Soviet Science Fiction Cinema and the Space Age: Memorable Futures 1793609314, 9781793609311

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Soviet Science Fiction Cinema and the Space Age

Soviet Science Fiction Cinema and the Space Age Memorable Futures

Natalija Majsova

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com Copyright © 2021 The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on File ISBN 978-1-7936-0931-1 (cloth : alk. Paper) ISBN 978-1-7936-0932-8 (electronic) ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

To cosmonautes, and to their perseverance.

Contents

List of Figures

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Acknowledgments xi Introduction: “To Begin With, There Must Be a Will to Remember” 1 Soviet Space and the Battlegrounds of Twentieth-Century Science Fiction Cinema

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2 Aelita’s Mark and the Many Faces of Utopia

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3 The Space Futures of Socialist Realism

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4 The Space Age and Its Others: Soviet SF between Gagarin and Gorbachev

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5 Little Soldiers, Perfect Aliens, and Spoilt Brats: Soviet and Post-Soviet Space Kids as Liminal Agents

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6 An Explosive Expansion: Soviet SF in the 1980s and Its Legacy

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7 The Province Called Earth: The Trope of Outer Space in Post-Soviet Russian Cinema

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8 Reinterpretations of the Soviet History of Spaceflight in Contemporary Russian Blockbusters

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Contents

Conclusion: “If It Got Recorded, It Had to Be True.” Replay, Rewatch, Remember?

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Bibliography 193 Index 209 About the Author

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List of Figures

All Figures are still from the films, analyzed in the book. They are reproduced according to Article 1274 of the Grazhdanskii kodeks Rossiiskoi federatsii (The Civil Code of the Russian Federation), which allows reuse of such materials for research and educational purposes Figure 2.1 Still from Aelita—A Soviet Orphanage Figure 2.2 Still from Tumannost’ Andromedy—Dar Veter and Veda Kong in Togas Figure 3.1 Still from the Film Kosmicheskii reis—Professor Sedykh and Andriusha Figure 3.2 Still from Nebo zovet—Astronaut Robert and His Mother Figure 4.1 Still from Planeta bur’—Masha and Sir John Figure 4.2 Still from Tainstvennaia stena—The Canadian Writer Rescued by a Soviet Battleship Figure 5.1 Still from Moskva—Kassiopeia—A Zero Gravity Scene Figure 5.2 Still from Cherez Ternii k zvezdam—Stepan and Niya in Stepan’s Parents’ Countryhouse Figure 6.1 Still from Lunnaia raduga—Dark Tracks Figure 6.2 Still from Podzemelie ved’m—Belliguri and Andrei Figure 7.1 Still from Kosmos kak predchuvstvie—The Split Identity of German and Konek Figure 7.2 Still from Pervye na Lune—A 1930s’ Soviet Space Program Experiment

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35 39 68 73 88 92 111 113 131 136 149 152

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List of Figures

Figure 8.1 Still from Gagarin: Pervyi v kosmose—Gagarin and Titov Waking up before the Verdict on Who Will become the First Cosmonaut Figure 8.2 Still from Salyut 7—Cosmonauts Alekhin and Dzanibekov Trying to Access the Unresponsive Salyut 7 Station

169 175

Acknowledgments

This book marvels at past utopias, and reflects on some magnificent films, stories, and people. It is the result of extensive research conducted since 2013, institutional support, countless conversations with colleagues, friends and family, and many fortunate circumstances. Very special thanks to Eric Kuntzman, Lexington Books’ Acquisitions Editor for History, Asian Studies and Slavic Studies, whose excitement about this project made this book possible, and to Lexington Books‘ editing and production team, for their smooth, professional, and helpful guidance during the production process. I am particularly grateful to the University of Antwerp and its Research Centre for Visual Poetics, for the postdoctoral scholarship that allowed me to develop this research project in 2017-2018. Especially, I thank Kurt Vanhoutte for encouraging me to consider the – initially somewhat daunting – idea of writing an entire book on Soviet science fiction cinema, for valuable theoretical insights, and for general support. I thank the University of Ljubljana (UL) for endorsing my research on Soviet and post-Soviet space culture over the past decade. The foundation for this book was laid out in my doctoral dissertation (2015) supervised by Peter Stanković and Miha Javornik, who taught me how to account for the dialectic of tradition and experiment. In 2020, the UL’s Centre for Cultural and Religious Studies and its head Mitja Velikonja wholeheartedly supported my efforts to finalize the project. I also thank the Catholic University of Louvain, where I had the opportunity to polish the manuscript in 2018–2020. In this phase, the work benefitted greatly from enlightening conversations about the form of science fiction with Philippe Marion.

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Many people contributed to the quality of the argumentation presented in this book, which is a compilation of new and previously published research. I warmly thank Elana Gomel for her perceptive and constructive comments on the first version of the manuscript. I thank Tea Sindbæk Andersen and Barbara Törnquist-Plewa for encouraging me to think about (post)Soviet space film culture from the perspective of memory studies in the framework of the 2012–2017 COST Action “In Search for Transcultural Memory in Europe”. I thank Alexander C. T. Geppert, Lyudmila Parts, Birgit Beumers, Eugénie Zvonkine, Nil Baskar, Mario Slugan, and Natascha Drubek for their feedback on particular texts republished in this book. I thank all my colleagues and friends who – often involuntarily, but always patiently – found themselves listening to different episodes related to my research and this book production process over the past several years. In particular, I thank Miha Turšič, Blaž Šef, and Dragan Živadinov whose space culturalization efforts, projects, and initiatives have shaped this book in a great many ways; Åsne Ø. Høgetveit for lucid observations about gender and science fiction; Jasmina Šepetavc and Nina Cvar for years of exchanges about various aspects of film and science fiction; Aljoša Pužar for insights about liminality and for being a cheerful presence; Rok Benčin for most inspiring conversations about aesthetics, eventality, and world-making; Sanja Vodovnik for valuable and amusing references and our discussions about estrangement; Daša Cerar and Anja Banko for our ongoing conversation about Russian and Soviet popular culture; Philipp Morozov for sharp aesthetic judgment and invaluable remarks on cinematography; Vjeran Pavlaković for his particular understanding of science fiction and its aesthetics; Kristina Pranjić for her commitment to the memory of avantgarde space projects; Adelaide McGinity-Peebles for her dedication to nurturing academic dialogue; Andrei Rogatchevski and Irina Souch for their general enthusiasm about this book. For understanding that cultural studies matter, teaching me perseverance, and for all kinds of support that made it easier to embark on the postdoc journey, I thank my parents Jelena Gankina and Alojzij Pungaršek. For my first Strugatsky books, and for his contagious delight for science fiction, I thank my late father Nikolai Maysov. STATEMENT ON PREVIOUS PUBLICATIONS OF PARTS OF THE MATERIAL Chapter 1 and Part “The Non-place Fantasy” of the Introduction A previous version of this chapter was published published as: Majsova, Natalija. 2021. In Space, Violence Rules: Clashes and Conquests in Science Fiction Cinema. In: GEPPERT, Alexander C. T. (ed.), BRANDAU, Daniel (ed.), SIEBENEICHNER, Tillmann (ed.). Militarizing Outer Space:

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Astroculture, Dystopia and the Cold War, (Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology, European Astroculture, vol. 3). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2021, pp. 119–146. Chapter 6 Parts of this chapter have been published as: Majsova, Natalija. 2018. Articulating dissonance between man and the cosmos: Soviet scientific fantasy in the 1980s and its legacy. In: BEUMERS, Birgit (ed.), ZVONKINE, Eugénie (ed.). Ruptures and continuities in Soviet/ Russian cinema: styles, characters and genres before and after the collapse of the USSR, (Routledge contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe series). Abingdon; New York: Routledge. 2018, pp. 183–199. Chapter 7 A previous version of this chapter has been published as: Majsova, Natalija. 2016. The province called earth: the chronotope of the post-Soviet province explored through contemporary Russian cinema on outer space. Studies in Russian and Soviet cinema, ISSN 1750-3140, 2016, vol. 10, iss. 3, pp. 223–237, illustr. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/ full/10.1080/17503132.2016.1218622?scroll=top&needAccess=true, doi: 10.1080/17503132.2016.1218622. Chapter 8 This chapter was first published as: Majsova, Natalija. 2019. “Enhanced Documents of a Past Future: Re-interpretation of the Soviet History of Spaceflight in Contemporary Russian Blockbusters.” Fiction in Central and Eastern European Film Theory and Practice (ed. by J. Alexander Bareis and Mario Slugan). Special Issue of Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe 8. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17892/app.2019.0008.159

Note on Transliteration

Names of people and places, as well as titles (of books, films, songs, etc.) have been transliterated from the Cyrillic alphabet according to the Library of Congress scheme, although in some cases, (that is, in reference to names of specific, well-known people and titles) established usage in the English language has been followed (for example, Andrei Tarkovsky, Strugatsky brothers, Alexei Tolstoy, Evgeny Dobrenko).

Introduction “To Begin With, There Must Be a Will to Remember”

THE SPACE AGE AS MEMORY In the 2010s, the “space age” of the previous century is no longer the future.1 The first satellite (1957), the first cosmonaut (1961), cosmonaute (1963), and the pioneering moon landing (1969), traditionally associated with the socalled dawn of the space age, are all over half a century old; in the context of today’s space programs, these combinations of inventions, figures, and events are monumental achievements, which have enabled and encouraged further research. Moreover, they opened up horizons, bringing about a qualitatively different idea of a “space age,” no longer as imminently tied to as much physical human presence in space as nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury visionaries, pioneers of space philosophy, art, and technologies had anticipated. The flying worlds of popular science fiction series from the 1960s–1980s, such as The Jetsons (1962–1963), Taina tretiei planety (The Mystery of the Third Planet) (1981), and Raumpatrouille—Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffes Orion (Space Patrol—The Fantastic Adventures of the Orion Spaceship) (1966) appear as foreign today as they did fifty years ago.2 However, they are foreign in a different sense than they probably were at the time of their production. It is neither surprising nor difficult to explain the Amero-Soviet fascination with the prospects of a “future in space” during the space race, fueled by the Cold War, and manifest abundantly in the dominant popular cultural formats of the twentieth century, film and television series, and of course literature. Such popular-cultural references point to a particular aspect of the bygone space age, that is to its cultural and sociopolitical dimensions, allowing us to decode what kinds of philosophical, popular-scientific, aesthetic, technological, as well as political and national imaginaries that xv

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space age belonged to. At the same time, all these imaginaries have since evolved, and have been integrated into our collective memory—the assemblage of means, or pathways, into the past (e.g., media, technologies, and narratives), as well as the contents that these relate to (e.g., words, ideas, plots, and physical objects, either coming directly from the past or commemorating it).3 Coordinately, the dawn of the space age today relates to specific, canonized popular cultural works (e.g., Isaac Asimov and Stanisław Łem’s short stories and novels, films like The Day the Earth Stood Still [1951] and Solyaris (Solaris) [1972]), but also to the International Day of Cosmonautics, coincident with the date of Yuri Gagarin’s first spaceflight of April 12, 1961, and the anniversaries of Neil Armstrong’s moon landing, which took place on July 21, 1969.4 Historical anniversaries are both affirmations and tests. Their scope, semantic, and emotive emphases, as well as the memorabilia, such as souvenirs, but also posters, brands, films, series, songs, and books produced to honor historical events at their anniversaries allow us to trace various transformations in the collective memories of these events. If Maurice Halbwachs, whose work is usually associated with the concepts of social frameworks, so-called filters that allow societies to interpret and to remember—that is, to reproduce at later dates and within various contexts—developed the metaphorical concept of “collective memory,” Aleida and Jan Assmann refined this term to analytically distinguish between “communicative memory” and “cultural memory.”5 If the former designates memories, operative within the realm of oral history, and relate to relatively recent events, which can still be narrated by those people that they had had a direct impact on, the latter refers to the material memories of older events. However, the distinction is not always clear-cut. Or, more precisely, the two categories often lead to divergent analyses; what is socially communicated about an event does not necessarily coincide with this event’s material ramifications. The associations that one has about, say, the launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite, by looking at its replica (e.g., reflections on its size, symbolic shape or Soviet provenance), need not coincide with the interpretations of the significance of the launch, provided by philosophers (just think of Marshall McLuhan’s famous theories of the world as a global village), or those of the involved witnesses, the satellite’s developers, journalists, or, last but not least, the disengaged, passive witnesses. Moreover, over the past five decades, all these diverse testimonies will have transformed, integrating one another and subscribing to various ideological frameworks. To put it simply, communicative and cultural memory depend greatly on the policies and contingencies that allow certain texts to rise above the archives, and bury other texts; in this sense, returns to the archives are particularly welcome in times of debates over meanings and narratives. The discussion

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on the sociocultural and conceptual significance of the space age today is marked by several of these. Apart from the confusion that can arise due to the presence of different stakeholders and the shifting temporal frame (because, which one specific event should one count as the beginning of the space age, and which—as its end?), collective memories of events, such as the dawn of the space age, are, in the twenty-first century, significantly skewed owing to another factor. The anniversaries of space-age-related events remind us, quite loudly, that the history of the space age of the twentieth century is still primarily the history of state-funded space programs, which, to an important degree, reflected the political interests of the parties taking part in the Cold War; the space age of the twentieth century is much too often depicted as the “race for space” between the USSR and the United States. This is evident from the nature of commemorations (the anniversary of the moon landing is therefore much more resonant in the United States than it is in Russia, and the opposite is true of the Sputnik 1 and of pioneering spaceflights), as well as from the body of scholarly literature generated on the history of spaceflight, and on the various interpretations of its cultural, philosophical, and soci(et)al significance over the past five decades.6 Despite the recent surge in attempts to tease out the vibrant domains of space history, sociology, and (popular) cultural studies from the methodologically nationalist trajectories that they usually subscribe to, there remains a lot of work to be done, and important epistemological questions to be tackled along the way.7 It would be futile—not to mention unnecessary and conceited—to attempt to abandon all references to national frameworks that had harbored and enabled so many of the achievements of space-related research of the previous century. At the same time, it may—and this is the position that will be advanced in the present book—be beneficial to make an effort to consider the national(ist) aspect of space programs in a non-essentializing manner; I argue that the methodological tools of memory studies and cultural studies are of particular value here. Namely, while it is true that “American,” “Soviet,” and other space programs developed in distinct, and only semi-permeable political, technological, and cultural frameworks, the resonance of the dawn of the space age has both transnational and global effects, many of which are of philosophical, conceptual, and sociocultural nature. In order to access these, I propose to turn to cultural production, namely, to cinema, and to investigate films in terms of their mnemonic agency, that is, their capacity to transmit, narrate, interpret, and thereby—both tacitly and explicitly—to address topics, forms, and questions that represent parts of the collective memory of the space age in the Russian context today. It may of course seem offbeat to argue against methodological nationalism and, at the same time, to propose a book on films tied to a very particular national (Soviet/Russian) and cultural

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context; at the same time, it is this very contextualization that allows one to free certain concepts and ideas, addressed by the proposed selection of films, from stereotypes about their (Soviet/Russian) provenance, and to access them in a more nuanced way. The aim of this book is to point to the dynamics of the concepts at play in Soviet/Russian (space) science fiction (also “sf” and “space sf” in the context of this book); to highlight the inner dilemmas and heterogeneity of the genre; and to reconstruct the aesthetics and narratives of the cultural myth of Soviet space supremacy from the perspective of film, arguably the most important audiovisual medium of the twentieth century. SETTING THE SCENE: THE “NON-PLACE” FANTASY One of the aspirations of the book is to give voice to those aspects of space exploration that often remain obscured in space-related film reviews and in histories of space programs. Accordingly, Stevphen Shukaitis has argued that contemporary approaches to space programs rely on a representational conceptualization of outer space, employing it as an answer to terrestrial political and economic crises and circumstances.8 Shukaitis discussed this apprehension of space as a “(non)place.” Space as a non-place functions both in Michel de Certeau’s terms, that is, as a place constructed on rules established by ideological apparatuses such as legal institutions, schools and political actors, and as discussed by Marc Augé, as a space of transition regulated by texts and signs, like an airport or a shopping mall.9 This means that we quickly anticipate what a certain space-oriented text of film is about, and how the protagonists of this text are going to act. In Cold War Hollywood films, the aliens will probably be antagonistic and will remind the spectators of the threat of Eastern-European communism; in post-Soviet Russian films, the cosmonauts will survive even the most hopeless situation, and emerge as heroes, as long as they believe in the Soviet cause, and so on. In contrast with these formulations, Shukaitis stressed that outer space could be conceptualized as a Deleuzian “imaginal machine,” that is, a milieu that fosters the emergence of new sets of rules, ideas, and worlds. According to Shukaitis, outer space could be such a Deleuzian space of radical imagination, that is, it could be a space for novel concepts, ideas, and social structures, but in fact currently is not one. Rather, it is akin to a floating signifier, which is systematically filled with humanity’s projections that reflect the current sociopolitical circumstances, such as romantic utopianism, which favors the search for new worlds, or the Cold War, which induces paranoia about the possible omnipresence of the ideological enemy. In the domain of cinema, outer space fulfills another function. Aside from being a grateful arena for playing out terrestrial conflicts, it serves as the arena for the ultimate

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spectacle. This has been pointed out by Susan Sontag in her classic 1965 discussion of American science fiction cinema: Science fiction films are one of the purest forms of spectacle. [ . . . ] Things, objects, machinery play a major role in these films. A greater range of ethical values is embodied in the décor of these films than in the people. Things, rather than the helpless humans, are the locus of values because we experience them, rather than people, as the sources of power. According to science fiction films, man is naked without his artifacts. They [sic] stand for different values, they are potent, they are what gets destroyed, and they are the indispensable tools for the repulse of the alien invaders or the repair of the damaged environment.10

Sontag’s argument foregrounded an important point; despite the typically heavy reliance on narratives, which are often adaptations of science fiction literature, the cinematic medium does much more than merely “adapt” narrative-based scripts. As audio-visual productions, science fiction films provide a certain “immediacy” of experience, which arguably cannot be reproduced in the experience of reading. Cinema does not represent experience; rather, it constructs it. Hence, in science fiction films, particularly in the more introspective productions, artifacts such as machines, monuments, or buildings sometimes function as elongations of thought. A monumental building, such as the Empire State Building in The Day the Earth Stood Still, may hence center the world around itself, turning it into a specific place, which points to the center and to the periphery of the world, to the good and the evil actors, to which decisions are acceptable and which are not. Humans are no longer the only carriers of subjectivity or the only possible loci of the viewer’s identification. Anthropomorphic subjectivity is only one of many possible variants, alongside others, such as inorganic cultural artifacts. The texture of the cinematic world itself, engaging factors such as the mise-en-scène, the script, the characters and extra-cinematic references, pertaining to contemporary and historical issues, both allows for experimentation and presents limitations for presenting radical otherness. At the same time, the capacity of film to visualize radical otherness has often, and usually unfavorably, been compared to literary production. Certainly, the argument on the imaginal capacities of space-themed science fiction cinema is limited by the realities of film production. The American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) played an active role in the Hollywood film industry, in accordance with the 1958 National Aeronautics and Space Act that obliged the Administration to keep the public as informed as possible about its activities. In the 1960s, the agency formed a special Entertainment Industry Liaison in charge of collaboration with the

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popular culture industry. Until the 1990s, when direct participation between NASA and film production began, the former was predominantly concerned with the film industry’s accuracy in its portrayal of the development of space technologies and depiction of key milestones of scientific progress.11 Collaboration with the entertainment industry also helped NASA maintain its positive public image even in the light of space tragedies such as the Challenger catastrophe in 1986.12 While Western European space programs did not focus on systematic collaboration with the film industry, an indirect relation between the two can be noted in the USSR. The movie industry was subordinated to the State Committee of Cinematography (Goskino), which authorized production of all films.13 Goskino generally endorsed space travel films with apparently unambiguous narratives and treated science fiction as a potentially educational genre, supporting ideologically plausible productions that celebrated the Soviet space program and its future, and were often aimed at younger audiences, increasingly so in the 1970s.14 A large proportion of space-themed science fiction cinema was also subordinated to representational functions, namely to visualizing the future while representing the ambitions and achievements of space programs and thereby to conveying subliminal ideology-infused messages, such as value hierarchies, national stereotypes or visions of the future. As such, twentieth-century science fiction cinema typically constructed outer space in terms of an inside/ outside binary. In doing so, it used a variety of space-related tropes (space exploration and/or invasion from outer space) in order to construct this binary along ideological, geopolitical, gender, psychological, and biopolitical axes, which will be discussed in chapter 1. SPACE AGE UTOPIAS IN THE SOVIET CONTEXT Equally important as the sociopolitical context of the twentieth century, which prominently framed particular sociocultural imaginations, representations and, ultimately, interpretations of the space age is the tradition of specific literary and cinematic genres that most of the films discussed in this book either directly belonged to or drew inspiration from. Just like space is most often not conceived of as an imaginal machine, but rather as a non-place that invites the projection of certain earthly value binaries, expectations, and codes of conduct, space science fiction popular culture, including films, has, by now, become a pool of references on their own. In opposition to science fiction literature, lauded as the prime medium for imagining and thinking radical difference and radical otherness, science fiction films are—with few exceptions, such as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)—often challenged as bleak and disappointing illustrations of

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the literary genre in general or of a specific literary work adapted to fit the cinematic screen. This is particularly true of many of the Soviet and Russian productions discussed in this book, the vast majority of which were based on novels, novellas, or other forms of prose by local authors. Many of the films discussed were, as we shall soon see, first received by spectators with disappointment for this particular reason, interpreted as inefficient and simplified visualizations of great ideas; and yet, as the cultural value of these films shifted from hopeful representations of the future to nostalgic symbols of a past vision, their critiques changed, too. For this reason, Soviet Science Fiction Cinema and the Space Age discusses Soviet screen representations of the space age and their legacy from the vantage point of memory studies, slowly untangling the processes of maturation that have marked particular past utopias, and following the story of the formation of a corpus of “cult” films for today’s science fiction and Soviet history fans. Focusing on space-related science fiction, the book hopes to enrich the fields of science fiction studies and utopia studies. Darko Suvin famously and influentially described utopia as the “sociopolitical subgenre of science fiction” and thus ultimately the site of social and societal critique, as well as representations of a better social order.15 Drawing inspiration from Ernst Bloch, Suvin productively aligned the political potential of science fiction with utopian desire for a better, and a more just society. Emphasizing sf’s interest in a certain technological or scientific novum, Suvin theorized the political at the heart of sf with the mechanism of cognitive estrangement—the capacity of sf literature to both make the reader look at their own society from the outside, while embracing the mechanisms of cognition as a secure link between the fictional and the possible. This early Suvinian position has commonly been described as primarily political (rather than strictly academic), and reliant on his particular interpretation of Marxism. Indeed, in a 1997 essay discussing the links between science fiction, utopia, and communism, Suvin wrote: We need radically liberating novums only. By “radically liberating” I mean not only a new quality as opposed to simple marketing difference: I mean a novelty that is in critical opposition to degrading relationships between people as well as to the commodification of human and surrounding nature, and in fertile relation to memories of a humanized past.16

Hence the polemical alignment of utopia and science fiction as potentially— due to its reliance on cognition, which prevents slips into irreal flights of fancy—the most productively utopian of literary genres. This position has been embraced and further developed by Fredric Jameson, whose seminal work Archaeologies of the Future (2005) provided further possible analytical distinctions, useful for the analysis of utopian texts, separating, for instance,

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the utopian wish from the utopian form.17 While these distinctions will be activated in relevant chapters of this book, they will also be grappled with from the productively critical insights, recently generated by scholars, such as China Miéville, Mark Bould, Carl Freedman, and Stephen Zepke, who questioned Suvin and Jameson’s strict preference for sf over other modes of imagining the future.18 With the help of the films presented in this book, I hope to map the narrative, visual and medium, that is film-specific persistence of certain utopian ideals as they traveled through sf subgenres (from science fiction proper to its more speculative and fantasy-infused variants, to melodramas that employed sf elements, to modern fictionalizations of the history of the space age), times and media, assessing the history of Soviet and Russian space utopianism in terms of impulse, program, and the temporalities that it has engaged with. REMEMBERING THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY SOVIET DREAM THROUGH FILM A brief look at contemporary popular culture shows a plethora of apparently nostalgic reinterpretations of the formative events of the space age, blockbuster feature films, such as Hollywood’s First Man (2018) and Hidden Figures (2016), as well as the Russian productions Salyut 7 (Salyut 7) (2017) and Vremia pervykh (The Age of Pioneers) (2017) being the most recent cases in point.19 These films have reinforced the synchronic link between the popularity of film as a medium, cinema as an experience, and space age as the imminent future (of the twentieth century). At the same time, formal analyses of these films reveal important intertextual references; not only did the films utilize tropes from various genres, from science fiction to the thriller, to the epic, they also relied on multitudes of documentary and fictional sources. To echo Jacques Rancière, the space age of the previous century, so science-fictional when it actually happened, is being fictionalized “in order to be thought.”20 In the process, it is being collectively remembered, and so is the history of science fiction that had, in the twentieth century, imagined, thought, recounted, and extrapolated the possible consequences of the space age. Numerous scholars have noted the particular significance of recent, twentyfirst century returns to the history of the space age in the Russian context.21 Slava Gerovitch’s seminal work explicitly positioned these returns in the context of mythologies, derived from communicative and cultural memory, and, following Natalia Ivanova theorized them as no(w)stalgia.22 According to Gerovitch, contemporary reappropriations of the Soviet mythology of space supremacy, such as film adaptations, books, and even thematic techno

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parties with explicit references to first cosmonaut Gagarin, chief constructor Sergei Korolev and others, are qualitatively different than proverbially bittersweet nostalgic longing of a lost past (and, in our case, its future). Rather than lamenting a lost future, these contemporary products and practices should be viewed as attempts to negotiate the symbols of a past, Soviet era in a new context, to reinscribe them with new meanings, only partly resembling the original ones. Gerovitch’s 2015 study is particularly timely, as it narrated a very recent phenomenon, and expands on legitimate earlier observations, which reflect on post-Soviet reappropriations of the Soviet space age in terms of the more conventional understanding of nostalgia. Among these, Daria Kabanova, for instance, argued that “in the post-Soviet context, signifiers of the Socialist state provide a link to the mythologies of the national past, serving as constant reminders of what was lost,” including past visions of the future.23 Utopian and dystopian futures, technological progress, the evolution of our idea of life and intelligence, and of human morality were common topics in Soviet science fiction. Due to strict censorship until the perestroika in the 1980s, Soviet science fiction was particularly versed in employing diverse strategies of varying levels of subtlety to convey politically non-sanctioned messages. While some of these strategies (allegory, subtle references, “internal jokes”) may be deciphered through narrative and thematic interpretative analysis, others relate specifically to form, or can be accessed at the intersection of form, content, and context.24 At the same time, the gradual evolution of aesthetic preferences and strategies intervenes into both cultural and communicative memories, as certain forms, as well as genres and ideas are praised and highlighted at the expense of others (e.g., Andrei Tarkovsky’s legacy was echoed in many later Soviet science fiction films, as was the aesthetics of Soviet children’s science fiction). While Soviet literary science fiction has attracted the attention of a notable number of scholars, and has been assessed from numerous perspectives, including its various takes on space exploration, Soviet science fiction cinema, well-documented in the Russian state film archive (Gosfilmofond) and available on online platforms, such as the Filmotheque of the Russian space agency’s television studio (Tvroscosmos) and YouTube, remains underresearched and is mostly subject to interpretative analyses, or analyses of its technical aspects.25 Among the former, Andrei Rogatchevski’s insightful study focused specifically on space exploration within Soviet science fiction cinema, involving a comparative perspective—references to then contemporary American science fiction cinema. The research focused primarily on cinematic narrative and sociopolitical and cultural references, similarly to an influential article by Fredric Jameson, whose brief comment on the coldness of Soviet science fiction cinema attributed it to the ideological context of rationalist Soviet socialism and the canon of socialist realism.26 Soviet

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science fiction cinema is often examined as a utopian mirror or productively dystopian critique of its sociopolitical and ideological context, and only in very specific cases (e.g., A. Tarkovsky’s oeuvre, Kin-Dza-Dza!), in terms of its aesthetics and possible globally resonant philosophical ideas. The cinematic-policy-analysis-supported conviction that censorship-filtered mainstream Soviet science fiction cinema was more ideologically subordinated and aesthetically less potent than science fiction literature, which could avoid official publication channels and emerge underground, partly justifies the aforementioned research shortcoming. At the same time, this very circumstance also makes mainstream Soviet science fiction cinema worthy of scholarly attention: dubbed as “the most important art” by Vladimir I. Lenin, Soviet cinema was positioned at the nexus of aesthetics and ideological guidelines followed by Goskino. As the latter grew softer after the end of socialist realism as the canon of cultural production in 1956, Soviet cinema developed toward two poles: mainstream, commercial production, and auteur cinema. Both poles are represented in science fiction film production, but the works of auteurs (Tarkovsky, Georgy Daneliya) have thus far received a far greater amount of scholarly attention than films, which did not receive equal critical acclaim. Nevertheless, both auteur and mainstream films contributed equally to creating an imagery of Soviet space age future(s), and thus provide diverse aesthetic memories of the space age. While these films are documented and accessible, they have not yet been analyzed as part of a corpus, addressing a common topic. Furthermore, they are rarely analyzed in terms of cinematic poetics, rather than as more or less precise adaptations of literary works/scripts. Yet, not only precision is at stake. Stephen Hutchings’s research on Soviet and Russian screen adaptations of literature has convincingly demonstrated that “dialogue between cinema and literature forms part of a larger image–word dialectic which is always ideological in nature, and in which image generally fulfils the role of ‘naturalizing,’ and so authenticating, the ideological thrust of the literary word.”27 Moreover, collection, distribution, and promotion of this corpus of films by TvRoscosmos, Soviet popular culture online databases created by fans, as well as mentions of Soviet science fiction in studies of Soviet popular culture are turning Soviet science fiction cinema into a visible part of cultural memory. A meaningful redistribution is therefore slowly taking place, enabled by the resources of the World Wide Web; certain cultural texts (in the broad understanding of the term, that is, all formats of recorded, encoded information) are getting transferred from the realm of “stored” memory, the ones hidden in the archives, into the domain of “functional” memory—contemporary points of reference.28 The Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) has provided an invaluable contribution in this regard; it not only administrates a wide range of

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popular-scientific media, aimed at popularizing the “Russian cosmos” or, in other words, the legacy of the Soviet space program. Roscosmos also manages a website, which, among other materials, features a rich film archive. An important section of this archive is entitled “Feature films on outer space and cosmonauts”; the section is divided into two subpages, one featuring “Soviet” (thirty-eight films), and the second “Russian” productions (twenty-one films, one still under production at the time this book was written). The archive not only provides basic information on the films, stating the date of release, director, and production company, but also, where possible, features links to full-length versions of the films, albeit mostly without English subtitles. While the archive clearly does not live up to all of the “commonist” promises of digital archives, such as participatory compilation, remixing, commenting, and other means that would allow the public to interact with it, alter it, and develop it, it does notably increase the visibility of Soviet and Russian space-related popular culture, allowing for easier synchronic and diachronic analysis of selected films, and therefore favoring the transition of this corpus into the realm of functional memory. THE SCOPE OF THE BOOK This book examines the archive described earlier as a repository of Soviet popular culture on outer space, that is, as an institution participating in a spontaneous politics of memory by allowing certain films trespass from the realm of stored memory into functional memory; hopefully, the present book contributes to this process. The book examines the archive, with a particular focus on science fiction, contextualizing and foregrounding twenty-three Soviet science fiction films and ten post-Soviet Russian films “on outer space,” occasionally complementing close, concept-oriented film readings that combine narrative and visual analysis with references to existent reviews and other historical material, in order to incorporate three interconnected perspectives: Time and Temporalities in the Context of Utopia and Axiological Ambiguity According to official records, such as the TvRoscosmos archive and the records of Gosfilmofond, space-related science fiction films accounted for over half of all USSR science fiction cinema in 1924–1991. The corpus of films involves approximately ten utopian productions (including 1950s–1960s science fiction, which, to a large degree, still adhered to the artistic and axiological canon of socialist realism, and late, commercial entertainment

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productions (e.g., Podzemelie ved’m [Witches’ Catacombs] [1989]), seven dystopian works (particularly from the late 1970s and from the perestroika period of the late 1980s), and axiologically ambiguous films (e.g., Doznanie pilota Pirksa [The Inquest of Pilot Pirx] [1979], as well as—interestingly enough—children’s and teen films).29 In this book, I offer close readings of selected films in order to provide a more complex take on the notions of utopia and dystopia in the context of Soviet (and post-Soviet) space-cinema, accounting for the immediate referential context and the formal techniques used in these films. A specific analytical emphasis is placed on the relation between the past and the future: while some films are set in the “present,” others explore the “future,” and make implicit and explicit references to the “present,” providing important temporal contexts for their utopian and dystopian aspects. The book traces how selected films navigated between the immediate, socialist ideological context, the legacy of modernity’s praise of scientific progress, and visions of humanity’s future in the space age. Soviet Science Fiction Cinema and the Space Age thus assesses the evolution of the topic of space-exploration and space travel in Soviet cinema in terms of both politics of aesthetics and aesthetics of politics. Us, Them, and the In-Betweens: Dominant Tropes (Non)-Identity Space exploration was a strong thematic preoccupation of Soviet science fiction cinema, but it is arguably the limits of space exploration or, so to say, the coordinates of space as a non-place, that have been of particular interest to researchers. Topics, such as futuristic technological development, extraterrestrial encounters, military rivalry in space, and human enhancement, typical of Hollywood science fiction cinema, were not nearly as prominent in Soviet cinema. Here, the dominant trope for describing future society until the perestroika was a multicultural, egalitarian society, which had overcome national and political barriers, and integrated cultural differences into its structure. This society is close to genderless, following the Soviet proposition that the revolution had solved “the women’s question” by politically affirming and structurally endorsing equal rights and responsibility for all sexes. At the same time, intimate interpersonal unions as depicted in these science fiction films are heterosexual and procreative; emotional and intimate closeness correlates strongly with the compatibility of the intellectual capacities of the persons involved, or, when this is not the case, is deemed destructive and alien. Therefore, if aliens featured rarely in pre-perestroika science fiction (e.g., Tumannost’ Andromedy [Andromeda Nebula] [1967]; Tainstvennaia stena [The Mysterious Wall] [1967]), it is because their place was taken up by everything that is not rational in the human being.30 Perestroika science

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fiction cinema also relied heavily on this dichotomy of the rational and irrational, but the boundaries between humans, robots, and aliens became somewhat more obscure, as science fiction cinema gets the opportunity to explore both its commercial, entertainment pole (e.g., Podzemelie ved’m), and its overtly politically critical dimension (Es ist nicht leicht ein Gott zu sein [Hard to Be a God] [1989]).31 The second aim of this book is, then, to investigate the estrangement devices, which Soviet science fiction cinema used to portray the human subject and its other(s). Soviet space science fiction cinema outlines three main others: the gendered other (the woman), the alien other (often, an alien woman), the technological—robotic other (technology is often portrayed as cold, remote, and foreign in Soviet science fiction). Moreover, I argue that Soviet science fiction cinema developed childhood as a trope of liminality, borderline existence, identified with the ultimate horizon of the future, yet at the same time necessarily absent from the present. Film as Memory: Soviet Science Fiction Film and the Memory of the Space Age In the context of memory studies, feature cinema “exists in a relationship to contemporary discourses of memory and illustrates functions, processes, and problems of memory in the medium of fiction through aesthetic forms.”32 This book makes a further argument, positing that cinema not only exists in a relationship to contemporary discourses of memory and illustrates memoryrelated phenomena, or is a result of certain memory politics, exposing dominant and marginal memory narratives. Rather, Soviet Science Fiction Cinema and the Space Age argues that films about the future actively engage in memory politics on several levels. Certainly, Soviet cosmos-themed science fiction cinema was embedded into waves of different (e.g., Stalinist, Thaw, stagnation, perestroika) state memory politics; it was therefore intended to create and reproduce different memories of the envisaged space age future; memories targeting different audiences (e.g., children’s science fiction for younger generations, melodramas aimed at women, philosophical dramas for intellectuals, space-detective films for technological sf enthusiasts and fans of Hollywood cinema). It also created and (re)produced popular, widely known images of the Soviet space future (some films were distributed abroad; some were adapted for the Western market (e.g., Planeta bur’/ The Planet of Storms [1962]).33 Today, these films are treated as belonging to a single corpus of Soviet cosmos-themed popular culture, but only some of them are widely known, appreciated, or examined as part of the memories related to the myth of Soviet supremacy in the space race. Soviet Science Fiction Cinema and the Space Age traces how these films conveyed and transferred memories of the space age, with their own formal aesthetics, use of intertextual references

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(or surprising lack of intertextual references between different films from the corpus), and comparing the image of the space age they portrayed in terms of formal aesthetics against reviews, which show how they were received by different audiences (critics and lay audiences), and examining the circumstances for their value today—as no(w)stalgic statements, cult items, archival rarities or persistent, if not always explicitly acknowledged, axiological flagships. THE STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK The chapters of Soviet Science Fiction Cinema and the Space Age are structured around two trajectories: a somewhat loose historical one and a thematic one, focusing on prominent themes and tropes, such as conflicts, utopias, space exploration, as well as concepts, such as liminality, othering, and remembrance. The first chapter positions the history of Soviet science fiction cinema in the context of the history of twentieth-century Western cinematic astroculture. Seeing Soviet sf productions, such as Aelita (Aelita) (1924) and Nebo zovet (The Sky Calls) (1959) addressed alongside a broad range of Western films, from Georges Méliès’s Voyage dans la Lune (Voyage to the Moon) (1902) to The Day the Earth Stood Still and Es ist nicht leicht ein Gott zu sein (1989), allows the reader to gain an understanding of the development of this genre in the context of international and global cultural and political preoccupations.34 Starting from the common assumption that twentieth century science fiction is a rather violent genre, and that its encounters with outer space are, to a great extent, a side product of the Space Race and the Cold War, this chapter emphasizes the diversity at the heart of space-clashes and conflicts in sf cinema. Using films from both sides of the “iron curtain” as examples and interlocuters, I outline the ideological, geopolitical, psychological, and biopolitical focal trajectories of humanity’s encounters with outer space. The analysis focuses on the military and violent aspects of space sf films, including tropes of alien invasions, future apocalyptic disasters, and social disintegration. The constructions of outer space as a battleground sometimes coincided with the political realities of the time but sometimes also subverted or bypassed them. Referring to film directors’ uses of metaphorical and formalist devices, I stress the ways in which films expanded the notion of militarization beyond its literal, physical meaning, toward the antagonist presumptions at the heart of space exploration. In doing so, I point to the ways in which the history Soviet science fiction cinema should be treated both as a historically grounded and a richly imaginative genre. Chapter two reconsiders Soviet space science fiction from the perspective of space utopianism and the notions of utopian impulse, utopian desire, and utopia as hypothetical presence. The chapter questions the very tenants

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of Soviet fictional societies oriented into space by first revisiting Yakov Protazanov’s Aelita, famously proclaimed as “the first Soviet science fiction blockbuster.” Building on excellent analyses of the film—a tale of a workers’ revolution on Mars, hijacked by the Martian princess Aelita—provided by scholars, such as Ian Christie and Andrew J. Horton, the chapter argues for the need to address Aelita in the context of the later developments of the genre of science fiction cinema in the Soviet context.35 Reading Aelita alongside later productions, such as Tumannost’ Andromedy, Solyaris, and Chetvertaia planeta (The Fourth Planet) (1995), unveils several continuities that distinguish the notion of utopia in Soviet science fiction cinema.36 The dialectics of utopia and dystopia within the overall framework of utopian impulse and desire is discussed with particular attention to the functions of various strangers and others, such as women and alien life-forms. It is also pointed out how both the conceptions of utopia, and the functions of strangers and others support or subvert official state policies. The third chapter continues the discussion of utopianism by stressing another important aspect of Soviet sf: its uneasy relation with the artistic canon of socialist realism, imposed by the Communist Party in 1934, and the conflictlessness of socialist realist sf. Socialist realism relegated sf to depictions of the so-called near future; this accounts for the relative unpopularity of the genre in cinema in the 1930s–late 1950s, when this constraining policy was democratized under Khrushchev’s government. Nevertheless, several interesting space-oriented productions were released even in the period of socialist-realism-marked cultural production. Notably, Kosmicheskii reis (The Cosmic Voyage) (1936) directed by Vasily Zhuravlev and consulted by Soviet rocket engineering pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovskii portrayed space travel as an imminent, nearing reality, and served as the springboard for a great number of popular-scientific films on the nearing future in space.37 Sometimes, such films would spill over into the genre of science fiction for younger audiences, such as Viktor Morgenshtern’s la byl sputnikom solntsa (I Was a Satellite of the Sun) (1959), released soon after the end of the socialist realist era, yet still heavily influenced by its narrative conventions.38 This chapter focuses on this particular subgenre of space-exploration science fiction films, investigating the aforementioned features alongside lateThaw productions, the somewhat “static” utopias of Nebo zovet and Mechte navstrechu (A Dream Come True) (1963).39 This chapter thus investigates the value hierarchies underpinning the Soviet imagination of space exploration. Chapter 4 proceeds from the static utopias of the 1960s to an examination of their Others, linking the productions from the previous chapter to those from the following decade. The 1960s, marked by the greatest feats of the Soviet space program, as well as by the post-Stalinist notable increase in artistic freedom, saw a significant expansion of the archive of Soviet science

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fiction cinema. In tune with contemporary political developments, the majority of Soviet sf films from the 1960s and early 1970s were inspired by the prospect of a future that would entail the exploration and colonization of other planets. At the same time, many of these films (e.g., adaptations of Polish writer Stanislaw Łem’s prose) proceeded toward this aim with great caution, warning about the possible dangers of such experiments. Films, such as Irina Povolotskaya’s Tainstvennaia stena—the first Soviet sf directed by a female director—and Zvezdnyi inspektor (The Star Inspector) (1980) and Petlia Oriona (The Orion Loop) (1980), as well as another Łem adaptation, Doznanie pilota Pirksa (The Inquest of Pilot Pirx) (1979) presented an entire typology of contemporary perceptions of otherness, ranging from antagonist (often foreign) humans to antagonist machines, cyborgs, and aliens.40 The fourth chapter of the book discusses this palette of socially acknowledged and stigmatized creatures in the context of theories, viewing sf as a social allegory, even a mirror of contemporary social conflicts, rather than a predictive genre. Chapter 5 focuses on children’s and teen Soviet sf films, which present a notable segment of Soviet science fiction cinema, particularly from the 1970s and 1980s. Productions, such as Richard Viktorov’s Moskva–Kassiopeia (Moscow–Cassiopea) and Otroki vo vselennoi (Teens in the Universe) (1973, 1974), Valentin Selivanov’s Bol’shoe kosmicheskoie puteshestvie (The Great Space Voyage) (1975), as well as Pavel Arsionov’s Lilovyi shar (The Lilac Ball) (1987), to name a few, reinforce the link between the conquest of outer space and children as basic tenants of the anticipated Soviet communist future.41 Indeed, these films typically portray child-cosmonauts as the imminent future of space exploration. Accordingly, while accounting for the need to sate the audience’s curiosity and to cater to its needs for entertainment, well recognized by post-Thaw film authorities and filmmakers, these productions remain infused with a clear pedagogical and a patriotic note. The ways in which childhood has been portrayed in post-Soviet youth-oriented science fiction cinema is strikingly different: the children of Oleg Kompasov’s Aziris-Nuna (Aziris-Nuna) (2006) or the teens of Fedor Bondarchuk’s Pritiazhenie (The Attraction) (2017) were no longer automatically burdened with the future of humanity, unless they specifically choose to take it on as their concern.42 Nevertheless, in Soviet and post-Soviet science fiction cinema alike, childhood as a trope remained a liminal terrain. Having the privileged role of “the future,” children are, at the same, strangely absent from and alien to the present—unlike their representations in other cinematic genres. This chapter explores the different modes of being a child in Soviet and post-Soviet science fiction cinema, focusing on the transformations in positionalities, narratives, and aesthetics of the aforementioned films, at least partly accounting for the broader context of youth policies. In doing so, it

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also points to the stable presence of mythical and fairy tale narratives in the universe of Soviet sf. Chapter 6 explores continuities between the Soviet tradition of science fiction, influenced by the socialist-realist canon, and post-Soviet Russian takes on the genre. The chapter proceeds through a detailed examination of outer space–themed films in the genre of Soviet sf (Lunnaia raduga [Moon Rainbow] [1983], Kin-Dza-Dza!, Podzemelie ved’m, and, to an extent, Vozvrashchenie s orbity [Return from Orbit] [1983]), analyzing the films in terms of their aesthetics, intertextual references to earlier Soviet politicized sf, and post-Soviet Russian science fiction, and in terms of their production context, in order to develop three points.43 First, that Soviet science fiction of the period may be seen as a culmination of the trajectories outlined by the genre of earlier Soviet sf cinema, if coupled with the canon of socialist realism: if Kin-Dza-Dza! embodied the dystopian, cyberpunk end of the spectrum, Lunnaia raduga appeared to be a careful exploration of the pitfalls of relying entirely either on science or on fantasy. Second, that the aesthetics of these perestroika films, which reached from reappropriations of the canons of the Hollywood blockbuster (Podzemelie ved’m ) to Dadaist anti-philosophy (Kin-Dza-Dza!), greatly influenced post-Soviet cinema on outer space, if not post-Soviet Russian science fiction cinema (e.g., Mishen’ [Target] [2011]) on the more general level of genre.44 Third, that the production context of the perestroika favored a turn in thematic preferences: from outer space–themed science fiction, Soviet sf as a cinematic genre started showing more interest in terrestrial science fiction, while space-related fictions began expressing a greater concern for the challenges of space exploration to the human psyche (notable in Vozvrashchenie s orbity). The seventh chapter follows the loose historical trajectory of the book, focusing on the first decade of Russian post-Soviet feature films on outer space. Departing from the fact that, on post-Soviet screens, space exploration no longer featured as a horizon of the future, it examines the few films on space, produced in the 2000s, in terms of their chronotopicality. In doing so, it asserts that the chronotope of outer space in the imaginary of these postSoviet productions differs greatly from all of the space-related chronotopes of the Soviet era, and is closer to that of the post-Soviet province. The chapter provides close readings of three contemporary Russian films on outer space, Kosmos kak predchuvstvie (Dreaming of Space) (2005), Bumazhnyi soldat (Paper Soldier) (2008), and Pervye na lune (First on the Moon) (2005), arguing that they turn the entire world (with a descriptive emphasis on the USSR) into the provinces, insofar as the provinces may be understood as a structural characteristic, a relation between the center and the periphery.45 Furthermore, I elaborate on how these cinematic provinces were marked by three different kinds of provincialism: provincialism of the subject (Kosmos

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kak predchuvstvie), provincialism of memory, where memory is turned into a fairy tale (Pervye na lune), and provincialism of universal axiology (Bumazhnyi soldat). The chapter thus demonstrates how outer space as the site of the Soviet communist utopia is effectively turned inside-out in early twenty-first-century Russian productions, and thereby critically engaged with on the levels of genre, memory politics, and related ethical concerns. The final chapter focuses on the past decade of Russian features that address the question of space exploration. Taking into account the curious circumstance that recent films on figures and events from the Soviet history of spaceflight are often counterintuitively described as science fiction, this chapter investigates the fictionalization of the space age in contemporary Russian spaceflight history blockbusters Gagarin. Pervyi v kosmose (Gagarin. First in Space) (2013), Vremia pervykh, and Salyut 7.46 This “second wave” of Russian films on spaceflight exhibited a greater affinity for the patriotic Soviet canon of portraying Soviet spaceflight history than their predecessors from the 2000s, examined in the previous chapter. This chapter argues that blockbusters of the past decade reinvent the patriotic Soviet narrative in a particular, no(w)stalgic way. Expanding the discussion on the chronotope of outer space in Soviet and Russian cinema, this chapter explores the productions in question through the lens of their constructions of literal and metaphorical diagonality, verticality, and horizontality. Drawing on recent scholarship on the intersections between nostalgia and utopia studies, the chapter argues that the examined films embedded historical events into fictional narratives and audio-visual worlds that monumentalize and mythologize the Soviet space age through the use of these spatial vectors, creating a novel yet eerily familiar fictional collage of a past.

NOTES 1. Pierre Nora, Rethinking France. Les Lieux De Mémoire, 4 volumes, trans. David P. Jordan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001–2010). 2. The Jetsons, originally directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, United States of America 1962–3 (Hanna-Barbera); Taina tretei planety, directed by Roman Kachanov, USSR 1981 (Soyuzmultfilm); Raumpatrouille—Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffes Orion, directed by Theo Mezger and Michael Braun, Federal Republic of Germany 1966 (Bavaria Atelier GmbH). 3. See also Jan Assmann, “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity,” trans. John Czaplicka, New German Critique, 65 (1995): 125–33. 4. The Day the Earth Stood Still, directed by Robert Wise, USA 1951 (Twentieth Century Fox); Solyaris, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, USSR 1972 (Creative Unit of Writers & Cinema Workers, Mosfilm, Unit Four). 5. Jan Assmann, “Communicative and Cultural Memory,” in Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, ed. Astrid Erll, Ansgar

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Nünning with the collaboration of Sarah B. Young (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2008), 109–18. 6. See, for example, Steven J. Dick, ed., Remembering the Space Age (District of Columbia, Washington: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Office of External Relations, History Division, 2008). 7. For an example of a study that attempts to research space without the methodological nationalist bias, see Steven J. Dick and Mark L. Lupisella, eds., Cosmos and Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context (District of Columbia, Washington: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Office of External Relations, History Division, 2010). 8. Stevphen Shukaitis, “Space is the (Non)Place: Martians, Marxists, and the Outer Space of The Radical Imagination,” Sociological Review 57, no. 1 (2009): 98–113, here 101. 9. Marc Augé, Non-Lieux: Introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité (Paris: Seuil, 1992), 100; Michel de Certeau, L’Invention du quotidien, Tome 1: Arts de faire (Paris: UGE, 1980), 208. 10. Susan Sontag, “The Imagination of Disaster,” Commentary 40, no. 4 (October 1965): 42–8, here 45. 11. For example, it played the role of a consultant, overseeing the representation of space travel in the space travel films of the 1960s and 1970s, like Marooned (1969); and space shuttles in the James Bond-movies Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and Moonraker (1979). The space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey was created by former NASA associate Harry Lange (1930–2008). Due to Lange’s previous work at NASA alongside chief rocket designer Wernher von Braun (1912–1977), the drawings had to receive security clearance before they could be used on set. 12. See David A. Kirby, Lab Coats in Hollywood: Science, Scientists, and Cinema (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), here 52–3; and idem, “Final Frontiers? Envisioning Utopia in the Era of Limits,” in Limiting Outer Space: Astroculture After Apollo, ed. Alexander C. T. Geppert (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 305–17 (= European Astroculture, vol. 2), 305–17. 13. The Committee was known as Gosfilm until 1963 and as Goskino after 1963. 14. Anna Lawton, Kinoglasnost: Soviet Cinema in Our Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), here 106. 15. Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre (New Haven: Yale UP, 1979), 4 and 7–8. 16. Darko Suvin, “On Communism, Science Fiction, and Utopia: The Blagoevgrad Theses,” Mediations 32, no. 2 (2019): 139–60. 17. Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions, (London: Verso, 2005), 1. See also Andrew Milner, “Archaeologies of the Future: Jameson’s Utopia or Orwell’s Dystopia?” Historical Materialism 17, no. 4 (2009): 101–119. 18. For an overview of this discussion, see also Gary Westfahl, The Mechanics of Wonder: The Creation of the Idea of Science Fiction (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1998); Carl Freedman, Critical Theory and Science Fiction (Hanover, NH:

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Wesleyan University Press, 2000); Tom Moylan, Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001); Mark Bould, “Introduction: Rough Guide to a Lonely Planet, from Nemo to Neo,” in Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction, edited by Mark Bould and China Miéville (London: Pluto Press, 2009); Stephen Zepke, “Beyond cognitive estrangement: The future of science fiction cinema,” NECSUS. European Journal of Media Studies 1, no. 2 (2012): 91–113. 19. First Man, directed by Damien Chazelle, USA 2018 (Universal Pictures, DreamWork Pictures, Amblin Entertainment, Temple Hill Entertainment, Phantasma); Hidden Figures, directed by Theodore Melfi, USA 2016 (Fox 2000 Pictures, Chernin Entertainment, Levantine Films); Salyut 7, directed by Klim Shipenko, Russia 2017 (CTB Film Company, Globus-film, Lemon Films Studio); Vremia pervykh, directed by Dmitry Kiselev, Russia 2017 (Bazelevs Production). 20. Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics (London, New York: Continuum, 2000), 22–3. 21. See, for example, Vlad Strukov, and Helena Goscilo, eds., Russian Aviation, Space Flight and Visual Culture (Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2017); Asif A. Siddiqi, “From Cosmic Enthusiasm to Nostalgia for the Future: A Tale of Soviet Space Culture,” in Soviet Space Culture: Cosmic Enthusiasm in Socialist Societies, ed. Eva Maurer et al. (London, New York: Routledge, 2011), 283–306. 22. Slava Gerovitch, Soviet Space Mythologies: Public Images, Private Memories and the Making of a Cultural Identity (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2015); Natalia Ivanova, “No(w)stalgia: Retro on the (Post)-Soviet Television Screen,” Harriman Review 12, no. 2–3 (1999): 25–32. 23. Daria Kabanova, “Mourning the Mimesis: Aleksey Fedorchenko’s First on the Moon and the Post-Soviet Practice of Writing History,” Studies in Slavic Culture 10 (2012): 75–93. 24. cf. Naum Leiderman, and Mark Lipovetsky, “Zhizn’ posle smerti ili novyje svedenija o realizme,” Novy mir 7, (1993), http://magazines​.russ​.ru​/novyi​_mi​/1993​ /7​/litkrit​.html; Elana Gomel, Postmodern Science-Fiction and Temporal Imagination (London: Continuum, 2009). 25. Kabanova, “Mourning the Mimesis,” 75–93. 26. Andrei Rogatchevski, “Space Exploration in Russian and Western Popular Culture: Wishful Thinking, Conspiracy Theories and Other Related Issues,” in Soviet Space Culture: Cosmic Enthusiasm in Socialist Societies, ed. Eva Maurer et al. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 211–265; Fredric Jameson, “Progress versus utopija ili mozhem li my voobrazit’ budushchee?” in Fantasticheskoie kino. Epizod pervyi, ed. Natalia Samutina (Moscow: NLO, 2006), 32–49. 27. Stephen Hutchings, “Introduction,” in Russia and its Other(s) on Film: Screening Intercultural Dialogue, ed. Stephen Hutchings (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 1–25, here 5. See also Stephen Hutchings, Russian Literary Culture in the Camera Age: the Word as Image (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004). 28. Aleida Assmann, Erinnerungsräume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses (Munich: Beck, 1999), 137. Also in Astrid Erll, Memory in Culture (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), here 35–6.

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29. Podzemelie ved’m, directed by Yuri Moroz, USSR/Czechoslovakia 1989 (Gorky Film Studio, Barrandov Film Studios), Doznanie pilota Pirksa, directed by Marek Piestrak, USSR/Poland 1979 (Tallinfilm, PRF “ZF”). 30. Tumannost Andromedy, directed by Yevgeny Sherstobitov, USSR 1967 (Dovzhenko Film Studio); Tainstvennaia stena, directed by Irina Povolotskaya, USSR 1967 (Mosfilm). 31. Es ist nicht leicht ein Gott zu sein, directed by Peter Fleischmann, USSR/GDR/ France/Switzerland 1989 (Dovzhenko Film Studio, ZDF, B.A. Produktion, Garance, Hallelujah Films, Mediactue, Sovinfilm). 32. Astrid Erll, and Ansgar Nünning, “Concepts and Methods for the Study of Literature and/as Cultural Memory,” in Literature and Memory. Theoretical Paradigms—Genres—Functions, ed. Ansgar Nünning, Marion Gymnich, and Roy Sommer (Marburg: Francke Verlag, 2006), 11–28. 33. Planeta bur’, directed by Pavel Klushantsev, USSR 1962 (The Leningrad Popular-Scientific Film Studio). 34. Aelita, directed by Yakov Protazanov, USSR 1924 (MezhrabpomRus), Nebo zovet, directed by Valerii Fokin, USSR 1959 (Dovzhenko Film Studio); Voyage dans la Lune, directed by Georges Méliès, France 1902 (Star Film Company). 35. Ian Christie, “Down to Earth: Aelita Relocated,” in Inside the film factory: new approaches to Russian and Soviet cinema, ed. Ian Christie and Richard Taylor (London: Routledge, 1991), 80–103; Andrew J. Horton, “Science Fiction of the Domestic: Iakov Protazanov’s Aelita,” Central Europe Review 2, no. 1 (2000), http:// www​.ce​-review​.org​/00​/1​/kinoeye1​_horton​.html (23. 5. 2018). 36. Chetvertaia planeta, directed by Dmitrii Astrakhan, Russia 1995 (Lenfilm, Mikofilm, Astrakhan-Lumex Studios). 37. Kosmicheskii reis, directed by Vasily Zhuravlev, USSR 1936 (Mosfilm). 38. la byl sputnikom solntsa, directed by Viktor Morgenshtern, USSR 1959 (Mosnauchfim). 39. Mechte navstrechu, directed by Mikhail Kariukov and Otar Koberidze, USSR 1963 (Odessa Film Studio). 40. Zvezdnyi inspektor, directed by Mark Kovalev, Vladimir Polin, USSR 1980 (Mosfilm); Petlia Oriona, directed by Vasili Levin, USSR1980 (Odessa Film Studio). 41. Moskva-Kassiopeia, directed by Richard Viktorov, USSR 1973 (Gorky Film Studio); Otroki vo vselennoi, directed by Richard Viktorov, USSR 1974 (Gorky Film Studio); Bol’shoe kosmicheskoie putishestvie, directed by Valentin Selivanov, USSR 1975 (Gorky Film Studio); Lilovyi shar, directed by Pavel Arsionov, USSR 1987 (Gorky Film Studio). 42. Aziris-Nuna, directed by Oleg Kompasov, Russia 2006 (KVID Film company, Ded Moroz Studio); Pritiazhenie, directed by Fedor Bondarchuk, Russia 2017 (Art Pictures Studio, Russian State Film Fund, Vodorod Film Company, Columbia Pictures). 43. Lunnaia raduga, directed by Andrei Ermash, USSR 1983 (Mosfilm); Vozvrashchenie s orbity, directed by Aleksandr Surin, USSR 1983 (Dovzhenko Film Studio).

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44. Mishen’, directed by Aleksandr Zeldovich, Russia 2011 (REN Film). 45. Kosmos kak predchuvstvie, directed by Aleksey Uchitel, Russia 2005 (TPO “Rok”); Bumazhnyi soldat, directed by Aleksei A. German, Russia 2008 (Lenfilm, Fenomen Films, Rossia TV Channel); Pervye na lune, directed by Aleksey Fedorchenko, Russia 2005 (Sverdlovsk Film Studio). 46. Gagarin. Pervyi v kosmose, directed by Pavel Parkhomenko, Russia 2013 (KremlinFilms).

