Russian speculative fiction
Elements of fantastical or supernatural fiction have been part of mainstream Russian literature since the 18th century. Russian fantasy developed from the centuries-old traditions of Slavic mythology and folklore. Russian science fiction emerged in the mid-19th century and rose to its prominence during the Soviet era, both in cinema and literature, with writers like the Strugatsky brothers, Kir Bulychov, and Mikhail Bulgakov, among others. Soviet filmmakers produced a number science fiction and fantasy films. Outside modern Russian borders, there are a significant number of Russophone writers and filmmakers from Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, who have made a notable contribution to the genres.
Terminology
In the Russian language, fantasy, science fiction, horror and all other related genres are considered a part of a larger umbrella term, фантастика, roughly equivalent to "speculative fiction", and are less divided than in the West. The Russian term for science fiction is научная фантастика, which can be literally translated as "scientific fantasy" or "scientific speculative fiction". Although the Russian language has a literal translation for 'fantasy', фантазия, the word refers to a dream or imagination, not literary genre. Today, Russian publishers and literary critics use direct English transcription, фэнтези for "fantasy". Gothic and supernatural fiction are often referred to as мистика.Imperial period
18th and early 19th centuries
While science fiction did not emerge in Russia as a coherent genre until the early 20th century, many of its aspects, such as utopia or imaginary voyage, are found in earlier Russian works.Fedor Dmitriev-Mamonov's anti-clerical A Philosopher Nobleman. The Allegory is considered prototypical to science fiction. It is a voltairean conte philosophique influenced by Micromégas.
Utopia was a major genre of early Russian speculative fiction. The first utopia in Russian was a short story by Alexander Sumarokov, "A Dream of Happy Society". Two early utopias in form of imaginary voyage are Vasily Levshin's Newest Voyage and Mikhail Shcherbatov's Journey to the Land of Ophir. Pseudo-historical heroic romances in classical settings by Fyodor Emin, Mikhail Kheraskov, Pavel Lvov and Pyotr Zakharyin were also utopian. Ancient Night of the Universe, an epic poem by Semyon Bobrov, is the first work of Russian Cosmism. Some of Faddei Bulgarin's tales are set in the future, others exploited themes of hollow earth and space flight, as did Osip Senkovsky's satirical fantasy series Fantastic Voyages of Baron Brambeus.
Bulgarin's 1824 novel Plausible Fantasies is considered to be the first "true" science fiction in Russian literature.
Authors of Gothic stories included Aleksandr Bestuzhev with his German couleur locale, Sergey Lyubetsky, Vladimir Olin, Alexey K. Tolstoy, Elizaveta Kologrivova and Mikhail Lermontov.
By the mid-19th century, imaginary voyages to space had become popular chapbooks, such as Voyage to the Sun and Planet Mercury and All the Visible and Invisible Worlds by Dmitry Sigov, Correspondence of a Moonman with an Earthman by Pyotr Mashkov, Voyage to the Moon in a Wonderful Machine by Semyon Dyachkov and Voyage in the Sun by Demokrit Terpinovich. Popular literature used fantastic motifs like demons, invisibility and shrinking men.
Hoffmann's fantastic tales influenced east European writers including Ukrainian writer Nikolay Gogol, Russian writers Antony Pogorelsky, Nikolay Melgunov, Vladimir Karlgof, Nikolai Polevoy, Aleksey Tomofeev, Konstantin Aksakov and Vasily Ushakov. Supernatural folk tales were stylized by Orest Somov, Vladimir Olin, Mikhail Zagoskin and Nikolay Bilevich. Vladimir Odoevsky, a romantic writer influenced by Hoffmann, wrote on his vision of the future and scientific progress as well as many Gothic tales.
Alexander Veltman, along with his folk romances and hoffmanesque satiric tales, in 1836 published The forebears of Kalimeros: Alexander, son of Philip of Macedon, the first Russian novel to feature time travel. In the book, the main character rides to ancient Greece on a hippogriff to meet Aristotle and Alexander the Great. In Year 3448, a Heliodoric love romance set in the future, a traveler visits an imaginary country Bosphorania and sees social and technological advances of the 35th century.
