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 (fantastika), roughly equivalent to "speculative fiction", and are less divided than in the West. The Russian term for science fiction is научная фантастика (nauchnaya fantastika), which can be literally translated as "scientific fantasy" or "scientific speculative fiction". Although the Russian language has a literal translation for 'fantasy', (fantaziya), the word refers to a dream or imagination, not literary genre. Today, Russian publishers and literary critics use direct English transcription, фэнтези (fentezi) for "fantasy". Gothic and supernatural fiction are often referred to as мистика (mistika, Russian for mysticism).
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 (Дворянин-философ. Аллегория, 1769) is considered prototypical to science fiction.Suvin, Darko. "Russian Science Fiction and Its Utopian Tradition", in Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (Yale UP, 1979). It is a voltairean conte philosophique influenced by Micromégas.Федор Иванович Дмитриев-Мамонов biography at The Russian Philosophy Encyclopedia
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" (1759). Two early utopias in form of imaginary voyage are Vasily Levshin's Newest Voyage (1784, also the first Russian "flight" to the Moon) and Mikhail Shcherbatov's Journey to the Land of Ophir. Pseudo-historical heroic romances in classical settings (modeled on Fénelon's Telemaque) by Fyodor Emin, Mikhail Kheraskov, Pavel Lvov and Pyotr Zakharyin were also utopian. Ancient Night of the Universe (1807), 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.Nicholas P. Vaslef, "Bulgarin and the Development of the Russian Utopian Genre", The Slavic and East European Journal Vol. 12, No. 1 (Spring, 1968), pp. 35-43. Не быль, но и не выдумка (Фантастика в русской дореволюционной литературе), 1979, Знание
Authors of Gothic stories included Aleksandr Bestuzhev with his German couleur locale, Sergey Lyubetsky, Vladimir Olin, Alexey K. Tolstoy, Elizaveta Kologrivova and Mikhail Lermontov ("Stoss").
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 (1832) by Dmitry Sigov, Correspondence of a Moonman with an Earthman (1842) by Pyotr Mashkov, Voyage to the Moon in a Wonderful Machine (1844) by Semyon Dyachkov and Voyage in the Sun (1846) by Demokrit Terpinovich. Popular literature used fantastic motifs like demons (Rafail Zotov's Qin-Kiu-Tong), invisibility (Ivan Shteven's Magic Spectacles) and shrinking men (Vasily Alferyev's Picture).
Hoffmann's fantastic tales influenced Russian writers Nikolay Gogol, 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 progressThe Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture by James Billington. Vintage Books (Random House), 1970. as well as many Gothic tales.
Alexander Veltman, along with his folk romances (Koschei the Immortal, 1833) and hoffmanesque satiric tales (New Yemelya or, Metamorphoses, 1845), in 1836 published The forebears of Kalimeros: Alexander, son of Philip of Macedon, the first Russian novel to feature time travel.Yury Akutin, Александр Вельтман и его роман "Странник" (A.V. and his novel Strannik), 1978 (in Russian). In the book, the main character rides to ancient Greece on a hippogriff to meet Aristotle and Alexander the Great. In Year 3448 (1833), 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" (published in 1869), 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 ("Prehistoric Man", 1890, by Wilhelm Bitner, The First Artist, 1907, by Dmitry Pakhomov, Tale of a Mammoth and an Ice-Man, 1909, by Pyotr Dravert, Dragon's Victims, 1910, by Vladimir Bogoraz). Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin's satires use a fantastic and grotesque element (The History of a Town and prose fables). The plot of Animal Mutiny (published 1917) by historian Mykola Kostomarov is similar to that of Orwell's Animal Farm.Esteemed Beasts (The Economist, 23 July 1988)
Some of Fyodor Dostoevsky's short works also use fantasy: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (about the corruption of the utopian society on another planet), 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 (1907) and collection of mythological stories White Goat (1908), both based on Greek myths. Journeys and Adventures of Nicodemus the Elder (1917) by Aleksey Skaldin is a Gnostic fantasy.
Utopias Nikolai Chernyshevsky's influential What Is to Be Done? (1863) 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 (1897) by pseudonymous A. Va-sky, On Another Planet (1901) by Porfiry Infantyev, and Spring Feast (1910) by Nikolay Oliger. Alexander Kuprin wrote a short story of the same kind, Toast (1907).
Among others, Vladimir Solovyov wrote Tale of the Anti-Christ (1900), an ecumenical utopia. Earthly Paradise (1903) by Konstantin Mereschkowski is an anthropological utopia. Great War Between Men and Women (1913) by Sergey Solomin and Women Uprisen and Defeated (1914) by Polish writer Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski (written and published in Russian) is about a feminist revolution. Other feminist utopias include short farces Women on Mars (1906) by Victor Bilibin and Women Problem (1913) by Nadezhda Teffi. In Half a Century (1902) by Sergey Sharapov is a patriarchal Slavophile utopia, and Land of Bliss (1891) by Crimean Tatar Ismail Gasprinski is a Muslim utopia. Voluminous A Created Legend (1914) 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 (Extraordinary Story of a Resurrected Pompeian by Vasily Avenarius), global disaster (Struggle of the Worlds, 1900, by N. Kholodny; Under the Comet, 1910, by Simon Belsky), mind reading devices (a recurring theme in works by Andrey Zarin), Antarctic city-states (Under the Glass Dome, 1914, by Sergey Solomin), an elixir of longevity (Brothers of the Saint Cross, 1898, by Nikolay Shelonsky), and Atlantis (1913, by Larisa Reisner).
Spaceflight remained a central science fiction topic since the 1890s in In the Ocean of Stars (1892) by Anany Lyakide, In the Moon (1893) and Dreams of Earth and Skies (1895) by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Voyage to Mars (1901) by Leonid Bogoyavlensky, "In Space" (1908) by Nikolay Morozov, Sailing Ether (1913) by Boris Krasnogorsky and its sequel, Islands of Ethereal Ocean (1914, co-authored by astronomer Daniil Svyatsky).
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" (= "more lies" in Russian) in Vampires, even before the original was translated to Russian. Early Alexander Grin's stories are mostly psychological horror (influenced by Ambrose Bierce), though later he drifted to fantasy.
Future progress was described in fiction by scientists: "Wonders of Electricity" (1884) by electric engineer Vladimir Chikolev, Automatic Underground Railway (1902) by Alexander Rodnykh, and "Billionaire's Testament" (1904) by biologist Porfiry Bakhmetyev. Future war stories were produced by the military (Cruiser "Russian Hope" (1887) and Fatal War of 18.. (1889) by retired navy officer Alexander Belomor, Big Fist or Chinese-European War (1900) by K. Golokhvastov, Queen of the World (1908) and Kings of the Air (1909) by navy officer Vladimir Semyonov, "War of Nations 1921-1923" (1912) by Ix, War of the "Ring" with the "Union" (1913) by P. R-tsky, and End of War (1915) by Lev Zhdanov). Threat to the World (1914) by Ivan Ryapasov (who styled himself "Ural Jules Verne") 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" (1898).
Soviet period
Soviet science fiction Soviet writers were innovative, numerous and prolific,"The Soviet Union has more professional science fiction writers than any country in the world except the United States and possibly Britain, and many of these writers are talented". 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.