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Jul. 20th, 2022 12:00 pm
A Strange Form of Russian Science Fiction
Ran across a Twitter thread by a man named Sergej Sumlenny, about a genre that’s popular in Russia. It features alternate-universe novels but with a twist: the protagonists travel into the past, end up in the bodies of important historical people, and change history.
According to Sumlenny, Russians feel history has been one betrayal after another. They’re still upset, apparently, that Queen Elizabeth I turned down Ivan the Terrible’s marriage proposal. (The clue might have been in the name: “Would you do our Gracious Sovereign, Ivan the Terrible, the honor of becoming his bride?”) These books are a way to change that, to right all the wrongs that have been done to them. In the first book that Sumlenny describes, Tsar from the Future, “A guy wakes up in the body of Tsar Nicholas II, prevents the Russian Revolution and conquers Istanbul with modern weapons.” (I corrected some very slight errors in English, because I couldn’t help myself.)
OK. Not a book I’d read, but no worse than some military sf over here. It goes downhill from there, though. The biggest enemy in these novels is England, for some reason. So the biggest ally becomes World War II Germany. (Sumlenny tells us that Russians don’t hate the Germans for being Nazis — they hate them for breaking the alliance Hitler made with Stalin and turning on Russia. “Nazi” becomes anyone who threatens Russia. This sort of explains why Putin could talk about “denazifying” a country led by a Jewish president. Sort of.)
So we get Comrade Hitler: Execute Churchill! “A popadenets [a time traveler, literally, ‘appearer’] gets into Adolf Hitler’s body. * Will he manage to execute Churchill for war crimes, create an alliance with the USSR? Will Comrades Hitler and Stalin defeat the US and get a nuke before the US?” Another book advertises “Russian-German brotherhood against the star-striped plague and for world liberation!” “The covers seem like they were created on drugs,” Sumlenny says: fiery conflagrations or mushroom clouds in the background, and in the foreground a cracked Capitol Dome or drowning Statue of Liberty or burning Parliament, men holding futuristic weapons or riding futuristic tanks, and sometimes a random hammer and sickle somewhere.
(*ewwww)
Sumlenny’s point is that anyone who saw these books, with their “examples of Russian state-run preparation for a global war, militarisation of people, spreading every possible weird violent fantasy,” should have realized that Russia was preparing its people for an imminent invasion of another country. There were hundreds of these books and even movies; bookstores even stocked military uniforms and accessories.
It’s a good point: “You shall know a country by its pop culture.” The other interesting thing to me is that Russia seems to have invented a form of science fiction unknown in the West. A creepy form of science fiction, true, but something new nonetheless. Grievance fiction? Consolation porn? They seem to be saying, “We aren’t very good at winning wars, and no one takes us seriously as a major power anymore, but if you give us a way to travel in time, an ability to jump into people’s heads, a knowledge of the future and of how to build advanced weapons, we can really do some damage!”
I can think of any number of US writers with grievances enough to fill hundreds of these novels. “A time traveler jumps into the body of Robert E. Lee…” It doesn’t bear thinking about. Thank Dog they don’t read this blog.
According to Sumlenny, Russians feel history has been one betrayal after another. They’re still upset, apparently, that Queen Elizabeth I turned down Ivan the Terrible’s marriage proposal. (The clue might have been in the name: “Would you do our Gracious Sovereign, Ivan the Terrible, the honor of becoming his bride?”) These books are a way to change that, to right all the wrongs that have been done to them. In the first book that Sumlenny describes, Tsar from the Future, “A guy wakes up in the body of Tsar Nicholas II, prevents the Russian Revolution and conquers Istanbul with modern weapons.” (I corrected some very slight errors in English, because I couldn’t help myself.)
OK. Not a book I’d read, but no worse than some military sf over here. It goes downhill from there, though. The biggest enemy in these novels is England, for some reason. So the biggest ally becomes World War II Germany. (Sumlenny tells us that Russians don’t hate the Germans for being Nazis — they hate them for breaking the alliance Hitler made with Stalin and turning on Russia. “Nazi” becomes anyone who threatens Russia. This sort of explains why Putin could talk about “denazifying” a country led by a Jewish president. Sort of.)
So we get Comrade Hitler: Execute Churchill! “A popadenets [a time traveler, literally, ‘appearer’] gets into Adolf Hitler’s body. * Will he manage to execute Churchill for war crimes, create an alliance with the USSR? Will Comrades Hitler and Stalin defeat the US and get a nuke before the US?” Another book advertises “Russian-German brotherhood against the star-striped plague and for world liberation!” “The covers seem like they were created on drugs,” Sumlenny says: fiery conflagrations or mushroom clouds in the background, and in the foreground a cracked Capitol Dome or drowning Statue of Liberty or burning Parliament, men holding futuristic weapons or riding futuristic tanks, and sometimes a random hammer and sickle somewhere.
(*ewwww)
Sumlenny’s point is that anyone who saw these books, with their “examples of Russian state-run preparation for a global war, militarisation of people, spreading every possible weird violent fantasy,” should have realized that Russia was preparing its people for an imminent invasion of another country. There were hundreds of these books and even movies; bookstores even stocked military uniforms and accessories.
It’s a good point: “You shall know a country by its pop culture.” The other interesting thing to me is that Russia seems to have invented a form of science fiction unknown in the West. A creepy form of science fiction, true, but something new nonetheless. Grievance fiction? Consolation porn? They seem to be saying, “We aren’t very good at winning wars, and no one takes us seriously as a major power anymore, but if you give us a way to travel in time, an ability to jump into people’s heads, a knowledge of the future and of how to build advanced weapons, we can really do some damage!”
I can think of any number of US writers with grievances enough to fill hundreds of these novels. “A time traveler jumps into the body of Robert E. Lee…” It doesn’t bear thinking about. Thank Dog they don’t read this blog.
