Alien Places in Late Soviet Science Fiction

ACTA UNIVERSITATIS STOCKHOLMIENSIS Stockholm Studies in Russian Literature 42 Alien Places in Late Soviet Science Fiction The “Unexpected Encounters” of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky as Novels and Films Henriette Cederlöf Contents Acknowledgements ix Note on transliteration xii Figures xiii FROM UTOPIA TO HETEROTOPIA: THE END OF THE SOVIET 1960S AND THE BEGINNING OF THE 1970S 1 Expectations and Disillusionments 1 The Strugatskys 3 Previous Research and the Aim of this Study 4 A Literature of Difference 6 Soviet Science Fiction 6 The Place of Science Fiction Within Late Soviet Culture 8 The Relationship Between Science Fiction and Reality 11 Science Fiction and the Gothic 12 Replacements of Time, Space and Body 13 The Chronotope 13 Heterotopia 15 Images of Environment 15 Images of Humanity 19 The Posthuman 21 The Dislocated Protagonist 22 Further Developments: The Screen Adaptations 23 Presentation of the Study 25 OVER THE THRESHOLD: THE THREE NARRATIVES OF UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTERS 29 Inspector Glebsky’s Puzzle: A Requiem for the Detective Genre? 29 Liminality 30 Between Genres 33 Between Worlds 37 Allusions to the West 37 The Mirror 39 Between Identities 40 The Mountain Climber 40 The Detective 43 Between the Old and the New 45 The “Eye” and the “I” 48 5IF,JEUtopia Revisited 51 A Colonial Narrative 52 Literary Ancestors 52 Communication and Sensory Perception 54 Heterotopia 57 The Land of Death and Opportunity 57 Mirrorings 58 The Dual Hero: “Fathers and Sons” 59 Father Figures 59 The Dislocated Protagonist 61 The Posthuman 63 3PBETJEF1JDOJDA "Fable of Despair"? 68 Complementary Heterotopias 69 Material Objects 74 Gadgets 74 Garbage 77 The Hero 79 The “Other” 82 Conclusion: Closing the Door to Utopia 87 INTO THE ZONE: THE SCREEN ADAPTATIONS 89 The Script and the Directors 89 Constructing Space 91 Adapting Characters 92 Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel: Transposition or Commentary? The Screenwriting Process 92 Film Noir/Generic References 94 The Construction of Space 95 The Natural Landscape 95 The West 96 Spatial Binary Oppositions: 99 Above/Below 99 Inside/Outside or Light/Darkness 101 Adapting the Characters 103 A Less Ambiguous Hero 103 Other Characters 105 No Longer “The Strange Child” 108 The Femme Fatale 109 Stalker: Re-imagining the Source Text: The Making of an Analogy 112 Intertextual References 113 The Establishment of Different Spaces 115 Outside the Zone 115 The Zone 116 The Changing Chronotope 119 Abolishing the Future 120 A Religious Action 121 The Transformations of the Characters 123 The Struggle to Find a Hero 123 Other Characters – Other Aspects 126 The Professor 128 Writer 129 The Wife 130 The Daughter 131 Moving Into “The Other Space” 132 ON TO NEW TERRITORIES: CONCLUDING REMARKS 133 Works Cited 137 Appendix I. The Novels 144 Appendix II. The Films 147 Svensk sammanfattning 149 Acknowledgements Having finally finished this manuscript, I asked myself when this whole ven- ture actually began. Was it that warm September evening back in 1992 when my eyes fell on a book by the Strugatsky brothers on a table on a Moscow street? I bought the book even though I had never heard of it. Many years later I began to entertain the idea that it might contain material on which to base a dissertation. Perhaps it does not matter when or where or how it began, but rather that I finally seem to have reached the end. The road there has not been com- pletely smooth. Nevertheless, travelling it has, on the whole, been a pleasant experience during which I have received invaluable help from a number of people and institutions. I would like to thank the Baltic Sea Foundation for financing my doctoral studies. The dissertation was written in an academic context where I had the opportunity to come in contact with different individuals and intellectual environments. It began at Södertörn University, at the Baltic and Eastern European Graduate School (BEEGS) where I spent my first two years as a PhD student. Then I moved on to the Department of Comparative Litera- ture. However, throughout that time I maintained a strong connection to my other affiliation, the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature, where I finished my dissertation. My work also took me abroad: to Venice, Moscow and Tallinn. First of all thanks to my advisors: Anna Ljunggren at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Stockholm University, for sharing invaluable insights into Soviet culture and not the least for the unending patience with which she read my texts over the years; Lars Kleberg at BEEGS for insightful advice; and Ola Holmgren at the Department of Comparative Litera- ture at Södertörn University for support and encouragement during the early stages of my work. ix At the Department of Slavic languages and Literatures at Stockholm Uni- versity: thanks to the senior researchers Per-Arne Bodin, Peter Alberg Jen- sen, Karin Grelz, Kerstin Olofsson; and to my fellow doctoral students – Mattias