Late 19th - early 20th century
The second half of the 19th century saw the rise of realism. However, fantasies with a scientific rationale by Nikolai Akhsharumov and Nikolai Vagner stand out during this period, as well as Ivan Turgenev's "mysterious tales" and Vera Zhelikhovsky's occult fiction.Mikhail Mikhailov's story "Beyond History", a pre-Darwinian fantasy on the descent of man, is an early example of prehistoric fiction. Fictional accounts of prehistoric men were written by anthropologists and popular science writers. Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin's satires use a fantastic and grotesque element. The plot of Animal Mutiny by historian Mykola Kostomarov is similar to that of Orwell's Animal Farm.
Some of Fyodor Dostoevsky's short works also use fantasy: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, a doppelgänger novella The Double: A Petersburg Poem, mesmeric The Landlady, and a comic horror story Bobok. Dostoevsky's magazine Vremya was first to publish Russian translations of Edgar Allan Poe's stories in 1861. Alexander Kondratyev's prose included mythological novel Satyress and collection of mythological stories White Goat, both based on Greek myths. Journeys and Adventures of Nicodemus the Elder by Aleksey Skaldin is a Gnostic fantasy.
Utopias
's influential What Is to Be Done? included a utopian dream of the far future, which became a prototype for many socialist utopias. A noted example is the duology by Marxist philosopher Alexander Bogdanov, Red Star and Engineer Menni. Some plays of another Marxist, Anatoly Lunacharsky, propose his philosophical ideas in fantastic disguise. Other socialist utopias include Diary of André by pseudonymous A. Va-sky, On Another Planet by Porfiry Infantyev, and Spring Feast by Nikolay Oliger. Alexander Kuprin wrote a short story of the same kind, Toast.Among others, Vladimir Solovyov wrote Tale of the Anti-Christ, an ecumenical utopia. Earthly Paradise by Konstantin Mereschkowski is an anthropological utopia. Great War Between Men and Women by Sergey Solomin and Women Uprisen and Defeated by Polish writer Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski is about a feminist revolution. Other feminist utopias include short farces Women on Mars by Victor Bilibin and Women Problem by Nadezhda Teffi. In Half a Century by Sergey Sharapov is a patriarchal Slavophile utopia, and Land of Bliss by Crimean Tatar Ismail Gasprinski is a Muslim utopia. Voluminous A Created Legend by another Symbolist Fyodor Sologub is a utopia full of science fictional wonders close to magic.
Entertainment speculative fiction
Entertainment fiction adopted scientistic themes, such as resurrection of an ancient Roman, global disaster, mind reading devices, Antarctic city-states, an elixir of longevity, and Atlantis.Spaceflight remained a central science fiction topic since the 1890s in In the Ocean of Stars by Anany Lyakide, In the Moon and Dreams of Earth and Skies by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Voyage to Mars by Leonid Bogoyavlensky, "In Space" by Nikolay Morozov, Sailing Ether by Boris Krasnogorsky and its sequel, Islands of Ethereal Ocean.
In the 1910s, Russian audience was interested in horror. Fire-Blossom, a supernatural thriller by Alexander Amfiteatrov and Vera Kryzhanovsky's occult romances, that combined sci-fi and reactionary elitist utopia, were popular. Bram Stoker's Dracula was imitated by pseudonymous "b. Olshevri" in Vampires, even before the original was translated to Russian. Early Alexander Grin's stories are mostly psychological horror, though later he drifted to fantasy.
