded universe of Timofeev’s apartment is protected from the hazards of
the outside world and the implications of his dream, the outside world is protected from the
alternative temporality of Timofeev’s apartment. Though they undermine one another, each is
able to tolerate the other so long they remain a world apart. The separation of these two worlds,
the cordoning-off of Timofeev’s apartment into an embedded micro-universe, constitutes an
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“ontological quarantine” and a “bubble of ideological irregularity” (Gomel, Narrative Space and
Time 94). So long as Timofeev’s apartment remains embedded and its borders remain
impermeable, its private temporality need not come into direct, potentially threatening contact
with the cyclical temporality of the outside world where stagnation precludes progress. In
Timofeev’s dream, borders dissipate and competing temporalities clash openly with one another,
but his awakening firmly reinstates these boundaries and cordons off the dream, undermining its
subversive potential. Timofeev’s apartment is safe from the outside world, the outside world is
safe from Timofeev’s apartment, and both are protected from Timofeev’s dream.
Even in the dream, the apartment acts as a sanctuary. However, it is a sanctuary besieged
on all sides. The most dangerous space in the world of the film is the public space just outside
the apartment. During the slight opening of the door from inside the apartment to the hallway or
balcony, the private safe space of the apartment becomes the dangerous public space of the
building. It is in this space that the news of Timofeev’s divorce is discovered by Bunsha’s wife,
Uliana Andreevna, transforming Timofeev’s private matter into a public matter, worthy of
Bunsha’s concern. It is in another public space, the space of the apartment’s balcony, that Ivan
the Terrible is discovered by Uliana and Shpak, both of whom, assuming that he is Bunsha,
clamor for his attention and come to the conclusion that he is drunk. This results in further
catastrophes, not least of which is the summoning of the doctors from the psychiatric institution.
The significance of private space and individual temporality is further established by the
songs performed over the course of the film. Songs are a staple of Gaidai’s oeuvre and played a
key part in his earlier film The Diamond Arm:
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While Gaidai also made song a key part of his comedies, he had the villains, not the
positive heroes, perform these songs. […] Their songs neither controlled the images nor
did they convey an ideological message, but rather served as ironic parables of Soviet
life. Gaidai thus replaced the mass song with the carnivalesque song, the musical and
verbal structure of which was in tune with the clownish bodies of his characters.
(Prokhorov 134)
Songs in IVMP are somewhat different; the movie has no proper villains and its songs are
performed by vastly different characters in different contexts: Timofeev’s (ex-)wife Zina sings
for a film; Ivan’s army, having been sent into battle, sing as they march; and Miloslavskii leads
the palace band in a song and dance during a decadent feast. The three songs share a common
thread of romance between two people–finding love, being separated from one’s love, and being
reunited. Even the troops, who are marching into battle, sing a song about the girls they are
leaving behind instead of a “mass song.” It is not the ironic song of the carnivalesque that is
given primacy, but the song of personal relationships and intimate feelings.
The film implies that even figures of authority possess personal narratives, value their
private lives, and indulge in intimate feelings. Even Ivan the Terrible evinces a capacity for
genuine and heartfelt emotional expression. When he accidentally sits on a magnitofon (a
magnetic tape recorder), stolen from Shpak’s apartment by Miloslavskii, and Vladimir
Vysotskii’s “Pogovori khot' ty so mnoi” (“At Least You Should Speak to Me”)
49
begins to play,
his face goes through a series of responses: fright, curiosity, enjoyment, thoughtfulness, and

49
The song was featured in the Kira Muratova film Korotkie Vstrechi (Brief Encounters), which was completed in
1967, but did not see widespread screenings until the 1980s. The film not only resolves in a state of peaceful
domesticity and intimacy in the privacy of a home, but is also about the construction of domestic space–the building
of the Khrushchevki.
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finally, weeping. Given that Vysotskii “occupied an ambivalent niche in the Soviet culture,”
Ivan’s acceptance, appreciation, and outpouring of emotion, as well as the knowledge that the
magnitofon belongs to the thoroughly reprehensible Shpak, signals the decentralized structure of
late Soviet temporality as a collection of personal narratives that are independent of broader
Soviet ideological and social expectations (Yurchak 123). Each individual is permitted a private
temporality, an impregnable private universe, so long as that world does not interfere with the
entrenched structure of Soviet society as a whole. Vysotskii gained popularity among all strata of
Soviet society by unifying otherwise disparate narratives through personal feelings, which are
nonetheless common among individual private spheres.
Soviet citizens are also adept at functioning beyond the borders of the private sphere.
Ivan the Terrible’s palace is the obverse of this space; it is the space of the most immediate
danger, a highly politicized arena where Ivan’s agents threaten the safety of Bunsha and
Miloslavskii at every turn. However, in spite of Ivan’s confidence that the pair will be beheaded,
they survive by successfully adapting to the environment. According to Yurchak, such adaptation
was a common tool for 1960s and 70s Homo sovieticus, particularly among normal’nye liudi
(normal people) who knew not to privilege the constative dimension of discourse:
Most ritualized acts of authoritative discourse during this time underwent a
transformation. Participating in these acts reproduced oneself as a “normal” Soviet person
within the system of relations, collectivities, and subject positions, with all the constraints
and possibilities that position entailed, even including the possibility, after the meetings,
to engage in interests, pursuits, and meanings that ran against those that were stated in the
resolutions one had voted for. (25)
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Late Soviet subjects knew how to shield themselves and create opportunities for themselves
within the system by means of the formulae of the dominant political discourse. Bunsha and
Miloslavskii exhibit this malleability using not only their speech, but also their physical bodies.
During their chase scene with the not-oprichniks, both Bunsha and Miloslavskii hide from their
pursuers by molding their bodies to fit the environment. This aspect of physical comedy is
especially significant for Gaidai, whose comedy, according to Alexander Prokhorov, “reinvented
the individual human body in his slapstick routines. In his films, he created a zone for the
physical joke, where the body stopped being a representation of Soviet ideology and became a
comic body par excellence. This comic body was anarchic and profane, thus defying the
collective discipline of Soviet ideology” (130). The characters use their control over their own
bodies to escape capture and punishment, to prevent external control and power over these
bodies. The two most notable instances of this tactic are Bunsha’s positioning himself as a mirror
image of a sitting statue and Miloslavskii’s inhabiting the suit of armor. The final and ultimate
performance of this physical act takes place when Bunsha and Miloslavskii become the tsar and
a prince by means of a costume change.
Many of the remainder of Bunsha and Miloslavskii’s adventures in the past revolve
around the use of formulaic language in order to perform the roles that they inhabit. Though
Bunsha’s eventual adaptation is more a result of his small-scale dictatorial inclinations,
Miloslavskii, unburdened by ideological loyalties, takes to this endeavor naturally and
seamlessly, casting himself in the role of Prince Miloslavskii, crafting an official document, and
even sending troops into battle. These performances by Bunsha and Miloslavskii render the not-
oprichniks harmless just long enough for Timofeev to fix his time machine and return the two to
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their proper epoch. The potential dangers of the time are neutralized, and even the police and
doctors in the present are rendered harmless by means of Miloslavskii’s clever disguise.
A complex comingling of temporalities and cultural artifacts makes Gaidai’s adaptation
of Ivan Vasil'evich a substantially more complicated work than it appears. Gaidai’s purposeful
layering of unofficial (banned and underground) Soviet culture enables an exploration of the
mechanisms of Stalinism as they continued to exist in the present day of the Soviet 1970s.
Gaidai’s decision to adapt a Bulgakov play was especially appropriate as the publication and
reception of Bulgakov’s work marked a fundamental shift in Soviet life: “The boisterous, jolly
reformers of the 1960s transformed into loner-hermits, seeking truth in metaphysical models”
(Vail' and Genis 373, my translation). As in Bulgakov’s duology, the world of the film is a
stagnant one and, consequently, encourages a similar response–one of escape over engagement.
However, his characters escape not to the inner world, but to the inner sanctum. Private space
becomes a refuge from totalizing ideologies and their universal temporalities. Though Gaidai
reminds us of the temporal link between late Soviet society and Stalinism, he enables his heroes
to defuse dangerous situations with hyper-normalized language and to avoid them by escaping
into private space. By hiding in one’s place of refuge or in plain sight, by means of camouflage,
characters are able to move tentatively into the future by living in the present. It is in these
pockets of freedom that exist on a plane apart from the universal that man is able to be
reconciled, however briefly, to the world.
Though it subverts Stalinist teleology, this alternative temporality is also limiting. With
the possibility of mass utopia growing ever more distant, the film utilizes embedding not to
topple the dominant temporal schematization, but to avoid it. Timofeev’s apartment is an
embedded universe with its own independent temporality. Though the borders of this space are
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porous, neither inside nor outside has any interest in interpenetration. The opposite of teleology
proves to be as intransigent as teleology itself and private temporality emerges as the only
solution. However, there is a sense that this solution is not all together satisfying. The lyrics of
Vysotskii’s song gesture toward this limitation. Based on an 1857 poem by Apollon Grigor’ev,
the song weaves together several brief personal narratives of lost love and loneliness and ties
them together with a refrain–“Ekh, raz, raz, da eshche raz/ da eshche mnogo mnogo raz” (“Oh,
once, again, and once again/ and many, many, many times”). The refrain’s emphasis on
recurrence indicates that the narrative threads of the song have recurred since the 19
th
century
and will continue to recur in many forms to many individuals. Private space, as it so happens, is
also a space of recurrence. Though retreat into private temporality enables an active engagement
with the present, it sacrifices the future for the sake of that present.
Pushkin and the Paparazzi
Like Ivan Vasil’evich Meniaet Professiiu, Andrei Bitov’s “Fotografiia Pushkina (1799-
2099)” confronts and upends Stalinist teleology and its historical revisionism by way of a
journey back in time. Bitov’s story aims to liberate Pushkin from his indentured servitude – his
work legitimizing Soviet ideology and teleology. The narrative features an attempt by Soviet
power to further subjugate Pushkin by sending Igor Odoevtsev, the story’s protagonist, into the
past to photograph him. However, Pushkin protects his independence, and, consequently, the
independence of history, from Soviet subjugation. Unfortunately, the temporality implied by
Pushkin’s triumph is a no-less oppressive and unyielding block universe,
50
through which man

50
The block universe is one in which all points in time coexist simultaneously, having already “occurred.” Time
does not unfold, we merely proceed through it. A famous example of a novel that creates such a block universe is
Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, in which the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, becomes “unstuck in time.” He does
92

moves, utterly helpless to enact change. This contradiction–that Pushkin is at his most liberated
when time is closed and unchangeable–fits neatly into the mythologized image of a Pushkin who
aligns himself with and embraces fate. Neither history nor temporality can be so easily
subjugated by ideology. Though the author-narrator of the story undermines the intentions of one
oppressive temporality, he replaces it with another. If Pushkin subverts the revisionist impulse of
Soviet teleology, it becomes the task of the author-narrator to overcome the suffocating
inevitability of the temporality that replaces it.
The story consists of a science fiction narrative, describing Igor’s journey to the Pushkin
epoch, framed and punctuated by the author-narrator’s forays into the present moment. In his
present (the year 1985), the author-narrator finds himself struggling to describe the view outside
his window before it moves forward in time and beyond his grasp. Meanwhile, in the future, in
the year 2099, Igor Odoevstev is selected to travel back in time to photograph Pushkin and
record his voice. When he arrives in the past, he takes to stalking Pushkin with the secret
intention of saving him from his death. Time and again, he aims to subvert history and introduce
into it something foreign and each time he fails and is forced to travel further and further back.
His final leap back in time sends him to Petersburg in the year 1824, where he attempts to live a
relatively ordinary life and waits for Pushkin to return. However, during the flood, Igor lives out
the fate of Pushkin’s Evgenii from The Bronze Horseman and is driven mad. Having lived into
the author’s present, Igor is rescued by a team of time travelers from his own era. He is so
haunted by Pushkin and the past that he is committed to a psychiatric institution. The

not move through time in a linear manner, but, rather, jumps from point to point. As all these points already exist,
Billy is able to shuffle among them. The Tralfamadorians, aliens that Billy encounters over the course of his
shuffling, are the only ones who understand Billy, as they can see in four dimensions, perceiving all time as it will
and has happened.
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academicians and officials who sent him on his journey find that his tapes and photographs,
though technically irreproachable, fail to capture Pushkin’s physiognomy. Having completed his
story, the author-narrator returns to life at the present moment of his own time: August 25
th
,
1985.
The story begins and ends in the present, 1985, but Igor’s journey begins in 2099, at the
planning council for an upcoming Pushkin jubilee. If the speeches and aspirations of this jubilee
are any indication, the Soviet establishment of 2099 treats history in a manner not dissimilar
from that of the Soviet 1930s, merging the impulse of Stalinism to treat “the art of the past …
[as] a storehouse of inert things from among which anything that seemed appealing or useful
could be removed at will” (Groys 41) with the technological capabilities of the distant Soviet
future. Not only are the citizens of the future Soviet Union subject to this same impulse, they are
able to make it manifest, transforming the Earth (on which they no longer reside) into a
storehouse for historical relics:
In A Photograph of Pushkin, instead of manipulating, rewriting, modernizing the past in
the modernist fashion, Bitov’s future age (the year 2099) lovingly recreates it - down to
the most minute detail. In its historicizing eclecticism, Bitov’s future resembles the
utopian culture of Stalinism. The past is resurrected within the hic et nunc of the present,
in the guise of monuments and decorations… While the present of 2099 is lived on a
synthetic satellite in space, ‘our old planet Earth’ has been turned into a sanctuary of
cultural memory. (Spieker 483)
The members of the planning council hope to expand upon this storehouse by plundering history
for its raw data, beginning with a photograph of Pushkin. The lack of any photograph of Pushkin
is deemed “an error of time” (“oshibku vremeni”) (Bitov, “Pushkin’s Photograph” 20; Bitov,
94

“Fotografiia Pushkina” 535), the correction of which will subsequently enable the council “to
photograph Pushkin’s entire life with a hidden camera, record his voice” and even to “restore the
whole of former culture down to the tiniest detail”
51
(Bitov, “Pushkin’s Photograph 23). The
council intends to replace the narrative openness of a history defined by memoirs, paintings,
artifacts, and documents – a history defined by its malleability – with one defined by
photography, which can brook no argument: “The name of Photography’s noeme will therefore
be: ‘That-has-been,’ or again: the Intractable” (Barthes 77).
Once firmly ensconced in the past, Igor attempts to photograph Pushkin and to save him
from his death at the hands of d’Anthès; in other words, he aspires to enact revisionism, to
accomplish literally what the 1937 Pushkin jubilee accomplished figuratively. Unfortunately for
Igor, Pushkin subverts the aspirations of the jubilee at every turn; he is unphotographable and his
biography proves to be unchangeable. Igor’s attempts to change the course of history inevitably
end in failure because the time stream through which he travels is closed off and cannot be made
to change its course. As in many time travel stories, the historical past is inclined toward a
conservative self-preservation:
Within time travel paradox stories, the historical past tends to preserve or protect itself,
even to “heal” itself when necessary, but in any case to persist as either what is or what it
was supposed to have been, according to a range of narrative, moral, or aesthetic logics. .
. . Likewise, and presumably not coincidentally, pre-oedipal order along with its
corollaries of unidirectional genealogy and decathected historical consistency, is also

51
“Zasniat’ vsiu zhizn’ Pushkina skrytoi kameroi, zapisat’ ego golos […] My vosstanovim vsiu prezhniuiu kul’turu
do mel’chaishikh podrobnostei” (Bitov, “Fotografiia Pushkina” 538).
95

confirmed or re-established, a tendency that colludes with the conservative stylistic or
generic leanings of popular literature more generally. (Wittenberg 150)
His two personal missions –– introducing Aleksandr Blok’s poetry to Pushkin and saving
Pushkin from his death – are not explicitly oedipal, but represent a tampering with literary
genealogy. Igor’s endeavors bear the potential to create a paradox of influence by bringing
Blok’s poetry to Pushkin’s attention and attempting the figurative murder of Pushkin in his guise
as the literary father by striving to save Pushkin the man. The structure of time does not allow
either of these genealogical diversions; every decision that Igor makes can result only in that
very future from which he was sent. When Igor sends Pushkin Blok’s poems, Pushkin neglects
their presence entirely. When he tries to stop the fateful meeting between Natalya Nikolayevna
and d’Anthès, he is punched by Colonel Lanskoy and so overcome by delirium that he does not
wake up until after Pushkin has perished: “Igor’ ochnulsia cherez dve nedeli, provaliavshis’ na
svoem cherdake v tiazheleishei likhoradke i bespamiatstve. Vyzhil. Vse bylo koncheno. Ne on
brosilsia pod sani, mchavshiesia na duel', ne on vybil pistolet iz ruki Dantesa.”
52
(Bitov,
“Fotografiia Pushkina” 555). Igor is capable of having some effect on Pushkin’s life only when
he is operating within and according to the Pushkin time-line. For instance, it is Igor that inspires
the poet to write “May God grant that I not go mad…” and scares the rabbit into running across
Pushkin’s path. Igor’s successful interventions occur only when he cooperates with time, when
he acts in accordance with history as it has already been written. The implication is that history
has already accounted for Igor. Neither Pushkin nor history are susceptible to the incursions of
outside forces.

52
Igor came to two weeks later, after lying unconscious in his attic with a high fever. He survived. Everything was
over. He had not thrown himself under the runners of the sleigh rushing to the duel, he had not knocked the pistol
out of Dantès’s hand. (Bitov, “Pushkin’s Photograph” 43-44)
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In spite of the limitations of a closed time stream, acquisition of Pushkin’s photograph
should be feasible; assuming it is taken to the year 2099 or beyond, the photograph would not
interfere with the flow of time. However, this task also proves impossible; any photographs taken
of Pushkin are blurred or shadowed over: “No—tol’ko ten’, kak krylo ptitsy, vsparkhivaiushchei
pered ob’ektom, i poluchilas’”
53
(Bitov, “Fotogragiia Pushkina” 569). In avoiding the camera’s
lens, Pushkin maintains his essence, his mystery, his life force. In his essay, “Pushkin, or Truth
and Probability,” Vladimir Nabokov considers and praises the fact that Pushkin perished before
he could be photographed. “To think, if Pushkin had lived another two or three years, we would
have his photograph. Another step and he’d have come out of the darkness – rich with nuance
and full of vivid allusions, where he remains – having firmly entered our lusterless day, which
has already lasted 100 years” (Nabokov 1937; my translation). Written the year of the jubilee,
Nabokov, no doubt disappointed by the Soviet appropriation of Pushkin, asserts the poet’s
freedom from utter subjugation by way of his inextricable greatness and obscurity, both of which
would be undermined by the existence of his photograph.
One can claim, as Barthes does, that “photography never lies…. Impotent with regard to
general ideas (to fiction), its force is nonetheless superior to everything the human mind can or
can have conceived to assure us of reality” (Barthes 87). Such a photography might, contrary to
Nabokov’s opinion, liberate Pushkin from the framing applied to him by State power. However,
in the Soviet context, the photograph is neither universal nor intractable, it is, like history itself,
property of the state, vulnerable to doctoring, another tool in an already substantial arsenal of
temporal manipulations. Photographs do not belong to the people; they do not provide

53
But only a shadow, like the wing of a bird flying up before the lens, came out. (Bitov, “Pushkin’s Photograph”
59).
97

unmediated reproduction of reality; they are another medium for the dissemination of a state-
mandated historical narrative. Consequently, the potential threat of the poet’s photograph is two-
fold: Pushkin’s demythologization, the power of his humanity to reduce the effect of his art, and
the manipulation of his image by State officials in order to achieve their own ends, to create a
definitive Pushkin to suit their needs.
Though Bitov’s Pushkin shares several key features with his canonized version—in
particular, his status as prophet—this Pushkin seems to prioritize the construction of his myth
above all else. The means are the same as those of jubilee culture, but the ends are at odds. His
evasion of Igor’s attempts at interference (and photography) seems so calculated that Igor begins
to fear that his avoidance is deliberate, going so far as to conclude that the Pushkin of earlier
years recognizes the aging Igor from his own impending future: “Pochti dvenadtsat’ let dlitsi eta
pogonia. I ia uzhe ne cobiraius’ ee prekratit’… Tak, znachit, tak, mozhet… Tak on menia UZHE
visel! Vot otchego on vse luchshe raspoznaet menia”
54
(Bitov, “Fotografiia Pushkina” 558).
Igor ascribes to Pushkin the power of foresight and Pushkin’s behavior appears to confirm this
assessment. When he interrogates Igor, having learned that he is from the future, Pushkin’s
questions–“Tak znachit, u vas uzhe est’ bal’zam ot liuboi rany?” and “A chto v vash vek dumaiut
pro roga?”
55
(Bitov, “Fotografiia Pushkina” 553-54)–display not only a shrewd discernment, but
also an uncanny foresight as regards his own fate. Though Pushkin could use the information that
he receives from Igor toward his self-preservation, his actions suggest that he consciously
embraces his fate and the creation of his future myth by avoiding Igor and his life-saving

54
This chase has been going on for almost twelve years. And I’ve already given up trying to put an end to it. . . .
Then, it means, then, perhaps. . . So he has seen me ALREADY! That’s why he keeps recognizing me more easily.
(Bitov, “Pushkin’s Photograph” 47)
55
“Then you already have a balm for any wound?”; “And what do they think about horns in your century?” (Bitov,
“Pushkin’s Photograph” 41)
98

penicillin–his “balm for any wound”—even as Igor seeks him out tirelessly. This Pushkin is a
confederate of time; he embraces not determinism, but destiny. Igor’s hero and adversary closely
resembles the Pushkin described by Igor’s ancestor Lyova Odoevtsev in Bitov’s earlier work
Pushkin House - “Leva postavil [Pushkinu] v zaslugu vysokoe otsutstvie lichnogo, chastnogo
“Ia”, a nalichie lish’ vyshego, obshchechelovecheskogo “Ia”, ctrazhdushchego ispolnit’ svoe
naznachenie na zemle”
56
(Bitov, Pushkinskii Dom 231). Pushkin uses his foresight not to fight
time, but to move with it.
Bitov’s narrative acts to subvert the Soviet politicizing of history, its treatment as a
malleable object, taking issue with the entire notion that history is open to re-emplotment for
ideological ends. Pushkin’s alliance with fate, his insouciant approach to his own death, puts him
at odds with the canonized Soviet variant. He is not a young revolutionary poet, cut down in his
prime by agents of the monarchy, but a poet in the process of writing his narrative in conjunction
with kismet. Though he possesses the same gift of prophesy that the 1937 jubilee ascribed to
him, he does not use it to predict the glorious Socialist future of Russia, rather, he foresees and
sabotages all attempts by the state to bring him into the present, to make of him a contemporary
of Socialism. Pushkin’s interest in the future only extends as far as his own telos. The questions
he puts to Igor about balms and horns illustrate that he is interested in posterity for his own sake;
he is more concerned about how future generations will perceive his authorial myth than the state
of the future itself. Pushkin’s actions undermine the goals and aspirations of both the 1937 and
the 2099 jubilees. However, the temporality evoked by Pushkin is as end-oriented and inflexible

56
Lyova credited [Pushkin] with a lofty absence of the private personal ‘‘I’, and the presence of only a supreme,
universally human ‘I’ thirsting to fulfill its destiny on earth. (Bitov, Pushkin House 227)
99

as the Soviet teleology that he subverts; Pushkin’s actions and Igor’s failed actions evoke a block
universe in which all history has already taken place and cannot be undone by any means.
This is the very same Pushkin whom Igor finds himself stalking, a Pushkin who cannot
be protected or swayed. In part because he did not live to be photographed, the Pushkin we know
today is a myth, not a man, and a myth does not have a human face to photograph. Similarly, a
myth cannot be humanized without becoming an echo of itself; in order to truly portray Pushkin
in his narrative, the author-narrator had to create a more-than-human being. To present a
photographable, conquerable man would have been to portray someone different. Portrayals of
Pushkin are monuments if they are anything at all – monuments are the only thing that can be
constructed out of what was left to us: “Earlier societies managed so that memory, the substitute
for life, was eternal and that at least the thing which spoke Death should itself be immortal: this
was the Monument. But by making the (moral) Photograph into the general and somehow natural
witness of ‘what-has-been,’ modern society has renounced the Monument” (Barthes 93). In his
poem “Exegi Monumentum,” Pushkin proclaims the timelessness of his intangible monument ––
his verse. By refusing to be photographed, Bitov’s Pushkin secures the immortality of this
monument.
In his duel with the politicized Soviet Pushkin myth of the 1937 jubilee, Bitov produces
his own narrative of the Pushkin myth. However, in so doing, Bitov lays bare the device—
illustrates the interchangeability of history and fiction in such a way as to make all histories
questionable, confirming history’s inaccessibility by demonstrating its susceptibility to
manipulation. The Pushkin monument, comprised of his verse and myth, blurs the line between
history and fiction, exposing the madeness of history, its inherent inclination toward narrative.
Bitov evokes and subsequently subverts these acts of manipulation while participating in such an
100

act himself. He questions the official Pushkin narrative by creating an alternative narrative that is
no less spurious if less opportunistic than those created by the 1899 centenary and the 1937
jubilee. Though the Pushkin timeline, seeming definitive by way of Igor’s participation in it,
subverts and undoes Stalinist revisionist historiography, hints in the text highlight the madeness
of this plot. Under the auspices of fate, Bitov’s Pushkin crafts his narrative, creates a history so
sensational that it does not resemble itself. This refers not only to Pushkin’s death, a drama that
has been woven into a variety of fictions, but also the events that seem too fortuitous, too
perfectly orchestrated, to be true. One such event is Pushkin’s encounter with the cart carrying
Griboedov’s body: “Posledniaia vstrecha udalas’ Igoriu v 1829 godu na budushchem
Pushkinskom perevale. On khotel uluchit’ moment, kogda Pushkin vstretit arbu c Griboedovym.
Ego inogda okhvatyvalo comnenie, tak li ono bylo na samom dele: slishkom uzh istoricheskoe
stechenie. Igor’ mnogo teper’ znal pro istoriiu, kakaia ona: ne takaia”
57
(Bitov, “Fotografiia
Pushkina” 557). During this brief encounter, Pushkin became distracted: “no vzgliad iz-pod
shliapy [Pushkina] neozhidanno udlinilsia, budto ustremliaias’ poverkh i vdal’”
58
(Bitov,
“Fotografiia Pushkina” 558). In spite of Igor’s desperate bid to keep the poet’s attention by
presenting him with a coin from 1833 in 1829, Pushkin
“I on pustil konia vskach’. Navstrechu arbe.
Arba—byla”
59
(Bitov, “Fotografiia Pushkina” 558).