Chapter 1

Soviet Space and the Battlegrounds of TwentiethCentury Science Fiction Cinema

WHAT KIND OF CONFLICTS CAN SPACE TAKE? The main aim of this chapter is to outline how prominent themes in Soviet space science fiction cinema relate to the historical developments in international science fiction cinema, in order to sketch out the scene for the discussions that will follow later in the book. It seems appropriate to begin by reiterating the conclusion of many recent studies on astroculture: namely, that the conception of outer space thematized in policies and cultural products across the globe—for both entertainment and education—is usually a reflection, or extrapolation, of earthly concerns.1 At the same time, it is a common contemporary expectation of science fiction to challenge familiar stereotypes, preconceptions, and expectations of human future in space. Indeed, as Shukaitis reminded us, why imagine the future to be akin to the present if the present is not “the best of all possible worlds”?2 Why imagine outer space as an extrapolation of Earth or strive to turn it into such an extrapolation? Why transpose terrestrial conflicts into outer space, transforming it into a gamelike battlefield? As an unexplored, unconquered horizon, a vast and virtually unlivable environment, outer space may serve as a good prop to spice up a box-office blockbuster or as a didactic aide, allowing the director to convey, in allegorical terms, a certain political message. From this perspective, it is unsurprising that numerous twentieth-century science fiction films set in outer space demonstrate an awareness of connections that space exploration had with the development of military technologies and with the context of contemporary military and political conflicts, namely the two world wars, the Cold War and the disintegration of the Eastern bloc. However, this chapter aims to demonstrate that—if approached from a decentralized, transnational perspective—science fiction cinema reveals the spacescape of the twentieth 1

2

Chapter 1

century and the militaristic dimension of space programs as belonging to a set of thematic preoccupations. Political and legal experts usually define space militarization as policies and acts that involve placing weapons and technologies that may serve aggressive ends into space beyond the atmosphere of planet Earth.3 From the perspective of popular culture analysis, this definition appears rather narrow. This is because military or violent conflicts in the space created by the genre of science fiction are only partly conditioned by the actual presence of weapons and different kinds of technologies in outer space. The space of fiction usually focuses less on creating precise analogies to political and technological reality and more on conveying allegorical meanings. In this sense, a look at popular culture allows one to broaden the definition of space militarization. Science fiction films of the twentieth century demonstrate how the presence of violence and military weapons in space is conditioned by sets of relations: political international relations as well as those between genders, races, and individuals. This broadened perspective on the question of militarization allows us to chart a terrain for a more nuanced discussion of Soviet and Russian science fiction cinema, which will follow in the next chapters. In this chapter, I would therefore like to point out the transnational and global questions that have contributed to the general image of outer space as a frightening and violent medium, which prevails in discussions on science fiction cinema and its history today. Against the common assumption that most of Soviet space science fiction cinema revolves around the Cold War race for space, I refer to a broad range of films produced on both sides of the Iron Curtain in order to argue that we can explore at least four different evident categories of antagonisms that underpin the producers’ approaches to activities in space: ideological, geopolitical, psychological, and biopolitical antagonisms. While these metaphorical battlefields are predictably in line with major international political preoccupations of the twentieth century, that is, the Russian revolution and the communist threat, the Cold War divide, the rise of minority rights movements, and the global expansion of capitalism, they also produce specific versions of outer space as constellations of space and time, also often described as timespaces or chronotopes, to echo Mikhail Bakhtin.4 While violence played an important role in all these constructions, it did so with reference to specific dimensions of astroculture: its varying ideological backdrops and geopolitical references, its interplay with the human imagination and the underlying presumptions about values and morals, and, finally, its attitude toward the very basic definition of life. Rather than aiming at providing a systematic overview of space science fiction cinematography, this chapter foregrounds a number of selected films in order to approach, illustrate, and develop the overarching conceptual issue: the interplay of representations of current sociopolitical reality and

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imagination in cinematic depictions of militarized outer space. Relying on relatively well-known films, I argue that while science fiction cinema of the previous century represented current political preoccupations, it also contributed to space militarization by normalizing the image of the omnipresence of danger and violence in space or coming from space. Over the course of the century, the image of outer space as a potentially dangerous and therefore a violent setting, often even a battlefield gradually turned into a common presumption, and a widely used trope in popular culture. Plotting the history of Soviet and Russian science fiction cinema into this broader framework is, in my view, important in order to be able to later switch between the registries of national and transnational cultural memories of the space age. PROFESSORS, SELENITES, AND MARTIAN PRINCESSES: THE PRE-CANONICAL, ANTI-COLONIALIST YEARS The advent of space science fiction cinema is often associated with Georges Méliès’s short film Voyage dans la Lune (1902), and what could be seen as its 1898 prequel, La Lune à un mètre (The Astronomer’s Dream), a short reverie about an astronomer’s dream about “looking the moon straight in the eye.”5 Méliès’s two fin-de-siècle depictions of humans’ first ventures into outer space were products of and comments on the advent of modernity, accompanied by the emergence of various workers’ rights movements and searches for alternatives to the existent economic system. Moreover, the lengthier and more elaborate Voyage dans la Lune may in restrospect also be seen as a premediator—a “trend-setter” that will be honored and referred to by many later films—for different subgenres of contemporary science fiction cinema.6 Both shorts located the ambitions to reach the moon at the intersection of the then contemporary “state-of-the-art” in science with imagination. Numerous critics have noted the parodic appearance of the astronomers in the two films; their visions and apparent lunacy in the film were explicitly coupled with imperialist ambitions of the state. Not only did no one have a problem with launching a cannonball-shaped capsule into outer space, aiming at the anthropomorphic moon and hitting the Man in the Moon in his eye. Professor Barbenfouillis, played by Méliès himself, also received a monument erected in his honor upon successful return to Earth with a captive moon-dweller, a Selenite. The short silent film was met with great enthusiasm by French audiences and was equally successful in the United States, where pirated versions by Lubin, Selig, and Edison ensured its great distribution. By 1904, it had also been widely screened in Germany, Canada, and Italy.7 The film provided a satirical critique of political order and pointed to the limits and dangers

4

Chapter 1

inherent to blind faith in scientific progress. Humanity only ventures to the moon to find out what it looks like to be atop a foreign planet. The earthlings were completely ignorant of all kinds of non-anthropomorphic extraterrestrial life that they encountered along the way, like the Man in the Moon or the Selenites, which appeared to explode when physically attacked. Humanity, represented in full only by mature bourgeois males, flew off into space absolutely certain of its intellectual and physical supremacy. It nearly destroys a foreign culture and returns to Earth to rejoice the triumphs based on the astronomers’ rational calculations as well as human courage and supremacy over the Selenites. The narrative, commenting on the colonialist and imperialist political context of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, will be revisited by countless later science fiction film, based on the premise that science and military power are key to humanity’s victory over all possible extraterrestrial threats. The explicitly satirical tone adopted by Voyage dans la Lune, however, is notably less common in these later productions. Critics have suggested that Voyage dans la Lune may be seen as an anti-imperialist parody, a function that would later feature only in very specific subgenres, such as space musicals or late 1980s Soviet productions, such as Kin-DzaDza! (1986), which will be analyzed in chapter 6.8 Furthermore, Voyage dans la Lune was produced long before the codification of the now-classical cinematic gestures, such as close-ups, juxtapositions, the tracking shot, and the shot-reverse-shot sequence; early cinema scholar André Gaudreault helpfully reminded us that films from the beginning of the twentieth century actually provided a very different viewing experience, closer to the tradition of the féerie theater-spectacle than to classical narrative cinema, which only became popular toward the 1920s.9 Voyage dans la Lune did not operate with a conventional linear narrative but rather treated time and space as flexible parameters, which allowed to show the voyage to the moon in two sequences from two different perspectives.10 Méliès created a visually rich spectacle, which allowed the spectator to enjoy fantastic, innovative shots of imagined situations, places, and times, transposing the tradition established in the literary genre of science fiction to a new medium.11 Equally important, Méliès’s film predicted that space exploration would probably be the result of the development of military technologies. Therefore, even this forerunner of the science fiction spectacle links the very idea of space exploration to military pursuits. Furthermore, aggressive, armed ventures into space were depicted as a consequence of a colonialist attitude exhibited by the protagonists of the film. They came to the moon unarmed but were happy to use their umbrellas against the Selenites once they realized this was an efficient means of destroying them. Early space science fiction films also include the first space opera prototype, the Danish silent film Himmelskibet (A Trip to Mars) (1918); literary

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5

adaptations, such as H. G. Wells’s The First Men in the Moon (1919) and the revolutionary allegory Aelita (1924)—which will be explored in the following chapter—as well as the scientifically rigorous first space melodrama Frau im Mond (Woman in the Moon) (1929).12 With regard to their formal features, aesthetics and narratives, these films were much less ambiguous than Voyage dans la Lune. They signaled a solidification of a transnational visual culture of outer space within the Western imaginary, demonstrating that, although outer space might be portrayed in an expressionist (Frau im Mond, Aelita) or a more realist-futurist manner (The First Men in the Moon), it was already constructed as the ultimate battlefield, featuring the struggles of a prevalent conception of society against extraterrestrials, imperialists, capitalists, or others. Notably, for contemporary analysts, these films demonstrated a heightened awareness of the need of sociopolitical critique. While the critical attitude remained relatively covert in Western European productions, early, pre–World War II Soviet films featured a much more pronounced degree of sociopolitical engagement. Of course, an ample amount of anti-capitalist and pro-communist propaganda in the USSR in the 1920s and early 1930s is hardly surprising; much more so are cases where such propaganda was openly mocked. The year 1924 was marked by the release of two films based on Alexei Tolstoy’s novel Aelita, which imagined a communist revolution on Mars: the homonymic Aelita, directed by Yakov Protazanov, which I will return to in detail in chapter 2, and Mezhplanetnaia revoliutsia (Interplanetary Revolution), an envisaged animated insert into Aelita, which, however, directly parodied Protazanov’s adaptation.13 In the latter silent animated short, Red Army Soldier Comrade Kominternov followed a bourgeois mission to Mars in order to prevent capitalist rule over the red planet, initiating a communist revolution instead. Interestingly enough, both parties in the class struggle were portrayed with the same amount of mockery: the bourgeois resembled bulldogs, which regard outer space as their new “final frontier,” full of resources and therefore ready for their lucrative ventures, whereas the ideologically drugged communists appeared one-dimensional and emotionally void. The ways in which the directors—young avant-garde Soviet animators—played with narrative structures, explicit and implicit social critique as well as outworldly fantasies made this experimental animation function in a very similar way to Voyage dans la Lune. However, in contrast to Méliès’s work, Mezhplanetnaia revoliutsia was never finished and did not make it to film theaters, leaving Aelita, a slightly less politically problematic adaptation of Tolstoy’s novel, the only mark of early Soviet cinematic astroculture.14 The combination of swift technological progress (coupled with enthusiasm) in the domain of rocketry and the absence of a strictly codified cinematic language allowed for an unprecedented degree of experimentation

6

Chapter 1

on screen. Nevertheless, space in these early science fiction films, which were produced long before the first tangible results of space programs, consistently—and very much in line with contemporary colonialist/socialist scenarios—appeared as a somewhat generic, unexplored terrain that would need to be tamed by military means. The decades that followed led to significant changes in the imagery of outer space, which offered conflict, warfare, and violence within very specific timespaces.15 This can be explained by the gradual establishment of film genres with distinct features, audiences, and marketing strategies as well as the appearance of distinct film policies, particularly in the USSR and socialist-bloc Eastern Europe, where film policy was governed by state agencies, ideologically aligned with the policies of the ruling Communist Parties. THE AMERICAN SEARCH FOR THE ULTIMATE OTHER, THE “CLASSICAL SCIENCE FICTION BLOCKBUSTER” RECIPE, AND THE DECADES OF SILENCE IN THE EASTERN BLOC While pre–World War II space-themed science fiction cinema focused on the ways outer space futures could broaden humanity’s horizons beyond the constraints of contemporary political regimes, postwar science fiction took a different turn. As the day of the launch of the first satellite and manned spaceflights drew nearer, the Soviet film industry remained cautious of the genre of science fiction after the Stalinist canonization of socialist realism as the normative framework for all artistic productions. The science fiction of socialist realism, which heavily influenced film production until the late 1950s, was to examine potentially realizable “near futures.” Moreover, in the domain of film production, it did not have separate funds but was most commonly associated with films for younger audiences. These two circumstances explain both the scarcity of productions and the pronounced focus on utopian future scenarios, exhibited by films, such as la byl sputnikom solntsa and Nebo zovet, which shall be analyzed in chapter 3. Meanwhile, Hollywood released a number of spectacular, albeit somewhat dystopian features, such as When Worlds Collide (1951), The Day the Earth Stood Still, Invaders from Mars (1953) and War of the Worlds (1953), known today as some of the most iconic science fiction films of the 1950s.16 Although at first glance, these genre films utilized the very same recipe perfected by their prewar predecessors—a pinch of threat and the atmosphere of an impending disaster—the tone and the message of these postwar films was starkly different. If Soviet productions advertised a firm belief in the nearing triumph of Soviet science in space, leading to Soviet authority over the entire

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world, 1950s Hollywood science fiction explicitly emphasized the possible existence of a serious external threat to a familiar society and therefore justified the need for further internal social consolidation. The spectacle portrayed by many 1950s American space-themed science fiction films was ultimately the feat of order, collaboration, and transparency over an unidentified or a vaguely identified threat. As noted by Vivian Sobchack, the trope of the city, an ordered and consolidated urban space, played an important role in science fiction films such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, that is, films that aim at reconciling human and alien (or unknown) power.17 Miranda Banks has argued that “countless science fiction films use easily recognizable foreign landmarks in montage / to show the international scale of the events taking place within the film. These single spaces speak not only to the residents’ experience but rather show the solidarity of all nations: What happens to one will happen to all.”18 Alongside this internationalist undercurrent, the universe of Hollywood 1950s science fiction cinema heavily relied on the dichotomy of the inside versus the outside. Contemporary analysts agreed that the increased rate of science fiction film production of the 1950s was in direct relationship to the increasing public concern about communism and the fear of nuclear disaster.19 For instance, the 1950 production Destination Moon, praised for its technological accuracy and box-office popularity, states that private investments into the space program are necessary for the United States to “win” the moon race against the USSR, turning outer space into an extrapolation of a political conflict (the early Cold War) on Earth.20 The General in the film states, directly quoting Wernher von Braun, “The first country that can use the moon to launch missiles will control the earth. And that, gentlemen, is the most important military fact of this century.”21 The Day the Earth Stood Still was an equally illustrative case.22 The alien Klaatu (Michael Rennie) arrived on Earth to warn earthlings that their escalating belligerence and inability to coexist peacefully would not be tolerated by the interstellar community. In contrast, Klaatu’s own futuristic alien community protected itself from armed conflict by subjugating itself to robot guardians. Utopia came at a price: the technologically advanced alien race bought peace at the expense of confining itself to a panopticon. The film suggested that this was the only alternative to incessant wars, which eventually lead to the elimination of the society in question. In this respect, The Day the Earth Stood Still offered a complex analysis of the problem of technological progress, coupling it with the context of the eternal and unchanging problem of social antagonisms and political conflicts. According to the director Robert Wise, the film had elements of a biblical allegory, with Klaatu functioning as a Christ-like figure reacting both to the recent World War II and the Cold War.

8

Chapter 1

A similarly nuanced perspective on the future of modernity, characterized by the technological advances, was provided by the 1960 East German production Der schweigende Stern (The Silent Star).23 Distributed as First Spaceship on Venus in the United States, and set in 1985, this film focused on the role of the international community of scientists in discovering evidence of a Venusian presence on Earth. Having sent a spaceship to Venus, humans would realize the Venusians, once a powerful race that had harbored a plan to eradicate humanity and invade Earth, were gone. The race destroyed itself with its own atomic weapons, its ruins serving as a warning to earthlings. In contrast to productions such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, this film, an adaptation of Stanisław Łem’s novel, had a much more pronounced internationalist note. Not only did the space crew consist of scientists of various nationalities, but their journey through the ruins of Venusian civilization serves as a clear visual allegory to post–World War II Earth. Der schweigende Stern used the genre of science fiction and the trope of the Venusians to create an otherworldly allegory of the perils inherent to humanity’s thirst for physical, symbolic, and technological domination. Other space-themed science fiction films from this period were less farreaching in this regard, portraying outer space as a simple extrapolation of the Cold War antagonism. The War of the Worlds (1953) used a Martian invasion as a cue for a visually excessive thriller, wherein humanity, embodied by the inhabitants of a town in Arizona, is attacked by a clearly violent alien aggressor, only to seek salvation in love and prayer. The threat was removed by nature itself: the Martians succumbed to microbes and bacteria present in the Earth’s atmosphere. Invaders from Mars (1953) went a step further to clearly couple the Martian threat with the Soviet one. Martian invaders, like a McCarthyist “red scare,” indoctrinated humans and took over their brains.24 Incidentally, the way in which Soviet space cinema from the same period was preoccupied with the Cold War divide was notably different. As we will see in the following chapters, while science fiction films were a rare find until the 1960s, the few productions that did address space exploration were markedly internationalist. The first iconic post-Sputnik space-documentary film, Pavel Klushantsev’s Doroga k zvezdam (The Road to the Stars), clearly stated that the space age was the future of all humanity.25 At the same time, this “documentary” film monumentalized the future by incorporating it into a narrative about the history of space exploration. While this history (and future) was clearly tied to Soviet signifiers, it was also depicted as a universal, global feat.26 Similarly, one of the most popular Soviet space science fiction films of the 1950s, Nebo zovet, a tale of the imagined and desired future of the Soviet space program (i.e., a flight to Mars) tellingly envisaged eventual collaboration between the United States and the USSR, albeit clearly under the aegis of the latter.

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In contrast to these Soviet and American films, Western European productions of this period did not depict the militarization of outer space as a result of current political constellations or use the metaphor of an alien threat to demonize a contemporary political other. Rather, outer space was a fantastic arena for mixing genres, intertextual references and, ultimately, for producing “notoriously bad” films.27 Such productions were evidently inspired by genres such as horror and satire and often focused on how space exploration might foreground and question traditional dichotomies, sometimes with unconventional results. In a representative 1956 low-budget UK production, Fire Maidens from Outer Space, a crew of stereotypically macho, heavily smoking astronauts from Earth landed on the thirteenth moon of Jupiter to explore signs of life that have recently been discovered there.28 They encountered a dying civilization, consisting of sixteen women and their middleaged symbolic father Prasus. The people were being terrorized by a beastly headed monster. This dying population was led by Duessa, who also initially wished to retain the astronauts in captivity, using them as mates. However, they prove to be very useful, killing the monster who had murdered Prasus and several women in his latest attack. The astronauts left the hostile moon with one of the women and promised to send spaceships full of men to the forsaken celestial body. Male physical strength and virility proved to be crucial for the future of civilization, both terrestrial and alien. Moreover, this film, like many others, portrayed the possibly alien inhabited pockets in outer space as dangerous places that must be approached bearing fire arms. Even in these humorous films of the first half of the 1950s, the visions of space exploration and extraterrestrial encounters depict space programs as the result of technological progress, brought about by a social order organized and ruled by males. In this situation, space exploration is limited to being a colonialist pursuit. Technological progress was not aligned with a pluralist, open attitude toward novel forms of life or social order. Both the aliens and the expeditions from Earth were, by default, armed with lethal weapons intended for the destruction of anything considered to be alien. Forbidden Planet was released in 1956, a year after both the United States and the USSR had declared their intentions to launch artificial satellites in the near future, catapulting them into the beginning of the Space Race.29 Apart from combining many of the themes and tropes highlighted by the films already mentioned, Forbidden Planet set new precedents that later films in this genre would successfully continue to exploit, along with a fully electronic score composed by Louis and Bebe Barron. Much like Destination Moon, Forbidden Planet glorified the technological advances of the human race, rating them higher than those of alien life forms. The film, set in the twenty-third century, featured a human crew traveling in a spaceship fasterthan-light, accompanied by Robby the Robot, the first-ever opinionated,

10

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anthropomorphic robot to appear in a space science fiction film. The expedition was set out to check on an earlier mission to Altair IV. They found out that the entire expedition on Altair IV succumbed to Monsters of the Id, produced by scientist Edward Morbius’s (Walter Pidgeon) subconscious— actual monsters released into reality by Morbius who has access to an ancient machine.30 The monsters of Morbius’s Id were only defeated after Morbius acknowledged his complicity in the elimination of the first expedition to Altair. The price he had to pay for his power is his life. Forbidden Planet set several trajectories for the development of spacethemed science fiction cinema for several decades. First, the narrative turned outer space into a mixture of threats and challenges “from the outside” and of “perils from within,” which were most often incarnations of an individual’s unconscious and fall into Sigmund Freud’s category of the uncanny. The film suggested that space exploration could have the capacity to exceed our expectations. Space exploration might be the beginning of developments that humans cannot foresee. According to the societal allegory presented in the film, advances in science, which were not followed by changes in the psyche, could result in the demise of an entire civilization. Second, the film’s treatment of women was frequently echoed in films that followed. The sf universe of the twentieth century was emphatically phallocentric, even in films such as the aforementioned Fire Maidens from Outer Space or the later Barbarella (1968), or even the Soviet teen films, such as Bol’shoe kosmicheskoe puteshestvie and Cherez ternii k zvezdam (Through the Thorns to the Stars; Humanoid Woman) (1981), which will be examined in chapter 5.31 In the specific case of Forbidden Planet, the entire crew was male and they allowed themselves to seduce Altaira (Anne Francis), Morbius’s teenage daughter, whose only possible choice was to follow the scientist-astronauts back to Earth. Women were typically depicted as either passive and submissive, motherly or alien. Outer space was reserved for men who had to combat all alien elements that come their way, regardless of the latter’s sex or gender. Thus, Western outer space-themed films of the 1950s demonstrated a clear resonance with the general societal preoccupations of the period, functioning as a critical allegory, at the same time wrapped into the form of entertaining productions, often described as pulp by critics at the time. Outer space was linked to the idea of an approaching apocalypse. However, apart from simply demonstrating the danger of the possibility of ideological conflicts turning into tangible armed confrontations on Earth and beyond, films like Forbidden Planet also satirically highlighted the role of social rules and laws in the development of such grave and destructive disputes. Forbidden Planet and Fire Maidens from Outer Space hinted at resolving political and ideological conflicts on Earth ultimately not providing true peace of mind, and suggested that more antagonisms, such as gender

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conflict, were to be found within democratic societies. As we will see in chapters 4 and 6, in Soviet productions, these questions were be picked up and reworked—in highly original ways—a little later, reflecting a greater tolerance of the Soviet authorities for entertainment-oriented film productions, which had marked the development of Soviet sf cinescape since the late 1950s. ASTRONAUTS ABASED, COSMONAUTS COMPLICATED: THE POST-APOLLO INWARD TURN If the 1950s and early 1960s have at times been characterized as the golden age of space-themed cinematography, the post-Apollo period was marked by a different atmosphere, for instance, in the films of Italian director Antonio Margheriti (1930–2002), such as Space-Men (1960), known as Assignment: Outer Space on the U.S. market.32 Operating within a narrative framework similar to Forbidden Planet, Space-Men featured a much more nuanced set of characters, suggesting that man’s perception of outer space does not merely depend on outer space as a dark, empty, and potentially perilous place, or on its ability to bring out our deepest fears, but also on the particular qualities of the characters who end up in outer space. The astronauts aboard the space station were no longer the perfect heroes of previous films; they were not immune to interpersonal quarrels, amorous delusions, or impulsive decisions. They did not automatically sacrifice their personal dignity and well-being for the betterment of humanity. Rather than constituting unambiguously “good” or “bad” characters, they were emotional, imperfect human beings who at times found it difficult to distinguish between their personal desires and the greater good of humanity.33 The trajectory of the problem posed to the exploration of outer space by the ambiguous and irrational nature of humanity itself resurfaced in numerous space-themed science fiction films of the 1960s and 1970s. Interestingly enough, there was an evident decline in Western space-themed science fiction film production after the Moon landing. A turn to inner space, materialized in the horror genre and, a little later, to cyberspace, was notable in both Hollywood and Western European science fiction cinema. Outer spacethemed films did not disappear, but they were more frequently used as a scenic prop for either political satire or explorations of the human psyche, or both. The statistics of Soviet film productions reveal that the USSR did not follow this trend, harnessing the trope of space exploration as a powerful nation-building mythology. Nevertheless, in both contexts, the films released after the launch of Sputnik 1 and the first spaceflights were typically less fascinated by the theme of the possibility of spaceflight than their predecessors,

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and more focused on visualizing outer space in as horrifying, humorous our politically allegorical terms as possible. For many film enthusiasts, the end of the 1960s and the 1970s produced some of the most profound cinematic explorations of the universality and significance of spaceflight that eventually acquired cult status among science fiction fans. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Soliaris and The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) are perhaps the first titles to spring to mind.34 These films presented a stark diversification of the genre of space fiction. Instead of focusing on outer space as an uncharted territory that contains many perils and needs to be rendered safe like earlier works, they focused on the people from or in space. In these three films, space served as a device that allowed the protagonists to explore their psyche in previously unforeseen circumstances. The cinematic proclamation that the real danger of space lay in the opportunity to encounter oneself echoed the imperative of the United Nations’ Outer Space Treaty from 1967. While the Treaty called for “peaceful” use of outer space, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Soliaris and The Man Who Fell to Earth implied that militarization, that is, trying to save humanity by placing weapons or even surveillance technology into space, would not provide any far-reaching solutions. Moreover, the three films foregrounded a distinct feature of post-spaceflight science fiction cinema: a familiarity with space, uncommon for earlier works. The diversity of science fiction subgenres hardly increased in the years following the launch of Sputnik 1. On the other hand, films within individual existing subgenres evolved in terms of their relative narrative, visual, and cinematic complexity. Building upon the legacy of The Day the Earth Stood Still as well as Der schweigende Stern, Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey plunged straight into the question of the birth of a new kind of space age subjectivity. It was embodied by a child of technology, the computer HAL 9000, on the one hand transcultural and ahistorical in its rational logic, yet carrying the weight of the European Enlightenment on the other. Soliaris—which will be contextualized within the archive of Soviet space cinema in chapter 3—built on an altogether different legacy, the one of Eastern Europe’s rich science fiction literature tradition, coupled with director Andrei Tarkovsky’s aspirations to turn cinema into a means of “sculpting in time,” that is, carving out timeless timespaces of universal significance.35 Viewed from the perspective of space-related violence, both Soliaris and 2001: A Space Odyssey highlighted the same idea: that violence, here epitomized by human-created sentinel computer HAL 9000, was inherent to thought, language, and culture and may therefore not be prevented in human space exploration. Both Soliaris and 2001: A Space Odyssey distinguished between violence and militarization; this distinction was a symptom of post-Sputnik science fiction space-related cinematography. Productions such as The Man Who Fell to Earth also highlighted an increasing militarization of social life as

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not the greatest peril posed by the technological progress that brought about and set the limits and horizons of space exploration. The Man Who Fell to Earth—echoed in the Soviet teen-science-fiction production Cherez ternii k zvezdam—explored the fate of intellectually superior humanoid alien Thomas Jerome Newton, played by David Bowie, who crashed on Earth and was trying to find a way to send water to his own exhausted planet, which was on the brink of environmental collapse. However, underneath this relatively simple narrative, the film also addressed the paradoxes of the core values directing terrestrial human lives. Newton felt torn between his mission and his commitment to his home planet and his current life on Earth, where he was kept in captivity in a luxurious apartment by Dr. Nathan Bryce (Rip Tom), who wished to exploit Newton’s alien powers. Newton’s story, visualized as an exploration of Earth through the intersection of two perspectives, an alien and a human one, juxtaposed fleeting emotions induced by momentary experiences, such as sexual desire, alcohol, drugs, and exciting events like travels and parties, to structural existential problems. This had a hierarchizing effect: individual psychology was exposed as inadequate in the face of problems such as global drought. As long as human psychology was subjugated to the imperative of momentary enjoyment, it was powerless against greater challenges, which, paradoxically, would eventually be brought about as a consequence of humanity’s negligent attitude to its social organization and to its environment. The world that Newton crashed into to seek a cure for his own planet was depicted as full of temptations, which were much more accessible to the wealthy, but essentially did not entail any kind of revelations and did not motivate their consumers for action. Rather, they numbed individuals and retained the social status quo, at the expense of the well-being of planet Earth. While early post–World War II cinematography tended to align humanity’s expansion into outer space with militarization—that is, expansion into outer space accompanied by heavy armament, usually portrayed as necessary to protect humanity from external threats—late 1960s and 1970s space-themed science fiction cinema demonstrated a turn “inward.” In this turn, the human being as the subject of space exploration appeared to be the source of violence and the precursor for militarization. Space exploration was portrayed as a violent enterprise because it had been enabled by a human culture that grew out of violent military conflicts and subordination or suppression of foreign species and element.36 Contemplative reflections on the nature of the human psyche, the essential coordinates of social and cultural relations on Earth and their implications for the Space Age, provided by 2001: A Space Odyssey, Soliaris, and The Man Who Fell to Earth and others, stood in juxtaposition to an altogether different approach to outer space sci-fi cinema in the 1960s and 1970s.37 In contrast to emphasizing violence, inherent to the human condition, less philosophically

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sophisticated productions focused on spectacular special effects and actiondriven plots continued the logic set out by earlier productions such as Invaders from Mars. In comparison to the 1950s, the transnational spectrum of such productions grew significantly broader. The 1970s productions treated outer space and alien worlds as a means for elevating otherwise relatively simple plots, usually adaptations of conventional genre narratives (horror, thriller, melodrama, historical drama) to “galactic” proportions, thus providing room for excessive visual effects; as we shall see in chapters 4, 5, and 6, the USSR of this decade was well on its way trying to “catch up” with the West in this domain.38 The militarized image of space, usually presented as a silent threat and a reason for numerous safety precautions, therefore related to a commonplace awareness that international, let alone interplanetary politics, is conducted in order to prevent military conflict. War in space remained, to echo Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz’s (1780–1831) famous line, the “continuation of politics by other means.” According to such productions, the threat of war in space was ever greater due to the potential presence of alien races, which are difficult to reason with on earthly terms and due to the cataclysmic effect produced by the harsh conditions of outer space as such. THE FALL OF THE WALL AND BIOPOLITICS IN SPACE Ridley Scott’s Alien franchise (1979–) is an example of a cinematic production that maneuvered between these two tendencies, that is intricate philosophical contemplation on the human condition in outer space on the one hand and the relatively simple, that is, formally uncomplicated narrative of a visual spectacle on the other. Interestingly enough, writer Dan O’Bannon (1946–2009) developed the idea for the Alien series based on Dark Star (1974), another science fiction production he had cowritten with the film’s director John Carpenter (1948–).39 Dark Star, a somber comedy about an overdue space mission to destroy “unstable planets,” which might jeopardize humanity’s colonization of the universe, involved an episode with an alien life form aboard the ship. This theme was molded into a fully-fledged plot in Alien, where the entire narrative focused on an alien life form threatening a human space mission. However, there was another parallel between these two projects. The quirky, visually straightforward, humorous Dark Star, which in its finale depicted a philosophical conversation between an astronaut and an advanced, thinking bomb called thermostellar Bomb #20 shared an important focus with the thrilling and lavish Alien franchise. Both productions treated life itself as an abstract concept, taking into consideration the possibility of its perfect alien-ness and thereby expanding the need for governance to the very core

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of existence. Ever since the mid-1960s, space-themed science fiction films lost their preoccupation with space programs and the possible implications of space exploration. Instead, they mainly used space as a milieu for testing various special effects on the one hand and posing philosophical questions, such as the status of life and the role of humanity in the universe, on the other. Instead of replaying various possible threats that might emerge from an expansion of human politics into outer space, philosophically concerned films shifted their focus to the status of life in outer space on a more abstract level. As aliens and technology grew less defined in terms of form, outer space cinema did not turn any less violent or militarized. Rather, it tilted its focus to biopolitics, in a Foucauldian sense, a politics that “deals with the population, with the population as a political problem, as a problem that is at once scientific and political, as a biological problem and as power’s problem”—or, rather, biopolitics in the realms of outer space.40 In terms of biopolitics, the subject of governance was the notion of life at its most abstract; life in its most trivial incarnations. Life defined as all the processes that define existence, including nutrition, reproduction, excretion, and production. If we expand the reach of biopolitics to outer space, the concept of life should also be extrapolated to involve all artificial intelligence and alien life forms. In Dark Star, Bomb #20 was granted autonomy in its decision-making. It is therefore reasoned and negotiated with as if it were human or at least rational. The conversation between the astronaut and the bomb affected the bomb’s later operations and the consequences of its reasoning were felt by the entire crew. Eventually the bomb exploded, after deciding that its demise might be the only evidence of its own existence. While Bomb #20 appeared not nearly as autonomous as, for example, the computer HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and did not possess the elaborate personality of Robby the Robot from The Forbidden Planet, it was more than just a sophisticated instrument. The Bomb, whose decision-making processes affected life and death, relied on simple deductive reasoning. Furthermore, it was depicted as a life form and life force that needed to be governed, rather than an aide whose actions needed to be directed. The Alien franchise extrapolated this issue of a foreign life force requiring governance rather than simple instructions or management of an external threat. Here, the alien life form, in contrast to, for example, depictions in Invaders from Mars, was no longer a direct analogy of a contemporary political antagonist. Rather, the physicality of the alien presence appeared in startling contrast to all kinds of rationality and organization governing life on Earth. The alien life form was abstract and dangerous in its infinite potential for destruction that is not curbed by any kind of social norms. From two different perspectives, the two films highlighted the topics of body politics and biopolitics in relation to space exploration.

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Dark Star depicted how the disintegration of a social organization and, with it, of normal daily routines gave way to the emergence of alternative value hierarchies. The Alien franchise, on the other hand, foregrounded the dangers of agency, represented by a life form not subjugated to our value system. Such sporadic philosophical interpretations of the political implications of the space age were aligned with a general shift in approaches to the nexus of space exploration, science fiction cinema, and space militarization. The shift was particularly discernable in certain productions of the 1980s. This was a period marked by the end of the Cold War, accompanied by a notable halt in the Soviet space program, as well as by a general global decreased popular interest in space exploration, related to an increasing environmental consciousness since the 1970s. At the same time, a growing popular uneasiness emerged in the light of then U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s new national defense policy, based on plans for a Strategic Defense Initiative—a missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attacks by ballistic nuclear weapons.41 This time brought some important space-related developments on the cinematic front, arguably, rounding off the spectrum of subgenres of spacethemed science fiction cinema. Aside from thrillers, such as the Alien franchise and entertainment-oriented space opera hits, such as Star Wars, a rapprochement happened, between Hollywood, Western European, and so-called Eastern bloc cinematography, facilitated by looser censorship and more favorable film policies in the latter. Aside from a number of entertainment-oriented, action-propelled films, which will be discussed in detail in chapter 6, these circumstances contributed to some productions that transgressed the boundaries of national genre conventions in an unprecedented way.42 Apart from the release of the first and only Soviet clearly satirical response to the Soviet space program, Kin-Dza-Dza! (1986), the period was characterized by the first cinematic version of the well-known 1963 Soviet science fiction novel by Arkady (1925–1991) and Boris Strugatsky (1933– 2012), Trudno byt’ bogom / Es ist nicht leicht ein Gott zu sein (Hard to Be a God), and by an unconventional film interpretation of Jerzy Żuławski’s novel Na srebrnym globie (On the Silver Globe). The two films were innovative contributions to the archive of space science fiction cinema and may be seen as the last important developments of the genre in the twentieth century. Both films approached the theme of the militarization of space exploration using the conventional form of the science fiction epos as the basis for their plots, at the same time subverting this basis to highlight the body-political aspect of such epics. Es ist nicht leicht ein Gott zu sein was the first epic feature film based on the Strugatskys’ novel, an allegory of terrestrial totalitarian regimes, which was heavily censored due to its ideological inadequacy before eventually

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getting published in 1964. It quickly acquired cult status among Soviet science fiction fans. The release of the film was a symptom of the fall of the iron curtain and of the politics of glasnost—a democratization of the public sphere advocated by the USSR Communist Party Secretary-General Mikhail Gorbachev (1931–). At the same time, it was a symptom of the drawbacks of these very political proclamations: the producers did not respect the Strugatsky brothers’ wish for the film director to be Aleksei German and eventually stopped collaborating with Peter Fleischmann, who had been trusted with the job.43 Es ist nicht leicht ein Gott zu sein, a linearly constructed cinematic tale, told the story of an inhabited alien planet, where the humanoid population was going through its medieval stage, characterized by an authoritarian social order, feudalism, patriarchy, and a set of peculiar beliefs spread by local doctors and scientists. The planet was monitored by a spaceship from Earth, and several crew members were infiltrated into the local society, conducting a peculiar experiment: observing the durability and the transformations of social bonds and political structures in order to determine historical laws. The plot was secondary to the highlighted trait of all-pervasive violence that marked the society and social dynamics on the said alien planet. Society was governed by violence exerted by those in possession of power. The ruling classes were completely oblivious of their subordinates’ humanity, instrumentalizing them entirely, regardless of their age and gender. Es ist nicht leicht ein Gott zu sein reserved rational judgment and rationalist compassion for the space mission orbiting the planet and obliterates emotions altogether. Technologically advanced Earth was committed to peace and rationality, whereas medieval Arkanar was being torn apart by crude medieval body politics. Governance over life was induced by violence and sealed by a feudal social order. An altogether different perspective on space colonialist sagas was offered by Na srebrnym globie (On the Silver Globe), directed by Andrzej Żuławski (1940–2016), known for his direct aesthetics, daring technique and irreverence toward social norms. The film was an adaptation of the first part of the 1901–1911 Trylogia Księżycowa /The Lunar Trilogy written by the director’s granduncle. The film was ultimately released in 1988 after the end of communist rule in Poland and after a decade’s halt in production due to political blockages.44 The film, a combination of original footage—shot before the production has been interrupted in the 1970s—and Żulawski’s commentary, filling in the gaps, featured the story of an alien civilization. The latter came into being after a group of astronauts, equipped with video recorders, has landed on a distant planet, with no way to return home. They built a village by the seashore and eventually created a mythology consisting of tales of Earth. The last remaining crew member, Jerzy, also known as

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the Old Man, watched this civilization grow and battle the indigenous alien Szerns. Before his death, he sent a video recording of these developments to Earth. The recording was intercepted by Marek, an astronaut who had come to the planet a long time ago. He had first been received as the Messiah, about to save the civilization from the Szerns, but was later re-interpreted as an impostor, an outcast from Earth, and sent away to make up for his sins. The narrative alternated between the past and present, between Earth and the distant alien planet, and between perspectives provided by different characters. Żuławski’s daring decision to provide sequences of point-of-view shots, referring to different characters, enhanced the impression of dealing with a foreign, alien world. Hijacking the spectator’s gaze, convincing us that all reality is subjective, the director went even further to direct the gaze toward various explicit displays of corporeal, physical violence, inherent to the society on the foreign planet. As contemporary cinematic interlocutors, Alien and Na srebrnym globie highlighted a thematic development in late-twentieth-century science fiction cinematography. While 1980s’ spacescapes continued to be marked by perceived threats of encounters with extraterrestrial life, the angle that this threat was approached from differed greatly from earlier productions. The menace that characterized extraterrestrial life in 1950s and 1960s space sf movies was no longer just a simple fear of being eliminated by the alien. Rather, Alien, and Na srebrnym globie showed this threat stemming from an alien model of life, which could not be incorporated into terrestrial models of governance and administration due to its very alienness and was difficult to eliminate due to its physical strength. In the cases discussed earlier, the militarization of outer space was necessary to either portray ideological, geopolitical, gender-political, and psychological antagonisms or, in response, to protect very specific and very tangible values, such as an ideology, peace on the planet, and a certain constellation of gender roles. The 1980s sf epic, however, elated to a slightly different issue. The arena of militarization was now life itself: life on Earth related to a different biopolitics than destructive alien forces. Furthermore, the destructive alien forces did not only target certain aspects of life on Earth, but rather, wished to impose a wholly different conception of biopolitics, incompatible to the one on Earth. Therefore, they were untamable, impossible to govern or subjugate and should be destroyed. In this sense, 1980s sf cinematic productions moved away from the traditional Cold War views on human enhancement and astronauts as modern-day cyborg heroes and toward the trans- and posthumanist debates on the future of the human condition and the human species, which played an important role within the then current humanities and social sciences.45

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SPACE MILITARIZATION: FROM IDEOLOGICAL CRITIQUE TO BIOPOLITICAL SPECTACLE This chapter has discerned four thematic trajectories that marked the astrocinematic landscape of twentieth-century science fiction, pointing to distinct modes of the militarization of outer space within the cinematic medium. While these modes were related to certain sociopolitical developments pertaining to the history of the space age, such as the space race in the 1960s, it should also be noted that the outlined main stylistic and thematic trajectories did not follow one another in chronological succession. Nor were they necessarily subordinated to the policies and politics that accompanied the space age and the space race. Rather, science fiction film in the twentieth century gradually inscribed the setting of outer space with a varied spectrum of meanings, providing a very nuanced critical stance on space exploration and its links to militarization. The big feats of space programs of the 1950s and 1960s, such as the first human spaceflight and the moon landings, were represented and extrapolated particularly by big budget films, supported by major film studios in the West and government film agencies and departments of culture in the Eastern bloc. These films, such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, Destination Moon, Invaders from Mars, as well as Nebo zovet and Der schweigende Stern, are now considered as iconic by film experts and enthusiasts alike.46 At the same time, apart from reflecting the history of the space age, space sf cinema was also greatly influenced by broader preoccupations that marked the evolution of the science fiction genre on the one hand and pertinent intellectual debates on the future of humanity on the other. For instance, while 1950s American science fiction cinema was indeed dominated by the fear of a nuclear Armageddon and communism, this thematic preoccupation was not dealt with homogenously on the level of cinematic aesthetics. Films that addressed the same topics (e.g., Plan 9 from Outer Space and Invaders from Mars) often did so through different genres, coexisting but not equaling one another in terms of popularity and frequency of appearance. Granting the fantastic, satirical, and epic trajectories equal analytical attention allows to uncover deeper synchronic and temporal transformations that took place within the genre of space science fiction cinema over the past century. From this perspective, it becomes clear that in the domain of fiction, the militarization of outer space was not merely a byproduct of political antagonisms of the Cold War. The idea of using outer space for aggressive purposes to achieve political supremacy was screened as early as in 1902: Pre–World War II science fiction cinema, such as Voyage dans la Lune, typically considered spaceflight in terms of a fantastic, yet instructive allegory and constructed military conflict around questions related to ideology, such as

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class antagonisms within a certain society or state. The ruling classes were the agents of militarization, never questioning their right to go to space carrying weapons, or to attack the inhabitants of other planets. At the same time, they did not consider using outer space as a medium for military pursuits aimed at their antagonists on Earth. Post–World War II science fiction cinema highlighted a different milieu of armed conflict. The agents of space militarization in these films were professional politicians, who saw it as a means of solving their problems on Earth. Hollywood films in particular often related conflict in outer space (or involving visitors from outer space) to external yet earthly threats, such as an armed conflict with the USSR. Furthermore, invaders from outer space or aliens found in outer space were used as mere metaphors for “outsiders” on Earth. This created the idealistic impression of the existence of a united society on Earth, which needed to combat outside threats. Therefore, 1950s and 1960s cinematography tended to portray alienness by employing the concept of “the other” in terms of species, gender, or political convictions. However, the 1960s also gave rise to a different focus in space sf films. Rather than focusing on conflict with an external enemy, films began to foreground humanity’s inner struggles and conflicts, demonstrating that militarization aimed at stopping external threats could not save it from its own inner imperfections. In these films, armed confrontations and violent ventures in space were depicted as the consequence of the drives and antagonisms of the human psyche. 2001: A Space Odyssey highlighted violence as inherent to human culture, including its version of rational thought as basis for technological progress. Films exploring the conflictual nature of the human psyche and its implications for interactions with outer space flourished in the 1970s, the thematic undercurrent running through various genres, from spectacular thrillers (e.g., Margheriti’s Space-Men) to reflective dramas (e.g., The Man Who Fell to Earth). The 1970s also involved an internationalization of space fiction cinema, related to the political détente, which also meant greater access to Western films in the Eastern bloc.47 Eventually, this contributed to, if not encouraged, the production of more commercial films, including melodramas, quasihistorical sagas, humorous satires about space programs, and space detective films in socialist governed countries. Moreover, this period foregrounded another turn in the way militarization and violence were treated in spacerelated science fiction cinema on a global level. In extrapolating this turn toward the human psyche, science fiction films turned to the question of how to govern bodies and lives in the space age. The emphasis on body politics (e.g., in Es ist nicht leicht ein Gott zu sein) and biopolitics (e.g., in the Alien franchise and Na srebrnym globie), which paralleled the debates on the future of the human condition and the 1980s popularization of discussions on cyborgs, trans- and posthumanism, as well as reflections on the falling

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totalitarian regimes of the Eastern bloc, can be considered the final twist in the double-bind of the human and the alien. Space militarization in science fiction cinema no longer referred to placing weapons in space for the sake of protecting humanity from various threats. Rather, space militarization followed the scientifically and politically interesting idea that every life form participated in governance structures. Therefore, in order to protect humanity, humans needed to learn how to govern other life forms as well. As arguably the most important popular astrocultural medium of the twentieth century, space films provided—and still provide—nuanced insights into the history of the Space Age and its militaristic aspects, highlighting violence at the structural core of social order. In their own differing ways, all of the films explored in this chapter emphasized the link between space exploration and space militarization as not natural or spontaneous, but reflecting underlying social antagonisms and fears. In doing so, they uncovered outer space as much more than a non-place, either the kind governed by textual and pictorial rules, as examined by Augé, or the kind left unanalyzed due to a prevalent ideology, as defined by de Certeau. Despite various national and regional constraints placed on cinematic productions, including censorship in the Eastern bloc and direct producer and indirect stakeholder expectations in the West, the films testified to the constructive and reflective dimensions of popular culture. In the following chapters, I will highlight the particularities of the Soviet archive of science fiction film and its contemporary legacy. One of the arguments that will be elaborated throughout the book refers precisely to the productive, generative capacity of this archive. Regardless of the limitations presented by their production context, many productions managed to not only construct metaphorical extrapolations of the state-of-the-art of spaceflight, but also to point to the consequences of possible encounters with the human psyche and with the ultimate otherness within various historical contexts, from the imperialist fin-de-siècle to the rise of environmentalist movements in the 1970s. The cinematic capacity for remediation was often an asset of particular value in this regard. NOTES 1. See, for example, Alexander C. T. Geppert, ed., Imagining Outer Space: European Astroculture in the Twentieth Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 2nd edn, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) (= European Astroculture, vol. 1).; Eva Maurer, Julia Richers, Monica Rüthers and Carmen Scheide, eds, Soviet Space Culture: Cosmic Enthusiasm in Socialist Societies (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); and Jutta Weldes, ed., To Seek out New Worlds: Science Fiction and World Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). 2. See Shukaitis on space as a “non-place” in the Introduction.

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3. Arjen Vermeer, “The Laws of War in Outer Space: Some Legal Implications for Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello of the Militarisation and Weaponisation of Outer Space,” in The New Order of War, ed. Bob Brecher (Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi B. V., 2010), 69–88, here 70. 4. Mikhail M. Bakhtin, “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes toward a Historical Poetics,” in The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist (Austin: Texas University Press, 2004 [1937–8]), 48–254. 5. La Lune à un mètre, directed by Georges Méliès, F 1898 (Star Film Company). 6. See Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska, Science Fiction Cinema: From Outerspace to Cyberspace: Short Cuts (New York: Wallflower Press, 2000), here 23, 67. 7. Richard Abel, “A Trip to the Moon as an American Phenomenon,” in Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination: Georges Méliès’s Trip to the Moon, ed. Matthew Solomon (Albany: Suny Press, 2011), 129–42, here 133. 8. For more on the political undercurrents of Méliès’s short film, see Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, “A Brief Typology of French Science Fiction Film,” in Rediscovering French Science-Fiction in Literature, Film and Comics: From Cyrano to Barbarella, ed. Philippe Mather (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), 143–60, here 143. 9. André Gaudreault, “Theatricality, Narrativity, and Trickality: Reevaluating the Cinema of Georges Méliès,” trans. and adapted by Tom Gunning and Vivian Sobchak, Journal of Popular Film and Television 15, no. 3 (Fall 1987): 110–19. 10. David Sandner, “Shooting for the Moon: Méliès, Verne, Wells, and the Imperial Satire,” Extrapolation 39, no. 1 (1998): 5–25, here 5. 11. For examples of such analyses, see Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination: George Méliès’s Trip to the Moon, ed. Matthew Solomon (New York: SUNY Press, 2012). 12. Himmelskibet, directed by Holger-Madsen, DK 1918 (Nordisk Film); Frau im Mond, directed by Fritz Lang, D 1929 (Ufa). On Himmelskibet, see Thore Bjørnvig, “The Holy Grail of Outer Space: Pluralism, Druidry, and the Religion of Cinema in The Sky Ship,” Astrobiology 12, no. 10 (October 2012): 998–1014; on Frau im Mond see Alexander C.T. Geppert and Tilmann Siebeneichner, “Lieux de l’Avenir: Zur Lokalgeschichte des Weltraumdenkens,” Technikgeschichte 84, no. 4 (2017): 285–304. 13. Mezhplanetnaya revoliutsia, directed by Zenon Komissarenko, Yuri Merkulov and Nikolai Khodataev, USSR 1924 (Mezhrabprom-Rus). 14. For a detailed discussion, see Peter G. Christensen, “Women as Princesses or Comrades: Ambivalence in Yakov Protazanov’s ‘Aelita’ (1924),” New Zealand Slavonic Journal 26, no. 1 (November 2000): 107–22. 15. For an overview of Eastern European postwar film industries and policies, see Mira Liehm and Antonín J. Liehm, The Most Important Art: Soviet and Eastern European Film After 1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). 16. When Worlds Collide, directed by Rudolph Maté, USA 1951 (Paramount Pictures); Invaders from Mars, directed by William Cameron Menzies, USA 1953

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(Edward L. Alperson Productions); War of the Worlds, directed by Byron Haskin, USA 1953 (Paramount Pictures). 17. Vivian Sobchack, Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 63. 18. Miranda J. Banks, “Monumental Fictions: National Monument as a Science Fiction Space,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 30, no. 3 (April 2002): 136–45, here 138. 19. Robert E. Hunter, “Expecting the Unexpected: Nuclear Terrorism in 1950s Hollywood Films,” in The Atomic Bomb and American Society: New Perspectives, ed. Rosemary B. Mariner and G. Kurt Piehler, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2009), 211–40, here 230. 20. Destination Moon, directed by Irving Pichel, USA 1950 (George Pal Productions). David Kirby, “The future is now: Diegetic prototypes and the role of popular films in generating real-world technological development,” Social Studies of Science 40, no. 1 (January 2010): 41–70, here 47. 21. Wernher von Braun, “Crossing the Last Frontier,” Collier’s, March 22, 1952: 24–8, 72–4, here 25. 22. Blair Davis, “Singing Sci-Fi Cowboys: Gene Autry and Genre Amalgamation in the Phantom Empire (1935),” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 33, no. 4 (November 2013): 552–75. 23. Der schweigende Stern, directed by Kurt Maetzig, GDR/P 1960 (DEFAStudio für Spielfilme, Künstlerische Arbeitsgruppe Roter Kreis, Film Polski, Zespól Filmowy Iluzjon). For more on the film, see Steven J. Dick, “Space, Time, and Aliens: The Role of Imagination in Outer Space,” in Geppert, Imagining Outer Space, 27–44, here 27. 24. Soon enough, such obvious allegories of the Cold War political divide became fruitful grounds for overtly satirical productions such as Plan 9 from Outer Space, directed by Ed Wood, USA 1959 (Reynolds Pictures). 25. Doroga k zvezdam, directed by Pavel Klushantsev, USSR 1957 (Lennauchfilm Studio). 26. See also Lynn Barker, and Robert Skotak, “Klushantsev: Russia’s Wizard of Fantastika.” American Cinematographer 75, no. 6 (1994): 76–83 and 75, no. 7 (1994): 77–82, in Russian Science Fiction Literature and Cinema: A Critical Reader, edited by Anindita Banerjee (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2018): 214–230. 27. Landon Brooks, “Doubling Down on Double Vision,” Science Fiction Studies 44, no. 3 (November 2017): 592–598, here 593. 28. Fire Maidens from Outer Space, directed by Cy Roth, UK 1956 (Criterion). See Steve Chibnall, “4 Alien Women,” in British Science Fiction Cinema, ed. I. Q. Hunter (London: Routledge, 1999), 57–74, here 57. 29. Forbidden Planet, directed by Fred M. Wilcox, USA 1956 (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). 30. The film itself refers to a “subconscious” rather than an “unconscious.” 31. Cherez ternii k zvezdam, directed by Richard Viktorov, USSR 1981 (Gorky Film Studio).

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32. Margheriti was the most prominent Italian science fiction director; see Science Fiction Film Directors, 1895–1998, ed. Dennis Fischer (Jefferson: McFarland, 2011), 422–26. Space Men, directed by Antonio Margheriti, I 1960 (Titanus, Ultra Film); David G. Hartwell, Age of Wonders: Exploring the World of Science Fiction (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), here 181. 33. This trait is much more characteristic of European cinematography than it is of U.S. or Soviet science fiction films. Arguably, one of the reasons for this discrepancy may be the traditionally smaller emphasis placed on the military dimension of the Space Age in Europe. 34. 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick, USA 1968 (Stanley Kubrick Productions, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer); Soliaris, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, USSR 1972 (Creative Unit of Writers & Cinema Workers, Mosfilm, Unit Four); The Man Who Fell to Earth, directed by Nicolas Roeg, UK 1976 (British Lion Films). For more on 2001, see Robert Poole, “The Myth of Progress: 2001—A Space Odyssey,” in Geppert, Limiting Outer Space, 103–29. 35. Andrei Tarkovsky and Kitty Hunter-Blair, Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987). 36. For more on the topic, see Alexander C. T. Geppert, “The Post-Apollo Paradox: Envisioning Limits during the Planetized 1970s,” in idem, Limiting Outer Space, 3–26. 37. See, for example, the Soviet-Polish production Test Pilota Pirksa, directed by Marek Piestrak, USSR/Poland 1979 (Przedsiebiorstwo Realizacji Filmów ‘Zespoly Filmowe,’ Filmistuudio ‘Tallinnfilm,’ Dovzhenko Film Studios). 38. Terrore nello spazio, directed by Mario Bava, Italy 1965 (Castilla Cooperativa Cinematográfica, Italian International Film); Space Battleship Yamato, directed by Leiji Matsumoto, Japan 1977 (Abe Shuji, Chubu-nippon Broadcasting Company (CBC)). 39. Dark Star, directed by John Carpenter, USA 1974 (Jack H. Harris Enterprises). 40. Michel Foucault, “Lecture 11, 17 March 1976,” in idem, Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France 1975–1976 (New York: Picard, 2003), 239–64, here 243. 41. Steven M. Sanders, “An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science Fiction Film,” in The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film, ed. idem (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), 1–17, here 17. 42. Star Wars is an American epic space opera created by George Lucas. The franchise began in 1977 with the release of the film Star Wars (later subtitled Episode IV: A New Hope in 1981), which became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon. It was followed by the sequels The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). These three films constitute the original Star Wars trilogy. A prequel trilogy was released between 1999 and 2005; see Star Wars, directed by George Lucas, USA 1977–2005 (Lucasfilm/Twentieth Century Fox). More spin-offs have been produced since the franchise was bought by Disney in 2012. 43. Elena V. Boroda, “Ot blagodetelya k progressoru: modifikatsiza obraza sverkhcheloveka v otechestvennoi fantastike XX veka,” Filologiya i chelovek 3, no. 4 (December 2008): 21–7, here 21.

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44. Anna Misiak, “The Polish Film Industry under Communism Control,” Iluminace 24, no. 4 (2012): 61–83. 45. For more on the cyborg debate of the 1980s, see Linda Howell, “The Cyborg Manifesto, Revisited: Issues and Methods for Technocultural Feminism,” in Postmodern Apocalypse: Theory and Cultural Practice at the End, ed. Richard Dellamora, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 199–218. 46. Eva Näripea, “Work in Outer Space: Notes on Eastern European Science Fiction Cinema,” in Work in Cinema. Labour and the Human Condition, ed. Ewa Mazierska, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 209–226, here 232. Robert A. Jones, “They came in peace for all mankind: popular culture as a reflection of public attitudes to space,” Space Policy 20, no. 1 (January, 2004): 45–48, here 46. 47. See also Kirby, “Final Frontiers.”

Chapter 2

Aelita’s Mark and the Many Faces of Utopia

UTOPIA AS METHOD, FILM AS PRAXIS IN THE SOVIET CONTEXT The beginning of the twentieth century, marked by revolutions, wars, the development of ever more powerful weapons, but also by rapid urbanization, quicker communication, technologies, such as the radio, cinema, and later television, was commonly considered as a time “on the brink of the future.” The consolidation of two ideologically opposed blocs, marked by the emergence of the Soviet Union on December 30, 1922, following the October revolution of 1917 and the civil war, emphatically put forth the question of what this future might look like, and which political framework it should, ideally, subscribe to. Avant-garde artists in both Western and Eastern Europe had set their hopes on technological advances, and both celebrated the promises of, and envisioned a faster, more efficient, more comfortable, better connected future humanity, as well as a qualitatively different human condition, which would allow for new modes of subjectivity, exceptional experience, unbridled development, and much more. In the Soviet Union, these ideas were predominantly interrogated from a socially normative perspective; that is, from the point of view of their propensity to contribute to a new, socialist future, and to pave the way for a transition to communism. The question was therefore not the Western-vanguard: “how to articulate a new subjectivity?” but rather “how to articulate a new collective space and experience, following socialist values?” In this context, it is not surprising that the advent of Soviet space science fiction cinema is often associated with Yakov Protazanov’s 1924 production, Aelita, a generously funded production, also known as “the first Soviet blockbuster.” Its golden age has often been often summed up with references to Yevgeny 27

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Sherstobitov’s Tumannost’ Andromedy (1967) and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solyaris (1972), while Georgy Daneliya’s Kin-Dza-Dza! (1986) is commonly considered to be its last breath.1 In broad brushstrokes, these films reflect the tendencies to transform outer space into an extrapolation of earthly concerns, outlined in the first chapter. At the same time, this selection of memorable, so-to-say canonical productions opens up a number of compelling questions. One of these, particularly relevant to the examination of the first three aforementioned features, is the relations between the films and the question of utopia. Utopia, influentially assessed in the 1970s by Darko Suvin as the “sociopolitical subgenre of science fiction,” should in the context of this book primarily be understood as a polysemic concept, which encompasses celebratory constructions of fictional societies (utopias, which seek better alternatives to the existing world), as well as critical ones (dystopias, which extrapolate the negative aspects of current progress to serve as a cautionary tale to contemporary decision-makers).2 While variant utopias—as enthusiastic or pessimistic predictions and extrapolations, satirical commentaries, or calls for action have been commonplace in the history of world literature, following Suvin, fiction and utopia scholars agree that their place in twentieth-century cultural production is somewhat specific. This is due to the socially relevant promises and challenges of scientific and technological progress, aimed at improving the accessibility of the world: in terms of time, space, and information. While constructions of a fictional world that, for better or for worse, “works,” are diverse, for Suvin and Jameson, only some of these—the ones aligned with Marxist utopianism as the impetus to imagine a more just society that has overcome the limitations and inequalities of the capitalist mode of production—should be considered utopian in terms of the desire at their core.3 The abolition of the utopian desire, that is, the anti-utopian surrender to the fact that everything greedy, corrupt, and unempathetic about humanity might, at some point, prevail, is seen as an anti-utopian option that has no political value.4 Suvin initially argued that the politically progressive core feature, and the core of the aesthetic appeal of sf utopias was the so-called dialectic of cognitive estrangement. Suvin harnessed the glaring antimony of sf: the fact that it uses modes of cognition (science) to defamiliarize our empirical reality and history, to show that it offers a presentation of previously unimaginable alternatives, grounded in a certain hope. This hope, according to Suvin and Jameson, is secured by the hegemony of cognitive logic at the core of sf worlds: cognitive logic apparently elevates sf utopias above pure fantasy, granting them credibility as either forecasts or critique. This framework, which aligned the “science” at the heart of science fiction with historical materialism, disregarded as false those novums, which do not lead

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to a better world.5 Utopia was hence posited as a close relative (a niece, perhaps?) of sf, insofar as in both cases, the scientific or technological novum that dominates the narrative can be assessed in terms of the impact it has on the world. Should a novum not lead to a better world, it must be disregarded as fake. Effectively, fantasy, folklore, and myth were dismissed as irrelevant to historical materialism, and as inferior to science fiction in this framework. Yet, as a productive discussion initiated by Mark Bould and China Miéville in the framework of the Historical Materialism journal in 2002 demonstrated the links between utopia, sf, Marxism, and speculative fiction at large (i.e., involving fantasy in forms such as fairy tales, myths, etc.) are not as selfevident as the aforementioned classical sf scholars might have argued.6 This recent development in utopian sf studies favors a diversification of interests that this present book is a by-product of. I interrogate utopia in terms of an intersection politics, technology, and representation. I would like to bring forth its operations within film—a medium that is not only narrative, nor relies solely on the conventions of literary genres, such as the novel. Moreover, a medium whose history testifies to its close ties to the very utopian impulse outlined earlier—the impulse to conjoin the technological, the aesthetic, and the political in the pursuit of a new vision and new worlds.7 For the purposes of this book, the science-fictional utopias discussed in this book will be located along the following axes: a) As determined by the interplay of the so-called cognitive effect—following Carl Freedman, “the attitude of the text itself toward estrangement,” produced through scientific or other means—and estrangement.8 b) As narratives or audiovisual representations that result from political ideals that envisage a just world for all (utopian impulse) and narratives or audiovisual representations that present reflections on the ways in which the techno-economic developments of contemporary societies forecloses such narratives. c) As uses of the cinematic medium to either follow (i.e., represent, elaborate, but also contest) the narratives described earlier (utopian form) or to develop film-specific, non-narrative modes of engagement (e.g., contact, communication, and transformation) with radical otherness as one of the presuppositions for an utopian space future (utopian desire). The films discussed in this chapter—Aelita, Tumannost’ Andromedy, and Solyaris—which belonged to very different political realities, all actively engaged with the question of the future. All films involved space travel as a device of cognitive estrangement and identification with the future, in order to foreground questions pertaining to the social order of today and of tomorrow. While pre-Stalinist Aelita addressed these concerns very

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straightforwardly, cheekily taking issue with current affairs (i.e., the October Revolution of 1917), Tumannost’ Andromedy was an equally direct but surprisingly optimistic prophecy, probing the limits of socialist social organization.9 As we shall see, this film conjoined optimistically predictive aesthetics with an imaginary, far-off future. In contrast to these sociologically concerned productions, Solyaris exploited the milieu of the space station and the temporality created by the conundrum of a faraway, yet familiar future, and a slightly ominous, but mostly mysterious alien presence to probe the nexus of individual and social ethical concerns. Suvin’s analysis of the eponymous novels, Ivan Efremov’s Tumannost’ Andromedy and Stanisław Łem’s Solyaris, of which the films were adaptations, pointed out that the works testified to a gradual “maturation” of the genre of science fiction, that is a tendency to gradually proceed to ever more complicated questions and give ever more nuanced responses.10 For Suvin, The Yefremovian social consciousness is one of a specifically inflected “scientific socialism,” receptive only to certain romantically codified forms of creativity. Łem’s is a consciousness committed to the philosophical Left by its emphasis on human reason and creativity, and yet acutely aware of the political Left’s failures and errors, of the gap between ideas and power.11

Suvin justifiably positioned Łem’s novel in the context of Central Europe, rather than the Soviet one. One could rightfully argue that it is an unrepresentative case of Soviet cultural production; the author of the novel was Polish, and interacted with a markedly different sociopolitical reality from the Soviet one. To what extent was the eponymous film, produced by the Soviet Mosfilm studio and directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, an altogether different matter? Apart from expounding on this question, the present chapter will attempt to be conscious about two other related concerns. Firstly, all of the films in question are adaptations of literary works—there are actually at least three cinematic adaptations of Solyaris—and as such demand to be probed from the point of view of remediation. Secondly, Aelita and Solyaris are often seen as outliers in the genre of science fiction; the former was primarily produced as a nation-conscious blockbuster with numerous melodramatic elements,12 while the latter was clearly conceived with the conventions of the psychological thriller genre in mind.13 Nevertheless, treating both films as interlocuters, and referring to a 1995 production, Dmitry Astrakhan’s Chetvertaia planeta, this chapter will elaborate how both Solyaris and Aelita have profoundly influenced the development of Soviet and Russian science fiction cinema, particularly productions that make use of the trope of encountering life on a foreign planet, and will outline in which respects this

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influence can be compared to that of the very different, but equally remarkable Tumannost’ Andromedy. AELITA, HISTORIOGRAPHY, AND AN ODE TO FLUX Aelita was conceived and produced in the context of negotiation between flights of fancy, scientific promises, and the need for new social policies and their quick implementation. It was funded as the film that would both demonstrate the glamour of the USSR’s film industry and serve as a monument to the October revolution. Ironically, this very ambition prophesized the film’s inherent impossibility to please the policymakers. Particularly Soviet histories of Soviet cinema often criticize the Protazanov of being a nonrevolutionary director, whose early work was heavily marked by the prerevolutionary Tsarist regime and by his several-year-long stay abroad, in France and Germany, where he had emigrated to during the Russian Civil War after the Revolution of 1917. Abroad, he had become a successful director of entertainment-oriented, genre cinema, which was berated in the early USSR, due to the lack of educational value and revolutionary drive.14 In 1923, however, he returned to Moscow, following an invitation of the NEP-era (Lenin’s New Economic Policy) film production company, Mezhrabpom-Rus,’ Moisei Aleinikov.15 Some analysts associated his return with the repatriation of other cultural figures, such as writer Alexei Tolstoy (the author of Aelita); another popular explanation emphasized the exceptional working conditions Protazanov had been offered, including a share of the Mezhrabpom-Rus’ company.16 Another plausible reason was a notable turn in Soviet film policy of the time. A three-headed ideological statement, consisting of Lenin’s famous 1917 affirmation of the potential exceptional significance of the film industry for the consolidation of the Soviet sociopolitical project, followed by Leon Trotsky’s 1921 article in the prominent Pravda newspaper, where he established cinema as one of the key means to counter the ideological and social power of the Russian Orthodox Church, and 1923 Grigorii Zinoviev’s comment on film as potentially the most powerful propaganda medium, had signaled a need to turn to the question of production capacities of the newlyborn Soviet film industry.17 The establishment of a cinematography committee within the People’s Commissariat for Education (Narkompros - Narodnyi komissariat prosveshcheniya) and the following creation of the State Film company, Goskino, in 1924, which was soon replaced by the Sovkino, were the first steps toward a consolidated Soviet system of control over film production, distribution, and criticism.18 One of the decisions of the Soviet meeting on film production, which took place in 1924, stated that “foreign productions” should be “ousted”

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from Soviet screens, and replaced by “domestic” pictures.19 The statement was issued in the final stages of the shooting of Protazanov’s first Soviet-produced motion picture, Aelita, which—such were the hopes of Mezhrabpom-Rus’— was meant to become the first Soviet big-budget box-office blockbuster. The premiere was, as one can imagine, accompanied by the highest of expectations. The cinematic adaptation of Alexei Tolstoy’s novel was released in September 1924, and quickly became the one of the most discussed filmrelated topics of the year, mostly in an emphatically negative light. Later assessments of Protazanov’s contribution to the formation of the Soviet cinematic canon commonly dismissed it as an unsuccessful “first attempt,” one that the director managed to learn from, and that was followed by ideologically much more appropriate works. Today, Protazanov is mostly seen as a master of silent cinema, which exerted a formative influence on the establishment of the Soviet school of film acting.20 In addition, post-Soviet Russian film historians have often underscored his contribution to the development of genre cinema, for instance, the genre of Soviet satirical comedy, which was inaugurated by his film Don Diego i Pelageya/ Don Diego and Pelageia, which premiered in 1934.21 Soviet film historians from the 1960s also noted his masterful comprehension of the function of the film director, as well as his professionalism on the set.22 They also remarked that some of Protazanov’s works greatly contributed to adequate understanding of Soviet history and current state.23 At the same time, Aelita, Protazanov’s contested pioneering Soviet film, was criticized on account of its alleged “eclecticism,” that is, an ideologically ambivalent combination of various narrative axes, acting schools, and visual aesthetics. Conversely, such critics, for instance, the editors of the foundational historical overview of Soviet film history, published in 1969, clearly stated that Protazanov’s reaction to such reproaches had been exceptionally productive, meaning that the director carefully took them into account in his later works.24 By the 1960s, he was already considered as a canonical “Soviet” director; accordingly, film historian and critic Neya Zorkaya, for instance, described him as a “non-innovator” rather than a “traditionalist,” the assessment being very different from the one he had received upon the premiere of Aelita.25 Taking into account all of the polemics outlined earlier, the particular production context of Aelita deserves special attention. The film, often succinctly summarized as the first Soviet feature film about the proletarian revolution in the constructivist-inspired fictional context of the planet Mars, was produced with a clear desire to reach a broad spectrum of target audiences, both the young and the old, the proletarians and intellectuals, urban and rural filmgoers, and—last but not least—also foreign markets. All of these managerial concerns greatly contributed to the special status enjoyed by Protazanov within the company, for instance, exceptional working conditions, including

