Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
The brothers Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky were Soviet and Russian science-fiction authors who collaborated through most of their careers.
In the second half of the 1950s, military translator A. N. Strugatsky, with the assistance of journalist and writer and intelligence officer, published the documentary novella and secured a position as an editor at Goslitizdat. B. N. Strugatsky, who worked at the Pulkovo Observatory, also harbored literary ambitions; according to legend, the brothers decided to write together on a bet. Between 1957 and 1959, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky wrote the novella The Land of Crimson Clouds and several short stories, which immediately attracted the attention of critics. In 1964, the Strugatskys were admitted to the Union of Writers of the RSFSR. After years of experimentation, they developed a working method that involved not only joint discussion of ideas but also the oral rehearsal of every sentence. The writing process followed a detailed plan, which was developed in advance and discussed multiple times.
Starting with works in the synthetic genre of adventure and scientific-technical fiction, the Strugatskys quickly transitioned to social prognostics and modeling in the form of "realistic fiction," with ideological content wrapped in a gripping plot. Most of their books explore the establishment of contact with alien intelligence, the question of the permissibility and justification of intervention or non-intervention in the natural evolution of civilizations of any type, and the study of various forms of utopia and dystopia.
Significant attention in their work was devoted to the problem of the ideologization and de-ideologization of society and the role of culture in the state. In the first half of the 1960s, the Strugatskys created a unified fictional universe, conventionally called the Noon Universe, which serves as the setting for nearly a dozen novellas. The image of communism they constructed evolved toward permanent geopolitical and cosmic expansion and associated mechanisms of social control. Their exploration of various forms of utopia led the Strugatskys to the conviction that humanity would inevitably split into unequal strata, not all of whose members are suitable or worthy of entering a bright future. The prospect of creating a biological civilization that radically reconstructs human nature and opposes technical culture also concerned the co-authors. From the 1980s, B. N. Strugatsky began to reassess their joint creative path in the context of liberalism and dissidence.
Having achieved significant fame in the 1960s, the Strugatskys faced persecution of philosophical fiction in the USSR by the Department of Agitation and Propaganda of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the leadership of the All-Union Leninist Communist Youth League. In the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s, the number of publications and reprints decreased, and several lengthy texts gained semi-banned status, circulating in samizdat. Based on the novella Roadside Picnic, which had no book editions at the time, the Strugatskys wrote the screenplay for A. Tarkovsky's film Stalker.
In the 1980s, the Strugatskys became some of the most published Soviet writers, a symbol of independent thought, and were awarded the RSFSR State Prize named after M. Gorky. Between 1991 and 1994, the publishing house Tekst released the first collected works of the Strugatskys. In the 1990s, numerous editions were published, including the series Worlds of the Strugatsky Brothers. A group of Strugatsky researchers published an 11-volume collected works based on archival texts between 2001 and 2003, and a complete 33-volume collected works between 2015 and 2022.
The Strugatskys' work significantly influenced the spread of dissent among the Soviet intelligentsia in the 1970s and 1980s, and was studied by literary scholars, social philosophers, and political scientists due to its interest ideological and literary constructs.
Life and work
The Strugatsky brothers were born to Natan Strugatsky, an art critic, and his wife, a teacher. Their father was Jewish and their mother was Russian Orthodox. Their early work was influenced by Ivan Yefremov and Stanisław Lem. Later they went on to develop their own, unique style of science fiction writing that emerged from the period of Soviet rationalism in Soviet literature and evolved into novels interpreted as works of social criticism.Their best-known novel, Piknik na obochine, has been translated into English as Roadside Picnic. Andrei Tarkovsky adapted the novel for the screen as Stalker.
Algis Budrys compared their An Emergency Case and Arkady's Wanderers and Travellers to the work of Eando Binder.
In 1991, Text Publishers brought out the collected works by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.