57
The last meeting Igor managed was in 1829 at the future Pushkin Pass. He wanted to catch the moment when
Pushkin would meet the bullock cart carrying Griboedov’s body. He had sometimes doubted that it had really
happened like that: it was just too historical a confluence. Igor now knew a lot about history, what it was like – not
like that. (Bitov, “Pushkin’s Photograph” 46)
58
the gaze from under [Pushkin’s] hat suddenly lengthened, as if it were rushing upward and into the distance
(Bitov, “Pushkin’s Photograph” 47).
59
galloped off. Toward the cart.
He had met the cart. (Bitov, “Pushkin’s Photograph” 47)
101

Pushkin seems to anticipate the cart, abandoning his conversation with Igor in order to meet it -
to create a remarkable historical convergence whose symbolic weight is so heavy as to seem
unreal. The intentionality of this action makes it an act of historical creation.
Fiction and history are also conflated in the opposite direction. When Igor travels further
back in time, arriving in St. Petersburg in the year 1824, he settles down to live and to wait for
Pushkin. He makes his home in Kolomna, modeling it after the little house from Pushkin’s as yet
unwritten poem. Yet, it is the story of The Bronze Horseman that becomes Igor’s reality when he
loses his home and his beloved in the great flood:
На месте своего дома он обнаружил пароход огромной величины. На борту его
прилепился листок, вроде объявления. Машинально он отлепил его… Все строчки
были размыты, но какой же автор не узнает лист своей рукописи в лицо! Волны,
ветер, обломки, Кумир с занесенным победным копытом… «Он же сейчас в
Михайловском! Откуда он все знал?..» — в ужасе забормотал Игорь, опять внутри
пронесся ветерок, и будто завернулась фалдочка чьего-то фрака, и вспышки, вроде
молнии, полыхнула перед глазами, в последний раз осветив черную громаду
парохода и размытые строки Игоревой рукописи. Игорь захохотал и побежал,
обезумев, как Евгений, бормоча строки будущей пушкинской поэмы, как
заклинание.
60
(Bitov, “Fotografiia Pushkina” 567- 68)

60
In place of his house he found a steamship of enormous size. A sheet of paper had stuck to its side like an
announcement. Mechanically he pulled it off . . . . All the lines were washed away, but what author doesn’t
recognize a page of his own manuscript when he sees one! The waves, the wind, the fragments, the Idol with the
raised victorious hoof . . . “He’s in Mikhailovskoe now! How did he know all this?” Igor muttered in horror, and
again inside him a breeze seemed to turn up the tail of some frock coat, and a lightning like flash flared up before his
eyes, illuminating the black bulk of the steamship and the washed-away lines of his manuscript for the last time. Igor
burst out laughing and started to run, gone mad like Eugene, muttering lines of Pushkin’s future poem like an
incantation. (Bitov, “Pushkin’s Photograph” 57-58).
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Pushkin’s future verse becomes the reality of Igor’s present; years before “The Bronze
Horseman” is written, Igor lives out its tragic plot; fiction becomes history and the entanglement
of the two triggers the onset of a familiar madness, one that has already been described by
Pushkin time and again. Here the Pushkin narrative becomes all-consuming, retroactively
impacting Igor’s life to conform to its course. Igor is swallowed alive by the Pushkin timeline;
though it is salutary for Pushkin, it is as debilitating and confining for Igor as the teleology of his
own time. No longer able to distinguish between history and fiction, Igor falls victim to madness.
While Igor’s impotence and susceptibility with regard to time drive him mad, the author-
narrator is threatened by a similar impotence. Though he has empowered Pushkin by granting
primacy to the narrative as he creates it, by conserving an inalterable, yet inaccessible history, he
has created a closed time stream against which man is powerless. His protagonist, caught
between the Scylla and Charybdis of two all-consuming temporal structures, cannot help losing
himself as he becomes aware of the overwhelming forces that work against him. Though
Pushkinian temporality locks time in place, maintaining not only Pushkin’s myth, but also the
author’s present and the protagonist’s future, affinities across time tether these periods to each
other. The end of Igor’s narrative arc provides a particularly striking example. Igor, having been
tucked away in a psychiatric facility, “is muttering like Hermann,” another of his Pushkinian
prototypes in madness, while the jubilee proceeds as planned: “Za oknom kosmicheskie
fizkul’turniki v individual’nykh skafandrakh s prozhektorami vo lbu ispolniaiut v
akrobaticheskom polete goriashchuiu tsyfru 300”
61
(Bitov, “Fotografiia Pushkina” 568). While
the world around him celebrates Pushkin, Igor lives out his fiction, transposing the narratives of

61
Outside the window cosmic gymnasts in individual diving suits with searchlights on their foreheads form a
flaming figure 300 in acrobatic flight. (Bitov, “Pushkin’s Photograph” 58)
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the past onto the future world. In addition, the jubilee is itself an act of recurrence – the actions
and aspirations of the 1937 jubilee reemerge and the Stalinist approach to history is taken to its
technological extreme.
Time becomes further wrapped up in itself as the author narrator becomes aware of
similarities between the future and his own time:
Мысли автора и героя начинают пересекаться: прав он про реанимацию…Пусть и
не столь совершена наша техника по сравнению с его будущей, а и я там, в
столице, пусть кривыми, ржавыми да грубыми, но кишками к общей жизни, без
которой мне и дня не прожить, подключен – к батарее, унитазу, телевизору…о
шнуры спотыкаюсь.
62
(Bitov, “Fotografiia Pushkina” 565)
No substantive change occurs between the present and the future and the time stream protects
this lack of progress as assiduously as it protected Pushkin’s life. Bitov, like Bulgakov and
Gaidai before him, has concocted a merely lasting time against which man is utterly helpless. As
Pushkin’s life inevitably ended at his duel, so too does the author-narrator’s time eventually
culminate in a future defined by both conformity and hierarchy:
Мы находим, однако, так много общего в разноцветных лицах, что никак не можем
пока ни на одном остановиться. И правда, далеко не каждый мог бы удостоиться
чести сидеть здесь, лишь избранные. Тем более такой экстренный случай – сессия
на Земле, на которую вообще нужен пропуск, виза (а Петербург, как в наше

62
The thoughts of the author and the hero are beginning to intersect: He’s right about being kept alive. … Maybe
our technology is not quite perfect in comparison with his future technology, but even I back there in the capital am
connected by hoses - admittedly twisted, rusty, and ill-made - to the communal life without which I cannot survive a
day - to the radiator, the toilet, the television. … I trip on the wires. (Bitov, “Pushkin’s Photograph” 55)
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далекое время зал Публичной библиотеки, со спецдопуском): чтобы пройти все
это, нужно скорее совпасть, чем выделиться. Это понятно: земное тяготение теперь
небезопасно в идеологическом отношении.
63
(Bitov, “Fotografiia Pushkina” 536)
Though history repeats itself, it is no clearer, no less muddled than it has ever been; it is at once
locked in place and hidden from view.
According to Sven Spieker, Russian postmodernism returned to history its independence
from individuals and from the state, confirming the existence of historical truth that is as certain
as it is inaccessible: “Where both modernism and Socialist Realism perceive the past as
essentially ahistorical and assume that it may be recreated at will, postmodernism does not share
that viewpoint. Here the past reacquires its historicity. For the postmodernist, history is once
again ‘past’ and, as a result, it may not be viewed in the present” (Spieker, 481). This
inaccessibility is demonstrated by the author’s inability to describe the constantly changing view
outside his window: “Stoilo otvernut’sia eto zapisat’, kak ushla baba, uletela mukha, muzhik na
glazakh skrylsia za stog”
64
(Bitov, “Fotografiia Pushkina” 532). The past is fleeting, each
moment becomes the next with no warning. The same is equally true of the Pushkin epoch.
Igor’s experience back in time conflates fact and fiction to the point of indistinguishability; he
cannot capture one concrete image of Pushkin, returning instead with a series of photographs that
can only hint at the historical truth:

63
We find, however, so much in common. … among the multi-colored faces that so far we are unable to single one
out. And really, not everyone deserves the honor of sitting here, only the select few. Especially on such an
extraordinary occasion - a congress on Earth to which you need a pass, a visa (and Petersburg - as in our distant time
- is the room in the public library that requires a special pass): to get through all this you need rather to blend in than
to stand out. That is understandable: Earth’s gravity is now somewhat dangerous in an ideological sense. (Bitov,
“Pushkin’s Photograph” 21)
64
I only had to turn away to write this down for the peasant woman to go off, the fly to fly away, and the man to
disappear behind a hayrick before my eyes. (Bitov, “Pushkin’s Photograph” 18)
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Поражала, однако, необыкновенная, бессмысленная красота отдельных снимков,
особенно в соотнесении с записями безумного времелетчика: буря,
предшествовавшая облачку, глядя на которое поэту пришла строчка «Последняя
туча рассеянной бури…»; […] замечательный портрет зайца на снегу: в стойке,
уши торчком, передние лапки поджаты; арба, запряженная буйволами, затянутая
брезентом, вокруг гарцующие абреки; рука со свечой и кусок чьей-то бороды;
волны, несущие гробы… и дальше все – вода и волны.
65
(Bitov, “Fotografiia
Pushkina” 569)
Though it subverts the specious revisionism of Stalinist teleology, the block universe
established by Pushkin’s unshakeable myth becomes another despotic temporality that needs to
be undone in order to empower the individual. This is a temporality which reflects the anti-
utopian turn during glasnost’: “we find in many quarters a ‘pathological’ inability to go beyond
an either/ornamentality that denies all forms of utopia and that makes a fetish of anti-utopian
cynicism” (Clowes, Experimental Fiction 31). Ultimately, Edith Clowes asserts that the anti-
utopian compulsion even comes to resemble the oppressiveness of the utopia in the early Soviet
context:
At times, this anti-utopian idée fixe looks merely like the other side of the same coin of a
long-lived Russian utopian cast of mind: the same passion, the same need for enemies,
the same demands made of writers and artists for works with a narrow didactic focus –

65
One was struck, however, by the unusual, senseless beauty of individual shots, especially in relation to the notes
of the insane time traveler: The storm that preceded the cloud that had inspired the poet to write the line “The last
cloud dispersed by the storm…”; […]the portrait of the rabbit in the snow - in a drift, ears erect, front paws folded
under; the cart harnessed to the bullocks covered with tarpaulin with Abreks prancing all around it; the hand with the
candle and a piece of someone’s beard; the waves carrying coffins . . . And all the rest of the shots were of water and
waves. (Bitov, “Pushkin’s Photograph” 59)
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the need for total authority, for “lessons,” for a “moral,” rather than an ability to engage
in dialogue – the same claim to universality, the same teleology, but now directed against
the fallen god of utopia. (Clowes, Experimental Fiction 33)
Though he has undone the inevitability of man’s triumph over time and liberated history from
teleology and its revisionisms, the inevitability of man’s failure in the face of time condemns
mankind to a life of cycles in a time which is no more likely to be diverted from its charted path.
The author-narrator is trapped in this time, pressed between impenetrable past and oppressive
future and tormented by the implacability of both.
In “Pushkin’s Photograph (1799-2099)”, the author-narrator is both inside and outside the
text of his own story. He is its creator and necessarily exists outside of it, describing the process
of writing it, the time that has passed since he began, his sporadic starts and stops. Yet, he
describes himself within the bounds of this universe, suggesting that he and his hero briefly
intersect in time. Each narrative is embedded within the other. Consequently, the author-narrator
creates the object of his own undoing, writes himself into a universe that deprives him of agency,
lodges himself permanently between the past and future. His relationship to writing further
reifies this spatio-temporal impotence; it binds him to past moments, such as the view outside his
window as it was when he began to describe it, and to the future, such as a fast approaching
deadline, the end of his time in the country, and the war that may break out. His plot leaves no
room for unmediated, unfettered moments. That is, until his son enters the fray.
The author-narrator’s son makes several appearances over the course of the narrative and
is, in many ways, the key to the author’s escape. The author-narrator’s son “was born eight years
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after [he] thought up and was about to begin [his] story”
66
(Bitov, “Pushkin’s Photograph” 27)
and it is not until after his son turns eight that he is able to complete it. The author-narrator is
unable to fill in the temporal gaps between the future and the past until after the birth of his son
because there was nothing jerking him into the present; he was helpless, stuck in an unyielding
time stream between Soviet past and Soviet future. It is no coincidence that his son refers to
himself as “the distracter” and is from that point habitually referred to as such. The son’s role is
to draw his father out from within the text he is producing, back into the world in which the text
exists as an embedded universe. By removing his father from his own text, the son breaks up the
infinite regression of narrative within narrative, restoring the hierarchy of worlds; neutralizing
the perils of the inflexible temporality of the embedded universe; and enabling the author-
narrator to experience the open-endedness of the present moment. The present moment, when
experienced free of preoccupation with what came before or what will be, is heavy with
potential. So the author does not end with his hero’s confinement or his failure to produce a
photograph; he ends in the open, unconfined present: “in our own personal time. OUR time
(mine and yours): dawn, August 25, 1985”
67
(Bitov 1989:59). The story liberates history from
ideology and, subsequently, liberates the present moment from both ideology and history.
Life in the Present
Though the two works were produced twelve years apart, emerging in vastly different
political atmospheres, Ivan Vasil’evich Changes Profession and “Pushkin’s Photograph (1799-
2099)” are coping with the same historico-political baggage–Stalinist teleology and the

66
Ostal’noe ia znaiiu: chto podo mnoiu rodilsia moi syn, vosem’ let spustia, kak ia zadumal i bylo nachal imenno
etot rasskaz, a teper’ i synu vosem’. (Bitov, “Fotografiia Pushkina” 541)
67
I obnaruzhivaem sebia, slava bogu, v svoem, v sobstvennom vremeni, nashe vremia (moe i vashe): pod utro 25
avgusta 1985 goda. (Bitov, “Fotografiia Pushkina” 569)
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accompanying appropriation, manipulation, and denial of history. Both works develop
temporalities in opposition to this teleology–Gaidai’s infiltration of the present by works, relics,
and symbols from the past, implies a history whose essence is repetition under a veneer of
change; and Bitov’s creation of a block universe attributes inevitability to all time, rendering
man helpless against the force of a time that has always been. Though they subvert Stalinist
teleology, these alternative temporalities are nonetheless too limiting to be productive. With the
possibility of mass utopia growing ever more distant, the two works utilize embedding not to
subvert the dominant temporal schematization, but to avoid it. Timofeev’s apartment is an
embedded universe with its own independent temporality; though the borders of this space are
porous, neither inside nor outside has any interest in interpenetration. In Bitov’s story, the
overbearing temporality is reduced to the state of an embedded universe as a self-defense
mechanism and the typical order of embedding is reversed–the universal is embedded into the
personal as text in order to protect the private world from its implications. The opposites of
teleology prove to be as intransigent as the thing itself and private temporality emerges as the
only solution. However, there is a sense that this solution is not all together satisfying, requiring
that characters stick their heads in the sand rather than confront or otherwise unsettle the new
time structure. The author-narrator is liberated, but he leaves an entire universe of beings behind,
his institutionalized protagonist foremost among them. Timofeev’s experience suggests that the
way to overcome Stalinism and its remnants is merely to shut the door. These solutions allow
private temporalities to flourish, enable an active engagement with the present, but they also
allow deleterious temporalities to retain their grip on the universal.

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Chapter Three:
Reframing Utopia: Restoring Temporality to Spatiality in the Late Soviet Landscape
Soviet teleology was a temporality whose endpoint was atemporality–the apocalyptic end
of time and escape from history. Its aspiration was utopian stillness, a space outside of time and
resistant to change. Though time rushed forward, it was rushing not toward the infinite, but
toward its own demise. This utopian aspiration defined the Revolutionary period, was coopted by
Stalin, and reemerged during the Thaw. Though the Thaw period was defined by ideological
inconsistencies, more a series of thaws and freezes than a steady and consistent reform, it was
nonetheless a period of resurgent utopian thinking in the ideological and imaginative spheres.
However, with the onset of stagnation, attempts to reanimate the unsustainable utopian visions of
the Revolution lost their vibrancy and sustainability. Alternative spatial configurations–linked to
alternative temporal structures–began to emerge. Though writers of the Thaw tried to revive
revolutionary utopian structures, the writers that followed endeavored to formulate more viable
forms of utopia, forms that did not rely on the dominant political ideology to determine their
structure. Having realized that the utopian narrative, in its Revolutionary incarnation, could
withstand neither the traumas of Stalinism nor the debilitating inertia of stagnation, these writers
started questioning the relationships between center and periphery; town and country; and space
and time which had been firmly established in the preceding decades. As the idea of a grand
utopian telos as the timeless endpoint of a constant progression lost its luster, the idea of what
constitutes a utopian imaginary had to change, to become flexible enough to adapt to
disappointment. This chapter will explore two works that restore temporality to utopia by
establishing the significance of the past to the future, by laying bare the relationship between
memory and possibility - Chingiz Aitmatov’s I dol’she veka dlitsia den’ (The Day Lasts Longer
than a Hundred Years; hereafter Dol’she veka) (1980) and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972).
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These works aspire to create utopian spaces rich with temporality and the possibility of change.
These are spaces that cross boundaries, allowing for an ever more engaged relationality between
mutually acknowledged subjects. Though they are founded on the influence of memory, these
structures aim to transcend the individual, to forge connections and stimulate empathy.
Aimatov’s Dol’she veka is Socialist Realism, village prose, and science fiction all at
once, and yet is also none of these things. The complex spatio-temporal topography the novel
constructs is consistent with its refusal to adhere to a single genre, with its defiance of easy
categorization. Aitmatov does not discard the past or utilize it as fodder for the present or the
future; nor does he insist on our return to this past. The temporality evoked by his work is more
fluid and nuanced – it embraces past (distant and recent), present, and future, insisting on a
symbiotic connection between the three. The spatial terrain is as vast and interconnected as the
temporal. The world of the novel is propped up against two axes – the vertical, spanning from
grave to earth to cosmos, and the horizontal, spanning from center to periphery to a boundary
beyond which it may conjecture, but may not pass. The novel constructs an intricate narrative
space-time, but not for its own sake. The Soviet space-time in which Aitmatov’s hero Edigei
resides is a limited and broken thing, which interferes with human connection. However,
Edigei’s ability to perceive and remember beyond boundaries and the narrator’s ability to
reconcile disparate times and spaces redeem the otherwise desolate socio-cultural landscape.
Though it does not depict a utopian space, the novel is itself a model for utopia.
From Aitmatov, I transition to Tarkovsky’s science fiction masterpiece Solaris (1972)
(keeping in mind the novel upon which the film is based). Though this work predates
Aitmatov’s, the new form of spatiality depicted in this work seems a natural continuation from
the all-encompassing yet ambiguous structure presented in Aitmatov’s work. Though
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Tarkovsky’s film deemphasizes the science fiction elements of Solaris, injecting terrestriality
into Lem’s narrative, whose scope is entirely cosmic, the work is neither a rejection of futurity
nor a fetishization of the past as rural utopian idyll. Solaris bears a unique and incomprehensible
spatiality and relationality; it is both planet and being, both space and consciousness. As a
consciousness, it is able to transcend the boundary between self and other; as a space, it is able to
manifest that transcendence, give substance to its knowledge of the other. The planet so fully
embraces the other that it wraps itself around him in the guise of his self – his own memories.
Solaris can make memories manifest, giving them not only spatial form, but also temporality.
The workings of Solaris are themselves an embodiment of memory’s influence on the world – its
ability to emerge and to be translated into action. With what appears to be the cooperation of
Solaris, protagonist Kris Kelvin is able to return to a facsimile of home that the Ocean of Solaris
produces. Though it is conjured from Kris’s memory, it is not a return to a static past, but to
time’s movement.
While neither of these works could properly be called a utopia, they both confront utopia
and its failed prototypes, reframing utopia according to the experiences and needs of the late
Soviet period. Aitmatov’s novel does not create utopia, except in brief moments and small
spaces, but gestures towards its form. Tarkovsky’s Solaris, on the other hand, takes advantage of
its science fiction genre in its creation of a space that is utopian even as it is uncanny. The works
share an emphasis on the dissolution of boundaries – spatial, temporal, and inter-personal – in
the creation of utopian spaces. This is not to suggest that the spatio-temporal structures
constructed by or hinted at are represented as the only possible forms of salvation for a Soviet
Union mired in a maladaptive topography. Rather, these spaces expose the insufficiency of the
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late Soviet landscape, while asserting the need for a more profound relationality between Soviet
subjects and serving as potential models for change.
Foundations of Utopia
Utopia, as a concept and a genre, is often confronted with accusations of atemporal
spatiality, of divorcing time from space to create frozen time and static space as the foundations
of a more perfect world. It “knows nothing of change. It is constituted by the representation of
the identical, of the ‘same’ of repetitive indifference. There is no going beyond, no
‘supersession,’ because […] utopia is either origin or end” (Marin xxiv). Sir Thomas More’s
Utopia institutes a closed spatial form in order to keep temporality in check: “The internal spatial
ordering of the island strictly regulates a stabilized and unchanging social process. Put crudely,
spatial form controls temporality, an imagined geography controls the possibility of social
changes and history” (Harvey 160). Indeed, More’s island of Utopia is founded on a strict spatial
structure that enforces moral behaviors. Bodies in the utopian space are so restricted in their
movements as to be made incapable of crime, sin, or waste: “You can see now that there is never
any opportunity to waste time or be idle: no wine-bars, ale-houses or brothels; no chances for
seduction, no dark corners or furtive encounters. Being always in the public gaze, it’s inevitable
that they either get on with their customary work or enjoy their leisure in some not unsuitable
manner” (More 73). Utopia is built on restrictive space – on space that has an unyielding
relational configuration; the relationships between centers and peripheries are closely regulated
in terms of distance, labor, and the movement of the bodies that perform that labor. More’s
Utopia exemplifies a tension at the core of utopian texts (from 1516 to the middle of the
twentieth century) – the tension between “a free play of imagination in its indefinite expansion,”
which opens up the potential for the imagining of newer spatial structures that confront the status
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quo with its faults, and “the exactly closed totality rigorously coded by all the constraints and
obligations of the law binding and closing a place with insuperable frontier that would guarantee
its harmonious functioning” (Marin 403). The conceptualization of a new spatial system is
inherently tainted by its own completeness.
However, space cannot exist in a state of complete indifference to time because space is
itself a product of time’s progression. Though the organization of spatial structures, especially
within large politicized entities – cities, nations, empires – dictates social forms and behaviors by
limiting possible actions to a subset that expands and contracts as the space changes, these spatial
structures are not ready-made. Even as they exert control over the bodies that reside within them,
these spatial structures are a product of actions in time. In The Production of Space, Henri
Lefebvre defines social space as follows:
(Social) space is not a thing among other things, nor a product among other products:
rather, it subsumes things produced, and encompasses their interrelationships in their
coexistence and simultaneity – their (relative) order and/or relative disorder. It is the
outcome of a sequence and a set of operations, and thus cannot be reduced to the rank of
a simple object. [ . . . ] Itself the outcome of past actions, social space is what permits
fresh actions to occur, while suggesting others. (73)
According to this definition, space is both limiting and liberating; it reduces the subset of
possible action, but responds to that action, changing and adapting to the shifting relationships
between objects as those objects vary and reconfigure their relationships in response to space.
These changes are not exclusively physical; they are often relational or psychological. The rules
governing space may change even if the physical contents of that space have not. Space is, by
nature, dynamic. It moves with time.
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This inextricability is equally applicable to the space of utopia. Even as he has declared
utopia’s resistance to change, Louis Marin asserts that there are fissures in the utopian text
through which temporality seeps:
Narrative discourse is not completely absent from the utopic text. […] [The] narrative
level subsists with the descriptive itself as traces or pockets that mark […] within the
finished product the hidden processes by which it was produced. The short fragmentary
narratives rip through the picture of representation; they tear holes into the canvas which
displays the figure of the most advantageous government and reveal, within utopia, the
work of utopic practice, its meaning, and its relationship to history and to the social and
historical conditions of its production. (55)
Utopia’s aspiration toward timelessness comes into direct conflict with the nature of spatial
creation. Even utopian space must be produced, must find itself possessed of the burden of a
history. Utopia aspires toward the static end point of this history, of this collection of narratives;
it strives to banish narrative from its space.
The utopian impulse, as it manifested itself during the Revolutionary period in Russia,
struggled with the same internal contradiction: “Imaginative free play is inextricably bound to
the existence of authority and restrictive forms of governance” (Harvey 163). The spatial play
that was inspired by the Revolution carries its own totalitarian baggage. For example, Aleksandr
Bogdanov’s pre-revolutionary utopia Red Star, like its prototypes, consists of a static utopian
landscape, framed by a journey. Yet, its narrative elements undermine its perfection, suggesting
that there is something sinister built into the foundations of utopian societies.
68
Martian society is