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generous funding allocations, often frowned upon by his younger colleagues. Protazanov had good access to “lucrative” screenplays, his preferred actors, and production funding.26 Aelita was supported by the first Soviet marketing campaign, analyzed in detail in Aleksandr Ignatienko’s study.27 In Moscow, the film was screened for an unusually long period of time, an entire eight weeks, and the press diligently published expert reviews of the work. The Head of Narkompros, Anatoly Lunacharski (1875–1933) supported the film, as did foreign reviewers.28 G. James A. Mills, the representative of the American Associated Press, influentially stated that this was an internationally competitive production—a view that was of particular significance at a time when Soviet film policy was explicitly oriented at “catching up” with Hollywood.29 The Soviet critiques were not nearly as positive; while they praised the technical aspects of the production, emphasizing that it could easily be compared to foreign films, they also found it to be ideologically inadequate.30 Gradually, Aelita came to be regarded as Protazanov’s first, transitional film, one that would teach him an important lecture about how to shoot Soviet cinema.31 Ian Christie’s classic study on early Soviet cinema, however, offered a more intriguing argument, stating that Aelita’s unpopularity could be attributed to its inherently polyphonic nature.32 Following this thought, I would like to argue that the utopian moment in Aelita ought not to be sought in the abstract decorations and costumography, conceived by vanguard painter Alexandra Exter (1882–1949) and Isaak Rabinovich (1894–1961), but in the director’s aspiration to create an innovative, large-budget, perfectionist work, which would both reflect the ideas of the October revolution and the demands of the Soviet film policy of the time.33 Due to the specificities of the NEP period of Soviet history, including the changing ideological guidelines, the latter was a particularly difficult task. Christie’s reading of Aelita relied on Mikhail Bakhtin’s definition of polyphony, as the coexistence, in a work of art, of numerous different voices and narratives, all of which make truth-claims.34 Several decades later, Andrew J. Horton interpreted the polyphonic aspects of Aelita in relation to the symbolic meanings of various neuralgic points of the film. Horton’s analysis outlined the symbolism of time, location, scenes of mundane, domestic life, and of course atemporal Mars as an allegoric representation of a critique of the October revolution. In Horton’s reading, Aelita came across as an essentially counterrevolutionary work, advocating monogamous marriage and evolutionary, slow change, which, however, should eventually bring about modernization and empower the proletariat. In this reading, Mars was a representation of fantastic dreams of a man or even men who are dissatisfied with their private lives and yearn for control, infantile women, and, implicitly, power. This Mars, portrayed in the film as

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a backward, slave-owning society, which benefited from several amusingly progressive inventions, such as a telescope with a lens of “exceptional resolution,” to quote Horton, was also a planet suddenly caught by surprise by an uprising of enslaved workers. This setting could easily be read as an allegory of Tsarist Russia.35 Horton’s detailed and profound reading explained all of the nuances of the narrative, as well as the socially critical undertones of Aelita, but, at the same time, it ignored the production parameters and context described earlier, that is the context of Protazanov’s pre- and post-Aelita career, and the intellectual Zeitgeist. The latter begs a return to the topics of symbolism and of the revolution. Aelita was doubtlessly a film that oscillated between two worlds: the world, dubbed as “Mars,” and a world, which was never named, but is, without a doubt, our world. “Our” world extended from the camels in a faraway desert to the towers of the Kremlin in Moscow, which functions as its center. “Our” world was also a world that seemed to be in permanent flux, or, rather, under construction. Echoing Horton’s remark, the Martian world was atemporal and static, until it witnessed an eruption—an uprising of slaves, which, when not at work, rested frozen in special refrigerators. Certainly, the Martian world was a symbolic projection. It was undoubtedly a symbolization of something “grand,” a system with an advanced culture, which needed to experience a certain transformation in order to overcome an imbalanced, depressing state where the vast majority of the population is either frozen or, when unfrozen, working for a bored minority. The image of the Martian world allowed Protazanov to fixate an image of a certain revolution. This image was rigid, static, lifeless, and unsustainable; the revolution was estranged from the spectator, from the worker, and from itself. In the end, it was even appropriated by the princess Aelita (Yuliya Solntseva), and thereby completely devalued. The Mars of Aelita thus became a warning against betrayal, against the trivialization of the revolution. The director seemed to be suggesting that the revolution cannot be cast in marble, sculpted, or painted in a better, more precise and unambiguous way than it actually was. Notably, only a small proportion of the film was actually devoted to the revolution. It only happened in the final quarter of the film, preceded by sequences portraying life on Mars, where the powerless and exceptionally bored royal daughter, Aelita, used the telescope in order to spy on Soviet engineer Los (Nikolai Tsereteli) on Earth. Structurally, these sequences functioned as occasional, uneasy hints of a looming danger. Aelita, this distorted image of a revolution, the revolution’s hijacker, voyeuristically observed real revolutionary fervor in Soviet Moscow. This fervor was much more layered, down-to-earth, and unidealized than the shots of the Martian revolution. This contrast was noted and reproached by certain Soviet critics: they believed that the times of wartime communism should have been depicted in terms of

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Figure 2.1  Still from Aelita—A Soviet Orphanage.

heroic scenes rather than bridges, which are always under construction.36 But Protazanov appeared to be interested precisely in the bridges that are yet to be built, relations that are yet to be consolidated, the spaceship that is still to be constructed, as well as institutions, such as Soviet orphanages. The seemingly chaotic buzz of voices, steps, prerevolutionary intrigues, and simple speculation are the key elements of Protazanov’s revolutionary Moscow. The city is inhabited by emphatically realistic characters, such as a certain Mr. Ehrlich (Pavel Pol), who is a womanizer and a fraud, as well as Los’s wife, the sincere Natasha (Valentina Kuindzhi), who is not entirely immune to Ehrlich’s pursuits. Natasha is married to Los, a choleric romantic, and an acquaintance of Spiridonov (Nikolai Tsereteli), an equally romantic dreamer, lamenting the end of Tsarism. Los and Spiridonov, played by the same actor, can be interpreted together, as a dynamic subjectivity. The former character has a dream, which entails him killing his wife Natasha out of jealousy, and traveling to Mars, pretending to be the latter. Meanwhile, Spiridonov escapes to the West, stating melodramatically that “The past is stronger than I am.” The past, the present, and the apocalyptic future, symbolized by the hijacked revolution, co-existed on the same plane in Aelita, speaking in equally loud voices, representing equally important elements of the October revolution, and the new world, coming into being as its result. At the same time, it would be inaccurate to assume that the world presented at the beginning of the film, when all radio receivers of the world, from the deserts to the Kremlin appeared to be registering the mysterious ANTA ODELI UTA signals, was radically or even completely different from the world at the end of the movie, a year later, when the mysterious signals were

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decoded to be an advertisement of a new brand of automobile tires. The revolution did result in new bridges, military vehicles disappear from the streets, but the camels remained the masters of the deserts. Los and Natasha managed to sustain their relationship, and so did Ehrlich and his wife. The world, momentarily out of joint, was back on track, while also having changed a little. Aelita mapped the microtransformations of this world, while also suggesting that the greatest peril to its existence might have been an attempt to monologize the sociopolitical system, to follow the path of unidimensional modernization at the expense of concurrent microtransformations in all other spheres of social life. Aelita, which concluded with a return to its starting point, the life of its protagonists in post-revolutionary Moscow, emphasized the diversity of revolutionary transformations and utopian horizons. These reached from the democratization of the labor market and interpersonal relations to an increasingly accessible public sphere, as well as consumer goods, such as shoes, coats, and teacups. Protazanov’s understanding of utopia in Aelita was very different from technologically utopian and progressivist calls for “Soviet power and electrification” of the entire state.37 The director resorted to a differently daring approach; he addressed normative presumptions about the nature of the social by foregrounding the micro-lesions in the old world on the one hand, and the micro-pores of the emerging new social on the other. The “wind of change” blowing through these pores, however, was not produced by dogmatic moral ideals, but was the by-product of the slow process of the appearance of new synaptic links between the elements of the old regime, which the revolutionary events of a certain October have freed of their old neuralgic network. Unfortunately, Protazanov’s message was too ambivalent for a regime that, by the mid-1920s, was becoming increasingly suspicious of nuanced content on the one hand, and of avant-gardist formal techniques, such as the constructivist costumes, worn in Aelita’s Martian world. TO COMMUNISTS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY! TUMANNOST’ ANDROMEDY AND THE LEGACY OF SOCIALIST REALISM Andrei Zhdanov’s 1934 speech at the Congress of Soviet Writers that established socialist realism as the canonical style for Soviet art, the USSR had put an end to the sort of utopian lines of inquiry set forth by cubofuturism, constructivism, and suprematism on the grounds of the alleged “formalism” of these endeavors, their presumed bourgeois political inclinations, and dissociation from the realities of Soviet life.38 A little over a decade later, reflections about the state of contemporary society in the light of the end of World

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War II contributed to considerable reassessments of the normative orientation and value of avant-garde art in Western Europe, too, where movements, such as Italian futurism were dismissed on the grounds of their fascination with fascist politics and, therefore, implicit totalitarian inclinations.39 At the same time, no official policy or recommendations on artistic styles marked cultural production to the same degree as it had done in the Soviet Union. Here, cultural production, and cinema, “the most important art,” was instructed to commit to “portraying the future, as if it had already happened.” This, and political leaders,’ such as Joseph Stalin’s famous preference of certain genres (e.g., the musical) to others resulted in an almost complete absence of science fiction on screens.40 The introduction of socialist realism essentially proclaimed a ban on science fiction that did not treat science in a realistic way (i.e., the so-called science fiction of “near reach,” that portrayed the near future and pondered on the impact of current scientific advances), opting instead for fantastic, imaginative futuristic portrayals of future society.41 If the dictate of socialist realism—and hence “near reach fantasy” as an imperative for science fiction—was lifted following then Soviet Communist Party Secretary-General Nikita Khrushchev’s denouncement of Stalin’s cult of personality at the 20th Party Congress in 1956, a special committee for science fiction and adventure film was only created in 1981.42 While this circumstance accounted for the relative scarcity of Soviet science-fictional productions, it also added to their analytical appeal. Near-reach scientific-fantasy productions, explored in the next chapter, were not as concerned with the possibility of a utopian society—which was a structural given, after all!—as they were with what they regarded as the almost imminent and positive implications of scientific progress. Therefore, similarly to the 1962 production Planeta bur’, Tumannost’ Andromedy—both the novel and the film—was intended, considered, and received as a remarkable break with many canons of the previous three decades of science fiction. At the same time, it should also be considered in the context of the inner tensions of the cultural production of the Brezhnevite (1964–1982) era of stagnation, which followed the relative liberalization, characteristic of the Khrushchevian Thaw (1956–1964). If Aelita had been directed by a director who had, prior to his return to the USSR, excelled in the genre of bourgeois melodrama, Tumannost’ Andromedy was signed by Yevgeny Sherstobitov, by 1967, and acclaimed director of youth and children’s films with clear political and moral messages, who would continue to work with the Dovzhenko Film Studio until the fall of the USSR in 1991, which is evident from his filmography.43 This partly accounted for the film’s overall rhetoric, which was emphatically supportive, even proud of the Soviet Communist project. Interestingly, the first version of the film, edited under Sherstobitov’s guidance in 1967, was reedited in

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1980, to produce a slightly shorter film, where most of the overt references to the triumph of communism in the twentieth century were removed.44 This reflected not only a politics of memory, wherein the film’s status as the first Soviet science fiction film was perceived as more important than its celebration of the communist project, but also the hope to export the film to foreign markets. The original version was later restored, and is available on multiple internet sites, where it is accompanied by a diverse palette of viewers’ comments. The comments have ranged from observations on the inadequacy of the film as an adaptation of Efremov’s novel, to nostalgic remarks about the supremacy of “kind” Soviet science fiction over contemporary Western productions, and to meditations on the technical aspects of the film, and its possible intertextuality. Notably, Efremov’s ardent fans have tended to highlight that several elements of the film, such as the name of one of the protagonists, Dar Veter, the idea of a Great ring of space stations, as well as the overall visual aesthetic of the film, were picked up, improved, and recycled in George Lucas’s Star Wars franchise, where the infamous antagonist was named Darth Vader. Such remarks have sometimes been followed by lamentations on the state-ofthe-art of the Soviet special-effects industry; the fact that an extraterrestrial planetary vehicle was created by covering a T-34 model military tank with plywood, particularly stands out.45 Nevertheless, a striking number of such laymen’s comments on the film reveal an overall positive attitude to this adaptation, which, ironically, did not receive much critical acclaim upon release in 1967.46 Interestingly, while the film was initially reproached for its highly idealist orientation, with artificial dialogues, an epic narrative, and unidimensional characters, all devoted to the future communist present, precisely these idealistic qualities tend to be praised by contemporary spectators. Yet, this general judgment, which posited that Tumannost’ Andromedy was a “film about idea(l)s,” is both enlightening and obscuring. Firstly, just like Aelita, Tumannost’ Andromedy was a film about a very special kind of utopia. If Protazanov’s film is an advocacy of microtransformations and flux, Sherstobitov’s praises are monumentality, both in the sense of the grandness of the communist project, and in the sense of the infallibility and perfection of the latter. The famous opening shots of the film featured a voice-over narrator declaring that the film was dedicated to “You, who live in the twentieth century, the first century of the Communist era”; this proclamation was followed by a sequence featuring a young man (and, after him, a young woman) taking a coming-of-age oath, and committing himself to learn from the elders, and serve society. The oath was made against the backdrop of a monument, and the soon-to-be adults participating in the ceremony solemnly hold torches. The imagery of the communist Earth of the future as a static, perfectly regulated society was maintained throughout the film. Earth

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Figure 2.2  Still from Tumannost’ Andromedy—Dar Veter and Veda Kong in Togas.

was home to sportive, intellectually capable individuals, who wore outfits that resemble ancient Greek togas, and busy themselves with scientifically (but not socially!) progressive pursuits. These individuals, for instance, Dar Veter (Sergei Stoliarov) and his muse, Veda Kong (Viya Artmane), were so advanced that they did not find it problematic to switch between professions with ease, no matter how diverse these professions might have been. Accordingly, in order to switch to a more relaxed lifestyle, manager of the Great ring Dar Veter decided to resign from his position in order to join his muse Veda, and the archaeological expedition that she was in charge of. Kong was not unhappy about this turn of events but is reluctant to accept Veter’s love until her present partner, space mission commander Erg Noor, safely returned home from his mission. Nevertheless, the pair suggestively wore matching white tunics, Veter’s featuring a black rhomboid, and Veda’s a circle. Matters were similarly orderly in space, where we follow Erg Noor’s starship Tantra. The starship suddenly fell into the exceptional gravitational field of a so-called steel star, and had to make an emergency landing on one of the two planets orbiting the star. In the course of these events, the spectator learned that the ship’s navigator Niza Krit (Tatiana Voloshina) was in love with Noor, while the latter appeared to be distant and reclusive. Nevertheless, his defense mechanisms broke down after he saw Niza risk his life for him and fall into a coma following an unfortunate extraterrestrial encounter on the hostile planet. He suffered a mental crisis, and was advised to give up his newly

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articulated love for Niza by undergoing special neurological treatment. At the last moment, he refused such treatment, remembering Niza’s love declaration, a verse from Shakespeare that she had given him—in ancient, paper-form— before the unfortunate expedition. Despite this series of setbacks, the film ended on a positive note; while Kong was waiting for Tantra to return before committing to Veter, her new admirer, positive news regarding the return of the spaceship actually reached Earth, where new generations of adults continued to salute their elders during their formal coming-of-age ceremonies. This take on the prospects of a utopian future revealed a curious attempt to conjoin the new, post-socialist-realist horizons of science fiction with a schematically socialist-realist approach to narrative. The film was based on Efremov’s eponymous novel, which provided a much more nuanced account of all of the characters involved, as well as their motivations than the film. The cinematic adaptation hardly allowed for any sort of evolution of the characters, as if the coming-of-age oaths featured at the beginning and at the end of the film signified a certain solidification of personality, a monumentalization of individuality, which, henceforth, shall only be concerned with the interplanetary expansion of the communist project. The only development that the film entailed—apart from the entertaining plot-twists, which took the crew of the Tantra spaceship from cosmos to chaos and back—was Noor’s realization of the power of love. Moreover, the episode where he realized that his love for Niza (who was in a coma) was something that he could not give up was at once productive and reactionary. It was productive for his self-actualization, but reactionary with regard to his function as crew commander. He was warned by the health professional on board that his sense of reality was jeopardized, and that his enamored state might affect his decisionmaking capacities. Yet, he clung to his new-found passion, and, apparently, this did not harm the success of the mission. This twist was rather curious, revealing individual agency to present structural tension into this utopian society. On Earth, Vera Kong patiently awaited the return of her life-partner, Noor, although she no longer loved him; she would not admit her passion for Dar Veter until her previous partner’s safe landing. In space, Noor was also initially inclined to do so, until he realized how pure and selfless Niza’s commitment to him was. This “love-event,” to echo Alain Badiou, profoundly destabilized the crew, did not revive Niza, and was not in accordance with the social contract, clearly followed by Kong.47 However, in the universe of this film, it was still granted positive value, pointing out a very basic incoherence at the core of socialist-realist utopian projects, and, at the same time, the classical sociological dilemma of structure and agency. Tumannost’ Andromedy wished to demonstrate that, under interplanetary communist rule, one could have it all: individual happiness, intersubjective love, social stability, scientific progress,

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and democratic politics. At the same time, it failed on all accounts, demonstrating that these ends will not meet, other than under the aegis of a contrived, forced happy ending. Unlike in Protazanov’s Aelita, where the utopian moment lied in the very process of constructing a new world from the ruins of the old, in Tumannost’ Andromedy, the old world persisted in reminding us that it could not be adapted to new realities. The old world, cast in marble monuments, togas and tunics, gendered professional divisions (women could be navigators and archaeologists, but it was up to the men to assume leading scientific, research, and political functions), and traditionalist gender roles, could not handle vast interplanetary distances or, more importantly, the fluidity of affect, and new, “long-distance” interpersonal relations. The Earth was a self-assigned, symbolic center of power, a monument with no real grip over events that take place elsewhere. A WINDOW ON ONE MAN’S WORLD: SOLYARIS Tumannost’ Andromedy could hardly be called a trend-setting film; in fact, it was the first and last formally clear-cut utopian feature film in post-Stalinist Soviet science fiction film history, apart from the distinct genre of youth sf cinema that was popular in the mid-1970 (to be discussed in chapter 5). The films that followed for the next several years actually testified to a profound “turn inwards,” as if compensating for the shortcomings of the Soviet specialeffects industry by focusing on the psychological and social ramification of space exploration and possibly establishing contact with extraterrestrial life.48 Tarkovsky’s Solyaris—his third feature film, produced by Mosfilm—was generally considered as the most influential science-fictional production from this period; however, it is featured here for a different reason. Rather than its cult status and transnational popularity, it will be discussed in relation to the concept of utopia, and its intertextual (and, to some extent, transmedial) nature. Both Łem’s novel and Tarkovsky’s film about human attempts to establish contact with an alien life-form, an ocean covering planet Solaris, posited more questions than they answered. In fact, many successive observations have brought out precisely this aspect of the work. Suvin, for instance, insightfully noted: “Humans always project their mental models upon the foreign universe: on Solaris, the universe obligingly materializes one projection. Thus, the stars are for Łem in a way what Utopia was for More and Brobdingnag for Swift: a parabolic mirror for ourselves, a roundabout way to understand our world, species and times.”49 But how can a mirror bring about understanding? What does a mirror show, and what can be induced from these images?

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The mirror-like quality of Solaris—an intelligent ocean that materializes the traumatic memories of the humans that wish to establish contact with it—had certainly fascinated both all of the film directors that have thus far taken on the job of remediating Łem’s novel (i.e., Tarkovsky, as well as Stephen Soderbergh, whose adaptation was released in 2002, and the less famous 1968 Soviet television play, directed by Boris Nirenburg and Lidia Ishimbaieva) and many interpreters of the film and novel, for example, the philosopher Slavoj Žižek. The latter described the film, wherein the living ocean of planet Solaris embodies astronauts’ memories by creating living, interactive humanoid entities, made out of neutrinos, rather than atoms, as a film about the Freudian unconscious, the ocean being the irreal Id, which makes the humans astronauts literally face their past, whether they want it or not, and succumbs to no rational law.50 Indeed, this interpretation captured Tarkovsky’s intention with admirable precision. In Tarkovsky’s Solyaris, the space station and planet Earth were depicted in a strange symbiosis. Protagonist Chris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) needed to confront his unconscious traumas on the Solaris space station, embodied by apparitions of his late wife Hari (Natalia Bondarchuk), who had committed suicide a decade ago, unable to deal with their personal conflict, in order to achieve a new level of self-actualization on Earth. In line with Łem’s novel, Kelvin’s colleague Snaut (Jüri Järvet), who followed the development of Kelvin’s confrontation with his past, declared: We do not want to colonize the cosmos, we want to extend Earth up to its limits. We do not know what to make of other worlds. We do not need other worlds, we need a mirror. We are desperate for contact [with alien life], but we will never find it. We are in the stupid position of someone who is rushing to reach a goal that they do not need. A person needs a person.

Kelvin, symbolically clad in worn, creased uniform, later elaborated on this thought, wondering, whether, perhaps, the entire point of the mission of the Solaris station astronauts might have been “to experience, for the first time, people as a motive for love.” Kelvin’s reflection was directly related to the central conflict of the film; the dilemma on how to deal with the productions of the ocean’s advanced mnemotechnology. While Kelvin, a psychologist by profession, proposed to embrace them as people, natural and technical scientists Snaut and Sartorius refused to consider unstable, neutrino-based systems, which were, to them, nothing but inferior emanations of real humans’ memories, as “flesh, blood, and feelings.” If, for Snaut and Sartorius (Anatolii Solonitsyn), Solaris was a scientific mystery, for Kelvin, it was primarily a confrontation with his own identity, which ultimately returned him to the green, green grass of his parents’ home on Earth, and to the complexity,

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but also the bliss that he experienced in his close relationships, such as that with his mother. In this sense, Tarkovsky’s Solyaris was a film about a personal utopia, where the utopian impetus was neither “to embrace the flux of the construction of the new” (Protazanov), nor “to create a static, perfect society, where the past and the future become one, and each individual is a monument to history” (Sherstobitov). In Tarkovsky’s Solyaris, Kelvin’s ultimate feat was his new-found capacity to reconcile the various conscious and unconscious aspects of his past with his present, and to synchronize this new temporality with his parents’ house, garden, and, ultimately, the planet.51 This motive of transcendental (earthly) transcendence (transition to a new, superior realm) was central to the symbolism of most of Tarkovsky’s works, and could be seen as his signature statement. This, apparently depoliticizing moment, could also be seen as an apt way to maneuver between artistic vision and Soviet censorship. If one judged by previous Soviet science fiction productions and their reception at home, such as Aelita, Tumannost’ Andromedy, and the near-reach films, which will be discussed in the following chapter, it is reasonable to conclude that focusing on an individual’s personal and family traumas, reiterated in a futuristic, cosmic context, and with an emphasis on broader social (ethical) concerns allowed for more artistic freedom and vision than a more sociologically oriented screenplay would probably have permitted. “Solaris is a machine that generates/materializes, in reality itself, my ultimate fantasmatic objectal supplement/partner that I would never be ready to accept in reality, although my entire psychic life turns around it,” Žižek argued.52 It was, thus, the estranging context of the space station and extraterrestrial encounter that allowed one to recognize the disparity between one’s desire and agency. At the same time, it should necessarily be noted that Tarkovsky’s approach was passionately disapproved by Łem. The author of the foundational novel, published in 1962, was disappointed and irritated that his multifaceted novel was turned into a “chamber film” about Kelvin’s trauma. Indeed, in the novel, Łem had made a conscious effort to juxtapose science to humanity, ardently arguing, in his own words, for the need for space exploration rather than for a return to Earth and people. In the book, the “mirror” that, as the protagonists maintained, was required for further social and scientific progress did not imply a return to the human psyche. While the renewed, Solaris-prompted love-relationship between Hari and Chris was certainly one of the central motifs of the book, it was counterbalanced by several other important themes, one of them being the state-of-the-art of “solaristics”—the scientific discipline devoted to Solaris-studies. The film almost completely disregarded this aspect of the work, as well as the other mnemonic apparitions, confronted by the other members of the crew. Furthermore, Łem was frustrated by Tarkovsky’s decision to link Kelvin’s struggle to his relations

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with his family on Earth, and to accentuate his relations with his mother, which one could easily interpret as mother Russia, or even mother Earth. He would have preferred, he claimed, the director to have focused on the planet of Solaris, its magnificent living ocean, its mysteries, and, last but not least, to have preserved the ending of the novel, where Chris and Hari remained on the space station together, privileging it to Tarkovsky’s more ambiguous ending, where the director played with the idea of Chris’s (at least mental) return back to Earth. It can legitimately be argued that Tarkovsky’s Solyaris was a rather free artistic interpretation of Łem’s novel, and, in a certain sense, a simplification of the writer’s idea. Conversely, Tarkovsky’s approach to the relationship between space and Earth, utopia, as well as his take on the genre of science fiction, reflected earlier works, including the films discussed in the present chapter. While it is true that Solyaris can productively—especially on the level of visual aesthetics—be interpreted as the Soviet response to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which preceded it by four years, the impact of Soviet approaches to space exploration tropes proved to be equally influential. Tarkovsky’s choice to focus on an interpersonal relationship, and to conjoin the personal, ethical, and social problematics, while emphasizing the importance of Earth as a home, a point of departure, and, essentially, the “cradle” of humankind, to paraphrase the grandfather of Soviet rocketry, visionary, and inventor Konstantin Tsiolkovskii, reiterated the decisions made by both Protazanov and Sherstobitov. Equally important was the decision to uphold the dichotomy between the cold, dark, and strange cosmos, and welcoming Earth, so frowned upon by Łem. Compared to Aelita and Tumannost’ Andromedy, the mirror-like quality of the trope of space exploration and of an encounter with an alien life-form in Tarkovsky’s Solyaris carried a much greater utopian charge. If Aelita used the outer space fantasy as an allegoric warning, stipulating, at the end of the film, that the entire story was nothing but an uncanny dream, Tumannost’ Andromedy offered the spectator a fictional futuristic projection. In the first case, the fictionality of the film was anchored in two instances: the trope of a space voyage, set in the “contemporary” (and unrealistic!) times of the 1920s, and the framework of Los’s dream. The mirrors of Mars and fictional Earth had a consoling element, suggesting that the utopian impulse was already there, in the microcomplexities of the modern world, which just needed to be followed through. In the second case, the fictional framework was provided by an omnipresent narrator, who inaugurated the film, dedicating it to “the first generation living in the era of communism.” Aside from placing the film into the realm of fiction, and enhancing the estrangement effect, this declaration infused it with a pedagogical note. The film encouraged the spectators to strive for a future, similar to the one that it depicted; the mirror was an

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optimistic extrapolation, an Instagram-like filter that embellished, and lured into its fictional universe. In Solyaris, however, the utopian impulse stemmed from a very different conviction. Tarkovsky’s film conjoined the modernist, humanist understanding of the subject, aiming at self-realization through self-reflection, with a particular take on the nature of the social contract. His interpretation of Kelvin was that of a man seeking understanding, solace, and transtemportal union with his surrounding world. Tarkovsky’s Kelvin embodied the utopian idea that it is possible to achieve cosmic balance between the self and the world, even transtemporal peace, through facing oneself. Here, science took man into space in order to allow him to question himself. Paradoxically, it was in this utopian project, which held such promise for the exploration of basic notions, such as human subjectivity, that the human subject appeared in its most gendered form, clearly defined as an—admittedly, compassionate—heterosexual male. While all of the three films prioritized their male protagonists, Aelita and Tumannost’ Andromedy still granted—at least certain—female characters considerable capacity to act. Solyaris, however, completely subordinated its female subjects (Kelvin’s mother (Olga Barnet) and Hari) to the status of apparitions that had no value beyond aiding Kelvin in his self-actualization project. Notably, this aspect of the film presented a considerable deviation from Łem’s novel, where, in line with the highly utopian impulse of embracing radical difference, Hari and Kelvin entered into a more nuanced, egalitarian relationship and remained on the space station, not only to deepen their relationship but also to—rather humbly—explore the possibilities of subjectivity, including contact with extraterrestrial life, in outer space. The kind of approach to human subjectivity in the domain of science fiction chosen by Tarkovsky in Solyaris did not appear to have had a profound impact on the further developments of the genre in the Soviet context. If anything, the outlined schema of gender relations exhibited a greater affinity to Western works, such as Devil Girls from Mars and The Man Who Fell to Earth, as well as Soderbergh’s remake, the 2002 Solaris, resonated in certain postSoviet takes on the trope of space exploration, which shall be analyzed in chapters 7 and 8, and did not strictly belong to the genre of science fiction.53 While Soviet (and post-Soviet) space-themed films doubtlessly remained male-dominated to this day, their approach to gender constellations is often quite different from the one adopted in Tarkovsky’s Solyaris, where Hari functioned as an estrangement device, prompting Chris (and the spectator) to reassess the basic coordinates of his own life. One of the most telling examples in this regard was the reworked version of the narrative about a sentient alien ocean, developed in Dmitry Astrakhan’s Chetvertaia planeta, explored further.

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AFTER UTOPIA, CAN THERE BE HAPPINESS? CHETVERTAIA PLANETA There exists a theoretical consensus that the artistic utopias and retrotopias of the 1980s and 1990s have little in common with the utopian projects of the beginning of the century, or those that marked the beginning of the space age, and even less with the ones that succeeded them.54 There is less of an agreement over the criteria, on the basis of which these different categories of utopia—on the general level of an imagined future society—should be distinguished from one another. The classical distinction concerns their modernist and postmodernist character. According to this distinction, many utopias of the beginning of the twentieth century can be described as social extrapolations of modernist projects of progressive self-actualization, hinging on beliefs in a brighter future, and often found inspirational by totalitarian political projects. Post–World War II future- and past-future-oriented projections, on the other hand, developed from a rejection of this modernist impulse, or, according to Jean-François Lyotard, grand narratives, which had in the past led to catastrophes, such as the Holocaust. These postmodern nominal utopias (depictions of social orders or the future, celebratory or highly critical projections of trends noted in the authors’ present) are contradictory from the very outset, either overtly dystopian, pointing to the limits of progress, to the moment where it apocalyptically caves into itself, or present re-articulations of modernist utopias, in a way that rids them of metanarratives, highlighting instead their intertextuality, self-referentiality, and instability.55 However, definitions of utopia tend to be as reliant on the utopian projects themselves, as they do on the context of their reception. It is not impossible to read modernist utopias from a postmodernist perspective, nor would it be incredible to provide a modernist reading of postmodernist works. In fact, Inke Arns pointed to this very dialectic between utopias and their rereadings, when she proposed a periodization of utopian projects conceived in Eastern and Central Europe. Her periodization only partly subscribed to the modernism: postmodernism distinction. Arns argued that Eastern and Central European utopian projects speak to one another in the following order: “great” (modernist avant-gardes), “damaged” (the retroavant-gardes and postutopianism of the 1970s–1980s), and “latent” (post-1990s) utopias. This nuanced distinction is carved out from longitudinal research performed across different Eastern European contexts, all differently marked by the Cold War bloc division.56 While the economic conditions and living experiences of the populations of the East German Democratic Republic (GDR), the USSR, and the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) are difficult to unite under one common umbrella, attitudes to utopianism in the given timeframe tended to

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go through similar stages, loosely based on greater political shifts, but also on shifts in approaches to media and media practices. The phase of “latent utopias” was accordingly marked by a media-archaeological return to the experimental past period of early modernist utopias, to a large extent born out the a trust in the progressiveness of (then) new media technologies, such as photography and cinema, and their implications for the questions, such as authorship and subjectivity. At the same time, this late-twentieth century return to such experiments and potential futures was, according to Arns, also marked by the willingness to work with and through the traumatic (e.g., potentially totalitarian) aspects of avant-garde movements from a century ago. Arns mostly focused on intermedial art practices, installations, and performances. However, her conclusion about the media-archaeological emphasis of the last utopias of the twentieth century is useful to keep in mind in relation to the present topic, that is, the development of space-age utopianism in Soviet and Russian cinema. Incidentally, after what is often dubbed as “the first Soviet cyberpunk film” and one of the last Soviet science fiction films ever, the comic dystopia of Kin-Dza-Dza!, the first post-Soviet return to the theme of space exploration revisited several themes that we are, by now, well familiar with: Mars, spaceflight, and a sentient alien force, capable of extracting astronaut memories and materializing humanoid apparitions. This production was Dmitry Astrakhan’s Chetvertaia planeta, loosely based on Ray Bradbury’s collection of short stories from the 1950s, titled The Martian Chronicles. However, the connection between the two works is much looser than in all of the films explored in this chapter, and, granted that the film involved many, both tacit and explicit, references to other Soviet space-themed science fiction productions; it seems reasonable to interpret it in relation to the latter, rather than the former.57 The low-budget film, which has, since its premiere, acquired a limited but devoted cult following online and among “Soviet space age” fans, plays around with the idea of a mission to Mars, which actually resulted in being a trip back to the USSR. The international crew, including two cosmonauts and an American astronaut, who spoke Russian with a pronounced U.S. accent, landed on Mars only to discover that they could breathe without their oxygenhelmets, and that their spaceship actually brought them in the proximity of a rural Soviet agglomeration, which was a perfect replica of the ship commander Sergei Beliaiev’s (Anatolii Koteniov, voiced by Valerii Kukhareshin) birthplace. Unlike Solyaris, where a contrast was maintained between Hari (the embodied apparition) and other personae from Chris’s past, such as his mother and aunt (merely mental images), Chetvertaia planeta forced the cosmonaut to fully immerse himself into his past. The most prominent plotline was, once again, the protagonist’s (failed) relationship with his former

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classmate, Tania (Ol’ga Beliaieva), who had been destined to die, attacked by a drunk rapist, on the exact day that was now re-enacted on Mars. However, the formal devices used to narrate this event, or, rather, Sergei’s attempts to prevent it, and his final decision to remain on Mars, among what he knew were not human beings but alien apparitions, were very different from those employed in Solyaris. Astrakhan insisted on taking the spectators “back to the USSR,” with an emphasis on apparent discrepancies between the ideas and ideals that the state had advertised, and which had since—by 1995—become nostalgic cues for early post-Soviet advocates of a return to the Soviet Union. Astrakhan’s USSR reflected contemporary developments in late-Soviet and early post-Soviet Russian cinema. Apart from financial difficulties related to the disintegration of the state film industry and an impetus to turn to entertainment-oriented productions, these involved the emergence of a favorable environment for productions that would better respond to actual, social realities and everyday challenges. Following Andrew J. Horton and Michael Brashinsky, Eliot Borenstein influentially described these shifts as a move from a “blackening” of late-Soviet popular culture and the emergence of the blackened—chernukha universe, which shamelessly pointed to all of the problems plaguing the USSR, to the dominance of “the logic of overkill” in early post-Soviet productions, including cinematic ones.58 Borenstein noted that if chernukha maintained an ethical imperative to showcase real, existent social problems, in order to raise awareness, early post-Soviet productions featured so much sex, violence, and drugs that these acquired a logic—and an aesthetic—of their own.59 Astrakhan’s Soviet Mars from the 1970s did not shy away from such elements. Merry alcoholics sing the popular Soviet 1963 song called “I na Marse budut iablani tsvesti” (“Apple trees will bloom on Mars, too”) initially used in the 1963 utopian Mechte navstrechu (for an analysis of this film, see chapter 3). At one point, a drunk lady aptly summarized the main scientific enigma of the film, the mystery of the ontological status of this Martian community, by chanting: “Is there life on Mars? There is no life on Mars, every pupil knows this! Because, what kind of a life is this?” This scene was both comic and revelatory; it established a direct bond between the Soviet past and a hallucination of a communist community on Mars. The film identified the USSR with a hallucination on numerous levels. It involved several scenes, which commenced with a display of all of the supposedly positive aspects of the fallen Soviet Union, such as comradeship, equality, sincerity, and respect for its heroes, such as cosmonauts. However, one after another, all these social constructs, which had once been promoted as desirable values, and, at the same time, as achievements of the Soviet state, quickly reassembled into their almost entire opposites. The cosmonauts swiftly learned that they were only their own heroes, as the

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Martian community only worshiped them insofar as it received something in return. Most tellingly, Beliaiev’s childhood muse, Tania, who ignored him when they had been schoolmates, only fell for him because of the desirable cosmonaut-status of his older self. She even accepted his mistreatment of her school sweetheart Andrei (Anatoly Zhuravlev), whom Beliaiev provoked and beat up, as if to take revenge on the mockery that he had actually endured from Beliaiev during their real schooldays on Earth. Tania was revealed as superficial, mercantile, and not extremely intelligent. The other inhabitants of this anachronistic community were corruptible, untrustworthy, and also sometimes also inexplicably kind. In this vein, when Sergei took out Tania to dinner and suddenly realized he did not have any local currency at his disposal, a local official lent him a helping wallet and covered the meal. The film was based on affect, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s presubjective, “prepersonal intensity corresponding to the passage from one experiential state of the body to another and implying an augmentation or diminution in that body’s capacity to act.”60 To quote one of the cosmonauts, “How can Mars eradicate us? Man is powerless when his childhood, his first love appear before him.” This very “powerlessness” resulted in Sergei’s decision to remain on the planet, with Tania, despite his vague awareness of the fact that all of his current happiness was but an illusion. Using the fake conviction that he could avert Tania’s murder as a ridiculous, unbelievable excuse, he first stated that he is “aware of everything,” but then still chose to stay and marry his childhood love. Evidently, the decision formally resembled the ending of Tarkovsky’s Solyaris, Kelvin’s conscious choice not to return to Earth in an attempt to continue his life on the space station with Hari. At the same time, the structure of the decision was completely different. In contrast to Kelvin, who rationalized his life choice using references to humanist ideals, believing in micro- and macrocosmic union, and ultimately in the possibility to know oneself, Sergei embraced his infantile fantasy and remains on the planet with the sole intention of finally possessing the muse of his past. One might conclude that Chetvertaia planeta trivialized the philosophical charge that distinguishes Solyaris, presenting a postmodernist ironic remix of ideals or grand narratives of the past. At the same time, this explanation is somewhat insufficient. Astrakhan not only returned to one of the overarching ideas of Solyaris, essentially the question of what kind of answers might be sought in a mirror. He combined this question with a retrotopian glance backward, into one of the more pessimistic periods of Soviet history, the so-called stagnation of the 1970s. Initially conceived as the future of the 1930s, the period looked everything but ideal, even when viewed from the gloomy, economically unfortunate context of early 1990s Russia. This glance at a past future was

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structurally very similar to the one offered in Protazanov’s Aelita, which, coincidentally, also played around with the fantasy of communism on Mars. Moreover, it responded to the utopian communist future visualized in Tumannost’ Andromedy. Interestingly, this response was neither completely parodic nor entirely nostalgic. Chetvertaia planeta appeared to be thematizing the utopian aspect of the notion of affect, as if both embracing and reflecting on the consequences of a confused world, a world where spatiotemporal coordinates no longer granted any existential warrant, and yet no other futures appeared to be available. UTOPIA’S OTHERS The significance of the films examined in this chapter is twofold. The offered juxtaposition of utopian productions from various time periods, and the critical interrogation of the significance of utopia in particular sociopolitical contexts allow to trace the many variants of this notion, present in the corpus of Soviet and post-Soviet science fiction cinema, and highlight their intertextual aspects. The overview provided by this chapter is based on a selection of the most commonly cited Soviet films addressing questions related to the future (and enhancement) of the social order in the space age. The crossexamination of the utopian moments of three iconic Soviet films allows us to see Soviet cinematic constructions of utopia from a more nuanced perspective than the one offered by both more general overviews of the genre and by studies, treating the films mostly as adaptations of literary works. At the same time, Chetvertaia planeta, the only post-Soviet film included in this selection, provided further evidence for the argument that the trope of utopia, related to space exploration as the future of humanity, is multidimensional and dynamic. The comparison of Aelita, Tumannost’ Andromedy, Solyaris, and Chetvertaia planeta allowed us to note the premediational function of the earlier films. Accordingly, Aelita functioned not only as the first Soviet space science fiction film, and a cautionary tale that warned against direct interrogations of Soviet historiography but also as a prototype for later integrations of the tropes of spaceflight, alien encounters, and exploration of a foreign planet. Apart from Tumannost’ Andromedy, all the other films explored in this chapter reiterated the problem of encountering an intelligent alien presence in the form of a beautiful female on an alien planet. Aelita granted this female unprecedented agency, even to the point of equipping her with a voyeuristic instrument—a telescope that allowed her to spy on her beloved earthling Los, even if her decisions are later discredited as selfish and unempathetic. Princess Aelita’s most useful weapon was, as Protazanov emphasizes, her

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love for Los, which allowed her to woo him, lure him onto Mars, and, to an extent, to transform herself, becoming more aware of the structural inequalities of the Martian bourgeois society. At the end of the film, Aelita may have been dismissed as a dream, but her image reemerged in the later films, where it was refashioned in several interesting ways. The motif of alien female love—or, in Tumannost’ Andromedy, simply female love, that is Niza’s love for Erg Noor—was always replayed in such a way that allows to sustain the preferred utopia. In Tumannost’ Andromedy, Niza’s love for Erg Noor sensitized him to the emotional aspects of his own personality, and pushed him to contradict social norms and even the doctor’s orders. However, Niza was only allowed this one single intervention; she remained in a coma, unable to influence the events any further. In Solyaris, Hari appeared as a direct projection of Kelvin’s psyche. She was an element of his unconscious, materialized in order for him to face it, and her only real power is the power of facing him, prompting him to question his own subjectivity. She was allowed to survive in order to sustain his symbolist, transcendently oriented self, and its fantasy of finding balance between himself and the macrocosm. Tania from Chetvertaia planeta took on a similar function, but her utopianist creator was concerned with a different problem, much closer to the one preoccupying Los. Sergei Beliaiev needed to remain with Tania, the muse of his schooldays, in order to relive his social and personal experience of the USSR. As he watched his colleagues return to Earth, he believed that he is staying behind to save his beloved, but also—and primarily—to experience private happiness by intervening into the past. Similarly, Los’s love for Aelita coincided with his ambition to help the Martian revolution. When this undertaking failed, he happily woke up on Earth, to realize he was only dreaming. Apart from merely sustaining a patriarchic utopia, it appears that females also had the unique ability to symbolize—and therefore to absorb—its various possible levels, from the historical (Aelita), to the social (Niza), the psychoanalytic (Hari), and the affective (Tania). Unlike the female presence in many Western productions, where it is often uncanny, but also clearly external to the utopian constructions, these females formed parts of these utopian constructions from the very outset, and pointed to their limits.

NOTES 1. See also Peter Rollberg, “Science Fiction,” in Volume 29, Directory of World Cinema—Russia 2, ed. Birgit Beumers (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2015), 126–9. 2. Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction; Lucy Sargisson, Fool’s gold?: Utopianism in the twenty-first century (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

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3. See also Anindita Banerjee, We Modern People: Science Fiction and the Making of Russian Modernity (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2012), 4–12. 4. See Jameson, Archaeologies, chapters 1 and 4; and Andrew Milner, “Archaeologies of the Future: Jameson’s Utopia or Orwell’s Dystopia?” Historical Materialism 17, no. 4 (2009): 101–119. 5. See also: Peter Fitting, “The Concept of Utopia in the Work of Fredric Jameson,” Utopian Studies 9, no. 2 (1998): 8–17; Gerry Canavan, “Defined by a Hollow: Essays on Utopia, Science Fiction and Political Epistemology, Darko Suvin, Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010,” Historical Materialism 21, no. 1 (2013): 209–216. 6. Mark Bould, “Introduction: Rough Guide to a Lonely Planet, from Nemo to Neo,” in Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction, edited by Mark Bould and China Miéville (London: Pluto Press, 2009). 7. For a discussion of the entanglements between utopia and the cinematic medium, see for example, Nina Cvar, Filmski u-topos, Lecture at Trubarjeva hiša literature, Ljubljana, 18 February, 2016, accessible at https://www​.youtube​.com​/watch​ ?v​=joH80c8ITf0. 8. Carl Freedman, Critical Theory and Science Fiction (Wesleyan UP, 2000), here 18–19. 9. For the specificities of sf utopias until the 1960s, see Darko R. Suvin, “Three World Paradigms for SF: Asimov, Yefremov, Lem,” in Positions and Presuppositions in Science Fiction (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988), 99–112, here 103–6. 10. Idem, 109. 11. Idem. 12. Cf. Stephen Hutchings and Anat Vernitsky, “Introduction: the ekranizatsiia in Russian culture,” in Russian and Soviet Film Adaptations of Literature, 1900—2001, ed. Stephen Hutchings and Anat Vernitsky (London: Routledge, 2005), xiv–xxxv, here xx–xxv. 13. See also Vlad Strukov, “Aelita,” in Volume 29, Directory of World Cinema— Russia 2, ed. Birgit Beumers (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2015), 130–1. 14. Yevgeny Margolit, “Drugoi (ko 130-letiiu dnia rozhdeniia Yakova Protazanova),” Cinemateka.​ru​, 2011. http://www​.cinematheque​.ru​/post​/143943​/3. 15. Ibid; Also see Denise Youngblood, Movies for the Masses: Popular Cinema and Soviet Society in the 1920s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Presss, 1992), here 105. 16. Also see Denise Youngblood, “The Return of the Native: Yakov Protazanov and Soviet Cinema,” in Inside the Film Factory: New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema, ed. Ian Christie and Richard Taylor (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 103–123. 17. Leon Trotsky, “Vodka, the Church, and the Cinema,” Pravda, July 12, 1923. https://www​.marxists​.org​/archive​/trotsky​/women​/life​/23​_07​_12​.htm; Aleksandr Ignatienko, Aelita: Pervyi opyt sozdaniia blokbastera v Rossii (Moscow: DirektMedia, 2014), here 25. 18. Aleksandr Ignatienko, Aelita: Pervyi opyt sozdaniia blokbastera v Rossii (Moscow: Direkt-Media, 2014), here 10.

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19. Idem. 20. Vladimir Tourkin, Dramaturgija kino: Ocherki po teorii i praktike kinostsenariia (Moscow: VGIK, 2007), here 173–174. 21. Idem; Don Diego i Pelageia, directed by Yakov Protazanov, USSR 1934 (MezhrabpomRus). 22. I. N. Vladimirtseva and A. M. Sandler., eds., Istorija sovjetskogo kino 1917– 1967, Tom pervyi, (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1969), here 111. 23. Idem. 24. Cf. Vladimirtseva and Sandler, eds., 111–120. 25. Neya Zorkaya, Portrety (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1966), here140. 26. Margolit, “Drugoi (ko 130-letiiu dnia rozhdeniia Yakova Protazanova).” 27. Ignatienko, Aelita: Pervyi opyt sozdaniia blokbastera v Rossii. 28. Ibid, 40–46. 29. Ibid, 44. 30. Aelita was perceived by Moscow-based media as a bourgeois film with a touch of vamp aesthetics, alien to the proletarian Soviet spectator, inappropriate representations of Soviet everyday life, unclear transitions from one event to another, and a “superficial,” “lazy” revolution. The experts from Leningrad were of a similar opinion, but they preferred to focus more or less on the technical aspects of the production, praising the excellence of the latter. Similarly negative reviews came from the so-called provinces, such as the city of Izhevsk, the capital of the Udmurt Republic, where, it should be noted, the film—consisting of two parts—was screened as two independent films, as cinema-owners hoped to increase profits. Therefore, it may be assumed that the impression was distorted, as most spectators had the opportunity to see only one of the parts. 31. Cf. Zorkaya, Portrety, 140. 32. Christie, “Down to earth: Aelita Relocated,”, here 80–103. 33. Ibid. 34. Horton, “Science Fiction of the Domestic: Iakov Protazanov’s Aelita.” 35. Idem. 36. See Ignatienko, Aelita: pervyi opyt sozdaniia blokbastera v Rossiii, 44. 37. Vladimir Lenin, Report on the Work of the Council of People’s Commissars, December 22, 1920. http://soviethistory​.msu​.edu​/1921​-2​/electrification​-campaign​/ communism​-is​-soviet​-power​-electrification​-of​-the​-whole​-country/. 38. Andrei Zhdanov, “Soviet literature: The Richest in Ideas, the Most Advanced Literature,” in Problems of Soviet Literature: Reports and Speeches at the First Soviet Writers’ Congress, ed. H. F. Scott (New York: International Publishers, 1935). https://www​.cengage​.com​/music​/book​_content​/049557273X​_wrightSimms​/assets​/ ITOW​/7273X​_74​_ITOW​_Zhdanov​.pdf. 39. Anne Bowler, “Politics as Art: Italian Futurism and Fascism,” Theory and Society 20, no. 6 (1991): 763–94. http://www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/657603. 40. See, for example, Trudy Anderson, “Why Stalinist Musicals?” Discourse, 17, no. 3 (1995): 38–48. www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/41389383. 41. Aleksandr Fedorov, “Sovetskaia kinofantastika o voine i kosmose: germenevticheskii analiz,” Voprosy kulturologii, 11 (2011): 89–93. For a comprehensive

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overview of the development of and debates in Soviet science fiction literature in 1917–1957, see Matthias Schwartz, Expeditionen in andere Welten Sowjetische Abenteuerliteratur und Science-Fiction von der Oktoberrevolution bis zum Ende der Stalinzeit (Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2014). Mikhail Kovalchuk (Vladimir Gakov), Meridiany fantastiki. 42. Mikhail Kovalchuk (Vladimir Gakov), Meridiany fantastiki. http://www​ .fandom​.ru​/convent​/12​/kino​_1981​_1​.htm. The Committee held a “Theoretical Conference on Adventure and Science Fiction Film” in January 1981, and the “First Soviet Seminar on Kinofantastika (fantasy and science fiction in film)” in April 1983. Two more seminars followed in 1985 and 1986. 43. His last film, Proryv (The Breakthrough), directed by Yevgeny Sherstobitov (Ukraine: Kinostudiia imeni Dovzhenko) premiered in 1992. 44. Verifiable on the vObzor​.c​om website, 2019. https://vobzor​.com​/page​.php​?id​ =1045. 45. See, for example, user reviews on the Kinopoisk forum, such as user Sir_ Genry’s observation on Star Wars references, Kinopoisk, 2019. https://www​.kinopoisk​.ru​/film​/42367/. 46. See for example V. A. Revich, O kinofantastike: Ekran 1967–1968 (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1968), here 82–6. 47. For Badiou, love is an existential event, an eternal, ever-unfolding quest for truth. See Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love (New York: The New Press, 2012). 48. See also Pollberg, “Science fiction,” 128–9. 49. Darko Suvin, Positions and Presuppositions in Science Fiction (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988), here 105. 50. Slavoj Žižek, “The Thing from Inner Space on Tarkovsky,” Angleki, 4 no. 3 (1999): 221–231, here 225. 51. See also Jeremy Mark Robinson, The sacred cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky (Maidstone: Crescent Moon, 2006), here 265. Robinson argues that Solyaris represents the most inward-oriented of all of Tarkovsky’s films. 52. Žižek, “The Thing from Inner Space on Tarkovsky,” 225. 53. For a feminist interpretation of the existentialist search in Łem’s Solaris essentially being a search for (masculine) “man,” see Elyce Rae Helford, “We are only seeking Man”: Gender, Psychoanalysis, and Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris,” Science Fiction Studies 19, no. 57 (1992). https://www​.depauw​.edu​/sfs​/backissues​/57​/helford57art​.htm. 54. The canonical discussions are provided in Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991) and Fredric Jameson, “Chapter 1: Varieties of the Utopian,” in Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions, Fredric Jameson (London, New York: Verso, 2005), 1–10. 55. See also Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979/1984), here 14–18. 56. Inke Arns, Objects in the Mirror May Be Closer Than They Appear! Die Avantgarde im Rückspiegel. Zum Paradigmenwechsel der künstlerischen

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Avantgarderezeption in (Ex-) Jugoslawien und Russland von den 1980er Jahren bis in die Gegenwart—doctoral dissertation (Berlin: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2004), here 66–88. 57. For an interpretation of this film as 58. Eliot Borenstein, Overkill, Sex and Violence in Contemporary Russian Popular Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), here 18–20. 59. Idem. 60. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. and foreword by Brian Massumi (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1980/1987), here xvi.

Chapter 3

The Space Futures of Socialist Realism

SOCIALIST REALISM, MEMORY, AND SPACE AS A TOOL One of the most well-known aspects of Soviet cultural production, and one of the first questions that may spring to mind when one imagines a “Soviet space future” is the artistic canon of socialist realism, the call to “portray the future as if it had already happened,” which was the dominant artistic canon of the Stalinist USSR (1934–1956).1 This chapter elaborates the relationship between the Soviet cinematic imaginary, spaceflight, and Soviet science fiction. After outlining the ramifications of socialist realism for science fiction in literature, I look at the challenges and solutions that it presented in the domain of cinema, highlighting these with the help of a selection of several different Soviet science fiction films, released from 1935 to 1963. The chapter harnesses these temporally distant productions, namely, Kosmicheskii reis (1935) from the Stalinist period, the early-Thaw la byl sputnikom solntsa (1959) and Nebo zovet (1959), as well as the late-Thaw Mechte navstrechu (1963), in order to trace in which ways socialist realism as a stylistic doctrine on the one hand and other concurrent domestic film productions on the other influenced interpretations of the significance of spaceflight for humanity, the understanding of the normative, aesthetic, and imaginative potential of the genre of science fiction, and, finally, the value frameworks adopted in these productions. Space, in these productions, remains “utopia that has landed on earth”; but what exactly does this imply?2 The chapter explores the dialectics of space-oriented utopia between progress and stasis, scrutinizing the broadly accepted assumption that “static utopias,” including optimistic images of perfectly organized futures often associated with the space age, 57

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were characteristic of the 1960s, to be later displaced by more dynamic, critical takes on the future of humanity. In 1934, Andrei Zhdanov famously called for the adoption of a new literary canon, which would soon be adopted in other spheres of cultural production. At the Soviet Writers’ Congress, he voiced a popular concern of the time, namely, that Soviet literature of the time did not reflect the needs of the Soviet people, the embodiment of the Soviet progressivist nation-building project. To put it very succinctly, he defended the need for a definite break with the experimental period of the Russian avantgardes, their attempts to use the various capacities of different media (e.g., typography, composition, and imagetext relations) in order to create spaces of new (collective and individual) experiences that would both reflect the quickly changing, modernizing world, and present an intervention into it.3 In contrast with artists (writers, filmmakers, painters, etc.), who had come to prominence in the first two decades of the twentieth century and who saw in the Soviet socialist project an opportunity to radically transform language and artistic expression, enabling it to access reality in a more direct, rather than a strictly representational manner, and hoping to thereby bring about transformations in this reality itself, Zhdanov sought a way to make art accessible to the masses—the peasants, and the workers. In his vision, which reflected earlier debates on the significance of culture to the evolution of the Soviet project, its potential mobilizing, and inspirational role, the future Soviet art was conceived in terms of easily accessible, concrete, rather than abstract works that would provide a glimpse into the future that socialism would eventually bring about. However, it would be inaccurate to describe this function of art as prophetic; rather, it was intended to be relatable, and to conjoin the normative utopianism of the Soviet political and economic project with representations of the positive aspects of mundane realities. Art, in brief, was to both represent and, on a more abstract level, visualize, and thereby think, the socialist utopia of the—then anticipated— near future as if it had already taken place, encouraging the Soviet workers to strive even harder to achieve it, and contributing to the impression that it was already at arm’s reach.4 Or, as Mariia Chegodaeva put it: Art was not only and not so much occupied with direct ideological propaganda, for which there were other, highly effective means to hand. What it did, rather, was “prepare the soil” for propaganda. It formed our very selves—our image and our lifestyle. Soviet man was required to be in a state of elation and enthusiasm about work, about scientific developments, about sport.5

In 1935, the imperative of socialist realism was adopted by the state’s main film policy organ, the Soiuzkino, which had replaced Goskino in 1924. To say that this decree had defined Soviet film production of the following two

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decades would be plausible, but would also be a swiping generalization. Many scholars have noted that the impact of the imperative of socialist realism was manifold, and, most importantly, that it cannot and should not be simplified.6 While, on the one hand, it did result in the formation of what are today considered to be prototypical Soviet genres, such as Stalin’s preferred merry musicals and carefully interpreted films on various—real and mythical—revolutionary events from the Russian past, it also created a specific space for experimentation and debate.7 If socialist realism had indeed defined what the overall aim of art should be, it also initiated a new search for artistic devices and formats. In the realm of film production, Maria Belodubrovskaya highlighted the significance of a long discussion on plot, which illuminates the static and monumental serenity of many of the sf films discussed in this book. At the advent of socialist realism, in 1932–1935, Soviet film policy stakeholders favored strongly plotbased films. Belodubrovskaya noted, plot-based art is defined as art in which “the depth of ideas, the excellence of form, the urgency of the subject matter, and the artistry of language molded together with a clear and thrilling development of the action.”8 By 1938, however, the tides had turned, and plans to model the Soviet film industry along the lines of Hollywood were abandoned; the term plot (siuzhet) was no longer used in the press, disregarded as a tool of bourgeois cinema.9 In this new view on the essence of socialist realist filmmaking, content prevailed over form, and directors began to experiment with a different, theme-based kind of storytelling. This approach, favoring the development of distinct themes, “such as party leadership, industrialization, collective farming, or national defense,” at the expense of a straightforward, action- and character-based development of the plot allowed film directors to expand their range of possible protagonists.10 All of a sudden, a developing city could, for example, be at the forefront of the film, to the detriment of the coherence of the stories of its human inhabitants, as Belodubrovskaya explained, referring to Komsomolsk. She argued that this kind of “/t/hematic thinking was socialist realism’s genuine contribution to Soviet film aesthetics,” explaining the relative neglect of film genres in Soviet cinema until the 1970s, which was also exacerbated by the Soviet authorities’ ideological conviction about the moral bankruptcy of Western genre cinema. In the 1940s, this plotless approach to cinematic storytelling was enhanced by another feature, conflictlessness; as socialist had allegedly been achieved, there could be no more room for social conflict, and conflict as a dramaturgical device had to be abandoned, the logic went. “Conflictlessness is an aberration. It leads to undramatic recounting of events and as such is closer to an illustration or a chronicle than to storytelling proper. Plotlessness, however, is a standalone narrative mode, which can have its masterpieces,” Belodubrovskaya elaborated.11

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Regretfully, such masterpieces were not commonplace enough or popular enough with the audiences to ensure that plot-based narration would not be returned to later, in the 1950s, and become an important explorative aspect for many filmmakers of the post-Stalinist Khrushchevian Thaw.12 However, this would not mean that the entire history of socialist realist cinema would suddenly lose all of its impact. In this chapter, I argue that certain—proverbially socialist realist—topics were particularly sensitive to this influence than others, space-age-related utopianism certainly belonging to this category. The following discussion of films from the 1930s, late 1950s, and early 1960s should demonstrate that these films, although formally very different, all belong to the universe of socialist realist cinema, reflecting particular aspects of this universe, and consolidating its programmatic memory of the space age, which was barely beginning. A particular analytical emphasis will be placed on the interplay between the (future) present and its cinematic past. In his study of Stalinist cinema and the musealization of the October revolution, Evgeny Dobrenko insightfully observed” In order to master the future, it is necessary, in the first place, to turn it into the past (as it is based on the “known,” the past does not scare), and, second, to sacrifice the present (which turns out from this future-directed perspective to be irrelevant, as everything is done “for the bright tomorrow” and “for future generations”).13

This statement resonates with a significant amount of Soviet space science fiction films, which focus on a future that seems eerily familiar, evoking mythic images of a normatively interpreted past. It is very plausible to argue that the past of socialist realist science fiction cinema is the imagery of socialist realism itself—a just, egalitarian and plentiful society with no class, racial, or economic conflict. Space exploration, as we shall see, is necessary in order to cement the memory of the idea of eternity and infinity of socialism, once it will have been established; it is, in fact, only possible after the establishment of a socialist society; furthermore, it is necessary to achieve global, even interplanetary communism. This interpretation of the significance of space exploration has at least two noteworthy theoretical ramifications. Firstly, to repeat the crucial point from the first chapter of this book, and to take it a step further, outer space is clearly not imagined as an empty non-place, or, to echo Shukaitis, a Deleuzian “imaginal machine.” However, it is also not only imagined from within an imaginary of international politics. Just as important is its internally oriented cultural function. In terms of the Soviet imaginary, outer space took upon

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itself the function of one of the myths that both justify the existence of the USSR (the USSR is necessary to bring about interplanetary communism) and provide it with a future that is worth sweating for (precisely the USSR will bring about interplanetary communism).14 Although it can convincingly be argued that this kind of reasoning reflects the ideological struggle between the Soviet Union and the West, exacerbated during the Cold War, the Soviet popular imaginary of the space age, as we shall see in a moment, pointed to a broader pool of references, and actually downplayed the realpolitikal antagonisms, particularly if compared with Hollywood productions from the same time-period. At the same time—and this is the promised second theoretical ramification—Soviet space science fictional productions managed to distance themselves significantly from the Russian history of ideas on spaceflight and its significance. The vanguard intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, known to today’s readers as the Russian cosmists, a loose group of thinkers that had predicted space exploration and theorized its importance from a number of intriguing perspectives, are completely absent from the Soviet and post-Soviet Russian imaginary of the space age until the early 2000s. While Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935), the proverbial grandfather of Soviet rocketry and inventor of, among other things, the reactive engine as a solution for launching space rockets, is often cited, his teacher, eccentric librarian, and Orthodox Christian thinker Nikolai Fedorov (1829–1903), is not. Nor are his contemporaries Alexander Chizhevsky (1897–1964) and Vladimir Vernadsky (1843–1945), with their ideas on biocosmism, and the future involving a space age that would be rooted in a symbiosis of the microcosm (humans) and the macrocosm (their earthly and space surroundings).15 The explanation for these omissions is rather simple, and brings us back to the theoretical points outlined earlier. If space exploration was to primarily be seen as a technology of communism, as a tool of socialist realism, then it necessitated no other theoretical background than that of a technician, which Tsiolkovsky was. As party ideology replaced religion and philosophy on the level of cultural production, no space was left for the utopias of the pre-Soviet times. Furthermore, a specific kind of a popular-cultural imaginary had to be created, to rival such ideas rooted in ideologies, alternative to communist modernism. Finally, the cult of Tsiolkovsky, promoted from the mid-1930s onward, was so strong, as was his retroactively established link to the father of Soviet rocket technologies, longtime chief constructor of the Soviet space program Sergei Korolev (1906–1966) that there was, possibly, no recognized need to dig any deeper into the archives of regional spaceoriented thought.16