Arkady
Arkady Strugatsky was born 25 August 1925 in Batumi; the family later moved to Leningrad. In January 1942, Arkady and his father were evacuated from the Siege of Leningrad, but Arkady was the only survivor in his train car; his father died upon reaching Vologda. Arkady was drafted into the Soviet army in 1943. He trained first at the artillery school in Aktyubinsk and later at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow, from which he graduated in 1949 as an interpreter of English and Japanese. He worked as a teacher and interpreter for the military until 1955. In 1955, he began working as an editor and writer. In 1958, he began collaborating with his brother Boris, a collaboration that lasted until Arkady's death on. Arkady Strugatsky became a member of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1964. In addition to his own writing, he translated Japanese short stories and novels, as well as some English works with his brother.Boris
Born 14 April 1933, Boris Strugatsky remained in Leningrad with his mother during the siege of the city during World War II. He graduated from high school in 1950 and applied to the physics department at Leningrad State University, but studied astronomy instead. After graduating in 1955, he worked as an astronomer and computer engineer at the Pulkovo Observatory. In 1960 he participated in a geodetic and astronomical expedition in the Caucasus. Boris Strugatsky became a member of the writers' union of the USSR in 1964. In 1966, he became a full-time writer. From 1972 he acted as the head of the Leningrad seminar of young speculative fiction writers, which subsequently became known as the "Boris Strugatsky Seminar". He established the "Bronze Snail" literary prize. He was an agnostic. After the death of his brother, he published two more novels under a pseudonym. Boris Strugatsky died in Saint Petersburg on.Artistic origins
Cultural and socio-political environment of the Strugatsky Brothers' formation
A defining feature of the Strugatsky Brothers' work is its collaborative nature. Between 1941 and 1956, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky lived apart, not united by professional activities or daily life; their communication was primarily in written form. The circumstances shaping the personalities of the two brothers, as well as their socio-political and aesthetic views, were entirely different. In particular, despite a relatively small age difference, Arkady and Boris belonged to different generations in terms of worldview: in 1941, the elder brother was 16 years old, and his childhood coincided with an era "for which it was customary to. Without any irony or reservations in this case: a peaceful, calm life in a good family, among kind friends, in a wonderful city, in a beloved country that both adults and children genuinely took pride in". Boris Strugatsky's formative years coincided with the war, the blockade, and evacuation, which predetermined negative memories of his childhood and youth and a skeptical attitude toward the country and its political system.The socio-political preferences of the Strugatsky Brothers were shaped in entirely different environments. Arkady Strugatsky, having graduated from the Military Institute of Foreign Languages, became a translator officer proficient in Japanese and English, and from 1946 to 1954, he gained experience working with classified documents and interrogating prisoners of war and war criminals. Boris Strugatsky, after returning to Leningrad, led the ordinary life of an intellectual schoolboy and student, graduating from Leningrad University. Their life-meaning orientations converged under the influence of constant correspondence and rare meetings during Arkady's leaves, which were spent in Leningrad. After the elder brother's demobilization in 1956, he settled in Moscow, and meetings and correspondence with his brother became much more frequent, though their main circles of friends and acquaintances remained different until the end of their lives, despite belonging to the Soviet scientific-technical and artistic elite. The path of both brothers into literature coincided with the period of the Thaw and the scientific-technical romanticism it engendered, which was highly fruitful for social engineering.
The Strugatskys' reading preferences, which provided them with pretexts and models for developing their own literary style, were distinctive. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky were interested in philosophy, studying the works of Marxist–Leninist classics not only for professional or academic purposes. Both valued Russian classical literature, stating that they learned to write from N. V. Gogol, L. N. Tolstoy, and A. N. Tolstoy. Arkady Strugatsky, fluent in Japanese and English, professionally followed literary novelties for many years; he likely read Orwell early on. He had access to many Japanese authors in their original language, including Akutagawa, Kan Kikuchi, and Arishima Takeo. At the same time, A. Strugatsky was indifferent to Japanese poetry, and all epigraphs and quotes from Japanese authors were selected by Boris Natanovich. Both brothers, from childhood, loved adventure literature and science fiction, favoring foreign authors. Most books by Kipling, Dumas, Wells, Jacolliot, and other writers were impossible to obtain in stores or public libraries, coming instead from the book collections of their parents or friends.