68
Mars, as described in Red Star, has a distinctly capitalist fault that is the source of the novel’s only conflict: it is
not a self-sustaining society and must seek a spatial fix. Mars must replenish its fuel reserves by colonizing either
Venus or Earth. The protagonist’s discovery of the (ultimately rejected) plan to conquer Earth prompts him to
murder the architect of that plan and leads to his expulsion from utopia.
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meticulously planned and strictly organized, the planet’s topographical features (or lack thereof)
providing the ideal landscape for a society founded on Communist principles. Like Bogdanov,
the art, literature, and architecture of the revolutionary period aspired to make ideology manifest
and to influence, in turn, the shape that the manifestation would take; diverging visions of the
blueprint of the future Soviet Union arose, each insisting its layout would be most conducive to
the creation of the ideal Soviet social order. For example, “by merging Western technology with
Russian revolutionary notions of cooperation and communalism, O.S.A. [Obshchestvo
Sovremennykh Arkhitektorov] designers hoped to change the texture of life and create the New
Soviet Person. […] It was the perfect example of the fusion of utopia and experiment inspired by
the October Revolution” (Stites 198). The Revolutionary ethos was conducive to the invention of
totalizing structures – structures that sought to reorganize life by strictly defining its social space.
The utopian spaces of the Revolutionary period in Russia are fraught with totalitarian potential.
Stalinism did not so much coopt utopianism for its own authoritarian ends as foreground
the authoritarian undercurrent inherent to utopia. According to Elana Gomel, “a utopian element
had always been a central part of Soviet ideology; and the connection between utopia and
violence had always been structural and not accidental. Stalin’s period is just as utopia oriented
as the previous decade, and just as committed to the creation of the New Man. What changed
was the means not the ends” (Gomel, Narrative Space and Time 126). Stephen Kotkin goes so
far as to claim that “despite the long, vicious political struggle for power, rampant opportunism
and careerism, and the violence and hatred that were unleashed, the USSR under Stalin meant
something hopeful. It stood for a new world power, founded on laudatory ideals, and backed up
by tangible programs and institutions” (358). His case study, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as
Civilization, considers the artificial city of Magnitogorsk as an exemplary Stalinist structure,
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combining within its structure revolutionary utopian elements – a firm belief in the importance of
urban development, communal living, and social welfare – and elements of authoritarian control
– surveillance and repression. “Magnitogorsk, the quintessential emblem of the grand
transformation whereby the Enlightenment goal of using science to perfect society, having been
bonded to the French revolution’s discovery of political mobilization and filtered through
industrialization and the attendant rise of the working class, had become a reality one could
participate in first-hand” (18). However, the presence of the NKVD, ITK (Ispravitelno-trudovaia
Koloniia – Corrective Labor Colony), and the Special Labor Settlement underscore the overt
presence of repressive structures within the framework of the city. These structures, were
“neither hidden nor revealed,” but simply present, proclaiming their role in the work of the city,
the work of building socialism. “The camp joined hands with the city in what might be called
‘architectural eugenics’: the creation of the New Man through the manipulation of the
environment” (Gomel, Narrative Space and Time 129). The term ‘architectural eugenics’ could
just as easily be applied to Utopia and its Revolutionary descendants. Though the impulse to
regard Stalinism as an aberration, a perversion of the utopian striving at the heart of the
Revolution, is most congenial to utopia’s redemption, utopia is by nature conducive to Stalinism.
Though the “ends” remained the same, the differing “means” manifested in divergent
spatial and temporal structures. Vladimir Paperny’s Architecture in the Age of Stalin: Culture
Two (known simply as Kultura dva in Russian) examines precisely these clashing forms as they
emerged in the architecture of the Soviet period. Culture One, referring to the dominant cultural
strain of the Soviet 1920s encompassing, for example, Avant-Garde and Revolutionary culture,
has “a horizontal quality. This means that the values of the periphery become more important
than those of the center.” Whereas, Culture Two, referring, in this case, primarily to the culture
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of High Stalinism, whose range is the 1930s to 1950s, “is characterized by the transfer of values
to the center…. The authorities start showing an interest in architecture both as a practical means
for securing the population and as the spatial expression of a new center-based system of values”
(xxiv). In terms of temporality, while both Cultures claimed orientation toward the future,
proclaimed forward movement, the resulting orientations vis-à-vis the past diverge significantly.
Culture One was intent on severing itself from the past, “[freeing] itself from the ballast that was
interfering with its surge into the future” (15). Culture Two, while asserting progress toward the
future, failed to spark meaningful change; “[movement] became tantamount to immobility, and
the future to eternity” (16). The future, a mere continuation of the present, lost its radiance;
Culture Two turned to the past for cultural development, all the while meticulously historicizing
its own lack of movement (18). Each Culture presents a competing vision of Soviet society, of
the ultimate end point of the Revolution. Culture One is dispersed, chaotic, still in motion toward
socialist utopia, ever striving to bring Revolutionary ethos to ordinary life. Culture Two
represents the strict control of bodies, of objects, of space and of time. As space is conquered and
deliberately structured in order to control its citizens, time also becomes an object of control –
the past is easily plundered for art and culture and rewritten to suit the present. Neither of these
visions has room for detractors. The former aims to destroy all that came before it, the latter co-
opts, distorts, and silences. Both are, nonetheless, visions that aspire to utopia.
Stalinism partakes of and, in fact, illustrates with clarity the contradictory nature of
utopia. However, acknowledging this relationship has resulted in a wholesale rejection of utopia
on the grounds that it is static and gives way to totalitarianism:
The rejection, in recent times, of utopianism rests in part on an acute awareness of its
inner connection to authoritarianism and totalitarianism (More’s Utopia can easily be
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read this way). But rejection of utopianism on such grounds has also had the unfortunate
effect of curbing the free play of the imagination in the search for alternatives.
Confronting this relationship between spatial play and authoritarianism must, therefore,
lie at the heart of any regenerative politics that attempts to resurrect utopian ideals.
(Harvey 163)
If, as Gomel claims, utopias “[swallow up] the contingency and messiness of historical time,”
forcing temporality, which cannot be severed from spatiality, to be “subsumed into the tensions
of the setting,” then utopia’s best chance for redemption is the reintegration of spatiality and
temporality, a rehistoricizing of utopian space in order to create an open utopia. Utopia must be
reformulated as dynamic space, capable not only of controlling bodies, but of adapting to them.
If, as anti-utopias assert, “people are essentially historical in the sense that for them life can have
meaning and action value only if they involve striving on the basis of imperfect knowledge and
in an uncertain world for elusive goals” (Morson 128), then utopia must reintegrate history into
its structure, must incorporate into its framework a capacity for change.
Such open utopias are, according to Darko Suvin, a hallmark of the second half of the
20
th
century:
The return of utopia – first in some Slavic writers of the 1950s ‘thaw’ and then in the
USA during and slightly after the upswing of radical questioning and hopes of the 1960s
– was however, in turn a highly significant refashioning of the tradition of utopian fiction.
It was marked by [a] shift from static to dynamic structure… Utopia as idea of a radically
more perfect life was understood as something to be achieved in a spiral and ongoing
development rather than brought down once and for all from the heavens of dogma, as
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well as something to be accompanied by constant self-critical watchfulness against the
temptation of the arrested moment.” (Suvin, Positions and Presuppositions 83)
The utopian structures that are conceived in the late Soviet era are especially unique to their
place and time. These works respond to and are born of the fraught utopian tradition of the
Soviet Union – Revolutionary and Stalinist utopianism. Early twentieth century utopianism
discarded historicity either through eschatology, as in V. D. Nikolsky’s In a Thousand Years
(1927) wherein “the ultimate collision between capitalist and socialist multinational superpowers
and the defeat of the former must occur in order to usher in the new order” (Stites, Revolutionary
Dreams 176) or the hollowing out and subsequent appropriation of historical content, as in the
appropriation of Pushkin and rehabilitation of Ivan the Terrible discussed it the previous chapter.
In order to imbue utopia with its former potential, late Soviet science fiction had to reformulate
the utopian form by reconciling it to the return of history. If “Culture Two in each of its
manifestations declares itself as the end of history,” (Paperny 31), then what follows its demise is
a rude awakening from utopia – the revelation that history had not, in fact, stopped. In order to
reanimate the possibility of utopia, it would have to be compatible with temporality. The utopian
vision of the Thaw, as it was presented in Khrushchev’s secret speech and during the Twenty-
Second Party Congress, was blighted by similar faults. The promise of future utopia was planned
down to the year Communism would be achieved. Stalinism was disowned and its fraught
connection to that utopia went unacknowledged. This was a utopianism that had not yet
unburdened itself of its authoritarian baggage, of its aspiration toward stasis, its animosity
toward time. In addition, this monolithic vision clashes sharply with its sudden introduction at
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the Twentieth Party Congress and its inconsistent implementation throughout the tumultuous
Thaw period.
69
The 1970s would bear witness to the final passing of that utopian vision:
Khrushchev promised that the generation of the 1960s […] would live in the era of
Communism and conquer the cosmos. As we were growing up it seemed that we would
travel to the moon much sooner than we would go abroad. There was no time for
nostalgia.
The year 1968, when Soviet tanks marched to Prague, was a watershed. By the late 1970s
the revolutionary cosmic mission was forgotten by the Soviet leaders themselves. As the
thaw was followed by stagnation, nostalgia returned. (Boym, Future of Nostalgia 60)
Utopia’s liberation from ideology is a result not only of the consistent undermining of the
utopian narrative of Soviet power under Brezhnev (which walked back Khrushchev’s promises
of future Communism, partially rehabilitated Stalin, and partially re-instated methods of Stalinist
repression), but also a response to what Alexei Yurchak terms the “performative shift” of the late
Soviet period. During this period, Soviet ideology became empty of all content; the texts,
documents, and speeches ceased to have meaning in and of themselves, having come to serve as
performative speech, as acts of participation within Soviet society. In this context, an individual
could produce empty Party rhetoric, not believing in the words being uttered, but maintaining
faith in the larger Communist mission and in their own contributions to that end (Yurchak 24-
26). By way of this shift, determination of the utopian ideal ceased to be concentrated primarily
in the hands of the Party. For the first time, Soviet power relinquished its rights to utopia.

69
Even in 1956, the year of Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” and its intentional dissemination, the Soviet authorities
see-sawed between reform and reaction.
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Among other things, nostalgia emerged to fill that void, creating utopian visions oriented
toward the past rather than the future. In Svetlana Boym’s The Future of Nostalgia, she defines
two forms of nostalgia – restorative and reflective.
Restorative nostalgia puts emphasis on nostos and proposes to rebuild the lost home and
patch up memory gaps. Reflective nostalgia dwells in algia, in longing and loss, the
imperfect process of remembrance…. [Restorative] nostalgia characterizes national and
nationalist revivals all over the world, which engage in antimodern myth-making of
history by means of a return to national symbols and myths and, occasionally, through
swapping conspiracy theories. (41)
Restorative nostalgia is a longing for a utopian moment, frozen in time, which is perceived to
have existed in the past. This is, for example, the nostalgia of village prose, a literary movement,
also emerging in the 1960s and 70s, which set the village, in its pre-collectivized state, as a lost
utopian ideal. Village prose, like science fiction, was a response to a loss of futurity and the lack
of a unifying vision for Communism. Writers seized the empty space where this vision used to
reside and filled it with their own idealized visions. The visions depicted in village prose revere
the past as a golden age – a period during which life was dictated by nature’s cycles, during
which the space of experience and horizon of expectation could be expected to coincide. “The
PAST, MEMORY, NOSTALGIA, and CHILDHOOD are linked by their orientation to TIME.
The sense of time in Village Prose is slow, cyclic, focused mostly on everyday life, and often
directed toward the past” (Parthé 9; capitalization in original). On the other hand, “reflective
nostalgia is more concerned with historical and individual time, with the irrevocability of the
past and human finitude. Re-flection suggests new flexibility, not the reestablishment of stasis.
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The focus here is not on recovery of what is perceived to be an absolute truth but on the
meditation on history and passage of time” (Boym, The Future of Nostalgia 49).
Though both of the works explored by this chapter bear distinct similarities to village
prose – longing for the past, a mourning for the loss of nature, alienation of the city in the case of
Solaris, and the crushing power of the center in Aitmatov – they are works of reflective rather
than restorative nostalgia. The works cherish memory, but not at the expense of futurity or
historicity. Both works value connection over isolation, creating spatial structures that strive to
unite beings across boundaries terrestrial and extra-terrestrial, whereas “village prose emphasizes
that the village is isolated from the rest of the world” (Parthe 6).
These works represent a form of science fiction that transcends the dominant and
competing utopian genres that preceded and accompanied them – Revolutionary utopia and
Socialist Realism; Thaw-era science fiction and village prose. The idea of utopia was reforged by
late Soviet science fiction, by narratives that did not let their attraction to the future sever them
from the past. Each work bears within itself a utopian aspiration, a gesture toward utopia, aimed
at its redefinition. These are metaphors meant to inspire contemplation and attempts at
understanding, to draw us out of ourselves and into the realm of the possible.
Narrative Structure as Utopia
Dol’she veka bears little resemblance to utopia in the traditional sense; its storyworld
feels not only plausible, but familiar, it resembles, in setting and characterization of its
protagonist, works of Socialist Realism and village prose (Clark, Foreword vii). But for the
inclusion of a science fiction plot, which seems to linger on the margins of the central narrative,
it could not be called science fiction at all. Yet, the science fiction plot is essential to the work,
expanding the bounds of Aitmatov’s temporal and spatial planes, evoking a vastness that alters
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our reading of the novel: “The individual lives of minor figures who live on that tiniest speck of
the universe which is that railway junction resonate with the fate of the Kazakhs […], which in
turn resonates with the history of the Soviet Union, the lot of mankind, and the universe itself”
(Clark, Foreword xv). Yet it is not this greater resonance of scale, the universalizing of personal
narrative which represents the most significant lesson of Dol’she veka; it is not enough to come
away from the novel with greater empathy for humanity, with an understanding of the intrinsic
connections between all human beings in the universe. The aim of the novel is not this weak
platitude; it is to build a structure worth emulating. Aitmatov narrativizes the utopian device of
comparison – “Like utopia, SF is in a constant implicit dialogue with the ‘normal’ expectations
of is readers” (Suvin, Positions and Presuppositions 41) – by locating the utopian precisely
against the backdrop of the reader’s environment. The novel’s utopian structure conflicts with its
diegetic world – a world of divisions and forgetfulness, a familiar world.
Dol’she veka features a complex interweaving of past, present, and “future.” The central
narrative describes Edigei’s journey from Borannly-Buranyi to bury his deceased friend
Kazangap in the Ana-Beitt cemetery and the process of recollection that he undertakes
throughout this journey. The primary chain of memories describes the arrival of the Kuttybaev
family – Abutalip, his wife Zaripa, and their two sons – Abutalip’s arrest, the news of his death,
his family’s departure, and his exoneration during the Khrushchev thaw. Kazakh legends also
appear over the course of the novel, diegetically motivated as having been transcribed by
Abutalip in his notebooks. A science fiction subplot makes regular appearances throughout the
text: a Soviet-American space program loses contact with the two cosmonauts aboard its space
station only to find that the two have made contact with a peaceful, highly intelligent alien
species from a planet called Lesnaya Grud’ (Forest Bosom). Though the two cosmonauts urge
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the world powers to consider contact and cooperation with the aliens, they instead choose to
completely cut the Earth off from external contact, launching Operation Iron Hoop, a defense
system that forms a border around the Earth. The narratives cross paths early in the novel, when
Edigei witnesses an unannounced rocket blasting off from the cosmodrome, but collide only at
the end, when construction on the Iron Hoop project results in the barbed wire fence that stands
between Kazangap’s body and its resting place. Edigei learns that the cemetery is inaccessible
and will soon be leveled to meet the demands of the growing cosmodrome. Kazangap is buried
nearby and Edigei decides to return to the fence and insist that the cemetery be spared. Though
the apocalyptic explosions that light up the sky during the launch of Operation Iron Hoop
frighten Edigei, causing him to flee, he nonetheless returns the following day to demand the
protection of Ana-Beitt.
The novel contains an implied, but unobserved utopian narrative—that of the
cosmonaut’s travel to Lesnaya Grud’—but this utopia is shut out beyond the limits of the
narrative by oppressive ideologies that control the world. Utopia is within reach and also beyond
grasp. The two cosmonauts aboard the orbital station are able to cross the boundary into Lesnaya
Grud’, inhabited by peaceful, technologically advanced humanoids, but they are forbidden from
returning. Though Nadia Peterson claims that “the utopia of the alien planet proposes happiness
imposed from outside” and is consequently akin to the mind control described by Sabitzhan
earlier in the novel (54), this reading assumes a more complete alignment between Dol’she veka
and village prose than can be justified. When the world powers refuse to engage with Lesnaya
Grud’ in spite of “the opportunity to exchange experiences and compare civilizations” and the
pleas of the two cosmonauts – “My umoliaev vas vo izbezhanie novoi vspyshki sopernichestva,
bor’by za lozhnyi prioritet reshenie etogo voprosa tol’ko v OON. […] Nam gor'ko i tiazhelo
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dumat’ o takikh veshchakh, nakhodias’ v zapredel’no kosmicheskoi dali, no my zemliane, i my
dostatochno khorosho znaem nravy obitatelei planet Zemlia.”
70
(Aitmatov, Dol’she Veka 118) –
it is a display of unwillingness to engage with the other, to shift from center to periphery at the
expense of happiness for all. Traditional utopian narratives are ineffectual in the face of
ideologies that pay lip service to progress, but are only interested in protecting themselves and
their power structures.
It is not tradition or nature that is being carefully guarded by the decision to avoid contact
with the alien society, but divisions and power centers, limiting boundaries that separate people
from one another. New boundaries are created to entrench pre-existing boundaries. Rather than
build a center for intergalactic cooperation, the joint commission fast tracks Operation Hoop,
“Chrezvychainyi transkosmicheskii rezhim … zaprogramirovav seriiu barradiruiushchikh po
zadannyv orbitam boevykh raket-robotov, rasschiannykh na unichtozhenie iaderno-lazernym
izlucheniev liubykh predmetov, priblizivshikhsia v kosmose k zemnomu sharu”
71
(Aitmatov,
Dol’she Veka 214). The creation of this cosmic borderline results in an insurmountable obstacle
for Egidei. He travels across the desert only to discover that the Ana-Beitt cemetery is located in
a protected zone behind a barbed wire fence – the launch site where preparations for the
initiation of Operation Hoop are under way. These rockets are launched after Kazangap’s burial
as Edigei is returning to the launch site to insist that the cemetery be spared the destruction that
the authorities have planned for it: “Rakety ukhodili v dal’nii kosmos zakladyvat’ vokrug

70
We beg of you to avoid a new outburst of rivalry and struggle for supremacy, and to give the final decision on this
matter over the United Nations. [...] It is bitter and hard to think about such things when we are beyond the confines
of our galaxy, but we are people of earth and we know how things are on our planet. (Aitmatov, The Day Lasts 105)
71
an Extraordinary Transcosmic System…in which is programmed a series of standing patrols of automated military
rockets assigned to certain orbits and intended to destroy by nuclear and laser radiation means any object
approaching the earth from space. (Aitmatov, The Day Lasts 203).
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zemnogo shara postoianno deistvuiushchii kordon, chtoby vse ostalos’ kak est’…”
72
(Aitmatov,
Dol’she Veka 456). The apocalyptic atmosphere in the wake of the launch so terrifies Edigei and
his companions, his camel Karanar and dog Zholbars, that they flee the site and, once more,
Edigei is unable to enter the cemetery, to say his piece to the authorities in charge of the site.
Operation Hoop cuts off access to both the future and the past, the heavens and the grave; it
makes the universe smaller and time narrower and emptier. The simultaneous loss of future and
past signals their inextricability, the reliance of the future on memory.
The science fiction narrative is not included only to be rejected, it is carefully embedded
into the text in order to broaden the scope of the text, to allow the text (and its readers) to escape
the earth’s gravitational pull. The inclusion of this narrative adds a new perspective to the novel –
the view of earth from space:
The NASA satellite image entitled ‘Earth Rise’ depicted the earth as a free-floating globe
in space. It quickly assumed the status of an icon of a new kind of consciousness. But the
geometrical properties of a globe are different from those of a two dimensional map. It
has no natural boundaries save those given by lands and oceans, cloud covers and
vegetation patterns, desert and well-watered regions. Nor does it have any particular
center. (Harvey 13-14)
The cosmonauts aboard the space station Parity see and describe this exact image and sentiment.
Their ability to perceive a world untouched by artificial boundaries allows them to think more
broadly about mankind and the universe:

72
The rockets soared up into deep space to form around the earth a continuously active barrier so that nothing
should change on earth, so that everything should stay as it was… (Aitmatov, The Day Lasts 351)
127

И еще раз последнее. Мы прощаемся. Мы видим через наши иллюминаторы Землю
со стороны. Она сияет как лучезарный бриллиант в черном море пространства.
Земля прекрасна невероятной, невиданной голубизной и отсюда хрупка, как голова
младенца. Нам кажется отсюда, что все люди, которые живут на свете, все они
наши сестры и братья, и без них мы не смеем и мыслить себя, хотя, мы знаем, на
самой Земле это далеко не так…
73
(Aitmatov, Dol’she Veka 71)
The cosmonauts, unlike the earth-bound politicians who dictate their orders, are able to see the
earth as a cohesive whole, to understand the artificiality of the borders that separate them or the
divisions that define life on earth and even the structure of the space program. They are able to
transcend the boundary between east and west. The two cosmonauts, one of whom is Soviet and
the other American, are condensed into a single entity speaking together as “we” or being
referred to as “they” or “the cosmonauts.” The two are never disentangled. They refer to
themselves as “zemliane” (“people of earth”; Aitmatov, Dol’she Veka 118) and they speak on
behalf of the “interesov zemlian” (“the interests of peoples upon earth”) and “chelovecheskogo
obshchestva” (“Man’s society”) (Aitmatov, Dol’she Veka 443). Their perspective is defined not
by nationality or ideology, but by distance. This sets them apart from every other aspect of the
space program.
Demiurgos, the joint Soviet-American space program, is defined by the principle of
Parity in geography and bureaucracy. Its base of operations, the aircraft carrier Convention,
“nakhodilsia v tot chas v otkrytom okeane Iuzhnee Aleutov, na strogo odinakovom rassoianii

73
We say fare well. We can see the earth through our observation windows, shining like an effulgent diamond in the
black sea of space. The earth is beautiful, with an unbelievable blueness unseen elsewhere and looks as delicate as a
child’s head. From out here it seems that all people who live on earth, all of them, are our sisters and brothers and
we dare not think of ourselves without them. . . although we know that on earth things are far from being like that.
(Aitmatov, The Day Lasts 61)
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mezhdu Vladivostokom i San Fransisko. Takoi vybor byl ne sluchaen. Kak nikogka prezhde, na
etot raz so vsei ochevidnost’iu proiavilis’ iznachal’naia prozorlivost’ i predusmotritel’nost’
tvortsov programmy «Demiurg»”
74
(Aitmatov, Dol’she Veka 60). The same formula for
duplication applies to equipment and crew, with each side contributing no more and no less than
the other does. The space station is called Parity as well and the presence of one Soviet and one
American cosmonaut is a reflection of this strict symmetry. This is a highly calculated equality,
based firmly in the division of the two sides rather than their unity and cooperation. Though the
two sides are ideological opposites, they display no functional difference. Just as they provide
the same equipment, they come to the same conclusion and share the same goal—maintenance of
the status quo. This aspect of the novel was considered problematic by Soviet critics (who were
otherwise very laudatory), causing many to either dismiss the science fiction narrative or to
provide unsubstantiated readings of the narrative that faulted the West for the decision to shut
out utopia (Clark, “Mutability” 581-82). However, the narrative provides no evidence for such a
reading, implying instead that the boundary line the two powers use to divide the world is more a
mirror than a wall.
Dol’she veka shows us that space must be continuous, connected, and uninterrupted. A
space that is split by boundaries creates impassable distances between groups and individuals,
determines hierarchies among these divided spaces and the people who inhabit them,
concentrates power behind one side of a fence and vulnerability behind the other. The railroad is
a complicated entity precisely because its role in reinforcing these hierarchies is ambiguous:
“The train itself, traditionally a symbol of the inhuman machine, becomes in the novel a sign of

74
Exactly equidistant by air from Vladivostok and San Francisco. . . . The choice of the aircraft carrier’s position
was no accident. Clarity, sagacity, and foresight had been shown from the very start of the planning and creation of
the Demiurgos programme” (Aitmatov, The Day Lasts 51-52).
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continuity and human contact. Yet, the train is also one of the many symbols of technology
which brings destruction to Aitmatov’s characters” (Peterson 52). The train connects the
peripheral realm of Boranly – Burannyi to the administrative and political centers that assert
control over it. The train brings from the center agents of power – the inspector, who informs on
Abutalip, and Tansykbaev, one of the secret police who interrogates and arrests him. After his
arrest, Abutalip is transported by train:
В тот же день поздно вечером на разъезде Боранлы-Буранный еще раз остановился
пассажирский поезд. Только теперь поезд шел в обратную сторону. И тоже стоял
недолго. Минуты три.
Ожидая впотьмах его подхода, у первого пути стояли те трое в хромовых сапогах,
что забирали с собой Абуталипа Куттыбаева…
75
(Aitmatov, Dol’she Veka 206)
Having been forcibly taken to the center, Abutalip is crushed by its weight and the separation
from his family – he dies before he can be exonerated.
Abutalip’s fate is described in a chapter that could not appear in the earliest publications
of Dol’she veka and was added only in 1990. In this chapter, Abutalip is carted from center to
center – from Alma Ata, where he is tortured and interrogated, to Orenburg, where his
interrogation will continue and from which he will be taken either to the camps or the grave – via
the trains whose movement from East to West and West to East divides the desert and separates
Abutalip from his family. Abutalip’s only moment of reprieve is defined by this separation: as
the train is taking him from Alma Ata to Orenburg, it passes through Boranly-Burranyi and
Abutalip is able to see his family through the window of the passing train. It is a beautiful

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“[A] passenger train stopped once more at Boranly-Burannyi junction. Only this time the train was going in the
opposite direction. It did not stop for long. Three minutes. Once more the three men in chrome leather boots were
standing there by No. 1 track; they were taking Abutalip Kuttybaev away with them” (Aitmatov, The Day Lasts
194).
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fleeting moment, one which the imprisoned Abultaip craves, but which serves to confirm the
thoroughness of his dehumanization and his separation from his family:
[Абуталип] так и не смог оторвать себя от окна, хотя из-за снега глядеть в окно
было уже бессмысленно. Он так и остался прикованным к окну, потрясенный тем,
что, не смирившись с творимой несправедливостью, вынужден был, однако
починиться некой воле, тихо, украдкой проследовать мимо жени и детей, как
безмолвная тварь, ибо к тому принудила его эта сила, лишившая его свободы, и он,
вместо того чтобы спрыгнуть с поезда, объявиться, открыто побежать к
истосковавшейся семье, униженный и жалкий, глядел в окошко, позволил
Тансыкбаеву обращаться с собой, как собакой, которой приказано сидеть в углу и
не двигаться. И чтобы как-то унять себя, Абуталип дал себе слово, которое не
произнес, но понял…
76
(Aitmatov, Dol’she Veka 313-314)
Upon arriving in Orenburg, Abutalip breaks away from his captors and throws himself on the
railroad tracks ahead of a moving train. This excluded chapter is the strongest condemnation of
the spatial configuration of the Soviet Union under Stalin. It is made all the more damning via
the inclusion of the legend “The White Cloud of Genghis Khan” (Aitmatov, Dol’she Veka 270-
273) which asserts the dangers of one man wielding power over many individuals. The train is
here depicted as a means of exerting the will of the power center over that of the individuals that
are subject to it, of subordinating the periphery to the center.