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WHAT WAS LEFT OF SCIENCE FICTION? The kind of science fiction (nauchnaia fantastika), which flourished in the Soviet Union from the 1930s onward, did not have the same genealogy as Western science fiction. As emphasized in “Introduction,” I seek to refer to science fiction throughout this book as a broad term. The aim is thus to remain equally attentive to the strictly utopian works that employ the productive dialectic of cognitive estrangement to follow the Blochian utopian impulse, aligned with Marxist aspirations for a future society based on egalitarian and commonist principles, and to the more fantastic, speculative aesthetics and narratives that shed light on radical difference and otherness in markedly different ways.17 Utopia as wish, utopia as form, and the content of utopias on offer in the corpus of Soviet and Russian feature films engaged with the space age of the (past) future are therefore explored in line with the recent productive discussions on the limitations of cognitive estrangement if posited as the sole progressive driving force of sf. The links between cognitive estrangement and utopia (eutopia as affirmation or dystopia as critical utopian warning) are disentangled through very close readings of particular films precisely in order to point to the fragility of some of the links between sf, its utopian subgenre and utopianism as a historical-materialist stance. Cracks in utopias should, such is one of the premises of this book, be discussed as attentively as its foundations, as careful bridges between the formalist poetics of the genre and its concrete historical products. At this point, preceding the discussion of what shine as the most glorious, most affirmative Soviet utopian cinematic representations of the space age, that is, those produced in the context of socialist realism, it seems particularly important to account for the discussion on the place of science fiction in this very canon. While accounting for the long and rich tradition of utopian literature in various genres (from Thomas More’s seminal 1516 Utopia to François Rabelais, to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s and Vladimir Odoevsky’s works in the Russian context), and affirming its proximity and importance for a great deal of sf literature, science fiction scholars usually trace the birth of the science fiction genre to nineteenth-century literature, influenced by ever quicker technological progress, and to authors such as Jules Verne and Edgar Allen Poe as his precursor.18 When it comes to science fiction as a literary genre, some scholars provocatively state that the vast majority of ideas associated with it today (from technological nova to ideological impulses) had been exhausted soon after the emergence of the genre, which is in novels by Verne and H. G. Wells.19 Gleb Eliseev, for instance, claimed that most contemporary science fictions deal with combinations of the following nine thematic clusters: space travel, contact with inhuman intelligence, time travel, parallel universes/ worlds, human mutation or evolution, models of society (dystopias, utopias,

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etc.), the legacy of scientific inventions, wars of the future, and cataclysms caused by various sets of circumstances.20 A very cursory overview of the content-preoccupied conceptualizations of the genre reveals that these tend to stay in line with this generalization, meaning that the thematic nexus of the future, humanity, and scientific progress is considered definitive, rather than a certain narrative, a set of characters, an ambience, or stylistic conventions. In this sense, science fiction seems to exceed the limits of a specific artistic form (literature, theater, cinema). At the same time, when speaking about Soviet literature and film dealing with space travel, the future, parallel worlds, and so on, the genealogy of the Russian term nauchnaia fantastika, also translated as scientific fantasy, should be granted some attention. Scientific fantasy, as traced and laid out by Anindita Banerjee, differs from free play of the mind’s imaginative capacities due to its mandatory references to science, which acts as a legitimizing factor for fantasy within the imaginary of socialist realism.21 Science fiction in the Soviet variant thus comes very close to Suvin’s and Jameson’s discussions of the genre at the nexus of historical materialism and its utopian impulse, and the critical capacity of utopia to think both alternative futures and the break from the present. In this sense, its generative impulse is opposed to anti-utopian vectors, grounded in the uncurbed expansion of individual freedoms and liberties in the context of the advances of capitalism. While the close readings of so-called socialist realist utopian Soviet space sf films provided in this chapter will reveal a certain formative ambiguity in relation to this generalization, but to fully grasp it, some insight into the place of sf within the history of Soviet socialist realism is needed. In a seminal discussion on the entanglements between science, journalism, and fiction in the Stalinist USSR, Matthias Schwartz pointed specifically to the late 1920s and early 1930s, explicating some terminological discussions that took place within the circles of Soviet writers, and marked the aforementioned 1934 First All-Unions Writers Congress.22 At the time, one of the proponents of a completely new genre, which would feature prominently in discussions on socialist realist art, and was provisionally termed nauchnokhudozhestvennaia literatura, translatable as either “scientific-fictional” or “scientific-artistic” literature was writer Varlam Shalamov. Although Shalamov’s later Gulag-imprisonment would make him envisage a completely different “new prose” in the 1960s, a prose fit to recount experiences, such as the Holocaust and the Gulag, in the 1930s, his call for writers’ social and political engagement was aligned with a different agenda. This agenda, defended in the late twenties and thirties by writers such as Maxim Gorkii and Samuil Marshak, followed the Stalinist call for writers to act as “engineers of the soul,” and proposed “to create a new type of literature located at the intersection of literary fiction and science journalism.”23 This proposal, Schwartz demonstrated, was an attack on both popular-science, so-called

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entertaining-science writing that adhered to the pre-Stalinist, utopian “ ‘civilizing mission’ of creating a healthier, wealthier, and more just society through the dissemination of knowledge and scientific education,” and on the genre of adventure fiction—dismissed as counterrevolutionary contraband by 1927—that was highly critical of the potentially “devastating consequences of modernity and industrial-technical progress, and the widespread fears they elicited.” Neither of these two strands of literature necessarily aligned Soviet politics and social order with scientific progress, or affirmed that the former would guarantee the “happy end” of the latter. Schwartz concluded: It was in this context that “scientific fantasy” (nauchaia fantastika), which until then had been mainly used by commercial rather than literary actors, was introduced by some critics and writers as an alternative to adventure literature or to pure fantasy. It served as a useful term for highlighting the genre’s tendency, in the sense of scientific probability, to “realistically” deal with the future outcomes of scientific-technical innovation and Socialist progress. Although it was extremely contested, the term thus was established as the genre description for the Soviet form of “science fiction.”24

However, this was not the end of the story: in the early-1930s attempts of the Communist Party to further homogenize and control the fields of literary and journalistic production, new debates ensued, including Gorkii and Marshak’s proposition of scientific-fictional literature as an alternative, more ideologically straightforward genre: “one that could merge the entertaining elements of low-brow science fiction, the educational merits of science popularization, and the artistic and ideological tasks of building up a new ‘scientific’ worldview for society.”25 Similar to the discussion on the form of Soviet films outlined earlier in this chapter, works in this genre were conceived as set out “around competing ideas and experimental settings designed to achieve scientific breakthroughs” rather than personal stories. “Scientific fictions” were thus envisaged as works that narrate to convince the reader about utopia as a blueprint, rather than to frighten and thrill, as science fictions usually would. Although the plans of the proponents of scientific fiction as a new, Soviet poetics of narrating the future were never fully realized, they clearly echo the broader issue at stake: the loud political concerns, characteristic of Stalinism and socialist realism, about the need to narrate the future according to current political priorities, and to advertise and monumentalize the Soviet cause. In this loose sense, socialist realism evidently suggested some constraints to the scope of Soviet science fiction, approved by the official ideology of the Soviet Communist Party, limiting it to narratives of the near future and seemingly imminent scientific feats. Particularly after World War II, Soviet sf markedly

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followed this pattern, remaining fantastika blizhnego pritsela,26 that is, fantasy, which—aiming primarily, although not exclusively at younger audiences—popularized the achievements of Soviet scientific and technological progress rather than imagined new, far-off future worlds and frontiers, at least until the late 1950s and the loosening of the Socialist Realist canon during the Thaw. In this sense, science fiction film subscribed perfectly to the Stalinist approach to film adaptation, as explored in Dobrenko’s aforementioned study, used to visually consolidate not only the past, but also future horizons. The Thaw may be seen as a milestone for Soviet science fiction, and indeed often is, with numerous references to Ivan Efremov’s novel Tumannost’ Andromedy (1957), one of the first post–World War II scientific fantasy novels going beyond the “close reach” of imminent technological progress.27 In 1967, the novel was turned into the eponymous film (Tumannost’ Andromedy), directed by Yevgeny Sherstobitov, explored in the previous chapter. The film began with an interesting prelude: a voiceover narrator preaches: “To you, people living in the 20th century! To you, people of the first century of the Communist era!” This was not a quote from the novel; this introduction legitimized screening an otherwise rather fantastic tale, with little didactic or moral value for communist ideology, to the masses. It revealed a certain political confusion about the purposes and functions of popular culture, which reached beyond socialist realism. This confusion would remain evident in later Soviet scientific fantasy films trying to find a balance between ideologically appropriate takes on the genre and the lure of either purely entertainment-oriented or philosophically complex and aesthetically intriguing possibilities, foregrounded by the increasing availability of Hollywood science fiction in the USSR on the one hand, and the Soviet political acknowledgment of the need for domestic cinema with greater mass appeal on the other. THE FUTURE FOR THE YOUNG! KOSMICHESKII REIS AND LA BYL SPUTNIKOM SOLNTSA The first space-themed film that was released in the USSR around the time of the imposition of the socialist realist canon in the domain of film production was the iconic silent feature Kosmicheskii reis, a tale about a trip to the moon, directed by Vasily Zhuravlev, who was consulted by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. This frequently quoted film evidently picked up and reinterpreted the narrative of Méliès’s Voyage dans la Lune, and—in line with the directives of the Soviet authorities of the time, outlined in previous paragraphs—embedded it into the context of a socialist realist, plot-based film, with an attempt to also retain an emphasis on the values of the Soviet state. However, these two

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aspects were not fused in the most organic way possible. In his analysis of the film, Rogatchevski adequately noted that the protagonist of the film, academician Pavel Ivanovich Sedykh (Sergei Komarov), is, for instance, “every bit as individualist” as protagonists in capitalist films, in spite of the Soviet ideological emphasis on the collective and comradery.28 At the same time, I argue that it is worthwhile to revisit the film—which, as we shall see, has had numerous repercussions in Soviet and post-Soviet Russian cinema—and, in particular, its take on socialist realist space utopianism, from a slightly shifted perspective, considering its influence on the consolidation of the Soviet popular-cultural imaginary of spaceflight and on the development of later space-oriented science fiction films. Kosmicheskii reis clearly attempted to depict spaceflight as the near future, accounting for the limitations of the scientific fantasy genre. Produced in 1935, it tried to visualize what the Soviet triumph in space could amount to, by as early as 1946. The director inserted plenty idealized elements from the contemporary present, such as young pioneers, into what appears to be the prototype of the next steps in technological development, that is, a gigantic constructivist cosmodrome. The pioneers were welcomed onto this launchsite, and even greeted as “young astronauts.” Incidentally, this detail reminds us that the term “cosmonaut” only became commonplace in the 1960s, during the peak of the Amero-Soviet “space race.” Moreover, it adds an extra nuance to popular interpretations, which harness the later “cosmonaut,” the “space-” rather than “star-” farer, in order to argue that the Soviet space program was inherently, that is, culturally, broader, more inclusive, and less directly competitive or goal-oriented than the American one. The terminology of Kosmicheskii reis, however, contrasted against the one used in later productions, provided evidence that this kind of rhetoric was, to a great degree, the result of political decision-making, intended to profile the Soviet space program both internationally and nationally. The launch-site was about to become the venue of a pioneering manned moon-bound mission, carefully planned out by the famous elderly academician Sedykh, whose surname reflected the grayness of his hairline and beard. The scientist was eager to launch himself into space, tired of inconclusive experiments involving animals. He was assisted by adolescent Andriusha (Vasily Gaponenko) and Marina (Ksenia Moskalenko), while young competitive researcher Viktor (Nikolai Feokistov) wished to conspire against the celebrated professor, and steal his planned pioneering success. Luckily, Andriusha warned the professor about Viktor’s deceitful plans, and Sedykh decided to outsmart Viktor by beating him to the spaceship together with Marina and Andriusha. From this point onward, the plot developed in almost complete absence of conflict. The crew landed on the moon, explored it, sent a signal to Earth, producing a mighty lightshow, visible on Earth, featuring

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the letters CCCP, the Russian acronym for the USSR, managed to find a space shuttle from an earlier experiment, hosting a cat that is still alive, and to return to Earth safely, with the kitty intact. At first glance, it may seem that the conflict between Viktor and Pavel Ivanovich Sedykh, the driving force of the beginning of the film, propelling Sedykh and his promptly assembled unlikely crew (composed of a young female assistant and a teenager), was strictly interpersonal, testifying to the selfishness of the duo. Sedykh even appeared greedier and vainer than Viktor, deciding to embark on a poorly prepared space mission in favor of the possibility that he might have to surrender his pioneering spaceflight to a junior scholar. However, the constant, that is the presupposition that the USSR alone is a condition of possibility of the space age, the juxtapositions of old age, and youth offered in the film, as well as suggestive intertitles, such as “Long live youth!” which followed the brief appearance of a crowd of young pioneers eager to visit the launch facilities, suggest that the conflict may be interpreted with a greater degree of symbolism.29 Sedykh was not just an academician; he was also the living embodiment, the tradition of the pre-space-age science that was about to propel humanity into the space age. In contrast to Professor Barbenfouillis (Georges Méliès) from Voyage dans la Lune, who, in his magician’s gown, resembled an alchemist, Sedykh was a proper specimen of ideologically appropriate, Soviet science. He, the hero of the new age of socialism, had the answers to all possible technical and ethical questions. Therefore, it is imperative that he be the first man on the moon. His age testified to his experience, and his dedication to go into space to his commitment to science. Not unimportantly, he was also aware that the future belonged to the children of this new socialist state that has produced the great Joseph Stalin spaceship. Therefore, he decided to take along a child and a young lady, who were not only the future, but were also devoted to his authority. During the moon landing, Sedykh strictly ordered Marina and Andriusha to immerse themselves into shock-absorbing baths, while he stayed in the control room. He exposed himself to grave danger and is indeed slightly bruised, the harsh landing throwing him to the floor. Furthermore, during the short trip to the moon, Marina and Andriusha acted as his helpers, yet it was Andriusha who was sent flowers by an enthusiastic pioneer on Earth. Therefore, while Sedykh was crucial to the mission, perfectly in command of the ship and aware of the agenda, the film suggested that his companions get equal recognition. The film offered a distinctive take on both the figure of the astronaut and on intergenerational solidarity; one that would be reiterated in later Soviet films. The future in space was a future that should belong to all, Kosmicheskii reis postulated. But it would only belong to all insofar as a fragile intergenerational balance was maintained, where the young learn from the experienced, and accepted that they were still just

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Figure 3.1  Still from the Film Kosmicheskii reis—Professor Sedykh and Andriusha.

mastering “the learning curve.” Conceited individualist youth such as Viktor would be forgotten, the film gently suggested, while those loyal to authority and ready to take on any challenge that it threw at them, like Andriusha, would be monumentalized. This reading of the film, as an attempt to resolve the tension between progress (the youth) and tradition (Sedykh), allows us to position the film on the axis of socialist realist filmmaking, and to determine its significance for further fictionalizations of the space age, beyond simple allusions to its technologically prophetic qualities, and its celebration of the pioneering role of the USSR in the space age. In this vein, it is also worth noting that the intertitles employed in this silent feature functioned in an explanatory and, most often, a didactic manner. Aside from providing the spectator glimpses into the conversations between the characters, they explained how certain aspects of the space voyage were supposed to function. For instance, radios allowed the travelers to keep in touch while on the moon, the spectators were informed. Later, Soviet space-themed productions exhibited a multifaceted influence of Kosmicheskii reis. However, its association of the space future with a specific kind of intergenerational solidarity was seldom—if ever—mentioned. Nevertheless, this normative framework encapsulated many newer films, particularly those aimed at younger audiences. Tellingly, it took over two decades for the USSR to release the next space-oriented feature, and this one, la byl sputnikom solntsa, produced by the popular-scientific film studio Mosnauchfilm was officially a popular-scientific film for children and teens. Granted that the film was aimed at less experienced audiences, the production

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was notably sophisticated in terms of the logic of its argumentation. At the same time, in line with its didactic intention, this film was evidently carefully thought-through in terms of its visual appearance. la byl sputnikom solntsa was exemplary in its demonstration of the persistence of socialist realist inclinations in cultural production that thematized nation-building myths, such as the one about Soviet supremacy in outer space. Just like Kosmicheskii reis, it did not acknowledge the existence of any nation besides the Soviet Union, equating the space age with the USSR, and therefore also almost identifying the USSR with the world at large. At the same time, the fact that the “Soviet” signifier was so strongly emphasized in these two productions—pronouncedly more so than in Aelita, Solyaris, or even Tumannost’ Andromedy, all of which were produced either significantly before the imposition of socialist realism or a considerable amount of time after its official condemnation—hints at the importance of the space race for the inner consolidation of the Soviet identity. The slight, yet very persistent distinction between the USSR and the world consistently strengthened the impression that the Soviet state was, if nothing else, at the forefront of scientific and social progress, as well as the main—or perhaps even only—conductor of global and interplanetary politics. At the same time, produced in 1959, only two years after the launch of the first satellite, Sputnik-1, la byl sputnikom solntsa presented a narrative that deviated, if slightly, from the official guidelines of near reach scientific fantasy. Namely, it actually addressed a relatively faraway future, where humans could fly around the solar system, and the Soviet daily Pravda reported on moon-based rockets. At the same time, this faraway, but apparently still twentieth-century future (Future 2) incorporated a less distant narrative (Future 1). In Future 1, the scientific community, represented only by Soviet scientists, debated whether to focus the efforts of the space program on developing (already feasible) manned spaceflight, or on the investigation of the potential existence in outer space of deadly, impenetrable zones, theorized by Ivan Petrovich Kolossovski (Vladimir Emelianov). In Future 2, Kolossovski was long dead, and his orphaned son Andrei (Pavel Matokhin) grew up to be a space engineer, and, having been brought up by his father’s colleague Sergei Ivanovich (Georgy Shamshurin), was unaware of his ancestry. He was, on the other hand, aware of Kolossovski’s legacy, having found a recording of the debates on impenetrable cosmic zones as a child. When this happened, his adoptive father also told him that Ivan Petrovich had sacrificed his life by embarking on the dangerous mission of retrieving an artificial planet, a lab that he had sent to orbit the sun in order to explore outer space. At this point, around twenty minutes into the hour-long film, the camera shifted from the interlocutors to a portrait of Ivan Petrovich, hung on the wall, and Sergei Ivanovich enigmatically instructed the young Andrei:

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“Be like Ivan Petrovich!” For the audience, this was a meaningful cue, which resolved the psychologically dramatic aspect of the narrative, and allowed to pay closer attention to the technical details. These details—visualizations of space and future space travel—were aptly drawn out in the skillful animations produced by Soiuzmultfilm, the Soviet animated film studio. The animated parts of the film visualized the solar system, the elliptic orbits of various planets, and explosions on the surface of the sun. These played an important role halfway through the film, presented in a playful, engaging manner, as dancing flames, accompanied by electronic music. This interlude was a welcome pause that allowed the spectator to reflect on the first part of the story, and a transition into the second part. Here, an abstract animation of shiny particles was used to illustrate the global importance of space exploration for the progress of humanity, directly linked to access to nuclear energy, produced in the sun’s core. This kind of interplay of imagination, vision, and scientific explanation was very characteristic of the film, linking it to the model used in Kosmicheskii reis and in Klushantsev’s popular science films, such as Doroga k zvezdam, which explored film’s utopian potential to visualize what had yet to become accessible: space and the future. Another link to the model of sf premediated by Kosmicheskii reis was revealed in a particular kind of emphasis on intergenerational solidarity represented in la byl sputnikom solntsa. A test cosmonaut, a monkey named Rena, was diagnosed with radiation-related illness after her last space voyage. Andrei, the young space engineer, was determined to invent a special kind of cosmic-radiation-resistant material that would guard future cosmonauts against ailments. Having found out who his father actually was, he was more willing than ever to risk his life to fly into the depths of the solar system to try to save his father’s space-labs, presumably still floating around the solar system and containing valuable data about radiation and impenetrable cosmic zones. However, this decision—and the film was very emphatic about this—first had to be recognized as sensible and approved by his seniors. Only once consensus was reached that a scientist rather than merely a skilled pilot should be sent to tackle this task, was Andrei ready to go. His decision to sacrifice his life for the prospects of finding his father’s legacy was both emotionally and morally motivated, as his monologue on the impact of satellites and of his father’s work indicated. In spite of the ultimately happy ending, another thrilling plot-twist was used to reinforce the connection between scientific vocation, the space age, and the long and difficult history of space exploration. Andrei managed to find and retrieve the experimental space lab, but is faced with an unforeseen situation; his spaceship was hit by a small meteorite that damages the autopilot. He was aware that he has to choose, what to save; there was only

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enough fuel to allow one unit to travel back to Earth safely. The choice was between his father’s (as emphasized by Andrei) lab and himself. Following in his father’s footsteps, he chose to rescue the lab. As he began to hallucinate and animated images of outer space were superimposed onto footage of his face, the connection with Earth was miraculously restored and he was granted another chance to return to Earth safely. The message, however, was clear; in space, every person could find themselves in the situation of needing to choose, and they should choose humanity and progress over their individual gains, even if the question was a matter of life and death. Two academic references were cited loosely in the film, Tsiolkovsky and Russian Marxist revolutionary and scientist Nikolai Kibalchich (1853–1881). The latter had anticipated the space age several decades before Tsiolkovsky, and, imprisoned (and, later, executed) in 1881, used his time in jail to attempt to develop plans for flying machine that would take man into the heavens. “Perhaps, the flying machine will take human beings into the free universe. The universe, I can see it. It awaits emancipated men, whose intellect is capable of victory,” he apparently wrote, according to the film. Notably, both his and Tsiolkovsky’s quotes were used here as inspirational slogans, even though the speakers were chosen for their scientific achievements. Space, dreams, faith, and science were forever intertwined, and remained safely embedded into the social normative framework of a utopian socialist Soviet state. At the same time, just like in Kosmicheskii reis, the iconographic aspects of the film firmly bound this utopian future with the contemporary present. The hairstyles, fashion, and interior design of this utopian Earth were not at all futuristic; apart from certain gadgets, for instance, advanced recording and video projection devices, it was actually just a reproduction of the 1950s urban USSR. Ironically, on Andrei’s way back to Earth, these images were not the first to cross his mind; he preferred to think of bubbling brooks, snow, and other natural phenomena. SPACE TO ALL—BUT ONLY UNDER THE SOVIET BLESSING. NEBO ZOVET AND MECHTE NAVSTRECHU Since the late 1950s, images of bubbling brooks, dynamic seas, and luscious forests had been popular features of Soviet space-related films, including science fictional ones. Aside from la byl sputnikom solntsa, such idyllic shots of planet Earth were prominent elements of the other two science fictional features from the late 1950s and early 1960s, Nebo zovet and Mechte navstrechu. While this imagery—as well as images of sunlit launch-sites in

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the mountains, signified by grand signal receivers, just like in East German productions of the same era, such as Der schweigende Stern (1960), and juxtaposed against somber and menacingly reddish or bluish foreign planets—strengthened the idea of the Earth as the heavenly cradle of humanity, it was also somewhat ambiguous. In la byl sputnikom solntsa, it functioned as a signal of an earthling’s joy upon his unlikely return to his home planet. Nebo zovet and Mechte navstrechu, on the other hand, embedded this imagery into the context of an international political competition, enhancing the socialist realist imaginary of a utopian near space future with an extra dimension. This statement might have tricked you into thinking that the argument of the following paragraphs will equate prosperity on Earth with the Soviet world; while there is a grain of salt to this kind of reasoning, the picture was nevertheless a little more complex. Nebo zovet, released in the same year as la byl sputnikom solntsa, also played with the possibilities of routine manned spaceflight, while obviously targeting a more mature audience and supplanting explanation of scientific facts and processes with a touch of melodrama. The narrative (siuzhet) and the raw material of the narrative (fabula), that is, the actual chronological succession of events, were so different that it was almost possible to speak about two different narratives. One of them was the narrative of a budding relationship between young cosmonaut Andrei Gordienko (Aleksandr Shvorin) and the space physician Lena (Taisia Litvinenko). This narrative followed Lena’s increasing affection for Andrei and, after a series of serious, dangerous experiences on a space mission, resulted in their happy return to Earth, to continue their life together. This melodramatic narrative was reinforced by two other stories: the story of lifelong love and devotion between senior cosmonaut Evgenii Kornev (Ivan Pereverzev) and his wife Vera (Aleksandra Popova), and the story of the tender love between American astronaut Robert Clark’s mother (Maria Samoilova) and her son (Konstantin Bartashevich). The prominence of this display of emotions was unprecedented in Soviet science fiction cinema, and was very characteristic of the general focus on individuals and their emotions, which dominated Thaw film productions. Yet, here, it was embedded into the uncharacteristic framework of a socialist realist space utopia. Therefore, these emotions appeared stiff, programmed onto character-types rather than representative of real people. However, as we shall see in the fourth chapter of this book, the gradual disintegration of this socialist realist utopia, wherein space is only open to perfect representatives of a perfect socialist society, will open up the cosmos to interactions that are less clearly and normatively defined. For the time being, though, let’s examine how this melodramatic narrative mapped onto the more active and arguably more prominent narrative of Nebo zovet. This one referred to a planned manned mission to Mars. Two

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teams, a Soviet and an American one, met on an interplanetary base, a socalled space pitstop. There, both had been working on constructing a spaceship that would take them to Mars. However, the Soviets were much more careful in their planning, whereas the Americans followed capitalist-inspired instructions from their superiors, the “Cosmos” syndicate that hoped to profit from the sensationalist news of the United States reaching Mars before the Soviets. Under pressure, exacerbated by images of various advertisements for space-themed consumer goods (including potent cocktails), Robert Clark (Konstantin Bartashevich) and his colleague Erwin Werst (Gurgen Tonunts) decided to fly, although the planets were not ideally aligned. Moreover, they discarded their Soviet colleague Yevgeny Kornev’s (Ivan Pereverzev) generous offer of going on a joint mission and benefiting from each other’s’ expertise. “It is sad to realize that we are separated by a lattice, rather than united in friendship, Mr Clark,” Kornev concluded. Predictably, the American shuttle, defiantly called “Typhoon,”30 ran into serious problems and ended up having to rely on the Soviets’ help. The Soviets, by then enjoying their smooth Mars-bound flight, unequivocally agreed to compromise the success of the mission in order to help their American colleagues. Meanwhile, the entire USSR was aware of the events in space, and eagerly awaited the return of the cosmonauts and astronauts. As they reached Earth—having given up on the idea of landing on Mars due to insufficient fuel supplies, Kornev remarking: “May this serve as a cruel, but useful lecture on unnecessary competition”—the audience followed the arrival of another ship, this one traveling

Figure 3.2  Still from Nebo zovet—Astronaut Robert and His Mother.

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by water. Clark’s mother apparently crossed the Atlantic to greet her son. As they embraced, she inquired: “Was it difficult, Robert?” “Yes, mother,” he responded, “but I also learned that the people of earth are much better than I had previously imagined.” Aquatic imagery—the landing site was also conveniently located on water—was therefore subtly aligned with an intersection of friendship, camaraderie, and political reconciliation, albeit under the auspices of the USSR. However, this was not the ending of the film; before the final credits, the viewer realized that this was all just a fictional tale, a highly utopian story, written down by Troian (Sergei Filimonov) who had visited the Rocketry Institutes to gather materials for a science fiction novel. As we have seen in several cases by this point, embedding an utopian narrative into the framework of a dream, a reflection, or a novel was a popular device in Soviet science fiction cinema, securing a definite link to reality, and stipulating the normative, allegorical, and imaginative aspects of such productions. Mechte navstrechu, Otar Koberidze’s directorial debut (with Mikhail Kariukov) however, took this device a step further. This film, the second Soviet space-themed science fiction film after Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering spaceflight of 1961, was not only inspired by another work of fiction—the Ukrainian sf writer Oles’ Berdnik’s (1926–2003) 1961 highly idealistic novella Serdtse vselennoi (The Heart of the Universe). In contrast to the novella, where the author used the entire epilogue to convince the reader about the veracity of the story, the film adaptation about events in the far-off future made its fictionality as clear as possible. Koberidze and Kariukov not only equipped the opening shots with a narrator’s inscription that dedicated the film “to young dreamers and romantics”; they went much further by then embedding the primary fictional narrative (Future 2) into the framework of a dream, a reverie imagined by a scientist from the utopian future (Future 1). In the former, society was trying hard to develop a method of contacting alien civilizations; a Soviet and a Western scientist held opposing ideological positions on the nature of a possible encounter, the Soviet believing in peace, and the Westerner predicting conflict. In this “first,” classical socialist realist future, that is, in Andrei Saienko’s (Boris Borisenok) reverie, the weather was great, the water was warm, and everyone did what they were best suited to do. “Fishermen live here, as well as poets, pupils and astronomers, artists and cosmonauts,” the voice-over narrator explained, taking on the role of the intertitles in Kosmicheskii reis and the reflexive narrator of la byl sputnikom solntsa. In this inspiring community, people could find a perfect balance between work and leisure. Accordingly, radioastronomer Tania Krylova (Larisa Gordeichik) decided to use her profession as an excuse to get into a closer relationship with the aforementioned young scientist and cosmonaut Andrei. Their romantic encounter by the river, her looking down

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at him seductively, served as the springboard into the main narrative of the film (Future 2). A dreamy popular Soviet song, I na Marse budut iablani tsvesti (Apple trees will bloom on Mars, too), composed by Vano Muradeli to the lyrics of Yevgeny Dolmatovski especially for this film—and reused in Chetvertaia planeta, analyzed in the previous chapter, to reach a nostalgic and somewhat ironic effect—served as a point of transgression. It displaced us into Andrei’s dream, where the presence of an alien civilization had already been established and he was able to contribute to decoding an extraterrestrial message captured by the receivers on Earth. An extraterrestrial civilization that had intercepted the aforementioned song, transmitted from Earth, was attempting to establish contact but seemed to be stuck on Mars and asking for help. The scientists in our utopian town, planned around the central Gagarin square that featured a great monument to spaceflight, retrieved a small communication device released by the aliens. A heated discussion developed between the previously mentioned foreigner, Doctor Lawnston (Nikolai Volkov), and Soviet academic Krylov (Nikolai Timofeev). Just like in Nebo zovet, the film emphasized the existence of an ideological binary, but, in contrast to the former film, it also stressed that this divide was bound to become a matter of the past. In contrast to the optimistic Soviet scientists who were eager to establish contact with an extraterrestrial civilization, Lawnston was still somewhat skeptical about the benevolence of the aliens’ intentions. He reminded his Soviet colleagues of the horrors of European colonialism, suggesting that, in this utopian society of the future, the ideological divisions of the twentieth century no longer applied; histories differed, but the utopian present was the same for all. At the same time, as if traumatized by the evildoings of his ancestors, he warned against a trusting attitude toward this alien expedition. He was accused of reasoning like “a politician of the past” rather than a scientist, and the Soviet argument that the only rationale behind an advanced civilization’s desire to travel to foreign planets could be its “thirst for knowledge” prevailed. All the world’s science, “the collective intellect” of the planet decided to put in gigantic efforts (including delivering impressive amounts of fuel to the intermediate base on the moon) to facilitate an expedition to Mars. This feat of cosmopolitan spirit and scientific enthusiasm was represented by an animated sequence of moon-bound rockets, accompanied by the second memorable song from this film—the march-like la Zemlia (This is I, Earth), performed by an anonymous female lead (Earth) and famous Soviet and Russian popular singer Iosif Kobzon.31 An international, gender-diverse and multigenerational crew—including Ivan Batalov (Otar Koberidze himself), Tania and Andrei—was established and sent off to Mars. They faced

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numerous difficulties, including having to land on Mars’s moon Phobos due to limited fuel, and sending a smaller vessel to Mars. Andrei and Tania’s connection grew, and Andrei ultimately confessed his love for Tania in the final minutes of the film, when he was about to die in the harsh conditions of stormy, dark, reddish, and barren Mars. After his confession, the narrative switched to something completely different. Apparently, our cosmonauts had managed to find the alien spaceship and are now transmitting live footage of alien leader, a beautiful blonde humanoid female named Aetania (Tatiana Pochepa), in slightly unusual, modernist attire, staring down at the spectators on Earth from a big screen on Gagarin square. The narrator, by now evidently one of the cosmonauts, used this contact with Earth to publicly refute Doctor Lawnston’s argument about the possible hostility of the aliens. After this clear political message, Andrei’s dream ended, and the film returned to the framework-narrative. Here, as Andrei and Tania looked at each other full of mutual adoration, they were informed—through a radio message, echoing the recent nonfictional news on Gagarin’s spaceflight—that spaceship “Ocean” had just been launched, and was headed for Mars. HOW MANY FUTURES TILL COMMUNISM? Three out of four films examined in this chapter (la byl sputnikom solntsa, Nebo zovet, and Mechte navstrechu) exhibited a distinct relation to extracinematic reality. In contrast to Kosmicheskii reis, which functioned as a near-future prediction with a civil-educational note, encouraging the children and adolescents of the USSR to study and to aim for the stars, these later productions chose to embed futures one into another, making them structurally resemble a matryoshka doll. Although this was not the unequivocally adopted approach to science fiction cinema in the USSR in the late 1950s and early 1960s (just take a look at Planeta bur’, which will be examined in chapter 4!), it was undoubtedly a popular choice. This strategy of visualizing the future had a twofold effect. On the one hand, it made producing space-oriented science fiction films safer, vouching for their realistic aspect, or keeping the specter of frowned-upon “unfounded fantasies” at bay. A dream about a faraway future is, after all, merely a dream; if framed within a more plausible future, it can even be considered a marketing device. At the same time, this layered approach enhanced the pedagogical impact of these films, all aimed at younger audiences (hence the abundant number of young adult cosmonauts, and a notable emphasis on mundane melodramatic episodes, such as love stories), and evidently produced as potentially nation-building aides. The nearer-future was not only an excuse for a more intriguing faraway future tale; it was quite clearly

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a stepping stone to that very future. Moreover, it had a mnemonic function; as the story was doubled, some of its elements were bound to be repeated, as Mechte navstrechu was not shy to demonstrate. The future was therefore something to be memorized in advance, to be learned, before it was actualized. Furthermore, it was something to be associated with particular types of social and interpersonal relations. Kosmicheskii reis kept replaying the trope of the value of intergenerational solidarity in various circumstances, both in space and on Earth (not to mention, on the moon). Mechte navstrechu was less direct, employing two thematic songs to conjoin abstract values, such as love, camaraderie, and admiration for Earth, our home planet, with static, abstract points in the narrative. la Zemlia and I na Marse budut iablani tsvesti were emblematic points in the narrative, denoting the end of particularly dramatic passages or indicating a passage into a different space or time (e.g., the end of Andrei’s dream). Moreover, in la byl sputnikom solntsa, the narrative was deliberately structured in a slightly obscuritanist manner, creating shallow intrigue (the mystery of Andrei’s father) in order to provide ample opportunities for reiterating slogans on the significance of spaceflight and satellites, as well as to emphasize the core axiological message, the importance of the capacity to sacrifice one’s life in the name of science. In Nebo zovet, the most repetitive message was the one about the ideological divide between the USSR and the United States. Although this message was always followed by optimistic conclusions on the need for and power of collaboration, ideological antagonism, Soviet, apparently altruist inclinations were proven to be superior to American capitalist individualism. At the same time, it should be pointed out that—in line with the socialist realist variant of humanism, which eventually presupposed global friendship and unity—individuals, particularly workers (in our case, the astronauts), were never portrayed in a negative light. In this sense, both Nebo zovet and Mechte navstrechu were surprisingly subtle, demonstrating the legacy of the thematic-thinking based approach to scriptwriting, as well as complying with the foreign-political climate of the Thaw, which, until the Cuban missile crisis of 1964, favored a rapprochement between the Soviet and the American blocs.32 Finally, it should be noted that Nebo zovet and Mechte navstrechu belonged to a range of science fiction films justified by the early feats of the Soviet space program (the launch of the Sputnik in 1957, Yuri Gagarin’s 1961 pioneering flight, Alexei Leonov’s 1965 spacewalk), which were produced with big budgets at some of the most important national film studios (Lenfilm, Mosfilm, Dovzhenko Studios). These “ ‘A’ quality of proverbially B productions, such as space operas,” released during the Thaw, which presented a window of relative openness of the USSR to the West, and before the USSR’s

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1973 accession to the Bern convention on copyright, were in a particularly favorable position in terms of Transatlantic migration.33 Namely, producer Roger Corman acquired copies of several films, including these two (and Klushantsev’s Planeta bur’, which will be discussed in the next chapter), on his trip to the USSR. In the United States, some of these films were refashioned to suit the anticipated preferences of the American audience. In an interview for KinoEye in 2003, Corman, who affirmed having bought the rights to the films due to their extraordinary quality, claimed to have warned “the Russians” that he would have to adapt the films by cutting out all of the Soviet and antiAmerican propaganda, and that his assertion was understandingly approved by “the Russians.”34 In particular, Mechte navstrechu was turned into Curtis Harrington’s technohorror B-movie Queen of Blood (1966).35 The remake completely disregarded the world-building message of the film as unessential for the gist of the story. The American alternate version foregrounded the action-plot, remaining within the tradition of the Western action film, this particular one inspired by the horror genre. Harrington’s Queen of Blood only really began where the Soviet film ended. Having cut out the melodrama and the ideological framework, the director/editor was left with somber scenes of the space expedition, and intriguing footage of an attractive female alien. The Soviet film never really explained why one should have reason to believe that Aetania the alien was a kind creature. And, as if taking a poke at the Soviets’ optimism, Queen of Blood expounded on the idea of her turning out to be a vampirical, man-eating monster. Footage with actress Florence Marly, whose attire had to at least partly match that of her Soviet colleague’s, was used to create this part of the story. Our lifeworlds are ambiguous and cannot be subordinated to idealist projections; Harrington seemed to be replying to the Soviets and their reverie. The Soviet dream within a dream thus became the American horror story. Conversely, the American adaptation of Nebo zovet, Francis Ford Coppola’s Battle Beyond the Sun (1962), although referring to allegorical, inexistent powerful states (South Hemis and North Hemis), relied much more on interpersonal intrigue, plot twists, such as shots of fighting space monsters, and competition as narrative-development devices than the explored Soviet productions.36 Certainly, as the next chapter will show, there is a degree of relativity to this difference in approaches; on a superficial level, it may seem to wane in later productions, as Soviet film industry decision-makers become more and more tolerant to the action-narrative-based. Nevertheless, the key features, emphasized in the analyses provided in this chapter, will continue to reemerge, in more or less evident manner, and will transform in the process, consolidating the chronotopicality of a familiar, yet distant, “Soviet space age future.”

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NOTES 1. See also Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism. Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Wolfgang Holz, “Allegory and Iconography in Socialist Realist Painting,” in Art of the Soviets. Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in a One-Party State 1917–1992, ed. Matthew C. Bown (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), 73–85; Victoria E. Bonnell, Iconography of Power. Soviet Political Posters under Lenin and Stalin (Berkeley: University California Press, 1997). 2. Peter Vail and Aleksandr Genis, 60-ye: Mir sovetskogo Cheloveka (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1988), 3–12. 3. Mariia Chegodayeva, “Mass Culture and Socialist Realism,” Russian Studies in History 42, no. 2 (2003): 49–65, here 50. 4. See for example Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avantgarde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), here 15. Also see Nina Sputnitskaia, “The politics of outer space: colonisers and missionaries in Russian fantasy film of the 1930s,” Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema 11, no. 2 (2017): 134–145. 5. Chegodaeva, “Mass Culture and Socialist Realism,” 60. 6. See, for example, Emma Widdis, Socialist Senses: Film, Feeling and the Socialist Subject 1917–1940. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017). 7. Maria Belodubrovskaya, “Plotlessness: Soviet Cinema, Socialist Realism, and Nonclassical Storytelling,” Film History 29, no. 3 (2017): 169–92, here 170. 8. Belodubrovskaya, “Plotlessness: Soviet Cinema, Socialist Realism, and Nonclassical Storytelling,” 172. 9. Idem., 173. 10. Idem., 174. 11. Idem., 187. 12. Idem., 190. 13. Evgeny Dobrenko, Stalinist Cinema and the Production of History: Museum of the Revolution (Edinburg: Edinburg University Press, 2008), here 6. 14. See also Iina Kohonen, “The Space Race and Soviet Utopian Thinking,” Sociological Review 57, no. 1 (2009):114–131, here 117. 15. Kohonen, “The Space Race and Soviet Utopian Thinking.” 114–131, here 117. 16. See also Kohonen, “The Space Race and Soviet Utopian Thinking,” 120. 17. For an overview of the conceptual debate, see Sargisson, Fool’s Gold?, Chapter 1. 18. See also Banerjee, We Modern People; Darko Suvin, “The Utopian Tradition of Russian Science Fiction,” The Modern Language Review 66, no. 1 (1971): 139–159. 19. See, for example. Christine Cornea, Science Fiction Cinema: Between Fantasy and Reality (Edinburgh: EUP, 2007). 20. Gleb Eliseev, “Nauchnaia fantastika. Fant-Iusas: Stat’i po psikhologii i filosofii eksistentsializma.” 2012. http://fant​-usas​.at​.ua​/publ​/gleb​_eliseev​_nauchnaja​_fantastika​/1​-1​-0​-16.

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21. Banerjee, We Modern People. 22. Matthias Schwartz, “A New Poetics of Science: On the Establishment of “Scientific‐Fictional Literature” in the Soviet Union,” The Russian Review 79, no. 3 (2020): 415–431. 23. Ibid., 416. 24. Ibid., 419. 25. Ibid, 420. 26. The concept of scientific fantasy, which imagined worlds in the near, rather than distant future, was formulated by a group of Soviet writers and critics in the late 1940s, and remained the dominant canon of Soviet scientific fantasy until the late 1950s. The very term close reach scientific fantasy was, however, coined retrospectively, in the early 1960s. See Sergei Larin, Literatura krylatoi mechty (Moscow: Znanie.1961), here 14–15. 27. Efremov’s socio-philosophical science fiction novel, first published in fragments in the Pionerskaia pravda and Komsomol’skaia pravda newspapers, is widely considered as a milestone in Soviet scientific fantasy history. It is a tale about a utopian Communist society on a distant planet in the distant future. The novel particularly focuses on the social and cultural aspects of this society and the man of the future. 28. Cf. Rogatchevski, “Space Exploration in Russian and Western Popular Culture:,” 211–265, here 254. 29. Cf. Idem. 30. In contrast to the Soviets’ Rodina (Homeland). 31. The female singer is not in the credits of the film. 32. See also Kohonen, “The space race and Soviet utopian thinking.” 33. Steven Yates, Invasion of the Mutant B-movie Producers: Roger Corman Interviewed about His Work in Europe, Kinoeye 3, no. 1 (2003). Accessible at: http:// www​.kinoeye​.org​/03​/01​/yates01​.php; Oleksiy Radynski, The Corman Effect: A Give-and-take between Soviet and American Cold-war Science Fiction Film. Kinokultura (2009). Accessible at: http:// www​.kinokultura​.com​/specials​/9​/radynski​-corman​.shtml. 34. See Yates, Invasion of the Mutant B-movie Producers. 35. Queen of Blood, directed by Curtis Harrington, USA 1966 (Cinema West Productions). 36. Battle beyond the Sun, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. USA, 1962 (Roger Corman).

Chapter 4

The Space Age and Its Others Soviet SF between Gagarin and Gorbachev

The 1960s, the golden era of the space age of the twentieth century, resonated in a special way in cinematography. In the Soviet cultural space, the feats of the first cosmonauts coincided with the Khrushchevian Thaw. This era is generally known to have provided a greater degree of freedom and more space for experimentation in the sphere of cultural production than the precedent three decades of Stalinist cultural politics. At the same time, the analyses of the utopian space-oriented film productions from the early 1960s provided in the previous chapters indicate that the consequences of Khrushchev’s condemnation of Stalinist socialist realism in 1956 did not affect all aspects of all cultural industries in the same way. The myth of Soviet space supremacy had not been questioned at the 20th Party Congress; on the contrary, there is evidence to believe that the Soviet space program was one of Khrushchev’s most precious projects.1 In a 2015 film Glavnyi (The Chief Constructor) directed by Yuri Kara, Khrushchev even appeared to have been the voice that had insisted on the premature launch of the first dog-cosmonaut, Laika, into space in November 1957, claiming that it is alright for her to die during the trip, if she is acknowledged to have been alive on the date of the anniversary of the 1917 Russian Revolution (November 7–8, 1917).2 In reality, Laika flew and died on November 3, 1957, disproving the veracity of this anecdote, but not its verisimilitude. Indeed, Kohonen stipulated that both Laika’s spaceflight, and the spaceflight of German Titov, the “second man in space,” from August 6, 1961, just months following Gagarin’s pioneering achievement, were promotional activities, confirmations to “the West” that the groundbreaking Sputnik-1 and Vostok-1 were not a matter of lucky coincidence.3 The statement is clear: the Soviet 1960s were about a space age that was still tied to a certain image of the special, formative role of the USSR in the global (interplanetary) future. As the utopian imagery and narratives 81

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proliferated in the films from the 1930s to the late 1960s, discussed in the previous chapters, demonstrated, this trope was quite stable, particularly in popular culture. At the same time, changes on various levels, from the general approach to cultural production to the level of film policy, the domestic political climate (the Thaw of 1953–1954) and even international affairs (the detente of 1967–1979) contributed to gradual, often subtle but actually remarkably significant shifts in certain world-building nuances.4 If the general orientation of Soviet space science fiction was toward an imaginable, yet ever more distant utopian future of interplanetary communism, the protagonists of this future and the relations between them were becoming markedly more diverse. As we shall see in the following paragraphs, the amplitude of these elements is easier to trace if one focuses on character- and actiondriven films, rather than those that foreground themes, such as “the (utopian) future,” explored in the second and third chapters. If chapters 2 and 3 focused more on the structural traits of future society, drawn out in a range of Soviet space fiction films, this chapter begins at the limits of this society, its various others. Picking up on the conclusion of chapter 2, which underscored the functions of otherness, personified by female characters in a range of foreign-planet-focused films, this chapter aims to provide an overview of several degrees of otherness, present in Soviet space cinematography. The chapter draws inspiration from the seminal overview of otherness on Soviet screens, provided in Stephen M. Norris and Zara M. Torlone’s edited volume Insiders and Outsiders in Russian Cinema (2008). At the same time, this chapter expands the notion of otherness, moving from foreignness—the main interest of the aforementioned volume—to the more slippery slope of close others, that is, the others that differentiate the group from within, and uncanny others that do not subscribe to established sociological categories (e.g., aliens and robots).5 For the purposes of the discussion in this book, otherness needs to be considered from the following perspectives. Firstly, in the context of the dialectic of cognition and estrangement, where the “other” emerges as a cognitively grounded familiar, yet also qualitatively different being, making one reconsider the very conditions of possibility of one’s experience of the world. In films such as Aelita, Solyaris, and Mechte navstrechu, otherness, embodied by female aliens functioned in this precise way, responding to markedly male fantasies. As we will see in this chapter, this use of the figure of the other was indeed widespread in the Soviet space future imaginary. However, we shall also see that the imaginary as such made offered a variety of uses of embodied cognitive estrangement. Apart from alien humanoid women, which tended to return male gazes, forms such as completely alien presences and intersections of the human and the technological also feature in certain later productions. This chapter examines them in the context of two interpretative matrices. Firstly, in terms of the classical

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interplay of nova and processes of cognitive estrangement: as figures whose possibility is grounded in cognition proper or in the cognitive effect, where the possibility of the novum is secured by the cognitive logic of the fictional universe. Following Carl Freedman, this perspective allows us to consider estrangement as a “roadmap”—a device that enables one to use fictional worlds in order to map certain critical problems within existent societies, and in terms of the cognition effect, evaluated with regard to the text’s attitude toward the estrangement introduced in it, rather than derivative of cognition proper. At the same time, the chapter takes into account another important facet of the discussion on otherness within sf and utopian studies: the capacity of sf to think radical otherness, rather than simply the “break” required to proceed from one type of social order to another. In line with Stephen Zepke’s discussion of the alignment of otherness with fluidity, eternal becoming, or, at the same time, a radically different distribution of the sensible, the chapter also interrogates the question of otherness as pure abstraction.6 In particular, this chapter focuses on the othering processes and on the relational position of others in Soviet space age communities, as these are portrayed in a range of films released during the Thaw and the following stagnation, that is both a retraditionalization and commercialization of cinematic production under Leonid Brezhnev’s government, or, in other words, between 1961 and 1980.7 In doing so, I will show in which ways these various others, ranging from different categories of fellow humans (foreigners and women, as well as virtually absent foreign women) to poorly discriminated robots, cyborgs, and abstract electronic minds, as well as alien creatures are accessories that, in these films, both challenged and sustained the utopian society of the Soviet future. Exploring the gradual diversification of trope of the other shall allow for a nuanced inspection of the slow disintegration of socialist realist postulates in Soviet science fiction, and will hint at what these had been replaced by. US Exploring otherness requires a provisional identification of the “in-group”; a statement about “us” is implicit to all definitions of “them.” Therefore, this chapter demands that we first briefly recuperate what kind of societies Soviet utopian future societies had been. While the previous chapters have given a preference to themes and transversal tropes, they also gave us a provisional glimpse into the evolution of particular social institutions, interpersonal relations, and the limits of a certain society. These general contours pointed to a gradual opening up of the world, from Soviet (Aelita, Kosmicheskii reis, Ia byl sputnikom solntsa, also Doroga k zvezdam [Road to the Stars] [1957])

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to international (Mechte navstrechu, Nebo zovet, Tumannost’ Andromedy, Solyaris, Chetvertaia planeta) social orders, and document a gradual shift “inward,” that is from the social to the psychological aspects of space exploration.8 At the same time, they posed a lot of questions regarding the horizons of social expectations. All the analyzed films clearly stated that the societies that they portrayed were classless. However, this did not mean that all hierarchies had been abolished and that the various characters were completely free to make autonomous decisions. Paradoxically, these classless futuristic societies appeared to have preserved a number of implicit hierarchies characteristic of regimes built on class and gender divisions. Because these were concealed by the décor of the communist or socialist utopia, one must ask oneself, in order to put them into the limelight: How did the various characters present in these films relate to one another? Using a functionalist lens, one could reframe this question and inquire: Which roles did the particular characters occupy and what does this tell us about the different cells, tissues, and organs of a given society? Apart from the somewhat atypical Aelita, which showcased a world in the making, a society in the process of deep and far-reaching social reform and material reconstruction (see chapter 2), all the aforementioned films released until the late 1960s (i.e., not taking into account Solyaris and Chetvertaia planeta) depicted stable and homogenous societies. These societies were based on clear ideological convictions, which prioritize scientific and technological development for the good of humanity. The good of humanity was loosely characterized as a state where each individual could focus on developing their talents—whatever these might be—and thereby contribute to general wellbeing, collective prosperity, camaraderie, and peace. Kosmicheskii reis, Ia byl sputnikom solntsa and Nebo zovet made it particularly clear that spacefarers held a very distinct position in this society. Some of them were presented as scientists and skilled technicians at the same time, and were granted leadership tasks. Such individuals were typically older men, professor Sedykh from Kosmicheskii reis being one of the clearest examples of this character-type. Sedykh was prophetic, skilled, and experienced; his function was to teach the loyal youth (Masha and Andrei) and to keep conceited schemers, such as Vitaly, at bay. If Kosmicheskii reis still relied on this interpersonal conflict as a narrative device, hinting at the possibility of an antagonist presence within this very society, the later films completely abandoned this premise. Furthermore, the male decision-makers became younger and consistently portrayed as securely embedded into institutions, such as laboratories, institutes, and, a little later, international scientific organizations. The individualism of Professor Sedykh did not resurface on Soviet screens until the 1970s, where, as we have already seen in Solyaris, it was both reinforced and undermined by the individual’s self-questioning stance.

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This is not to say that the characters of Soviet science fiction cinema were incapable of making choices and fully rely on predefined rules. Unlike robots, these films taught us, humans were capable of autonomous reasoning, and can experience affect. However, the affective spectrum that led to action in these films was emphatically narrow. In an outstanding way, Sedykh acted out of fear; he was terrified that a younger colleague might beat him to the moon and claim all of the glory for this groundbreaking event. This kind of behavior did not reappear in later productions; in Ia byl sputnikom solntsa, for instance, Andrei decided to undertake a risky space mission in order to honor his father and continue his research, as well as to fulfill his duty toward humanity. In Nebo zovet, Soviet cosmonauts decided to help their American colleagues—who were clearly depicted as slaves to capitalism—because they valued humanity, cooperation, and life more than petty squabbles over pioneering achievements. In Mechte navstrechu, the cosmonauts were once again guided by their self-imposed duty to help other intelligent living creatures. In Tumannost’ Andromedy, Erg Noor decided to embrace his love for Niza Krit instead of getting treatment that would numb his brain. He chose to sacrifice his peace of mind for the complexity of the human condition, and embraced the extra responsibility that came with this decision—he was, after all, the commander of the spaceship, and was obliged to safely guide his crew home. The only affects that our protagonists were allowed to act upon were thus dignified, idealized affects that complied with the ideological convictions of Stalinist Soviet humanism, including its imaginary of masculinity.9 Apart from the alien Aelita, women were not particularly in the limelight in the productions from this period. Moreover, as argued insightfully by Åsne Ø. Høgetveit, their position was rather ambiguous; they were both elevated, viewed as creatures of superior intuition (and arguably even moral supremacy), and of a weak disposition, prone to irrational decisions.10 Niza from Tumannost’ Andromedy was perhaps the best example of this ambivalence: normally a skilled astronavigator, she was suddenly completely overcome with her selfless love for Noor, when the latter was in danger. She proceeded to put own life under threat just because her love demanded it. On Earth, Noor’s official wife Veda Kong, on the other hand, chose to wait for Noor’s safe return before admitting her own love for Dar Veter. Both women acted completely selflessly and subjugated their lives to men, either for ethical (Veda) or amorous (Niza) reasons. This imperative, which resurfaced to different degrees in Mechte navstrechu and even in Kosmicheskii reis, where women were portrayed as inspirational sidekicks, muses, and assistants with little to say, but a lot (of emotional support) to offer, indicates that both early (Kosmicheskii reis) and mature (Tumannost’ Andromedy) Soviet utopian space futures required the gender binary and a patriarchic constellation of

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gender relations. In the absence of so many potential others that would enable the in-group to differentiate itself from them, and hence to identify itself in relation to the outside world, others such as malevolent aliens, criminals, wartime antagonists (remember, in these films, even the Americans were treated as fellow humans who are in need of Soviet assistance), and the traditionalist gender binary provided a much-needed cue for plot twists, and served as a narrative device. At the same time, as the universe of Soviet science fiction film gradually began to open up to futures beyond socialist realist ideals, the spectrum of others also started to broaden. Indeed, even the women of Mechte navstrechu and Tumannost’ Andromedy already lived in markedly international societies, and even coexisted with alien life. While these latter “others” came across as rather bland and undefined in these particular films, they did signal more transformations to come. Indeed, what happened to the gender binary in Soviet science fiction film after its universe becomes open to the possibility of international space collaboration and aware of alien lifeforms, robots, and cyborgs? Let us examine the films that granted them special attention. AND THEM: PLANETA BUR’ AND TAINSTVENNAIA STENA While socialist realism dictated progress toward a highly ideologically determined future, based on the clear presumption that the advanced stages of the space age, involving interplanetary travel and communication with extraterrestrial intelligence, will be managed by the New Soviet Man, it was also aligned with scientific inquiry as the vehicle of progress toward the communist future. In the realm of science-fiction and popular science cinema, this translated into a heightened interest in film’s capacity to visualize the future. In fact, until the late 1970s, Soviet sf films exhibited a clear influence of trick-master Pavel Klushantsev’s popular science masterpiece, the cinematic tribute to the history of the Soviet space program, Doroga k zvezdam (1957). This film, an exquisite combination of celebratory, patriotic narration, and footage that both memorialized the work of Soviet space scientists and extrapolated it, harnessing visualization as one of the privileged tools of imagination, had set the pace for later productions characteristic of Soviet pre-moon landing science fiction cinema and popular science film alike. Produced by the Leningrad popular scientific film studio Lennauchfilm, Doroga k zvezdam carefully navigated the border between documentation and fiction, embedding both into a clear ideological context, and using the cinematic medium as the privileged arena for tricks, much like film pioneers from the early twentieth century, such as Georges Méliès, and Vasily Zhuravlev

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in Kosmicheskii reis.11 However, if Zhuravlev conceived of spaceflight as a symbol of Stalinism and Soviet power, and mused on spaceflight as a dream, Doroga k zvezdam, inspired by the actual developments of the Soviet space program, “dreamt bigger,” not only about a trip to the Moon but also about an entire ecology of manned space and spaceflight, with satellites, rockets, Moon landings, and space colonization. Moreover, if Zhuravlev’s film had come out in the twilight of early Soviet cosmic enthusiasm, Doroga k zvezdam was intended to make the spectator smell the rocket, and to invite Soviet youth to join the ranks of engineers, physicists, and pilots. Not only did this film inspire Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, it also resonated in a range of Soviet productions that followed. Klushantsev directed two more successful popular science films, Luna (Moon) (1965) and Mars (Mars) (1968), but this fascination with observation of other worlds also permeated his first fiction feature. Less than a year after Gagarin’s leap into the Earth’s orbit, Klushantsev directed Planeta bur’, which came to often be quoted as one of the masterpieces of Soviet science fiction film, albeit for different reasons than Aelita, Tumannost’ Andromedy or Solyaris. Planeta bur’, based on well-known sf writer and scientific-fictional literature proponent Aleksandr Kazantsev’s (1906–2002) eponymous novella, adapted into a screenplay by the author, depicted an international space mission to Venus. It has been praised for its zero gravity scenes, vanguard special effects, and imaginative decorations used to show the apparently thriving Venusian lifeworld, full of fascinating creatures, including dinosaurs.12 This particular footage has been reedited and adapted twice by American directors, first to become Roger Corman’s The Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965), and then Peter Bogdanovich’s The Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968).13 The adaptations made extensive use of Klushantsev’s imagery of the Venusian world and those of the space voyage, but all references to the original Soviet mission were omitted. In turn, the Soviet original of the film is sometimes called as a Soviet response to Fred M. Wilcox’s The Forbidden Planet (1956), mostly due to the presence of the first space robot (Sir John, played by acclaimed USSR heavyweight wrestler Boris Prudovsky) in Soviet cinema. Indeed, The Forbidden Planet featured Robby the Robot, allegedly the first robot on film to have a distinct (actually, a distinctly helpful) personality. At the same time, it should be noted that the plots were remarkably different, as the American film used outer space as a setting for technohorror with pronounced melodramatic elements.14 The Soviet production, on the other hand, did not have malevolent aliens at its disposal and was not concerned with interspecies and intercivilizational antagonisms. Rather, it offered us a safari through Venus, marveling at giant prehistoric carnivorous plants and dinosaurs, and offering a display of the cosmonauts’ adventurousness. Sir John the robot, an American product that insisted on being treated with

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the utmost respect, or, rather did not respond if addressed using the friendly “ty” (“thou”) instead of the formal “vy” (“you”), was treated here as an equal, physically exceptional and resourcefully equipped member of the team. His American colleague Allan Kern (Georgii Teikh) was also accepted as an equal to Soviet cosmonauts. In fact, according to the film, the mission to Venus, intended to verify whether there is life on the planet, initially consisted of three spaceships. One of the ships, Capella, was destroyed by a meteorite during the voyage. Sirius (with six Soviet cosmonauts on board) and Vega (hosting Allan, as well as Sir John and two Soviet cosmonauts, Masha Ivanova [Kiunna Ignatova] and commander Ivan Shcherba [Yuri Sarantsev]), on the other hand, managed to reach the Venusian orbit. Because three ships were necessary to ensure the entire crew’s Venus-landing and safe return to Earth, Capella’s premature crash made the situation unexpectedly complicated. The crew decided to descend, and to leave Masha on Vega, alone in orbit, to maintain connection with the authorities on Earth, as well as to ensure the others’ possibility to return to the orbiting spaceship. Unfortunately, Masha lost touch with the explorers down on Venus, and was torn between two equally unsettling scenarios: descent and an attempt to find her colleagues, which would condemn all of them to life on Venus, or idleness in orbit. Masha finally opted for the second, more sober of the two alternatives, but a series of dramatic events, reactions, and decisions preceded and framed this outcome. Incidentally, while the male protagonists’ gender and origin were not marked at all, and even robot John’s non-humanness was underscored rather

Figure 4.1  Still from Planeta bur’—Masha and Sir John. The Mission Commander Is Asking Masha to Stay on the Spaceship While the Rest of the Crew Lands on Venus.

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delicately and never condescendingly, Masha’s gender created a subplot of its own. In fact, Masha’s gender and gender alone made her stand out among her comrades. Taking note of how the male Soviet cosmonauts addressed Masha as “my little girl,” how she was quickly identified as the one who shall stay behind, on the spaceship, while the men went to explore Venus, and, finally, how she was condescendingly equated with a generic “woman,” incapable of rational reasoning at the end of the film, one could quickly assume that she was being treated as inferior to men. She was, after all, shown floating playfully in zero gravity and laughing at her own frolics. She also broke down and cried when she could not decide whether to land the Vega spaceship or stay in orbit. Incidentally, the then current Minister of Culture of the USSR, Yekaterina Furtseva, condemned this very scene, claiming that no Soviet female cosmonaut should allow herself to tear up in space.15 At the same time, it was Masha who had a mysteriously strong intuition; in spite of a number of theories that claimed otherwise, she was certain that there was life on Venus, and was not afraid to argue about it with her male colleagues. She was adamant in describing her life in orbit by recounting various details that the male cosmonauts found irrelevant (e.g.: “I have been singing songs. I threw off my magnetic boots and flew around in the cabin.”). These incidents, so qualitatively different from the men’s rational, foreseeable conduct, both establish the male part of the crew as the in-group and positioned Masha as an other, whose pure difference from this in-group created space for unpredictable situations. Tellingly, before deciding to remain in orbit, Masha actually initiated landing, throwing the spaceship off course and leaving her comrades on Venus without precise coordinates of the ship in orbit. Moreover, she did not inform her colleagues about her decision to abort landing quickly enough; they only received her first message, which stated that she was about to join them on the surface of this “prehistoric planet.” Their comment on the message was: “Even a machine is capable of reasonable judgment. But to expect such a thing from a woman.” The image of the woman in orbit as illogical and completely inaccessible was reinforced by another analogy: in the final shots, one of the cosmonauts found a mysterious rock in the depths of the Venusian ocean. The rock contained an image of a woman, perhaps an alien princess, a wink to the Martian Aelita that we have gotten acquainted with in chapter 2. The link between the female and the ultimately alien presence was not only an anecdotal feature of Planeta bur’. In a less structurally prominent way, we have seen the two coincide in Aelita, and they later reemerged in Solyaris. However, the conundrum of the alien woman functioned slightly different from the otherness of the futuristic cosmonautes. Alien women allowed terrestrial men to reflect upon their own societies, as if re-inspecting them from an outside, from a more detached, and, at the same time, more sensitive, if

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not sensuous perspective. Hari in Solyaris allowed for Kelvin to reflect on his own humanity, his traumas, and his relations with his close relatives. She also enabled him to see the Earth and humanity in more abstract, even conceptual terms, foregrounding questions of belonging, love, and empathy. Similarly, Aelita in Aelita allowed Los to view his own world as a whole, and a whole that he belongs to, in contrast to the peculiar world of the Martian people. Masha did no such thing. Her otherness was interior to the terrestrial world, and it was essential to its functioning. It did not challenge the world, it completed it, and added to it a dynamism that it would otherwise lack, with detrimental consequences. These consequences, however, were not explained in the film, which is why other similar constellations provided a welcome complement in this regard. Niza from Tumannost’ Andromedy related to the world in a similar way to Masha’s, foregrounding its male protagonists’ blind spots, not to say shortcomings—their lack of faith in intuition, a daring and zealous quality, based on affect, rather than rational judgment. However, Tumannost’ Andromedy still remained slanted toward the male point of view, and did not focus on alien encounters at all, granting us but a limited glimpse into performances of femininity in particular and of otherness in general. A much more nuanced perspective was, in contrast, provided by its contemporary, the first science fiction film by a female director, Irina Povolotskaya, Tainstvennnaia stena. In terms of structure, main themes, and plotline, director Irina Povolotskaya’s unacclaimed and semi-forgotten black-and-white debut Tainstvennaia stena, produced in 1967 by one of the largest Soviet studios, Mosfilm, in the collaboration with the Iunost creative association, was, in my opinion, the most original Soviet space science fiction film of all time. Today, references to this film explicitly acknowledge that it must have influenced Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s famous 1971 novel Piknik na obochine (Roadside Picnic), which inspired Andrei Tarkovsky’s highly acclaimed 1979 science fiction film Stalker (Stalker) (1979).16 In retrospect, Tainstvennaia stena does appear to have sketched out several significant topics, which traverse both Tarkovsky’s Solyaris and Stalker, and were, by many critics, interpreted as the influence of Łem’s novel Solaris. Indeed, Tainstvennaia stena, based on a screenplay cowritten by Povolotskaya with Aleksandr Chervinsky and Mikhail Sadkovich, revolved around a mysterious wall-like radioactive apparition in the middle of the taiga, and the scientists who tried to study it, some even dreaming about establishing contact with it. The wall, or, rather, an extensive dome, made anyone who approached it experience psychedelic visions from his or her own past. However, this is where the analogies with Solyaris and Stalker end. Unlike Tarkovsky’s productions, Tainstvennaia stena was not a meditation on the human psyche and its connections to the macrocosm; nor was it focused on the experience of a strong male

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protagonist. Instead, Tainstvennaia stena originally combined the aesthetics of Soviet Thaw cinema, with a science-fictional plot, managing to generate several insightful developments. Firstly, the focus of the film oscillated between very mundane affairs, such as the protagonist Yegor Lomov (Lev Kruglyi) and his fiancée Lena’s (Tatiana Lavrova) struggle to find a balance between his passion for his work and their relationship, and the general, looming anxiety about the unexplainable presence and activities of the mysterious wall. The film granted equal attention to the wall, Lena, and Yegor, as well as to Yegor’s colleague, Georgian scientist Andrei Iraklievich Erdeli (Iraklii Ouchaneishvili) and senior sergeant Valia (Andrei Mironov). The heteroglossia of this production was enhanced by other elements, such as a parodic talk-show, presented in the very opening shots. The elegant female talk-show host interrogated a scientist about the mysterious wall, invoking theories about an alien presence. Shots of Egor in the taiga followed. Having spent weeks in the proximity of the energetic dome, he was still very much puzzled by it. He told his colleague that the radio malfunctions at the time of the manifestation of the wall, which was not a constant presence. Andrei, who arrived to the cabin with Lena, and Yegor fooled around in the cabin, joking about the possibility of this affair being an alien encounter. These inserts were clearly satirical in nature, poking fun at the authority, often granted by the public to the rather hermetic discourse of science on the one hand, and at the rhetorical and affective appeal of conspiracy theories on the other. Lena, who arrived at this cabin in the woods, using her vacation days to be with Yegor, was particularly apt at such jokes. She was clearly reserved about her fiancé’s fanaticism, and scared to see him taken over by research fervor. Andrei was also uneasy to see his colleague prioritize work over the harmony within his relationship with Lena. He told Egor to take Lena to the Georgian seaside, to Sukhumi, and to get married. Yegor was reluctant, enthralled by the phenomenon at his feet, and determined to find a way to access it using reason; he was also the most enthusiastic of the bunch about the extraterrestrial-hypothesis, according to which the wall had either been sent by aliens as a means of communication with humanity or was itself an intelligent alien presence. All of the four protagonists (Yegor, Andrei, Valia, and Lena) were drawn out with a fair amount of complexity, which was enhanced by the hallucinations that they experienced when they approached the wall. Through these, the audience learned that idealistic, romantic Valia had once served on a battleship, which apparently helped rescue a Canadian writer (Valentin Nikulin), who was found estranged and alone, at sea. In this episode, the writer, whose appearance and speech indicated a surrealist, and perhaps a psychedelic influence, said: “A Martian? No, I am not a Martian. I am no one. I am alone in the ocean. Although, it sounds beautiful. A Martian. Yes, to you, I am a Martian. We are all Martians. We are all naked in the ocean.”

