Re-conjuring Sci-Fi into Political Reality: Russophone Science Fiction Writers and Invasion of Eastern Ukraine in 2014

• In Event: "More Than Sci-Fi": The Models of Society in Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Speculative Fiction

Abstract

Russia's 2014 invasion of Donbass (eastern Ukraine) was initially organized as a proxy war involving local "militias" with the participation of Russian military and special services. Journalists have already written that the first phase of the invasion involved an unusually large number of "reenactors," that is, people who had previously participated in reenactments of famous historical battles in which Russian troops took part. The most famous of these was Igor Strelkov (Igor Girkin), a former colonel of the Russian FSB (the successor to the USSR's KGB), who was among the first to launch military operations in eastern Ukraine. For several months, Girkin was the "Minister of Defense of the Donetsk People's Republic." In addition, it has already been discussed in the media that the leadership of the Donbass separatists included several well-known science fiction writers. Among these writers one should first name Fedor Berezin, who for a long time worked as "deputy defense minister" -- first of Strelkov and then of his successor. In Berezin’s science fiction novels, long before 2014, the writer depicted a war between Russia and the West on Ukrainian territory or to take control of Ukraine. Another Donetsk-based science fiction writer, Mikhail Belozerov, wrote novels similar in content. These works were imbued with ressentiment -- the desire to "take revenge" on the West for the collapse of the USSR.

The activities of these science fiction writers, who first described the war between Russia and Western countries on the territory of Ukraine, and then supported or even participated in the real aggression of Russia against Ukraine, are apparently based on the belief that reality can and even should be remade on the basis of literary narratives, which can serve its "ideal" model. The worldview of the "reenactor" Girkin is close to the same notion. In this paper, I will try to trace the genealogy of the social episteme described here. Apparently, it combines the influences of late Soviet times (from the 1940s to the 1970s) and the aesthetics of the 1990s, especially the PR activities of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov.

Author

• Ilya Kukulin, Stanford U