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[Abutalip] could not tear himself away from the window, even though the snow made it pointless to look. He
remained glued to the window, shaken by the fact that, not subdued by the creator’s injustice, he nonetheless needed
to repair? himself to some will, to quietly, furtively, pass by his wife and child, like a mute creature, because the
force that robbed him of his freedom compelled him. And he, rather than jumping from the train, declaring himself,
openly running toward his grieving family, looked through the window, humiliated and pathetic, allowing
Tansykbaev to treat him like a dog, like a dog who has been ordered to sit in a corner and be still. So, in order to
soothe himself, Abutalip made a promise to himself, a promise which he did not utter aloud, but understood. My
translation.
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Though the train is a source of repression and separation, it is also capable of creating
connection and of facilitating the flow of authority from periphery to center. During the late
1920s and early 1930s, “the railway was a key mechanism for the abolition of spatial hierarchies,
overcoming the divide between town and country, work and peasant” (Widdis 224). The railroad
as portrayed by Aitmatov retains this capacity to overcome distance for the sake of the periphery.
For example, the train is a source of liberation for Edigei, Abutalip, and their respective families
when they are able to take a trip to Kumbel’. Here the train opens up an entire world to the two
families, enabling them to escape their lives for a day: “Prosvetleli ikh litsa. Osvobodilis’,
raskovalis’ liudi na kakoe-to vremia khotia by ot postoiannoi ozabochennosti, vnutrennei
podavlennosti”; “Deti, konechno, pritomilis’ k vecheru, no byli dovol’ny ochen’. Povidali mir na
Kumbele…”
77
(Aitmatov, Dol’she Veka 167-68). In addition, it is a railway journey that brings
Edigei to Alma-Ata to exonerate Abutalip in 1956. In contrast to the menacing image of the train
as it stops to take Abutalip away (“Probivaia lobovym svetom tolshchu moroznoi letuchei mgly v
vozdukhe, on grozno nadvigalsia, vyrastaia iz klubov tumana temnoi grokhochushchei massoi”
78

(Aitmatov, Dol’she Veka 207)), the train to Alma-Ata appears to be rushing full-tilt toward a
more hopeful future: “A poezd shel, mchalsia na vsekh parakh po razdol’iu vesennikh sarozekov,
kak by spesha nagnat’ ubegaiushchuiu vpered prozrachnuiu kaimu gorizonta. V mire
sushchestvovali tol’ko dve stikhii – nebo i otkrytaia step’. Oni svetlo coprikasalis’ i vdali, tuda I
rvalsia skoryi poezd”
79
(Aitmatov, Dol’she Veka 416). This train ride exemplifies the potential of

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“Their faces were lit up. They were free for once, unfettered at least for a time from their continual cares and inner
worries”; “By evening, of course, the children were worn out, but very contented. They had seen the world in
Kumbel’” (Aitmatov, The Day Lasts 155-56)
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“With its headlight piercing through the thick, frosty, swirling mist, it came on, a dark, threatening, clattering
mass.” (Aitmatov, The Day Lasts 195)
79
“The train went on its way at full speed across the open spaces of the springtime Sarozek, as if racing to catch up
with the sharp border of the horizon. In this world there seemed only two elements – the sky and the open steppe.
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the railroad to create equal exchange between center and periphery. In this instance, power flows
from a small barely inhabitable railroad junction to the bustling city and its political center – the
Republic’s House of Government that houses its Central Committee. Abutalip is rehabilitated,
Tansykbaev is punished, and the hope that “spravedlivost’ neistrebima na zemle” (“justice
cannot be destroyed on this earth”) is upheld (Aitmatov, Dol’she Veka 426; 322).
The railroad is capable of oppressing and liberating, of dividing and unifying. This
potential is expressed by the novel’s refrain, a description of the trains as the defining
geographical landmark of the Sarozek, a skeleton that defines and shapes the body that surrounds
it:
Поезда в этих краях шли с востока на запад и с запада на восток…
А по сторонам от железной дороги в этих краях лежали великие пустынные
пространства – Сары-Озеки, Серединные земли желтых степей.
В этих краях любые расстояния измерялись применительно к железной дороге, как
от Гринвичского меридиана…
А поезда шли с востока на запад и с запада на восток… (Aitmatov, Dol’she Veka 20)
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In its capacity as skeleton, the railway defines space by cutting across it; it becomes a meridian
that splits the space of the desert in two. Its shuttling, East to West and West to East, the steady
motion of trains in both directions, is constant, but uncertain. It is a motion that is capable of
bringing authority and departing with prisoners or transmitting injustice and receiving

They touched in a bright line in the distance, and it was thither the express train was racing” (Aitmatov, The Day
Lasts 313).
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Trains in these parts went from East to West, and from West to East . . .
On either side of the railway lines lay the great wide spaces of the desert – Sary-Ozeki, the middle lands of the
yellow steppes.
In these parts any distance was measured in relation to the railway, as if from the Greenwich meridian . . .
And the trains went from East to West, and from West to East . . . (Aitmatov, The Day Lasts 12)
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vindication. In its more hopeful depiction, the railroad is less skeletal and more circulatory, it
becomes a living, flowing bloodstream, facilitating an unobstructed flow between disparate
spaces.
Occasionally, the refrain is altered; in particular, the last two lines are removed as if to
imply that the railroad is, in one instance or another, more arterial than skeletal. The penultimate
instance of this refrain features all four lines and separates Edigei’s return from Alma-Ata and
his encounter with guard commander Tansykbaev, his impasse at the gate of the launch site. The
meridian, the artificial boundary and its presence in the refrain implies another shift from 1956 to
the present – a loss of the reciprocal action present in the memory, an increased concentration of
power in select areas to the detriment of others. The Tansykbaev who arrested Abutalip was
disciplined, but in the present, another Tansykbaev has risen to take his place. Many of the gains
made in 1956 have been lost. However, the final iteration of this refrain eliminates the final two
lines and restores hope in connectedness. The train tracks that cut across Sary-Ozeki at the end of
the novel endeavor to unite a vast space. When Edigei’s daughters return to Boranly-Burannyi,
“pomianut’, zasvidetel’stvovat’ svoiu skorb’…, a zaodno i pogostit’ denek-drugoi i roditelei”
(“to remember, to express their sorrow and, at the same time, to spend a day or two with their
parents”), they find that their father has gone to Letter Box, the town built around the
cosmodrome, “k nazhal’stvu tamoshnemu” (“to see the man in charge there”) (Aitmatov,
Dol’she Veka 457; 352). We learn that Edigei, though he had fled from the launch site, will not
be deterred, that he will continue to insist the Ana-Beitt cemetery be spared, that men like him
will not allow the past to be destroyed, will fight to remove barriers, and, most importantly,
continue to remember.
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In Dol’she veka, memory creates the possibility for the future to be built on the past. To
refuse to remember is to cut oneself off from future possibilities, to become mired in the present.
A man with no memory of the past is a “mankurt” – a slave deprived of his memory: “Mankurt
ne znal, kto on, otkuda rodom-plemenem, ne vedal svoego imeni, ne pomnil detstva, ottsa i
materi – odnim slovom, mankurt ne osoznaval sebia chelovecheskim sushchestvom. […] On byl
raznoznachen beslovesnoi tvari i potomu absoliutno pokoren i bezopasen”
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(Aitmatov, Dol’she
Veka 139-140). The mankurt has no conception of either past or future, living only to survive,
unable to seek change, to hope or wish for more. Without memory, the space of experience, there
can be no horizon of expectation. Sabitzhan, the over-educated and ungrateful son of the late
Kazangap, reveals himself to be a mankurt. He does not value his father’s memory or the town
where he was raised, returning to bury his father merely as a matter of propriety. He stoops
before power, valuing bureaucracy and hierarchy over the intrinsic value of the past, refusing
even to speak to guard commander Tansykbaev or to return with Edigei to plead against the
leveling of Ana-Beitt, a cemetery where a mankurt killed his mother, Naiman-Ana, out of fear
and obedience to his masters. His vision of the future – “A nastupit vremia, kogda s pomoshch’iu
radio budut upravliat’ liud’mi, kak temi avtomatami”– is one of mass mankurtization of the
Soviet people “iz vyshikh interesov”
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(Aitmatov, Dol’she Veka 54), an eager acquiescence to
enslavement. Edigei’s daughters are foils for Sabitzhan; they belong to the next generation and
have moved beyond Boranly-Burannyi, but have not lost connection to the place or their
memory. They come back precisely to remember. Their example, brief though it is, demonstrates

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“The mankurt did not know who he had been, whence and from what tribe he had come, did not know his name,
could not remember his childhood, father or mother – in short, he could not recognize himself as a human being.
[…] He was the equivalent of a dumb animal and therefore absolutely obedient and safe” (Aitmatov, The Day Lasts
126).
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The time will come when it will be possible to control people directly by radio, like any other automated
systems…in the best interests. (Aitmatov, The Day Lasts 45)
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that a viable future must be built on the past – the son (or, as in this instance, daughters) must
remember the father when he ventures forth into the future.
This hopeful ending is, unfortunately, an artificial one, added by Aitmatov in order to
“smooth over the negative conclusion” – Edigei’s flight from the site of the cosmodrome upon
witnessing the apocalyptic launch of Operation Hoop (Mozur FN18). The original ending
presented its readers not with a shimmering example, but with a warning and a challenge: “most
of Aitmatov’s works end tragically….Defying Socialist Realism’s demand that a work of art
have an underlying positive orientation, Aitmatov leads his readers through a series of tragic
events that culminate in a powerful feeling of catharsis. His hope is openly didactic: the readers
will resolve to better themselves and society” (Mozur 9). The novel’s end presents the readers
with a rather hopeless representation of the late Soviet landscape; with Edigei’s terrified flight
from the launch of Operation Iron Hoop, the cemetery will doubtless be destroyed and the
boundary between earth and cosmos and between man and his history will be built while voices
from past and future cry out for connection and recollection without being heard. The
relationship between memory and the future is laid bare by their sudden simultaneous loss at the
end of the novel: the two must be retrieved and reconciled before either of them can be salvaged
alone.
In order to be reconciled to the possibilities of the future, memory must be extricated
from unadulterated restorative nostalgia, from the desire to live in the past. Aitmatov’s narrative,
by conflating past and future in a single location and casting them both off with one action,
illustrates the inextricability of the two. Yet it is not simply that the future must be contingent on
the past or that history provides humanity with lessons for the future. The pull of the future and
the traces of the past must both be tugging at the present moment, giving it nuance and
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expanding the field of possibilities. The temporal structure of Dol’she veka reflects this ideal,
interweaving legend, memory, action, and science fiction, foregrounding the parallels and
interrelationships between them; the novel presents a folding of the past into the present that
does not immediately dissociate it from the future.
The temporal and spatial spheres of the novel are also merged. The past and future are
each embodied in spatial forms. The Ana-Beitt cemetery spatializes memory in its purpose and
history – it is a space whose aim is to memorialize the dead and the act of remembering itself.
The cosmos is a space that represents the future – its openness and possibilities. The launch of
operation Iron Hoop represents a loss of both memory and the future: “The attempt to cut the
Earth off from all external influence is portrayed by the author as tantamount to placing a shiri
around the planet” (Mozur 108). The destruction of the cemetery in order to facilitate this
procedure is an act of willful, self-imposed amnesia, which creates barriers between men and
limits the range of possible futures. Amnesia enables hegemony over space – Soviet mankurt
Sabitzhan will not challenge Tansykbaev, will not question the barrier or challenge the
relationship between center and periphery. The antidote to the planned destruction of Ana-Beitt
is Kazangap’s burial in a new location and Edigei’s insistence that the young men in his
company bury him there as well. Memory creates a new cemetery, a new space.
Confronting Utopia
The relationship between the space of our world and the world of our memories is
explored by Aitmatov and laid bare by Tarkovsky. Solaris, as Tarkovsky depicts it, literalizes the
relationship between present and past, between space and memory. Under the influence of
Solaris, Koselleck’s “space of experience” is actualized, becoming manifest in space and even
transforming the planet itself into such a space. More than a space, the planet is a being. As a
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being it is able to transcend the boundaries of the body that separate the world of memory from
the world of action. Solaris is able to penetrate the unconscious, to access the deepest memories
of its objects. Transported to the world of action, the memories are imbued with temporality and
the capacity for change beyond the limits of the memories themselves, indicating that nostalgic
utopias must be temporal in order to avoid the stifling possibility of stagnation.
Solaris, the novel written by Stanislaw Lem in 1961, follows the thoughts,
“experiments,” and changes in Kris Kelvin, a scientist sent to the Solaris space station to conduct
research on the mysterious planet. He quickly discovers that all three of the crew members are
haunted by “guests” – physical manifestations of figures pulled from each crew member’s
subconscious mind – when he awakens to find his late wife Hari in his room. After he disposes
of this first guest by launching her into space, another soon appears. As Kris learns and discovers
more about the capabilities of the mysterious planet, Hari learns more about herself, realizing
that she is the copy of a deceased original. Eventually, a fully self-aware Hari willing participates
in her own demise. Kris, on the verge of returning to Earth, explores the planet, still seeking
contact with an irreconcilable otherness.
Tarkovsky’s 1972 adaptation of Lem’s novel frames this extraterrestrial narrative with an
earthly one. The film begins at the rural home of Kris’s aging father where the audience is given
to understand that Kris’s decision to travel to Solaris means he will never see his father again.
The film ends at this same location; Kris is reunited with his father, dropping to his knees before
him. The perspective of the camera zooms out to reveal that this is taking place on Solaris, which
has sprouted islands of memory in response to Kris’s encephalogram, transmitted to the planet
from the station. Solaris has proven itself capable of grasping its other.
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Solaris is able to transcend the boundary between self and other. Somehow, it can reach
into the memory of its object and emerge with physical embodiments of its deepest subconscious
thoughts, producing an undesired “guest”—an embodied specter from the past—for each crew
member. It knows its objects better than they know themselves, readily accessing thoughts that
had long been inaccessible to the conscious mind. The Ocean’s manifestation of Kris’s deceased
wife Hari is an embodiment of this transcendence:
Lem sets out to interrupt both the unidirectional gaze of the scientists and the narrative
gaze of Kelvin by returning it with the impenetrable, unknowable alien gaze of the
Ocean’s creation, [Hari]…. Lem inscribes in [Hari] the power to confuse subject/object
boundaries and offers the possibility that the scientists might realize fuller versions of
themselves by learning to occupy both subject and object positons simultaneously.
(Weinstone 180)
Hari not only manifests the Ocean’s ability to bypass the physical barriers between itself and the
scientists studying it, she challenges the scientists’ understanding of who or what possesses a
subjectivity. She and the planet that created her both display signs of subjectivity, of
consciousness. Efforts to study them as mere objects are doomed to failure because they are not
governed by concrete, observable laws.
Solaris remains obscure and unknowable to the scientists whose purpose is to study it:
“Solaris is pure novum. It has no significant qualities other than its newness and difference. Yet,
precisely because it cannot be assimilated into human history … it represents a void into which
all human hypotheses fall. Its discovery is pure negative apocalypse” (Csicsery-Ronay Jr. 68).
Though Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr. is here referring to Lem’s Solaris, Tarkovsky’s Solaris is no
more readily demystified. Though the crew members are able to uncover the means by which
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Solaris creates the “guests” – control over neutrino fields – the planet’s intentions – whether or
not there are any intentions or a consciousness capable of intent – remain obscure to them. Their
attempts to ascribe benevolence or malevolence to Solaris reflect a complete gap in
understanding, an inability to translate the messages that it sends them:
Humans reconcile shadowed fragments that haunt memory and mechanically reified
images within a linear, coherent model of reality. However, the sentient Solaris planet
does not share such a rigid episteme, and contact is based upon reproduction of disjointed
fragments and shameful memories that roam the human unconscious….The problem
would therefore appear to be one of language, meaning and translation. (Slevin 58)
Solaris challenges the scientists to expand the boundaries of their thinking, to engage with the
planet on its own terms, as it engages with them. It exposes the limits of memory and the self by
way of its own capacity to cross these boundaries.
Though the scientists’ goal is to study and develop an understanding of the planet, Solaris
flips the script and, in the process, exposes the impossibility of knowing the other when fenced in
by one’s own consciousness, by the limits of experience on imagination. Lem’s novel concludes
with a reentrenching of the impossibility of contact, of understanding between two
fundamentally different beings. Though Solaris ends with Kris exploring Solaris, it is a Solaris
that he cannot understand and with which he is unable to connect. However, Tarkovsky’s film
ends with an instance of unidirectional contact – Kelvin is able to transmit his desire for a return
to earthly existence to the planet and, in its creation of an island occupied by people and places
from Kris’s memory, the planet would seem to be indicating its understanding. Solaris merges
itself with the other, contorting its own substance to conform to the memories of the other,
becoming his dwelling place. This ending is part of the anthropocentric frame that Tarkovsky
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applies to Solaris: “Thus the initial metaphor’s intention is switched from the external
impossibility of contact to the internal actuality of contact: two completely detached minds, that
of the astronaut and that of the Ocean in Lem’s novel, are contrasted in Tarkovsky’s film with
Chris’s mental images being imitated by the Ocean” (Skakov 97). Kris is able to transmit his
thoughts to the Ocean, but he understands only that he is understood. Kris remains no closer to
an implicit understanding of this place that has so fully come to know him. Unlike mankind,
Solaris is not confined by the boundaries that limit humanity’s capacity for understanding and
imagination – the boundaries between self and other, matter and memory.
By making matter of memory, Solaris literalizes Henri Bergson’s conception of the
relationship between the body and the spirit.
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The relationship between the two is at the core of
Bergson’s exploration of perception and its contact with the world of action – of matter and of
the body – and the world of spirit – of memory:
The problem is no less than the union of soul and body. It comes before us clearly and
with urgency because we make a profound distinction between matter and spirit…. It is
in very truth within matter that perception places us, and it is really into spirit that we
penetrate by means of memory. But on the other hand, while introspection reveals to us
the distinction between matter and spirit, it also bears witness to their union. (Bergson,
180)
Though Bergson describes these two realms as being distinct, the world of pure memory divided
from that of pure perception, interaction with the world requires the activation of both realms,

83
Though there is no evidence to suggest that Tarkovsky ever read Bergson, many scholars have remarked upon
affinities between the two and have suggested that Tarkovsky may have picked up some Bergsonian influence
second-hand. In particular, Donato Totaro has written consistently on the topic. Gilles Deleuze also explores
Tarkovsky’s films through a Bergonsian lens in his Cinema 2. For more information on the Bergsonian in
Tarkovsky’s films, see: Totaro, “Time and the Film Aesthetics of Andrei Tarkovsky”; Deleuze, Cinema 2.

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requires an ephemeral connection between the two. Solaris disintegrates the boundary line
between matter and memory and lays bare the connection between them – the inherent spatiality
of memory and vice-versa. The planet-being engages unmediated memory, memory which has
not been obscured by consciousness. It is no coincide that Solaris brings forth “guests” when the
crew members are sleeping. The world of dream is also that of pure memory: “But, if almost the
whole of our past is hidden from us because it is inhibited by the necessities of present action, it
will find strength to cross the threshold of consciousness in all cases where we renounce the
interests of effective action to replace ourselves, so to speak, in the life of dreams. Sleep, natural
or artificial, brings about an indifference of just this kind.”(Bergson 154) Though sleep permits
unmediated access to memory, this memory remains past; it is the act of recollection that
translates memory into the possibility of action, into perceptible changes in the world of matter.
Solaris imitates the act of recollection by transforming the virtual into the actual. By revealing
the inseparability of memory and time in the acts of recollection and perception, Solaris provides
an implicit critique of utopian forms—Communist and Nostalgic—that endeavor to do away
with time.
Tarkovsky’s Solaris is deeply anti-teleological, clashing with much of the science fiction
of the preceding decade and, to an extent, with Lem’s original text. As discussed in Chapter 1,
the rhetoric of the Thaw and the science fiction that reflected it, aspired to efface the traumatic
past by escaping into the future and into the cosmos, the future’s spatial representation. Both the
novel and the film expose the impossibility of this escape, revealing that, as Hannah Arendt has
explained, space travel cannot shake its own essential anthoropocentrism:
The astronaut, shot into outerspace and imprisoned in his instrument-ridden capsule
where each physical encounter with his surroundings would spell immediate death, might
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well be taken as the symbolic incarnation of Heisenberg’s man – the man who will be the
less likely ever to meet anything but himself and man-made things the more ardently he
wishes to eliminate all anthropocentric considerations from his encounter with the non-
human world around him. (Arendt, Between Past 277)
Lem’s Solaris takes up precisely this problem of man’s inability to properly engage the
mysterious world of the cosmos as a result of the significant man-made baggage that surrounds
him; it bemoans the limitedness of humanity, its reduced ability to understand anything beyond
itself. “For Lem, Earth remains a visually abstract point of reference, it shapes the human
capacity to comprehend, and this is perceived as an obstacle” (Skakov 80). However, Arendt
does not take issue exclusively with man’s inability to engage the otherness of the cosmos; she is
equally concerned with his complete detachment from the Earth – the place that imbues man
with humanity – and his dwelling ever more completely in a world of his own creation: “The
most radical change in the human condition we can imagine would be an emigration of men from
the earth to some other planet. Such an event would imply that man would have to live under
man-made conditions, radically different from those the earth offers him” (Arendt, Human
Condition 10). It is this concern that Tarkovsky engages in his Solaris. For Kris, the desire to
break free from the Earth is bound up with a desire to extricate oneself from the past. Before his
departure, Kris “symbolically burn[s] his past” (Slevin 58) by setting fire to old photographs.
However, he is unable to dispose of his entire past, bringing with him videos and photographs.
Solaris’s “guests” are reminders that man cannot be severed from his past, that memory will
continue to arise and take shape in the present. Tarkovsky presents the cosmos as a space from
which one can easily view and reflect on the Earth, work through our relationship to it, our
seemingly contradictory desire and inability to move beyond it. The film aims to reconcile these
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competing pulls – to reconcile the thirst for contact with the other and the inclination to seek and
re-create the comfortable and the familiar. The view of Solaris as mock Earth becomes a focal
point for this attempted reconciliation – representing both progress and nostalgia, future and past.
Tarkovsky’s Solaris, like Dol’she Veka, confirms not only the impossibility of escape,
but also its undesirability—the importance of remembering and working through the past. Kris’s
desire to break free from Earth and from the past is foiled by the extra-terrestrial being itself. His
journey into the cosmos leads him deeper into his own self, back into the past of his memories.
Kris’s willingness to engage this past rather than distance himself from it is a sign of his
increasing humanity. His foil is, of course, Sartorius, whose detached, inhumane treatment of his
“guests” in the name of scientific truth is indicative of his inability to relate to the other.
“Tarkovsky’s Solaris suggests the reason for such continuous development, such reaching and
yearning for teleological development regardless of cost, is related to the inherent failings within
humanity, a blind refusal to confront itself in the desire for progress. The past contains trauma
for us all, yet we falsely imagine a future independent of the past” (Slevin 57). Sartorius strips
the “guests” of their earthly significance, avoiding any confrontation with his conscience, with
his past. Though he repeatedly confronts Hari with her own inhumanity, it is he who becomes
inhuman. His stubborn dedication to the telos of scientific objectivity represents a refusal to
allow for change resulting only in stasis, in a cycle of destruction and rebirth. It is Kris who, in
Hari’s own words, “acts humanely in an inhuman situation,” who, because he engages with his
past, is able to evoke change. Though Sartorius conceives of a means to disintegrate the
neutrino-based specters, Kris’s encephalogram halts their reappearance on the space station.
Kris’s memories radically alter the space of Solaris by way of his encephalogram. At the
end of the film, we see Kris, returned to his childhood home and to the welcoming embrace of
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his father. Memory and dream are spatialized, facilitating Kris’s return to a home that we were
given to believe he had left behind forever. This home, already a surreal and impossible
landscape, takes on an even more uncanny pallor when it is revealed to be neither artifact,
memory, nor dream, but a newly formed island on Solaris’s surface. Solaris comes to mirror
Earth, its strangeness capable of producing familiarity, of reflecting nostalgia: “[Tarkovsky] aims
to obliterate the all-too-powerful presence of science fiction – a genre that includes a conquest of
space in its pure form – by restoring the terrestrial referent. However, this referent is of a
different order, since it has already experienced the alienation of space; it is not a mere
homecoming, but a dreaming about homecoming which is powerfully depicted at the end of
Solaris” (Skakov, 98). As Snaut proclaims in both film and novel alike, man wants only to
extend the Earth as far as its borders will allow. Man is seeking not other worlds, which he does
not need, but mirrors (Lem 72; Tarkovsky). Tarkovsky makes of Solaris’s surface just such a
mirror; his parting shot is of a Solaris transformed, resembling an uncanny mirror-image of
Earth. Compared to previous shots of Solaris (Figures 1-2), the last image of Solaris’s ocean that
we see is the one in which it most closely resembles earth (Figure 3). It is not only the presence
of the island, the only land mass that we see on Solaris, but the use of less alien colors that
evokes a more Earthly image. The view of Solaris from space does not bring us any closer to
Solaris, rather it allows us to see ourselves and our own nostalgia more clearly.
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Figure 1: Ocean of Solaris (Spiral Movements)

Figure 2: Ocean and Sky

Figure 3: Parting Shot (Solaris as Earth)

Perhaps it is significant that the novel Solaris was written after Sputnik, but before the
image known as “Earthrise” appeared. The film was released after Earthrise and its echoes
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manifest throughout the film and, in particular, in its final shot. Here, rather than unifying Earth
by deconstructing its geopolitical topography, as it does in Aitmatov, the image serves to
emphasize the Earth’s spiritual gravity, its psychic pull. However, as is quite clear, Kris is
dwelling among his own memories, utterly cut off from the world of the “real” that exists on the
station and on Earth. The film’s parting question is whether or not this space can also be said to
be ‘real’ or if it is a purely virtual world
84
, forged from nostalgia for what can never be again.
Though the film evokes nostalgia and would seem to recreate the past, the past becomes
more real than virtual when it is imbued with time. The terrestrial framing of the film—its idyllic
representation of the natural setting, especially when juxtaposed with the alienation of the future
city and the space station—inevitably evokes comparisons with the village prose movement. It
would appear that Tarkovsky’s ending creates a utopia of restorative nostalgia, that the film’s
final scene represents the longed-for return to the idealized past. However, in spite of the literal
restoration of Kris’s past, which facilitates a return to his terrestrial home and his father, the film
is a work of reflective, rather than restorative nostalgia. Restorative nostalgic relates to the past
as “a perfect snapshot,” a fossil frozen in amber (Boym 49). The past becomes space deprived of
temporality – a utopian structure where time must stop in order to perpetuate paradise. However,
there is no static past in Solaris; time is, after all, Tarkovsky’s medium and it fills every object
on the screen with energy. Even artifacts of the past are imbued with varying temporalities,

