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Arkady Strugatsky (1925-1991); Boris Strugatsky (1933-2012) |
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Russian author, who collaborated with his brother Boris
Strugatsky
and published acclaimed science fiction novels. The Strugatskys became
best-known Soviet science fiction writers, continuing the Russian
tradition starting from Nikolai Gogol's
novel Chronicles of a City, Vladimir
Mayakovsky's play The Bedbug, and Mikhail Bulgakov's fantasy The
Master and Margarita. Under the official Soviet ideology much of
the Strugatskys' stories were written in code to avoid censorship. Both brothers had a scientific background. Andrei Tarkovsky's film Stalker (1979) was loosely based on their novella Piknik na obotshine (1972, Roadside Picnic). "Burbridge lay immobile, hands folded on chest, staring resignedly at the sky. His huge feet, cruelly eaten away by the jelly, were turned out unnaturally. He was the last of the old stalkers who had started hunting for treasure right after the Visitation, when the Zone wasn't called the Zone, when there were no institutes, or walls, or UN forces, when the city was paralyzed with fear and the world was snickering over the new newspaper hoax." (Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, translated by Antonina W. Bouis, New York: A Timescape Book, 1978, p. 60; originally published with Tale of the Troika in one volume, 1977) ►Arkady Natanovich
Strugatsky was born in
Batumi, Soviet
Georgia, but the family moved short after his birth to Leningrad. His
mother, Alexandra Ivanova, was a teacher. Strugatsky's
father, Natan Zenovievich, came from a Jewish family. He kindled
Arkady's interest in the works of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells,
and Arthur Conan Doyle. Natan Zenovievich was an active
member of the Communist party. He died of hunger during the siege of
Leningrad in 1942. One of his brothers died in the political purges of
1937. When the German Army invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Arkady
was sent with his schoolmates to construct military defenses to prevent
the Germans from capturing Leningrad. "At the end of July we were in
our first battle," he recalled, "and I killed my first Nazi. . . . The
bastard that was marching straight toward me, I shot right in the naked
belly from 20 paces, and I saw him double over, smashing his sweaty
face into the ground he wanted to trample with his boots . . . " ('Strugatsky, Arkady Natanovich (August 28, 1925-) and
Boris Natanovich (April 15, 1933-)),' in World Authors 1975-1980, edited by
Vineta Colby, New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1985, pp. 716-717) Arkady's
father died of hunger during the siege of Leningrad in 1942. His
brother, Aleksandr, died in the political purges of 1937. Due to
malnutrition Arkady suffered under the Blockade, he lost practically
all of his teeth, ". . . the mustache that he wore for most of his
post-military adult life was partially intended to conceal this fact." ('Introduction,' in Celestial Hellscapes: Cosmology As the Key to the Strugatskiis’ Science Fictions by Kevis Reese, Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2019, p. xx) Arkady served in the Soviet army in 1943-55,
becoming a
senior lieutenant. After being drafted into the army, he was
trained as an artilleryman, but before being sent to the front, he was
sent to Kuibyshev, where he studied English and Japanese at the
Military
Institute for Foreign Languages.In 1955 he married Elena Oshanina; they had one
stepdaughter. Arkady worked as a technical
translator
and editor for Institute for Technical Information, Goslitizdat
(1959-61). Jules Verne's novel Hector Servedac
from 1877 prompted him to study mathematics and astronony. In 1956 he
began writing together with his brother. Their acceptance into the
Writers' Union was apparently partly delayed by their Jewish heritage.
Arkady
was an editor of the publishing house Detgiz in 1961-64 and then worked
as a
freelance writer and translator from English and Japanese.
Arkady Strugatsky died on October 23, 1991. ►Boris
Natanovich Strugatsky, the younger brother, was born in
1933
in Leningrad,
where the family had moved in the late 1920s. He was too weak to leave
the city during World War II, but he survived with his mother the siege
– she died in 1979 at the age of seventy-nine. Boris Strugatsky studied
astronomy at Leningrad University and in Kazakhstan at the Almaty
Observatory under Gavrill Adrianovich Tikhov. After graduating in 1956
he joined
the staff of Pulkovo astronomical observatory, situated near Leningrad.
