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Science Fiction and the Thaw Author(S): Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr

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Science Fiction and the Thaw Author(S): Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr SF-TH Inc Science Fiction and the Thaw Author(s): Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. Source: Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3, Soviet Science Fiction: The Thaw and After (Nov., 2004), pp. 337-344 Published by: SF-TH Inc Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4241281 . Accessed: 22/10/2014 05:24 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. SF-TH Inc is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Science Fiction Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 05:24:43 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SCIENCE FICTION AND THE THAW 337 Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. Science Fiction and the Thaw Of the many creative boom periods in the history of sf-fin-de-si&cle England and France, revolutionary Russia, the US Golden Age, the New Wave, cyberpunk,Japan in the 1990s-none has had as much immediateimpact on the public sphere, the political culture, andthe currentsof mainstreamliterature-or was viewed as such a potent threatby the ruling order-as the sf of the Soviet post-Stalin Thaw. Inevitably associated with its most prominentauthors, Ivan Efremov and the Strugatskybrothers, the sf of the Thaw was in fact the work of a large creative communitythat includedmany other writers as well, among them Sever Gansovsky, Vladimir Savchenko, Olga Larionova, Valentina Zhuravleva,Gennadi Gor, Ilya Varshavsky,Vadim Shefner, Rafail Nudelman, AriadnaGromova, and Kir Bulychev. A generationof Anglophonereaders was introducedto some of their works when, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a few publishing houses, led by the UK-based Macmillan, embarked on an ambitiousproject of publishingmajor works of Soviet sf, primarilyof the Thaw cohort. Several volumes of the Strugatskys' oeuvre appeared in English translations,as well as some stories and single novels by others.' The translation project was typical of the internationalistmood of the English-speakingcultural atmosphere of the time, when works of the Latin American boom, of Japanese and African fiction, and eccentric European writers like Lem and Calvino appeared on bookshelves in unprecedented numbers.Translations of Soviet sf, however, were doubtlessalso driven by the wish to further the "spirit of detente," the pause in the Cold War inspired mainly by the threatof nuclear war, the passion for space exploration, and the drive for consumer goods-shared by the people of the US and the USSR, and, not incidentally, characteristic inspirations for sf. Soviet sf also spoke to Western readers' desire for otherness. At a time when Western sf was itself booming with experimentsin form and social imagination,Soviet sf represented an alternativetradition altogether, an ethical-literaryenvironment far different from the fast-forwardtechno-modernity of most Westernand Japanese sf. Later (indeed, at the time many of the translationsfinally appearedin print), as the Brezhnev regime clamped down tight on all forms of opposition, there was a wish to see Soviet sf writers as low-key dissidents, one step away from samizdat and persecution. In the West, we read the Thaw writers in the frarneswe had ready for them. And before we could really get to know them, the favorablemoment passed. A few of the Strugatskys'novels that were still in the pipeline were publishedin the mid-1980s. Then it was over. Importantlater works, like the Strugatskys' Lame Fate (1986), TheDoomed City (1988), and Burdenedby Evil (1988), and Efremov's TheHour of the Bull (1970), have not seen light in English. (English translationsof Efremov's AndromedaNebula [1957], the foundingtext of post- This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 05:24:43 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 338 SCIENCEFICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 31 (2004) WorldWar II Sovietsf, havenever been published outside of theSoviet Union.) Aside froma few academicsand connoisseurs, there were few takers.At this writing,not one of the translationsis in print.As the historicalSoviet Union passesinto memory, and-at leastfor mostWestern readers-fades even from there,there is goodreason to tryto gaina newunderstanding of thatmovement, one of themost original attempts to frameimaginary futures out of thesubstrate of bureaucraticdespotism. As RomanArbitman shows us in the memoir publishedin this issue, Russianwriters themselves return to it for inspiration. For Westerners,the sf of