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The following analysis will rely heavily on the concepts of the actual image and the virtual image as they are
deployed by Giles Deleuze in Cinema 2. He describes cinema as the interchangeability of the actual image and its
memory or representation—its virtual image: “We have seen how, on the broader trajectories, perception and
recollection, the real and the imaginary, the physical and the mental, or rather their images, continually followed
each other, running behind each other and referring back to each other around a point of indiscernibility. But this
point of indiscernibility is precisely constituted by the smallest circle, that is, the coalescence of the actual image
and the virtual image, the image with two sides, actual and virtual at the same time” (69). Though Deleuze briefly
considers Solaris in his analysis—“Are we to believe that the soft planet Solaris gives a reply, and that it will
reconcile the ocean and thought, the environment and the seed[…]? Solaris does not open up this optimism”(75)—I
expand upon and respond to his brief discussion.
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creating new images and new selves. Though they remain physically unchanged, photographs,
videos, and other media are tangled up in the web of memory, dream, thought and action –
meaning and interpretations change even as images are frozen in time. Even static objects take
on temporality as the camera creates a sense of movement within them. Bruegel’s The Hunters in
the Snow, for example, as shown in the film, is imbued with movement by the steady transition
of close-ups and slow panning across portions of the painting; the “music” that plays over the
sequence evokes progression by layering sounds one on top of the other. The camera replicates
Hari’s gaze as she stares at the painting, ascribing narrative to its whole as she gazes among its
parts. These parts take on an additional temporal dimension when they become bound up with
Kris’s childhood in Hari’s mind. The sequence lasts nearly two minutes before cutting to a brief
shot of the young Kris in the snow; as soon as he turns around to face the camera, the sequence
comes to an abrupt close, returning to the image from which it began, Hari’s face, silent and
nearly expressionless. Her face also has changed since the sequence began – a tear has formed
and glistens in her left eye. Described by Jeremy Mark Robinson as, “one of the few instances of
Hollywood montage in Andrei Tarkovsky’s cinema” (386), the sequence nonetheless creates the
sense that events are occurring “one … after another” (142), that a progression is unfolding
across time rather than the portrayal of simultaneous action in one instant.
The Hari created by Solaris represents just such an attribution of temporality to memory,
to the static object. The last scene of Part I of Solaris depicts Hari’s mysterious resurrection.
When Kris awakens, she is already in his room. She discovers a photograph of the original Hari
among Kris’s belongings. She and the photograph look exactly alike, as though she were brought
forth explicitly from this representation of the ‘real’ Hari. It is not until she sees herself in the
mirror that Hari is able to recognize herself in this image. This image creates a triangle of
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virtuality, a virtual image confronts two virtual representations of herself. Yet each of these
representations depicts a different image of Hari: the photograph – a still, timeless image, a
remembrance of the living woman and of her death - the “guest” herself – a physical
embodiment of the deceased Hari, cobbled together from Kris’s memory – and the mirror image,
a reflection of the virtual image, furthest removed from the original who no longer exists.
Though the photograph is the closest to the original in its representational proximity, “the
photographic Hari does not possess the truth of living, since the photograph is a spatial object
rather than a temporal subject” (Slevin 60). The juxtaposition of the three virtual images
instigates Hari’s first spark of selfhood – she recognizes herself in the mirror and then in the
photograph, developing an image of herself, of how she exists in the world.
As the virtual Hari acquires temporality, she gradually distinguishes herself from her
original—becoming a distinct being, capable of independent action and thought. As Hari changes
throughout the film, she becomes both more and less like the original, gradually remembering
her prior relationship with Kris, yet coming into her own as a subject distinct from her original
and unbound from her creator. In her language, she sometimes does and sometimes does not
distinguish between the original Hari and herself, even as she becomes aware of and confronts
the nature of her existence. Having learned of her virtuality, Hari questions Kris about their
relationship, about Hari’s death. She asks him if he loved anyone else, if he remembered her
(Obo mne ty pomnil?) here conflating herself and the original. However, when her questions turn
to the fate of the original Hari, she becomes a separate entity (A s nei – s toi – chto s nei
sluchilos’?). She is also aware of her burgeoning humanity and asserts it before Sartorius: “No ia
stanovlius’ chelovekom. Chuvstvuiu ne skol’ko ne men’she chem vy. Povert’e… Ia liubliu ego. Ia
chelovek.” (“But I am becoming a human. I don’t feel any less than you. Believe me.... I love
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him. I’m human.”) Hari's capacity to feel, specifically to love, endows her with humanity, makes
her deserving of empathy. She becomes fully human when she becomes capable of death and,
consequently, of sacrificing her life for another. When she asks Sartorius to destroy her, “she
exceeds her meta-real condition as a sutured network of overlapping signifiers from the chaotic
geography of the human mind. Although she is the synthetic embodiment of Kris’s shame and
desire, she asserts an individual subjective agency in her sacrifice to another” (Slevin 61). In her
sacrifice, Hari transcends her bond to the original, becoming more than her origins, infinitely
more than the sum of Kris’s memories. A past returned becomes more than the static unchanging
image of itself, it acquires the potential for newness, becoming a catalyst for new feelings and
experiences. It can neither be severed nor restored.
Kris’s return “home” at the end of the film is not a return to timelessness,
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but to
temporality. Though many images from the film’s final scene echo those from its beginning, the
seasons have changed: “the pond is covered in frost, trees are stripped of their leaves, and
vegetation is scarce. The spatial transformation reveals a temporal progression: Chris left his
house in late summer and ‘returns’ to it in late autumn” (Skakov 95). This implies that the world
did not stop with Kris’s departure, that it underwent changes and will continue to change. Solaris
becomes the locus of a restoration of temporality to spatiality; the house – the utopian space –
emerges from memory into reality and takes on the temporality inherent to the real space – to the

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Deltcheva and Vlasov have asserted that this return creates a cyclical temporality that ultimately undermines
time’s movement: “Tarkovsky practically declares his conception of time-independent existence of humankind. That
is the underlying motivation of his approach and of his use of the science-fiction genre. He uses the formal
framework allowing him to place his story in the future, thus distancing it from his immediate audience. At the same
time, following his understanding of the sole existence only of the past, he creates a more philosophically
generalized topos in which primacy is given to memories and visions, cultural artifacts and the home “nest,” that is,
to the visual/material manifestations of the past” (Deltcheva and Vlasov, 539).) However, I would argue that these
cultural artifacts and memories are not an end in and of themselves. The goal is not movement back toward the past,
into memory, but toward a future that is reconciled to this past.
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space of action. Kris chooses not utopian stillness, for that is impossible for living beings, even
virtual ones, but reflective nostalgia. This is further evidenced by the fact that the home to which
he returns is not the home of his childhood, but of his adulthood and departure. He returns not to
bask in the idyllic past of childhood and his mother’s love, but for redemption before his father,
whom he abandoned to death and old age when he chose to pursue objective scientific
knowledge , the telos of progress toward an understanding of the cosmos. “[The] past opens up a
multitude of potentialities, non teleological possibilities of historical development” (Boym 50), it
is a source of humanity, of empathy, of the possibility of redemption, but not an end in itself.
There can be no redemption without transgression – utopias that are merely spatial are built on
the impossibility of transgression and hence the impossibility of redemption. Solaris imbues the
past with futurity, the future with memory, illustrating the relationship between the two that is
most conducive to real growth and change. Without memory, there is no future, no potential for
understanding or change, only a cycle of destruction and reconstruction from which there is no
end. Memory, though it has its roots firmly in the past, is also a force moving us into the future.
Solaris confronts the two competing utopian visions of the post-Stalinist era, offering an
alternative to both the fulfillment of the future, which does away with time in its attainment of
static perfection, and the return to the past, which aspires to recreate the idealized moment,
frozen in time. Future utopias, founded on radical breaks with the past and teleological
temporality, are exposed as dangerous to our capacity for connection, to our ability to empathize
with and accept otherness. When Hannah Arendt bemoans the widespread desire to dislodge
ourselves from the Earth, she explains, “the earth is the very quintessence of the human
condition… The human artifice of the world separates human existence from all mere animal
environment, but life itself is outside this artificial world, and through life man remains related to
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all other living organisms” (Arendt HC 2). Detaching oneself from the earth represents an
attempt to discard one’s past and consequently one’s sense of shame and responsibility for the
Earth and the Other. Any utopia that relies on a radical break with the past is a utopia of
inhumanity, of disconnectedness and solipsism. Throwing off the past is neither desirable nor
possible. Memory inevitably influences all of man’s actions; memory is “activated” by the act of
recognition and takes on form in the present moment: “[From] the moment it becomes image, the
past leaves the state of pure memory and coincides with a certain part of my present. Memory,
actualized in an image, differs, then, profoundly from pure memory. The image is a present state,
and its sole share in the past is the memory from which it arose” (Bergson 140-141). The utopia
of restorative nostalgia is undermined by the temporality with which Solaris’s manifestations are
endowed. Hari’s attainment of selfhood and ability to feel, love, and sacrifice save Kris from the
torment of a static restoration of the past and allow him to seek redemption and grow as a human
being. His final return “home” is a return, not to an idealized past, but to history, to movement
toward the future guided by the past. The planet of Solaris embodies this alternative space and
science fiction, though Tarkovsky notably criticized it (Dalton 281), provides the language for
creating this space.
Seven years after the release of Solaris, Tarkovsky projects this other space onto the
Earth in Stalker (1979). Another adaptation of a famous work of late Soviet science fiction,
Stalker is a significantly-altered reimagining of Strugatsky Brothers’ Roadside Picnic. The film
follows the journey of the Stalker as he leads the Writer and Professor (real names are never used
during this journey) into the mysterious Zone, which only Stalkers and those they guide are able
to traverse safely. The Zone, theorized as the remnants of a visit from extraterrestrial beings or
forces, is rumored to contain a wish fulfillment chamber, the path to which is plagued by traps.
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Of the original plot, only the ideas of the Stalker, the Zone and wish fulfillment remain. The
Stalker leads both his charges through the dangerous terrain of the Zone and to the threshold of
the chamber, but neither the Writer nor the Professor is willing to use it, both too uncertain of
their true desires. The film concludes with the Stalker’s return to his home – a space of both
banal earthliness and “extraordinary devotion” (Skakov 161).
The Zone, like Solaris, is unphased by the physical boundary between self and Other. Its
wish fulfillment chamber can read people’s desires and the Zone “modifies itself according to the
inner state of the characters” (Skakov 146). The Zone would seem to merge the terrestriality of
earth, the absence of artificial mediation by which Arendt defines our humanity, with the extra-
terrestriality of alien otherness and newness. In this regard, it is an attempt at utopian space,
allowing for humanity, for connection with the living environment of the earth, and a movement
beyond its limits that facilitates a more thorough exploration of the self and its relationship to its
spatio-temporal surroundings. The Zone is nearly pristine, long untouched by man; its man-made
structures are in ruin, decaying reminders of the artificial world that once occupied this space.
The Stalker is at home, perhaps even fully alive in this space in and by which he is understood as
he cannot be among men.
However, this utopian space is untenable. Neither the Writer nor Professor enter the wish
fulfillment chamber, too afraid of confronting the consequences of such an action:
The threshold of the room where the protagonist believes the most secret desires can be
fulfilled will not be crossed, and will not because no one dares confront the double risk
that crossing it involves. If the miracle does not transpire, there will be nothing to believe
in or hope for any longer. If, on the other hand, entering the room means acceding to the
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darkest part of oneself, the peril is of not being able to bear the shame of what one
discovers. (Salvestroni 302)
This is a step back from Kris Kelvin who is convinced to reject his skepticism and willingly send
his encephalogram to the Ocean of Solaris, which fulfills his wish for redemption before his
father. In Stalker, this utopian vision fails to evoke connection between individuals. The Writer
and Professor do not understand the Stalker. Skakov describes a particular scene that illustrates
this inability to connect: “The three characters seem to occupy different realities. The rational
and sceptical minds of the Zone’s tourists are not convinced by the visions of their guide. The
sequence starts with Stalker’s sideward stare, which is then invaded by Writer’s and Professor’s
gazes of non-comprehension. . . . The two men stare right into the camera lens again and make
the viewer aware of the presence of the filming device: he or she witnesses a complex interplay
of gazes, which accompanies the text about gazes that fail to see” (Skakov 155; 156). The
utopian nature of the Zone is known only to the Stalker; this utopia on earth is not a mass vision,
it is a vision limited to the individual and is, consequently, not viable as a model for society. It is
a sign of the disillusion with utopia that would accompany glasnost’, which I will discuss in my
following chapter.
Aitmatov’s Dol’she veka would be published the year following Stalker’s release.
Though Aitmatov’s narrative structure functions as a blueprint for utopia, he too is unable to
present its concrete embodiment. His protagonist ends the novel in a limited world with only the
occasional refuge of utopian possibility. We are left with theoretical constructions of a less
limiting utopia and glimmers of hope. This science fiction of nostalgia was able to reinvigorate
the idea of utopia, but not to bring it to fruition. And, indeed, no great transcendent utopian
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structure emerged to save socialism, to restore history and humanity to an ideology that had been
co-opted by teleology and bureaucracy.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the victory of capitalism, and the rise of
globalization came the passing of mass utopia: “the abandonment of the larger social project
connects … personal utopianism with political cynicism, because it is no longer thought
necessary to guarantee to the collective that which is pursued by the individual. Mass utopia,
once considered the logical correlate of personal utopia, is now a rusty idea” (Buck-Morss x).
The remnants of the utopian visions of the Thaw are its monuments – from the Monument to the
Conquerors of Space to the “miniature rockets rusting in children’s playgrounds” that Svetlana
Boym encountered in St. Petersburg in 1999 (345). No longer emblems of utopian promise, these
are artifacts of reflective nostalgia, structures which have accrued nuance with the passage of
time and changes in ideologico-cultural environment. These structures serve as reminders of
what could have been, but never was and never will be; they are artifacts of a future past, a future
which collapsed and whose collapse they have now come to memorialize.
The Monument to the Conquerors of Space, built in 1964, is perhaps the most striking,
and for me, the most familiar example of such an artifact. Its base presents the teleological
narrative of progress toward space travel as progress toward the future and appears very much in
the socialist realist style with the factory worker and kolkhoz worker both standing front and
center, following Lenin’s gesture toward the future. It is spatialized temporality, progress toward
a future suspended in time. The monument itself is more dynamic. Though it too is spatialized
movement, the abstraction of this movement and reflectivity of the material create a dynamic
structure, one that appears to change and shift as the angle of the viewer or of the sun changes.
The monument reaches for the infinite, but falls just short as the dream of Soviet space travel fell
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short of utopia. The spatialization of the rocket’s movement propels it upward and binds it to the
Earth. It represents a union of spatiality and temporality; and earth and cosmos. However, it is a

Figure 4: Monument to the Conquerors of Space Figure 5: Base of the Monument
tragic union, one which failed to manifest. Its tragedy is further compounded by its proximity to
the All-Union Cultural Exhibition, a representative structure for Paperny’s Culture Two.
In 1981 the Monument to the Conquerors of Space became a burial site for the utopian
dream of space travel. The Museum of Cosmonautics was constructed in its base extending the
Monument’s reach further down into the Earth. For cosmonautics, as it was for avant-garde art,
the museum is a “box” – a space of relegation and of death, a space for objects that no longer
affect life.
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The Museum, as it was when I visited during the Summer of 2013, was filled to
bursting with model spacecraft, photographs, art, and a wide assortment of Soviet space artifacts.
Its collection is overwhelming and potentially exhausting. The dead, unmoving realia of Soviet

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Katerina Clark describes the retreat of avant-garde art from the city square to the museum: “The avant-garde
artists of War Communism had also been committed to taking art out of the ‘boxes’…. But during NEP – in
Petrograd especially – they were no longer in commanding positions and retreated from the ‘streets’ to a museum
and a scholarly institute…Thus, those iconoclasts who had sought to ‘dynamite’ the academy had retreated to
academic institutions” (Clark St Petersburg 148).
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space travel lacks (both literally and figuratively) the reflective quality of the monument above
it.
The living embodiment of these dead utopian spaces is Baikonur, the cosmodrome in
Kazakhstan (the obvious prototype for Aitmatov’s cosmodrome in Dol’she veka) from which
missions still fly to the International Space Station. It remains cut-off and inaccessible as
Aitmatov described it – a city that is leased by Russia, located in Kazakhstan, its “top
administrator … appointed jointly by the presidents of the two countries” (Russian Life
Magazine 38). However, it is no longer divided across strict ideological boundaries – astronauts
of different nationalities gather in Baikonur to depart from the Earth. The cosmodrome tethers
the Soviet past to the possibilities of the future. It is also a place where the utopian space
monuments have yet to lose their life force, where space travel is a reality and not a memory to
be restored. It is a fraught space, which, nonetheless continues to carry the utopian potential of
space travel, tainted and worn as it is, forward.

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Chapter Four:
Revolution as Eternal Return
In the preceding chapters, I described the seemingly unlikely concomitance between
stagnation in the political sphere and utopian experimentation in the cultural sphere. This chapter
begins with the inverse of this relationship. During the era of glasnost’, when political change
was being enacted in the hopes of reinvigorating Communism and its future, literary science
fiction declined and the science fiction texts that were produced were dystopian texts, which
illustrated the closing up of history rather than its momentous reopening. One such dystopia,
Vladimir Voinovich’s Moscow 2042, written in exile in 1986, conflates past and future, signaling
the utter loss of the utopian dream upon which Soviet society was ostensibly constructed.
Though this work, like its Revolutionary-period science-fiction predecessors, features an act of
future-oriented time travel, the future described undermines linear progress, depicting a historical
meta-narrative of cyclicality. Twenty years later, Vladimir Sorokin would write Day of the
Oprichnik, a novel that could easily be read as a sequel to Voinovich’s, confirming the
pessimistic forecast put forward in Moscow 2042. Where Moscow 2042 offers a slight modicum
of hope to its readers, half-hearted though it may be, Oprichnik offers nothing–no way out, no
future, no agency for the reader. The loss of agency in history is further established by the
narrative form–one day in the life of its protagonist, no different from any other. Just as the
narrative does not progress, history does not progress–it is a series of days, which follow one
after the other. In spite of the Soviet collapse and the upheaval of the 1990s, Oprichnik follows
almost seamlessly from Moscow 2042, implying that the distinction between Soviet and post-
Soviet is not so clear cut, that visions of the future, or lack thereof, are being repeated, and that
two vastly different political circumstances–perestroika and Putinism–nonetheless yield similar
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visions of the future. Reading Voinovich and Sorokin side-by-side shows us that the trends we
see today began before the Soviet collapse.
A bleak vision of the future during glasnost’ and perestroika seems counter-intuitive.
Under Khrushchev, de-Stalinization and the promise of the Communist future had spurred a
spike in the production of utopian science fiction. Gorbachev undertook reforms similar to
Khrushchev’s, but unlike Khrushchev, he did not curtail them, in spite of mounting pressure
from the conservative faction of the Politburo. Gorbachev hoped to instigate a lasting reform,
implementing perestroika and glasnost’ with the intention of saving Communism, of giving it a
new lease on life, so to speak. However, his efforts to reinvigorate an obsolete system resulted
not in renewed hopes in a bright Soviet future, but in an ever-increasing doubt in the guiding
principles of Communism. According to Thomas Sherlock,
the assignment of a negative valuation to Bolshevism during 1989 and 1990 damaged the
prospects for within-system reform […]. [It] destroyed Gorbachev’s attempt to use Lenin
and Leninism as the moral inspiration for his reforms, forging a powerful coalition on the
basis of a powerful myth. The public desacralization of Lenin and the exposure of the
horrors of Stalinism undermined for many individuals the belief that the Soviet political
community was a common enterprise based on moral principles. (121)
As the foundational myths of Communism – those of the Revolution and of Leninism – came
under attack, the future that Gorbachev had hoped to build on this foundation collapsed.
Consequently, Soviet writers turned away from an increasingly-fallow future landscape,
to the now-fertile past. This shift is described by Nadia Peterson as a turn away from fantastic
literature and towards publicistic fiction, which she defines as “literature engaged in a desperate
search for a new organizing and explanatory pattern of existence, a different set of guiding myths
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– radically opposed to the Soviet version of Marxism-Leninism but as mythologically potent as
the latter.” As Marxism-Leninism and the Communist future are debunked, “a substitute pool of
values is introduced, values whose centrality is justified by the reference to an alternative sacred
past (that of the preindustrial village, traditional Russian family, and Christian myth)” (Peterson
116). Indeed, many writers used glasnost’ as an opportunity to set the record straight vis-à-vis
Soviet history. Challenges to the canonical history of the Soviet Union undermined the
Revolution, the notion of progress for which it stood, and the notion of modernity that it claimed
to fulfill. As the now-debased Soviet past, the legacy of Lenin and the Revolution could no
longer serve as the foundation for a future society and writers turned to the pre-Revolutionary
past as a potential source of material. This turn to the past led not only to an increase in historical
fiction and village prose, but also to a rise in nationalism among the ethnic groups that comprised
the Soviet Union, including ethnic Russians. This period witnessed the birth of the Russian
nationalist and orthodox group Pamyat
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and an increase in ethnic violence, such as several
pogroms against Armenians in Azerbaijan.
With the unifying vision of the future and the goal of mass utopia gone, the scale of
utopia diminished. With the notion of inevitable progress now thoroughly undermined, the future
was no longer a viable source of hope. Moscow 2042 makes manifest this tainting of the ideals of
the Revolution and of Marxism-Leninism by bringing them to culmination and by revealing
them to be a sham. Voinovich undermines the ideology of Communism by way of the future
rather than the past by revealing the two to be equivalent. However, Voinovich does not stop
there; he also discredits the idealization and fetishization of the pre-Revolutionary past by his

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Originally founded as a historical movement geared toward restoration of monuments, such as the rebuilding of
Orthodox churches, the mid-1980s saw the radicalization of this movement. By the late 1980s, it had transformed
into a far-right, nationalist, and anti-Semitic group.
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peers, most notably Solzhenitsyn, who is viciously lampooned throughout the novel. Just as he
draws the equivalence between past and future, so too does he render the two totalizing
ideologies essentially interchangeable in spite of superficial differences. When the Solzhenitsyn
character establishes a monarchy based on the principles of the Domostroi in Moscow, he
changes its laws, but maintains its oppressive structures. Day of the Oprichnik takes place in a
similar society, picking up where Moscow 2042 ends. In this regard, it is a more thorough
undermining of the narrative of progress, suggesting that the twenty years between 1986 and
2006 have seen the failure of progress, giving way to eternal return rather than the emergence of
a viable new way of being. Even the post-apocalyptic landscape turns out to be a barren one.
Whether they are read together or apart, Moscow 2042 and Oprichnik present a satirical
historical emplotment. “Satire [is],” according to Hayden White, “a drama dominated by the
apprehension that man is ultimately a captive of the world rather than its master” (White 8)
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.
These two works illustrate man’s lack of agency within the context of history. Revolution as
transcendence is impossible in this world and human beings are disempowered and trapped in
uniform time. These notions of history are utterly at odds with modernity, more closely
resembling the pre-modern model as described by Reinhart Koselleck: “the expectations
cultivated in this peasant-artisan world (and no other expectations could be cultivated) subsisted
entirely on the experiences of their predecessors, experiences which in turn become those of their
successors.” (Koselleck 264-265). The evocation of these worlds is also an accusation leveled
against the preceding decades, implying a failure of imagination and utopian reconfiguration.
The utopian and science fiction experiments of the preceding decades failed to come to fruition,
to engender a new mass vision for the Soviet Union that could restore a sense of shared futurity.

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Historical emplotment and its satirical variant are discussed more thoroughly in Chapter Two.
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Recycling the Past: Moscow 2042 and the Uniformity of Time
In his “Chto takoe sotsialisticheskii realism” (“On Socialist Realism”), Abram Tertz
expressed this same concern, albeit ironically, suggesting that the younger generation would not
be able to generate a new future after the disavowal of Stalin rendered the “radiant future” of
Socialist Realism untenable. While mourning the loss of the Soviet telos, Tertz lamented that
Stalin had not been immortalized immediately after his death, writing, “Akh, esli by my byli
umnee i okruzhili …smert’ [Stalina] chudesami! Soobshchili by po radio, chto on ne umer, a
voznessia na nebo i smotrit na nas ottuda, pomalkivaia v misticheskie usy. ”
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In Moscow 2042,
Vladimir Voinovich does precisely that. By launching his immortal Soviet dictator – who is
referred to as Genialissimus – into space, Voinovich consolidates teleology as the guiding
principle of the future Soviet Union while thoroughly undermining it. In the future Moscow of
2042, the linear temporality promoted by Stalinist historiography has been fully restored as the
official historical emplotment. History is appropriated and manipulated to fit a narrative whose
inevitable end is the Communist Future; even Jesus Christ is recast as a harbinger of future
Communism. This official narrative is presented against the backdrop of obvious stagnation and
is itself an indication of that stagnation – of a society mired in a reading of history that maintains
the status quo by assuring people of the progress they’ve made. The dreams of the pre-
revolutionary and early Soviet period undergo a similar treatment. Rather than heralding the
advent of Utopia, scientific achievements such as a cure for death and the “New Man” – longed
for and anticipated as sources of potential salvation during the early 20
th
century – are used by

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Oh! If only we had been smarter and surrounded [Stalin’s] death with miracles! We would have transmitted via
radio that he had not died, but had levitated up to the sky and watches over us from there, biting his tongue behind
his mystical mustache. – Abram Tertz, “On Socialist Realism”; my translation
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the establishment to maintain the world as it is. Written in exile in 1986, after the advent of
perestroika and glasnost’, Moscow 2042 conflates past and future, signaling the utter loss of the
utopian dream upon which Soviet society was constructed.
The protagonist of Moscow 2042 is Vitalii Nikitich Kartsev, a Russian émigré writer
living in Germany who is offered the opportunity to travel to the Moscow of the year 2042. Upon
arriving in the Moscow of the future, he quickly discovers that nothing has changed, and even
suspects that the flight was an elaborate KGB plot. The landscape, the technology, and the
ideology are essentially the same. Having never read his books, the people of Moscowrep, the
only city to have allegedly achieved pure Communism, praise him as one of their great literary
ancestors and plan a centennial celebration in his honor. However, this treatment is offered to
him in exchange for a compromise of his literary truth – the authorities demand that he remove
the writer Sim Simych Karnavalov – a Solzhenitsyn-like figure – from the novelization of his
travel to the future. When Kartsev refuses, he is left to fend for himself in Moscowrep; he is
transferred to a filthy, bedbug-ridden hotel, robbed, and nearly starves. He eventually gives in to
the authorities, but does so in a subversive fashion – changing the character Sim to Seraphim and
thereby further mythologizing Karnavalov. His act foments revolution in Moscowrep and
Karnavalov, who was cryogenically frozen in anticipation of this historical moment, returns to
Russia and establishes a Christian monarchy. Here too we see that, though the content has
changed, the form has not – the totalitarian organs, most notably, the secret police, of
Moscowrep are taken over by Karnavalov and repurposed rather than destroyed.
This narrative structure completely undermines a core tenet of Soviet ideology –
teleology, the unstoppable march of progress toward a Communist utopia. The authorities of
Moscowrep declare their achievement of unadulterated Communism, but the city has not
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undergone any meaningful transformation in the 60 years since Kartsev’s departure. The Soviet
system has become more deeply entrenched, permeating life more completely, imbuing all its
aspects with stagnation. According to Natalia Olshanskaya, “Moscow 2042 satirizes already
existent aspects of life in the Soviet Union, from potholed roads, broken public telephones and
absence of toilet paper, replaced by newspapers, to official public ceremonies with specific
rituals, and the ubiquitous presence of ideological propaganda” (429). Voinovich mocks the
Soviet present and undermines its ideological foundation by projecting the trivialities of the
present into the so-called “radiant future” and exaggerating them to the point of absurdity.
In so doing, Voinovich emphasizes history’s tendency to repeat, presenting the reader
with the aforemntioned satirical historical emplotment. Satire presents a world that cannot be
altered by man; satirical emplotments trap humanity in cycles. Humanity is presented as being
incapable of enacting progress, whether because of its own nature or the nature of history itself.
Voinvich’s pointed reuse of minor details is especially instrumental to creating the impression of
a future that lacks futurity, that is a mere extension of the present. For example, toward the start
of the novel, Kartsev turns on the Soviet radio and hears the song “Гандзя” (“Gandzia”), noting
that this song is seemingly always performed at ceremonial Party functions and is always
performed in the same manner. Hearing this song on the radio in 1982 prompts him to wonder
“Bozhe moi…neuzheli v etoi strane, i vpravdu, nikogda nichego ne izmenitsia?” (38). Kartsev
hears the song again shortly after arriving in Moscowrep. He even seems to recognize the
performer: “Ia znal ee na protiazhenii vsei svoei proshloi zhizni ot rozhdeniia i do ot’ezda v
emigratsiiu. Ona nikogda ne menialas’…”
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(116). When he blurts out the name of the song as it