In 1957 he married Adelaida Andreevna Karpeliuk, who also studied
astronomy and worked at Pulkovo. They had one son, Andrei. From 1956 to 1964 Boris Strugatsky worked in Pulkovo as a computer mathematician and then began his career as a freelance writer. He was a strong critic of the prevailing conditions, even after the fall of the Soviet system. In 2009 he entered into correspondence with Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed former Yukos CEO. Strugatsky signed an open letter in support for Khodorkovsky along with the writer Boris Akunin, actress Lia Akhedzhakov, actor Oleg Basilashvili, film director Eldar Ryazanov, theatrical director Kama Ginkas and television journalists Vladimir Pozner and Leonid Parfyonov. Joining other Russian intellectuals he urged President Putin to release the punk band Pussy Riot, sentenced to two years in jail over anti-Putin protest at Moscow cathedral. Boris Strugatsky died in St Petersburg on November 19, 2012. Adelaida Andreevna died in 2013. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's first story, the novella Strana bagrovyh tuch (The Country of Crimson Clouds), was finished in 1957 (published in 1959), in the same year when the Sputnik was launched and the Soviet Union took lead in the space race. In April 1961, the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space. The novel was set in the future, in the 1980s, looking at it from the optimistic perspective of the Khrushchev's era. The story tells of the first successful expedition to Venus: there is uranium. The brothers insisted that their oeuvre
was "about adventures of the spirit, and not of the body." (quoted in 'On Contemporary Russian Fantasy and Science Fiction: An Afterword' by Sofya Khagi, in Worlds Apart: An Anthology of Russian Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited and with commentary by Alexander Levitsky, New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2007, p. 647) It was the
combination of Boris's
scientific expertise and Arkady's knowledge of western science fiction
helped make them Russia's most widely translated writers of the genre.
Shest' spichek (1960, Six Matches) collected short stories originally published between 1957 and 1959. The early pieces followed the tradition of Ivan Jefremov and praised the achievements of science and technology. During the Cold War, it was taken for granted in the Soviet SF, that in the future the Socialist system will be far ahead of capitalism. An example of these works is Stazhery (1962, Space Apprentice), written for young adult readers. It contrasted to outposts: Einomisa, where the staff of an undersupplied and overcrowded research station work happily, and Bamberga, an asteroid mining colony run by a an unscrupulous boss named Richardson. Vladimir Yurkovsky, the Inspector-General of the International Administration of Cosmic Communications (IACC), puts Richardson under arrest. In Noon: 22nd Century (1962) the cosmonauts optimistically search unknown frontiers. Capitalism is a thing of the past. The short story 'Six Matches' called for a limit on risk taking in the name of science. ". . . scientists are so lovingly eager to advance science that they peform dangerous experiments upon themselves against the loving orders of the government, as represented by the 'Labour Protection Inspector', who pleads them to use animals instead. The final kicker to that story, by the way, strikes me as the most nearly American touch in the whole book." ('More Science Fiction from the Soviet Union,' in Asimov on Science Fiction by Isaac Asimov, London: Panther Books, 1984, p. 197) An ingenious scientist suffers a mental breakdown after trying to lift a bundle of matches via telekinesis. "The human race should gain mastery over nature not by sacrificing its best sons but by using powerful machines and precise instruments," concludes one of the characters. The same theme comes up at the end of Space Apprentice, where the heroic Yurkovsky dies while chasing what seems to be an alien satellite. After the brothers began move gradually to the direction of
social satire, they came into conflict with the censors, although they
were never dissidents or anti-Soviet. Only for a period during the
Brezhnev era, they were unable to publish their work. The Soviet
government banned the reprinting of Ulitka
na sklone (1966, The Snail on the Slope), in which they argued, that no form of knowledge can be the
ultimate truth, questioning indirectly the validity of Marxist-Leninist
theories of progress. Usually the authorities did not object the use of the word Zhid/Yid, a deragotary term for a Jewish person, but when their play "The Yids of the City of Peter," or Joyless Conversation by Candlelight (1990) was performed in the city of Tula, only the words "Joyless Conversation" were allowed on the posters. In Trudno byt' bogom
(1964, It's Hard to Be a God) a group of historians from the future
where Communism has triumphed
visit a medieval planet in order to observe its historical development.