the Thawoffers, throughits alternativefutures, a privilegedway of understandinga society whose present was already alien to us. To understandthe roleof sf in theculture of theThaw, we mustestablish its context. In the past, criticshave tendedto takeone of two approachesto the Thaw writers. Some hopedto find evidenceof an oppositionalassertion of Marxisthumanism against the inhumanity both of Westernmonopoly capitalism and SovietStalinism. They constructed Soviet sf as a partnerin the New Left projectof socialistreform. Others expected the Thawcohort to be courageous dissidents,closer in spiritto contemporaryfantastic satirists like Sinyavski, Zinoviev,and Voinovich,than to mere craftersof sf. Neitherof these is an entirelyfalse stereotype.Many of theThaw writers were faithful Marxists and Communists(they were often instrumental, however, in showingthat these are not identicalconcepts, just as revolutionand utopia are not) who took Khrushchevat his word when he promiseda reformof socialismand the emancipationof sciencefor the goodof humanity.Many were also persecuted for theirwriting, either overtly prevented from publishing altogether, or forced to publishwork that was fatallycompromised. A few of the Strugatskys'works were indeedpublished in samizdatform by an emigrepublisher. But,as Arbitman'sand Erik Simon's essays make clear, Thaw sf was in fact a popularliterature that addressed the feelingsof a largesector of the Soviet populationin theKhrushchev and early Brezhnev eras. It spokeespecially to the youngintelligentsia-students, young scientists and engineers, and humanists for whom science representedfreedom from Stalinistsuperstition. This new intelligentsiawas beingencouraged to takea leadingrole in the transformation of Sovietsociety into a technologicallyadvanced one, andeven to leadit intoa shiningCommunist future based not on hollowphrases but material-scientific achievements.For a generationunburdened of Stalin,witnessing the Space Age, believingin the promiseof gradual(albeit minimal) improvements in personal life, sf representeda potentsynthesis of ideologyand science, of personaland social happiness.Utopia, which had inspiredthe classic sf writersof the revolutionaryperiod, and had been outlawedby Stalin,once againbecame topical. As Khrushchev'sCommunist Party itself incorporatedutopian imaginingsinto its 22ndCongress, the scientific intelligentsia was givenlicense to dreamabout engineering social-and personal-happiness. The Thaw. Establishingdates for the Thawis not a simplematter. A "long thaw"begins with the deathof Stalinin 1953and ends around 1972, withthe final slide of the Brezhnevregime into the periodof "Stagnation."It is more This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 05:24:43 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SCIENCEFICTION AND THETHAW 339 orthodoxto date its beginning at 1956, with Khrushchev'ssecret speech to the 20th Communist Party Congress, attacking Stalin for his purges (although, significantly, not for his crimes against the population). Since every act of liberalizationat this time was inspiredby reactionagainst Stalinism and the "cult of personality," a reasonable end-date for the Thaw is April 1968, when Brezhnevannounced to the Plenumof the CentralCommittee that "consequences of the personalitycult" had been officially eliminated(Rothberg 236). There is little dispute about the main aspects of the Thaw. Khrushchev understoodquickly after rising to power that the Soviet Union was dangerously backwardcompared to the technologicaland economic development of the West. The populationwas exhaustedand demoralizedafter years of war, tyranny,and deprivation.Khrushchev initiated new policies that were diametricallyopposed to Stalin's. He encouraged science education, decentralized industrial and educational institutions, and opened the country to Western scientific ideas. Quantumphysics, relativity, cybernetics, and genetics-all of which had been proscribed by Stalin as "bourgeois science"-were incorporated into the curriculum.Khrushchev's interest in science was purelypragmatic; he saw it as the only means to specific goals: nucleararms, a space-program,and above all, highly efficient economic (especially agricultural)production. The policy produced obvious successes. The Sputniklaunch in 1957, and Yuri Gagarin's orbital flight in 1961, both the first achievementsof their kind, were spectacularselling points for the Soviet system, at home and abroad.The emphasis on science led to the constructionof special Science Cities that were to be devoted to scientific research and development. (The first and largest of these, Akademgorodok,near Novosibirsk,was establishedin 1958.) Khrushchev also
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