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Figure 4.2  Still from Tainstvennaia stena—The Canadian Writer Rescued by a Soviet Battleship.

This episode was key to the message that the film harbored regarding otherness. The mysterious wall provided a strong metaphor for barriers between individuals; the metaphor was further enhanced by the foregrounded relations between the protagonists. Unable to make emotional contact with Egor, Lena thus experienced a fit of jealous rage. Desiring to end this unbearable situation of anxiety and limbo, and following her intuitive guess, supported by her encounters with the wall, she decided to break into it, hoping to establish contact with whatever it may be, and to resolve the “problem.” She ran toward the wall, not listening to Andrei and intentionally misinterpreting as amorous advances his attempt to stop her by wrapping his arms around her. He backed off, and she would not listen to his pleas. Luckily, she did not reach the wall on time, it disappeared before she can enter. The ending of the film was relatively anticlimactic, the four protagonists returning to Moscow, reporting on their trip, and the scientific community deciding to form another, extended expedition to study the wall. The lack of resolution, and the overall focus of the film on walls, material, and metaphorical, on the incapacity of individuals to truly understand one another, made Tainstvennaia stena an unprecedentedly subtle Soviet sciencefictional production on otherness as a philosophical notion. Rather than aiming to explore identity and the possibilities of intersubjective union, this film, often judged as somewhat eclectic and incoherent due to its reluctance to provide straightforward arguments, let alone answers, questioned some of the most important axioms of Soviet space science fiction cinema. One of them was the common assumption that extraterrestrial life would develop

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analogically to life on Earth, and, related to this, that intelligent extraterrestrial life would be more or less anthropomorphic. The trope of an abstract, energetic alien presence, introduced in Tainstvennaia stena and picked up and developed in Solyaris and Chetvertaia planeta was the only one to challenge the dominant essentially humanist and crudely evolutionary imaginary of the Other. I argue that Tainstvennaia stena went further than Solyaris in its exploration of radical otherness, persistently staying away from all kinds of moral or didactic messages. The wall was not there to teach us anything; the images from the protagonists’ pasts that it initiated were not there to allow for any kind of personal development. They simply faced the humans with eerie, uncanny, and unknowable otherness. Like the neutrino-creations generated by Solyaris, they demonstrated that even images that were, on the surface, representations of what one knew or had known, were not stable. Yet, unlike Solyaris, the narrative of Tainstvennaia stena, uncannily interwoven with a soundtrack that alternated between electronic buzzing sounds and popular twist compositions (by Sergei Slonimskii), told us to embrace otherness in a very postmodernist sense, to live alongside it, wherever it may come up (in personal and professional affairs, in the taiga and on the television screens). Moreover, after Aelita, Tainstvennaia stena was the first Soviet space science fiction film that introduced parody and satire into the idea of the future of humanity, including space exploration and contact with extraterrestrial civilizations. Strikingly, in Tainstvennaia stena, the object of satire was not just the mythology of Soviet space supremacy, and the imminence of the Soviets being the first to establish contact with alien intelligence; Povolotskaya did not just question the structures and ideology of Soviet research, she directed the spectators’ attention to the human element within these structures. Her scientists all had their individual backgrounds (e.g., Andrei, was a Communist Party activist who had left his wife behind in rural Georgia to “bring up /his/ son,” while he set out to build a career) and clear limitations, both social and psychological in nature. Lena’s status as a woman in this group was drawn out with particular care. If Planeta bur’ taught us that from the perspective of the organization of Soviet public life, Soviet working women were close others, clearly distinguishable from the male “in-group,” regardless of their profession and of the dominant ideology that had, rhetorically “abolished the gender question” in 1918, Povolotskaya presented a mildly alternative perspective.17 By highlighting Lena’s point of view, vocalizing her role, and following her as she made her own decisions, the director managed to highlight serious contradictions inherent to the Soviet policy of a genderless society due to its imposition onto a traditionalist, patriarchic cultural imaginary. Current social order dictated that both Lena and Egor pursue their careers, but it expected of the woman to be willing to tailor her own career (and herself) to her male partner’s needs and ambitions. Furthermore, current social order

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promoted egalitarian dialogue on various issues, but Lena’s opinions on the wall and the disturbing situation that it gave rise to were often disregarded by Egor. Andrei was characterized as more sensitive in this regard, but the only alternative to their quarrels that he knew how to offer was for Egor to take Lena to the coast and get married. In spite of all of these tensions and her own anxieties and clear desire to leave the mysterious taiga, Lena was portrayed as—also—a very capable, intelligent individual. In fact, it was she who articulated an important, and a highly nuanced point about alienness, surpassing her male colleagues’ theories. “They could be entirely unlike us. They could be small like ants or gigantic, like clouds,” she claimed, perhaps indicating that her own experience of a certain degree of otherness within her own society was what gave her a broader perspective on the world. Interestingly, Tainstvennaia stena was released in the same year as a more popular, equally atypical Soviet science fiction film, Ego zvali Robert (They Called Him Robert), directed by Ilya Olshvanger and produced by Lenfilm.18 Although not a straightforward space exploration film, this feature is worth mentioning for two reasons. The film followed the adventures of a very humanlike robot, Robert (Oleg Strizhenov), a spitting image of his creator, Sergei (also Strizhenov), who was sent to live on his own for a while, as part of an experiment to determine whether he could ever replace a human being in real life. Robert was presented as an upgrade of previous models of robots; in this context, Sir John from Planeta bur’ briefly took the scene again, this time in an unpleasant comparison to Robert, who, in contrast to John, looked like a natural human being. The narrative of the film suggested that Robert’s appearance was more than superficially misleading, as he kept getting taken for his creator in the most bizarre of situations. Following a convoluted mixup, he was even taken for a human being to the detriment of another character, the alcoholic Mykola Knopkin (Mikhail Pugovkin), who was mistaken for the robot. Ironically, Mykola accepted his identity, even proclaiming “We must serve humanity.” Robert, on the other hand, exhibited an increasing curiosity about the human world, wishing to learn “what beauty is” and how to err. His creator was pessimistic about these prospects and proclaimed— albeit somewhat unconvincingly—at the very end of the film that “it may be better to stick to humans when it comes to space missions.” Apart from signaling that robots like Sir John, heavy metallic machines, were about to become outdated modes of thinking otherness and humanmachine interactions, Robert also succeeded in questioning the limits of our own humanity. Robert and Mykola suggested that our social roles and actions were highly dependent on our self-identification, which, in turn, was marked by our willingness to act in accordance with social labels, imposed onto us by other members of society. Apart from otherness attributed on the basis of provenance (aliens) or biological parameters, such as gender (women), this

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film indicated that otherness could also result from an individual’s refusal to comply with these social expectations. However trivial this finding may sound, its appearance within the Soviet science fiction imaginary was nonetheless significant, pointing to the ignition of an interest for difference in favor of the previously prevalent ambition to establish an all-encompassing social system with no room or need for the Other. WE’RE ALL JUST ORDINARY MEN: THE PILOT, THE INSPECTOR, AND THE ALIENS BEYOND THE LOOP In the 1970s, the so-called Brezhnevite stagnation period, marked by stricter censorship (which did not bypass science fiction, where for example the Strugatsky brothers were suddenly faced with serious problems), Soviet science fiction saw a notable decline, called upon to appeal to the masses, but to steer clear from questioning contemporary social reality.19 At the same time, socialist realism never officially returned. These two circumstances, coupled with the fact that funding for science fiction films was the simplest to get in the realm of children’s film production, led to a proliferation of science fiction films for children and teens, which will be explored in the next chapter. The disbalance that suddenly appeared, with a relative abundance of space-related science fiction for younger audiences and almost an absolute absence of productions for adult audiences within this genre, was partly exacerbated by the stagnation of the USSR’s space program since the early 1970s.20 Nevertheless, science fiction’s broadly acknowledged potential to function as a light, entertaining genre brought it back to screens toward the end of the 1970s; Doznanie pilota Pirksa, an adaptation of Łem’s novella by the same name, opening up the field in 1979. In several respects, this highly experimental Soviet-Polish coproduction, a collaboration between Tallinfilm and the Polish Film Fund, can be seen as a milestone in the Soviet space age science fiction imaginary. First, it provided a mature reflection on the implications of the development of robotics, tackling paramount ethical questions in a rather nuanced manner. Second, it treaded cautiously and skillfully on the brim of several genres, enhancing the lighthearted and entertainment-oriented form of the Western European and American space thriller with philosophical and ethical undertones, more common in the Soviet tradition of space science fiction cinema. Third, as explored in detail by Eva Näripea, the film offered a profound commentary on the human condition under the social order of late Soviet socialism.21 In doing so, it often resorted to absurdly humorous satire in order to highlight this time as an era of many contradictions, and managed to steer clear of unequivocally supporting any particular ideological option. Finally, the film set the stage for later productions, such as Zvezdnyi inspektor

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and Petlia Oriona; while evidently inspired by it, each developed its starting points into different directions, sacrificing a great degree of reflection for action and props. Nevertheless, treated alongside one another, and in the context of approaches to Otherness exhibited by earlier Soviet science fiction films, the three productions provided a complex response to the intriguing question of what kind of others persist in the Soviet space imaginary after the relative loosening of ideological boundaries that had marked film policy and artistic canons since the 1960s? All three films in question, that is, Doznanie pilota Pirksa, Zvezdnyi inspektor and Petlia Oriona, were set in the advanced space age of routine space travel, and androids or advanced artificial intelligence. All three conceived humanity in terms of an international and intercultural society, and—very tellingly—this society is no longer necessarily the utopian socialist community that we have just gotten familiar with in this same imaginary. Significantly, pre-perestroika Soviet space science fiction cinema borrowed more than just special effects and plot-twists, such as tropes about perilous alien encounters and mischievous, egoistic space rogues from Hollywood productions like Star Wars. The entire future horizon suddenly shifted to a different social order. Although Zvezdnyi inspektor and Petlia Oriona and, to an even greater extent, later productions, such as Lunnaia raduga, Vozvrashchenie s orbity and Lilovyi shar indicated that the shift was not permanent, it was by all means remarkable. It signified a symbolic transition from a (supra)national imaginary with one possible future to a multitude of imaginaries with different scenarios about their development. Technological progress all of a sudden ceased to coincide with spiritual advancement and with a pathway toward interplanetary communism. Accordingly, Doznanie pilota Pirksa, set somewhere in the near future, where international organizations, such the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization—UNESCO had to negotiate their agendas with prominent international corporations, was set in a capitalist world, where an individual (in our case, pilot Pirx (Sergei Desnitsky) faced far more dilemmas than his predecessors from earlier Soviet films. A lonesome, opinionated, and yet somehow disillusioned hero, he had to navigate his own way through a labyrinth of difficult dilemmas. He was summoned by the UNESCO and the Kibertron Electronics corporation to perform a pilot space mission, where he was to observe a mixed crew of androids (here called simply robots) and humans. Upon arrival, he was to report to the UNESCO on his findings, which would be used to draft a resolution on android-production, accounting for various ethical aspects of the latter, and stating whether and in which measure androids could replace humans. In contrast, Petlia Oriona, released two years later, started off from the premise of this question having been resolved. The offered solution was simple and idealist; the film

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presupposed total human control over androids (here called cyborgs). A mixed crew of human cosmonauts and androids, replicas of the human crew (“Not to confuse you by new faces,” one of the developers of the mission stated) was sent to inspect a potentially dangerous energetic loop approaching Earth. It was determined that the loop was produced by an alien civilization, which some of the cosmonauts erroneously believed to be malevolent. Although this assumption was finally overturned—in fact, the aliens, victims of a “glass virus” of galactic proportions, were trying to save a fellow civilization by wrapping it into the loop, which the virus could not penetrate—the premise as such indicated a direct deviation from established earlier Soviet narratives. This initial mistrust toward alien others was clearly not rooted in the tradition of socialist-realist space age utopianism; the assumption that the sole purpose of robots was to serve humans, on the other hand, echoed earlier productions, such as Planeta bur’ and even Ego zvali Robert. Furthermore, the aliens’ mode of appearance—they were holograms that resembled the crew members’ close relatives—reminded one of Tarkovsky’s Solyaris, where the sentient ocean of the alien planet brought to life the protagonists of the cosmonauts’ traumatic memories. However, just like the potential uncanniness of the cyborgs, the one of the holographic apparitions was swiftly resolved in Petlia Oriona, as it was rationalized by the narrative; the aliens, who looked nothing like humans, simply felt that they needed to take on familiar, anthropomorphic form in order to make contact with humans. The question of gender was explained away in a similarly matter-of-fact kind of way. The crew sent to Orion’s loop involved three male cosmonauts and one female, Masha Dementieva (Liudmila Smorodina). Like most females on such missions in Soviet film, she was a doctor; she was also the Commander Pavel Belov’s (Leonid Bakshtaiev) intimate partner. She was therefore safely structurally prevented from taking any decisions that would be outside of the domain of taking care of the team’s health and well-being. The melodramatic aspect of the film was left to the men; cybernetician August Goris (Gennadii Shkuratov), for instance, was emphatically distrusting of the aliens’ intentions, and created quite a bit of havoc as he tried to destroy the loop. In doing so, he died and injured the commander. This message appeared to have high moral value; August’s distrust cost him his life. Unlike his colleague Mitia Tamarkin (Anatoly Mateshko), who also almost died as he attempted to take action during a meteor shower, August was not saved by the well-meaning aliens. Notably, August’s name also suggested that he might have been the only non-Soviet member of the crew. In this sense, his otherness could be interpreted as cultural and moral. We can see that this film’s response to Pilot Pirx’s statement about the imminence of a capitalist future was to subtly highlight the moral superiority of the Soviet social ideology of egalitarianism, comradeship, and openness to otherness, albeit at the expense of preserving

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traditional cultural models of interpersonal conduct, including a clear malefemale distinction and hierarchy. Zvezdnyi inspektor employed a similar approach, but took a step further. Here, a rogue astronaut crew—Douglas Cober (Emmanuil Vitorgan), Steve Wilkins (Vilnis Bekeris), and Marjorie Hume (Valentina Titova), apparently desiring to destroy a network of international space stations—was eventually revealed to have gone astray due to an external cause.22 Dubos, a supercomputer built by humans to aid space exploration, took over an entire planet and zombified this crew of scientists—who had been sent on a mission by the Mainthouse corporation to create this prototype of an artificial mind—turning them into soulless antagonist space pirates. In this storyline, alienness was once again attributed to human nature itself, and eventually rendered manageable and even masterable. But before this happy ending, where Dubos was defeated by the inspection crew from the International Cosmonautics Association, the audience would learn that the computer had managed to exert mind control over its creators by making them focus entirely on their own latent psychological weaknesses. Marjorie, for instance, became convinced that she must do everything to protect her baby twins, who were in fact but illusions created by the AI. It therefore appears as if Zvezdnyi inspektor provided an important counternarrative to Doznanie pilota Pirksa. The latter film overtly referenced Western film genres (e.g., the detective film) and aesthetics characteristic of Western dystopian science fiction cinema. In doing so, it accepted a dystopian capitalist society as the imminent future, McDonald’s cafes and uncanny multinational corporations included, and made the individual (Pilot Pirx) bear the burden of ethics. Zvezdnyi inspektor, on the other hand, used the aesthetics of Western science space operas to convey a different message. Here, Douglas, Steve, and Marjorie, employees of the Mainthouse corporation, were depicted as glossy prisoners of a fake gilded cage. Wearing outfits that would have been worthy of Star Trek, they were enslaved by their own creation, commissioned by a corporation.23 Representatives of the capitalist world, they no longer had the capacity of seeing through the “conditions of their own lives”; they needed to be rescued by an ethical collective, embodied by the International Cosmonautics Association, tellingly consisting of nationals of socialist states, such as the Russians Sergei Lazarev (Vladimir Ivashov), Gleb Skliarevsky (Yuri Gusev), and the Czech Karel Zdenek (Timofei Spivak). FORWARD, TO CHILDHOOD This chapter attempted to analyze the complexities of the relations between plot, character, and structural position in the Soviet space sf imaginary,

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foregrounding the question of otherness in terms of representation, function, and structure. Focusing on a variety of films, all united in their overt interest in the “other,” I demonstrated that a distinction should be made between the nominal “other,” such as the Venusian creatures in Planeta bur’, the alien presence in Tainstvennaia stena, and the robots/cyborgs in Doznanie pilota Pirksa, Petlia Oriona, and Zvezdnyi inspektor. This distinction mostly subscribes to the function of cognitive estrangement: the enumerated nova point to the real others in the distinct utopian space-age Soviet societies: women in Planeta bur’, all people outside oneself in Tainstvennaia stena, and a lateSoviet society headed for transition into capitalism in the productions from the late 1970s and early 1980s. Planeta bur’, Tainstvennaia stena, Solyaris, and Ego zvali Robert navigated relatively calm worlds, where humans inhabited stable, knowable social systems that allowed them to explore themselves, or, at the very least, allowed the directors to take a closer look at their psychological mechanisms, leading to intricate stances on human, robotic, and extraterrestrial difference and its immediate significance for the question of how to navigate the future. Planeta bur’ demonstrated the power of visualization in foregrounding structural relations between various categories of humans and the world around them, unintentionally positing that even a space future based on ideals of international collaboration and classlessness in Soviet society would entail gender-related inequalities. Tainstvennaia stena, on the other hand, played with the idea of otherness as highly abstract alterity, examining in what ways approaching a radical other entailed that one become-other, exhibiting a markedly processual perspective. In turn, zvezdnyi inspektor and Petlia Oriona highlighted the question of human-technology interactions to address the less faraway question of impending social change. In doing so, the two films testified to the unconventionality of the critically acclaimed and popular Doznanie pilota Pirksa; while this 1978 production challenged many tacit assumptions of the Soviet science fiction imaginary, the two 1980 films demonstrated that this challenge did not go unnoticed. It is unclear whether the screenplays of Petlia Oriona and zvezdnyi inspektor really consciously took issue with Doznanie pilota Pirksa, yet it is very apparent that they made attempts at providing ideologically acceptable answers to contemporary questions (the future of robotics, and the future economic order of the world), first posed by this very film. Along the way, all three films exhibited a range of insecurities about both the impending transition from Soviet socialism to capitalism, and also demonstrated a very capacity of the legacy of Soviet socialism to prevent transition into a capitalist dystopia. While Petlia Oriona and zvezdnyi inspektor nominally placed their hope and faith in camaraderie, collective conscience, and international governance, which guaranteed happy endings, these responses to problems posed by

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the unknown (new technologies and new economic arrangements) appeared unconvincing, both lacking the appeal of the capitalist individual freedoms and lacking flexibility, liveliness, and vision other than that of a state under totalitarian control. Due to this preoccupation with the questions of socioeconomic character, the obsession with otherness, touched upon in the productions from the 1960s to early 1970s, was no longer as pronounced in these later films. The late 1970s and early 1980s productions on the other hand rejected all of the complexity brought out in the films that immediately preceded them. In a return to the programmatic ideological presuppositions that had marked the majority of Soviet science fiction until the late 1960s, they reframed these presuppositions (of the future being a socialist future with clear social norms, values, and ethics) in the context of a dangerous, divided world, plagued by factors beyond state control, embodied primarily by corporations. In doing so, however, they responded not only to the aforementioned productions but also to a very particular segment of Soviet science fiction cinema—children’s and teen films, which were especially popular in the 1970s. Conveniently, these shall be explored in the next chapter.

NOTES 1. Kohonen, “The Space Race and Soviet Utopian Thinking.”. 2. Glavnyi, directed by Yuri Kara, Russia 2015 (Studio Master). 3. Kohonen, “The Space Race and Soviet Utopian Thinking,” 115, 118. 4. Idem, 115. 5. Stephen M. Norris, and Zara M. Torlone, eds, Insiders and Outsiders in Russian Cinema (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2008). 6. Zepke, “Beyond Cognitive Estrangement,” 91–113; Mark Bould, “On Carl Freedman’s Critical Theory and Science Fiction,” Historical Materialism 10, no. 4 (2002): 297–305. 7. Cf. Birgit Beumers, Pop Culture: Russia! (Barbara, Denver, Oxford: ABC Clio, 2005), here 9, 72. 8. Doroga k zvezdam, directed by Pavel Klushantsev, USSR 1957 (Lennauchfilm Studio). 9. For a referential investigation into Soviet masculinity in Stalinist cinema, see John Haynes, New Soviet Man: Gender and Masculinity in Stalinist Soviet Cinema (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2003), here 30–67. 10. Åsne Ø. Høgetveit, “Female Aliens in (Post-) Soviet Sci-Fi Cinema: Technology, Sacrifice and Morality,” Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media 19 (2018): 41–71. https://www​.digitalicons​.org​/wp​-content​/ uploads​/2019​/02​/DI19​_3​_Hogetveit​.pdf.

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11. See Birgit Beumers, “Special/spatial effects in Soviet cinema,” in Russian Aviation, Space Flight and Visual Culture, ed. by Vlad Strukov and Helena Goscilo (Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2016), 169–188. 12. Cf. Beumers, “Special/spatial effects in Soviet cinema,” here 175–177. 13. Roger Corman’s The Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (USA1965 (The Filmgroup)), and then Peter Bogdanovich’s The Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (USA 1968 (The Filmgroup)). 14. Cf. Susan A. George, Gendering Science Fiction Films: Invaders from the Suburbs (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), here 150. 15. E. Kharitonov, “Kosmicheskaia odisseia Pavla Klushantseva,” in Na ekrane Chudo—Otechestvennaia kinofantastika i kinoskazka (1909–2002): Materialy k populiarnoi entsiklopedii / NII Kinoiskusstva, ed. E. V. Kharitonov and Andrei V. Shcherbak-Zhukov (Moscow: B. Sekachev, 2003), http://www​.fandom​.ru​/about​_fan​/ kino/​_st03​.htm. 16. Stalker, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, USSR 1979 (Mosfilm). 17. Cf. Linda Edmondson, “Women’s Emancipation and Theories of Sexual Difference in Russia 1850–1917,” in Gender Restructuring in Russian Studies: Conference Papers–Helsinki, August 1992, eds. Marianne Liljeström, Eila Mantysaari and Arja Rosenholm (Tampere: University of Tampere, 1993), 39–52, here 40. 18. Ego zvali Robert, directed by Ilya Olshvanger, USSR 1967 (Lenfilm). 19. Cf. William J. Thompson, The Soviet Union under Brezhnev (Oxon, New York: Routledge, 2003), here Chapter 9. 20. A curious exception is the first Soviet space-themed musical, Eta vesiolaia planeta (This merry planet), directed by Yuri Saakov and Yuri Tsvetkov and produced by Mosfilm in 1973. This light-hearted film, which plays with the idea of extraterrestrial humanoids being mistaken for humans on Earth, gently interrogates the core premise of Tarkovsky’s Solyaris. If the former claims that humans need space and aliens to encounter themselves, the latter puts aliens in an analogous position. Through interaction with humans, the technologically advanced, rational aliens featured in this film, where they crash a Soviet corporate New Year’s eve party, realize that they can and need to love. 21. Eva Näripea, “Soviet and Post-Soviet Images of Capitalism: Ideological Fissures in Marek Piestrak’s Polish-Estonian Coproductions,” in Red Alert: Marxist Approaches to Science Fiction, ed. Ewa Mazierska and Alfredo Suppia (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2016). 22. Spelled as Margaret Hewm, but pronounced consistently as Marjorie Hume in the film. 23. Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry, USA 1966–1969.

Chapter 5

Little Soldiers, Perfect Aliens, and Spoilt Brats Soviet and Post-Soviet Space Kids as Liminal Agents

The unprecedented degree of playfulness that characterizes the early Soviet sf 1980s productions examined in the previous chapter did not emerge out of the blue. Nowhere was the tendency to domesticate space, to turn it into something homely, almost cozy—albeit with strangely formal undertones, reminding us that it was still essentially a dangerous environment—as prominent as in the science fiction productions of the 1970s and 1980s, aimed at younger audiences, that is, children and teens. Productions, such as Richard Viktorov’s Moskva-Kassiopeia and Otroki vo vselennoi (1973, 1974), Valentin Selivanov’s Bol’shoe kosmicheskoe puteshestvie (1975), as well as Pavel Arsionov’s Lilovyi shar (1987), to name a few, reinforced the link between the conquest of outer space and children as basic tenants of the anticipated Soviet communist future. In short, these films typically portrayed child-cosmonauts as the imminent future of space exploration, which both expanded and limited their horizons of expectations and their agential capacities. More was expected of these kids, but these expectations were of a distinct kind, and act to the detriment of their spontaneity and their inclination to act on impulse or without a distinct, pragmatic purpose, often associated with childhood. Appropriately, while attempting to attract and amuse the audience, according to the directives issued by the post-Thaw film authorities and filmmakers, these productions remained infused with a clear pedagogical and a patriotic note. At the same time, the corpus of these films does not offer a uniform or a perfectly homogenous image of Soviet children or models of childhood of the future. This chapter will argue that the image of a consistent universe of Soviet childhood and adolescence in the context of future space exploration depended much less on the actual children involved and much more on the power dynamics between the adults and the children 103

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in these films, as well as on the way that the children were embedded into a consistent set of space-related chronotopes, such as the one of the spaceship. While the abundance of contemporary nostalgic references to the particular universe of space voyages involving young protagonists indicates that the genre was not only popular, but left a long-lasting impact, this “golden age” of Soviet teen and children’s science fiction was, in fact, very short-lived, and is currently mostly associated with the first and most successful 1970s productions. Although the last Soviet film featuring the adventures of young cosmonaut, the popular protagonist of sf writer Kir Bulychev’s (1934–2003) novels Alisa (Lilovyi shar), was released in 1987, it actually signaled a crisis that had engulfed this aspect of Soviet science fiction almost a decade earlier; Arsionov’s attempt to modernize and rejuvenate Viktorov and Selivanov’s iconic films failed quite miserably with the critics and audiences alike.1 Nevertheless, it also involved an important innovation, expanding the genre toward the pole of fantasy and fairy tale, and anticipating the evolution that would follow in successor-films released in post-Soviet Russia, after a decade’s silence. Without such intentional attention to continuities, the ways in which childhood is portrayed in post-Soviet youth-oriented science fiction cinema might at first glance appear to differ strikingly from the Soviet variant. The childprotagonists in Oleg Kompasov’s Aziris-Nuna (2006) and the teens in Fedor Bondarchuk’s Pritiazhenie (Attraction) (2017) were no longer automatically burdened with the future of humanity, unless they specifically chose to take it on as their concern. However, some of these differences are more superficial than one may think. The décor and the plots cast aside, a contrastive comparison of productions from 1973–2017 reveals that, in Soviet and post-Soviet Russian science fiction films alike, childhood as a trope remains a liminal terrain. Having the privileged role of “the future,” children have been, at the same, strangely absent from and alien to the present—unlike their representations in other cinematic genres. This chapter will demonstrate several structural aspects of this liminality. It will highlight that the ambivalent status of the concept of childhood (as a social status with a certain horizon of expectations, functions, and limitations) in the Soviet context was linked to a certain ideological ignorance of the specificities of adolescence and puberty, characteristic of Soviet youth policies of the second half of the twentieth century. On this ideological level, I will argue, childhood and adolescence often got conflated as a transitional phase of progression leading to adulthood, rather than an independent, explorative, and largely self-sufficient phase in one’s life.2 This characteristic was particularly apparent in science fiction films, featuring apparent “ideal-types” of children, children of the Communist future. Interestingly, these types of children belonged to the films of the gloomy times of Brezhnevite stagnation and Gorbachev’s perestroika, political contexts wherein the very concept of a Communist future had become

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questionable, not to say irrelevant; this implies that the very intention of these films need not be interpreted at face value.3 Could youth-oriented space science fiction films of the 1970s and 1980s have been the first satirical sf interventions on Soviet screens? And, if this was the case, can an analogy be made with their successors in post-Soviet Russia? The latter belong to the very different context of Vladimir Putin’s government, whose visions of the development of the Russian Federation might not depend on pioneers and cosmonauts, but do involve healthy “patriots.” By contrasting Soviet children and adolescents with their post-Soviet peers in space travel-themed films, this chapter will not only explore the different modes of being a child in Soviet and post-Soviet science fiction cinema. By focusing on the transformations in positionalities, narratives, and aesthetics of a selection of particularly remarkable films, it will shake up the solidity of the stereotype of a “kind, good” Soviet children’s science fiction cinema, and point out which features of that cinema are currently being reworked in contemporary films. PERFECT, STRANGE, AND ABSOLUTELY ANNOYING: ABOUT THE SELECTION The discussion presented in this chapter foregrounds only a selection from the vaults of Soviet and post-Soviet Russian space-related sf films for younger audiences. Widely known productions, such as the 1984 television series in five parts, Gostia iz budushchego (The Guest from the Future) and the 1979–1990 series of plays for television—telespectacles, Etot fantasticheskii mir (This Fantastic World)—were excluded for two reasons.4 First, the present study focuses primarily on feature films, intended for public screenings. The formats of a television series and a telespectacle (telespektakl’) differ from feature films, produced primarily for home viewing, rely on particular narrative devices, granting more time to character development (series) and emphasizing theatrical effects (televised play). The rather compact format of a feature film for a younger audience, on the other hand, is faced with the challenge of keeping the spectators’ attention for a full 80–100 minutes, while delivering a consistent, memorable story. Animated productions, such as the famous Taina tretiei planet (The Mystery of the Third Planet), an animated series-adaptation of Kir Bulychev’s popular, space-opera-inspired book series (1965–2003) on the space travels of the young cosmonaut Alisa Selezneva, which featured in Gostia iz budushchego and Lilovyi shar (one of the analyzed films), were also left out from the present discussion.5 Instead, this chapter focuses on the feature films that (appear to) clearly position children and teens in adventures involving space exploration and/or dialogue with extraterrestrial civilizations. These are the

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aforementioned Moskva-Kassiopeia and Otroki vo vselennoi, as well as Bol’shoe kosmicheskoe puteshestvie from the 1970s, Lilovyi shar from the late 1980s, and Aziris-Nuna from 2006. The analysis of children and childhood in these films is enriched by a contrastive perspective provided by two films produced for teenage audiences and, accordingly, featuring adolescents, if not “young adults”: Richard Viktorov’s Cherez ternii k zvezdam (notably, the screenplay for this film was written by the aforementioned prominent Soviet children’s sf writer Kir Bulychev) and Fedor Bondarchuk’s Pritiazhenie. This selection allows us to grasp the coordinates of several distinctions: the distinction between Soviet and post-Soviet Russian representations of positionalities of children and childhood in stressful situations; the distinction between representations of adolescence in both historical contexts; finally, the distinction between the structural functions of space-related productions for younger audiences in the USSR of Brezhnevite stagnation and Gorbachev’s perestroika and those in Putin’s Russia. It is through these contextualizations and comparisons that childhood can be understood as a liminal state, and children as liminal agents. THE LIMINOID ASPECTS OF SOVIET CHILDHOOD, AND THE DIALECTICS OF PLAY AND WORK Liminality was introduced into the lexicon of the social sciences and humanities by anthropologist French Arnold van Gennep in 1909 and popularized by British anthropologist Victor Turner in the late 1960s, following the translation of van Gennep’s work into English.6 Turner referred to liminality profusely during his study of the Northwestern North-Rhodesian (today: Zambian) province’s Ndembu community, for which certain rites and rituals presented the core of social life. On a most abstract level, liminality, etymologically derived from the Roman līmen, a threshold, refers to transition, demarcated from the preliminal stage of systemic separation (from a social role/status, a place, a time, or a situation) and the postliminal phase of reintegration into the system.7 One of the most common contexts to study liminality are the rites of passage, accompanying an individual’s transition from childhood to adulthood. However, the usage of the term has recently been expanded to the studies of broader social phenomena, including political transition between different regimes, as well as to periods of socioeconomic transition. At first glance, childhood, the developmental stage of human beings that precedes adolescence and adulthood, does not appear to comply with any of the given criteria for liminality. If anything, these define adolescence, the teenage years of proverbial insecurity, skin problems and other intense

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hormonal changes, as well as often a heightened awareness of one’s own capacity to act and a willingness to exercise this capacity, sometimes in selfdestructive ways. However, youth policies often disregard these physical and emotional aspects of adolescence, subjecting the quickly evolving teens to social structures very similar to those they endured as children: rigid school schedules, after-school activities, and numeric achievement-assessment practices.8 In this sense, the Soviet child-socialization system was very modernist, designed to ensure and facilitate progress toward adulthood. School education typically lasted between nine and eleven years. After the first seven years of obligatory elementary and middle school, some students were encouraged to enroll in professional, technically oriented education facilities, tekhnikums, but most students remained in “school,” completing general secondary education requirements before enrolling in different kinds of tertiary-education facilities, such as university. In practical terms, this system meant—and still means, in its eleven-year Russian variant—that children aged seven to eighteen studied in the same building. If the Russian, post-Soviet school system has retained many of the formal elements of Soviet education, such as the possibility to transfer to professional education courses after the ninth year of middle school, children are no longer subject to any particular requirements regarding their “socialization as citizens.”9 Namely, in the USSR, school education was complemented by three levels of social association that the growing up Soviet citizens were strongly encouraged to take part in at different stages of their pre-adult lives: young schoolchildren swore oath to the Soviet Union as oktiabriata, the children of the great October, secondary school pupils then became “pioneers,” and tertiary-education participants were invited to join the Komsomol—the Communist Youth League of the USSR. All these stages of socialization were intended to prepare the Soviet youth for later engagement in Communist party activities. Throughout the long history of the Soviet State, its youth policies exhibited a remarkable consistency in values, aims, and tools. Relying on longitudinal studies of school textbooks and accompanying materials from the Soviet space (1940–1989), following Erica Burman, Zsuzsa Millei, Iveta Silova, and Nelli Piattoeva postulated that the official Soviet ideology, evident from these aforementioned materials, saw the child as “an index, a signifier of ‘colonization’ and ‘modernity.’ ”10 In their attempts to “delink” the child from the project of Western, rational modernity, these authors used official pedagogical tools from various periods, as well as (once) children’s own memories in order to unveil the “multilayered logic of coloniality,” supposedly at the core of Cold War–era Eastern European and Soviet pedagogical policies.11

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Soviet children, Millei, Silova, and Piattoeva stated, were taught literacy in a very particular context. This context socialized them into adopting notions, such as the linear progression of time, the validity of the modernitynarrative, which supports the necessity of constant progress, including progress from childhood into adulthood, and tied the notion of “independence,” an achievement, unlocked by literacy, to certain expectations, of which the core was the capacity to contribute to a common, Soviet future, underpinned by the belief in a common, Soviet identity.12 Studies on the Russian educational system of today indicate that most post-Soviet transformations referred to the level of contents: signifiers, such as “Soviet identity” have been replaced by references to “Russian” identity, future, and so on, but the approaches to education, such as the emphasis on literacy and on fact-based learning, particularly in the domains of the social sciences and humanities, still persist. Millei, Silova, and Piattoeva’s approach to “delinking” childhood from grand narratives of modernity, focused on textbook analysis and memories of once-children, granted little attention to the differences in approaches to socializing the youth that happened over time: Lisa Kirschenbaum, whose study focused on the politics of childhood in 1917–1932, was often cited, even when materials from a much later period, such as the perestroika, were discussed.13 While the similarities between the pedagogical tools, such as textbooks, analyzed in the study, did support this approach, it also begs for more contextualization. Here, studies that focus on representations of childhood could be of help. Alexander Prokhorov’s analysis of children screened in films from the period of the Thaw, for instance, provided astounding observations on censorship-approved images of children “at war,” that is, children during World War II. Here, official ideas on “progression towards adulthood” were demonstrated as nuanced and altered by both lived experience and artistic interpretation.14 Distinctions between children and teens also became apparent in these films albeit very particular versions of such distinctions, where teens typically took on responsible, adult roles, and the younger children were portrayed as more irrational and emotional. In the analyses that follow, we will see to what extent “children in space” can be related to “children at war.”15 In contrast to “children at war,” who were “embattled, destroyed and violent,” required to grow up overnight in order to survive, Millei, Silova, and Piattoeva’s study stipulated that “children in times of peace” were, from a very early age, socialized into adulthood through play that mimicked work, and through youth institutions that mimicked those of adults (e.g., the Pioneers’ Union).16 While Soviet child-cosmonauts certainly belonged to this category, their post-Soviet heirs were not at all familiar with the concept, which contributes to a new level of intertextuality between the two categories

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of films, and allows to compare and contrast the varying agential trajectories of these different generations of kids. Accordingly, my analysis below traces the liminality of Soviet children featured in space-related filmed aimed at younger audiences through two interrelated perspectives. Firstly, I demonstrate how these films, which relied on a broadened definition of childhood as all preadulthood, constructed it as an uninterrupted rite of passage that culminated in an adventure in/related to outer space. In this adventure, two core socialization axes were tested in order to determine whether the children were ready to take on responsible roles in adult society: their capacity for camaraderie and their acceptance of binary gender roles. At the same time, I argue that this schema, characteristic of the vast majority of Soviet space sf for younger audiences, was so clear and unambiguous, that it functioned as an estrangement device, and uncanny extrapolation of certain problematic aspects of the Soviet and post-Soviet Russian political regimes. In this sense, I attempt to demonstrate how outerspace-related chronotopes in these films function as an anti-carnivalesque device. In contrast to the Bakhtinian carnival, these chronotopes condition, enable, and display a festival where, under the guise of playfulness and naivety, hierarchies are not suspended, but reerected and solidified.17 CHILDHOOD AS PREADULTHOOD AND SPACE AS A RITE OF PASSAGE Out of the six productions focused on in this chapter, four (MoskvaKassiopeia, Otroki vo vselennoi, Lilovyi shar and Aziris-Nuna) involved or young teens going into space and engaging in an adventurous narrative of “saving the day.” In Aziris-nuna, they even traveled through time. Bol’shoe kosmicheskoe puteshestvie had preteen pupils think they have been sent on a space mission, only to reveal that this was just a test-mission, executed in a special underground simulator on Earth. On the surface, Moskva-Kassiopeia, Otroki vo vselennoi, and Bol’shoe kosmicheskoe puteshestvie were closer to standard Soviet definitions of science fiction as a potentially projective genre, while Lilovyi shar and Aziris-Nuna were closer to fantasy, mixing elements from science fiction and fairy tales. The plots of Cherez ternii k zvezdam and Pritiazhenie also provided a mixture of the ethical dilemmas and ideals characteristic of Soviet sf but revolved around the prospects of fantastic interactions between human adolescents/ young adults and extraterrestrial humanoids. In both cases, the prospects of heterosexual love between earthlings and aliens were interrogated. In Cherez ternii k zvezdam, a young extraterrestrial woman inhabited a home on Earth, while Pritiazhenie envisaged the consequences of an alien spaceship landing

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in the Moscow suburbs of Chertanovo, and one of its passengers, an attractive young male, establishing contact with a local female high school student. The fact that all of the selected films framed engagement with either outer space or with creatures from outer space in terms of a highly responsible and potentially dangerous endeavor is not extraordinary as all of the films were initially set in the “near future” of the twentieth century, while Aziris-Nuna might even have taken place in the “present” of the late twentieth or early twenty-first century. It is characteristic of science fiction in general—and this is supported by our previous discussions on various Soviet productions—that space only ceased to be a dangerous realm in those faraway futures or alternative universes, where space travel was already commonplace for earthlings (or for the extraterrestrial protagonists of such stories). In all the productions examined in this chapter, however, space was still mysterious, although the very fact that it was starting to welcome children and young adults (true for all of the films except Aziris-Nuna and Pritiazhenie) invited the spectator to consider it as a homelier realm than ever before. Closer examination, however, revealed that space in these films was neither to be considered foreign, nor was it masterable by children. Aesthetically, all the films discussed demonstrate the cinematographers’ good knowledge of contemporary Western productions. Moskva-Kassiopeia has often openly been referred to as “the Soviet response to 2001: A Space Odyssey,” the reference alluding to the film’s ingeniously engineered zero gravity scene.18 At the same time, both Viktorov and Selivanov made a special effort to ground their films in the tradition of Soviet science fiction cinema; the terrestrial landscapes, for example, were consistently depicted in rather traditional, even rural, Russian contexts, such as wooden houses and green flatlands, and Soviet institutions, for example, schools, labs, or the Moscow cityscape. In Moskva-Kassiopeia, the inclusion of the latter actually sparked an argument between the scriptwriters Avenir Zak and Isai Kuznetsov, who opposed the Viktorov’s insistence on a scene involving the young cosmonauts appearing on Moscow’s central Red Square.19 Nevertheless, Viktorov decided to keep the scene, probably to reassure the state censors. According to the scriptwriters, the film passed them with flying colors. The post-Soviet Russian productions were grounded in both the Soviet and the international traditions of science fiction filmmaking in a slightly different way. Rather than presenting direct continuity with the outlined aesthetics of Soviet sf for younger audiences, Aziris-Nuna reused one of the theme songs from Moskva-Kassiopeia (Etot bol’shoi mir [This great world]) in its final credits. Pritiazhenie, on the other hand, refrained from formal analogies and reused the plotline of an encounter with space being a test for future life on Earth. As I will argue further, both of these seemingly trivial details hint at underlying structural continuities and their limits.

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Figure 5.1  Still from Moskva—Kassiopeia—A Zero Gravity Scene.

The Children of the USSR and Space as a Training Course There is an important feature to how minors ended up in space (or thinking they are in space). In all the Soviet films, their missions were a part of a bigger, grander, state-supported plan to explore the Universe, as well as to incorporate its potential other civilizations into its political project. Children were brought up in a way that allowed them to conjoin their creativity and their intellectual capacities. In Moskva-Kassiopeia, for example, pioneer Vitia Sereda (Mikhail Yershov) even devised a plan for a fifty-two-yearlong space voyage, operated by a teen-crew. Therefore, while children are generally seen as highly capable beings; nevertheless, their projects have to politically and ideologically comply with state policies. Children were seen as potential executive agents. Notably, the children in question were “not older than fourteen or fifteen years of age.” According to contemporary standards, as well as to iconic depictions of this age group from the archives of world cinema, they were actually teens. Yet, they exhibited none of the characteristic teenage patterns of behavior: no hyper-critical reflexivity, no social criticism, no preoccupations with their bodies, emotions, and the psychological changes that young adolescents usually go through. Rather, their disposition corresponded to that of children-at-war. They responded obediently to their elders; they acted altruistically, for “the Cause” (fulfilling their mission), they were quick to forget petty interpersonal disputes and focus on the tasks at hand. Of course, in contrast to children-at-war, these

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our protagonists—who resembled Robert the robot from Ego zvali Robert (see chapter 4) and could be described as “physically teens, emotionally robots”—were not as concerned with physical survival, as they were with their contribution to a larger social project. This description of the state of affairs might of course come across as somewhat black-and-white; after all, both Moskva–Kassiopea and Bol’shoe kosmicheskoe puteshestvie involved undertones of childish recklessness, play, fun, and puppy love. Moreover, the protagonists of Bol’shoe kosmicheskoe puteshestvie, Fedia (Sergei Obrazov), Sasha (Igor Zakharov), and Sveta (Liudmila Berlinskaya), were clearly younger than those of Moskva– Kassiopeia / Otroki vo vselennoi. If the latter were allowed to actually embark on a mission of their own planning, the former were selected to experience a space voyage as winners of a national competition; the audience learned by the end of the film that this voyage was just a simulation, as Sveta, Sasha, and Fedia were exposed as children that were too young and inexperienced for space. Nevertheless, their slightly older and more experienced seven members (three girls and four boys) of the crew of spaceship ZARIA.20 were also eventually portrayed as in danger of not completing their mission without the advice of the watchful IOO—the nameless Special Service Executive played by Innokenty Smoktunovski. Their mission, to reach an Earth-like planet in the Cassiopeia constellation, which was sending out signals of distress, was almost sabotaged by crew member Fedia Lobanov’s (Vladimir Basov, Jr.) awkwardness. He accidentally pressed a combination of controls that launched the spaceship ahead in time, making them arrive at their destination twenty-six years too soon. At the same time, it was very clear that such moments of childish recklessness served as plot accelerators or cues for the deployment of special effects (e.g., what better excuse to demonstrate zero gravity than a button, accidentally pushed by a child?), rather than as important independent sub-narratives. They were not nearly as vital to the plot as the untamable, irrational havoc triggered by the spoilt and capricious post-socialist brother-duo in Aziris-Nuna. In Moscow-Kassiopea, cca fourteen-year-old Vitia and Fedia might have argued and fought over who had written a love note to Vitia prior to their space voyage, but the fight resembled a primary school squabble, an attempt to prove that boys were superior to the trappings of girly emotions, rather than a chivalrous, sentimental episode. These scenes, coupled with the girls’ purely comradely functions, and the boys’ genuine enthusiasm over various gadgets, pushed one to associate these characters, officially teens, with younger children rather than adults. In Otroki vo vselennoi, the sequel to Moskva-Kassiopeia, Fedia once again created unexpected problems by descending into an underground city on the foreign planet reached by the team, and losing radio-connection with his crew. Nevertheless, camaraderie

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proved essential in this episode, as he was later found by his selfless crewmates, and the planet was saved as the Soviet teens managed to burn down a population of malevolent robots who had taken over power and almost eliminated the humanoid population that had created them in the first place. In both Moskva-Kassiopeia / Otroki vo vselennoi and Bol’shoe kosmicheskoe puteshestvie, space missions served as testing ground that allowed children and teens to demonstrate their admirable civic qualities and prove they were ready for adulthood. This dynamic did not change when the limelight turned to older adolescents or even young adults. Stepan Lebedev (Vadim Ledogorov), a university student and therefore officially a young adult from Cherez ternii k zvezdam, may be seen as an older version of the minors described earlier: well-educated, polite, perfectly socialized, he was portrayed as a youth who was well-aware of his family duties, loving and respectful toward his grandmother, and as an embodiment of the moral norms advanced and followed by his father. The latter was a scientist who insisted on bringing humanoid Niya (Elena Metelkina), an extravagant and enthrallingly beautiful otherworldly female, whose spaceship crashed on Earth, home with him in order to study her and to initiate contact. Suggestively, contact was emphasized to be “a two-way gesture.” Against the backdrop of relatively conservative views on interpersonal relationships, endorsed in Soviet youth sf cinema, Stepan’s and Niya’s physical maturity allowed them to transgress the initial human-nonhuman binary and to fall in love with one another. Stepan took on a key role in promoting Niya’s agency in the human world, only for both of them to discover that her greater mission was elsewhere, on her own dying planet Dessa. The

Figure 5.2  Still from Cherez Ternii k zvezdam—Stepan and Niya in Stepan’s Parents’ Countryhouse.

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film could be read as the final phase of childhood, or of “progression towards adulthood”—indeed, these young adults eventually opted for participation in a collective project. Niya, who, over the course of this film, became integrated into the community on Earth, chose to overpower her implanted “obedience center,” which tied her to power structures on her home planet, and to fall in love, but ultimately managed to overcome this final, romantic temptation, and returned to her planet. Stepan, who had been probed by idealist notions of selfless love, as well as by the transgressive impulses provoked by a first love, returned home, to his family unit, and to his site of collective agency. Collectively promoted morals allowed a genderless future to triumph over the sentimental present. Interestingly enough, a structurally similar process of integration, transgression, and catharsis was present in Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth from 1976.21 The Crew as a Gender-Socialization Test There is one aspect in which the films involving children and teens were particularly similar to Cherez ternii k zvezdam. No matter what (space voyage or an alien encounter) the main “test” that our young protagonists were subjected to actually was, one of the lessons they learned—apart from camaraderie and the ultimate value of remaining faithful to one’s homeland—was the lesson of gender. This lesson did not apply to the male protagonists as much as it did to the female ones. In Cherez ternii k zvezdam, humanoid Niya did not only learn what it was like to be human; she was also taught what was expected of her as a human woman.22 Her decision to exercise unprecedented agency, and return back to her dying planet, was partly justified precisely by the fact that she was only humanoid, but still alien. In contrast to this, in Moskva-Kassiopeia and Otroki vo vselennoi, the girl-cosmonauts completely internalized the assumption that their role during the mission was a supportive and an aesthetic one. They never took on any major decisions, but consistently encouraged and assisted their male colleagues. In Bol’shoe kosmicheskoe puteshestvie, the lesson was drawn out in even more expressionist strokes. Sveta, the girl-cosmonaut, was characterized as a dreamy individual through songs (e.g., Ya zametila odnazhdy [I once noticed], composed by Alexei Rybnikov, to lyrics by Igor Kohanovsky) that consistently took her back to Earth and were accompanied by romantically hued visuals. Her fantasies, as presented in the videospot—a non-diegetic musical insert, intended to contribute to character development and to provide an entertaining digression—were drawn out as related to her male colleague and to the proverbially feminine origin, Earth. The videospot was featured during a critical moment in the narrative, when Sveta was supposed to individually perform a risky task. It was, essentially, Sveta’s concise

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reflection on her upcoming space voyage, focused on depicting her and her male colleagues as determined, serious young cosmonauts; nevertheless, it quickly drifted off to images of Sveta’s fantasies about life on Earth. Here, she dreamt about running through the green grasslands with her colleague and temporary commander of the ship Fedia Druzhinin, about colorful umbrellas, washed by summer rain, and about coming back to Earth. Moreover, Sveta was characterized as a human being of incredible intuition, but was often discredited, as her opinion was disregarded by Fedia as hallucination or illusion. Sasha never questioned the accuracy of the older Fedia’s judgment; it is ambiguous whether this was due to Fedia’s status of temporary crew commander, his age, or his gender. At the end of the film, it turned out that, from the very beginning of the voyage, temporary crew commander Fedia had been aware that the mission was a mere simulation. Nevertheless, none of his crew members discredited him as a lier, nor did Sveta take any particular pride in her sharp mid-mission observations, which would have exposed its true nature, had it not been for Fedia’s emphatic denial of their value.23 The film hereby both affirmed and discredited the status of Sveta’s girlhood. It offered an affirmation of her intellectual capacities and, paradoxically, a discreditation of her capacity for rational judgment. These contrasts stood out particularly strongly in youth films, where the young child-protagonists ensured there were no romantic bonds intervening in the narrative. A similar aspect of gender-socialization was highlighted by Lilovyi shar, the last Soviet children’s science fiction film, an adaptation of Bulychev’s eponymous short story on the space travels of cosmonaut Alisa Selezneva (played by Natalia Guseva, who had starred in the same role in Arsionov’s 1984 Gostia iz budushchego television mini-series). This film is worth mentioning for two reasons. This late-Soviet production with a convoluted story was the first Soviet film to conjoin space-exploration tropes with those from the realm of traditional Russian fairy tales. Although the idea in itself was not novel, Soviet space science fiction had, until this film, consciously steered clear of fantasy, let alone of connections to pre-Soviet imperial legends. The liberalization and disillusionment about Soviet myths, characteristic of Gorbachev’s perestroika, however, opened up new horizons in this regard, resulting in curious films, such as this one, focusing on young space explorer Alisa’s attempt to save the world by going back in time, to “the time of tales and legends.”24 Accompanied by friendly, six-armed-giant-alien-archaeologist Gromozeka (Viacheslav Nevinnyi), she set out to find a stone violet ball, containing the utmost evil, deposed by particularly malevolent aliens and about to explode in “our time,” unleashing misery and chaos on Earth. In the film’s “present,” where Alisa was invited by her father, Professor Seleznev (Boris Shcherbakov), to join him on a short space mission, this ball—the location of which on Earth is unknown—was revealed as in danger of being

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broken, and the evil unleashed. Alisa proposed to look for it in the time of legends, a specific timespace that she knew well and that was structured according to and inhabited by characters from Russian folk tales and legends. One would imagine that such a rich universe, allowing aliens to meet creatures from the world of the Earth’s mythical past, would present a space for unprecedented encounters and unexpected relationship patterns. Although this particular concoction of costume and puppet fairytale film and classic Soviet space science fiction narratives remains unrepeated to this day, only rivaled in its intertextual breadth by Aziris-Nuna, which will be analyzed in the following paragraphs, the film’s richness did not go beyond visual eclecticism. Rather conventionally, Alisa managed to convince mission commander Zelenyi (Viacheslav Baranov) and her father to let her travel to the mythical world of the past, only if she were to be accompanied by an adult, Gromozeka. Moreover, prior to these negotiations, she was—despite her short hair and worker’s one-piece suit—clearly drawn out as a young teenager, and a rather traditional woman-in-becoming. This was clear both due to her willing and immediate acceptance of all of the domestic, homemaking chores on the spaceship, such as dinner preparation. Furthermore, just like in Bol’shoe kosmicheskoe puteshestvie, she was credited with exceptional intuition; however, because her trip to a different timespace was sanctioned by the mission commander Zelenyi (Viacheslav Baranov) and by her father, this intuitive capacity was not discredited. In her interactions with the inhabitants of the time of legends, she was portrayed as a charming girl, whose affability assured that the crew would enjoy the necessary help of Magician Ouououkh (Vladimir Nosik), whose magic delivered the Earth of today of the explosion of the lilac ball. How? Well, Ouououkh simply threw the ball toward the Sun. As a character, Alisa was, in short, a child, capable of intervening in the world of adults in certain circumstances, and only once she had been permitted to do so. In order to promote her own maturity, however, she was first required to demonstrate her capacity to act as an adequately, traditionally socialized grown-up woman. At the same time, she could not exercise all the privileges of adult independence; this ambivalent status secured her as a liminal agent; her childhood was on the brink of adulthood, but “not quite there yet”; it was also in the magical place of tales and legends, where “there be dragons.” Typologically, Sveta, Alisa, and Niya were carved out from the same bark; their particular, feminine liminality was secured by the distinction of their girlhood (Sveta and Alisa) from childhood at large, as a softer, more intuitive, but also fragile and somewhat impressionable version; in Niya’s teenage case, the same function was performed by the particularities of her metaphorical childhood—her literal newness and alienness to Earth.