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“My God…. Could it be that nothing in this country ever actually changes?”
“I had known her for the duration of my previous life, from my birth to my emigration. She never changed…”; my
translation
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is being announced, Kartsev seems to answer his own question in the negative – nothing in this
country will ever change, not even “Gandzia.” Kartsev’s journey through time exposes its
uniformity. The time travel device, as it is employed by Voinovich, creates a historical
equivalence similar to that evoked by Leonid Gaidai in Ivan Vasil’evich Changes Profession.
However, unlike the equivalence between past and present engendered by Gaidai, the
equivalence that Voinovich presents—that between present and future—is significantly more
debilitating. If the future is predetermined, it limits the possibility of reconciliation, entrenching
the satirical emplotment.
This repetition is enacted on the level of the quotidian in the cycle of exchange between
‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ matter necessary for basic sustenance. Euphemisms for food and feces
respectively, the latter must be produced and exchanged in order to receive the former – this
cycle defines the daily rhythm of life in Moscowrep. Kartsev is at one point locked out of
participation in this exchange when his ‘secondary matter’ is stolen and he is not able to acquire
‘primary matter’ by any other means. The sameness of time is further demonstrated by the
interchangeability of primary and secondary matter, by the certainty that the relationship is not
merely one of exchanging, but of recycling.
Though the main target of Voinovich’s mockery is the Soviet Union that wronged and
exiled him – the Soviet Union of the late 70s and early 80s – his satire also undermines the
inchoate efforts of glasnost and implies that the Soviet Union will remain burdened by
totalitarian inclinations so long as it continues to strive toward Communism. The Genialissimus
of Moscowrep “bears a convincing resemblance to Brezhnev, as he is much decorated, much
titled, and extraordinarily old and feeble” (Ryan 18). Though he resembles Brezhnev, the
ubiquity of his image and the pervasiveness of his cult of personality are evocative of Stalin. The
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figure of Genialissimus serves not only to mock Brezhnev, but to suggest that Stalinism, its
methods, structures, and even Stalin himself will continue to reign in the Soviet Union. The
portrayal of such a future also represents a barb against Gorbachev. That such a future comes to
pass obviously suggests that perestroika and glasnost are not able to derail the Soviet Union
from its adherence to totalitarian habits. Though Voinovich started the work in 1982, he
completed it in 1986, one year after Gorbachev’s rise to power. Gorbachev is mentioned in the
novel – though not by name – in a chapter that consists of denunciations against Karnavalov by
his serving woman Stepanida: “Poslednii vsplesk nadezhdy byl u Batiushki, kogda na smenu
nemoshchnym ctarikam prishel, nakonets, vozhd’ molodoi I zdorovyi s dvumia vysshimi
obrazovaniiami. Kommentatry po gliadelke napereboi novogo voskhvaliali, chto umnyi I
ostraumnyi, kostiumy zakazyvaet tol’ko v firme «Dior»,chitaet v podlinnike Vol’tera i taikom v
tserkov’ khodit”
91
(275). Karnavalov has high hopes that this leader will be receptive to his
request to reinstate the monarchy, but he does not receive a response. Consequently, his
perceived radical differences from his predecessors are diminished: “Kost’iumy ot Diora on
nosit, no v tserkov’ khodit navriad li, a v podlinnike chitaet iskliuchitel’no Lenina”
92
(275). The
new leader distinguishes himself from his predecessor only on the level of superficial
appearances. At his core, he is an ideologue who reads only Lenin. Of course, it should not be
assumed that the leader’s disinclination to institute a monarchy is indicative of his affinity with
his predecessors. Rather, Karnavalov’s disillusionment, paired with the stagnant future of 2042,

91
Father had a last ray of hope when a young and healthy leader with two higher degrees came to replace the
incompetent old men. Commentators tried to outdo each other in praise for the new leader, writing that he is
intelligent and clever, wears only Dior brand suits, and reads Voltaire in the original and secretly goes to church. My
translation.
92
He wears suits from Dior, but hardly goes to church and reads only Lenin in the original. My translation.
166

would seem to suggest that this leader was unable to accomplish the essential change necessary
to break free of the static time in which the Soviet Union found itself trapped.
93

Furthermore, the act of time travel exposes the foundational contradiction of Moscowrep
—stasis masquerading as progress. The people of Moscowrep are mired in inertia, listening to
the same songs and consuming the very excrement that they produce and their society is
committed to a teleological history whose inevitable endpoint is Moscowrep itself. The intensity
and absurdity of the authorities’ assertion of teleological historiography is directly proportional
to the stasis of the city as a whole, to its utter banality. While Stalinist historiography coopted
Russian historical figures – for example, Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible – Moscowrep
lays claim to Jesus Christ as an ancestor for Communism. Upon his arrival in the future Moscow,
Kartsev encounters the following display at the air terminal: “Na levom s kraiu byl narisovan
chelovek, pokhozhii na Iususa Khrista, no ne v rubishche,a vo vpolne prilichnom kost’iume s
zhiletkoi, galstukom i dazhe, kazhetsia, s tsepochkoi ot chasov. Riadom s nim poseshchalsia Karl
Marks. Dva portreta sprava izobrazhali Engel’sa i Lenina”
94
(100). The portrait at the center of
this display appears to be none other than Lesha Bukashev, Kartsev’s former classmate, a KGB
member tasked with keeping tabs on Kartsev in 1982 and, as is shortly revealed, the
Genialissimus of Moscowrep – a figure whose cult of personality surpasses even Stalin’s. The
narrative depicted by the display presents the Communist lineage of Genialissimus – his

93
Of course, Voinovich might have felt vindicated in his assessment when this very book was not allowed into the
Soviet Union,: “In spite of the greater openness under Gorbachev, the editor-in-chief of Novy mir still refused to
publish the author’s work in the USSR, and when, at the Sixth Moscow International Book Fair in 1987, Ardis
Books presented Soviet works of fiction written in exile, all the books on display, including Moscow 2042, were
confiscated by the Soviet authorities – a telling comment on the fate of dystopian satire almost to the very last
moment of the regime” (Gottlieb 256).
94
From the leftmost edge was drawn a person, resembling Jesus Chris, but wearing not rags, but a completely
respectable suit with a vest, tie, and even, it seems, with a watch chain. Next to him was Karl Marx. Two portraits to
the right were Engels and Lenin. My translation.

167

presence at the center of this display legitimates his rule by reinforcing his roots in Communism,
as formulated by Marx and Engels and enacted by Lenin. Jesus Christ’s inclusion serves to
reinforce the ideology by asserting that the path to Communism began not in modernity, but in
antiquity, that Moscowrep and its leader are the fulfillment of two thousand years of progress.
The mythology of Genialissimus reaches its zenith with his launch into outer space; from
the stars, he is able to look down upon and keep watch over his beloved citizens. Immortal and
omniscient, Genialissimus is functionally a god in Moscowrep, making his unique ancestry all
the more apposite. As mentioned at the start of the chapter, this would appear to be a reference to
Abram Tertz’s “Chto takoe sotsialisticheskii realism” in which he, with deep irony, laments
Stalin’s death and subsequent reappraisal as a thorough undermining of Soviet teleology. Tertz
insists that a better approach would have been to cover up Stalin’s death by asserting that he had
transcended the earthly plane and was now residing in the firmament. He asserts that such an
action was indispensable for the maintenance of Soviet teleology: “Liubaia teleologicheskaia
Sistema sil’na svoim postoianstvom, stroinost’iu, poriadkom”
95
(Tertz). Tertz claims that
teleological systems require not change, but constancy, implying that the teleological ideology is
not one of progress, but, rather, of stasis. Maintenance of the teleological system requires an
unshakeable certainty in telos and the grand narrative that ends with its attainment. Teleology
can brook no challenges if it is to remain the foundation for ideology. With the Stalinist narrative
at once undermined and lingering, Tertz questions whether the younger generation is capable of
conceiving a new telos:
После смерти Сталина мы вступили в полосу разрушений и переоценок. Они
медленны, непоследовательны, бесперспективны, а инерция прошлого и будущего

95
Any teleological system finds strength in its constancy, harmony, and orderliness. My translation.
168

достаточно велика. Сегодняшние дети вряд ли сумеют создать нового бога,
способного вдохновить человечество на следующий исторический цикл. Может
быть, для этого потребуются дополнительные костры инквизиции, дальнейшие
«культы личности», новые земные работы, и лишь через много столетий взойдет над
миром Цель, имени которой сейчас никто не знает.
96
(Tertz)
In Moscow 2042, a new telos is engendered by precisely these means and earlier than anticipated.
By 2042, the authorities of Moscowrep have thoroughly embedded their grand narrative and
consolidated their power by launching an immortal, god-like Genialissimus into space.
Moscowrep has transcended change; the state claims to have fulfilled the dreams and
aspirations of the revolutionary project – politically, socially, and scientifically. The scientific
achievements of Moscowrep are presented to Kartsev by Professor Edison Ksenofontovich
Komarov. Professor Komarov’s breakthroughs are testaments to inertia even when they succeed.
When he produces a Communist Superman, affectionately nicknamed Supik, the authorities
demand his castration, insisting that there need only be the one. Supik’s lineage ends with him
and he is relegated to completing household chores around the laboratory. Perhaps the most
notable Revolutionary aspiration that Edison fulfills is that of immortality. According to Irene
Masing-Delic, from Fedorov and his disciples to the cult of Lenin, “there was a perception that
time itself had qualitatively changed, that after October, history had reached a point when, as
Mayakovsky put it, time was obeying the order to ‘go forward’ into a future of constant novelty;
the old past was being left irrevocably behind, and with it, death…” (Masing-Delic 5). Edison

96
After Stalin’s death, we have entered a region of destruction and revaluation. They go slowly, inconsistently,
hopelessly, while the inertia of the past and future is sufficiently great. Today’s children will scarcely be able to
conceive of a new god, capable of inspiring mankind toward the next historical cycle. Perhaps, this will require
additional bonfires of inquisition, further “personality cults,” new earthly labors, and only after many centuries will
a Purpose arise before the world, the name of which no one yet knows. My translation.
169

conquers death with the invention of his elixir of life, translated into Soviet bureaucratese as
NGB – Napitok Bessmertiia Genialissimusa – which is used only by Genialissimus and Edison.
Lesha Bukashev is able to survive until 2042 only because of the elixir that extends his
gerontocracy ad infinitum. Edison, who has also used the elixir to extend his life and maintain
his youth, conceives of a further use for the elixir as a means of social manipulation: “My prosto
budem raspredeliat’ eliksir strogo v sootvetstvii s povedeniem. Vedesh’ sebia khorosho –
poluchil mesiachnuiu portsiiu… A vot s temi, kto ne budet proiavliat’ neposlushanie, tekh my
budem eliksira lishat’”
97
(271). Formerly a utopian aspiration, the elixir of life becomes a
potential mechanism of totalitarianism – the people would not be liberated from death, but
enslaved by an addiction to life.
Moscow 2042 reveals the spurious nature of the utopian aspirations of the Revolutionary
period that were revived during the Thaw. The realization of these aspirations does not serve as
an indication of utopian transcendence, of technological and social progress coming to fruition.
Rather, the planned use of the elixir to maintain power exposes the totalizing potential of these
achievements—an aspect of social engineering that is common to many utopian spaces. For
example, it turns out that the Genialissimus is already enslaved by his eternal life. Kartsev learns
from Edison that Genialissimus is trapped in the cosmos, betrayed by his generals, his immortal
presence in space a tool for them to further exercise control over the population and retain their
grasp on power: “Odnazhdy, kogda Genialissimus otpravilsia s ocherednoi inspektsii v kosmos,
oni peshili ego ottuda ne vozvrashchat’. Pust’ on tam letaet, my budem na nego molitsia… i
zdes’, na Zemle, budem rasporiazhat’sia po-svoem”
98
(270). The Genialissimus’s launch into

97
We’ll simply distribute the elixir strictly in accordance with conduct. Behave well and you receive a month’s
portion. And with regard to those who display disobedience, we’ll deprive them of elixir. My translation.
98
Once, when Genialissimus was sent to space with a routine inspection, they decided not to allow his return. Let
him float up there. We’ll pray to him… and here, on Earth, we’ll direct things as we please. My translation.
170

space affirms the teleological progression from Christ onwards, rooting this narrative in place by
way of his immortality, but is, in fact, a ruse to maintain the status quo; a deeply entrenched
teleology results not in progress but in inertia.
Yet this inertia is inherent to utopia. Utopia, as an endpoint, must be timeless in order to
exist. This is the logic at the core of Moscowrep: its static, unchanging nature is indicative not of
the slowing down of progress but of the end of that progress by way of its culmination. Erika
Gottlieb succinctly explains this phenomenon: “Voinovich states quite explicitly that [the society
depicted] does not present an aberration of the dream about the ‘radiant future.’ On the contrary,
it is the very essence of the Communist system” (249). Edison’s superman, having been
perfected, must be castrated, his perfection having superseded the need for further breeding.
Similarly, the Genialissimus must be made immortal as his reign represents the ultimate
fulfillment of historical development. Castration and immortality are made equivalent; they are
states that are resistant to change, to evolution. The equivalency between primary and secondary
matter is also intrinsic to utopia. Described by Derek Maus as “a Rabelaisian parody of the 'From
each according to his ability, to each according to his need' Soviet credo,” this exchange presents
the utopian ideal of self-sustainability in its most grotesque and exaggerated form (78-79).
These, among many other mechanisms installed to preserve the system, are not antithetical to the
utopian dream, but completely in keeping with the strict laws and rules that are described in
utopias. This stasis is revealed to be unsustainable and vulnerable to incursion from the outside.
At the first hint of regime change, the citizens turn on the system that they knew and embraced
as utopia in order to install a new ruler and a new system.
Fully realized Communism is the root cause of its own destruction because it consists
entirely of the mundane. Once Sim, now Seraphim, has taken over, Kartsev and
171

Lesha/Genialissimus are both arrested and reunite in prison. Here Lesha explains that by
successfully building Communism, it was he himself that destroyed it: “Vse eti liudi ot Marksa i
do menia, zaraziv kommunizmom chelovechestvo, dali emu vozmozhnost’ perebolet’ etoi
bolezn’iu i vyrabotat’ immunitet, kotorogo, mozhet byt’, khvatit na mnogo pokolenii vpered. No
iz vsekh razrushitelei kommunizma mne udalos’ bol’she drugikh, potomu chto imenno ia na
praktike dovel eto uchenie do polneishego absurda”
99
(321). Having built and maintained
Communism, Genialissimus/Lesha has ensured its end. Byt is the building material from which it
is constructed and byt cannot be tolerated. “Russian, and later Soviet, cultural identity depended
on heroic opposition to everyday life” (Boym, Common Places 3). Byt is likewise the scourge of
Revolutionary ideology, which embraces progress, dynamism, and change. Yet byt is precisely
the realm that this ideology seeks to occupy by way of this forward movement. For example, the
effort to enact a New Byt during the 1920s-1930s, jointly pursued by “left theorists and Stalinist
bureaucrats” is inherently contradictory. The evocation of the New Byt sought to revitalize the
everyday by imbuing it with the values of the Revolution: “The Soviet iconography of New Byt
was based on a complete restructuring of both time and space; from Gastev’s utopian schedules
of everyday life to the total design of the new Communist space…to the construction of new men
and women” (Boym, Common Places 33). However, this movement did not successfully reshape
everyday life, as “the Stalinist new byt turned out to be the style of […] the Soviet version of
middle-brow culture.” Subsequent attempts to reshape the quotidian also lost steam. For
example, the efforts undertaken by intelligentsia in the 1960s succumbed to stagnation by the
1970s (Boym, Common Places 38-39). Maintaining Revolution proves tiresome and New Byt

99
All these people, from Marx to me, having infected mankind with Communism, gave it the capacity to recover
from this illness and develop an immunity, that, maybe, will last for many generations to come. But of all the
destroyers of Communism, I was more successful than others, because I, in practice, carried these teachings to the
point of utter absurdity. My translation.
172

can only be new for so long before it becomes merely byt. Utopia is, by nature, unsustainable, its
stasis, its stability, is the essence of its undoing.
We quickly learn that the system that replaces the Communism that Lesha built to
destroy is, in essence, the same system with a different content. Though its rules are based on
Karnavlov’s vision for the reinstatement of the monarchy, most of these new rules are
superficial, changing the appearance of society, but not its functioning. Karnavalov’s vision for
Moscow is one of restorative nostalgia,
100
a yearning for a return to the past whose culmination
is a rebuilding of that past (Boym, Future of Nostalgia 43). Karnavalov’s nostalgia manifests
itself in his recreation of a distant Russian past, one that he himself never experienced, and
concocts rituals and procedures in accordance with this vision. He does so on his estate in
Canada and in the monarchy that he establishes in the Moscow of 2042. The novel viciously
mocks Karnavalov for this nostalgia, undermining it by exposing its shallowness. For example,
many of the proclamations of Karnavalov’s new state prescribe cosmetic changes: the names of
towns, streets, and rivers are changed, citizens are issued new documents, and women are
forbidden from riding bicycles (326). However, the systems of the previous regime remain in
place. The other decrees are acts of terror – members of the old regime are investigated and
purged. Dzerzhin, a member of the secret police and one of Kartsev’s guides in Moscowrep,
would seem to be a prime target for such directives, given his complicity in the actions of the old
regime. However, he maintains his position precisely because every regime needs someone with
his expertise: “Im takie spetsialisty, kaki a, nuzhny. I ne tol’ko im. Liubomu rezhimu. Ty khot’
kakuiu revoliutsiiu proizvedi, a potom rezul’tat ee nado komu-nibud’ okhraniat’”
101
(327).

100
Restorative nostalgia is discussed in Chapter Three.
101
Specialists such as myself are necessary to them. And not only to them, but to any regime. Carry out any given
revolution and you’ll need someone to guard it. My translation.
173

Karnavalov’s monarchy is no less an authoritarian utopia than its predecessor and requires
precisely the same organs to function. Karnavalov is himself portrayed as a tyrant. According to
Karen Ryan, Karnavlov is a satirical depiction of Solzhenitsyn, based on biographical details and
rumors, but also on “Solzhenitsyn’s own satiric treatment of Stalin” (Ryan-Hayes 467). This
mocking of Karnavalov’s (and therefore Solzhenitsyn’s) authoritarian inclination, the revelation
of his essential affinity with the society he ostensibly overthrew, further affirms the satirical
emplotment of history portrayed in Moscow 2042. This emplotment also implicates the literary
genre of village prose with which Solzhenitsyn was associated and which shared with him and
his caricature an idealization of the past. Restorative nostalgia is revealed to be as totalizing and
oppressive as the ideology that it seeks to upend and the authoritarian tendencies of its adherents
are exposed.
The embrace of totalizing utopian ideologies results in an endless procession of
revolutions and stagnations as each totalizing ideology degrades and is replaced by the next. As
Voinovich draws this equivalence between competing ideologies, he undermines the possibility
of agency within history, either of the masses or of individuals. The post-Enlightenment notion
of revolution as radical break is also challenged when Karnavalov’s revolution fails to yield
results that penetrate beneath the surface. When Kartsev speaks with some of his guides in the
future Moscow, most of whom were participants in the revolution, he sees that they have donned
the accoutrements of the new order, but that their lives remain otherwise unchanged. The
revolution that takes place adheres to a pre-Enlightenment definition of the term:
The naturalistic metaphor of political ‘revolution’ lived on the assumption that historical
time was itself of a uniform quality, contained within itself, and repeatable. While it was
always debatable at what point in the ebb and flow of a revolution one would place the
174

present or desired constitutional state, this remained, from the point of view of the
circulatory process, a secondary question. All political positions remained preserved in a
transhistorical concept of revolutions. (Koselleck 46)
As this reversion to the previous notion of revolution undermines the notion of historical
progress, so too does it undermine the agency of the individual. When the concept of revolution
metamorphosed from one of repetition to one of radical change, it was accompanied by the
emergence of a new role – that of the revolutionary. This role empowered individuals as actors
within history, granting human beings the power to act on the world around them in meaningful
ways, giving them the ability to change their circumstances rather than relegating them to mere
existence within historical time. Moscow 2042 questions the ability of the Soviet citizen to act in
history, even as it portrays a revolution among them. However, in spite of this pessimistic take
on history, the novel’s epilogue grants the readers a slim chance at hope.
The text of Moscow 2042 is a complex object in time, at once inhibiting, seeming to
suggest that all things will happen as they have, and liberating, possessing the ability to
undermine contingency and to spark change. Diegetically, the novel that we are reading is read
by Kartsev in the future and written by him upon his return to the present. Consequently, its
creation is a time travel paradox; the novel cannot exist independent of the time travel event. It is
read by Kartsev ‘before’ he ever sits down to write it, though the writing event technically takes
place in the past. The question of the novel’s authorship depends on the frame of reference – a
purely chronological reading of the novel, with events unfolding according to date and time
would attribute authorship to Kartsev as the book would be written before 2042, the year of
Kartsev’s reading. Yet, based on Kartsev’s experience of time, he could not possibly be the
author of his own book since it is read by him before he writes it – his act of writing is one of
175

mere copying. The description of his act of writing does not provide much clarity in this regard:
“Rabotal ia legko i bistro, potomu chto vse, zdes’ opisannoe, ia videl v inoi svoei zhizni, a s
samim romanom poluchilos’ vrode by tak, chto vse, zdes’ opisannoe, ia videl v inoi svoei zhizni,
a s samim romanom poluchilos’ vrode by tak, chto ia ego prochel prezhde, chem napisal.
Poetomu vsia eta istoriia skladyvalas’ kak by cama po sebe i ia uzhe sam ne mog razobrat’sia,
chto v nei pervichno i chto vtorichno”
102
(338). Kartsev himself is uncertain of the novel’s status;
he is clearly writing the novel, but on some level the text he is writing is not original – the words
are his words, but he did not conceive of them. Consequently, the novel is a joint venture
between past and future and serves to bind the two to together. The novel cannot be altered
without undoing the need for alteration. For example, the requests to remove Sim Simych from
the text, made by Sim himself, cannot be honored or the change would already have taken place.
As an artifact of time travel, the novel would seem to freeze time into a solid block.
However, the paradox of the novel’s origins undermines contingency by problematizing
our understanding of chronology – of beginning and ending. In his book Time Travel: The
Popular Philosophy of Narrative, David Wittenberg discusses at length the unique capacity for
time travel to complicate our instinctive assumption of an overarching chronological narrative as
the originating story of the narrative work. Borrowing the terms fabula and siuzhet from Viktor
Shklovsky, Wittenberg states that “time travel paradox stories lay out the conditions and
limitations for our ‘naturalized’ postulation of fabula through the retrospective construction of
sjuzhet. And finally, time travel stories refer us to the place where the negotiation of sjuzhet and
fabula begins, namely, to the text” (128). As it is impossible to determine which came first, the

102
I worked quickly and easily, because everything written here I had seen in my other life. With the novel, it turned
out that I read it before I wrote it. Consequently, that whole narrative seemed to compose itself and not even I could
make out what was primary and what secondary. My translation.
176

reading or the writing of the novel, the reader cannot assume “fabular apriority” and must engage
with the novel as text rather than world in order to reconcile fabula to sjuzhet: “The fabula, as it
is necessarily becomes sjuzhet – or as its postulation unravels – also becomes, as it were
asymptotically, paratext, the physical embodiment and frame of the sjuzhet, literally viewed
rather than merely read” (Wittenberg 135). The text draws attention to itself not only as an object
of paradox, but as its resolution. The paradox complicates assumed notions of beginning and
ending, of first and last, but by ascribing primacy to paratext, nonetheless conserves the past and
future.
Though the text is a force of narrative conservation it also bears within itself the capacity
to shatter the narrative and rewrite history. By way of paradox, the novel calls attention to itself,
to the act of reading being performed by the reader and to the reader’s environment – the
circumstances of the reading. It does so in order to challenge the reader to destroy the history that
is portrayed, to determine the ontological status of the text:
[А] что если прочтя вышеописанное, соберутся заглотчики тайно на какое-нибудь
свое заседание, обсудят мой роман всесторонне и признают, что автор в чем-то
может быть, прав? И решат, что, если мы, мол, не свернем с заглотной нашей
дороги, не исправим текущего положения, то неизбежно дойдем до ручки, до
стирания разницы между продуктом первичным и продуктом вторичным. И, придя
к такому печальному выводу, займутся исправлением не автора или его сочинений,
а самой жизни. А роман мой, вынув из сейфа, издадут массовым тиражом как плод
пустой и безобидной фантазии.
103
(339).

