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

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

In the 1950s-60s, Soviet Russophone science fiction became a highly demanded branch of literature and, at the same time, a subject of close attention from the ideological apparatus. The sci-fi novels of a number of authors were saturated with hidden political and cultural messages of a liberal/emancipatory or nationalistic origin. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, an influential trend emerged in Russophone science fiction (or to be more precise, in speculative fiction -- an umbrella term uniting sci-fi, dystopias and fantasy literature) -- conservative authors who expressed ressentiment and sought revenge on the West for the USSR's defeat in the Cold War. Their fiction became a tool of wishful thinking and denial of the existing social reality as "unfair".

The authors of this panel analyze various aspects of Soviet science fiction as a social-cultural institution that have not been studied so far, from the planning of science fiction publications to hidden transcripts in the works of Jewish science fiction writers. In addition, we hope to analyze the transformations of post-Soviet speculative fiction, its conversion into a tool of conservative and revanchist social imagination, and the participation of speculative fiction writers in Russia's war against Ukraine.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 21st Century

Chair

• Anindita Banerjee, Cornell U

Papers

• Ilya Varshavskii and the Jewish Language of Soviet Science Fiction - Marat Grinberg, Reed College

• Soviet Science Fiction between Adventures and Detective Stories: Thematic Management, Economic Plans, and Lobby Groups in the 'Molodaia Gvardia' Publishing House, 1957-1974 - Maksim Lukin, U of Pennsylvania

• 'Future That We Have...What?': The Tenses of the Modern Russian Science Fiction - Elena Mikhailik, U of New South Wales (Australia)

• Re-conjuring Sci-Fi into Political Reality: Russophone Science Fiction Writers and Invasion of Eastern Ukraine in 2014 - Ilya Kukulin, Stanford U

Discussant

• Muireann Maguire, U of Exeter (UK)