“Making a Long Nose”: Soviet Science Fiction Writers and the State in the Late USSR

Abstract. The article deals with the assertion, widely spread among science fiction writers, critics and readers, that in the late USSR, many authors in their works secretly despised the current politics and challenged the prevailing ideological attitudes, laying double content in their texts, images, plot and topics. On the base of factual materials (memoirs of the authors, other memoirs, documents of authorities, analytical studies), it is shown that the real picture of events in those years was somewhat different from the declared one. In many ways, the degree of supposedly ideological opposition to the system was determined by intra-literary conflicts (primarily the struggle for the possibilty to print), which were subsequently given an appropriate “ideological” frame, and here it is also necessary to take into account the hypersemiotization of public discourse characteristic of Soviet ideologized thinking, due to which “dangerous” signs, explicit and imaginary, were discovered by vigilant observers almost everywhere. It is concluded that the history of the “silent resistance” of late Soviet fiction is largely mythologized and needs to be studied more carefully.

Keywords: Soviet science fiction, ideology, power, moral panic, history of the USSR, Soviet literature, popular culture.