103
And what if, reading the above-written text, the vipers (literally “whole-swallowers”) gather in secret at one of
their sessions, thoroughly discuss my novel, and acknowledge that the author might be right about a thing or two?
177

The text must be read as fact so that it might become fiction, effectively returning some potential
to the present. The text inhabits a quantum state: until the future comes to pass, the text may be
taken for either fact or fiction. Since the means of the novel’s creation implies a closed time-
stream, the reader must challenge its ontological status in order to avoid the undesirable future it
portends. By drawing attention to the novel’s status as text and as object, the epilogue draws the
reader into the world of the text and compels her to render the author’s account false by means of
concrete actions – with changes not to the text but to life.
Voinovich collapses the reality of the narrator with that of his readers, creating a sense of
urgency and responsibility for the reader. Unlike Moscow 2042, the two time travel narratives
discussed in Chapter Two—Ivan Vasil’evich Changes Profession and Pushkin’s Photograph
(1799-2099)—implement a device called embedding to protect their characters and
viewers/readers alike. Gaidai casts the time travel episode as a dream, from which the private
space of the apartment is safe, and Bitov embeds his time travel narrative in a work of fiction
that the author can complete, allowing him to return to the present moment. Voinovich’s use of
metalepsis is an act of reverse-embedding—one that shatters the boundary between the diegetic
and extra-diegetic realms by way of the text itself. He does not comfort, but, rather, challenges
his readers. His readers do not have recourse to the private sphere, whose insufficiency is
established by the existence of Moscow 2042. If the reader hopes to break out of history’s cycles,
she must act in history. The present is not a refuge, but an opportunity to shift the course of time.
One Day in the Life of Andrei Danilovich

And decide that if we do not turn from our viperous path, do not current the present circumstances, then we will
inevitably arrive at the point of the erasure of the distinction between primary and secondary product. And, having
arrived at such a sad conclusion, occupy themselves with correcting, not the author and his writings, but life itself.
And having removed my book from the safe, will publish it in mass circulation as the fruit of an empty and
inoffensive fantasy. My translation.
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If Voinovich leaves a slight openness in his narrative, hoping “out-loud” that it will not
come to pass, Sorokin’s narrative indicates that it already has, offering no hope for a different
future. Day of the Oprichnik presents one day in the life of its protagonist, Andrei Danilovich
Komiaga, a high-ranking oprichnik. Though the title typically refers to members of tsar Ivan the
Terrible’s secret police, the title and accompanying organization has been reinstated in a future
time period, one that is beyond the present, but close enough that the memory of the Soviet
collapse still stings. The novel, or anti-novel, follows Komiaga as he undertakes his slate of
activities for the day, including raiding the home of a noble who has fallen out of favor,
assessing a musical performance for appropriately patriotic content, and visiting a clairvoyant on
behalf of the Tsaritsa. The reader is, for all intents and purposes, accompanying Komiaga on a
day “at the office,” so to speak. The work consists not of chapters but tasks that Komiaga must
accomplish. They are punctuated most frequently by the act of transit and occasionally by that of
waiting. Neither the character nor the world undergoes any meaningful change from the start of
the narrative to its end.
The “day” is a metonymy for all other days in Komiaga’s life; there is no hint of growth
or change, only the promise of repetition. This structure resembles two other notable texts
belonging to the Socialist Realist and dissident canons respectively – Time, Forward! and One
Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Time, Forward! notably presents progress as repetition. The
characters are working towards a goal – breaking a production record – which they achieve by
the end of the novel. However, the close of the novel makes it clear that the characters will have
to get up the next day and break yet another record. Progress, forward movement, recurs and
builds on itself. Ivan Denisovich uses the same format to opposite ends, portraying the one day as
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one in a procession of days during which the protagonist must strategize his continued survival.
The cycle of one day to the next is the temporality of the camp, of bare humanity.
The narrative form as it is employed in Oprichnik is neither progress nor endurance, but
stillness at the end of history. The diegetic history of Russia, as depicted in Sorokin’s novel, is a
history defined by its return to an idealized past. The last century is described using the
terminology of medieval history and of the Gospel: “Zdes’ les eshche povyshe nashego: starye,
vekovye eli. Mnogo oni povidali na svoem veku. Pomniat oni, pomniat Smutu Krasnuiu,
pomniat Smutu Beluiu, pomniat Smutu Seruiu, pomniat i Vozrozhdenie Rusi. Pomniat i
Preobrazhenie
104
” (Sorokin, Den’ Oprichnika 18). The Soviet and post-Soviet periods are
renamed the “Red” and “White” Troubles, respectively, each defined as a repetition of the Time
of Troubles (Smutnoe Vremia), but with a different flavor of Trouble. The succession of Troubles
is halted only by the Rebirth of Rus’ (Vozrozhdenie Rusi), the return to a prior historical state,
one that existed before the Time of Troubles. This history fits neatly with Koselleck’s
description of pre-modern temporality: each phase of Russian history is defined as a repetition of
an already-experienced history. Following the Rebirth is Преображение which can be translated
as either Transformation or Transfiguration. This event, though it is neither explained nor
described, is, by its name, suggestive of a moment of religious transcendence. Such a notion is
also evocative of Koselleck’s explanation of pre-modern temporality: “Expectations that went
beyond the realm of experience were not related to this world. They were directed to the so-
called Hereafter, apocalyptically in terms of the general End of the World” (265). The
Transfiguration represents the joining of the heavenly and earthly in the person of Jesus Christ.

104
Here the trees are even higher than ours: ancient centuries-old firs. They have seen much in their time. They
remember: they remember the Red Troubles, they remember the White Troubles, they remember the Gray Troubles,
they remember the Rebirth of Rus. They remember the Transformation as well. (Sorokin, Day of the Oprichnik 13-
14)
180

In terms of historical time, this periodization implies the projection of heaven, of the Hereafter,
onto Earth, thereby attaining a state of utopian stasis. If the advent of Modernity “[temporalized]
the aim of completeness” which was previously the domain of the “Hereafter,” the fulfillment of
Utopia on Earth sparks an atavism to a pre-modern temporality (Koselleck 265).
The internal logic of Day of the Oprichnik is that of a utopia. Having attained a state of
Transcendence – the complete restoration of the idealized period – the society becomes fully
detached from historical time. It neither cycles through previously experienced forms nor
progresses, but merely lasts. According to Aleksandr Chantsev, “the negation of history is per se
characteristic of a utopia (in that the embodiment of the social ideal is tantamount to the end of
history, its redundancy going forward)” (88). As mentioned, the temporal model of Oprichnik is
one of static, uniform time where action does not amount to change. Even the future predicted by
the clairvoyant, Praskovia Mamontovna, is not a future at all, but an extension of the present.
When she predicts Komiaga’s future, the predictions coincide with his experiences and
expectations:
- А коль знаешь – остерегайся. Машина у тебя сломается через недельку. Хворь
подцепишь несильную. Ногу тебе просверлят. Левую. Денег получишь. Немного.
Будешь бит по морде. Несильно.
- Кем?
- Начальником твоим.
181

Отлегло сердца. Батя для меня – отец родной. Сегодня поколотит – завтра
обласкивать. А нога… это дело привычное.
105
(Sorokin, Den’ Oprichnika 140-1)
None of these predictions come as any surprise to Komiaga. His expectations coincide with his
experiences. His future is also defined by moderation; no extreme, life-shattering events are
slated to take place. Even his servant girl’s pregnancy is a not-utterly-unexpected event (“Nu a
chto…byvaet.” “So what…it happens.”) that can be dealt with (Sorokin, Den’ Oprichnika 140).
This state applies not only to Komiaga but to Russia as a whole. When asked about the future of
Russia, Praskovia Mamontovna responds, “Budet Nichego” (“Nothing will happen”) (Sorokin,
Den’ Oprichnika 140). Russia is ahistoricized and futureless. Its temporal form is one of utopian
stasis, though it approaches this form with an ironic distance.
Though the historical narrative in Oprichnik is a cycle in time, a circle backward into the
past, the technology used in the novel reflects steady technological advancement in spite of
historical recurrence. The oprichniks ride sleek, high-tech cars with dog heads affixed to the
hoods, waiters have been replaced by holographic projections, and each individual’s information
is catalogued and can be pulled up a moment’s notice. According to Eliot Borenstein, “the
advanced technology, including human/machine interfaces, is borrowed from cyberpunk fiction.
[…] Sorokin shows that modernization and authoritarianism are just as good a match” for one
another as repressive regimes “within a demolished technological base” (“Dystopias” 101). This
is a further undermining of the belief in progress that accompanied the advent of modernity.

105
“So if you know, beware. Your car will break down in a week. You’ll come down with something. Not too bad.
They’ll drill through your leg, the left one. You’ll get some money. Not much. You’ll get hit in the mug. Not too
hard.”
“Who’ll do it?”
“Your boss.”
What a relief. Batya is like my own father. Today he’ll give me a thrashing. Tomorrow he’ll be kind. And my leg …
that’s just the usual stuff. (Sorokin, Day of the Oprichnik 118)
182

Technological advancement proceeds independent of history, illustrating the distinction between
technological progress and historical progress. The former does not imply the latter. Quite the
opposite, actually. The oprichniks utilize advanced technology in their operations, making it a
tool of repression and the maintenance of the status quo. Consequently, the past and future
comingle seamlessly. The juxtapositions on the morning news are a striking example of this
comingling: “mozgliaki iz lekarskoi akademii zavershaiut raboty nad genom ctarenia,
Muromskie gusliari dadut dva kontserta v Belokamennoi, graf Trifon Bagrationovich Golitsyn
pobil svoiu moloduiu zhenu. V ianvare v Sviato-Petrograde na Sennoi porot’ ne budut, rubl’ k
iuaniu ukrepilsia eshche na polkopeiki”
106
(Sorokin, Den’ Oprichnika 8-9). The jarring
juxtaposition of flogging and currency appreciation in a single sentence is yet another source of
ironic distance for the reader.
Oprichnik is unquestionably political in its satire, aimed at Putinism and its embrace of
nationalism and orthodoxy as foundational principles of an increasingly repressive and anti-
democratic regime. With the rise in extreme nationalist ideology, an increasing valorization of
Ivan the Terrible and his oprichnina has taken shape. “Over the course of the last decade the
historical forces of the oprichnina have been widely recreated in the journalism and literature of
the neo-patriotic movement, where the oprichnina represents a symbolic force designed to
struggle for ‘patriotic’ values against liberals and democrats” (Aptekman 242). This sentiment
has been adopted by political authorities, culminating in the construction of a new monument to
Ivan the Terrible in Oryol in October 2016 (“Russia’s First Monument…). Even Putin has
recently voiced an apologia for Ivan the Terrible, claiming that the tsar was viciously slandered

106
The featherbrains from the Healer’s Academy are completing work on the aging gene. The Muromsk psaltry
players will give two concerts in our Whitestone Kremlin. Count Trifon Bragrationovich Golitsyn beat his young
wife. In January there will be no flogging on Sennaya Square in St. Petrograd. The ruble is up a half-kopeck against
the yuan. (Sorokin, Day of the Oprichnik 6)
183

(“Putin offers”). The fact that Sorokin published Oprichnik in 2006, ten years before the
construction of the monument to Ivan, further affirms the closed, cyclical time suggested by the
work; Sorokin accurately predicts a continuation of the past, one that erases any possibility of the
future.
Furthermore, the present-day canonization of Ivan the Terrible is itself a repetition of the
Soviet-era rehabilitation undertaken by Stalin (as discussed in Chapter Two). As Stalin did, Putin
is laying claim to all history, from Rurik to the Soviet Union, in order to craft a narrative of
Russian power. “Putin’s government now began to construct a forceful narrative whose central
theme was the organic connection among tsarist, Communist, and post-Communist periods, with
the Russian state as the unifying element” (Sherlock 161). This effort is best embodied by the
Alley of Rulers in Moscow, a sculpture garden where Ivan the Terrible and Stalin share real
estate with Peter the Great, Lenin, and Khrushchev. Russia’s history becomes a singular whole
and all exploits, whether undertaken under the Soviets or the Romanovs, are easily appropriated
into this narrative.
Though the tsar in Day of the Oprichnik crafts history in an entirely opposite manner to
the one embodied by the Alley of Rulers, even going so far as to destroy Lenin’s tomb, the
society that he builds is not a radical break with the one that came before. Sorokin may even be
hinting, very subtly, that the canonization of Ivan the Terrible in this world may have even been
inspired by its Stalin era precursor. When Komiaga is praying in the Uspensky Cathedral, he
briefly describes his favorite icon: “Molius’ liubimoi ikone svoei – Spasu Iarkoe Oko, trepeshchu
pod neistovymi ochami Spasitelia nashego. Grozen Spasitel’, nepreklonen v Sude svoem”
107

107
I pray to my favorite icon, the Savior of the Ardent Eye; I tremble before the fury of our Savior’s eyes.
Formidable is our Savior; immovable in his judgment. (Sorokin, Day of Oprichnik 30)
184

(Sorokin, Den’ Oprichnika 38; emphasis mine). The above-mentioned icon is famously present
as a backdrop of Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible films (See Figure 1).
108
The use of the word
“Terrible” (“Grozen”) to describe the icon further nudges the reader’s thoughts in this direction.
Though the world of Oprichnik is modeled after society during the time of Ivan the Terrible,
reference to the film implies a connection to the Stalin era, suggesting a natural kinship between
the two.
By making covert reference to Eistenstein’s film, Oprichnik reveals the illusory nature of
restorative nostalgia. The idealized past that is being restored is not modeled after an objective
past, but a prototype, one that was produced by the ideological enemies of the current regime—
the Soviets. Ivan Vasil’evich Changes Profession leverages references to Eisenstein’s film in an
effort to subvert Stalinist teleology, revealing a lack of forward progress. Oprichnik undermines
the act of return to the past, implying that the past on which the world is modeled is not as distant
as it seems—revealing the affinities between orthodox nationalists and the Communists they
claim to oppose.

108
Another potential reference to the Ivan the Terrible films is the oprichnina’s bathhouse orgy, which could be read
as the exaggeration to a grotesque extreme of Eisenstein’s dance of the oprichniks.
185

Figure 1
Like the monarchy established at the end of Moscow 2042, the monarchy of Oprichnik
possesses the same basic authoritarianism as its Soviet predecessor, but with a different exterior.
For example, Komiaga describes the hunt for internal enemies during the Rebirth:
Супротивных много, это верно. Как только востала Россия из пепла Серого, как
только осознала себя, как только шестнадцать лет назад заложил Государев
батюшка Николай Платонович первый камень в фундамент Западной Стены, как
только стали мы отгораживаться от чуждого извне, от Бесовского изнутри – так и
полезли супротивные из всех щелей, аки сколопендрие зловредное. Истинно –
великая идея порождает и великое сопротивление ей.
109
(Sorokin, Den’ Oprichnika
38)

109
There are plenty of opponents, that’s true. As soon as Russia rose from the Gray Ashes, as soon as she became
aware of herself, as soon as his majesty, Father Nikolai Platonovich, laid the foundation stone of the Western Wall
sixteen years ago, as soon as we began to fence ourselves off from the foreign without and the demon within –
opponents began to crawl out of the cracks like noxious centipedes. A truly great idea breeds great resistance.
(Sorokin, Day of the Oprichnik 30)
186

Here Komiaga echoes the logic of the Stalinist terror. As the description continues, he describes
the acts of the terror as it manifested during the “Rebirth”: “Ne odna golova skatyvalas’ na
Lobnom meste za eti shestnadtsat' let, ne odin poezd uvozil za Ural supostatov i sem’i ikh […]
ne odin voevoda perdel na dybe v Tainom Prikaze, ne odno podmetnoe pis’mo upalo v iashchik
Slova i Dela na Liubianke”
110
(Sorokin, Den’ Oprichnika 38-39). Komiaga’s description is one
of a Soviet terror whose intensity has been amplified by medieval cruelty. While the means of
terror have changed, the structures have not. Enemies of the state continue to be sent to Siberia,
powerful officials are arrested and tortured, and citizens inform on one another to the secret
police. Even its headquarters – Lubianka – remains the same. A statue of Malyuta has replaced
that of Dzerzhinsky, suggesting that these two are interchangeable, that all that has changed is
the content, but not the form. Given this essential kinship between the Soviet period and
Komiaga’s present, it is no surprise that he feels an odd affinity with Soviet people and is able to
relate to and enjoy their culture, despite having never experienced it firsthand (Sorokin, Den’
Oprichnika 115). Just as Voinovich illustrates in the final chapters of Moscow 2042, the two
totalizing ideologies function by way of the same methods and structures; substituting one for the
other does not constitute change at all.
Conclusion
Both Moscow 2042 and Day of the Oprichnik reveal the sameness of these two ideologies
beneath the façade of difference, exposing the authoritarian nature that is shared by the two, even
as they position themselves in opposition to one another. Indeed, this affinity between
Communism and Nationalism has played itself out after the Soviet collapse. In The Future of

110
More than one head rolled on the block at Lobnoe Mesto during those sixteen years, more than one train carried
our foes and their families beyond the Urals […] more than one general farted on the rack in the Secret Department,
more than one denunciation was dropped in the Work and Word box at Lubianka. (Sorokin, Day of the Oprichnik
30)
187

Nostalgia, Svetlana Boym writes, “It is not surprising that many former Soviet Communist
ideologues have embraced a nationalist worldview, becoming ‘red-and-browns,’ or Communist-
nationalists. Their version of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism was revealed to have the same
totalizing authoritarian structure as the new nationalism” (Boym, Future of Nostalgia 44). Both
these ideologies seek to freeze time. Communism aspires to bring history to a stop by arriving at
the future. Nationalism aspires to return to a highly idealized historical moment. Though they are
oriented toward future and past respectively, these ideologies are both utopian and their endpoint
is stasis.
This essential uniformity of ideologies is, however, merely a feature of the larger
temporal structure that both Voinovich and Sorokin construct in their works – that of the satirical
historical emplotment. These works imply that history is a series of cycles rather than a linear
progression. Dismissing claims about the power of technology, the two works portray societies
that remain stagnant in spite of technological advances. In Moscow 2042, Voinovich challenges
the utopian beliefs of his Revolutionary predecessors, who fetishized technology and scientific
progress as essential tenets of Communism, and of his contemporaries, writing during the
utopian boom of the 50s and 60s. Day of the Oprichnik also undermines the belief that the
relationship between technological and historical progress is causal, thereby mocking the ethos
of this century’s utopian movement – the tech sector. Read separately, Moscow 2042 and
Oprichnik each depict human impotence in the realm of history. Read together, these works
confirm that lack of agency, the impossibility of change in spite of its potential.
Though the twenty years between the writing of Moscow 2042 and Day of the Oprichnik
have witnessed the fall of the Berlin wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the introduction
of capitalism and democracy in Russia, Sorokin is easily able to pick up where Voinovich left
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off. Voinovich’s readers, it seems, have failed to challenge the truth of the novel. The Soviet
collapse and what followed become just another phase in the endless cycle of historical
“revolution,” their potential squandered. Sherlock explains the failure of this period to yield
change as follows:
The political disorder and economic decline of the early 1990s gradually stripped
Russians of their belief that a prosperous and democratic Russia would emerge in the
near future. In this context, the Soviet past was increasingly reassessed in positive terms,
either as a relegitimated model for social and political development or as an historical
frame with the capacity to stimulate pride and reinforce individual and group identity.
(Sherlock 165-66)
Furthermore, he explains that there was no foundational historical myth to offset the growing
pains of democratization and shock therapy, facilitating an easy backslide into nostalgia for
Soviet and Russian power. Putin has responded to and propagated this nostalgia for both the
Soviet period and the monarchy. In addition to the Ivan the Terrible apologia, Putin makes a
show of attending orthodox services. Speaking at once to nationalists and Soviet nostalgics, he
has famously described the Soviet collapse as a “geopolitical catastrophe,” because it trapped
ethnic Russians outside their native country. As “Russia’s ideological leaders […] have informed
contemporary society with modern, Soviet, and archaic (premodern) values simultaneously,” so
too has Sorokin constructed his work (Chantsev 85). Just as Voinovich had feared in 1986,
Russia is unable to leverage revolution into progress.
In addition, both Voinovich’s and Sorokin’s novels are testaments to the insufficiency of
utopian experimentation in the late Soviet period. In the preceding chapters, I discussed
alternative utopias, utopian spaces that reside in the private sphere, in the realm of memory, or in
189

the principles of community. Ultimately, these utopian experiments did not yield concrete
results. Implemented on smaller scales, these utopian spaces failed to engender a new, more
resilient mass utopia for the Soviet Union. Though these utopias share a striving for universality,
for applicability beyond their limited realms, this universality was never achieved.
As the nostalgia and nationalism that currently hold sway in Russia begin to seep out
beyond its borders, the lessons of the alternative utopias of the 70s are more relevant than they
have ever been and may yet serve as a protective salve against the forces that have spurred the
rise of nationalist and racist groups in the United States and Europe. The lesson of these works is
to aspire toward what Ernst Bloch described as imagination rather than recollection:
The ideas of the imagination stand in contrast to those of recollection, which merely
reproduce perceptions of the past and thereby increasingly hide in the past. And in this
instance the ideas of the imagination are not of the kind that merely combine the already
existing facts in a random manner […], but carry on the existing facts toward their future
potentiality of their otherness, of their better condition in an anticipatory way. (Bloch,
“Utopian Function" 105)
The works discussed in the preceding chapters occupied a unique space that inspired them to
imagine rather than recollect: one of faith in mass utopia, of a collective Soviet future
undergirded by faith in Marxism-Leninism, but not in its current manifestation. Post-apocalyptic
fiction occupies a similar niche in our present. Acutely aware of the aftermath of crisis, post-
apocalyptic fiction attempts to rebuild from the ashes. The post-apocalyptic landscape is the
hardest place, and therefore the most appropriate, to find redemption. It is in the post-apocalypse,
with the feeling of our own crisis looming, that I will close this dissertation.

190

Coda:
Our Own Post-apocalyptic World
Though most of the works discussed in the dissertation explore the potential of non-linear
temporalities, the overarching narrative of the project is a linear one—that of decline. The works
I examine attempt to reimagine the Soviet future, but the limits under which they operate imply a
receding horizon, a fading away of any sense of futurity that eventually gives way to recurrence
and collapse. We began in 1957 with the publication of Andromeda Nebula—a utopian tract
responding to the sudden re-introduction of the Revolutionary utopian ethos by Khrushchev’s
Secret Speech and the launch of Sputnik—a smoothed-over reflection of an ideologically bumpy
Thaw period. The dissertation ends with Sorokin’s Day of the Oprichnik, the embodiment of
stasis, an anti-utopian tract with no hope of escape. Though they appear to be diametrically
opposed, these two works share a key feature—they represent societies that have attained their
ends, that have reached a state of finality. These visions are totalizing, unable to incorporate
alternatives; individuals who do not fit into these systems must be exiled (as in Andromeda) or
executed (as in Oprichnik). When seen in this light, the narrative becomes not one of decline, but
of repetition. The narratives sandwiched in the middle are an interlude between the Communist
utopia of the Thaw (itself a reworking of Revolutionary utopia) and the utopia/anti-utopia of
restorative nostalgia that is an attribute of Putinism.
In narrative form and content, these novels, films, and stories endeavor to create non-
totalizing forms that are, nonetheless, utopian in nature. Chapter One ends with Hour of the Bull,
which, though it retains the utopian vision of Andromeda, acknowledges the need for alternative
forms by juxtaposing this vision with its dystopian antipode. The works discussed in Chapter
Two create utopian spaces in embedded individual temporalities, embracing private spaces and
the openness of the present moment as alternatives to totality. These utopian visions, however,
191

are ineffectual precisely because they are individual, because they do not scale into a viable
vision for mass utopia. The utopian visions of Chapter Three are built on connection—
interpersonal, temporal, and spatial. They aspire to imbue the static utopian model with
temporality, asserting the human need for growth, change, and redemption as an integral part of
the utopian model. These interlude works, those discussed in Chapters Two and Three, did not
present concrete descriptions of utopian societies, but, rather, constructed narrative forms that
could serve as models for utopia, using science fiction to embody abstractions, to give shape to
alternative utopian ideals in the form of time traveling apartments, embedded universes, and
planets that can restore time to memory. However, as is evidenced by Moscow 2042 and, of
course, the unfolding of history, these visions did not come to fruition. The space of utopia
evoked in these works was too limited—to the private sphere, to memory, to community—in
spite of science fiction’s efforts to project these utopias outward.
This dissertation is titled “Utopia after Stalin” not only because the works being
discussed are responding to the ideological jolt of Stalin’s death, but also because they are as
much responses to Stalinist ideology and its accompanying temporal, historiographical, and
spatial forms as they are reflections of the shifting relationships between Party doctrine and its
ostensible indoctrinatees—Homo sovieticus. These fictions undertake both mourning and
warning, attempting to overcome the traumas of Stalinism by way of humor and redemption,
while signaling that Stalinism has not been fully exorcised—that its ghosts linger in Stalin’s
heirs. To that end, the post-Stalinist utopias in this dissertation often juxtaposed their spatio-
temporal (or temporo-spatial) forms against those of Stalinism in order to actively subvert them,
to loosen their grip on the present. This is not to say that Stalinism had returned. This was by no
means the case; de-Stalinization could not be fully eradicated. However, some of the repressive
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elements of Stalinism had made their way back into the Party’s toolkit, even while the Party had
lost the ideological certitude of Stalinism. The science fictions discussed in this project carve out
utopia in the space between Stalinist repressions and empty authoritative discourse, responding
to what Alexei Yurchak refers to as the “performative shift” in Soviet society. Similarly, these
works are not alternatives to Communism, but alternatives within and for Communism. It is only
with the advent of perestroika that science fiction ceased producing alternative utopias and the
production of literary science fiction stalled. The few noteworthy works of this period are
dystopian works such as Voinovich’s Moscow 2042 and Aleksandr Kabakov’s The Deserter.
When, as a result of glasnost’, the Leninist foundation of Soviet ideology was undermined, faith
in any kind of Communist utopia, traditional or alternative, shattered. The last work discussed in
the dissertation, Day of the Oprichnik, is a work emblematic of science fiction in Putin’s Russia,
where science fiction production has skyrocketed once again. The biggest names in Russian
literary fiction—Pelevin, Sorokin, Tolstaya, and Bykov—embrace science fiction as a means of
responding to the present political situation,
111
most often in the form of anti-utopia. However,
these works resemble their utopian opposites by means of a static, unyielding temporal form; the
anti-utopian society becomes the culmination of history. These works fail to propose any future
model for Russia.
Having ended with the loss of futurity in contemporary Russia, I hope to reinforce the
significance of the works that preceded it. These visions represent alternatives not only to the
spatial and temporal manifestations of Stalinism, with which they are reckoning, but also to our
contemporary space-time, defined as it is by the end of history (and with it the loss of an