Ågren, with whom I have had many interesting conversations and shared experiences of the plight of the doctoral student, as well as Hans An- dersson, Fabian Linde, Natasha Ringblom, Larisa Korobenko and Petra Jo- hansson, who all have given valuable suggestions, advice, support and encouragement. At the Department of Comparative Literature at Södertörn University: thanks to Sara Granath for advice (“Tell me what your dissertation is about. In two sentences.”) and support over the years, and especially for the extra six months of uninterrupted work on the dissertation; Claudia Lindén, Yael Feiler and Christine Farhan; my fellow PhD students Cecilia Annell and Markus Huss for their interest and helpful comments. At BEEGS I have met many inspiring scholars over the years: thank you, Irina Sandomirskaja, Helene Carlbäck, Rebecka Lettevall, Margareta Tillberg, Ilja Viktorov, $IBSMPUUF#ZEMFS, Ulrika Dahl, and all the rest of you for useful advice and comments, and for encouragement and support. I have also received support and encouragements from fellow PhD students in other disciplines, especially Nadezhda Petrusenko, Florence Fröhlig, and Erika Lundell. And thank you, Jessica Moberg, for providing inspiration and unfailing interest in the progression of my work. Many thanks also to the administrative staff at BEEGS and at both de- partments for all the help I have received. Thanks also go to the people I met on my travels abroad. In Venice: Luigi Magarotto and the department of American, Iberian and Slavic Studies as well at the staff at the department of international exchange at Università Ca’Foscari. Thank you all for interesting conversations and the free use of libraries and office space. In Moscow: thanks to Galina Ponomareva and her staff at the Moscow State University, for the opportunity of experiencing this amazing environment and for counseling and support; to Yuri Arabov at the Gerasimov Insti- tute of Cinematography (VGIK) for valuable insights into the work of An- drei Tarkovsky; and last but not least to Naum Kleiman for taking the time to read an early draft of my chapter about Stalker. I also want to thank x 3Pman Silant’ev for patiently introducing me to some insightful thoughts about contemporary Russian fantastic literature. In Tallinn: thanks to the very helpful staff at the Estonian Film Archive and the Estonian National Archives, and especially to Eva Näripea, for late but nevertheless very helpful input. Thanks also to Maria Engström and Jørgen Bruhn for the work you both did in connection with my final seminar; your perceptive comments helped very much to give the dissertation its final shape. Thanks as well to Julie Hansen for taking the time to read the manuscript and give useful last- minute input. Special thanks go to Rachelle Puryear for correcting the language, especially for breaking up long sentences into more comprehensible units, and to Aleksei Semenenko for his work on the layout. Stockholm, May 8, 2014 xi Note on transliteration Where an established conventional English spelling of Russian names exists (e.g., Strugatsky, Tarkovsky, Vysotsky), this has been given preference in the main body of the text. The sole exception is the name of the hero of the first novel: although he is “Glebsky” in the title of the novel, he is “Glebski” in the main text. In the case of the director Grigori Kromanov, I have used the established Estonian spelling. In the footnotes and bibliography, Russian names and sources have been transliterated according to the Scandinavian version of the international scholarly transliteration system ISO/R 9. All translations are mine unless stated otherwise. Where an established Eng- lish title for a work exists, this has been used, with the original title in paren- theses. In other cases the translation of the titles are mine, with the original titles in square brackets. xii Figures 1. Consumer goods evoking a vision of a generalized “West.” 98 2. Western glamour: Simone (Lembit Peterson) in the billiard room. 98 3. The hero: inspector Glebski (Uldis Pūcītis) before the portrait of the dead mountaineer. 107 4. “Doll-like”: Brjun (Nijolė Oželytė) and Olaf (Tiit Härm). 109 5. The femme fatale: Mrs. Mozes (Irena Kriauzaitė) dancing at the party. 111 All photos courtesy of Estonian Film Archives, Tallinn. xiii From Utopia to Heterotopia: The End of the Soviet 1960s and the Beginning of the 1970s Expectations and Disillusionments In June 1968, the renowned scientist Andrei Sakharov completed an essay entitled “Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom” (“Razmyšlenija o progresse, mirnom sosuščestvovanii i intellektual’noj svobode”).1 In the essay he discussed the threat of nuclear war and addressed the subject of the lack of intellectual freedom in the Soviet Union. The Soviet 1960s began as a time of unusual optimism about the future: at the 1961 Party Congress it had been proudly declared that the ideals of communism would finally be realized.2 The conquest of outer space also appeared to be within reach.

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