Anton alias Don Rumata, a historian, witnesses in the city of Arkanar
increasing tension. Don Reba, Minister for Security, accedes more
influence and his pogroms among the members of the intelligentsia
spread terror. Finally Reba comes to power and establishes a tyranny,
beginning a systematic purging of the people. Anton feels he must
contravene the Terran Historical Institute's directive of
non-interference by helping dissidents to escape from Arkanar. "Can man
be a god?" asks Anton. Can – or should – a god permit evil? This
Dostoyevskian theme brought Arkady and Boris Strugatsky recognition as
serious writes. However, taking a critical view on the work of
the Stugatskis, the Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw
Lem
argued, that "It is characteristic that this type of literature, which
refers only to a very
concrete type of totalitarian relations, loses a lot of its social
relevance and vitality when the system which it critiques
collapses. When the system lies in ruins, it turns out that there is no
need to speak in Aesop's language, no need for complex periphrases and
allusions, since now everything can be said simply as is." ('Reflections on Literature,
Philosophy, and Science,' in A Stanislaw Lem Reader, edited
by Peter Swiski, Northwestern Univesity Press, 1997, p.
22)
The brothers wrote the novel when ideological pressure from the Party
increased. Originally Don Reba was called Rebia, an anagram of the head
of Stalin's secret police. Russian critics have hailed this work as the
best utopian novel of Soviet literature. "Yes, while we were arguing here about that overprint a Martian had entered the chemist's shop, had given Achilles a written order asking for all medicaments containing narcotics to be given over to the bearer, and Achilles had without remembering or realizing anything wrapped up a package containing these medicaments and handed it over, after which the Martian had left, leaving nothing in our memories but flashes of recollection and a blurred picture registered out of the corners of our eyes." ('The Second Martian Invasion: A Fantastic Tale' by Arkadii and Boris Strugatskii,' translated by D. Matias and P. Barrett, in Vortex: New Soviet Science Fiction, edited by C. G. Bearne, London: Pan Books, 1970, pp. 173-174) Vtoroe nashestvie marsian (1968, The Second
Invasion from Mars) was a humorous sequel to H.G.
Wells's famous novel War of the World.
In the story the Martians come back after their defeat but now they
have better weapons: blue brandy and blue bread and propaganda. Upon seizing power, they
start to run the world for their own purposes, to get human gastric juices. "Nowadays, the papers
are quite amazing," says the narrator, who is only interested in
collecting stamps. "Not a single paper has a philatelists' section,
there's not a word about football, and, what's more, all the papers
have printed the same huge, and
entirely meaningless article about the importance of gastric juice." (Ibid., pp. 136-137) Dalekaia raduga (1963, Far Rainbow) was a story about a catastrophe threatening a whole planet, called Rainbow. The hero, Leonid Gorbovsky, must decide who can leave the planet, a test ground for null-T (teleportation), and who will die. Gorbovsky himself refuses to board his spaceship, Tariel II. However, he reappeared in several subsequent stories. The Second Invasion from Mars and The Tale of the Troika (1969) caught the eye of conservative reviewers. Especially the brothers satirized bureaucracy – almost a taboo subject. The Ugly Swans, a dystopian story set in an unnamed Western country, did not find a publisher. Eventually it appeared in Germany in 1972 without the permission of the authors. Nevertheless, they were blacklisted. In the story the indolent intelligentsia has lost its role as a critical counterforce and the new generation, children transformed into geniuses, decides to leave the whole old world. Konstantin Lopushansky's film adaptation from 2006, set in a rainy Siberian town, was loosely based on the book. Obitayemyi ostrov (1971, Prisoners of Power) was about a planet governed by a tyranny and propaganda and the attempts of an young idealistic pilot to change the society. In Za milliard let do knotsa sveta (1976-77, Definitely Maybe), set in the contemporary Soviet Union, scientists witness strange events, which refer that somebody wants to hinder their work. A theory is developed: the faceless threat from above is the whole world order protecting the Second law of thermodynamics. The protagonist's phone number was Boris Strugatsky's phone number with one digit changed. Though Soviet authorities promoted the publication of
the brothers' work abroad, they enjoyed the role of
semi-outcasts in the West until the advent of glasnost.
Their first novels published in the USA were The Second War of
the Worlds and Hard To Be a God, both came out in 1973.