111
Not only intellectuals have embraced the science fiction genre. Putinist and chauvinist groups have created a sub-
genre (liberpunk) dedicated to promoting their anti-liberal ideological ends. For more information, see: Borenstein,
Plots against Russia.
193

alternative to global capitalism) and, subsequently, the rise of nationalism and nostalgia. In spite
of the failure of these visions to engender a future for the Soviet Union, the utopias that emerge
provide nuanced spatio-temporal forms that might serve as inspirations for new alternatives
within the limits of our here and now. The futurity that emerges in these works is a reflective
futurity–one that seeks its own potentialities in the past and injects a static notion of utopia with
dynamism. With the competing static visions of neoliberalism as global telos and nationalism as
a return to the glorious past, the efforts of late Soviet writers to create non-totalizing utopian
worlds should serve us as much-needed sources of inspiration and hope, as counters to anti-
utopian hopelessness and brokenness. The only other alternative on offer is apocalypse.
The last decade has witnessed a spike in the production of apocalyptic and post-
apocalyptic fiction and media–from Hollywood blockbusters to televised comedies to popular
video games, featuring every form of catastrophe from religious rapture, to zombie hordes, to
environmental disaster and nuclear explosion. The feeling that we are in for a reckoning would
appear to be a particularly evocative one. The threat of innumerable disasters assails the stability
of the liberal democratic world order, whose dominance Francis Fukuyama proclaimed in 1989
in his essay “The End of History?” According to Fukuyama, the death of Marxist-Leninist
ideology as a viable alternative to liberal democratic capitalism marked “the end point of
mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the
final form of human government” (Fukuyama 1989). For Susan Buck-Morss, the end of
European socialism also marks the passing of mass utopia: “Mass utopia, once considered the
logical correlate of personal utopia, is now a rusty idea. It is being discarded by industrial
societies along with the earliest factories designed to deliver it” (Buck-Morss x). Without a sense
of a collective future, even the end of history seems to be approaching its end. On the one hand,
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growing dissatisfaction with the neo-liberal world order, with no viable future alternative, has
given rise to nostalgia, and with it, nationalism, racism, and neo-fascism. On the other hand,
attempts to maintain the status quo and forestall collapse do little to offset the inevitability of
ecological disaster. Having reached the future via the end of history, humanity finds itself
trapped between past and present and obsessed with the End.
Russia, the epicenter of Fukuyama’s end of history, confronted the reality of the post-
apocalypse in the 1990s. For Russia, the end of history constituted the end of the world, at least
as the former citizens of the Soviet Union had known it. Millions of formerly Soviet citizens
found that the system under which and for which they toiled had ceased to exist. Their life
savings, the result of years of labor, became worthless and they started over from scratch in a
new world. The adoption of liberal democratic capitalism in Russia was immediately beset by
the lingering issues of corruption that had plagued the Soviet system, undermining the status of
the Soviet collapse as a break in history. This state is vividly reflected in contemporary science
fiction literature and film, which depict the post-Soviet state as a post-apocalyptic landscape, but
one that is strikingly familiar. The post-catastrophic state turns out to be one of recursion rather
than a truly radical break with the past; society rebuilds a funhouse mirror version of itself from
the memories and remnants of what came before. These depictions imply that history has indeed
ended, that no new social forms are possible and that humankind will be recycling ideologies ad
infinitum.
In that vein, Tatiana Tolstaya’s Kys’ (translated as The Slynx) presents a post-catastrophic
vision of Moscow whose governing structure is an assemblage of parts from various epochs of
Russian history. The social and political structure could be described as a bureaucratic
aristocracy, merging elements of feudal Russia (an aristocratic upper class; a servant class) with
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those of the Soviet Union (an inefficient bureaucracy and secret police). The world is not only
an amalgam of past political structures, but is, in fact, littered with relics from before the
cataclysmic event, referred to as “the Blast.” Among these relics are books, which are deemed
dangerous and forbidden, and even individuals. Among the residents of the post-apocalyptic
world are prezhnie (translated as “Oldeners” by Jamey Gambrell), individuals who survived the
Blast and, as a result, no longer age or die of natural causes. The Oldeners remember the pre-
catastrophic past, but relate to it by way of restorative nostalgia. Nikita Ivanych, an oldener
whose post-catrastrophic mutation is the ability to breathe fire, attempts to restore the past with
physical markers–signs that indicate the pre-Blast names of streets and landmarks such as
“Polianka,” “Strastnoi Bul’var,” and “Kuznetsky Most.” He undertakes this memory project in
order to “keep memory alive” (chtob pamiat’ byla) and “make [his] contribution to the
restoration and rebirth of culture” (vnesti svoi posil’nyi vklad v vosstanovlenie kul’tury)
(Tolstaya, Slynx 24, Tolstaia, Kys’ 32-3). Nikita Ivanych expends his efforts on the restoration of
Soviet culture; rather than seek to establish new forms of culture, new ways of being, he and his
fellow Oldeners fetishize the past and its remnants, trying to recreate it at every turn, but only on
a superficial level. His efforts are wasted on the inhabitants of Fyodor-Kuzmichsk, for whom
these names are empty signifiers, completely detached from their prior meaning. Even Benedikt,
the protagonist and a friend of Nikita Ivanych, interacts with these signs as annoying
inconveniences rather than tethers to the past.
Nikita Ivanych’s most explicit attempt at restoration of the pre-crisis past is the erection
of the “pushkin” statue. He has Benedikt carve a new “pushkin” statue out of a log and they
install him across the street from his pre-crisis spot. Though pushkin is once again
monumentalized, he is just another dead object in this world, hence the use of the lower-case p.
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Rather than being enlightened by the mere presence of the poet’s likeness, the people use him to
hang their laundry. The sublime is rendered utterly banal. Yet Nikita Ivanych maintains that the
monument be consistently restored, in spite of its lack of efficacy. The poet is emptied of all
content, becoming either a mundane object or a fetish object. In this regard, the statue is no
different from the other pre-crisis objects to which the Oldeners ascribe value. Their obsession
with these objects is elevated to the point of absurdity at a funeral they orchestrate for one of
their own – a woman named Anna Petrovna. Before they can inter her body, they must provide a
pre-crisis object belonging to the deceased, in this case, instructions for a meat grinder with
attachments. These instructions are elevated to the level of the sacred, regarded as an essential
part of the burial, though they serve no purpose, the meat grinder itself having been destroyed
without yet having been reinvented. The Oldeners, in spite of their memory of the past and their
relative wisdom compared to regular folks (referred to as “golubchiks”), seek refuge in
restorative nostalgia, unable to view the past through a critical lens.
What is striking about the Oldeners is that they are nostalgic for a past that is also
assumed to be the future. Acts of superficial restoration of the fetishized past are accompanied by
inaction on a broader systemic level. The Oldeners create oases of the prior civilization for and
among themselves, but are otherwise either participants in the current system or do nothing to
change it. For example, Nikita Ivanych makes frequent reference to the inevitable development
of civilization: “Gliadish’, govorit, cherez tyshchu-druguiu let vy nakonets vystupite na
tsivilizovannyi put’ razvitiia, iazvi vas v dushu, svet znaniia razveet besprobudnuiu t’mu vashego
nevezhestva, o narod zhestokovyinyi, i bal’zam prosveshcheniia prol’etsia na zaskoruzlye vashi
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nravy, puti I privychki”
112
(Tolstaia, Kys’ 33). Nikita Ivanych’s description of the future progress
of society is a passive one; all civilizing effects are impositions from abstract external sources–
“свет знания развеет” “бальзам просвещения прольется”–civilization will resurface in spite
of people, not because of them. Similarly, he uses passive constructions when delivering this
portion of the eulogy at Anna Petrovna’s funeral: “Material’naia kul’tura, druz’ia, ezhechasno
vosstanavlivaetsia. Vnov’ izobreteno koleso, vozvrashchaetsia koromyslo, solnechye chasy!
Skoro nauchimsia obzhigat’ gorshki!”
113
(Tolstaia, Kys’158). Nikita Ivanych’s faith in progress,
his certainty that human kind will develop as it did before, is the foundation for his inaction.
Exactly as Walter Benjamin warned in his “Paralipomena to On the Concept of History,”
reliance on the notion of linear progress proves to be utterly disempowering. According to
Sophie Fuggle, “For Benjamin, the specific danger lies very specifically in positing the future as
utopia, perceived as the apotheosis of present-day hopes and dreams. This inevitably leads to
complacency and places too much trust in political and economic systems – according to them
the status of quasi-natural laws” (36). Though Nikita Ivanych finds the current society utterly
repugnant, he makes no effort to change it, in spite of his power to do so. Not until the very end
of the novel, to which I will return later, does any attempt to change the system take place.
For regular golubchiks, history begins after the Blast. The relics that remain are regarded
with trepidation, fear, and misunderstanding. Many, like Benedikt’s father, destroy these objects
out of fear. Even those who do not fear these objects do not understand them. The inhabitants of
Fyodor-Kuzmichsk occupy a Strugatskiian zone, only the artifacts that surround them were not

112
Just wait, he says, in a millennium or so, you people will finally set foot upon the path of civilized development,
curse your bloody souls. The light of knowledge will finally dispel the impenetrable darkness of your ignorance, O
obstinate people, and the balm of enlightenment will flow down over your course manners and customs. (Tolstaya,
The Slynx 24)
113
Moreover, friends, material culture is being restored hour by hour. The wheel has been invented, the yoke is
returning to use and the solar clock as well! We will soon learn to fire pottery! (Tolstaya, The Slynx 121)
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left behind by an alien civilization, but by their own ancestors. Both value and risk are ascribed
to these objects, but they are utterly dehistoricized and decontextualized. For example, Fyodor
Kuzmich takes great literary and artistic works of the past and passes them off as his own
without himself knowing what they mean. When he presents the copyists with Vrubel’s Demon,
he explains, “Odnu kartinu ia krasil, a ona menia vyshla ne ochen’. Nazval «Demon». Nu tam ia
sve sinim pozakaliakal, aga” (Tolstaia, Kys’ 77). (“I painted one painting. I called it The Demon ,
but it didn’t turn out too well, so I brushed it over with a lot of blue paint, yes siree, I
did…”(Tolstaya, Slynx 59)) These works, created during different periods by vastly different
artists, become contemporaneous, lose their prior meaning and are interpreted against the
diegetic world. A steed becomes a mouse and a book about freedom is actually about knitting
(Tolstaia, Kys’ 79; 275-6). The links between signifier and signified disintegrate completely.
Books are the foremost example of this loss of meaning: “Like post-Soviet Russia,
Fyodor-Kuzmichsk turns out to be awash with books, but these books can do no good for
anyone. Scriptures here are not sacred; instead, they are the textual equivalent of the golden calf.
The books are taboo, in Freud’s sense of the term: objects of both worship and terror, they are
the final form taken by the unexamined elitism of the intelligentsia: the repression of culture”
(Borenstein, “Dystopias” 96). Benedikt consumes books with unmatched enthusiasm, but doesn’t
read for meaning or content, but only to imbibe empty words for their own sake, reading every
work as intently as the last. His consumption of books does not enlighten him, but rather
becomes an addiction, one that blunts his moral sensibilities and capacity for empathy. In his
pursuit of empty words, Benedikt becomes the thing that he most fears and hates – the Slynx.
With no regard for what is actually contained in particular books, Benedikt will sacrifice his
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friend, mentor, and children to protect art that he does not understand, but that he imbues with
higher meaning.
The post-apocalyptic world is an apt metaphor for the state of post-modernity, especially
in its post-Soviet context. Though an allegorical reading of the novel is both tempting and easy
to suggest, as Alla Latynina illustrates in her review of the book, it is no mere allegory for the
troubles of the Soviet past. In fact, the book easily lends itself to more than one allegorical
reading in this vein. It could be read as Latynina illustratively reads it, with Fyodor Kuzmich as
Lenin and Kudeyar Kudeyarich as Stalin (Latynina 69); as Edith Clowes suggests, with Fyodor
Kuzmich as Khrushchev (Russia on the Edge 37); or, as might be tempting to those wishing to
endow Tolstaya with uncanny foresight, with Fyodor Kuzmich as Yeltsin and Kudeyar
Kuderyarich as Putin. The collapse of these narratives on to one another implies a flat temporal
expanse, the flattening out of history. What emerges from the ashes of the apocalypse is not a
radically new world, but a rehashing of the old, its reconstitution and recombination. The
repetition of history after the Blast, the underlying similarity between the pre- and post-Blast
world, is laid bare by human/beast of burden Terenty Petrovich when he reminisces about the
reign of the previous ruler, Sergei Sergeich, with Nikita Ivanych and Lev Lvovich. As he praises
the order that Sergei Sergeich instilled, his reminiscences spill over into pre-Blast territory.
Terenty Petrovich conflates these two periods, continuing to rant and rave about the Soviet past
through multiple interruptions and corrections (Tolstaia, Kys’278-281). During his rant, Terenty
Petrovich reveals his chauvinism and his authoritarian leanings, both of which will manifest
when Terenty Petrovich ingratiates himself into a position of power and excavates gasoline,
another remnant from the pre-Blast world, in order to consolidate this power. The apocalypse
creates a society trapped between stasis, the full spatialization of the world, sapped of its
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temporal element, and restorative nostalgia, the unattainable desire to return to a past that never
truly was.
The end of the world fails to result in any kind of radical newness; too much of the past is
left behind in its decontextualized form, free to become the object of any given ideology. The
post-Blast world is “littered with the debris of history, and contaminated by irrelevant ideologies
as invisible and deadly as the radiation that poisons their environment” (Borenstein, “Dystopias”
100). The past becomes easy fodder for dangerous ideologies. Benedikt’s father-in-law Kudeyar
Kudeyarich, the head of the Saniturions (the post-Blast manifestation of the secret police),
employs pre-Blast texts as justifications for his authoritarian inclinations. His assessment of
Macbeth as a “useful” (полезная) book, followed by his praise of the fox who eats the kolobok
and his misreading of the “Wolf and the Lamb” fable, implies a narrow, self-legitimating cherry-
picking of texts (Tolstaia, Kys’ 236). Similarly, he applies a model of linear progress (“Stalo
byt’, ran’she – eshche khuzhe. A doprezh’ vsego – voobshche Vzryv”; “Stalo byt’ dvigat’sia
nam nado kuda? - vpered”
114
), combined with a distorted and convoluted logic and a baffling
misinterpretation of texts, to rope Benedikt into the family business of “healing” people, a
euphemism for raiding their homes and arresting them (Tolstaia, Kys’ 222-7). Though Kudeyar
Kudeyarich has an extensive collection of pre-Blast books, they provide no moral or intellectual
growth and are merely tools for the Head Saniturion to push his agenda, no different from the
hook he uses to ensnare his victims. Though Kudeyar Kudeyarich espouses a philosophy of
linear progress in order to facilitate action rather than inaction, his embrace of the teleological
narrative without any critical backwards glance recreates the past under the auspices of progress.

114
“And before that, they were even worse. And before everything – well, there was the Blast.” “So which way do
we need to go? Forward, of course.” (Tolstaya, The Slynx 171)
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In the world of The Slynx, we see the return of Voinovich’s satirical emplotment, which
will return yet again with a vengeance in Sorokin. Not even catastrophe is able to shake history
from its state of stagnation – apocalypse is a part of this cycle, rather than its cataclysmic
endpoint. In its opening voiceover, Aleksei German Jr’s 2015 film Under Electric Clouds (Pod
Elektricheskimi Oblakami) sets itself up to contend with this problem of the impossibility of
novelty after the end of history. The film is set in 2017, one hundred years after the Revolution
and only two years after the film’s release. War is on the horizon and ecological disaster looms.
The voiceover describes the state of the world: “Globalizatsiia ne sdelala mir edinym i istoriia ne
konchilas’. […] My vstupaem v novuiu epokhu vrode by vooruzhennye opytom istorii I sami
togo ne zamechaem, kak pristaiut k nam istlevshie siurtuki predshestvuiushchikh pokolenii. I ne
poniat’, gde my, i gde oni ”
115
(German Jr 2015). German’s narrator describes our world, a world
dissatisfied with globalization and neoliberalism, which can neither shake off the past nor learn
from it. The world is, as Borenstein described post-Soviet Russia, “pre- and post- apocalyptic at
the same time,” with the passing of mass utopia and the end of history representing the
apocalypse already lived (“Dystopias” 87). The world of Electric Clouds is a world of
individuals grasping at snatches of human connection, at meaning beyond the clarion call of
consumerism. The eponymous electric clouds–advertisements projected on the clouds
themselves–represent the dominant positions of the new system. The global capitalist system
reigns/rains over the Russian population.
The narrator describes the film as a series of stories about superfluous people, individuals
who are utterly alienated from the present world. The first vignette follows a Kyrgyz man whose

115
Globalization did not unite us and history did not end. […] We enter into a new epoch supposedly armed with the
experience of history and don’t even notice how the ragged coats of previous generations stick to us. And we don’t
understand where they end and we begin. My translation.
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construction site has closed as he wanders alone, unable to speak Russian, and, therefore, to be
understood. The tale ends with a man teaching him to speak the necessary words in Russian. The
second narrative, the one of primary interest to me, follows a woman, Sasha, and her brother as
they return to Russia from abroad after their father’s death. Sasha finds purpose in attempting to
protect an unfinished building that her father had started constructing but which is consistently
ridiculed by others. This becomes increasingly difficult when it is revealed that her father is
being investigated for fraud and that this threatens to strip her and her brother of their means. In
the third narrative, Marat Alekseivich has recurring dreams about the immediate aftermath of the
Soviet collapse, dreams of which he wishes to be cured. The fourth narrative follows a PhD
candidate in art history reduced to working as a guide in a museum, as he decides whether or not
the historically significant property of the museum is worth fighting for at the cost of his job. The
fifth follows a young man named Valya as he attempts to save a young girl, Sveta, from
kidnappers. Valya shows more humanity, more compassion for the girl, than even her older
brother. The sixth and final vignette focuses on the architect of the aforementioned unfinished
building, contending with a world that has no use for his designs. The ending brings many of
these characters together in a sculpture garden that Sasha has constructed on the beach.
The landscape of the film is at once present and future, suggesting that we are being
guided through the ruins of our own time, confronting the apocalypse that is in the process of
taking place or has already done so. The ruins are, however, also the wreckage of history, spaces
and objects that represent the broken dreams of the past. For example, the unfinished building
left to Sasha and her brother by their father is a compelling symbol for the unfulfilled dream of
Communism. That Sasha’s uncle hopes to sell the building to Japanese developers who would
raze the structure implies his willingness to exchange the utopian dream for participation in the
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system of global capital. Sasha opposes her uncle’s wishes, hoping to preserve her father’s
building as a monument to his grand vision. The building itself closely resembles the architecture
of the Soviet constructivists, evoking, for example, the Shukhov tower and designs by Nikolai
Ladovsky. The unfinished building also inevitably brings to mind the Monument to the Third
International, colloquially known as Tatlin’s Tower, the ultimate symbol of the unrealized hopes
of the Revolution (see Figures 1- 4). Another symbol of these unrealized Revolutionary
aspirations is an abandoned statue of Lenin, abandoned on the shore in danger of being swept
away by the ocean. The statue becomes a space for both thought and play for Sasha. In the
middle of her section of the film, she is seen sitting on Lenin’s arm, gazing pensively into the
distance (see Figure 5). This image is striking. The frost-covered face of Lenin gives him a truly
corpse-like appearance. The gesture, ostensibly toward the future, turns out to have led nowhere,
pointing to the border of the screen itself. The monument, Lenin himself, becomes a mere object,
a place to sit. This Lenin has lost his immortality. During the final scene of her plotline, Sasha
returns to the Lenin statue and performs a handstand on Lenin’s head; she is triumphant in spite
of her financial precariousness and abandonment (see Figure 6). The handstand gives Lenin new
life. Even the angle at which the statue is filmed has shifted, giving Lenin the appearance of
gesturing outward and gazing beyond. The scene presents hope in the face of hopelessness,
resilience in the face of apocalypse.
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Figure 1: The Unfinished Building

Figure 2: Shukhov Tower

Figure 3: Collective Housing design,
Nikolai Ladovsky

Figure 4: Tatlin’s Tower

Figure 5: Sitting on Lenin’s Arm

Figure 6: Lenin Handstand

The beginning of the film effectively articulates where we stand in the present moment–
mired in the quicksand of the past, unable to unburden ourselves from the limitations of our
predecessors, trying desperately to hold off another impending crisis. The film mourns the
passing of mass utopia, asserting that its loss is responsible for our current apocalyptic condition,
for the alienation of the individual from society and of individuals from one another.
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Though the beginning of the film feels deeply resonant with the current state of our post-
apocalyptic world, the end of the film is a further illustration of our own failure to overcome the
end of history, precisely because it asserts its own success. The hand waving that takes place off-
screen, resolving the crises that beset the characters during the early plotlines, is further evidence
that these problems are not actually resolvable. For example, the film renders Sasha and her
brother penniless, their father’s fortune the object of an investigation that threatens to undermine
his vision and their inheritance. However, when we return to these characters, Sasha has taken
over her father’s companies and is using the resulting wealth to complete his unfinished building
and to buy the abandoned studio populated by old statues and monuments, including Lenin.
Another example is that of the young girl Sveta. We leave Sveta in the hands of captors by
whom she is being held for ransom. They have beaten and killed Valya, the only person with
enough compassion and capacity to think beyond his own gratification, and we see her gazing
out the car window, certain that no one else will come for her. When we see her again, she says
that she has escaped her captors and is starting a new life. The escape is neither shown nor
described, but is, again, conveniently elided. These ellipses are unrealistic and deeply
unsatisfying, erasing any sense of struggle or overcoming. This “happy ending” is an uninspired
amalgam of utopian artifacts. Sasha builds her utopian space out of the ruins of past utopias. This
type of space is described by Jameson as a “chimera, the allegedly new thing [that is] an
ingeniously cobbled together object in which the secondary features of our own world are
primary in the new one” (Jameson Archaeologies 120). What is perhaps meant to read as a
continuation or extension is rather a return, a failure to attain newness that speaks to our
contemporary condition, our inability to think beyond what has come before.
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This ending presents utopia on a small scale, as an oasis in a tumultuous world that,
nonetheless, is able to influence the larger system. When Sasha and Sveta meet in the final scene,
the immediate sense of empathy between the two, the bond they forge in an instant, is meant to
represent our salvation. Human kinship serves as a means of rebuilding the utopian hopes of the
past. This is further emphasized when Sveta says “The wind has stopped,” as if to say that the
ecological destruction that has plagued the world of the film is also coming to an end, that all it
took was for two people to find each other, to treat each other as subjects, and to apply this to the
rebuilding of the past utopia. This, according to Badiou (by way of Žižek), is the only kind of
action that remains: “Badiou reads […] the demise of Communism […] as signaling the end of
the epoch in which, in politics, it was possible to generate truth at the universal level, as a global
‘revolutionary’ project: today, in the aftermath of this historical defeat, a political truth can only
be generated as (the fidelity to) a local event, a local struggle, an intervention into a specific
constellation.” However, the restriction of radical political action to the space of the local event,
Žižek argues, entrenches capitalism as “an omnipresent background of political struggles” (Žižek
Lost Causes 403-5). So too does the ending of Electric Clouds. The film endeavors to stave off
the apocalypse by embracing the utopian ideals of the Soviet past on a smaller scale, as an act of
protest against the system that it, nonetheless, fails to disturb.
Under Electric Clouds encourages us to revive and literally build on the utopian dreams
of the Soviet past, to carry them forward into the future. However, it fails to enunciate a new
vision for the future, to achieve the novum of which Bloch speaks. The film “merely [combines]
the already existing facts in a random manner,” embodying what Bloch would describe as an act
of recollection rather than imagination. “The ideas of the imagination […] carry on the existing
facts toward their future potentiality of their otherness, of their better condition in an anticipatory
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way” (Bloch, Utopian Function 105). Though the fact that Sasha is completing her father’s
building implies the latter, this is not a further development of a past vision, but rather its
revivification and fulfillment. The tragedy of our loss of the past, of the end of history, is
resolved by a return to a dehistoricized version of that past.
The utopia that Sasha builds closely resembles the current Park Iskusstv “Muzeon” in
Moscow. This is a pleasant park landscape strewn with statues of varying styles and periods,
where Lenin and Stalin dwell among contemporary statues (see Figures 7-8). In spite of its
ability to present striking juxtapositions to its visitors, the Park Iskusstv is, at its essence, a
tourist destination, occupied not only by the debris of the Soviet past and the art of the post-
Soviet present, but by markers of global capitalism, such as Starbucks-Coffee-branded planting
beds. Park Iskusstv falls easily into the two traps of our current day and age, those of nostalgia
and commodification, exposing the tenuousness of the utopian chimera as Sasha creates it. If all
we can do to fend off the impending apocalypse is build the Park Iskusstv then perhaps we have
only reaffirmed its inevitability.

Figure 7: Stalin; behind him, the Monument
for the Victims of Stalinist Repression

Figure 8: Lenin shares the field with
contemporary works

If the ending of Electric Clouds exposes the inadequacy of localized solutions to systemic
problems, as I believe it does, the ending of The Slynx provides an altogether different, perhaps
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more satisfying, though not exactly actionable, solution: “Bukh!..tadakh!...-udarilo za spinoi, i,
oborachivaias’ na begu, Benedikt uvidel, kak val vzvivaetsia na dyby, kak lomit vdol’ ulitsy,
vzryvaia zapasnye bochki s pinzinom, v odin glotok proglatyvaia izby, krasnoi dugoi
perekidyvaias’ ot doma k domu, slizivaia tyny i chastokoly – tuda, vse tuda, kak po nitke, - k
Krasnomu Teremu”
116
(Tolstaia, Kys’ 376). Such is the destruction by fire of the settlement
Kudeyar Kudeyarichsk (formerly known as Fyodor-Kuzmichsk). Rather than be executed by
Kudeyar Kudeyarich, who, having overthrown Fyodor Kuzmich, had imposed a thoroughly
authoritarian state, Nikita Ivanych lets loose a torrent of flames that ignites the recently
disinterred gasoline (which had been intended for his execution) and destroys the entirety of the
town, right down to the tyrant’s fortress. The only survivors of the conflagration are Nikita
Ivanych, Lev Lvovich, and Benedikt himself, who just manages to utter “Konchena zhizn’,
Nikita Ivanych” ( “Life is over Nikita Ivanich”). Nikita Ivanych responds, “Konchena-nachnem
druguiu” (“It’s over…so we’ll start another one”) (Tolstaia, Kys’ 377). The novel ends with an
image of jubilation as the two surviving Oldeners join hands and begin levitating:
Прежние согнули коленки, взялись за руки и стали подниматься в воздух. Оба
смеялись: Лев Львович немного повизгивал, как будто боялся купаться в холодном,
а Никита Иваныч посмеивался басом: хо-хо-хо. […]
- Вы чего не сгорели-то?
- А не охота! Не-о-хо-та-а!..
- Так вы не умерли, что ли? А?.. Или умерли?

116
Boom! Baboom! The sound hit his back. Turning as he ran, Benedikt saw the fireball rise up and charge down
the streets exploding extra barrels of guzzelean, swallowing up whole izbas in one gulp, throwing itself like a red
yoke from house to house, licking the palings and fences, heading in one direction as though following a thread –
right to the Red Term. (Tolstaya, The Slynx 294)
209

- А понимай как знаешь!..
117
(Tolstaia, Kys’ 378-9)
This is the novel’s parting image and its parting words are those of a poem by Natalia
Krandievskaya, grandmother of Tatiana Tolstaya, in which the poet embraces destruction as a
source of liberation. Rather than seek to delay the end, to look for solutions to the impending
apocalyptic moment, Tolstaya initiates it and beckons the readers to embrace it as well, to
recognize in this moment the boundless potential of a new world. As we become more and more
mired in what is and what has come before, unable to imagine beyond our own experience,
Tolstaya’s finale evokes Jameson in inviting us to imagine this radical break as Utopia:
Disruption is, then, the name for a new discursive strategy, and Utopia is the form such
disruption necessarily takes. And this is now the temporal situation in which the Utopian
form proper – the radical close of a system of difference in time, the experience of the total
formal break and discontinuity – has its political role to play, and in face, becomes a new
kind of content in its own right. For it is the very principle of the radical break as such, its
possibility, which is reinforced by the Utopian form, which insists that its radical difference
is possible and that a break is necessary. The Utopian form itself is the answer to the
universal ideological conviction that no alternative is possible, that there is no alternative
to the system. But it asserts this by forcing us to think the break itself, and not by offering
a more traditional picture of what things would look like after the break. (Jameson,
Archaeologies 231-32)

117
The Oldeners bent their knees, held hands, and began to rise in the air. They were both laughing – Lev Lvovich
shrieked a bit, as though he were afraid to swim in cold water, and Nikita Ivanich laughed in a deep voice: ho-ho-ho.
[…]
“Why didn’t you burn up?”
“Didn’t feel like it! Just didn’t feeeeel like it!”
“So you mean you didn’t die? Huh? Or did you?”
“Figure it out as best you can!” (Tolstaya, The Slynx 296)
210

Plagued by nostalgia and complacency, the products of the end of history and the passing of mass
utopia, we do all but embrace the apocalypse, going through all four stages of grief, as Žižek
describes in his Living in the End Times: denial, anger, bargaining, and depression. Žižek suggests
that we accept apocalypse as “an opportunity to be seized in order to bring about totally new forms
of collective existence” (Fuggle 42). Tolstaya’s ending does the same, asking us to accept an all-
consuming blast, a radical break that could kick-start history and dislodge humanity from its
cycles.

211

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