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TO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: IMPOSSIBLE BRATS AND PROPHETS OF A NEW MORALITY The strong underlying reliance of Soviet science fiction cinema for younger audiences on the patriotic belief in the Soviet space future accounted for a slump in interest in the genre in the late 1980s and 1990s. The period was, after all, marked by the disintegration of the USSR and a crisis in the film industry, which resulted from the disintegration of the old, nationalized system of film production and distribution, as well as from the lack of funding in the context of a series of economic crises.25 Aziris-Nuna, Oleg Kompasov’s 2006 box-office failure, an adaptation of the first novella in Sergei Lukianenko and Iulii Burkin’s 1997 fantastic trilogy Ostrov Rus’ (The Rus’ Island), entitled Segodnia, mama! (Today, Mother!), was the first Russian production to break the silence that had lasted since the 1987 production of Lilovyi shar. Although a commercial flop that exhibited more parallels with the genre of Russian-folklore-inspired-fantasy than with science fiction, particularly its classical, socialist-realist-inspired variant, the film was praised by some critics as the first step toward the Russian re-invention of this very genre—the genre of Soviet children’s science fiction cinema, associated with Moskva-Kassiopeia and the other 1970s and 1980s productions discussed in the previous subchapter. Incidentally, Aziris-Nuna was probably the first film featuring spacefaring children, other than that of aspiring to subscribe to adults’ expectations. Although I haven’t managed to find any explicit references to this, it seems as if the creators of this movie actively attempted to subvert the imagery of Soviet childhood developed by the Viktorov/Selivanov triad of spacefaring emanations of the young Soviet future. Notably, Aziris-Nuna’s closing credits were accompanied by the theme song from Moskva-Kassiopeia, Etot bolshoi mir.26 While this choice may be seen as an homage to the patriotic undertones of the genre of Soviet children’s sf cinema, it may be more productive to, in this particular case, read it as a commentary on the Soviet corpus of films. In Aziris-Nuna, too, two preteen boys, Kostia (Filipp Avdeev) and Stas (Roman Kerimov) traveled through space and time. However, they did so precisely because they were neither exceptionally intelligent nor well-socialized enough to know that they should keep out of their father’s workspace. Their father (Aleksandr Lazarev) was a professional collector of “ancient space vessels,” and his curious, but ignorant sons did not take long to proverbially “push the wrong button” on one of the vessels and launch themselves into the year of 2056, and then into ancient Egypt. Although evidently completely lost, these children were not exceptionally willing to listen to grown-ups, unless this was absolutely necessary. In Egypt, they did befriend a sphynxlike alien named Shidla (Maksim Averin), who guided them on their voyage

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into the future. However, they got along with him because he possessed the carnivalesque, reckless, and irrational quality that they could identify with, rather than taking on a traditionally instructive role. Moreover, during their time-travels, Kostia and Stas managed to fall in love with an Egyptian girl named Hailine (Maria Kozakova), who, as it turned out, was actually their mother in “their” time (played there by Nonna Grishaeva). This unfortunate circumstance provided them with a dire need to seek a way out of their decadent space adventure: they did, after all, want time to unravel in a way that would not make them disappear out of existence. At the same time, their mode of “falling for their mother” was a rather childlike one. They never actively contemplated approaching her in order to initiate physical intimacy, nor did they seek deep intellectual engagement; their crush was more of a fascination with looks than a profound infatuation. However, once again, it broadened the range of agency for our protagonists in an unprecedented way. Even in the magical world of Lilovyi shar, Alisa Selezneva made no decisions that could jeopardize her mission and her commitment to what she perceived as the common good—saving Earth from the evils of the lilac ball. AzirisNuna, on the other hand, took the Soviet genre of children’s space science fiction out of the domain of any such sort of pedagogical intentions and placed it into the domain of entertainment cinema. In doing so, it also unprecedentedly highlighted the sphere of emotions and drives, rather than relied on rational conduct or the belief in a supreme, collective good. Aziris-Nuna therefore signaled an important shift in representations of childhood in the future; by taking as its main point of departure the realm of fantasy, instead of the venerable category of space science fiction, it was able to focus much more on how children might spontaneously act than on how one would expect the brightest hopes of humanity to act in critical situations. Kostia and Stas were children free of the burden of ideological compliance; the final credits of the film and the reference to their spacefaring predecessors, provided by the Etot bol’shoi mir song, indicated that the film was in dialogue with the legacy of Soviet children’s films imagining the future in space and trapping their protagonists in it like marble statues on the pedestal of unavoidable camaraderie, honesty, and rationality. Importantly, Aziris-Nuna did not remain exceptional in its change in focus. The task of integrating emotions into youth-oriented science fiction also got taken up by other directors, such as Fedor Bondarchuk, who has thus far directed two teen-oriented science fiction films: Obitaemyi ostrov I and II (The Inhabited Island I and II) (2008/2009) and Pritiazhenie.27 While both films technically referred to space travel, the Obitaemyi ostrov dilogy was much more concerned with the history of an alien civilization and human intervention on a foreign planet than it was with space-exploration-related tropes. Moreover, its protagonists were fully autonomous young adults, in

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no way defined as liminal by their age; their actions neither depended on nor were in any instance defined by the actions of their elders; in other words, they were, by all possible definitions, adults. Pritiazhenie, on the other hand, responded to the question of representations of childhood in a much more direct manner. In the context of an active, reignited emphasis on the role of youth in Russia’s national policies, evident in the fact that Rosmolodezh, the Russian State Agency for Youth Policies, has, since 2013, actively emphasized patriotism as the first tenant of the official youth policy, Pritiazhenie may be read as an attempt to provide a new patriotic framework for contemporary Russian youth.28 The film overtly commented on the problem of xenophobia and racism, embodied here by an alien, although very humanoid presence, exploring the possibility of countering these issues with youthful, maximalist love. Alien Haekon (Rinal Mukhametov), whose spacecraft crashed on Earth, sacrificed his otherwise endless life (the privilege of advanced civilizations, such as his) to save Yuliya (Irina Starshenbaum), a high school student, who protected him against the narrow-minded, malevolent teens of her home Moscowsuburb of Chertanovo. The gangs that like to assemble in the courtyards and underground garages of this neighborhood, engaging in low-level crimes and drinking, turned against Haekon for two reasons. First, and primarily, because he was an alien Other; second, because Yuliya chose him over her popular, emphatically xenophobic boyfriend Artiom (Aleksandr Petrov). Both teenager Yuliya—no longer a child but not yet an adult in terms of rights and responsibilities—and her new friend Haekon—to whom she suggestively, as if demarcating the limits between Us and Them, advised he identify as “from Saint-Petersburg” (rather than from Moscow, where the film took place) if asked about his origin—are portrayed as social outsiders.29 Haekon was alien due to the fact that he had come from a different planet, and had extraordinary abilities, such as endless life; nevertheless, he was humanoid enough to quickly be mistaken for a closer “other,” an annoying foreigner rather than an inapproachable, unrelatable foreign presence.30 Yuliya was very similar, although her otherness came from her subjective ethical position, rather than her origin. She appeared well-integrated into society, about to grow up into a perfectly socialized member of the Chertanovo community, well-dressed, from a wealthy family, supported by her father, a responsible local defense expert, Colonel Valentin Lebedev (Oleg Men’shikov), and dating a popular, hands-on, street-smart boyfriend.31 Yet, all of these attributes amounted to nothing, once she was prompted to make ethical choices. Her choice was to compromise the integrity of her immediate community by welcoming an alien stranger into it, in the name of love, exacerbated by her own attraction to this stranger. This personal dilemma prompted a greater reflection on ethics and priorities, and made her embark on a path with no return;

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a path of celebrating love and life, and denouncing identity politics, such as nationalism, xenophobia, racism, or speciesism. Her commitment to it taught Haekon to choose the same position. Yuliya and Haekon functioned as liminal agents, whose role was to point to certain social shortcomings and injustices, that is, xenophobia, racism, and the human inability to love in a cosmic, compassionate, and universally empathetic manner. Underscoring the significance of emotions and interpersonal interaction, this film could be contrasted against Cherez ternii k zvezdam, where the youth started off as outsiders, but eventually integrated themselves into greater, collective projects. A similar process was at work in Viktorov and Selivanov’s films on “children in space” films: children were outsiders that society should integrate. Post-Soviet Russian cinema take on children’s space science fiction appeared to be tackling this question from an opposite perspective: children and teens were outsiders whose individuality and “core” values enabled them to battle social evils. However, as nicely suggested in Aziris-Nuna, where children’s emotions were explored, but not idealized as emancipatory agential capacities per se, it can be just as destructive to suppress infantile sincerity as to bet on it per se, granting it agency before socializing these agents. SPACE AS ANTI-CARNIVAL AND CHILDHOOD AS AN ESTRANGEMENT DEVICE One of the emphases of this chapter was to demonstrate in which ways, in contrast to a lot of other genres of youth cinema, Soviet science fiction films celebrated intellectual maturity, integrating all affects into this single idea of the ecstasy of contributing to a greater, collective project. Post-Soviet Russian productions, which no longer viewed science fiction, space-related science fiction in particular, as a privileged domain of the triumph of the intellect, on the other hand, embraced affect in a multitude of emanations. Therefore, an evolution in the representations of childhood reflected a transformation on the level of a genre—even the transformation of the genre itself, as testified to by the increasing liberties with the use of fantastic narratives closer to fairytale—than to science fiction—to a great extent enabled by structural and political changes. At the same time, it should be noted that, of course, in both cases, these films attracted using formal techniques and means (music, special effects, and gadgets), which were often, according to reception analyses, the ones remembered, to a greater degree of accuracy than plot twists and characters. All the same, it seems noteworthy to end this exploration of the structural coordinates of childhood and adolescence by pointing out one important

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analogical trait of all of the films discussed. Moskva-Kassiopeia/Otroki vo vselennoi, as well as Bol’shoe kosmicheskoe puteshestvie, Cherez ternii k zvezdam, Lilovyi shar, Aziris-Nuna, and Pritiazhenie all provided somewhat idealistic constructions of space-related adventures in childhood and adolescence as carnivalesque periods of temporary crises, which would necessarily—either with the help of adults (Bol’shoe kosmicheskoe puteshestvie) or through socialization that results in adulthood (Cherez ternii k zvezdam)— lead to happy endings. At the same time, both the social constructions and the institutions that the children and young adults needed to endure, and the crises that the protagonists had to undergo in order to arrive at these happy endings were simplifications, estranged perspectives on their respective contemporary societies. Zak and Kuznetsov famously revealed that the role of Secret Service Executive—IOO in Moskva-Kassiopeia was a direct reference to the Soviet secret services. The scriptwriters admitted they were slightly worried about the censors’ reaction to this caricaturist figure of an adult, invited to watch over the teenaged team’s every move and to provide “special assistance.”32 However, they acknowledged that the playful context of the children’s film acted in their favor, the censorship committee not commenting on this analogy. An even stronger reference to the repressive nature of certain Soviet state structures was made in Bol’shoe kosmicheskoe puteshestvie, where our champion team was tricked by adults into participation in an experiment, without their consent.33 Their space voyage was, in the end, not only revealed to have been an underground simulation, but a diligently observed one, almost echoing Viktor Pelevin’s 1992 postmodernist novel Omon Ra (Omon Ra), where the entire Soviet space program was speculated to have been a fraud. Interestingly, in the context of children’s cinematography, the immediate object of critique, attacked by such unflattering depictions of fictional social structures, simplifications of extant social realities—sharpened to absurdity for the purposes of creating a knowable, explainable world—often remains obscure. Similarly, in Pritiazhenie, the problems highlighted by the film were seemingly obfuscated by the final happy ending, where Yuliya was recognized as a morally superior, ethical Russian citizen, more patriotic than the xenophobic gangs of Chertanovo. In this realm of fiction, both Yuliya and her ex-boyfriend, gang leader Artiom, were equally unreal. Yet, the moral message of the film related to Yuliya’s kindness and its triumph over Artiom’s selfish and racist convictions, despite the fact that it could easily be interpreted in opposite terms; Yuliya’s conduct jeopardizes the stability of her society on Earth in favor of supporting a different social order. The ambiguity of whether satisfyingly happy endings are the result of adequate social structures or happen in spite of them, due to individual psychological characteristics, adds an unexpected layer of complexity to most of the films discussed in this chapter,

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and affirms the analytical potential of examining (ideal) childhood and adolescence as both tropes of liminality and estrangement devices. NOTES 1. According to reviews on kinopoisk​.r​u, such as the one by users Stalk-74 and Sciolist, the film was particularly disappointing due to the cast and the unfortunate mix of space-themed and fairy tale-themed special effects. In fact, while the film is thematically related to Gostia iz budushchego, belonging to the same cycle of young cosmonaut Alisa’s space travels, created by Kir Bulychev, the cast was inconsistent with Gostia iz budushchego. While Alisa was played by the same actress (Natalia Murashkevich), the other characters are an odd bunch. Notably, the charismatic Vesel’chak Ou from Gostia iz budushchego, played by Viacheslav Nevinnyi, uncomfortably turned into alien archaeologist Gromozeka in Lilovyi shar, at once emphasizing the two films’ independence, and creating an uncanny, estranging effect experienced by the audience who looked forward to Lilovyi shar precisely because it was seen as a sequel to Gostia iz budushchego. 2. See also Alexander Prokhorov, “The adolescent and the child in the cinema of the Thaw,” Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema 1, no. 2 (2007): 115–129. Prokhorov argued that despite an apparent individualization of the value system, characteristic of Thaw films, “numerous films in the 1950s and 1960s continue to follow the patterns of Socialist Realist plots and position characters in hierarchical relationships that replicate the family structure represented in Stalinist texts.” In this constellation, the role of children is to “fix the broken family bonds” (115). While Prokhorov argued that the child-hero eventually disappeared from screens, transformed into a comic figure in the Stagnation period, this article emphasizes the particularity of the youth science fiction genre, where children continued, well into the Stagnation period, to represent the hierarchies characteristic of Stalinist texts, and to offer “fixes” to situations, which adults could not access and/or comprehend. 3. Indicative of the growing pessimism about the prospects of a communist future is, for instance, Alexander Yanov’s 1978 book The Russian New Right: Right-Wing Ideologies in the Contemporary USSR (Berkeley: University of California Press) that prognosed a post-Brezhnev USSR faced with the challenge of an increased political influence of authoritarian, Russian-nationalist right-wing forces. 4. Gostia iz budushchego, directed by Pavel Arsionov, USSR 1984 (Gorky Film Studio). Etot fantasticheskii mir, directed by Tamara Pavliuchenko (Episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12), Antonina Zinovieva (Episodes 13, 15, 16), Viktor Spiridonov (Episodes 9 and 14), USSR 1979–1990 (Glavnaia redaktsia programm dlia detei i iunoshestva, Tsentralnoie televidenie SSSR). 5. Taina tretiei planety, directed by Roman Kachanov, USSR 1981 (Soiuzmultfilm). 6. See Victor Turner, “Liminality and Communitas,” in The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldline Publishing, 1969), 94–113, 125–30. 7. Turner, “Liminality and Communitas,” 93–111.

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8. Cf. Polly Jones, Myth, Memory, Trauma: Rethinking the Stalinist Past in the Soviet Union, 1953–70 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013). See also Catriona Kelly, “A Joyful Soviet Childhood: Licensed Happiness for Little Ones,” in Petrified Utopia: Happiness Soviet Style, ed. Marina Balina and Evgeny Dobrenko, 3–18, (London: Anthem Press, 2009) for a discussion of Soviet childhood in the context of utopia. 9. See also Jones, Myth, Memory, Trauma, 101. 10. Iveta Silova, Nelli Piattoeva, Zsuzsa Millei, eds., Childhood and Schooling in (Post)Socialist Societies: Memories of Everyday Life (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), here 233. 11. Idem, 232. 12. Idem, 232. 13. Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, Small Comrades: Revolutionizing Childhood in Soviet Russia, 1917–1932 (New York: Routledge, 2001). 14. Margaret Peacock, Innocent Weapons: The Soviet and American Politics of Childhood in the Cold War (Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press, 2014), here 129–140. 15. Peacock, Innocent Weapons, here 140. 16. Idem, 139. 17. According to Mikhail Bakhtin, the carnival allows for four different subversions: it brings together unlikely people that would never have come together in a different setting; it encourages familiar and free interaction between these people; it allows mésalliances, reuniting that which is normally separate, and thus cutting across binaries, such as heaven and hell. Finally, it strips authoritative figures of their power, leading to a profanation of social norms and conventions. In our films that feature children in space, however, the apparently carnivalesque gesture of children becoming cosmonauts and taking charge of space missions, eventually serves as a cue for the exact opposite—the justification of the unviability of the carnivalesque. For a definition of the Bakhtinian carnivalesque sense of the world, see Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. and trans. by Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), here 122–123, 130. 18. See, for example, Valerii Pavlotos, Rozhdeny chtob skazku sdelat’ (Simferopol: IT Arial, 2011). 19. Isai Kuznetsov, “Moskva–Kassiopeia byla velioloi rabotoi,” interview with Andrei Shcherbak-Zhukov, Na ekrane Chudo—Otechestvennaia kinofantastika i kinoskazka (1909–2002): Materialy k populiarnoi entsiklopedii / NII Kinoiskusstva, ed. E. V. Kharitonov and Andrei V. Shcherbak-Zhukov (Moscow: B. Sekachev, 2003), http://www​.fandom​.ru​/about​_fan​/kino/​_st05​.htm. 20. The acronym ZARIA that literally stands for Zvezdoliot annigiliatsionnyi reliativistsky iadernyi, that is, Annihilative relative nuclear spaceship also reads as “zaria” or “dawn.” 21. The Man Who Fell to Earth, directed by Nicolas Roeg, UK 1976 (British Lion Films). 22. For an exploration of liminality in the context of feminine agency and feminist strategy, see Aljoša Pužar, “Dear Kongja: Liminality and/as the feminist strategy,” Situations 1 (2011): 1–40.

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23. An intriguing proposition would be to consider Sveta’s marginality in terms of queerness. For a discussion on the queer child in cinema, see Jasmina Šepetavc, “Išče se čudaški otrok: queerovski otrok in otroštvo,” Družboslovne razprave 31, no. 79 (2015): 45–62. 24. For the “excess of reality” and the chernukha period of Soviet cinema, characteristic of the perestroika, see Vohla Isakava, “Reality Excess: Chernukha cinema in the late 1980s,” in Ruptures and Continuities in Soviet/Russian Cinema, ed. Birgit Beumers and Eugénie Zvonkine (New York: Routledge, 2018). 25. Cf. for example, Birgit Beumers, Pop Culture: Russia! (Santa Barbara, Denver, Oxford: ABC Clio, 2005), here 9; 72–3. 26. Etot bol’shoi mir was composed by Vladimir Chernyshev, to the lyrics of Robert Rozhdestvenskii. For Moskva–Kassiopeia, the song was performed by Gennadii Belov. 27. Obitaiemyi ostrov I and II, directed by Fedor Bondarchuk, Russia 2008/2009 (Art Pictures Studio, Non-Stop Production and STS Channel). 28. The lack of “patriotism” in contemporary Russian youth (citizens under the age of 30) is repeatedly emphasized as one of the main challenges in the Strategy on Youth Development until 2025, accepted by Rosmolodezh in 2013. See Rosmolodezh, Strategiia razvitiia molodezhy Rossiiskoi federatsii na period do 2025 goda, https://fadm​.gov​.ru​/mediafiles​/documents​/document​/98​/ae​/98aeadb5​ -7771​-4e5b​-a8ee​-6e732c5d5e84​.pdf. 29. For a contemporary perspective on the historical rivalry between Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, see Anil Çiçek, “Rivalry between Moscow and St Petersburg—The Contrasting Ideologies of Conservatism and Westernism in Russia Embodied in the Two Capitals,” International Journal of Russian Studies 2013, no. 2/1: 1–15. 30. For a discussion on the significance of identifying “others” for plot development in contemporary Russian films, see Oleg Sulkin, “Identifying the Enemy in Contemporary Russian Film, in Insiders and Outsiders in Russian Cinema,” ed. Stephen M. Norris and Zara M. Torlone (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2008), 113–126. 31. For a discussion on the family as a social model of communality in contemporary Russian cinema, see Irina Souch, Popular tropes of identity in contemporary Russian television and film (London: Bloomsbury, 2017). 32. Kuznetsov, “Moskva–Kassiopeia byla veseloi rabotoi.” 33. Idem.

Chapter 6

An Explosive Expansion Soviet SF in the 1980s and Its Legacy

Since the late 1950s, and up until the 1980s, Soviet science fiction cinema remained preoccupied with the theme of space travel: thirty-five out of forty Soviet space-themed fiction feature films were produced between 1959 and 1990, the percentage of sf steadily increasing since the late 1960s, and including more and more fantastic elements, somewhat to the detriment of the films’ didactic qualities. At this stage, with several notable exceptions, Soviet cinematic scientific fantasy did not follow the same route as literature of the genre, which exhibited more explicit social and political criticism (e.g., the Strugatsky brothers), often quite explicitly using the sf format as a veil.1 As we have seen in the previous chapters, science fiction films tended to focus on issues that did not converse with contemporary political realities in unsettling ways; often, they were indeed adaptations of novels and short stories, but in these cases, screenplays were carefully reviewed and rid of potentially subversive elements. By the 1980s, however, these distinctions would become blurred and Soviet sf cinema turned a much more diverse, stylistically and thematically ambiguous category. The preoccupation with outer space remained, but it transformed in relation to its immediate pool of references, that is, earlier and later (post-Soviet Russian) films, which focused on the same topic. In this light, it is helpful to view perestroika sf cinema as a rapprochement between scientific fantasy and science fiction. The selection of films presented in this chapter will help us see along which axes space was gradually created for this kind of a rapprochement. This chapter explores continuities between the Soviet tradition of science fiction, and post-Soviet Russian appropriations of the genre. The chapter proceeds through a detailed examination of outer-space-themed films in the genre of scientific fantasy (Lunnaia raduga [1984], Kin-Dza-Dza! [1986] and Podzemelie ved’m [1990]), analyzing the films in terms of their aesthetics, 125

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intertextual references to earlier Soviet, and post-Soviet Russian science fiction, and in terms of their production context. In doing so, the chapter supports the overall argument of the book, that is, the challenge to the common presumption that Soviet science fiction cinema focusing on outer space developed quickly and fruitfully from the late 1950s until the early 1970s, and peaked in terms of style and philosophical depth with Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solyaris (1972). Later works—with the exception of Kin-Dza-Dza! (1986)—are often seen as inferior in terms of seriousness and cinematographic technique, and too reminiscent of Hollywood science fiction. This chapter revisits several selected Soviet science fiction productions from the mid- and late 1980s in order to present a different narrative, foregrounding the following arguments. First, I will use the films Lunnaia raduga, Kin-Dza-Dza!, and Podzemelie ved’m to argue that perestroika sf cinema was a certain “boiling point” of the genre in Soviet cinema, a period when many heterogeneous ideas that evolved in older Soviet sf cinema could enter into synchronic dialogue with one another, sometimes within the framework of a single film. Second, I will use these films—examined in terms of cinematic aesthetics, underlying ideas, intertextual references, and their post-Soviet legacy—to point to a certain continuity within Soviet scientific fantasy, and to argue that this continuity did not break off with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, but spilled over into Russian cinema. Thereby, the chapter aims to contribute to a slight redefinition of the genre of Soviet sf cinema, and point to an often underappreciated reference point for contemporary Russian science fiction film analysis. Third, this chapter proposes to consider that the aesthetics of these perestroika films, which reach from re-appropriations of the canons of the Hollywood blockbuster (Podzemelie ved’m ) to Dadaist anti-philosophy (Kin-Dza-Dza!) might have significantly influenced post-Soviet Russian cinema on outer space, if not post-Soviet Russian science fiction cinema (e.g., Mishen’ [2011]) on the more general level of genre. Finally, the chapter suggests that the production context of the perestroika favored a turn in thematic preferences: although dominated by outer space-themed sf from the late 1950s, during the perestroika, Soviet sf as a cinematic genre started showing more interest in terrestrial science fiction.2 SPECTERS OF CLASSICAL SOVIET SCIENCE FICTION: LUNNAIA RADUGA In order to get to grips with scope and significance of the transformations that the genre of scientific fantasy had undergone during perestroika, let us begin a couple of years before official political transformations, that is, the announcement of perestroika in 1985. By 1984, Soviet studios had released

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several fantasy, rather than scientific progress-concerned feature films, such as Richard Viktorov’s Cherez ternii k zvezdam (see chapter 5), and Vasili Levin’s Petlia Oriona (1980) and Mark Kovalev and Vladimir Polin’s Zvezdnyi inspektor (both examined in chapter 4). Ermash’s Lunnaia raduga produced by Mosfilm could well be seen as a continuation of this tradition. Furthermore, Lunnaia raduga continued the tradition of scientific fantasy films being adaptations of literary works: the screenplay was an adaptation of Sergei Pavlov’s rather successful novel under the same name, which first appeared in 1978. Notably the novel would become one of the first Soviet graphic novels.3 Pavlov’s novel was initially conceived as a dilogy, and the film only dealt with the first part of the series; it did so in a simplified way, with a smaller number of characters and plot twists. The film was Ermash’s first full-length feature film, and many reviews both by professional critics and fans emphasized that the director’s work was one of the weakest aspects of the film (see reviews on Kinopoisk).4 The director, son of Filipp Ermash, who was the longtime (1972–1986) chairman of the Soviet Cinema Committee (Goskino), allegedly had access to excellent actors and received a notable degree of support: he directed Lunnaia raduga at age twenty-seven, which was a very young age for Soviet directors. He would go on to direct another sf film, Konets vechnosti (The End of Eternity) (1987), an adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s novel under the same title, which came out after the end of Filipp Ermash’s career as head of Goskino, and was apparently put into production before Ermash’s departure.5 It was the last film made by Andrei Ermash. Both Lunnaia raduga and Konets vechnosti may be characterized by a certain slowness, the emphasis being on the actors’ personal expressiveness, that is their gestures, facial expressions, and the ideas their characters conveyed, rather than on action and plot. This emphasis was slightly out of tune with the general trends of 1980s Soviet cinematography, advocated by Filipp Ermash: a wish to focus on commercially more appealing, and therefore less complicated cinema.6 Yet it seems premature to simply dismiss Andrei Ermash’s sf films as products of mediocre directing skills: rather, they presented the contours of a certain aesthetic, which may appeal to a science fiction fan or not. Regardless of the spectator’s final verdict, the argument of this chapter is that Lunnaia raduga was a thought-provoking example of Soviet science fiction cinema of the early 1980s, and can be interpreted as a certain milestone in the genre. In audio-visual terms, the film was relatively uncomplicated: it did not experiment with means of representing time, space, or outer space, and appeared somewhat ascetic in terms of form. It followed a chronologically coherent, linear storyline, with several flashbacks, which were clearly demonstrated and left out any kind of possible ambiguity: the viewer did not

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get lost in these chronological leaps, as they were clearly shown as torn out of the overarching linear narrative. However, the slowness and narrative clarity of Lunnaia raduga did not render the film as a whole simplistic or superficial. Rather, the measured pace at which the ninety-minute feature developed—almost entirely shot inside, within space station headquarters and command rooms—pointed to a whirlpool of ideas, expressed almost exclusively through the setting and verbal exchanges between cosmonauts and the command centers of the Space Security Service and the World Health Organization: the key actors called upon to investigate a curious phenomenon that had taken place as a side effect of space exploration. Apparently, a number of kosmodesantniki, that is, an international space crew that had taken a trip to planet Oberon near Uranus and survived a peculiar accident there now exhibited superhuman qualities. They were capable of affecting magnetic fields but could also temporarily rid themselves of this superpower by leaving a black mark on a special receiver. The film explored the implications of this situation for earthlings: Should the astronauts have been considered a threat to humanity? Were they merely enhanced human beings? Who was to decide? Would humanity ever be able to comprehend the secrets of the universe? The plot did not advance beyond these questions, nor was a definite answer provided by the end of the film. The fate of the astronauts on Earth also remained unclear. This kind of mystical minimalism was not novel: by this stage in this book, you will probably find it overtly reminiscent of internationally acclaimed science fiction films, such as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Tarkovsky’s Solyaris. Furthermore, it pointed to the materiality of the cinematographic experience: rather than experimenting with special effects, Lunnaia raduga emphasized embodied psychology. This was a clever solution, considering that the director had a famous cast, involving several distinguished and renowned Soviet actors, such as Vladimir Gostiukhin, Vassilii Livanov, Iuri Solomin, Natalya Saiko, and Aleksandr Porokhorshchikov. On the other hand, the juxtaposition of a simple interior, a clear plot, minimalist special effects (the most impressive one being a video projected from a tree branch and shown in “mid-air,” as a holographic three-dimensional image, rather than a projection onto a flat surface), and powerful actors, who voiced profound philosophical thoughts, gave the impression that the film is slightly “out of joint.” In terms of style, Lunnaia raduga was a peculiar mix of the genres of ideologically plausible, didactic science fiction (which celebrated technological progress and did not question man’s fate to conquer outer space), and philosophically concerned science fiction that interrogated the limits of sf, as outlined earlier. The film left an uncanny impression, because it did not follow any of the genres clearly enough for the audience to be able to classify it.

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However, it also clearly illustrated some of the key concerns of Soviet film policy of the early 1980s and the condition of Soviet science fiction as a genre during that same period. As demonstrated clearly by Pavlov in the novel that served as the basis for the screenplay, outer-space-oriented sf of the 1980s could no longer have much to do with outer-space science fiction propagated several decades earlier: both the literary and cinematic medium had taken it further, leaving behind spaceflight as a means of exploring unknown worlds and as a token of scientific progress, and returning to the question of man: Was man up to the task of exploring the world beyond Earth? As years and space missions went by, science fiction appeared to be losing confidence in this premise. However, the outer-space-oriented subgenre as set out by Soviet cinematography since the 1950s (and linked to the outer space myth promulgated by the USSR) did not leave much room for such pessimistic conclusions, preferring to focus on the positive and motivating perspectives of space travel. Lunnaia raduga swayed between these two extremes, based on a pessimistic screenplay and at the same time attempting to remain within the visual aesthetic tradition of enthusiastic Soviet sf. The film employed several interesting techniques to retain the impression of the latter, such as confident voiceover narration, which accompanied the flashbacks to the astronauts’ fatal expedition, and many references to man’s great, groundbreaking achievements in the domain of spaceflight. On the other hand, Lunnaia raduga was saturated with doubt. The opening eleven minutes of the film, preceding the opening credits, set the scene and expose the problem that was going to be the central topic for the rest of the film. The problem was not the future of spaceflight, or of international cooperation (according to the movie, the world had already moved on to a transnational phase, where it ran according to the order imposed by supranational organizations, such as the Space Security Service), but the system that had made spaceflight possible in the first place. Apparently, this system thrived on controlling individuals, under the pretense that a lack of information may threaten humanity, which was now expanding its world to horizons unheard of in the past. Indeed, the world of Lunnaia raduga was divided into Earth (zemlia) and the extraterrestrial world (vnezemel’e), which was portrayed as dangerous, lonely, and menacing, albeit worth exploring. The film investigated the consequences of an unforeseen clash of Earth (or, rather, its earthlings) and the extraterrestrial world (vnezemel’e). Rather than exploring the foreign environment, the primary concern of the authorities on Earth was to determine the scope of its effects on astronauts. Interestingly enough, in this film, astronauts were not space voyagers or explorers, but paratroopers, cosmic commandos (kosmodesantniki). The universe’s power to affect the human body and mind was immediately interpreted as a potential threat to humanity; innocent kosmodesantniki were transformed into potential

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enemies. Their pleas: “Do not rummage through our souls. It is not only pointless, it is cruel,” and their assertions that they were “no more of a threat [to humanity] than any average person” were not taken into account.7 The core problem addressed by the film was the issue of the individual’s place within a system built around notions such as transparency, security, and caution, and guided by the belief that society could function according to the same unemotional, rationalist logic that drove technological progress. The film explored how this kind of social order might have functioned when faced with unpredictable and uncontrollable situations; how it might have dealt with individuals who had the will and the means to overturn established order and rules. The idea was not new in the genre of science fiction, but it was a relatively novel development in the Soviet take on the genre. Questions evoked in Lunnaia raduga evidently echoed films with greater critical acclaim, such as the aforementioned Solyaris: however, it embedded them into the formal framework of a commercially oriented sf film focused on spaceflight. It resembled Valentin Selivanov’s Bol’shoe kosmicheskoe puteshestvie, the youth sf film about child cosmonaut training that ended with the revelation that the great outer space adventure was just a simulation, explored in the previous chapter. The difference between the two was in the sole detail that Selivanov’s film functioned as a sort of a prequel to a real space voyage, an instructive, educational, and morally uplifting overture for future cosmonauts. Lunnaia raduga, on the other hand, ended on a more ambiguous note. Having touched upon existential questions, such as the perilous and uncertain future of all space voyagers, and the pressure it exerted on their loved ones, the issue of whether kosmodesantniki, affected by outer space, were to be experimented on or not, and the thin line—voiced by the astronaut Timur Kizimov (Georgy Taratorkin) in the film—between “a little bit of caution can do no harm” and “caution for caution’s sake,” the film allowed kosmodesantniki to present their own view of the future of space exploration. Norton (Vladimir Gostyukhin), one of the members of the unlucky crew, concluded: “So who are we? We are people, Dave, and I believe that we can be known. Not at once, it seems. And not in special quarantine zones. We might have retired too early—we could still be of much use. [ . . . ] I am not at all certain that our generation will understand the essence of how outer space affects us.” Released in 1984, Lunnaia raduga was one of the last Soviet science fiction films that explicitly struggled with the issue of what the purpose of spaceflight might be, and attempted to reconcile this struggle with the official Soviet conviction of the sensibility, imminence, and righteousness of spaceflight.8 Narrow in focus and crude in terms of special effects, it came across as somewhat naïve, as noted by post-Soviet reviewers.9 However, as a mid-1980s production, it was a telling product of its time, transposing what

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Figure 6.1  Still from Lunnaia raduga—Dark Tracks.

would become pressing political issues of perestroika into the science fiction genre, and pointing to the limited efficacy of the formal canons of the genre in dealing with these same issues. THE FUTURE GETS DIRTY: KIN-DZA-DZA! Perestroika added another three feature films to the archive of Soviet spaceflight in scientific fantasy cinema: Georgy Daneliya’s Kin-Dza-Dza!, Yuri Moroz’s Podzemelie ved’m, and Peter Fleischmann’s Trudno byt’ bogom, and one to the archives of Soviet fiction films on outer space: Korabl’ prishel’tsev (Alien Spaceship) (1984).10 Evidently, the topic of spaceflight became less prominent in Soviet cinema, compared to the period from the 1960s to the 1980s, which had produced around thirty films preoccupied with outer space. Notably, perestroika (1985–1991) spaceflight-themed cinema also focused considerably less on celebrating Soviet spaceflight history and its heroes (cosmonauts, constructors, and inventors), and more on spaceflight as a feature of science fiction cinema in the broad sense of the word, including its fantastic connotations. In this respect, Soviet cinema followed the politics of glasnost, no longer applying strict censorship to scientific fantasy screenplays, and broadening the definition of the genre to involve entertainment, and not necessarily primarily state-identity-building works. Soviet science fiction was greatly enriched in terms of the spectrum of themes it addressed: numerous films emerged in this period, following the sf premise of examining the

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implications of technological progress for the human mind, and combining them with fantastic plots, political metaphors, and even humor.11 However, spaceflight and outer space no longer figured as a prominent setting for these films: as if Earth were fantastic enough as it was. At first glance, the few space-themed films produced in this new political context indeed differed greatly from earlier Soviet science fiction cinema. Kin-Dza-Dza!, directed by the master of Soviet comedy Daneliya, was an unprecedented case of comic science fiction, and the first (and last) Soviet salvagepunk space movie; Trudno byt’ bogom, a Soviet-German coproduction, was the first finished cinematic adaptation of the Strugatsky brothers’ antiregime novel, which used science-fictional form to provide a dystopian allegory of contemporary (Soviet) sociopolitical order. Podzemelie ved’m, which will be analyzed in detail in the following section, was on the other hand a lighthearted, entertainment-oriented take on the genre, combining spaceflight with forest-fantasy, reminiscent of Conan the Barbarian.12 However, these films were not entirely oblivious of the heritage of Soviet science fiction, and should not be examined without this context in mind. Kin-Dza-Dza!, dubbed by some critics as “one of the strangest artifacts in all of Soviet cinema,” continued to explore the topic of the future of technological progress and spaceflight, approaching it from an interesting “what if?” angle.13 The film sent its protagonists—two then contemporary Soviet earthlings, who did not believe in extraterrestrials or intergalactic travel—onto a peculiar planet in the Kin-Dza-Dza galaxy, called Pluke. As most of the water on the planet had been turned into fuel (luts), Pluke was largely a desert ruled by Chatlan; everyone in this alternative universe speaking a strange language, largely dominated by the word Ku!.14 Anyone who was not a Chatlan (Chatlans can identify foreigners by pointing a certain device at them, and checking whether it emits an orange [i.e., Chatlan] or green [i.e. non-Chatlan or Patsak] light) had to perform a bizarre greeting upon meeting a Chatlan. The earthling protagonists (foreman Vladimir Ivanovich Mashkov (Stanislav Liubshin) and student Gedevan (Levan Gabreadze)) spent most of the 135 minutes of the film learning the strange ways and customs of this new world, and trying to find a way back to Earth, and out of this absurd adventure, an anachronistic experience of a future, used.15 Considered from the perspective of Soviet space-themed science fiction, the film was particularly interesting in two respects. Firstly, it played with the idea of a used, that is, dated, rusty future: by coincidence, Vladimir and Gedevan left Earth, which they believed was technologically advanced, and at the same time found out they had been completely ignorant about the world (they had thought that space travel to other populated galaxies was impossible). They persisted in their ignorance (thinking they just got transported to a desert on Earth) until confronted with advanced technologies that allowed

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them to understand the language spoken on the planet they wound up on. Interestingly enough, this technology was rusty, used, and often broke down. The future of technological progress revealed itself as anything but sterile and glossy. Or, in other words: technological progress was not accompanied by progress in social order, norms, or manners. Quite the contrary—and this brings us to our second point regarding the importance of the film—technological progress was accompanied by rigid and conservative social structures: Vladimir (also known as Vova) and Gedevan traveled through a galaxy full of anachronistic customs and conventions, such as a strict distinction between the Chatlans and the Patsaks, and strict codes of conduct to be followed when encountering a superior in rank. This combination accounted for the absurdity that enveloped the film: technological superiority corresponds to social conservatism and very low hygienic, moral, and aesthetic standards. Although sometimes described as an antiutopia, it should be more precise to consider Kin-Dza-Dza! as a dystopian satire of social reality. It was a post-apocalyptic planet wherein inhabitants were blessed with advanced technology but were inefficient at maintaining it. It was a world plagued by ecological problems, which were treated as a matter-of-fact rather than an issue of concern. It was a planet governed by rules that had no rationale other than maintaining a certain structure of power relations and which left no space for art and artists. The planet was ruled by P. Zh., a dictator who had earned the people’s admiration having granted the entire population of the planet free access to oxygen. This achievement shall never be forgotten, the film stipulated, as it was symbolically manifest in a special supply of air, hovering above the capital city, maintained (constantly inflated by hard-working laborers) as a symbol of the great leader’s “last breath” and its eternal presence. Planet Pluke may be seen as a parody of the USSR, but it may just as well be interpreted as an allegory of any kind of terrestrial sociopolitical order. (Although it is worth noting that it was particularly warmly received by Soviet audiences, which specifically appreciated the subtle puns on the Soviet state.) However, it is also possible to turn the angle of discussion around slightly, focusing on the protagonists rather than on the strange universe they were thrown into. Such a phenomenological investigation reveals that the question of humanity in this salvagepunk rusty-future world was just as strongly emphasized as it was in earlier Soviet sf films, such as Lunnaia raduga, or even Tainstevennaia stena, examined in chapter 4, facing the spectators with the presupposition that human conduct was not an evolutionary category but depended solely on social structures. Humans do not progress or regress with time and technological progress; they just find ways of using technology to follow or to avoid social norms these films teach us. Despite these continuities (allegorical status, and a special attentiveness to human nature) that align Kin-Dza-Dza! to more conventional products of

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Soviet science fiction, the film remains a rather unique example of Soviet cinema and a trend-setter for some later productions. The first humorous Soviet film on spaceflight, it was by no means the last. As you will remember, the first post-Soviet Russian production on outer space, Dmitry Astrakhan’s Chetvertaia planeta 1995 was a satirical account of life—and socialism— on Mars. More comic films involving Soviet spaceflight may be found in Aleksey Fedorchenko’s work, the most explicit one being Pervye na lune (2004). Last but not least, Daneliya produced a remake of Kin-Dza-Dza!, Ku! Kin-Dza-Dza—it was an animated feature released in 2013. Some reviews note that the remake was not nearly as complex and subtle as the original, and that it trivialized the original subversive message, turning the story into a science fiction animated film for a younger audience.16 However, Daneliya himself countered such allegations in one of his interviews, stating that the remake was intended to allude to contemporary Russia, which “is Pluke.”17 In any case, it is worth noting that Kin-Dza-Dza!, particularly its original version, managed to take space travel and spaceflight out of the domain of serious, contemplative sf, and at the same time used cognitive estrangement as a useful approach for portraying social reality with an impressive complexity. It enriched Soviet space-themed science fiction with satire and parody, and at the same time succeeded in avoiding both cynicism and nostalgia about the early 1960s expectations from the nascent space age. LEAVING THE REALM OF ALLEGORY: PODZEMELIE VED’M There is a thin line between humor and entertainment. Kin-Dza-Dza! was certainly funny at times, but the humor was tied to a certain context: the Chatlan language was funnier and more accessible to those familiar with Russian; extraterrestrial social order may have been joked about in comparison to terrestrial affairs, and so on. By contrast, Podzemelie ved’m, a 1990 SovietCzechoslovak coproduction based on another novella by Kir Bulychev, was devoid of such subtle humor and satire. Initially aimed at a younger audience enthralled by Hollywood blockbusters, this film, which surprisingly received the 1990 Best Picture award of the Sovietsky ekran journal, was conceived as a commercial entertainment product. If the two earlier films took science fiction as a form that allowed them to address relevant social and political issues, Moroz’s film was much more concerned with appearance for its own sake. This collage of various genres, ranging from fantasy and science fiction to melodrama, used coordinates of outer-space-oriented science fiction (an expedition to a far-off inhabited planet, encountering humanoid extraterrestrials and helping them to solve a local problem) as a carnivalesque stage.

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In terms of plot, the film was rather superficial and lighthearted. Spacemen from Earth (clad in USSR spacesuits) descended onto a strange planet to help the rest of the terrestrial expedition (viz., a philologist named Jean [Nikolai Karachentsev]) solve the puzzle of the planet’s history. It turned out that various stages of history and evolution coexisted on this planet, pterodactyls living alongside birds and cavemen with iron swords (which they knew how to use, but not how to make). The planet was terrorized by fearless Oktin-Hash (Dmitrii Pevtsov), who controlled the land and its tribal peoples (alongside the slightly lost and lonely Last Neanderthal (Leonid Filatkin)), having killed the “Old people” who had lived in “Witches’ catacombs,” and stolen swords and other cold steel weapons from the “witches.” The commander of the expedition from Earth, inspector Andrei Brius (Sergei Zhigunov), set out on a mission to solve the mystery of the witches’ catacombs, and rescued Billeguri (dubbed by earthlings as Bellagurochka) (Marina Levtova), one of the local peaceful tribes’ chief’s daughter. Once Brius figured out the mystery of the Catacombs, realizing they were controlled by humanoid robots left by the Old people, none of whom were alive anymore, Oktin-Hash realized he might be a “great leader,” possessing plenty of “steel knives,” and decided to trade him Billeguri and a set of horses for weapons. Brius declined the proposition, killed Oktin-Hash, and reunited with Billeguri, who had been taken away from this nasty scene by philologist Jean. The last bit of the drama unraveled as Jean, Andrei, and Billeguri rode their horses back to the spaceship in order to leave this foreign world. Billeguri appeared to be convinced that Andrei was “her man”—a role that he had allowed her to push him into throughout the film—while Andrei seemed reluctant to accept this sudden change in relationship status. He almost let her ride away in tears before turning around and letting love triumph (and taking his new wife with him). This episode and the final credits were accompanied by now famous Russian pop singer Masha Rasputina’s love song Ya i ty (Me and You. The lightheartedness of the plot was a novelty in Soviet space-oriented science fiction: not even Richard Viktorov’s children’s science fiction saga, consisting of Moskva-Kassiopeia and Otroki vo vselennoi and Viktor Selivanov’s Bol’shoe kosmicheskoe puteshestvie or the aforementioned Kin-Dza-Dza! were as entertainment- and spectacle-oriented as Podzemelie ved’m. Moroz’s film may be seen as a complete negation of the tradition of the Soviet sf genre as it had been conceived until the perestroika period. The film employed a standard linear narrative about the intellectual and moral superiority of the human race, proven in an encounter with an extraterrestrial civilization. Earthlings emerged triumphant on all fronts, defeating the physical local enemies (the witches and Oktin-Hash), teaching the locals a thing or two about life and love (in a melodramatic moment, Bellogurochka revealed that she now knew “what it is to love,” the object of her love and devotion

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Figure 6.2  Still from Podzemelie ved’m—Belliguri and Andrei.

being the commander from Earth), and solving the intellectual challenge of the film. It should not be forgotten that the mission had initially set out to find why various stages of natural and cultural evolution coexisted in one world on this remote planet. The trip to the witches’ catacombs revealed that this mess had been caused by an intervention of another extraterrestrial civilization—the so-called Old people. However, the human expedition left this confused world without any progressive impact, aside from taking Bellogurochka, now Brius’s amorous partner, back to Earth. Jean even commented on this development by saying: “so, wilderness triumphs in another clash with civilization.” The only notable narrative development was therefore the love story between Brius and the beautiful, economically clad alien woman. Interestingly enough, the alien woman appeared less alien than infantile: she claimed not to know about love, but did know about belonging to a man; being a chief’s daughter, she expected to be given to a chief. Brius had to teach her about monogamy and love, which he did, telling her about how women and men interacted on his planet. His explanations were rather laconic, and he basically expected her to follow the rules he set. On this level, the film was therefore a reaffirmation of a rather conservative conception of heteronormative society. Nevertheless, this is not where Podzemelie ved’m undermined the classical canon of Soviet science fiction. The issue is, rather, that instead of resorting to a remote, populated planet as an allegory of Earth, or of teaching the spectator about the prospects of scientific progress, the film simply used spaceflight and extraterrestrials to stage a visually intriguing, lighthearted action fantasy thriller. In this sense, Podzemelie ved’m was a novelty in Soviet cinema and an interesting reappropriation of the classical variant of the genre, characteristic of the 1930s–1970s, in the perestroika period. Instead of being politically,

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socially, or even visually provocative, it opted for a straightforward application of the Hollywood fantasy blockbuster genre in a slightly “locally” adapted context (spacemen were, after all, dressed as USSR cosmonauts).18 Podzemelie ved’m would be followed by more like-minded approaches to space-oriented cinema, particularly common in commercial cinematography for younger audiences. However, this kind of cinema would need over a decade to resurface (Aziris-Nuna, examined in the previous chapter, being a case in point), as the space preoccupation of Soviet science fiction ended with Trudno byt’ bogom (1989), and did not reemerge in post-Soviet Russian cinema until the early twenty-first century. Additionally, the development of commercial science fiction was stalled by early post-Soviet cinema industry’s technological backwardness and a lack of finance for expensive visual effects equipment. PERESTROIKA AS A REEVALUATION OF SOVIET SPACE SCIENCE FICTION There are several reasons why perestroika Soviet science fiction cinema can be viewed as a turning point for the genre as such. The three examples of perestroika space-themed science fiction films examined earlier pointed to some of them. First, and not unimportantly, to the gradual loss of interest in spaceflight-themed science fiction productions, so prominent earlier. This shift in thematic focus correlated with a general global loss of popular cultural interest in space programs, and with local sociopolitical circumstances: by the time of perestroika, the Soviet space program had lost much of its mass appeal, as had the general idea about the existence of the USSR.19 Furthermore, the broadening of the definition of Soviet science fiction (to eventual inclusions of elements of fantasy, folklore, entertainment without moralist undertones, etc.) had decreased the appeal of spaceflight as a topic. Science fiction that no longer had to incorporate a clear educational component or imagine outer spatial horizons in order to allegorically question terrestrial social order found enough inspiration and ways of questioning relations between humanity, society, and technology on Earth. Indeed, the archives of Soviet science fiction were greatly enriched and diversified during the perestroika, but tended to speak about fantastic events on Earth (e.g., Konstantin Lopushanskii’s Pis’ma mertvogo cheloveka [Letters of a Dead Man] [1986] and Vadim Abdrashitov’s Armavir [Armavir] [1991]) or even within the human mind.20 Secondly, the conceptual transformation of science fiction in the Soviet context was accompanied by a reinspection of outer-space-themed cinema. Notably, no films celebrating the feats of the Soviet space program were shot during perestroika, and the scientific fantasy films that retained an

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interest in outer space approached it with a lot less seriousness, as testified to by the cases analyzed earlier in the text. Nevertheless, this does not mean perestroika science fiction bore no relation whatsoever to earlier Soviet takes on the genre. As I tried to demonstrate in this text, it merely upgraded earlier conventions of the genre (a preoccupation with the question of the human being in a new, expanded world; a didactic component; a celebration of technological achievements of the human race), and took them out of the canons of ideologically directed sf of previous decades. This was accompanied by a recontextualization within a more commercially oriented state film policy (hence colorful, action-based productions, such as Podzemelie ved’m). Both of these trends (reliance on thematic heritage of earlier Soviet science fiction, evident from the importance of Soviet sf literary works as the foundations for cinematic screenplays, and commercialization of the genre) would persist in post-Soviet Russian science fiction. Fedor Bondarchuk’s Obitaemyi ostrov (The Inhabited Island) (2008–2009), a high-budget adaptation of the Strugatsky brothers’ novel under the same name, with strong emphasis on evident special effects (slowmotion battles, magnificent explosions, flawless facial features), was a good example of such a production, drawing on Soviet sf in plot, and on impressive professional special effects in technique.21 Such films testified to a late Soviet and post-Soviet Russian turn in science fiction cinema from this region—a turn away from the obsession with space-related plots and questions, such as the nature of a utopian society, its character-types, its aesthetics, and the narratives that may lead toward such a society, as explored in the previous chapters. This turn, anticipated in late 1970s- and perestroika-science fiction, signaled both a more lighthearted approach to these questions, and provided a different angle for interrogation. FROM PERESTROIKA TO A DIFFERENT KIND OF CRITIQUE As we shall see in the next chapters, which examine post-Soviet films that remembered and memorialized the space age of the twentieth century, the disillusionment about the unquestionability of the Soviet space program did not lead to a complete disappearance of outer-space-themed productions. Rather, these were gradually relegated to other genres. Remembering and memorializing the space age occured in both reflectively and restoratively nostalgic registries, to echo Svetlana Boym. Auteur films of the 2000s (examined in chapter 7) ironized, critisized and questioned the space craze (reflective nostalgia), while attempts to restore this lost mythical past its future (restorative nostalgia) were offered by

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recent big-budget productions in the genre of biopics and action thrillers (discussed in chapter 8).22 Science fiction productions, on the other hand, retained the philosophical questions common to the genre, without necessarily transposing them into outer space. Aleksandr Zeldovich’s 2011 film Mishen’ is an exemplary—and highly original—case in point. Here, all of the binary oppositions characteristic of Soviet science fiction, that is, the axiological opposition between Soviet space exploration and American space colonization, manifest in films, such as Nebo zovet and Mechte navstrechu, the accompanying backdrop of the positive, progressive Soviet communist utopia opposed to the decadent, profane dance of capitalism in the United States, and the symbolic opposition between the eternal peace of the Russian countryside and the unknowable, but seductive darkness of outer space, brought out in Tainstvennaia stena and Solyaris, were united, producing a highly disturbing effect. According to the plot, in 2020, a group of filthy rich Muscovites, including the Russian Minister of natural resources Viktor (Maksim Sukhanov), his bored wife Zoya (Justine Waddell), her soon-to-become flame Nikolai (Vitaly Kishchenko) and her brother, talk-show host Mitia (Danila Kozlovskiy) as well as his flame Anna (Daniela Stoyanovich) headed out to a deserted compound in the Altai mountains near Mongolia, known as “the clearest place on earth.” They wanted to access a radiation-collector-well, known as the Target (mishen’), which allegedly functioned as a fountain of eternal youth. Predictably, this rejuvenating experience did not salvage the group from their boredom, or eternalize their love for one another. It merely galvanized their affects, resulting in an abundance of diverse sex scenes, and makes them reiterate grand philosophical questions that have marked the history of Russian thought, such as the perfect social order, the question of individual freedoms, and the nature of ethics. In the context of our discussion on projections and reflections of the space age future in Soviet and Russian cinema, Mishen’ can be interpreted as an implosion of the utopian ideal of progress, which presupposed social and individual evolution toward a kinder, more empathetic and rational human race to accompany technological advances and an improvement in living conditions. At the same time, it was an implosion of the dystopian prediction that perfect social order cannot but hinge on a totalitarian regime, which does not care for the good of the people. In this film, both premises were explored in the context of neoliberal capitalism of the Russian type, that is, an economics partly regulated by state apparatuses, which grant far greater opportunities to ideologically loyal structures than to the opposition, and which encourages the development of a society plagued by economic and social inequalities. The film insightfully warned that these contradictions would never be solved by materialist aspirations of the privileged few, even

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if these were accompanied by the best of intentions and by the most idealistic of reflections on social order. None of the characters were inherently evil, nor did they harbor mischievous plans. They were simply too near-sighted to use their newly acquired youth for more than the satisfaction of their immediate cravings, or to postpone acting upon affects, such as lust, jealousy, or anger. Mishen’ grounded the later Soviet space utopias, enacting them on Earth, and in the context of a near post-Soviet future, which appeared more realistic than the futures of near-reach sf. It did not shy away from exploring the idea of the future as eternal decadence for the wealthy few; in this future, space exploration was no longer necessary. Moreover, in this perspective, and in the context of late Soviet and post-Soviet reflections on the space age, such as Kin-Dza-Dza!, the past of Soviet space utopianism appeared as a socially enticing gimmick, intended to lead to precisely this outcome—posthumanist eternal prosperity for the chosen wealthy and influential elites, rather than equality in opportunities and prospect for all. The most uncanny effect of Mishen’ was, however, the compliance of its dystopian coordinates with the basic social coordinates of Soviet utopias, characteristic of the films examined in the previous chapters. In Mishen’, the very reliance of these utopias not only on totalitarian regimes but also on individuals who had internalized particular intergenerational hierarchies, traditional gender divisions, and the belief in the possibility of a better, fairer future, accessible through individual and technological advancement, was brought to its point of implosion. In contrast to common dystopian productions, which foreground the struggles of enlightened individuals against the regime, this film focused on the intellectually average individuals, on the ones that were allowed to thrive under this regime, as they followed the ideologically set-out parameters in their careers, intimate lives, and voting patterns. The protagonists of Mishen’ were accomplished individuals; they were educated, successful, influential, and in possession of sufficient resources to fulfill all their desires. They were the grown-up children of the Soviet teenscience-fiction films, thrown into the post-Soviet world, where they needed to deal with a capitalist future, full of opportunities. If seen in the light of this extrapolation, Mishen’ provided a powerful critique of these Soviet youth-science-fiction films, as well as the socialist-realist productions examined in the second chapter. Namely, it highlighted that these utopias of old disregarded the factor of affect and its impact on individuals. It allowed us to see that Soviet utopian productions with prominent socialist-realist features (see chapter 2) used the image of a space future as a device to curb affective responses to everyday situations. This functioned as both a rhetorical and mnemonic device, encouraging the spectator to bracket her own affective responses to quotidian challenges in favor of putting in sustained efforts for a better future for all. At the same time, the imagery of a

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future communist utopia also functioned as an intradiegetic device, providing necessary cohesion to affectively empty plots by implying that communist utopia involved such a degree of social harmony that all affect was collective, and tuned to social progress rather than individual satisfaction. While films like Tainstvennaia stena, Solyaris, Petlia Oriona, Zvezdnyi inspektor, and the perestroika productions examined in this chapter questioned this premise by accentuating the personal battles undergone by their protagonists, it is difficult to align them as straightforwardly with Soviet youth science fiction cinema as it is to provide this comparison with reference to Mishen’, simply due to the fact that its protagonists can directly be associated with the generations of children who grew up watching Bol’shoe kosmicheskoe puteshestvie, Moskva–Kassiopeia, and Cherez ternii k zvezdam.

NOTES 1. For example, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, USSR 1979 (Mosfilm). 2. Mishen’, directed by Alexandr Zeldovich, Russia 2011 (REN Tv). 3. The graphic novel was published in 1985, and is fully available online at: http://moonrainbow2​.narod​.ru​/part1​.html. (26 July 2016). 4. Kinopoisk reviews of Lunnaia raduga are available on Kinopoisk​.ru​, 2019. https://www​.kinopoisk​.ru​/film​/45125/. 5. Konets vechnosti, directed by Andrei Ermash, USSR 1987 (Mosfilm). 6. Liudmila Budiak, Aleksandr Troshits, Nina Dymshits, Svetlana Ishevskaia, Viktoriia Levitova, Istoriia otechestvennogo kino: khrestomatiia (Moscow: Kanon+, 2011), 547–557; Anna Lawton, Before the Fall: Soviet Cinema in the Gorbachev Years (Philadelphia: Xlibris Corporation, 2002), here 13. 7. Both statements were uttered in the film by one of the affected astronauts, Timur Kizimov (Georgy Taratorkin). 8. Another film that addresses the same issue in the genre of scientific fantasy is Vozvrashchenie s orbity (Return from Orbit), directed by Aleksandr Surin and produced by Dovzhenko Film Studios in 1983. In contrast to Lunnaia Raduga, this film interrogated the tension between the Soviet cultural mythology of the necessity of spaceflight and the human nature of the cosmonauts from the point of view of nearreach, prognostic, rather than fantastic sf, and affirmed the moral, psychological and physical supremacy of the cosmonaut over ordinary citizens. The film conjoined the science-fictional backdrop of a future where spaceflight had become a mundane activity with a melodramatic plot. Here, the story centered around two cosmonauts, Pavel Kuznetsov (Juozas Budraitis) and Viacheslav Mukhin (Vitalii Solomin), who had been a successful and inseparable team, until Viacheslav’s wife suddenly died, while he was on a mission. In mourning, he refused to continue his cosmonautic career. However, an incident at the Space Station, which involved his colleague Kuznetsov, made him reconsider his decision and come to his colleague’s rescue. This film first took Mukhin back to earth, which was depicted as a rural setting, with wooden

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houses, empty planes and a countryside that could slowly be traversed by train. He was shown to decline, surrender to mourning, until a random train-passenger casually, in a passing remark, devalued the cosmonauts’ efforts as an easy path to glory. This threw Mukhin out of his stupor. Upon hearing that his colleague Kuznetsov was not faring well in space, he did not hesitate to convince his superiors that he should be sent to space to help, even if his period of inactivity had left him in subpar shape. Dreams of space and trust in “the cause” of space exploration were depicted as superior to human emotion, even when the latter was a reaction to the loss of a loved one. 9. Some recent reviews are available at https://www​.kinopoisk​.ru​/film​/45125/ and http://www​.kino​-teatr​.ru​/kino​/movie​/sov​/3543​/annot/. 10. Korabl’ prishel’tsev, directed by Sergei Nikonenko, USSR 1985 (Kinostudiia imeni Gorkogo). 11. Kristin Thompson, and David Bordwell, Film History: An Introduction: Third Edition (NY: McGraw-Hill, 2009), here 594. 12. Conan the Barbarian, directed by John Milius, USA 1982 (Dino De Laurentiis Corporation Edward R. Pressman Productions). 13. John A. Riley, “Kin-Dza-Dza!” Electric Sheep: A Deviant View of Cinema, 2013. http://www​.ele​ctri​cshe​epma​gazine​.co​.uk​/reviews​/2013​/09​/12​/kin​-dza​-dza/. 14. The film took several years to make. Before it came out, Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko had become Secretary General of the Communist Party. As his initials (K.U.) spell out Ku!, the crew thought about replacing the morpheme with something less provocative. Chernenko’s death in 1985 made those changes unnecessary. 15. Apparently, Daneliya had been given a budget for two feature films. Upon completing the film, the first version of ninety minutes, he was warned that he would have to return money if he would deliver one film instead of two, so he opted for reediting the film and releasing a longer (135 min) version in two series. 16. Sasha Senderovich, “Georgii Daneliya and Tat’iana Il’ina: Ku! Kin-dza-dza (2013),” Kinokultura 43 (2014). http://www​.kinokultura​.com​/2014​/43r​-ku​-kindzadza​ .shtml. 17. Georgy Daneliya, “Boius’, chto ‘Kin-dza-dza! Dza!’ mogut zapretit’,” Sobesednik 30, August 28, 2012. http://sobesednik​.ru​/print​/87149. 18. Cornea, Science Fiction Cinema, here 111–120. 19. Cf. Ron Miller, “Spaceflight in Popular Culture,” in Societal Impact of Spaceflight, ed. Stephen J. Dick and Roger D. Launius (Washington, DC: NASA), 501–12, 2007, here 512. 20. Armavir, directed by Vadim Abdrashidov, USSR 1991 (Mosfilm). Pis’ma mertvogo cheloveka, directed by Konstantin Lopushanskii, USSR 1986 (Lenfilm). 21. Obitaiemyi ostrov I and II, directed by Fedor Bondarchuk, Russia 2008/2009 (Art Pictures Studio, Non-Stop Production and STS Channel). 22. Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic books, 2014). For an inspiring analysis of the particularities of nostalgia for socialism in post-socialist transitional societies, see also Mitja Velikonja, “Lost in Transition: Nostalgia for Socialism in Post-Socialist Countries,” East European Politics and Societies 23, no. 4 (2009): 535–551.

Chapter 7

The Province Called Earth The Trope of Outer Space in Post-Soviet Russian Cinema

TO LOOK BACK AT EARTH FROM ABOVE AND BEYOND If the previous chapters looked at the formation of a cultural memory of the space age through science fiction as a didactic, mnemonic, and imaginative device, the last two chapters of the book turn the mirror backward. Focusing on the question of fictionalizing the space age “in retrospect,” I address the intersections between science fiction as the site of a past future and historical drama as the site of its reflection. How are dreams of the past refracted, rearranged, and reintegrated into the present imagination of this past and its projections of the future? At this point, it should necessarily be noted that post-Soviet popular cultural references to the history of Soviet spaceflight have attracted a considerable amount of scholarly attention over the past decade (2010–2020). To a notable degree, these studies agree that the first wave of post-Soviet reappropriations of the mythical history of the Soviet space program included many examples of postmodernist deconstruction, aiming to provide a critique of the previous political system and its foundational myths.1 At the same time, many scholars have also pointed out the coexistent nostalgic element of these returns to various aspects of the space program and the space race, such as the longing for a lost, communist vision of a future, the idealization of the Khrushchevian Thaw, and certain structures of Soviet everyday life.2 Slava Gerovitch’s study on the Soviet space age remembrance proposed a slightly more nuanced approach, examining Soviet space myths beyond classical analyses that saw them as longing for certain aspects of a documented past. For Gerovitch, these myths became “frames for entirely new meanings,” functioning in terms of Natalia Ivanova’s “no(w)stalgia:” “neither 143

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condemnation nor idealisation of the past, but its actualisation as a set of appealing symbols for today’s discussions.”3 The “no(w)stalgic” audience turns into “a collective participant and a collective interpreter; a creator of a myth, a part of the myth, and a debunker of the myth; the living past and a trial of the past at the same time.”4 The concept of no(w)stalgia corresponds partly to Boym’s characterization of nostalgia for the Soviet Union and for the cult of cinema itself, typical of early post-Soviet cinema on Soviet myths, which exhibited “the desire to manipulate cultural myths, to aestheticize and to politicize against the grain.”5 Focusing on “elite cinema,” that is auteur films, such as Prorva (The Abyss), Boym also stipulated that this nostalgia gave birth to a number of “decadent fairy tales in spite of all moral and commercial odds.”6 Taking Boym’s observation as a springboard, this chapter examines the legacy of the Soviet space program in post-Soviet Russian cinema through a mythical notion that is not entirely self-evident: the provinces. There seems to be a general consensus that “the provinces” bear special cultural significance in the Russian linguistic context; however, there is no prescriptive or exhaustive definition of the provinces’ contextual relevance, connotations, uses, or transformations. A number of scholars have agreed that the idea of the provinces has been undergoing substantial transformations over the past century, and requires (re-)examination.7 This observation coincides with an increased amount of attention that the provinces have recently received in cultural production and analysis, the cinematic medium being no exception. It appears, if one is allowed a provisional categorization judging by the range of province-preoccupied cinematography, that the cinematic “post-Soviet provinces” could be traced along several interconnected, but distinct trajectories: in terms of spatio-temporality—as a chronotope with specific configurations of time and place; in terms of dynamics—as the spatio-temporal relation between the center and periphery; and in terms of subjectivity—as a mode of being and agency. All three trajectories take on very particular contours and manifestations: there are no universal, abstract provinces or a provincial subject; nor is there a universal recipe for provincialization or deprovincialization. However, the notion of the provinces remains a useful tool of sense-making, providing implicit, common-sense explanations for occurrences, which would otherwise seem foreign, irrational, or both. Moving into the domain of the Soviet space program, I will demonstrate that defining the provinces and the provincial does not mean simply questioning the set of characteristics conventionally regarded as provincial, that is, dreaminess, technological backwardness, vast empty spaces, and long journeys, poorly remembered stories that function as facts if recounted with reference to authority, etc. Rather, these characteristics of provinces and the provincial function as a structural characteristic are important in two

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respects. First, provinciality as a structural feature denotes relationship(s) between the center and the periphery, where they depend on one another. Second, provinciality as a structural characteristic favors a certain subjective predisposition, as suggested by Zlotnikova’s exploration of the metaphorical dimensions of the notion: characteristics outlined earlier as provincial may easily be poetically (and therefore metaphorically) attributed to individuals rather than regions. This chapter will argue that—in contrast to the Soviet productions examined in the previous chapters, which positioned spaceflight and the Soviet society that enabled its first cases at the very center of human, social and national activity—post-Soviet feature films on the space age depicted the people, the state, and the temporal context of the beginning of the space age as inherently provincial. Furthermore, these films succeeded in demonstrating that this actual and metaphorical provincialism, which—from the perspective of twenty-first century filmmakers—characterized the beginning of the space age in the Soviet context, is depicted as key to the success of the Soviet space program and not as an obstacle to it.8 Insofar as the first achievements of the Soviet space program required cooperation of various agents on the level of the entire state, they were infused with ideas coming from the center. However, these ideas continued to develop in provincial circumstances at remote cosmonaut training and technology development sites. Aside from this factual observation, I argue that an altered perception of the center/periphery relationship in the context of the impending space age, where the center as a geographical point was replaced by a central aim, and periphery became defined by everything that was not directly related to reaching this aim, corresponds to the dynamics of the provinces as commonly understood in Russian cultural geography: as related to journeys to and from the center, to the constitution of subjectivity and agency, and general ideas about the world and one’s place in it. In order to elaborate this argument, I provide close readings of three critically acclaimed films, which, precisely do to their atypical treatment of the history of the Soviet space program and its ideals, generated limited mass appeal: Aleksey Uchitel’s Kosmos kak predchustvie (2005), Aleksey Fedorchenko’s Pervye na lune (2004), and Aleksei A. German’s Bumazhnyi soldat (2008), in order to examine how the notion of the provinces interacted with that of outer space. THE PROVINCES IN THE CONTEXT OF THE DAWN OF THE SPACE AGE How can the cosmos as a horizon of thought and achievement redefine the relationship between the center and the periphery? First of all, a brief

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glimpse at the history of the space age reveals that there is no real consensus about the significance of the first cases of spaceflight. With several decades’ hindsight, “(the dawn of) the space age”—a common reference to the period following the launch of the Sputnik in 1957 used to describe man’s first ventures beyond the orbit of the Earth—appears metaphorical and poetic: it resorts to rhetorically efficient rather than analytically precise images in order to refer to certain events and their (actual and potential) implications. “The dawn of the space age” is a syntagm and an image that hints at a new beginning and at an emergence of new spatio-temporal coordinates; if this hint is taken seriously, the syntagm and the idea it bears can also be regarded as a milestone with far-reaching implications for the question of how to go on being human.9 Many reflections on the first manned spaceflight acknowledged these implications: “The fact of spaceflight marks today’s world and our contemporary existence as people on the deepest level,” stated Günther Anders.10 If Hannah Arendt had seen the launch of the Sputnik and the ensuing advent of the space age as the beginning of the “alienation of the Earth,” of man’s fatal disengagement with his/her essence in favor of scientific and technological progress, Anders interpreted spaceflight as a remarkable occasion that demonstrated to man how small and unremarkable the Earth, the cradle of our existence, actually was when seen from the vastness of outer space.11 Around the same time, Jacques Lacan theorized the first landing on the Moon as an event of mathematical language, which—along with certain other scientific achievements—postulated the autonomy of the signifier and therefore entailed radical consequences for the question of subjectivity.12 Over time, both of these accounts seem to have been integrated into more conventional narratives. Spaceflight was turned into a side effect of Realpolitik, which favored the development of surveillance and other military technologies. However, this rationalization did not completely eliminate a certain general fascination with the beginning of humanity’s (ad)ventures in space; a feeling of uncomfortable wonder persisted both in accounts of these events and in further scientific research, in one way or another connected to space exploration. Therefore, rather than focusing on the variable sociocultural dynamics that accompanied the beginning of spaceflight, I propose to foreground the constant: the perseverance and wonder that seem integral to the issue. In this chapter, I follow Anders and Lacan in speculating that spaceflight—as an experience and as a precondition for the dawn of the space age—entailed a radical redefinition of the human condition and subjectivity. In other words: if spaceflight and the space age are viewed as the primary aim, the core horizon of human activity, then everything else becomes peripheral.

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However, periphery remains a crucial factor, which constitutes both the center and the dynamics between center and periphery. Therefore, this dynamic is contextually bound. This chapter argues that it corresponds to the dynamics of the provinces, as it is commonly understood in Russian cultural geography: as related to journeys to and from the center, to the constitution of subjectivity and agency, and general ideas about the world and one’s place in it. The rate of production of space-themed films after 2001 is comparable to that in the Soviet era between 1923 and 1986, and follows a fifteen-year-long silence on the topic, only broken by Dmitry Astrakhan’s Chetvertaia planeta, the satire about the Soviet communist utopia, conveniently set on Mars, that was explored in detail in chapter 2. Usually, post-Soviet Russian films on outer space, no longer science-fictional projections of the future, but reflections on this future’s past, are interpreted as nostalgia for the Soviet future or for one of the constituent myths of Soviet identity, a myth of supremacy in outer space.13 However, I believe they also lend themselves to another, perhaps polemical, but arguably also a productive reading. My focus is on the special significance of the dawn of the space age as, in Lacanian terms, a “master signifier” of sorts, capable of structuring reality. These recent reinterpretations of the dawn of the space age operate from within a chronotope, in which three phantomlike images of the post-Soviet Russian province function in the richest understanding of the term: as a structure, which may take on the form of a narrative, or a spatio-temporally determined axiological, or political orientation.14 In the Russian understanding of the term, the provinces not only comprise the region outside the center, but may also be understood as the relationship between the two. In order to explore these relationships, it is necessary to focus on the provincial in terms of its metaphorical dimensions, which is why I propose to focus on people, memories, ideas, and the cinematic medium. This conceptual approach to film implies a specific understanding of cinema aesthetics: aesthetics functions as a means of pointing toward inconsistencies within a given world, and, a Rancièrian sense, inviting a new distribution of the sensible rather than merely making sense of the existing one.15 This, in turn, infers refraining from using standard methods of analysis and relying on the potency of methodologically mixed interpretations. I focus close film readings not on narrative, mise-en-scène, music or characters, but rather on films as agents, potentially capable of intervening into reality. The three films in question developed the chronotope of the dawn of the space age along three dimensions, which also represent three particular aspects of post-Soviet provincial space: Uchitel’s film was preoccupied with the subject, Fedorchenko’s with memory, and German’s with universal axiology.