Noteworthy, the paperback publication of Snail on the Slope
by Bantam was withdrawn in 1980 when the Strugatskys refused to market
it as a work
of dissident fiction. "Our science fiction is socially and ideologically committed and humane," said Arkady Strugatski in an
interview in 1983. "It fosters an active mentality, a kind of mentality
that is intolerant of narrow-minded bourgeois attitudes." (quoted in The Contribution of the Brothers Strugatsky to the Genre of Russian Science Fiction by Yulia A. Kulikova, thesis, the Graduate School of the University of Oregon, 2011, p. 6) At the time
when, broadly speaking, the Soviet science fiction was loaded with
Communist optimism, the Strugatskys did not differ from the main
stream. From the mid-1960s they began to examine universal issues of
morality and the tension between ideals and reality. The brothers also translated novels by Kobo Abe, Hal Clement,
Andre Norton, and John Wyndham into Russian. After
the death of Arkady in 1991, it remained uncertain whether or not Boris
would continue writing alone. However, he published two books under the
pseudonym S. Vititskii (Search for Designation, 1995; The Powerless of This World, 2002), but then
ceased writing fiction. Before Tarkovsky began to work on Stalker,
he had recommended the book to his friend, Giorgi
Kalatozishvili, thinking he might adapt it to screen. The
original story tells of a mysterious Zone in Canada, where enigmatic
artifacts can be found, left there like picnic rubbish on a superalien
stopping place. The stalkers are illegal guides to the heavily guarded
Zone. At the end the protagonist, Redrick Schuhart, says after the
failed quest: "I don't want work for you, your
work makes me puke, do you understand? This is the way I figure it: if
a man works with you, he is always working for one of you, he is a
slave and nothing else. And I always wanted to be myself, on my own, so
that I could spit at you all, at your boredom and despair." (Ibid., p. 152) When
the Strugatsky brother began to write the script, they left only the
basic elements of the plot. Their screenplay was published in Science-Fiction Anthology No. 25 (Moscow, 1981). The smuggler-saint Stalker is a
guide to two men, the Writer and the Scientist, across a waste land –
nothing there resembles the future – and
to the Room, where one's most secret wish will be granted. A black dog
attaches itself to the Stalker, an old telephone rings suddenly in the
ruins. As the
group has reached their objective, nobody has the courage to enter the
place: the wishes granted are not the conscious ones but those of the
subconscious. Thus the journey into the Zone can be interpreted as a
psychoanalytical
process. Previosly Russians had associated the word "Zone" with the gulag and Siberia. "People have often asked me what the Zone is, and what it symbolizes, and have put forward wild conjectures on the subject. I'm reduced to a state of fury and despair by such questions. The Zone doesn't symbolize anything, any more than anything else does in my films: the zone is a zone, it's life, and as he makes his way across it a man may break down or he may come through. Whether he comes through or not depends on his own self-respect, and his capacity to distinguish between what matters and what is merely passing." (Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema by Andrey Tarkovsky, translated from the Russian by Kitty Hunter-Blair, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003, p. 200) In 1981 Tarkovsky worked with Arkady in an another film project, but at that time the director was already planning to go into exile and Arkady was suffering from ill health. Tarkovsky's other science fiction film, Solaris (1971), was based on Stanislaw Lem's novel, which appeared in 1961. His last film, The Sacrifice, was heavily influenced by Ingmar Bergman, and contained a section visualizing World War III. For further reading: Microworlds: Writings on Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Franz Rottemsteiner (1985); 'Strugatsky, Arkady Natanovich (August 28, 1925-) and Boris Natanovich (April 15, 1933-),' in World Authors 1975-1980, edited by Vineta Colby (1985); Soviet Fiction since Stalin: Science, Politics, and Literature by Rosalind J. Marsh (1986); The Second Marxian Invasion: The Fiction of the Strugatsky Brothers by Stephen W. Potts (1991); Apocalyptic Realism: The Science Fiction of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky by Yvonne Howell (1995); The Contribution of the Brothers Strugatsky to the Genre of Russian Science Fiction by Yulia A. Kulikova (2011); The Human Reimagined: Posthumanism in Russia, edited and introduced by Colleen McQuillen and Julia Vaingurt (2018); 'Arkady and Boris Strugtsky: The Science-Fictionality of Russian Culture' by Yvonne Howell, in Lingua Cosmica: Science Fiction from Around the World, edited by Dale Knickerbocker (2018); '"Unregenerate Mass Nature" in H. G. Wells and the Brothers Strugatsky' by Richard Boyechko, in H.G. Wells and All Things Russian, edited by Galya Diment (2019); Celestial Hellscapes: Cosmology as the Key to the Strugatskiis’ Science Fictions by Kevin Reese (2019) Selected works:
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