3 literary Soviet dystopias that predicted the future more accurately than we would like

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In the Soviet Union, science fiction was held in high esteem throughout the history of its existence. And many authors did not pass by such a genre as dystopia. Some branded the horrors of militarism, others imagined a terrible future in a world obsessed with industrialization, others soared with fantasy, imagining terrible civilizations on other planets (where, of course, they flew to save local progressive earthlings). Some of the things described seem to have come true anyway.

"Dunno on the Moon", Nikolay Nosov

The book, which in the twenty-first century began to be remembered very often, having discovered that it was not such a children's story. According to the plot, little "shorty" people from the Flower City, so similar to a commune from Soviet dreams of the future, go to the moon and discover the world of capitalism there. So, Dunno gets acquainted not only with the fact that you have to pay for food - but also with ideas about corruption, environmental disaster (plants are very rare on the moon, and there are probably economic reasons for this), destruction of small businesses by monopolies and extreme unequal distribution of income and social benefits.

For a long time, what was described was perceived as an exaggeration, a caricature of capitalist society, but in our time many are sure that the book warned against the "wild capitalism" into which Russia threw itself after the official abolition of socialism. The details, they say in social networks, coincide right up to the environmental disaster caused by the greed of business - when areas are given for construction, which are vitally important to keep "green." … An interesting shape-shifter with Dunno, who behaves on the moon, "as if he fell from the moon" - as real earthlings would say. Only he fell on the moon!

"Predatory Things of the Century", Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

The protagonist, a former space pilot, arrives with a secret investigation in the southern resort town of a clearly capitalist country that has achieved general prosperity - at least in consumerism. Here is a four-hour working day (for it it is quite possible to serve your own and other people's needs, but the townspeople don't need more) and do not know hunger and other everyday problems. Life is so full that the reason for the strike is the termination of the filming of your favorite television series.

The townspeople are trying to escape from their half-asleep existence in the most bizarre ways. Professors and students arrange terrorist attacks, extreme people explore the long-abandoned metro station in search of deadly dangers, those who want to commit atrocities buy or steal recognized world masterpieces of art just to destroy them. And the drug distribution network is flourishing in the city - it was she who became the object of the hero's investigation.

Ultimately, he finds out that biochemically, the "drug" is absolutely harmless. It is addictive from the fact that it gives people a new, brighter reality in comparison with everyday life (by the way, they go into it with the help of a radio receiver). Many are now convinced that in this way the Strugatskys, the authors of the story, predicted the emergence of virtual reality, into which people will literally begin to live.

There are other signs of a much later time. For example, "droshka" is a rave party, the game "lyapnik" is paintball, and on the Internet (especially on Twitter) you can find serious, not comic, angry petitions requiring the authors of films and TV series to re-shoot them, partially or completely, or create a continuation for them. That is, some people really have problems of the level that requires the involvement of public activism. But even in the Scandinavian countries they have not yet reached the four-hour working day and the closure of public transport as unnecessary.

"We", Zamyatin

The novel was written in 1920, but the USSR saw the light only during Perestroika. A society built on the cult of science and industrialization - where each person is just a rational small cog in a rational large system - seemed to the Soviet government to be directed against its proclaimed course of collectivism and, yes, industrialization.

According to the plot, people of the distant thirty-second century live in the only huge city on Earth in completely transparent apartments of completely transparent houses. You can retire only for the sake of sexual intercourse and only on schedule. There are no more names - all inhabitants of the Earth received identification codes and use them in any situation. You can't tell what gender or occupation you are by your clothes and hairstyle: everyone is exactly the same in suits and hygienically shaved their heads. Children are taught in schools by robots, and only physically perfect manufacturers have the right to have them.

However, the main character learns that there is another humanity outside the city walls, falls in love and, as the doctor says, a soul is formed. He also associates with revolutionaries, since his beloved is a revolutionary. It all ends with the government massively conducting citizens through the procedure for removing the center of fantasy. The revolution fails, the protagonist loses all feelings.

Many are convinced that the modern digitalization of society (where everyone, in addition to a name, has many identification codes, which the state is constantly trying to reduce to one common one) leads to the very effect of living in the glass rooms of a glass house, when everyone is in everyone's sight. And part of the educational process is indeed transferred to "robots" - training programs. However, not yet in schools. Will this lead to a general loss of the "fantasy center" in the brain? So far, the answer is rather negative. But in the yard and century not thirty-second.

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