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PROVINCIALIZING THE SUBJECT: KOSMOS KAK PREDCHUVSTVIE Had the title of Aleksey Uchitel’s Kosmos kak predchuvstvie, commonly known to anglophone audiences as Dreaming of Space, been translated more precisely, as Space as Premonition, it could have served as an elegant justification of the shift in analytical focus as proposed in this chapter. Nevertheless, most reviews of the film tended to disregard the original title and focus on everything but outer space. Indeed, the simple narrative of this melancholic stylized account of the late 1950s in an obscure town in the Russian north might at first seemed to provide a reason: the spectator got a glimpse into the life of two men, their relations with two women, and their involvement in the cosmonaut training program. Space was there, but it seemed marginal, lurking in the shadows, easily mistakable for the picturesque setting of a melodrama. However, I intend to subvert this reading by proposing that this film was not concerned with representation or psychology at all. Rather, it was obsessed by an idea: Which human being was worthy of the abstract, but imminent space age? This idea is not directly transferrable to or deducible from a character or a cinematographic technique. This peculiarity surfaced as soon as one attempted to examine the film according to established analytical categories such as character analysis. One of the protagonists, German (Yevgeny Tsyganov)—an allusion to German Titov, the cosmonaut initially set to become the first man in space, only to be substituted by Yuri Gagarin at the very last moment—was a highly motivated fellow, who was evidently a bit too intelligent for his own good: he was studying English in his spare time, and apparently trying to find a way out of the USSR, either on a regular ship or a spaceship.16 His space enthusiasm was caught by a more simple-minded creature who went by the name of Koniok (Horsy) (Yevgeny Mironov), a cook in a local restaurant, who was not an opponent or an antagonist, but rather a less intelligent and gullible figure than German. I argue that these two men constituted one subject and the film was an exploration of subjectivity. Throughout the film, the two men did not really function without one another; separately, they appeared static and flat. They did not function together well either, but they did manage to propel the film’s exploration of subjectivity. The director employed several techniques in order to create this double-headed subject, whose heads appeared to be facing the same direction with an obscure goal, provisionally defined as “going to outer space,” while their feet pulled them in different directions. Throughout the first half of the film, the camera followed Koniok who was pursuing German, depicted at first as an intriguing stranger. Around halfway through the film, the point of view changed, and the camera started squinting at both characters, examining them from the side, in medium shots. In

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the last third of the film, the director intentionally, almost loudly, shifted the gaze of the camera by another quarter: a tracking shot, going after someone dressed like German, suddenly was followed by a medium close-up that showed us the person en face. And this person was not German, but Konek, who was wearing German’s clothes. After this episode came a long shot of both characters, which we saw through the window of a tram. The glass seemingly solidified the image of two men, now wearing very similar clothes, who seemed to share a secret. But at this point, both the spectator and one of the men (German) knew that this secret was a lie: German claimed he was training to become the first cosmonaut, although this was just another layer of fiction, an excuse he invented to persuade Konek that he was on an important mission. Apart from the gaze of the camera, there were other circumstances that reinforced this split and illogical unity embodied by German and Konek. The first were curiosities of the fabula, which seemed to drive the social-realist canonical logic of irrational connections to the extreme: Koniok had no idea who German was, what this mysterious persona did, why he studied foreign languages, practiced boxing, and regularly swam in the ice-cold sea.17 Despite all this, he made a blind decision (as advised by his boxing coach) to befriend this stranger and follow him around everywhere he went. He did not reconsider this decision despite an apparent lack of enthusiasm, and despite the fact that German proceeded to coldly seduce Koniok’s girlfriend Lara (Irina Pegova). Meanwhile, the camera insisted: long shots that showed the coast, the bridge, a common meeting place, and the forest, where Koniok often fell off his bike with a girl in the back seat, and they proceeded to roll around in the autumn leaves—all this was consistently fuzzy, unclear. Medium shots,

Figure 7.1  Still from Kosmos kak predchuvstvie—The Split Identity of German and Konek.

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on the other hand, were always in motion, they shook, shifted, and slid. The subject was caught somewhere between these extremes: we captured it in the medium long shot, not as a stabilization and a clarification of the image, but as a mock-up: like Koniok who was just a caricature of German when he took up his idol’s dressing habits. He did not become German, he became his inefficient replica. This split did not have much to do with a single person; rather, it was the split that marked the way the film was driven forward, the way it worked; it enacted the film’s obsession with the nearing, but faraway, imminent, but incomprehensible advent of the space age. This statement was reinforced by the relationship between the sound and the image. Most of the music in the film was diegetic, which might be a stylistic allusion to the socialist realist tradition of Soviet cinema. Most of the music came from radio transmitters on the set; and wherever there was music the source of which could not be traced as easily, such as the music accompanying the closing credits, it was thematically directly linked to the ideas picked up by the narrative, such as the Soviet idea, which seemed to provide explanations for inexplicable action. However, it was not the presence and the functions of the music in this particular film that were striking, but its loudness: compared to the dialogue, the music was exceptionally loud and sounded forced into the shots. The dialogue, on the other hand, seemed to have been muted intentionally, so that it was unclear and muffled: this stylization, which foregrounded the music, created a remarkable contrast between the visual and sonic images and the spoken word, between technology and the ambient it intruded into. Layered upon one another, all these techniques almost seemed excessive; yet there was no real closure, no catharsis: the film did not make much sense if seen through a progressive or a deconstructionist lens. However, if watched from the standpoint of post-Soviet reflections on the early space age, it produced a sense of uncomfortable unity, marked by the gap between the event of the dawn of the space age, and existent explanatory frameworks for it. It managed to construct a subject, which both was and was not human, which seemed to be driven somewhere into the darkness, and did not have much of an ear for what might be expected of it on Earth. However, the film still managed to produce a sense of unity, which was recognized in the critiques it received from the general public, available at Russian internet forums, such as Kinopoisk​.ru​. One of the ideas that held the film together was the emphasis on the symbolic geography and imagined spaces: this post-Soviet interpretation of the dawn of the space age conflated the center (Moscow, as well as the outer space as Gagarin’s destination) and the provinces (the obscure northern town where events take place). The opposition between this unified terrestrial horizon and a trajectory toward the celestial unknown seemed to be a telling parallel to those accounts of

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the post-Soviet provinces, which foregrounded its decreasing tie to geographical definitions and stronger link to the notion of constant travel, which may be found in urban or rural, metropolitan or isolated, and homogenous environments.18 PROVINCIALIZING MEMORY: PERVYE NA LUNE The outlined redefinition of the provincial subject in the context of the beginning of the space age provided by Uchitel’s Kosmos kak predchuvstvie could have been disregarded as a unique eccentric peculiarity, were it not accompanied by similarly oriented explorations, introducing the notion of provincial subjectivity into works concerned with other aspects of the space age and the Soviet space program, such as narratives of its memory. Apart from Astrakhan’s Chetvertaia planeta, the only explicitly humorous account of the glorious days of Soviet ambitions beyond the orbit of the Earth has so far been Aleksey Fedorchenko’s mockumentary on the memorialization of the Soviet space program, Pervye na lune, which was released around the same time as Uchitel’s Kosmos kak predchuvstvie. In order to provide the film with a coherent, light-hearted, and suggestive storyline, the director resorted chiefly to the strategy of postmodernist deconstructive reconstruction. What the film mocked was not the Soviet space program as such, but rather the memory of it: the myths it had produced and reproduced. Here, it seems that the movie, devoid of any geographical localization, apart from being set in various peripheral locations (Chilean mountains, Chita, Johannesburg), and driven by visually explicit spatial frustration, employed most of its capacities to play around with space and time in order to focus on memory: the memory of the mythical Soviet space program of the 1930s. The viewers followed researchers who tracked down unreliable evidence of the existence of a space program in the 1930s, and of Ivan Kharlamov’s (Boris Vlasov) flight to the Moon, which accidentally ended somewhere in Chile. The film used pseudoarchival footage and neutral narration, as well as construed testimonies of fake witnesses to tell about what seemed to be the logical step that had to be taken before Gagarin’s flight in 1957. Spectators who articulated their impressions about the film on Kinopoisk​.​ru were mostly convinced that the director tried to make fun of the history of spaceflight, and some thought he was trying to do the very opposite: to elevate it to the level of myth. Both groups agreed that he did whatever he was trying to achieve poorly.19 Nevertheless, the film succeeded in one matter: in creating a great deal of confusion. Its straightforward narrative defied Western expectations of postSoviet bitter humor, and its comedy was unbelievable for the Russian spectator,

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Figure 7.2  Still from Pervye na lune—A 1930s’ Soviet Space Program Experiment.

as it made fun of matters of mythical proportions (i.e., of the Soviet space program, which is a common laughing matter). Up until the very end, the film insisted on sticking to the form of the documentary, like a persistent historian digging through the archives and following his research object regardless of the absurdities and illogical elements that tend to undermine the thesis set out at the beginning. The film managed to create a liminal time-space: it was not yet in the realm of unbelievable parody and no longer a serious conspiracy theory.20 This aspect of the film’s form seems to mirror the irrational, blind persistence that guides all basic research (research for its own sake, the primary aim of which is not applicability, but scientific discovery) and that occurred before the actual beginning of the space age. This blind belief in the necessity to continue working toward success created the conditions, albeit not always the best ones, for people to stick to patterns of behavior that might, at one point, bear results (although not necessarily): spaceflight. This was a confusing situation: the space age had demanded exceptional effort from the people and, at the same time, there had never been any guarantee that, even if achieved, it would have any direct impact on the lives of the people who worked toward creating it. The film focused on this confusion behind the space age, and showed confusion as crucial for the dynamics that had brought about its dawn. There was, for instance, a telling sequence where horsemen rode up to the rocket before its launch, their helmets apparently pointing to the absurdity of the entire endeavor: Why would one invest in the space program at a time when even tanks and cars had still almost been the stuff of science fiction? Fedorchenko’s film started off with confusion, but offered no way out. Confusion and blind faith in fairy tales was what characterized the dynamic of memory narratives, when the latter were dictated by the ideological center

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(the metropolis, perceived as a mythical, unattainable center of progressive thought, planning, and lifestyle) and allowed to trickle down to the backward periphery, which always only received, and never created progress.21 Memory narratives received by the geographical and mythical (backward, faraway) periphery from the ideological and mythical center were therefore often inconsistent with local (provincial or peripheral) memories, which made these “instructive” memories disseminated by the center seem superficial, elevated from everyday reality, and therefore somewhat fairytale-like. The most comfortable exit from this uncomfortable muddle would probably be humor. But in this particular case, the Russian spectator paid a high price for this humor. The film exploited the conventions of the documentary and insisted on the truthfulness of all testimony: of the first Soviet “cosmopilot” who had allegedly flown to the Moon, had an accident that landed him in Chile, was admitted to a psychiatric ward in Chita as he made his way back to Moscow, and ended up playing the part of Prince Alexander Nevski in a circus. One of his colleagues from the crew of potential cosmopilots, the constructor of the first rocket Fiodor Suprun (Andrei Osipov), one of the cameramen following them around instructed by the secret services, an employee from the psychiatric ward in Chita—all proved to be exceptionally enthusiastic respondents to the questions posed by the film crew. “Everything that happened there got recorded. And if it was recorded, it had to be true,” said one of the employees of the archives when introduced to the film crew. Humor here neutralized the confusion generated by the film, but this had a price: we had to acknowledge that the characters involved in this burlesque were also exceptionally funny. The potential cosmopilot Khanif Fattakhov (Aleksei Slavnin and Anatoly Otradnov), an orphan, “raised with love by the Soviet people,” later employed as a guard at the zoological museum, spending his days surrounded by huge model insects; the lilliput Mikhail Roshchin (Viktor Kotov) who ended up as a performer at a midget circus, where he was filmed by the crew—they were grounded in comedy just as firmly as they were in their diegetic positions.22 The film deconstructed a myth about a myth. The deconstruction was humorous, but allowed for no empathy whatsoever, because all of the characters involved were elevated to the level of a myth, and therefore deprived of everything human. The narrative had a carnivalesque quality: the dance of bizarre, eccentric figures who once, a long time ago, participated in a common task, and were now once again brought together in its name, rendered powerful (they spoke the truth, as they were witnesses) and powerless (they spoke nonsense, because they were caught up in a nonsensical play of empty signifiers, awoken within the mockumentary) appeared to be permanent; the carnival was the dynamics of the film.23 The visuals were accompanied by Soviet patriotic songs from various periods and Soviet sf electronic “beeps”;

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the shots, on the other hand, were another bricolage of sorts: historical data was shown alongside pseudo-documentary montage and footage from Soviet space films. The only film that was shown to be undeniable fiction was Vasily Zhuravlev’s Kosmicheskii reis, which, as we saw in chapter 3, also examined the possibility of flying to the Moon, and was widely acknowledged as an emblematic film of the Soviet space age, particularly due to its uncannily precise anticipation of space travel. The only firm anchor of Pervye na lune was therefore, ironically, fiction, which did not, in postmodernist terms, replace the reality, which was lost and perhaps never happened, but appeared as an image, pointing to a horrific void behind closed curtains.24 This is why the affirmatively fictional shots from Kosmicheskii reis were important: they guaranteed that there remained a little something to be trusted: at least some of the fiction was truly fictional. Other shots mainly maneuvered between fiction and reality, such as the shots of the cameras supervising the cosmopilots. There were even excerpts from advertisements for these cameras in the movie, which made the entire film even more eerie: everything was shown to be contrived. This was a documentary based on staged, fake evidence. The film presented the dynamics of the myth of the Soviet space program as confused, contrived, and as a product, greatly conditioned by the tension between the center and the periphery. Driven at the same time by a persistent conviction about the exceptional necessity of spaceflight, and by an intention to bring order into the chaos of fiction surrounding it, Pervye na lune highlighted a dynamic, which was homologous to physical and mental journeys, characterizing the idea of the post-Soviet provinces. Pervye na lune, in a similar way to Aleksei Balabanov’s Brat (Brother) (1997), enacted this aspect of the provincial theme on a very material, worldly level.25 Furthermore, it placed one aspect of the provinces, their reliance on stories heard from the center, and stories told by the center into subjects themselves, rather than a far-off geographical region. In this regard, it demonstrated that narratives and the imagery of memorialized events may only be perceived as such (and not as mere fairytales) by subjects, who do not fully belong to the center. PAPER SOLDIERS OF A COSMIC EMPIRE: PROVINCIAL DYNAMICS OF THE UNIVERSAL AXIOLOGY In the context of our discussion, Aleksei German Jr.’s Bumazhnyi soldat provided a synthesis of the key ideas explored in the previous two highlighted productions. First, Bumazhnyi soldat used the idea of the exceptionality of the (impending) space age to highlight its implications for humanity. Second, according to a widely cited quote, the director explicitly stated that

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this is a film about what was not there, “but could have been”: similarly to both Kosmos kak predchuvstvie and Pervye na .une, it was not a factographic account but a transposition of ideas and symbols with references to historical reality, onto the level of pure fiction. Unlike the films analyzed earlier, the main idea was neither dissecting the subject nor the memory of the space program; what was at stake in this film were the contours of the post-Soviet national idea, or, more precisely, its validity in the world of the intelligentsia. In the film, the intelligentsia was depicted as the Soviet urban myth about the pre-Soviet intelligentsia: as the highly educated segment of society, concerned with the human condition in the contemporary world, with values, morals, knowledge, and meaning, and also impractical in everyday affairs.26 The intelligentsia was portrayed as highly idealist, and opposed to materialist ideas, such as the necessity of technological progress and equating technological progress with success. Interestingly enough, the film aligned this somewhat abstract, timeless image of the intelligentsia with an equally abstract depiction of the provinces, where crucial activities for the preparation of the beginning of the space age took place. I argue that these images of both the intelligentsia and the provinces should be interpreted as imaginary and mythical products of the post-Soviet imaginary. The main spatio-temporal coordinates of the film were clearly imaginary. Even without German Jr.’s hint about the fictionality of the locus of the plot, it was clear that the temporality and space created by the film did not pretend to reconstruct the past or to deconstruct the myths about it. This was emphasized by the allusion of the film’s title to the famous eponymous song by the Soviet bard and poet Bulat Okudzhava, a popular anti-regime song of the Soviet Thaw. According to the archives, the song had not become famous until 1962 or even 1963.27 In any case, it could not have been popular in 1961, when the events of the film, which addressed the time before Gagarin’s flight, took place. Yet from the perspective of today’s audience, the film operated from within an array of symbols, which belonged to the Thaw in one way or another. But in their disconnectedness, they seemed to only point out that, for this work, the Thaw was nothing but a loose net of symbols, which were comfortable and fun to connect in detached intellectual play of intertextual associations. This symbolic Thaw, which appeared to be stranded in time somewhere in the Soviet provinces, as if reminding the contemporary spectator that—just like the material experience of the beginning of the space age—it was completely, hermetically inaccessible to them, haunted the protagonists’ clothing, their hairstyles, the contradictions between their enthusiasm for science, and the often horrible conditions they worked and lived in. The universe of the film extended between Moscow—the workplace of the protagonists, doctor Daniil (Merab Ninidze) and his wife Nina (Chuplan Khamatova)—and

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Baikonur, where they traveled to take part in cosmonaut training (so they thought; later, it turned out that the program was a farce). There was not much of a storyline to the film, which resembled a time-image (a combination of shots that creates its own unique temporality, rather than represents real-time action), as if trying to hint that the eclectic symbolic universe was merely an amplifier for a cataclysm, which occurred on a different level.28 The film created an apocalyptic time; this was also the only “function” of the symbolism of the first spaceflights, a symbolism that reeked of the barracks and mud of the gulag, the “working conditions” for the team in Baikonur. The barracks were inhabited by the neurotic offspring of the Soviet intelligentsia, seemingly also of the nineteenth-century intelligentsia. Daniil lived for an “idea,” and Nina appeared to be living for love, as the only action she took in the film was actually reaction to Daniil’s ever more obvious coldness toward her. Daniil was choleric, and Nina seemed to be somewhat hysterical; their dialogues were reminiscent of the characters from Anton Chekhov’s plays; at the end of the film, Nina and Vera (Anastasiia Sheveleva), Daniil’s lover who became friends with his wife after his death, even semi-cynically recited a passage from Chekhov’s play Diadia Vania (Uncle Vanya) (1897): Yes, we shall live, Uncle Vanya. We shall live all through the endless procession of days ahead of us, and through the long evenings. We shall bear patiently the burdens that fate imposes on us. We shall work without rest for others, both now and when we are old. And when our final hour comes, we shall meet it humbly, and there beyond the grave, we shall say that we have known suffering and tears, that our life was bitter.29

Such dialogues and the apocalyptic temporality created by the film reinforced the impression that spaceflight was a brutally technological, yet senseless endeavor. This point was brought across both by the visual aesthetics of the film and through individual characters: potential cosmonauts seemed to be wandering through marshes aimlessly, in their spacesuits. This activity was shown in a long shot, as if underscoring its senselessness. Daniil appeared similarly without sense when he decided to take a bike for a few rounds across the marshes before collapsing and dying of heart failure. His pale complexion and constant cough were also allusive of stereotypical depictions of late nineteenth-century provincial intelligentsia as overworked, tired, physically weak, and largely impractical doctors and teachers.30 In this film, the premonition of the space age functioned as a chip of the myth of the Thaw, tied to attempts at synthesizing cosmic questions about life and fate with love for the individual on the one hand, and the imminence of technological progress on the other. The synthesis failed: only Nina and Vera lived, but their lives did not have any direct impact on matters beyond

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mundane activities, such as planning to renovate the apartment. There was nothing about these individualist, sensitive characters, symbolizing the intelligentsia that can survive the fast pace of life, dictated by technological progress: either they physically died (like Daniil) or they survived but had to give up on their ideas about taking an active part in the world. The symbolist poetics of the film generated the unarticulated aspect of the myth of spaceflight, which could not be equated to a mere attempt to tell the people about the heroes behind the cosmonauts. Rather, the film questioned the implications of the program for the human being: what would it mean to send the human subject to a badly researched, alien environment. The setting (the faraway Baikonur) allowed the director to highlight this question in a very efficient manner: the provinces portrayed in the film were equally mythical (infinitely vast and empty, technologically backward, full of eclectically gathered objects with no purpose, such as rusty bicycles, camels, photographs of Soviet leaders, framed in bulky frames with big electric lights) as the image of the intelligentsia. Relying on this image of the provinces as the setting for the mythical space program and on the intelligentsia (an elusive concept rather than any kind of viable collective identification) elevated the issue of the beginning of the space age to the level of symbols. On the level of the simulacrum, all three of these mythical symbols (the province, the space age, and the intelligentsia) appeared equal: all three were copies without originals, sets of references to mythical concepts. These copies had no intention to provide exact, precise definitions of the concepts they abstractly alluded to. At the end of the film, the surviving characters (Nina and Vera) left the provinces behind and moved to the city; they also left behind questions about global morality and human significance. The space age did not result from the events they were involved in Baikonur, but happened in different circumstances a couple of years later. However, these copies without originals remained incorporated into a teleological matrix: the film was driven forth by a search for logic, which would provide some sort of justification for the individual’s eternal suffering: it left the spectator wondering, “what could have been,” had the space training program been real, had Daniil not died, and so forth. In this context, the provinces were laid out as a multilayered concept: Bumazhnyi soldat used the provinces as a geographical unit (barracks in the middle of nowhere), a temporality (the film created an apocalyptic time in the provinces), and an atmosphere (everything seemed possible, the provinces favor idealism, but at the same time this atmosphere did not have any real, material effects). In the provinces of Bumazhnyi soldat, protagonists who were torn between very specific demands of the center (Moscow ordered cosmonaut training to take place), which turned out to be pure fiction, and their own idealist yearnings for cosmic peace, played out their dilemmas in an environment that appeared

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to be patiently waiting for an apocalypse and was infused with eclectic symbolism from various periods in Russian and Soviet history. The province appeared to be a milieu that uncovered contradictions within official mythical accounts about the rationale, motives, enthusiasm, and history of the beginning of the space age; it also appeared as a milieu that did not provide any solutions or solace, and offer any kind of moral guidance or opportunities to “begin life again from scratch.” COSMIC CHALLENGES FOR POST-SOVIET PROVINCIAL DYNAMICS Evidently, it is impossible to reconstruct a unified idea that informed Soviet anticipations for the space age; and the films discussed earlier postulated that there was no need to do that. However, they all highlighted a curious resemblance: a conjunction between dreams of cosmic dimensions and the dynamics between the center and the periphery. This redefinition seemed to entail an incorporation of everything conventionally regarded as provincial (dreaminess, technological backwardness, vast empty spaces and long journeys, poorly remembered stories that function as facts if recounted with reference to authority, etc.) into the very relation between the center and the periphery. The center therefore became infused with the periphery, and the periphery as such disappeared from the schema aimed at outer space/the dawn of the space age altogether. Notably, this schema was only characteristic of post-Soviet Russian films about the dawn of the space age, produced in the first decade of the twenty-first century: Soviet productions, such as Anatolii Granik’s Samye pervye (The Very First) (1961), and Vladimir Semakov’s Glavnyi konstruktor (Chief Constructor) (1980) generally tended to depict the provinces as a peripheral and backward region, which the protagonists of the space age had to leave behind in order to succeed.31 The twist performed by post-Soviet cinema, however, placed certain features, conventionally associated with the province, into the very heart of the dawn of the space age. It did not do so in a demeaning or derogatory way, in order to say that provinciality decelerated progress; rather, it highlighted the province as a place within the center, where dreams go, and sometimes, against all odds, come true. I tried to demonstrate that these retrospective accounts of “what could have been” need not be hastily disregarded as “nostalgia for the future” because they provided potent reflections on the significance of the past in the present.32 What is common to all three films is their largely open, explicitly nonjudgmental starting point. Rather than evaluating the Soviet space program or any other aspects of Soviet politics, they took the impending space age as a locus, on which many earthly questions hinged. Kosmos kak predchuvstvie managed

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to demonstrate that the space age may only have been (and was) enabled by an inherently split, contradictory subject, which was held together by its activity, directed toward unknown and magically alluring outer space. Pervye na lune played with the possibility of a factography-based, bottom-up history of secrets of the Soviet space program, and succeeded in demonstrating that such a history would entail so many discrepancies that it would not amount to anything but fiction, no matter how much footage of allegedly archival material it would involve. Bumazhnyi soldat performed a similar gesture, but constructed its pseudo-historical drama from the point of view of the intelligentsia, a subjective formation traditionally stereotyped as preferring to rely on ideas rather than material circumstances. In an oblique way, these three films provided a reevaluated version of the post-Soviet provinces because they discussed the space as a locale that was as imaginary as the center and periphery had been in Russian culture. They discussed the subject, memory, and the national idea, using the same reference point, the Soviet space program, in order to pose a range of questions about this pillar of Soviet identity, and to state that these three areas not only should, but can be rearticulated, if addressed without relapsing into nostalgia or other emotionally laden evaluations of the past. In this sense, a highly critical impulse marks these films, which all point to history and memory as sites of utopian reconfiguration of the past, for a different kind of future.

NOTES 1. Cf. Vlad Strukov, and Helena Goscilo, Helena eds. Russian Aviation, Space Flight and Visual Culture (Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2017). 2. Cf. Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic books, 2001); Rogatchevski, “Space Exploration in Russian and Western Popular Culture,” 251– 265; Siddiqi, “From Cosmic Enthusiasm to Nostalgia for the Future,” 283–306. 3. Gerovitch, Soviet Space Mythologies, here 164. Ivanova, “No(w)stalgia,” 25–32. 4. Gerovitch, Soviet Space Mythologies, 164. For the contours of no(w)stalgia, see also Mark Lipovetsky, “Post-Sots: Transformations of Socialist Realism in the Popular Culture of the Recent Period,” The Slavic and East European Journal 48, no. 3 (2004): 356–377. 5. Svetlana Boym, “Post-Soviet Cinematic Nostalgia: From “Elite Cinema” to Soap Opera,” Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture 17, no. 3 (1995), here 79. 6. Prorva, directed by Ivan Dykhovichnyi, France, Germany, Russia 1992 (Mosfilm). 7. See also Catherine Evtuhov, Portrait of a Russian Province: Economy, Society and Civilization in Nineteenth-Century Nizhnii Novgorod (Pittsburgh PA: University

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of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), here 228–250; Lyudmila Parts, “Topography of Post-Soviet Nationalism: The Provinces—The Capital—The West,” Slavic Review 74, no. 3 (2015): 508–528.; T. S. Zlotnikova, T. I., Erokhina, N. N Letina., L. P. Kiiashchenko, “Russkaia provintsiia v filosofskom diskurse: kontseptualizatsiia metafory,” Voprosy filosofii (2014). Accessible at: http://vphil​.ru​/index​.php​?option​=com​_content​&task​=view​&id​=1054. 8. For more on the sociocultural impact of the space age, see Geppert, ed., Imagining Outer Space—on the cultural history of European astrofuturisms of the 20th century; Albert A. Harrison, Spacefaring: The Human Dimension (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 2002)—for an analysis of the human factor of the U.S. space programme; De Witt Douglas Kilgore, Astrofuturism: Science, Race, and Visions of Utopia in Space (Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 2003) for an analysis of ideas underlying astrofuturisms, and Shukaitis, “Space is the (Non) Place,”—for an analysis of the cultural geography of outer space, as perceived in the context of ideological divisions and consumer capitalism. 9. Certain authors (e.g., Jacques Lacan, Televizija [Ljubljana: Društvo za teoretsko psihoanalizo, 1993]) take the question further, focusing on subjectivity (agency, tied to the signifier rather than to human form), rather than on humanity only. 10. Günther Anders, Der Blick vom Mond: Reflexionen über Weltraumflüge (München: C. H. Beck, 1994), here 117. 11. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), here, 248–285. 12. Lacan, Televizija, 45. 13. Rogatchevski, “Space Exploration in Russian and Western Popular Culture,” 211–265. 14. In this text, the term chronotope is used with reference to Mikhail Bakhtin’s seminal essay, yet adapted to the cinematic medium. This adaptation is partially inspired by Bart Keunan’s argument about the visual potency of materializations of time, which is brought about in film, and partially by Jacques Rancière’s discussion on cinematic images in The Future of the Image, where a close attentiveness to imagery is accompanied by a warning, that no analysis of artworks should rely solely on the conventions and capacities of a given medium. See Mikhail M. Bakhtin, “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes toward a Historical Poetics,” in The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, 48–254 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1937–8/1981); Bart Keunan, “The Chronotopic Imagination in Literature and Film. Bakhtin, Bergson and Deleuze on Forms of Time,” in Bakhtin’s Theory of the Literary Chronotope: Reflections, Applications, Perspectives, ed. Nele Bemong, Pieter Borghart, Michel De Dobbeleer, Kristoffel Demoen, Koen De Temmerman and Bart Keunen, 35–56 (Ghent: Academia Press, 2010); Jacques Rancière, The Future of the Image (London: Verso, 2007). 15. Jacques Rancière, Aisthesis: Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime (London: Verso, 2013). For the specificities of Rancière’s approach to representation, see also Rok Benčin, “Rethinking Representation in Ontology and Aesthetics via Badiou and Rancière,” Theory, Culture & Society 36, no. 5 (2019): 95–112. 16. Asif A. Siddiqi, The Red Rocket’s Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857–1957 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, here 74.

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17. See also Evgeny Dobrenko, Muzei revoliutsii: sovetskoe kino i stalinskii istoricheskii narrativ (Moscow: NLO, 2008). 18. Cf. Zlotnikova et al., “Ruskaia provintsiia v filosofskom diskurse: kontseptualizatsiia metafory.” 19. Seven reviews on the film are publicly accessible at http://kinopoisk​.ru (last accessed on April 12, 2016). Six of them are positive, while one is negative. The negative rating was given by a reviewer who was unimpressed by the film as a mockumentary, having expected the director to produce a more “believable” film. On the other hand, five out of six reviewers who rated the film positively were left somewhat confused. Although all of them acknowledged that the film was a mockumentary, one of them believed it involved “a lot of unique archival footage,” and two found some of the film’s arguments for the existence of an early Soviet space program convincing. Interestingly, one reviewer also observed that there is a “mystical” quality to the film, stemming from the mysticism related to the utter unknowability of the cosmos. The overall impression created by the film can therefore be summed up as confusion: most of the reviewers agree that it is difficult to pin down what the director’s main intention might have been; this critique runs through all these reviews, regardless of the overall rating given by a reviewer. 20. Cf. Gomel, Postmodern Science-Fiction and Temporal Imagination. 21. Aleida Assmann and Linda Shortt, Memory and Political Change (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012), here 1–15. 22. For an examination of the “orphan” trope in the Soviet imaginary, see Marina Balina, “‘It’s Grand to Be an Orphan!’: Crafting Happy Citizens in Soviet Children’s Literature of the 1920s,” in Petrified Utopia: Happiness Soviet Style, ed. Marina Balina and Evgeny Dobrenko, 99–114 (London: Antem Press, 2009). 23. The term carnivalesque is used in a Bakhtinian sense, as a temporary jovial suspension of everyday hierarchies, norms, and rules. 24. This humorous approach to the space age and its place in collective memory, largely conditioned by fictional representations of space-related events of the twentieth century, was also taken up by Slovenian director Žiga Virc, in his 2016 mockumentary Houston: We Have a Problem. Cf. also Peter, Stanković, Igranje z resnicami v Houston, We Have a Problem: public lecture (Slavic Studies Institute, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz), 15. 11. 2018. 25. Brat, directed by Aleksei Balabanov, Russia 1997 (CTB Film Company). 26. Eleonora Havryluyk Narvselius, Ukrainian Intelligentsia in Post-Soviet L’viv: Narratives, Identity, and Power (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2012, here 108. 27. Antologiia Samizdata. Accessed October 30, 2018. http://antology​.igrunov​.ru​ /60​-s/. 28. Cf. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2 (London, New York: Continuum, 2010). 29. Anton Chekhov Uncle Vanya. Project Gutenberg, 1999/2004. https://archive​ .org​/stream​/unclevanya01756gut​/vanya10​.txt. 30. Narvselius, Ukrainian Intelligentsia in Post-Soviet L’viv: Narratives, Identity, and Power, 108–109. 31. Samye pervye, directed by Anatoly Granik, USSR 1961 (Lenfilm); Glavnyi konstruktor, directed by Vladimir Semakov, USSR 1980 (Sverdlovskaia kinostudiia). 32. Siddiqi, “From Cosmic Enthusiasm to Nostalgia for the Future,” here 305.

Chapter 8

Reinterpretations of the Soviet History of Spaceflight in Contemporary Russian Blockbusters

THE SPACE AGE AS MUSEUM Over the past two decades, Russian production companies have, with the support of state agencies, such as the Russian Film Fund and the Ministry of Culture, released over a dozen fiction feature films on the history of the Soviet space program. Even a superficial glance at these films will detect gradual shifts in the dominant themes, tropes, narratives, and aesthetic preferences. Namely: productions from the 2000s (Pervye na lune, Kosmos kak predchuvstvie, Bumazhnyi soldat), discussed in the previous chapter, actively subverted the narrative conventions established by Soviet feature films on the history of spaceflight, such as their linearly progressive, normatively optimistic plots, and standard sets of historical characters. Moreover, they used props, camera angles, and extradiegetic sound in order to turn their cinematic timespaces of the beginning of the space age into an estranged, fictional construction, to elaborate the underlying philosophical and sociocultural assumptions of this timespace.1 In contrast, their successors, directors of spaceflight history films from the 2010s, reaffirmed the history of the Soviet space program as an absolutely excellent achievement. In doing so, these later films referred to their more ambiguous counterparts from the first decade of the twenty-first century, and reinvented both the apparently blindly patriotic, pro-Soviet narrative in a new, post-Soviet context. This chapter will discuss three cases in point: Gagarin: Pervyi v kosmose (2013), Vremia pervykh (2017), and Salyut 7 (2017). As it will be argued further, these newest additions to the growing corpus Russian feature films on the space age played with myths, aestheticized them, and politicized them anew. However, in contrast to post-Soviet Russian cinema of the 1990s, examined by Svetlana Boym in her explorations of nostalgia 163

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for the USSR in film, these films were driven by anything but a decadent logic—hence my inclination to analyze them through a no(w)stalgic lens, posing the following questions: How does cinema fictionalize the history of Soviet spaceflight, and which relations do these fictions bear to the events themselves? In what relation are they to the utopian impulse traced through the discussions on Soviet sf, assembled in the previous chapters? In this chapter, I will analyze how these productions responded to the narratives and questions set out by the aforementioned early post-Soviet productions with their own attempts to reflect on the dawn of the space age. In doing so, they frame these new reinterpretations of the Soviet patriotic narrative in evident dialogue with the tradition of the Hollywood action film, heavily reliant on spectacular sequences and action-driven protagonists. However, as I will argue further, they reappropriated this canon in a unique and recognizable fashion, paving the way for a slightly different canon. By exploring the films’ chronotopes of outer space with a particular emphasis on their constructions of vectors (verticality, horizontality, and diagonals), this chapter argues that these particular cases of cinematic recasting historical events as fictional worlds also did so within a specific fictional world. HOW TO MONUMENTALIZE A DOCUMENT: THE SPECIFICITIES OF RUSSIAN SPACEFLIGHT ACTION FILMS It is tempting to interpret recent Russian features on the space age in terms of an evolutionary narrative. Namely, in 2013, the production company Kremlin Films released the first post-Soviet historical feature on Yuri Gagarin and his pioneering spaceflight of April 12, 1961, tellingly titled Gagarin: Pervyi v kosmose. The film, directed by Pavel Parkhomenko, enhanced the main event, Gagarin’s spaceflight, with flashbacks to his childhood, Soviet victory in World War II, and subtle glorification of certain stereotypes about Russian and Soviet culture. The indicated emphases of this film laid out a normative framework on cinematizing the Soviet history of spaceflight, devoutly followed by later productions. Accordingly, in 2015, director Yuri Bykov, acclaimed for his films’ realism, was hired to direct Vremia pervykh (the title is commonly translated into English as Spacewalk, but the film is also known as The Age of Pioneers, which is closer to the Russian original), the first feature film about cosmonaut Alexei Leonov’s pioneering 1965 spacewalk. The project was produced by acclaimed fantasy and action film director and producer Timur Bekmambetov and actor Yevgeny Mironov. A year later, with the project well under way, the producers, allegedly disappointed by Bykov’s insufficiently spectacular footage, decided to replace

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him with Dmitry Kiselev, a less experienced director but with a greater affinity to genre cinema.2 Kiselev re-shot over 60 percent of the film, and a new team of composers was hired to provide a different soundtrack. Vremia pervykh was finally released in 2017, premiering in early April, as a tribute to International Cosmonautics Day, celebrated on 12 April, commemorating Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering spaceflight of 1961. The year 2017 was marked by another Russian historical spaceflight blockbuster, Salyut 7, directed by acclaimed romantic-comedy director Klim Shipenko, and produced by the CTB Film Company, Lemon Films Studio, and Globus-film.3 This film, based on arguably the most technologically complicated rescue mission in the history of space exploration, premiered in autumn 2017. It should be noted that the release of the two films in the same year was coincidental; Vremia pervykh was initially planned to come out a year earlier. Nevertheless, the canon that all of these recent productions set out regarding fictional depictions of the Soviet history of spaceflight is noteworthy for several reasons. Firstly, big-budget spaceflight history action films have presented an innovative addition to fictionalizations of historical events in Russian cinema. The archive of contemporary Russian genre cinema is abundant in fiction feature films “based on real historical events.” These films, paradoxically ahistorical in their approaches to film format, typically refer to those episodes from Soviet and pre-Soviet Russian history that reinforce a patriotic narrative, which glorifies the spirit of the Russian nation, its superior moral values, bravery, selflessness, ingenuity, and humanism. At first glance, these films, officially classified as fiction films, but often featuring documentary footage, appear as Russian reappropriations of a particular mix of Hollywood action-based narratives, such as the combat/war film, and the action hero film.4 Particularly, the influence of the latter, with its dynamic, action-driven montage, spectacular special effects, uncomplicated character-types, and unambiguous value dichotomies, has proven influential in films about the history of the space age. At the same time, the commonplace practice to supplement fictional shots with documentary footage produces an ambiguous effect. Spectators’ feedback on the films, available on forums, such as Kinopoisk​.ru​, has revealed that the viewer is often attracted and entertained by the fictional aesthetics, narratives, and special effects, but also intrigued by its documentary basis. A similar observation may be made about expert reviews, which have frequently devoted ample attention to the debate on historical accuracy and authenticity, usually to the detriment of the film’s overall score.5 Apart from the clear introductory statement that this is a fiction, rather than a nonfiction film, and the aforementioned factual inaccuracies, active fictionalization is produced by means of a delicate balance between devices, such as point-ofview shots, which encourage identification (not only with the point of view, but also, by derivation, with the moral values of the protagonist), and a sense

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of estrangement, solicited by extraordinary situations, as well as the official historical coordinates granted to this fictional world. The entertaining format of the historical thriller has intentionally been harnessed to function as a myth-making mechanism, as well as laudatory evidence of the high quality of the Russian film industry of today. The use of historical fiction features to celebrate the achievements of the industry, entertain, and reinforce patriotic sentiment is certainly nothing new or particularly context-specific. It is noteworthy, however, that contemporary Russian directors have tended to focus on just a few selected historical cases, World War II (e.g., Leningrad [Leningrad] [2009], Brestskaia krepost’ [The Brest Fortress] [2010], 28 panfilovtsev [Panfilov’s 28 Men] [2016]), sportive events (Legenda #17 [Legend #17] [2013]), Dvizhenie vverkh [Going Vertical] [2017]), and our case in point, the history of spaceflight, doubtlessly at the top of this list.6 The latter is a somewhat more complicated subject-matter than the former two, simply because of the technical complexity of recreating events that took place in space. Therefore, while spaceflight history action films also focus on singular events, such as Gagarin’s pioneering spaceflight, Leonov’s pioneering spacewalk, or the rescue mission to the Salyut 7 space station, they have typically involved more extradiegetic references than war battles or sports matches. Namely, they have incorporated the topics of the prehistory and history of rocket technology, the rationale behind the space race, the family histories and psychological profiles of the characters, and so on. This specificity has prompted the directors to resort to more variegated editing solutions and highlight the chronotopicality of the outer-space trope. If Mikhail Bakhtin introduced and explored the implications of analyzing chronotopes or the “intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature,” scholars such as Martin Flanagan and Bart Keunan have argued for and demonstrated the analytical value of the term for film analysis.7 Looking at film, and specifically at eventbased films, in terms of chronotopes, foregrounds the fictionalizing capacities of the medium by pointing to the tacit expectations and assumptions that supplement the spectator’s perception of the audiovisual subject-matter. The Soviet chronotope of outer space and space exploration was first described in Matthias Schwartz’s analysis of post-1957 Soviet literature. Here, the author pointed out that the early successes of the Soviet space program, such as the launch of the Sputnik, which temporally coincided with the democratizing tendencies characteristic of the Khrushchevian Thaw, justified both greater investments into basic science, sometimes quipped as “cybernetics instead of tractors,” and encouraged a bold step away from socialist realism in the arts. According to Schwartz, this contributed to greater diversity and—not always optimistic—philosophical reflections on the anticipated space future in the genre of sf, most often exemplified by the literary works

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of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solyaris, examined in chapter 2.8 The chronotope of outer space as a place, which gradually transforms from a symbol of imminent progress and Communist future into a potentially dangerous, unknown and ultimately unknowable place that questions the human in return for being interrogated by humanity, was generally reflected in Soviet space science fiction of the 1960s–1980s. At the same time, in the previous chapter, which provided an analysis of early post-Soviet films about the Soviet space age, I argued that this chronotope was thoroughly destabilized in productions from 2004–2009. These films evidently referred to the bygone Soviet epoch and its space program, but neither belonged to the genre of science fiction proper nor alluded to real historical events, significantly reinventing the history of Soviet spaceflight in terms of narratives, historical data, characters, and plots, in order to question its historical accuracy, as well as its philosophical, ethical, and moral presumptions. One of the main cinematic devices that contributed to this destabilization in these productions was the persistence of an uncanny, questioning gaze, directed toward the unknowable real, which shined through the destabilized images and narrative.9 The fictional worlds of films, such as Pervye na lune, Kosmos kak predchuvstvie, and Bumazhnyi soldat, were incomplete; their apparently fictional constructions revealed a gaping lack of coherence, which is directed to the complex, irrational real beyond the fictional world of the artwork, and the fictional world that the artwork is embedded into. This present chapter, which also relies on close readings of several selected films, this time films with notable mass appeal, will demonstrate how Russian spaceflight history blockbusters of the past decade resorted to an entirely different strategy, ousting the possibility of a gaze. In order to demonstrate the mechanisms at work, I draw on a methodological tool introduced in Åsne Ø. Høgetveit’s work on Soviet and post-Soviet airspace and outer space-oriented cinema.10 Høgetveit expanded the discussion on the outer space chronotope by pointing to its reliance on vectors, particularly the vector of verticality and the so-called moral vertical. Making references to both historical and science fiction feature films, Høgetveit argued that Soviet and post-Soviet films, which fictionalized spaceflight (and aviation) often drew on the Russian cultural symbolism of verticality as aligned with both transcendence, and hence to the idea of outer space as an abstractly transcendent realm, and with the idea of the existence of “natural” hierarchies.11 In this particular case study, I will investigate verticality alongside two other vectors: the diagonal and the horizontal. By pointing to imagery that either directly depicted or allegorically presented vertical, diagonal, and horizontal vectors, I will analyze how the examined films have allowed us to consider verticality in terms of its links to the supremacy of

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the imperative of scientific development, and certain historical narratives. Accordingly, the following paragraphs will analyze Gagarin: Pervyi v kosmose, Vremia pervykh, and Salyut 7, focusing on their narratives, editing, and performativity, and highlighting these dimensions in the context of the vertical-diagonal-horizontal triad. PIONEERS AND GUARDIANS OF THE PLANET AS OBSERVERS: KOROLEV, SCIENCE, AND THE SPACE-EARTH VERTICAL A common, easily recognizable feature of Soviet space films is the trope of the cosmonaut as “the chosen one”; the one selected by the Soviet authorities, the one who understood the language of technology, appreciated Soviet scientific achievements and is willing to sacrifice himself for further advances. In the opening scenes of Gagarin: Pervyi v kosmose, Gagarin (Yaroslav Zhalnin) and Titov (Vadim Michman), the finalists of the cosmonaut selection process, were presented in their bedroom, from a bird’s eye perspective, two lean, small men, stretched on their narrow, military beds the day before the historical event of man’s pioneering spaceflight. They looked very much alike, almost difficult to tell apart. Yet, the plot provided numerous flashbacks to the training process, and presented a final discussion at the command center. All of these gradually convinced the spectator that Yuri was the better candidate for the job. He was selfless, comradely, emotionally stable, down-to-earth, and extremely rational. German Titov, on the other hand, was repeatedly portrayed as jealous of Gagarin, and unable to deal with his “defeat” in a non-emotional way (e.g., when Gagarin attempted to reassure him that his time in space will come, he bitterly replied that “[the people]/ will only remember the first one, the rest will be forgotten.”) However, these descriptions were not unbiased. As the film progressed, it became ever clearer that their judgments on the cosmonauts’ capacity to perform were drawn out by the chief constructor, Sergei Korolev (Mikhail Filippov). Here, he was also the chief interpreter. He interpreted data assembled by the conscientious doctors and nurses, who monitored the cosmonauts’ training, weighed it against his colleagues’ opinions, picked, and sent into space. Korolev was the infallible deic figure, the upright vertical which could not be questioned. Nor could questioning apply to his chosen “eaglets,” orioliki, as he liked to call his cosmonauts. Shots of Korolev preceded shots of the launch of the spaceship in both Gagarin: Pervyi v kosmose and Vremia pervykh. In the latter film, Korolev (here played by Vladimir Ilyin) provided Alexei Leonov (Yevgeny Mironov) with step-by-step guidance during his brief excursion into outer space. Accordingly, as soon as these instructions

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Figure 8.1  Still from Gagarin: Pervyi v kosmose—Gagarin and Titov Waking Up before the Verdict on Who Will Become the First Cosmonaut.

were interrupted by a telephone call from Soviet Communist Party SecretaryGeneral Leonid Brezhnev (Valery Grishko), who wished to congratulate Leonov, the scientific narrative of success broke down, and the cosmonaut, briefly overcome with emotion, encountered very serious problems. This happened several times in the film, and each time, Korolev’s instructions proved to be infallible. The emphasis on the Soviet people’s extraordinary capacity for executing ground-breaking ideas conceived in the realms of politics and science set Vremia pervykh apart from more conventional space-themed adventure thrillers despite the fact that Leonov and pilot Pavel Beliaev’s (Konstantin Khabensky) space mission and their return to Earth were the events that took up over half of the film. The happy ending expected of the film was not grounded in the heroism of the cosmonauts or in the excellence of the command center on Earth. Rather, it was guaranteed by the overarching idea that space and Earth were connected by the vertical of scientific excellence, embodied by the protagonists: Korolev and Leonov. Science was conceived as a fusion between the abstract (formulas), the collective (technology) and the personal (Korolev and the cosmonauts). Therefore, it could not fail, even when the odds were not in its favor. The part of the Vremia pervykh set in space was in rhythmic juxtaposition to the events “on earth.” While embedded into the context of 1960s Soviet politics and ideological narratives, this part of the film clearly responded to the expectations of spectators hoping for an action-filled breath-taking thriller. Carefully constructed with the help of a special computer-generated imagery (CGI) solution developed by Aleksandr Gorokhov’s computer studio CGF, and a team of dedicated stuntmen, Leonov’s spacewalk was a glorious attempt to let the spectator try on the spacesuit herself.12 The spectator witnessed Leonov peek out from the space vessel, then carefully climb out of it,

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gain initial balance, take off the cap from the camera, establish video-connection with the command center on Earth, and then, after instructions from his superiors, let go of the corpus of the shuttle, launching himself into the void. He saw Earth, and his spaceship, Voskhod-2, in its entirety, he seemed to be in control, and then he suddenly lost it, allowing for a highly intense, dramatic sequence. In brief, the scenes in zero gravity were allusions to what have, over the past fifty years of space exploration and post-spaceflight cinema, become poetic, easily recognizable tropes of the spaceflight mise-en-scène. At the same time, Belikov’s review of Vremia pervykh insightfully described the zero-gravity scenes in Vremia pervykh as a “phantom-like nostalgia for the times of the space race, equally unfamiliar to the director and the spectator.”13 Indeed, the dramatism of the film arose from the unusual character of Leonov himself: in contrast to Gagarin, he was a rebellious, individualistic figure, prone to daydreaming and disobeying orders, and hence very ill-suited for the Soviet sociopolitical structures as these were drawn out in the film. Why such a character would be allowed into space, remains a mystery, which could only be explained by the role played by Chief Constructor Korolev. Clearly, his relationship with Leonov was drawn out in very different brushstrokes than the one with Gagarin in Gagarin: Pervyi v kosmose. At the same time, in both instances, the link between the cosmonaut and the constructor guaranteed the persistence of the scientific vertical, and reinforced the symbolism of outer space as a transcendent realm. In space, Gagarin’s lips formed his iconic smile, and he remembered his wife Valentina (Olga Ivanova) and daughters. In space, Leonov closed his eyes and remembered his childhood fantasy of lifting off from the ground and standing up tall, facing the flourishing fields as if they were a wall. Salyut 7, a unique film that addressed the period of Soviet space history, which was no longer dominated by Korolev, in fact almost two decades after his death, needed to rely on a slightly different formula. As if in solemn awareness of the fact that there would never be such a talented, erudite, and valuable man at the head of the Soviet space command center, the film chose to downplay the role of the Soviet authorities, reinventing the cosmonaut as a fully autonomous superhero. This cosmonaut—undoubtedly male, undoubtedly superior to all the women (mothers, lovers, wives, a competent and eternally ignored healthcare professional) in the film—was elevated to the level of a proactive hero at the expense of the semiotic trivialization of the theme of spaceflight. Notably, the opening shots of the film were bird’s eye-view shots filming two cosmonauts, a man and a woman, performing routine tasks on top of the Salyut 7 space station. Structurally, Salyut 7 followed the formula laid out by many other films on space exploration. The scenes “in space” were, like in Vremia pervykh, in counterpoint with scenes “on earth.” The scenes “on earth” constructed the

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lost world of the Soviet past, seen as the promised land by the cosmonauts. This promised land was haunted by the trope of quiet family life, and by the political Cold War division. The world of Salyut 7 emerged in stark opposition to an “American” world, which, just like in Vremia pervykh, Gagarin: Pervyi v kosmose, and other Russian productions on the history of the Soviet space program, was inaccessible, even almost hermetically sealed. Its contours are only hinted at by passing remarks referring to current political events. Unlike the other two films, which showed that spaceflight was impossible without a strong, stable link between science, technology, and individual heroism, linked in a steady vertical vector, Salyut 7 fully subordinated the post1960s development of the Soviet space program to its militarist undertones and to the antagonisms of the Cold War—a blind upward diagonal, which will be discussed in detail in the following paragraphs. The film ended on a happy note, showing that the cosmonauts managed to single-handedly repair an unresponsive space station using a sledgehammer, while the head of the command center could do nothing but helplessly try to attack the prototype of the station in his office, also using a sledgehammer. However, their return home was not shown to the audience. The scientific vertical, so characteristic of the films on Gagarin and Leonov, was broken. The cosmonauts, particularly Vladimir Fedorov (Vladimir Vdovichenkov), were unruly technicians. Sometimes, they hallucinated angels. As Fedorov noted upon offering his partner Viktor Alekhin (Pavel Derevianko) a shot of vodka, “I don’t see any police flying around outside to stop us.” And, indeed, the orders that they received from Earth bore no heavier weight than their own decisions. “THE RACE IS ON!” POLITICAL ESSENTIALIZATION AND THE DIAGONAL VECTOR OF MODERNIST PROGRESS All of the three productions in question were explicitly narrative-driven films. Moreover, in all three cases, the narrative was built into plots that provided numerous opportunities to remind the spectator of the greatness of the cosmonauts’ achievements, while anchoring them within a very specific historical context, and Zeitgeist. Stripping the plots down to their bare structural traits, we are left with a single narrative—an overarching metanarrative of Soviet modernity, constructed on the foundations of the victory in World War II, and aimed at beating the United States in the space race. If one examines the history of Soviet space exploration films and biopics on the actors of the Soviet space program, it becomes evident that these choices were not necessarily the most obvious ones.

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The slogan advertising Gagarin: Pervyi v kosmose was, for instance, “The race is on!” rather than the more commonplace, almost proverbial “Poekhali!” or “Off we go!,” allegedly his words uttered during take-off. Paradoxically, Gagarin: Pervyi v kosmose was not as explicitly concerned with “beating the Americans” as Vremia pervykh and Salyut 7, where decisions regarding sending cosmonauts on premature and thus extremely risky missions were made with the sole intention of overtaking the ideological adversary. Cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Pavel Beliaev, loosely based on their eponymous historical models, were apparently sent on the spacewalk mission two years ahead of sensibly, carefully calculated plans, only to prove a point to NASA. Likewise, in Salyut 7, Alyokhin and Fedorov, fictional avatars of historical figures, cosmonauts Viktor Savinykh and Vladimir Dzhanibekhov, were sent to contact the unresponsive Salyut 7 space station in a great hurry, against a tight deadline, determined by the Americans, who were setting up an empty Challenger shuttle, presumably to get to the station before the Soviets and to steal their secrets. The year in question was 1985, and Ronald Reagan’s “star wars” threat was mentioned by the Soviet space command center with great seriousness. In these films, the road to space was therefore actually a race upward, rooted in political ambitions, and marked by milestones that tended to be further and further away from Earth. In this context, it is not surprising that Brezhnev did not hesitate to telephone Leonov in the middle of the latter’s dangerous, unprecedented spacewalk, just to tell him he was proud of him and was counting on him to come back home alive. Korolev, otherwise very concerned about the well-being and safety of his cosmonauts, did not prevent this call, even though it possibly contributes to Leonov’s carelessness that almost sabotages the mission several minutes later. The scene was very clear in presenting a mandatory, even hereditary link between Soviet science and technology (Leonov contacted the command center, and there was a sequence of shots jumping from these headquarters to the cosmonaut, and back), its political leadership (Brezhnev’s call), and the heroism of Soviet citizens (Leonov), but no links were made between the political and technological infrastructure and its failures. Setbacks were just plot-development devices, and are attributed to either undefined technological issues or individual carelessness. At the same time, moments of despair, brought about by such problems, were often juxtaposed with very particular memories from Earth. In Gagarin: Pervyi v kosmose, Yuri Gagarin often recoiled into childhood memories in search of inspiration. The phantom of World War II loomed over these memories, at once explaining Gagarin’s present calmness, resilience, as well as serving as a means to develop his psychological profile by nuancing it with certain traits, such as selflessness, loyalty to his family, and curiosity.

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For instance, the audience learned that he had put himself in danger in order to save his younger brother Boris from the paws of a Nazi soldier during the war, when their home village was occupied by the Germans. It was also stipulated that he had been a willful youth, who respected his father and chose not to follow in his footsteps as a carpenter and bricklayer, preferring to receive an education. During this flashback, a shot from below emphasized that this teen was about to embark on a journey of ascent. In contrast, his father, mother, and sister were mostly shot en face, emphasizing the horizontal, stable, and secure role they play in Yuri’s life. Gagarin was constructed as a perfect Soviet specimen, brought up in an honest, poor peasant family, cool, calm, and collected under pressure, aiming for an undefinable greater good, and unquestionably devoted to serving the state. When asked about his first association to the word “horror” during a psychological test, he replied: “famine.” When his mother (Nadezhda Markina) asked how his pregnant wife was coping with his dangerous career, he calmly replied that she was “the wife of a soldier,” and that he had consciously sought a woman that would be able to handle anything. Gagarin’s spaceflight was hence depicted as a function of his trust in a certain historical narrative and current political structures, as well as a particular (calm, but daring) psychological disposition. In cinematic terms, this conundrum was emphasized by ascending diagonals within shots, for instance, his memories of symbolic ascents (e.g., we learn that Yuri took his wife Valentina hiking), and ascents that resulted from the montage, for instance, his flashbacks to childhood on Earth shown in counterpoint with shots from outer space. A very similar process was at work in Kiselev’s film on Leonov’s spacewalk, even if the psychological profile of the cosmonaut was markedly different from Gagarin’s. Leonov was explicitly labeled as “out of his mind” by his superiors, after he exhibited unparalleled individualism and unconventionality in thought in order to help his colleague, acclaimed World War II pilot Beliaev during a dangerous landing. Nevertheless, his recklessness—an element of the film that was not grounded in historical evidence—was always justified by his relentless devotion to a greater cause. It was unclear whether, for him, this cause was spaceflight as such or its significance for the Soviet state. For instance, he exclaimed to his wife: “I don’t see the ceiling, all I see are stars.” At the same time, he appeared deeply moved by the state’s insistence that a spacewalk should be executed two years earlier than initially planned. “We will fly in shackles, if need be,” insisted Leonov, enthusiastic about the spacewalk project, and convinced in its feasibility, attempting to reassure the concerned, responsible, and careful Korolev, and highlighting the active, action-hero nature of his character in this film. In carefully coupling the nation-building myth of Soviet victory in World War II with its moral predestination to win the ongoing Cold War, Vremia

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pervykh paid a significant amount of attention to the relationship between the chief constructor responsible for most of the Soviet achievements in this domain, the political establishment of the time, and the cosmonauts. This was a common triad in Soviet and post-Soviet space-themed cinema, and Vremia pervykh was clearly conscious of and affirmative in regard to this tradition. On the most schematic level of narrative and visual aesthetics, Korolev was a corpulent, remarkably serious, meticulous, and daring man, who invariantly addressed the cosmonauts as orioliki, just as he had done in films such as Gagarin: Pervyi v kosmose and the two films dedicated specifically to his own character and role in the Soviet space program, Korolev (2007) and Glavnyi (2015), both directed by Yuri Kara. In a slight contrast to these films, Korolev of Vremia pervykh also appeared to be very well aware of the particularities of Russian history and cultural milieu. “What if the shackles are removed? We will crash into oblivion,” he responded to Leonov, acknowledging that the Soviet people “have always flown in shackles.” Korolev’s quote can be seen as the main nexus of the relationship between the constructor, the Soviet power structures, and Soviet cosmonauts. Having downed a glass of an unidentifiable alcoholic beverage, Korolev was finally convinced by Leonov’s willingness to execute the dangerous experiment. Nevertheless, the film was very clear about the hierarchy: individual zeal and adventurism was of no use when a delicate element of the spaceship needs repair, or when the cosmonauts landed in the freezing cold taiga; political approval and the collective effort of a team of scientists were the ones that accounted for the mission’s final success. The premise of granting the cosmonaut more decision-making power, advanced in Vremia pervykh, was even more prominent in Salyut 7, the most action-oriented contemporary Russian space exploration feature film, and also the first film on the post-Korolev history of the Soviet space program. Salyut 7 foregrounded the topic of the heroism of Soviet cosmonauts, doing so in a markedly different way from Vremia pervykh. Along with other Russian films on spaceflight, Vremia pervykh linked the heroism of highly trained individuals to what appeared to be a nationally specific trait. The cosmonauts’ ability to withstand enormous amounts of stress, to deal with hopeless situations, was cinematically aligned with Russian history, which, according to Korolev in Vremia pervykh, had enabled the people to develop the capacity to withstand numerous diverse horrors. Just like Korolev, Leonov, whose figure was constructed in conversations with the real historical reference of the protagonist of Vremia pervykh, cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, based his own patriotism and sense of duty on the intellectual and historical heritage of the Soviet state. In the first part of the film, his character was clearly carved out from his cosmonaut training and references to his simple childhood in the Soviet countryside. When

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confronted with unexpected obstacles during his pioneering spacewalk, Leonov remembered the Soviet victory in World War II, positing the wartime struggle as the ultimate battle, even graver than his own battle against malfunctioning technology and the prospects of not returning from his space mission alive. Salyut 7 did not articulate this historical premise as explicitly; rather, it employed its central characters, the heroic cosmonauts, as ahistorical embodiments of the remarkable national characteristic. The protagonists of the Salyut 7, cosmonauts Fedorov and Alekhin, were perfectly at ease with all kinds of unexpected obstacles and unbelievable complications. They were embodied Communist new men, fully committed to their mission, and fully capable of completing it regardless of the equipment at hand. Aware of the necessity to reach Salyut 7 first, before the U.S. rival shuttle threatening to find out the secrets of the Soviet space program under the guise of a rescue mission, Vladimir and Viktor did not even require guidance from the command center on Earth. In fact, they consciously and deliberately disregarded certain commands from Earth, when they felt they had better solutions, like taking a sledgehammer out into space, attempting to crack the carcass of the unresponsive Salyut 7. This utopian image of the cosmonaut as a fully autonomous space-worker, a technician and a strategist in one, was a relatively novel development in post-Soviet Russian cinematic depictions of the history of Soviet spaceflight. Salyut 7 was the first film in this tradition that emphasized the figure of the cosmonaut, very much at the expense of the command center, which appeared

Figure 8.2  Still from Salyut 7—Cosmonauts Alekhin and Dzanibekov Trying to Access the Unresponsive Salyut 7 Station.