Future progress was described in fiction by scientists: "Wonders of Electricity" by electric engineer Vladimir Chikolev, Automatic Underground Railway by Alexander Rodnykh, and "Billionaire's Testament" by biologist Porfiry Bakhmetyev. Future war stories were produced by the military and Fatal War of 18.. by retired navy officer Alexander Belomor, Big Fist or Chinese-European War by K. Golokhvastov, Queen of the World and Kings of the Air by navy officer Vladimir Semyonov, "War of Nations 1921-1923" by Ix, War of the "Ring" with the "Union" by P. R-tsky, and End of War. Threat to the World by Ivan Ryapasov is similar to Jules Verne's The Begum's Fortune. Jules Verne was so popular that Anton Chekhov wrote a parody on him, and Konstantin Sluchevsky produced a sequel - "Captain Nemo in Russia".
Soviet period
Soviet science fiction
Soviet writers were innovative, numerous and prolific, despite limitations set up by state censorship. Both Russian and foreign writers of science fiction enjoyed mainstream popularity in the Soviet Union, and many books were adapted for film and animation.Early Soviet era
The birth of Soviet science fiction was spurred by scientific revolution, industrialisation, mass education and other dramatic social changes that followed the Russian Revolution. Early Soviet authors from the 1920s, such as Alexander Belyaev, Grigory Adamov, Vladimir Obruchev and Alexey N. Tolstoy, stuck to hard science fiction. They openly embraced influence from the genre's western classics, such as Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle and especially H. G. Wells, who was a socialist and often visited Soviet Russia.File:Illustrations in science fiction 02.jpg|thumb|left|An illustration to Professor Dowell's Head, by Alexander Belyaev, a novella about mad scientist reviving a disembodied head
Science fiction books from the 1920s included science predictions, adventure and space travel, often with a hue of working class agenda and satire against capitalism. It was generally encouraged by the authorities, tied to general promotion of science and education, as well as communist propaganda that juxtaposed communist approach to science, portrayed as disinterested, altruistic, and international, with capitalist one, focused on personal gain.
Alexey N. Tolstoy's Aelita, one of the most influential books of the era, featured two Russians raising a revolution on Mars. Tolstoy's Engineer Garin's Death Ray follows a mad scientist who plans to take over the world, and he's eventually welcomed by capitalists. Similarly, the main antagonist of Belyaev's The Air Seller is a megalomaniac capitalist who plots to steal all the world's atmosphere. Belyaev's Battle in Ether is about a future world war, fought between communist Europe and capitalist America. The novel Professor Dowell's Head, also by Belyaev, is about a mad doctor who performs experimental head transplants on stolen bodies in a hospital, which he operates solely for profit, and where the patients aren't really sick at all.
Soviet authors were also interested in the distant past. Belyaev described his view of "historical" Atlantis in The Last Man from Atlantis, and Obruchev is best known for Plutonia, set inside hollow Earth where dinosaurs and other extinct species survived, as well as for his other "lost world" novel, Sannikov Land.
Two notable exclusions from Soviet 'Wellsian' tradition were Yevgeny Zamyatin, author of dystopian novel We, and Mikhail Bulgakov, who contributed to science fiction with Heart of a Dog, The Fatal Eggs and Ivan Vasilyevich. The two used science fiction for social satire rather than scientistic prediction, and challenged the traditional communist worldview. Some of their books were refused or even banned and only became officially published in the 1980s. Nevertheless, Zamyatin and especially Bulgakov became relatively well-known through circulation of fan-made copies.
The following Stalin era, from the mid-1930s to the early 1950s, saw a period of stagnation in Soviet science fiction, because of heavy censorship that forced the writers to adopt socialist realism cliches. This period was dominated by the so-called "close aim science fiction". Instead of the distant future, it was set in near future, and limited itself to hard science fiction: anticipation of industrial achievements, inventions and travels within the Solar System. The top "close aim" writers were Alexander Kazantsev, Georgy Martynov, Vladimir Savchenko and Georgy Gurevich.
In films the "close aim" era lasted longer, and many films based on "close aim" books and scripts were made in the 1950s and 1960s. Some of these films, namely Planet of the Storms and The Sky Beckons, were pirated, re-edited and released in the West under different titles.