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amoebic, somewhat incompetent, and out of touch with the action that took place in the celestial realm. At the same time, one should point out that once technical competences were fully transferred to the cosmonaut, the command center assumed the role of the moral compass, attempting to elaborate the most sensible solutions to critical situations. Nevertheless, in this film, the cosmonauts were visually depicted as superior to the command center, looking down on Earth during their mission, rather than being looked up to by the command and control center, as is the case in Vremia pervykh and Gagarin: Pervyi v kosmose. However, their superiority was somewhat helpless. Tellingly, at the end of the film, the visors on their space helmets persistently reflected the moon, sitting above them, as if haunting them. The moon was never shown as the direct object of their gaze, yet, it was there, unavoidable and inaccessible, a proverbial elephant in the room. THE CULTURAL HORIZONTAL AND THE ORBIT AS A SITE OF POST-MEMORY Salyut 7 was clearly a continuation and extrapolation of the myth of Soviet supremacy in outer space, mainly created around the figure of the first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin. In terms of space-related Soviet and post-Soviet Russian genre cinematography, this myth was created and fully developed in a static, ahistorical world. Films on the Khrushchevian period of the history of the Soviet space program established a system of symbolic coordinates that integrated the Soviet space age into a network of values and aspirations that supposedly played a formative role in the early history of spaceflight. Salyut 7, situated over two decades later, merely exploited this coordinate system, without adding anything new. At the beginning of the film, cosmonaut Fedorov’s wife Nina (Maria Mironova), the mother of his child, asked how he would describe his life in the USSR to the people of Madagascar, should he accidentally land on their island. “My daughter, football, and building communism,” he responded, stipulating that these are the matters he loves, and referring to loosely the same world that characterized Vremia pervykh and Gagarin: Pervyi v kosmose. This fictionalized history of the Soviet space program, “based on real events,” operated in a world abundant in (now compellingly stylish retro) symbols of the 1960s USSR: hairstyles and dresses, television sets and space control rooms, as well as interiors of Soviet apartments, where the cosmonauts’ families waited hopefully to hear the final verdict about the success of the mission. At the same time, the overlap between the three fictional worlds is not entirely complete. Salyut 7 worked with an uncomplicated world, following just one, contemporaneous, political logic of a race, situated within a “cold,

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but nonetheless serious” war, to paraphrase a heated discussion at the command center on Earth in the film. In this world, the cosmonauts were free to choose their values. While they had families, they felt an almost greater responsibility before one another, and the drive to space outweighed the concerns of their loved ones. Fedorov’s partner Lilia (Liubov Alekhina), for example, repeatedly confronted him about his priorities—for choosing “space over [their daughter] Olia and I.” She was the complete opposite of Leonov’s silent wife Svetlana (Aleksandra Ursuliak) or Gagarin’s spouse Valentina, who refused to attempt to prevent her husband, a young father, from embarking on his dangerous, life-changing task. While it is possible to argue that these variations in reactions reflected the women’s personalities and psychological dispositions, the films provided abundant evidence for an interpretation that places a greater emphasis on the given cultural contexts. Namely, both Gagarin: Pervyi v kosmose and Vremia pervykh went to considerable lengths to create four-dimensional worlds, where centuries of history manifested themselves as cultural phenomena. For instance, the vast plains of rural Russia reinforced the characters’ patience and resilience. Gagarin and Leonov might have been peasants’ sons, but the frequent flashbacks that they had to their childhoods in the countryside suggested that this experience gave them the stamina required to conquer space. Moreover, recent World War II served as a constant reminder of the greatness, resilience, and moral superiority of the Soviet people, for both the cosmonauts and the Chief Constructor Korolev. There could be no space exploration without the “shackles” referred to by Leonov and Korolev: deprivation, subordination, and discipline are the necessary conditions for great achievements. This belief was reflected by the men and the women of the space program. On the one hand, the women were stereotypically represented as the cosmonauts’ wives, mothers, and nurses, who frequently worried about their husbands, sons, and patients, and were also frequently disregarded by Korolev, who wished to push his “little eagles” as far as possible. On the other hand, they also embodied a quiet, loving, and stabilizing collectivity. Accordingly, when Gagarin’s sister Zoia (Daria Melnikova) informed their mother Anna that “Yuri is flying around in space,” Anna ran out of the house in her slippers, determined to make her way to Moscow, to help Valentina with her two little children. Valentina, like Leonov’s wife Svetlana, embodied the silent ideal of “a soldier’s wife,” coupled with the sense of a gentle, kind, and conservative femininity of a child-rearing homemaker. This was much less true of Nina, Vladimir Fedorov’s wife from Salyut 7, who allowed herself question the supremacy of the space program over her family. Lilia, the pregnant wife of Vladimir’s mission partner Vitalii, was less temperamental, but insisted on her husband taking two woolen skiing hats along into space.

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Her intuition proved correct: the cosmonauts needed to survive in very cold conditions, and the hats were more than useful. Blue skiing hats with recognizable Soviet design were one of the many cultural symbols that embellished the somewhat atemporal universe of Salyut 7. Vodka and cheap cigarettes were the next on the list, both officially forbidden on the spaceship, yet both allowing the cosmonauts to find hope in times of despair. In instances of dramatic climax, when Gagarin and Leonov thought about home and their homeland, Fedorov and Alekhin calmed themselves down with a shot of vodka or a drag of a cigarette. To take the argument even further: Gagarin: Pervyi v kosmose included a brief flashback to Gagarin’s youth at flight school. In order to pass his exam for his pilot’s license, he was instructed by his superior to sit on his little briefcase. This helped the short Gagarin land the plane with greater accuracy. Gagarin, absorbed by the task, had forgotten to empty his briefcase of the mandatory cigarettes, intended as a treat for his examiners, a symbol of celebration in case he passed the exam. Consequently, the cigarettes that he could offer the examiners in the end were flattened and useless. Relying on such details, Gagarin: Pervyi v kosmose created the cultural space of the USSR of the early 1960s as a space of hopes, dreams, and historically grounded values, rather than easily recognizable material symbols, such as the cigarettes, vodka, and other trivialities, abundant in the universe of Salyut 7. Vremia pervykh also relied on a cultural horizontal, structured around values and relations, adding another layer to the monumentality of the Soviet space program. Due to failures of key mechanisms, Beliaev and Leonov needed to land their spaceship manually, which resulted in them descending in a remote and poetically cold and snowed-in area in the Perm region. The cosmonauts spent hours waiting for the rescue team, risking their lives to the same extent they had in space, and were only discovered thanks to the daring, illegal, and comradely efforts of an amateur radio operator located on the equally cold and remote island on Sakhalin. Risking his freedom, this supporting character informed the Kremlin of the whereabouts of the space vessel, after the official Soviet radio channel had already circulated news of the cosmonauts’ probable death. As Sasha Shchipin’s review pointed out, this second instance of the trope of being lost in space, this time the hostile space of the Soviet north in the winter, reinforced the mythical dimension of Vremia pervykh.14 In their white spacesuits, the stranded cosmonauts appeared both heroic and absurd, as if referring to the many parodic takes on the Soviet space program, such as Fedorchenko’s Pervye na lune. A miner’s son and a World War II pilot, who were hurried off onto a premature mission in order to prove Soviet supremacy in outer space to the United States, somehow, against all odds, made it back to Earth on a spaceship prone to malfunctions. Alienated in their heroism, they could only finally be saved after a series of transcontinental collective efforts.

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CAMERAS FOR INTRIGUE AND HISTORICAL FOOTAGE FOR AN EPIC ENDING All three films, based on real events that had marked the history of the Soviet space program, were evidently no(w)stalgic accounts of “what could have been”—alternative narratives of factually documented events. Leonov and Beliaiev’s signal could have been picked up by an amateur from Sakhalin, but it was actually deciphered by an operator in the warmer (and closer) Altai region. Fedorov and Alekhin probably would not have saved the unresponsive Salyut 7 space station by banging onto the broken protective shield around a battery sensor with a sledgehammer, and then waving to the American Challenger shuttle, leaning onto the reactivated station. However, this moment of artistic freedom reinforced the impression about the productive insanity at the core of Soviet technological achievements. Finally, it is unlikely that the final argument for why Gagarin, and not Titov, was to become the first man in space was that “Khrushchev liked him on the photograph.” Yet, such provocative details inspire the audience to dig further into the archives and sustain discussions about the films. All the films ended on a particularly suggestive note: documentary footage reassured us of the veracity of the events, and reaffirmed their happy endings. All three endings showed their films’ cosmonauts’ successful returns to Moscow, the crowds’ joyful greetings, and the tight embraces they gave their wives and children. While the documentary footage used in Gagarin: Pervyi v kosmose and Vremia pervykh referred to the events that were explored in the film, the images accompanying the closing credits of Salyut 7 were a chronologically organized collage, intended to provide a brief summary of the feats of the Soviet space program. It is intriguing to read these images in terms of another, symbolist ascent. All three films frequently demonstrated the mediatized aspect of the Soviet space program. Cameras were depicted as direct proof that “all of this really happened.” In Gagarin: Pervyi v kosmose, one of the officials witnessing Gagarin’s take-off commented: “Oh, look, they are shooting it all!,” to which his colleague responded: “Let them shoot. American heroes are recorded all the time, why would ours be any worse?” This reference responded quite directly to Pervye na lune, where the honesty of Soviet cameras was openly mocked, as the trope of constant documentation was used to construct a mockumentary about a fictional Soviet space program. In Vremia pervykh, Leonov took great care to ensure that his spacewalk was covered by a camera and shown live to Soviet film viewers. Likewise, Korolev immediately ordered that the live transmission be cut, when Leonov encountered problems. Intriguingly, no cameras featured in Salyut 7, as if to highlight the film’s even looser reliance on historical evidence than the

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other two productions. This also explains the logic behind a transhistorical space exploration history collage at the end of the film. The collage provided an exemplary case of the coherent fictional world of contemporary Russian spaceflight history films. Within this world, the actual history of the Soviet space program was monumentalized in a fictional time capsule, and schematically organized within a right-angled triangle, pointing upward: the triangle linking an essentialized image of Soviet (Russian) culture with the vector of progress and the mythical belief in Soviet cosmic predestination. In my view, such schematization produced an estranging effect, rather than one of identification; in the process of monumentalization, the possibility of a destabilizing gaze was actively, intentionally barred, which closed up the fictional worlds of the examined productions. Thereby, the monumental fictional integrity of the films, such as Gagarin: Pervyi v kosmose, Vremia pervykh, and Salyut 7 was secured, positioning them as eternal monuments cast in marble and, at the same time, producing an uncanny relationship of these films with extrafilmic accounts of the same historical events. Indeed, many critics tellingly tended to align such fictional productions with the genre of science fiction, rather than historical drama. Indeed, the totalizing impulse driving the analyzed no(w)stalgic narratives resembles the static mid-twentieth-century Soviet utopias discussed in chapter 2. Yet, it would be imprecise to conclude that the historically oriented space blockbusters of the twenty-first century are thus also utopian in their orientation. They express a nostalgia for a total form, which, as demonstrated in chapter 2, was mostly a didactic device aimed at facilitating the consolidation of an imaginary of the future. In a reverse move, Gagarin. Pervyi v kosmose, Vremia pervykh, and Salyut 7 attempt to do the same for the past. However, in the context of microutopian narratives that have, since the 1970s, progressively destabilized first visions of the Soviet future and later accounts of the Soviet space program, such monumentalizations appear hyperreal at best. They are signifiers without graspable referents, dancing on the waves of incompatible longings: for a past that never was, and for a future that was never drawn out as unquestionably as these action films would like one to think.

NOTES 1. Høgetveit, “Female Aliens in (Post-) Soviet Sci-Fi Cinema,” 41–71. 2. Sputniknews, “New Blockbuster about First Human Spacewalk Tops Russian Box Office,” 2017. https://sputniknews​.com​/society​/201704121052564171​-first​ -space​-walk​-biopic/.

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3. Tasha Robinson, “Russia’s Space Blockbuster Salyut-7 Is a Fascinating Look at Cinematic Heroism,” The Verge, September 29, 2017. https://www​.theverge​.com​ /2017​/9​/29​/16373940​/salyut​-7​-movie​-review​-russian​-space​-blockbuster. 4. Barry Langford, Film Genre: Hollywood and Beyond (Edinburgh: Edinburg University Press, 2005), here 111–31. 5. Cf. Iegor Belikov, “Vremya pervykh,” TimeOut​.ru​, 2017.​http:/​/www​.timeout​ .ru​/msk​/artwork​/360586​​/review; Sasha Shchipin, “Vremya pervykh: K zvyozdam v kandalak,” Snob​.r​u. 2017. https://snob​.ru​/profile​/31049​/blog​/122952. 6. Leningrad, directed by Aleksandr Buravskii, Russia 2009 (Channel One Russia, Leningrad Prodakshn, Kinokompaniya Non-Stop Prodakshn); Brestskaia krepost’, directed by Aleksandr Kott, Belarus/Russia 2010 (Belarusfilm); Legenda #17, directed by Nikolai Lebedev, Russia 2017 (Trite Studio); Dvizhenie vverkh, directed by Anton Megerdichev, Russia 2017 (Three T Productions); 28 panfilovtsev, directed by Andrei Shalopa and Kim Druzhinin, Russia 2016 (Panfilov’s Twenty Eight and Gaijin Entertainment). 7. Bakhtin, “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel,” here 48; Martin Flanagan, Bakhtin and the Movies: New Ways of Understanding Hollywood Film (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Keunan, “The Chronotopic Imagination in Literature and Film,” 35–56. 8. Matthias Schwartz, “Die Besiedlung der Zukunft. Zur Neubegründung der sowjetischen Science Fiction nach dem ersten Sputnikflug 1957,” in Bluescreen: Visionen, Träume, Albträume und Reflexionen des Phantastischen und Utopischen, ed. Walter Delabar and Frauke Schlieckau (Bielefeld: AISTHESIS Verlag, 2010), 105–122. 9. Cf. Todd McGowan, The Real Gaze: Film Theory after Lacan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007), here 3–14. 10. Høgetveit, “And Up She Went—the Moral Vertical in Wings”; Idem., “Female Aliens in (Post-) Soviet Sci-Fi Cinema: Technology, Sacrifice and Morality.” 11. Høgetveit, “And Up She Went—the Moral Vertical in Wings,” 79. 12. Belikov, “Vremya pervykh.” 13. Belikov, “Vremya pervykh.” 14. Shchipin, “Vremya pervykh: K zvyozdam v kandalak.”

Conclusion “If It Got Recorded, It Had to Be True.” Replay, Rewatch, Remember?

TO MAP A WORLD IN ITS MULTITUDE Soviet Science Fiction Cinema and the Space Age attempted to uncover, layer by layer, trope by trope, the dynamics of utopias in space, as they were conceived, remediated, and thereby both solidified and transformed in Soviet, post-Soviet, and contemporary, that is, Putin-era Russian cinema. It also followed the journey of this utopia from futuristic projections of society and possible future selves, to interrogative and overtly dystopian social critique, an entertaining playground, and retrospective reflectively nostalgic and restoratively no(w)stalgic accounts. One of the book’s objectives was to trace an evolution of the trope of space exploration in feature films that directly addressed the possibility of a future in space at the intersection of fiction and historical fact. Coordinately, Soviet Science Fiction Cinema and the Space Age aimed to integrate the various chronotopes, narratives, and recurrent topics and tropes, characteristic of Soviet and Russian space science fiction films, into a common semiotic container; to demonstrate unintuitive continuities between films from various historical periods, as well as structural analogies between different, seemingly distant concepts. Its intention was also to celebrate the power of close readings of particular films, and to demonstrate the analytical value of thick description. These final remarks would like to bring together what, for me, are the main findings of this extensive study. Apart from providing a broad overview of the range of science fiction film production, focused on the question of space exploration, in the USSR and in post-Soviet Russia, Soviet Science Fiction Cinema and the Space Age clustered particular films into groups, focusing on certain concepts. These conceptual clusters allowed the reader to both gain insight into the core structural moments that constitute them at certain moments in time, and to recall 183

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them in later chapters, revealing the following characteristics of the Soviet and Russian cinematic memoryscape of space age science fiction. Evidently, the Soviet space future drawn out in its purest form in 1960s films, such as Tumannost’ Andromedy and Mechte navstrechu, has had a series of ramifications for both later Soviet and post-Soviet cinematic reflections on the possibility of a space age future and for post-Soviet attempts at retelling the Soviet history of the space age with this future in mind. And while this future appeared to have been bright, peaceful, and stable, our investigation of its transformations over more than half a century of cinematography indicated that it was also extremely static and unbreathable, a future for the few, drawn out as the future of all. Therefore, it was bound to become challenged, by the many that it involuntarily excluded in its aspiration for symbolic grandiosity, in films such as Soliaris, and even more directly in Kin-Dza-Dza!, Lunnnaia raduga, and Chetvertaia planeta. At the same time, post-Soviet productions, such as Aziris-Nuna and Mishen’, not to mention the emphatically reflective films discussed in chapter 7, exhibited direct and indirect references to this very future, demonstrating that its legacy is difficult to relinquish. The Bilderatlas of Soviet space sf imagery and accompanying narratives assembled in this book thus hoped to facilitate the complex task of making sense of the significance and connotations of the popular cultural narratives of the Soviet space age by putting them in conversation with one another, and, not unimportantly, to grant a glimpse into the complex interplays of conceptions of the future and their pasts. In doing so, it also partook in the several discussions outlined further. UTOPIA BETWEEN IMPULSE AND FORM The impulse to examine outer space as a site of utopian desires and ambitions, loosely defined as visualizations of futures, in some way reliant on the space age in the twentieth century, led me to examine in its entirety the broad range of Soviet, post-Soviet, and post-2010 Russian fiction films defined, in one way or another, by the space age as a compelling, groundbreaking novum. This anti-canonical stance foregrounded the vastness of the archive as opposed to promoting as particularly progressive certain ideas present in some of the films discussed. In doing so, it followed those considerations in current discussions in sf and utopia studies that have broadened the early Suvinian identification of sf utopia with estrangement reliant on cognitive logic proper, to also account for other modes of utopian world-building, such as the mythical, the fantastic, the fairy-tale, and, finally, the historiographic. Although this approach significantly broadened the scope of relevant films, the thematic focus on the space age rendered it manageable. The analyses

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performed reflect the potential productiveness of this methodological decision, demonstrating no significant alterations in the nature of the films’ utopian impulse as a consequence of the particular formal world-building mode. The basic coordinates of the cognitively grounded, fantastic, historiographic, fairy-tale, and mythical utopian constructions appeared rather homologous, and could be summarized with recourse to the Rancièrian dichotomy of art that intends to intervene in the normalized distribution of the sensible to create a “sensorium of exception,” and art preoccupied with creating new forms of collective experience. In the realm of sf studies, an alternative consideration, a Deleuze-Guattarian combination of the two in an attempt to think the utopian sf impulse as the process of endless becoming, was identified as relevant by Zepke, in opposition to the more established model of thinking estrangement as structure, which tends to align utopias with representation, rather than thought proper.1 The analyses presented in the eight chapters of the book support the idea of developing an integrative and dynamic conceptualization of utopia that— instead of an a priori preoccupation with the political impulse at the heart of utopian texts, whether the latter is projective or critical—would allow to grasp utopia on the levels of the individual, the social, and in terms of both representation and becoming. It is this fourfold construction that sheds light onto the impulse at the heart of particular utopian worlds. In the context of the discussions presented in this book, it had manifold implications. It should first be stipulated that the utopian impulse, if aligned with becoming and dynamism, was found in several atypical productions, such as Aelita, Tainstvennaia stena, Cherez ternii k zvezdam, Lunnaia raduga, Kosmos kak predchuvstvie, and Pervye na lune. This group of films showed that, in the realm of fiction film, temporal vectors, underlying orientations such as “past” and “future,” are of relatively small structural significance, when the question of utopian impulse is concerned. Furthermore, the nominally projectively utopian visions of the space age future, most often associated with socialist-realist and socialist-realistinfluenced productions, such as Nebo zovet, Mechte navstrechu, Tumannost’ Andromedy, Moskva-Kassiopeia and Otroki vo vselennoi have been slightly reframed. If they have usually been described as rather static communist utopias, my analyses have recast them as films that overlaid ideas of a museumlike communist future in space onto very traditional value hierarchies. These concerned heteronormativity and rather rigid gender roles, marking females as mothers, wives, and sidekicks, and tacit affirmations of Russian-Soviet intellectual superiority. In the quasiconflictless worlds of the aforementioned films, these messages were consistently generated as latent byproducts of the plot, suggesting the particularly important role this segment of sf space cinema played in the domain of cultivating a certain image of collective

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memory. Indeed, these very messages permeated visually and narratively distant later features, such as Petlia Oriona, Zvezdnyi inspektor, and Lilovyi shar, too. Moreover, they reappeared in recent Russian productions discussed in the final chapter of this book. The static nature of many Soviet space utopias thus need not be considered as a peculiarity of world-building, but as a function of the films’ social mnemonic function: to assure the stability of the described symbolic imaginary across time, genres, and aesthetic preferences. Thirdly, in the context of this didactic quality of space-related utopias in Soviet and Russian cinematography abstract becoming, unconcerned per se with social structures or individuals, was never among the privileged questions, featuring marginally, and most often in opposition to the aforementioned mnemonic function. It can be traced as a prominent topic in few films, such as Tainstvennaia stena and Lunnaia raduga, and these tended to generate limited popular and critical appeal. More often, this concern about radical alterity as a process seeps through the seams of films with a highly explorative attitude to the space age as the future of the socialist future. Here, it was detectable in abstract visualizations of the richness of outer space and possible extraterrestrial life, characteristic of Klushantsev’s works, and productions influenced by his approach, such as la byl sputnikom solntsa. Equally influential as Klushantsev’s emphasis on visualization were Tarkovsky’s ideas about space and its wonders as a mirror to be faced by humanity at large and human subjects in particular. If Klushantsev had used visualization of the unknown as a mode of thought, Tarkovsky’s aesthetic, at work in Solyaris, relied more on bracketing the unknown in order to allow confrontation with the self, an approach echoed to an extent in Viktorov’s Cherez ternii k zvezdam and later in German Jr.’s Bumazhnyi soldat. Yet, the majority of Soviet (and Russian) post-1957 space sf films actually implemented a characteristic combination of these two modes of estrangement. Visualization was used with increasing functional eclecticism, to entertain and illustrate, rather than propose to think. In most of the films for younger audiences discussed in chapter 5 (i.e., in Moskva-Kassiopeia and Otroki vo vselennoi, as well as in Aziris-Nuna and Pritiazhenie), visualization of the unknown is entertaining, and at the same time, by way of emplotment, aimed at strengthening associations between certain features of existing society and its utopian variant. Particularly in the Soviet youth films, fantastic and fairy-tale features thus mostly curbed, rather than enhanced, the estrangement effect. In this sense, post-Soviet Russian films like Aziris-Nuna were more innovative. However, both ended up providing highly dystopian insight into the normative framework of socialist and post-socialist Russian childhood, and readily functioned as satirical critiques of “adult” societies. In terms of form, the children’s and youth films mentioned earlier interestingly corresponded best to Sargisson’s mapping of utopias as characterized

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by estrangement, playfulness, and the figure of the visitor, who comes to this alternative reality from the author’s reality.2 Indeed, a combination of all four devices only characterized a fairly small proportion of the examined productions, the figure of the “visitor” and the notion of “play” particularly difficult to find in films from the 1950s to early 1970s. In contrast to the earlier Aelita and Kosmicheskii reis, and the later youth films, space operas and even the dystopian Kin-Dza-Dza!, classical Soviet space sf films were mostly gentle didactically framed estrangements, aimed to inspire faith in a better future, and quite directly—and often in contrast to the literary bases of such films, to mention Mechte navstrechu as an example—framed as “dreams,” regarded from afar, rather than visited. A very similar logic marked the recent space blockbusters, which may, then, equally plausibly be interpreted as nostalgic of the past, as of its dreamy fictions. The nostalgia for a lost utopia, detectable in these action films, differs from the one characteristic of the somewhat introverted productions from the 2000s, examined in chapter 7: having embraced the utopian impulse to construct anew, and reconstruct in a better way, but not utopia as a predefined form, these films attempted to align nostalgia with the past as such, in its multitude, as opposed to a particular interpretation of it. FILM AS A MNEMONIC MEDIUM, SF AS ARCHIVE, AND UTOPIA AS METHOD The archive of Soviet and Russian space (science) fiction films as laid out in this book testifies to a great variety of intertextual references, unveiling the films’ active transtemporal polylogue. This is arguably the most obvious sense in which cinematography appears to be a mnemonic medium, and a medium of mnemonic migration. Where at all possible, I tried to highlight this facet of the chosen corpus of films by facing films from various historical periods in single chapters, to reinforce the proposed conceptual statements. Thus, chapter 2, for example, highlighted the premediative functions of Aelita, and the focus on vectors and power hierarchies from chapter 8 can easily be aligned with the discussion on socialist-realist utopias from chapter 3. More intertextual references surface from reading the book as a whole, as certain images, tropes, and songs traverse time and space. Especially worth highlighting among these are images of the dying planet, destroyed by humanoid or human intervention, characteristic of disparate productions from The Man Who Fell to Earth to Cherez ternii k zvezdam and Kin-DzaDza!. In the Soviet context in particular, the youth production Cherez ternii k zvezdam was the first sf film to grant subjectivity to not only a humanoid alien (Niya), but, more importantly, to an entire planet (Dessa), making up for decades of almost complete subordination of nature to human intervention in

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this particular genre and in Soviet terraformation policies in general.3 Planet Dessa not only demonstrated the official recognition of the dangers of nonreflected environment exploitation but also signaled a move toward planetary consciousness on screens—a move anticipated in Soviet sf literature decades prior.4 In counterpoint to these pessimistic images, the solid trope of rural and at the same time technologically advanced Soviet communities on earth, characteristic of pre-1980s Soviet sf imagery, seem more utopian than outer space. Moreover, both in a synchronic perspective, juxtaposed against the darkness and perils of outer space in particular films, and in a diachronic perspective, viewed alongside the images of Dessa, planet Pluke, or even post-nuclear-war earth in Pis’ma mertvogo cheloveka, these ideal havens of knowledge and communitas replicated the uncanny dynamic of idyllic “world” and its dark side, the “zone”—of terror, misery, and violence, which Gomel described as an overarching characteristic of the Stalinist modernization process.5 An analysis of the archive thus allows to reexamine the relations between film and memory as conceived in the context of Soviet film policy, that is, in terms of propaganda, visualization of the future, and memorialization of the future (or, in the current Russian context, its inversion: a monumentalization of utopias of the past). Archival reinspection allows one to critically reexamine where and how, in a historical perspective, illustration, pedagogy, and critical interpretation coalesce. Acknowledging film archives as a medium of remembrance, and films themselves as media of multidirectional mnemonic migration entails recognizing the dynamic between remembering and forgetting that characterizes memory and remembrance cultures. This particular book focused on Soviet space sf films and their legacy as both an under-researched and at the same time a somewhat overexposed segment of Soviet space age memory. The recent heightened academic interest in the Soviet space age, and in the current nostalgia for socialism, of which that space age is often a prominent part, as well as the facilitated accessibility of the films in question in various online repositories have greatly augmented these films’ visibility. A select few have even acquired cult status among sf cinema fans, a following enthusiastic about these films for a number of reasons: they might entice as objects of nostalgia for analog film culture, or for socialism, or for the space age of the twentieth century. While some reasons for these films’ recent popularity are listed throughout the book, I did not, in the present study, provide an exhaustive account of this aspect of the examined segment of (post)Soviet astroculture. Yet it is clear that works of particular masters, such as Pavel Klushantsev, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Richard Viktorov, have attracted more attention than other directors, featured in the explored archive. While this book attempted to rectify this particular inaccuracy, following the cultural-studies call for

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constant reevaluation of canon-formation, it was not completely immune to oversights. Most obviously, in this study, I did not grant equal focus to the analyzed films and their literary precedents. While the existence of the latter has been acknowledged throughout the book, making apparent the particular prominence of certain authors, such as Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, and Kir Bulychev, it seemed excessive for the scope of this particular study to attempt to analyze them in detail. In particular, in many cases, the very loose link between the literary works and the films often strengthened the case for omitting this dimension of the discussion and focusing rather on the mechanisms of memory migration in the sole medium of film. However, the basic overview of these films provided in this book invites further research into the relations between literature and media, and the mediatization of memories of the space age in this contrastive lens. In fact, the project appears all the more urgent in the context where the increased visibility and accessibility of film culture could potentially contribute to a weakened awareness of the importance of many of the films’ literary origins. One of the aims of the postformalist analyses provided in Soviet Science Fiction Cinema and the Space Age was, in fact, to make apparent the persistence of certain “adaptation devices,” for example, the “dream” framing device popular until the 1970s, used to transform novellas and novels into film screenplays. It can be argued that this device ensured the reception of the film as pure fiction, testifying to the common assumption about film as a powerful visualization device. At the same time, it was film (and sometimes theater), and not literature, that often got accused of simplicity in its visualizations of alterity.6 The final claim of this book is thus a reiteration of the utopian methodological call that echoes the early-twentieth-century initiatives to archive and connect all knowledge of the world, exemplified by projects, such as the Belgian cosmopolitans Paul Otlet (1868–1944) and Henri La Fontaine’s (1854–1943) project of the Mundaneum as the Museum of the World’s Memory, or German art historian and cultural theorist Aby Warburg’s (1866–1929) Mnemosyne atlas. That is, a call to consider utopia at the heart of sf cinema at large in terms of archive, rather than canon or museum, taking advantage of the connections offered, intentionally and not, by the ever increasing accessibility of cultural production from various parts of the world. To begin grappling with this task in the framework of the present work, I chose a conceptual entrance-point, slowly following the meanders of utopian thought through a selection of films, most of which have been characterized in a variety of ways throughout history, utopia and nostalgia sometimes applied to describe the same production. As deconstructed and reconstructed in this book, the particular utopias and their corresponding nostalgias point to the structural heterogeneity of the two terms, which are always dependent on both form and impulse. That this is a matter of not just cultural production or representation but also of agency in the most

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political sense of the term has been demonstrated by the consistent appropriations of Soviet both socialist-realist and deconstructive utopian structures, the first by modern historical blockbusters discussed in chapter 8, and the second by the auteur films highlighted in chapter 7. Despite the seeming substantial oppositions inherent to these two contemporary reactivations of types utopianisms traceable back to Aelita and Kosmicheskii reis, at the very end of this book, it seems necessary to point out their shared epistemological blind spot: the persistent reluctance to engage with gender as an epistemological category. This worrisome limitation, evident in practically no alternatives gazes to that of the predominantly male protagonists, was historically challenged in Tainstvennaia stena, and was by no means a given in Soviet sf literature. Yet, it appears to be a constant in post-Soviet takes on fictionalizing the space age, but not sf cinema in the stricter sense of the word. Namely, destabilizations of the male gaze have, if sometimes naively, been offered by prominent female protagonists in films like Mishen’ and Pritiazhenie, whose visions of the future involve embracing contingency and alterity in non-possessive ways, echoing the principle of hope. This book, in turn, wishes to serve as a guardian and anchor of such microtransformations, hoping to facilitate their future political significance. The first step in this direction would entail a more reflexive treatment of Soviet space utopias in contemporary cinematography, where their forms, structures, and dark sides have to be interrogated, rather than casually reappropriated, if their impulse is not to remain alive. The second would involve a reevaluation of space utopias in terms of the cultural series that they belong to, to use André Gaudreault and Philippe Marion’s term, referring to subsystems that constitute a more complex cultural paradigm. In the case of space age memory, a transmedia reorganization of this paradigm is thus welcome, accounting for “subsystems,” such as the conceptually delineated dreams, nostalgias, futures, and mechanisms of othering, encouraging analysts to travel between media, times, and genres to better differentiate between persistent patterns and unsettling disruptions.7

NOTES 1. Zepke, “Beyond Cognitive Estrangement,” 91–113. 2. Sargisson, Fool’s Gold?, 1–45. 3. Aleksandr Fedorov, Ekologicheskaia tema v rossiyskom kinoiskusstve zvukovogo perioda: problemy i tendentsii (Taganrog: Izdatel’stvo Kuchma, 2002). 4. Ibid. 5. Elana Gomel, “Utopia in the Mud. Judging Nature in Soviet Science Fiction Film,” Screening nature: Cinema beyond the human, ed. Anat Pick and Guinevere Narraway (Oxford, NY: Berghahn Books, 2013), 162–176.

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6. For a discussion on the difficulties of enacting alterity on state, see Sanja Vodovnik, “Oder in vesoljski poleti: ekstrapolacije, intrapolacije in aktualizacije,” Časopis za kritiko znanosti: Vesoljska doba 50 let po Apollu 2019, no. 277: 144–165. 7. For a discussion on the cultural series, see André Gaudreault, Film and Attraction. From Kinematography to Cinema (Urbana, Chicago, Springfield: University of Chicago Press, 2011); André Gaudreault and Philippe Marion, La fin du cinéma? Un média en crise à l’ère du numérique (Paris: Armand Colin, 2013).

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Houston, We Have a Problem. Directed by Žita Virc, Slovenia, Croatia, Germany, Czech Republic, Qatar 2016 (Studio Virc, Nukleus Film, Sutor Kolonko). Ia byl sputnikom solntsa. Directed by Viktor Morgenshtern, USSR 1959 (Mosnauchfim). Invaders from Mars. Directed by William Cameron Menzies, USA 1953 (Edward L. Alperson Productions). Kin-Dza-Dza!. Directed by Georgy Daneliya, USSR 1986 (Mosfilm). Konets vechnosti. Directed by Andrei Ermash, USSR 1987 (Mosfilm). Korabl’ prishel’tsev. Directed by Sergei Nikonenko, USSR 1985 (Kinostudiia imeni Gorkogo). Korolev. Directed by Yuri Kara, Russia 2007 (Master film, L. S. D. Films). Kosmicheskii reis. Directed by Vasily Zhuravlev, USSR 1936 (Mosfilm). Kosmos kak predchuvstvie. Directed by Aleksey Uchitel, Russia 2005 (TPO “Rok”). La Lune à un metre. Directed by Georges Méliès, F 1898 (Star Film Company). Legenda #17. Directed by Nikolai Lebedev, Russia 2017 (Trite Studio). Leningrad. Directed by Aleksandr Buravskii, Russia 2009 (Channel One Russia, Leningrad Prodakshn, Kinokompaniya Non-Stop Prodakshn). Lilovyi shar. Directed by Pavel Arsionov, USSR 1987 (Gorky Film Studio). Lunnaia raduga. Directed by Andrei Ermash, USSR 1983 (Mosfilm). Marooned. Directed by John Sturges, USA 1969 (Columbia Pictures). Mechte navstrechu. Directed by Mikhail Kariukov and Otar Koberidze, USSR 1963 (Odessa Film Studio). Mezhplanetnaya revoliutsia. Directed by Zenon Komissarenko, Yuri Merkulov and Nikolai Khodataev, USSR 1924 (Mezhrabprom-Rus). Mishen’. Directed by Aleksandr Zeldovich, Russia 2011 (REN Film). Moonraker. directed by Lewis Gilbert, United Kingdom 1979 (Eon Productions). Moskva-Kassiopeia. Directed by Richard Viktorov, USSR 1973 (Gorky Film Studio). Na srebrnym globie. Directed by Andrzej Żuławski, Poland 1988 (Zespól Filmowy ‘Kadr’). Nebo zovet. Directed by Mikhail Kariukov and Aleksandr Kozyr, USSR 1959 (Dovzhenko Film Studio). Obitaiemyi ostrov I and II. Directed by Fedor Bondarchuk, Russia 2008/2009 (Art Pictures Studio, Non-Stop Production and STS Channel). Otroki vo vselennoi. Directed by Richard Viktorov, USSR 1974 (Gorky Film Studio). Pervye na lune. Directed by Aleksey Fedorchenko, Russia 2005 (Sverdlovsk Film Studio). Petlia Oriona. Directed by Vasili Levin, USSR1980 (Odessa Film Studio). Pis’ma mertvogo cheloveka. Directed by Konstantin Lopushanskii, USSR 1986 (Lenfilm). Plan 9 from Outer Space. Directed by Ed Wood, USA 1959 (Reynolds Pictures). Planeta bur’. Directed by Pavel Klushantsev, USSR 1962 (The Leningrad PopularScientific Film Studio). Podzemelie ved’m. Directed by Yuri Moroz, USSR/Czechoslovakia 1989 (Gorky Film Studio, Barrandov Film Studios).

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Pritiazhenie. Directed by Fedor Bondarchuk, Russia 2017 (Art Pictures Studio, Russian State Film Fund, Vodorod Film Company, Columbia Pictures). Proryv. Directed by Yevgeny Sherstobitov, Ukraine 1992 (Kinostudiia imeni Dovzhenko). Queen of Blood. Directed by Curtis Harrington, USA 1966 (Cinema West Productions). Raumpatrouille – Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffes Orion. Directed by Theo Mezger and Michael Braun, Federal Republic of Germany 1966 (Bavaria Atelier GmbH). Salyut 7. Directed by Klim Shipenko, Russia 2017 (CTB Film Company, Globusfilm, Lemon Films Studio). Samye pervye. Directed by Anatolii Granik, USSR 1961 (Lenfilm). Solyaris. Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, USSR 1972 (Creative Unit of Writers & Cinema Workers, Mosfilm, Unit Four). Space Battleship Yamato. Directed by Leiji Matsumoto, Japan 1977 (Abe Shuji, Chubu-nippon Broadcasting Company (CBC)). Space-Men. Directed by Antonio Margheriti, I 1960 (Titanus, Ultra Film). Stalker. Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, USSR 1979 (Mosfilm). Star Trek. Created by Gene Roddenberry, USA 1966–1969. Star Wars. Directed by George Lucas, USA 1977–2005 (Lucasfilm/Twentieth Century Fox). Taina tretiei planety. Directed by Roman Kachanov, USSR 1981 (Soiuzmultfilm). Tainstvennaia stena. Directed by Irina Povolotskaya, USSR 1967 (Mosfilm). Terrore nello spazio. Directed by Mario Bava, Italy 1965 (Castilla Cooperativa Cinematográfica, Italian International Film). The Day the Earth Stood Still. Directed by Robert Wise, USA 1951 (Twentieth Century Fox). The Jetsons. Originally directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, United States of America 1962–3 (Hanna-Barbera). The Man Who Fell to Earth. Directed by Nicolas Roeg, UK 1976 (British Lion Films). The Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women. Directed by Peter Bogdanovich, USA 1968 (The Filmgroup). The Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet. Directed by Roger Corman, USA1965 (The Filmgroup). Tumannost Andromedy. Directed by Yevgeny Sherstobitov, USSR 1967 (Dovzhenko Film Studio). Voyage dans la Lune. Directed by Georges Méliès, France 1902 (Star Film Company). Vozvrashchenie s orbity. Directed by Aleksandr Surin, USSR 1983 (Dovzhenko Film Studio). Vremia pervykh. Directed by Dmitry Kiselev, Russia 2017 (Bazelevs Production). War of the Worlds. Directed by Byron Haskin, USA 1953 (Paramount Pictures). When Worlds Collide. Directed by Rudolph Maté, USA 1951 (Paramount Pictures). Zvezdnyi inspektor. Directed by Mark Kovalev, Vladimir Polin, USSR 1980 (Mosfilm).

Index

action films, 164–68 adaptation devices, 189 adolescence, 106–7. See also childhood and adolescence Aelita, xxii, xxiii, 5, 27–51, 53n30, 69, 82, 84, 85, 87, 89, 90, 93, 185, 187, 190 Aelita (A. Tolstoy), 5 affect, 49 Aleinikov, Moisei, 31 Alien, 14–16, 18, 20 alien model of life, 18 aliens, xii, 7–9, 95–98; pre-perestroika science fiction, xx; technology and, 15 Aliokhina, Liubov, 177 All-Unions Writers Congress, 63 American Associated Press, 33 Anders, Günther, 146 animated productions, 105–6 anniversaries of events, x, xi antagonisms, 2 anthropomorphic robot, 10 anthropomorphic subjectivity, xiii anti-capitalist propaganda, 5 Archaeologies of the Future (Jameson), xv–xvi Arendt, Hannah, 146 Armavir, 137

Armstrong, Neil, x Arns, Inke, 46, 47 Arsionov, Pavel, xxiv, 103, 104, 115 art, 58 artifacts, xiii Artmane, Viya, 39 Assmann, Aleida, x Assmann, Jan, x Astrakhan, Dmitry, 30, 45, 47–49, 134, 147, 151 astroculture, 2 astronomers, parodic appearance of, 3 Augé, Marc, xii autonomous reasoning, 85 avant-garde art and artists, 27, 37 avant-garde movements, 47 Avdeev, Filipp, 117 Averin, Maksim, 117 Aziris-Nuna, xxiv, 104, 106, 109, 110, 112, 116, 117, 184, 186 Badiou, Alain, 40 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 2, 33 Balabanov, Aleksei, 154 Banerjee, Anindita, 63 Banionis, Donatas, 42 Banks, Miranda, 7 Baranov, Viacheslav, 116 Barbarella, 10 209

210

Barron, Bebe, 9 Barron, Louis, 9 Bartashevich, Konstantin, 72, 73 Battle Beyond the Sun, 78 Bekeris, Vilnis, 98 Belodubrovskaya, Maria, 59 Berdnik, Oles’, 74 Berlinskaya, Ludmila, 112 biopolitics, 14–21 blind faith, 152–53 Bloch, Ernst, xv blue skiing hats, 178 body politics, 20 Bogdanovich, Peter, 87 Bol’shoe kosmicheskoe puteshestvie (The Great Space Voyage), 10, 103, 106, 109, 112, 113, 114–15, 116, 121, 130, 135, 141 Bondarchuk, Fedor, 118, 138 Bondarchuk, Natalia, 42 Borisionok, Boris, 74 Bould, Mark, xvi, 29 Bowie, David, 13 Boym, Svetlana, 138, 144, 163–64 Bradbury, Ray, 47 Brat (Brother), 154 Brezhnev, Leonid, 83 Brezhnevite stagnation period, 95 Bulychev, Kir, 104, 105, 106, 115, 122n1, 134, 189 Bumazhnyi soldat (Paper Soldier), xxv, xxvi, 145, 154–58, 159, 167, 186 Burkin, Yuli, 117 Burman, Erica, 107 cameras, 179–80 capitalism, 2, 63, 85, 99, 139 censorship, xvii, xviii, 16, 21, 43, 95, 108, 121, 131 CGF, 169 CGI solution, 169 Challenger catastrophe (1986), xiv chamber film, 43 Chegodaeva, Mariia, 58 Chekhov, Anton, 156

Index

Cherez ternii k zvezdam (Through the Thorns to the Stars; Humanoid Woman), 10, 13, 106, 109, 113–14, 120, 121, 127, 141, 185, 186, 187–88 Chervinskii, Aleksandr, 90 Chetvertaia planeta (The Fourth Planet), xxiii, 30, 45, 46–51, 75, 84, 93, 134, 147, 151, 184 childhood and adolescence, 98–100, 103–22; brats and prophets, 117–20; as an estrangement device, 120–22; gender-socialization, 114–16; liminality, 106–9; overview, 103–5; as preadulthood, 109–16; space as a training course, 111–14 children’s film production, 95 child-socialization system, 107 Chizhevsky, Alexander, 61 Christie, Ian, 33 chronotopes, xxv, xxvi, 2, 104, 109, 144, 147, 160n14, 164, 166–67, 183 cigarettes, 178 classical narrative cinema, 4 cognition proper, 83 cognitive estrangement, xv, 28, 29, 62, 82–83, 99, 134 cognitive logic, 28–29 Cold War, ix, 1, 2, 171; Hollywood films, xii collective memories, x communicative vs. cultural memories, x–xi Communist Party, 64 communist revolution, 5 communists, 36–41 Communist Youth League. See Komsomol (Communist Youth League) Congress of Soviet Writers, 36, 58 Coppola, Francis Ford, 78 Corman, Roger, 78, 87 cosmic challenges of provinces/ provincialism, 158–59 CTB Film Company, 165

Index

cultural memories, 143; vs. communicative memories, x–xi cultural production, 37 cultural studies, xi cyberpunk film, 47 Daneliya, Georgiy, 28, 131, 132, 134, 142n15 Dark Star, 14, 15, 16 dawn of the space age, 145–47 The Day the Earth Stood Still, x, xiii, xxii, 6, 7, 8, 12, 19 de Certeau, Michel, xii Deleuze, Gilles, 49 Deleuzian “imaginal machine,” xii, 60 Derevyanko, Pavel, 171 Der schweigende Stern (The Silent Star), 8, 12, 19, 72 Desnitskii, Sergei, 96 Destination Moon, 7, 9, 19 Devil Girls from Mars, 45 Diadia Vania (Uncle Vanya), 156 Dobrenko, Evgeny, 60 documentary, xvi, 8 Don Diego i Pelageia (Don Diego and Pelagia), 32 Doroga k zvezdam, 8, 70, 86–87 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 62 Dovzhenko Film Studio, 37 Doznanie pilota Pirksa (The Inquest of Pilot Pirx), xx, xxiv, 95, 96, 98, 99 dream framing device, 189 Eastern bloc, disintegration of, 1 Ego zvali Robert (They Called Him Robert), 94, 97 Efremov, Ivan, 30, 38, 40, 65, 80n7 Eliseev, Gleb, 62–63 elite cinema, 144 Emelianov, Vladimir, 69 Entertainment Industry Liaison, xiv Ermash, Andrei, 127 Ermash, Filipp, 127 Es ist nicht leicht ein Gott zu sein (Hard to be a God), 16–17

211

Etot bol’shoi mir (This Great World), 118 Exter, Alexandra, 33 fabula, 149 Fedorchenko, Aleksey, 134, 145, 147, 151, 152, 178 Fedorov, Nikolai, 61 Feokistov, Nikolai, 66 fictional societies, 28 Filatkin, Leonid, 135 Filippov, Mikhail, 168 films, xi–xii. See also science fiction Fire Maidens from Outer Space, 9, 10 First Man, xvi The First Men in the Moon, 5 Flanagan, Martin, 166 Fleischmann, Peter, 17 Forbidden Planet, 9–11, 15, 87 foreign productions, 31–32 formalism, 36 Francis, Anne, 10 Frau im Mond (Woman in the Moon), 5 Freedman, Carl, xvi, 29, 83 Freud, Sigmund, 10 Gagarin, Yuri, x, xvii, 74, 75, 76, 77, 81, 87, 148, 151, 155, 164 Gagarin. Pervyi v kosmose (Gagarin. First in Space), xxvi, 164, 166, 168–69, 170, 172–73, 174, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180 Gaponenko, Vasily, 66 Gaudreault, André, 4, 190 gender: as an epistemological category, 190 gender binary, 85–86 gender-socialization, 114–16 German, Aleksei, Jr., 145, 154 Gerovitch, Slava, xvi, xvii, 143–44 Glavnyi (The Chief Constructor), 81, 158 Globus-film, 165 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 17

212

Index

Gordeichik, Larisa, 74 Gorky, Maxim, 63 Gorokhov, Aleksandr, 169 Goskino, xiv, xviii, 31, 58, 127 Gostia iz budushchego (The Guest from the Future), 105 Gostiukhin, Vladimir, 128 Granik, Anatoly, 158 Grishaeva, Nonna, 118 Grishko, Valery, 169 Guattari, Félix, 49 Guseva, Natalia, 114 Halbwachs, Maurice, x Harrington, Curtis, 78 Hidden Figures, xvi Historical Materialism, 29 Høgetveit, Åsne Ø., 85, 167 Hollywood films, xii, 6–7 Holocaust, 46 Horton, Andrew J., 33–34 humanity, 4 Ia byl sputnikom solntsa (I Was a Satellite of the Sun), xxiii, 6, 57, 68–71, 72, 74, 77, 84, 85, 186 Ia Zemlia, 75–76, 77 Ignatova, Kiunna, 88 Ilyin, Vladimir, 168 “I na Marse budut iablani tsvesti” (song), 48, 75, 77 in-group created space, 83, 86, 89, 93 Insiders and Outsiders in Russian Cinema (Norris and Torlone), 82 intelligentsia, 155, 156, 157, 159 International Day of Cosmonautics, x Invaders from Mars, 6, 8, 14, 15, 19 Ishimbaieva, Lidia, 42 Italian futurism, 37 Ivanova, Natalia, xvi, 143–44 Ivanova, Olga, 170 Jameson, Fredric, xv–xvi, xvii, 28, 63 Järvet, Jüri, 42 The Jetsons, ix

Kabanova, Daria, xvii Kara, Yuri, 81 Kariukov, Mikhail, 74 Kazantsev, Aleksandr, 87 Kerimov, Roman, 117 Keunan, Bart, 166 Khabenskiy, Konstantin, 169 Khamatova, Chuplan, 155 Khrushchev, Nikita, 37, 81 Khrushchevian Thaw, xxiii, 37, 60, 65, 72, 77–78, 81, 82, 83, 91, 103, 108, 122n2, 143, 155–56, 166 Kibalchich, Nikolai, 71 Kin-Dza-Dza!, xviii, xxv, 4, 16, 28, 47, 126, 131–34, 135, 140, 184, 187 KinoEye, 78 Kinopoisk​.ru​, 150, 151, 161n19, 165 Kirschenbaum, Lisa, 108 Kishchenko, Vitaliy, 139 Klushantsev, Pavel, 8, 70, 78, 86, 87, 186, 188 Koberidze, Otar, 74, 75 Kobzon, Iosif, 75 Kokhanovskii, Igor, 114 Komarov, Sergei, 66 Kompasov, Oleg, 117 Komsomol (Communist Youth League), 107 Komsomolsk, 59 Konets vechnosti (The End of Eternity), 127 Korolev, 174 Korolev, Sergei, 61 Kosmicheskii reis (Cosmic Voyage), xx, xxiii, 57, 65, 66–71, 74, 76, 77, 84, 85, 87, 154, 187, 190 Kosmos kak predchuvstvie (Dreaming of Space), xxv, 148–51, 155, 158–59, 163, 167, 185 Kotov, Viktor, 153 Kovalev, Mark, 127 Kozakova, Maria, 118 Kozlovskiy, Danila, 139 Kruglyi, Lev, 91 Kubrick, Stanley, 87

Index

Kuindzhi, Valentina, 35 Kuznetsov, Isai, 110 Lacan, Jacques, 146, 147 La Fontaine, Henri, 189 La Lune à un mètre (The Astronomer’s Dream), 3 latent utopias, 47 Lavrova, Tatiana, 91 Lazarev, Aleksandr, 117 Ledogorov, Vadim, 113 Lem, Stanislaw, x, xxiv, 8, 30, 41, 42, 43–44, 45, 90, 95 Lemon Films Studio, 165 Lenfilm, 94 Lenin, Vladimir, 31 Lennauchfilm, 86 Leonov, Alexei, 77, 164, 166, 172 Levin, Vasili, 127 Levtova, Marina, 135 Lilovyi shar, xxiv, 96, 103, 104, 105, 106, 109, 115, 117, 118, 121, 186 liminality, 106–9 Litvinenko, Taisia, 72 Livanov, Vasily, 128 Lucas, George, 38 Lukianenko, Sergei, 117 Lunacharski, Anatoly, 33 Luna/Moon, 87 Lunnaia raduga (Moon Rainbow), xxv, 96, 126–31, 133, 185, 186 Lyotard, Jean-François, 46 The Man Who Fell to Earth, 12–13, 45 Margheriti, Antonio, 11, 24n32 Marion, Philippe, 190 Markina, Nadezhda, 173 Marly, Florence, 78 Mars, 33–34, 47–48 Mars (film), 87 Marshak, Samuil, 63 The Martian Chronicles (Bradbury), 47 Martians/Martian world, 8, 34 Marxism, xv masculinity, 85

213

material memories, x Matokhin, Pavel, 69 McLuhan, Marshall, x Mechte navstrechu (Toward a Dream), 48, 74, 77–78, 82, 184, 185, 187 media-archaeological return, 47 media technologies, 47 Méliès, Georges, xxii, 3, 4, 5, 65, 67, 86 Mel’nikova, Daria, 177 memory, xxi–xxii; provincialism of, xxvi, 151–54 memory studies, xi Men’shikov, Oleg, 119 Mezhplanetnaia revoliutsia (Interplanetary Revolution), 5 Mezhrabpom-Rus’, 31, 32 Michman, Vadim, 168 Miéville, China, xvi, 29 militarization, 19–21; defined, 2 Millei, Zsuzsa, 107 Mills, G. James A., 33 Ministry of Culture, 163 minority rights movements, 2 Mironov, Andrei, 91 Mironov, Yevgeny, 148, 168 Mironova, Maria, 176 Mishen’, 139–41, 184, 190 missile defense system, 16 Mnemosyne, 189 modernist progress, 171–76 monumentalization, 40, 180, 188 More, Thomas, 62 Moroz, Yuri, 131, 134, 135 Mosfilm, 41 Moskalenko, Kseniia, 66 Moskva–Kassiopeia (MoscowCassiopeia), xxiv, 103, 106, 109, 110, 111–13, 114, 117, 121, 135, 185, 186 Mukhametov, Rinal, 119 mystical minimalism, 128 mythical symbols, 157 mythologies, xvi–xvii myths, 143–44, 151–54

214

Näripea, Eva, 95 NASA. See National Aeronautics and Space Administration Na srebrnym globie (On the Silver Globe, novel by Zulawski), 16, 17–18, 20 National Aeronautics and Space Act (US), xiii National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), xiii–xiv; entertainment industry and, xiii–xiv; National Aeronautics and Space Act and, xiii; public image, xiv nauchnaia fantastika, 63 near-reach scientific-fantasy productions, 37 Nebo zovet (The Sky Calls), xxiii, 6, 8, 19, 57, 71–78, 84, 85, 139, 185 Nevinnyi, Viacheslav, 115 New Economic Policy (NEP), 31, 33 Ninidze, Merab, 155 Nirenburg, Boris, 42 Norris, Stephen M., 82 Nosik, Vladimir, 116 novums, 28–29 no(w)stalgia, xvi, 143–44 O’Bannon, Dan, 14 Obitaemyi ostrov I, II (The Inhabited Island I, II), 118–19, 138 Obrazov, Sergei, 112 October revolution of 1917, 27, 31, 33 Odoevsky, Vladimir, 62 oktiabriata, 107 Okudzhava, Bulat, 155 Olshvanger, Ilia, 94 Omon Ra (Pelevin), 121 Osipov, Andrei, 153 Ostrov Rus’ (The Rus’ Island), 117 others/otherness, 81–100 Otlet, Paul, 189 Otradnov, Anatoly, 153 Otroki vo vselennoi (Teens in the Universe), xxiv, 103, 106, 109, 112–13, 114, 121, 135, 185, 186

Index

Ouchaneishvili, Iraklii, 91 outer space: as a Deleuzian “imaginal machine,” xii; transnational visual culture, 5 Outer Space Treaty (UN), 12 Parkhomenko, Pavel, 164 parody and satire, 93 Pavlov, Sergei, 127 Pelevin, Viktor, 121 People’s Commissariat for Education (Narkompros), 31 perestroika, 137–41 perestroika science fiction film, xx–xxi Pereverzev, Ivan, 72, 73 Pervye na lune (First on the Moon), xxv, xxvi, 134, 145, 151–54, 159, 167, 178, 179, 185 Petlia Oriona (Orion Loop), xxiv, 96– 98, 99–100, 127, 141 Petrov, Aleksandr, 119 Pevtsov, Dmitrii, 135 Piattoeva, Nelli, 107 Pidgeon, Walter, 10 Piknik na obochine (Strugatskys), 90 Pis’ma mertvogo cheloveka (Letters of a Dead Man), 137, 188 Planeta bur’ (The Planet of Storms), xxi, 37, 76, 78, 87–90, 93, 94, 97, 99 Podzemelie ved’m (Witches’ Catacombs), xx, xxi, xxv, 126, 131, 132, 134–37, 138 Poe, Edgar Allen, 62 Pol, Pavel, 35 Polin, Vladimir, 127 Polish Film Fund, 95 polyphony, 33 Popova, Aleksandra, 72 popular science film, add page numbers! Porokhorshchikov, Aleksandr, 128 post-Soviet Russian cinema, 143–59; cosmic challenges, 158–59; intelligentsia, 155, 156, 157, 159. See also provinces/provincialism

Index

Povolotskaya, Irina, xxiv, 90, 93 Pravda, 31 premediator, 3 Pritiazhenie (The Attraction), xxiv, 104, 106, 109–10, 118, 119, 121, 186, 190 pro-communist propaganda, 5 Prokhorov, Alexander, 108 proletarian revolution, 32 Prorva (The Abyss), 144 Protazanov, Yakov, xxiii, 5, 27, 31–33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 41, 43, 44, 49–50 provinces/provincialism, xxv–xxvi, 53n30, 144–59; cosmic challenges, 158–59; memory, xxvi, 151–54; space age and, 145–47; structural characteristic, 144–45; subject, xxv– xxvi, 148–51; universal axiology, xxvi, 154–58 provincialism, xxv–xxvi Prudovskii, Boris, 87 Pugovkin, Mikhail, 94 Putin, Vladimir, 105 Queen of Blood, 78 Rabelais, François, 62 Rabinovich, Isaak, 33 racism, 119 Rancière, Jacques, xvi Raumpatrouille—Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffes Orion (Space Patrol—The Fantastic Adventures of the Orion Spaceship), ix Reagan, Ronald, 16 Realpolitik, 146 Rennie, Michael, 7 retrotopias, 46 romantic utopianism, xii Russian Civil War, 31 Russian Film Fund, 163 Russian Orthodox Church, 31 Russian Revolution, 2, 81 Rybnikov, Alexei, 114

215

Sadkovich, Mikhail, 90 Saiko, Natalya, 128 Salyut 7, xvi, xxvi, 163, 165, 166, 168, 170–71, 172, 174, 175–80 Samoilova, Maria, 72 Samye pervye (The Very First), 158 Schwartz, Matthias, 63–64, 166–67 science fiction, ix, 62–65; history of, xvi; literature, xiv; parody and satire, 93; production of the 1950s, 7; space-themed, xiii–xiv. See also childhood and adolescence; postSoviet Russian cinema; Soviet science fiction in 1980s; twentiethcentury films Scott, Ridley, 14 second wave of Russian films, xxvi Segodnia, mama! (Today, Mother!), 117 Selenites, 3, 4 Selivanov, Valentin, xxiv, 103, 104, 110, 117, 120, 130, 135 Semakov, Vladimir, 158 Serdtse vselennoi (Heart of the Universe, Berdnik), 74 Shalamov, Varlam, 63 Shamshurin, Georgii, 69 Shcherbakov, Boris, 115 Shchipin, Sasha, 178 Sherstobitov, Yevgeny, 27–28, 37–38, 44, 65 Sheveleva, Anastasiia, 156 Shipenko, Klim, 165 Shukaitis, Stevphen, xii, 1, 60 Shvorin, Aleksandr, 72 Silova, Iveta, 107 Slavnin, Aleksei, 153 Smoktunovski, Innokenty, 112 Sobchack, Vivian, 7 social contract, 40, 45 socialist realism, 6, 57–78; ban on science fiction, 37; as the canonical style, 36; film policy, 58–61; imperative of, 58–59; as a stylistic doctrine, 57 social order, 93–94

216

Index

societies, 83–84 Soderbergh, Stephen, 42 Soiuzkino, 58 Soiuzmultfilm, 70 Solntseva, Yuliya, 34 Solomin, Yuri, 128 Solyaris (Solaris), x, xiii, 12, 13, 28, 29, 30–31, 41–45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 69, 82, 84, 87, 89–90, 93, 97, 99, 126, 128, 130, 139, 141, 167, 184, 186 Sontag, Susan, xiii Soviet literature, 58 Soviet science fiction in 1980s, 125–41; allegory, 134–37; childhood and adolescence, 103–22; classical, 126–31; perestroika, 137–41. See also provinces/provincialism; science fiction Sovietskii ekran, 134 Soviet Union, 27 Soviet Writers’ Congress. See Congress of Soviet Writers space: as a non-place, xii; as a training course, 111–14 space age, ix; anniversaries of events, xi; collective memories, x–xi; interpretations of, xiv; others/ otherness, 81–100; popular-cultural references, ix–x; provinces/ provincialism and, 145–47; twentieth century history, xi spaceflight: cameras, 179–80; contemporary blockbusters and, 163–80; cultural horizontal, 176–78; modernist progress, 171–76; pioneers and guardians, 168–71; Realpolitik, 146; sociocultural dynamics, 146; specificities of action films, 164–68 Space-Men, 11 space militarization. See militarization space programs, xi; contemporary approaches to, xii; film industry and, xiv; Soviet, xiv; Western European, xiv space race, ix

spatio-temporality, 144 Sputnik 1, x, 1, 11, 12, 69, 77, 146, 166 Stalin, Joseph, 37 Stalker, 90 Starshenbaum, Irina, 119 Star Wars, 16, 24n42, 38, 96 State Committee of Cinematography. See Goskino static utopias, 57–58 Stoliarov, Sergei, 39 Stoyanovich, Daniela, 139 Strategic Defense Initiative, 16 Strizhenov, Oleg, 94 Strugatsky, Arkady, 16, 17, 90, 95, 125, 132, 138, 167, 189 Strugatsky, Boris, 16, 17, 90, 95, 125, 132, 138, 167, 189 subject, provinces/provincialism of, xxv–xxvi, 148–51 subsystems, 190 Sukhanov, Maksim, 139 Suvin, Darko, xv, xvi, 28, 30, 41, 63 Taina tretiei planety (The Mystery of the Third Planet), ix Tainstvennaia stena (The Mysterious Wall), xx, xxiv, 90–95, 99, 139, 141, 185, 186, 190 Tallinfilm, 95 Tarkovsky, Andrei, xvii, xviii, 12, 28, 30, 41, 42–45, 49, 90, 97, 126, 128, 167, 186, 188 technological advances/progress, 5–6, 9; accessibility of the world, 28; avantgarde artists and, 27 Teikh, Georgy, 88 tekhnikums, 107 Thaw. See Khrushchevian Thaw thriller, 166 timespaces, 2 Titov, German, 148, 168 Titova, Valentina, 98 Tolstoy, Alexei, 5 Tom, Rip, 13 Tonunts, Gurgen, 73

Index

Torlone, Zara M., 82 totalitarian political projects, 46 training course, space as a, 111–14 traumatic memories, 42 Trotsky, Leon, 31 Trylogia Ksiezycowa (The Lunar Trilogy), 17 Tsarist Russia, 31, 34 Tsereteli, Nikolai, 35 Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin, xxiii, 44, 61, 65, 71 Tsyganov, Yevgeny, 148 Tumannost’ Andromedy (Andromeda Nebula), xx, xxiii, 28, 29, 30, 31, 36–41, 43, 44, 45, 50, 51, 65, 69, 84, 85, 86, 87, 90, 184, 185 Turner, Victor, 106 twentieth-century films, 1–21; biopolitics, 14–21; classical recipe, 6–11; conflicts, 1–3; internationalization, 20–21; postApollo period, 11–14; pre-canonical, anti-colonialist years, 3–5 20th Party Congress, 37, 81 2001: A Space Odyssey , xiv–xv, xxviin11, 12, 13, 15, 20, 44, 87, 110, 128 Uchitel, Aleksey, 145, 147, 148, 151 UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), 96 universal axiology, provinces/ provincialism of, xxvi, 154–58 utopia, 7; aesthetic appeal of, 28; cognitive logic, 28–29; definitions, 46; latent, 47; as method, 27–31; modernist, 46; as a polysemic concept, 28; postmodernist, 46; science fiction and, xv–xvi; static, 57–58; Suvin on, xv; variant, 28 utopianism, 46–47, 62 utopian projects: Eastern and Central European, 46; imagery and narratives, 81–82; periodization, 46

217

van Gennep, French Arnold, 106 variant utopias, 28 Vdovichenkov, Vladimir, 171 Venus, 87–89 Venusians/Venusian world, 8, 87–89 Vernadsky, Vladimir, 61 Verne, Jules, 62 Viktorov, Richard, xxiv, 103, 104, 106, 110, 117, 120, 127, 135, 186, 188 violence, 2 Vitorgan, Emmanuil, 98 vodka, 178 Voloshina, Tatiana, 39 von Braun, Wernher, 7 von Clausewitz, Carl, 14 Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon), xxii, 3–5, 19–20, 65, 67 The Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, 87 The Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, 87 Vremia pervykh (The Age of Pioneers), xvi, xxvi, 163, 164, 165, 168, 169– 71, 172, 174–75, 176–80 Warburg, Aby, 189 War of the Worlds, 6, 8 wartime communism, 34–35 Wells, H. G., 5, 62 Western European films, 9–11 When Worlds Collide, 6 Wilcox, Fred M., 87 Wise, Robert, 7 women, 10, 85–86; representation, 177–78 workers’ rights movements, 3 World War II, 5, 6, 36–37 xenophobia, 119 Zak, Avenir, 110 Zakharov, Igor, 112 Zeitgeist, 34 Zeldovich, Aleksandr, 139 Zepke, Stephen, xvi, 83, 185

218

Zhalnin, Yaroslav, 168 Zhdanov, Andrei, 36, 58 Zhigunov, Sergei, 135 Zhuravlev, Anatoly, 49 Zhuravlev, Vasily, xxiii, 65, 86–87, 154 Zinoviev, Grigory, 31

Index

Žižek, Slavoj, 42, 43 Zlotnikova T. S., 145 Zorkaya, Neya, 32 Zulawski, Andrzej, 17, 18 Zulawski, Jerzy, 16 Zvezdnyi inspektor, xxiv, 96, 98, 99–100, 141, 186

About the Author

Natalija Majsova is an assistant professor and researcher at the University of Ljubljana (Department of Cultural Studies and Center for Cultural and Religion Studies). She holds a PhD in Cultural Studies (2015), and her research interests involve (post-)Soviet cinema studies, cultural studies of outer space, memory studies, and the politics and aesthetics of visual media. Her first book, Konstruktor, estetika in kozmonavt: vesolje v sodobnem ruskem filmu (2001–2017) (The Constructor, Aesthetics, and the Cosmonaut: Outer Space in Contemporary Russian Film (2001–2017)) was published in Slovenian (University of Ljubljana) in 2017.

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