Share This Article
Table of Contents Show
¯\_(シ)_/¯
Today I want to talk to you – not about politics, but about books. In general, by education, I am a philologist and I defended my diploma in the history of literature at university. However, the literary genre, which my today’s letter is dedicated to, is closely related to politics. This is the genre of anti-utopia – it seems that in 2022 Russians remember it especially often.
The texts of George Orwell and Vladimir Sorokin (especially his) today seem to many as terrible prophecies – and at the same time come true. Even more frightening because there is no hope in these books. Did the writers really foresee everything, and are we now living in a dystopia that has no end in sight? In a way, yes, we are living in it (not conceptually, but purely technically), but we are completely wrong in our attitude towards dystopias. I will try to explain why, and also tell you which books are really worth reading now.
Chapter One. How some people invented “ideal” states – and scared others with it.
“Anti-” is a prefix of opposition, and the conversation about anti-utopias should begin with the genre they emerged in response to. That is, with utopias, of course.
One of the first attempts to depict an ideal social order (this is what utopians were concerned with in their works) can be considered the dialogue of Plato’s “The Republic”, written in 360 BC. The worst form of government Plato considered was tyranny, but he did not appreciate democracy either, since he saw in it an “unjust” power of the majority. It was precisely the concept of justice that seemed key to Plato in the construction of the state, and he considered a society governed by carefully selected philosophers to be just- and therefore ideal. According to Plato’s plan, anyone worthy could become one of them – positions were not inherited, but earned through diligent study from an early age.
In Plato’s ideal state, property was supposed to be communal, but it wasn’t because the inhabitants of such a society were equal among equals. People’s capabilities are unequal, and people themselves are also unequal. Moreover, according to Plato, there are “better” and “worse” people among people. The former are men and women who are most capable of philosophy, legislation, arts, and martial arts, while the latter are all others. The best men should “mostly unite with the best women, and the worst, on the contrary, with the worst,” the philosopher believed, while “the offspring of the best men and women should be educated, but the offspring of the worst should not.” Under this “not,” the philosopher most likely meant death, although he did not speak of it directly, only indicating that the children of the worst should be taken to an “inaccessible, secret place” after birth.
It is unlikely that the Platonian utopia seemed truly utopian to you. The same can be said about Thomas More’s “Utopia” – the 16th century treatise (whose full title reads “A truly golden handbook, no less beneficial than entertaining, about the best state of a republic and the new island Utopia”) that gave its name to an entire genre.
The recipe for the ideal state by Thomas More, who was a writer, philosopher, and lawyer at the same time, sounds like this. Take an island and create a republic on it, which is governed by elected officials. Call these people “fathers” and the most important of them – the king. Now you will distribute food to citizens for free, but in return, you will force them to wear the same clothes and live in the same houses, located in one of the same-sized identical cities. And if suddenly there are more people in one of them than in others, you will engage in forced resettlement to restore balance. You will also prohibit leaving the cities without permission, and violators will be turned into slaves who lose all their rights and must work tirelessly. But you will also make the “free” citizens work diligently, engaged in agriculture and crafts. Don’t forget to cancel private property (it leads to inequality and injustice) and also recognize the state’s right to take away other territories if, in their opinion, they are used ineffectively.
There is no private ownership in another fictional “ideal society” – the City of the Sun from the eponymous novel by the Italian philosopher, theologian, and writer Tommaso Campanella; it was created approximately a century after “Utopia.” As can be seen, utopians really like to blur the line between “their own” and “other people’s.” So, the solarians (that’s what locals are called in the City of the Sun) sleep in common dormitories and eat in common dining halls, and children are immediately handed over to state educators after birth. The city is ruled by a man who calls himself the “Sun” – he combines the functions of a ruler and a priest. He has co-rulers, as well as officials of lower levels, but any political power in this “ideal society” is closely linked to religious service. Moreover, the highest rulers in the City of the Sun hold their positions for life.
Neither Plato’s state, nor More’s Utopia, nor Campanella’s City of the Sun can be called just societies – at least in a contemporary Western understanding. Moreover, we can rightfully call them totalitarian regimes, in which the rights of individuals are trampled in favor of the state and its welfare (Plato, More, and Campanella would probably object here – in favor of the welfare of the community). However, at the time these texts were written, their authors’ ideas sounded very progressive. Judge for yourself: there are simple and understandable rules for everyone; wise men rule, not just anyone; an unworthy ruler cannot come to power because of a well-thought-out selection system.
However, this sounded progressive not to everyone, some laughed at utopian ideas. For example, the French writer of the 16th century Francois Rabelais had in mind the ideas of More when describing the Telemsky abbey – a fictional society from the satirical novel “Gargantua and Pantagruel” – the only rule of which sounded like “Do what you want.”
The favorite technique of Rabelais is grotesque, and ultimately it was the grotesque that helped dystopias come to light. Here’s how it happened. In the 18th century, states with parliamentary forms of government began to emerge, and therefore, full-fledged political parties. At the end of the century, the Great French Revolution took place, proclaiming freedom, equality, and fraternity. But the tempting slogan turned into chaos and anarchy, attempts to correct it boiled down, among other things, to the confiscation of products from farmers and artisans, then to the nationalization of enterprises, and ultimately to terror.
What is better – the old order or the new one? Is justice really fair, for which the struggle is being waged? Utopians depict the image of an ideal state with many “equally happy individuals,” notes philologist and dystopian researcher Alexandra Vorobyeva, but dystopia comes and finds gruesome flaws in this image. Instead of an ideal state, she sees a machine for suppressing individuality, instead of society – an impersonal crowd that has lost its purpose and meaning of existence. To turn the beautiful into the terrible, it is enough to make the features of beauty as convex and grotesque as possible – to bring them to the absurd. Do you think you are leading us to justice? But look closely, everything is not as it seems!
In short, anti-utopias were literally born out of the struggle against utopias (hence the “anti-“). In the 19th century, when the Great French Revolution had just ended, the confrontation of philosophical ideas finally transformed into a confrontation of political meaning: socialists promised people to build a just society, while their political opponents, conservatives and liberals, warned citizens of the possible consequences of such construction. Anti-utopias became an effective weapon in this struggle, as they allowed to warn vividly – not only through slogans, but also through images.
In a way, the dystopias of that time, such as Jules Verne’s “Paris in the 20th Century,” can be called political pamphlets. They warned people that the construction of a society of universal equality can easily turn into totalitarianism. And that’s exactly what happened in the 20th century, and much of what dystopians described came true. For example, it is still believed that Verne predicted the appearance of the subway, the internal combustion engine, and the electric chair in his novel, as well as foresaw the abnormally cold winter in Europe in 1962-1963 a hundred years before its arrival. Perhaps partly for this reason, dystopias have acquired an unofficial image of gloomy predictions that will inevitably come true – you just have to wait a little.
Chapter Two. How dystopias helped Yeltsin win the elections (well, almost), and then confused us.
In modern history, dystopias also served as a weapon in political struggle. Now it is a rare case – they have lost their utilitarian function – and yet there are examples. One such example we will now consider to get to know dystopias closer – this is the story “Zigzag of Luck”, published in the newspaper “God forbid!” In 1996.
It might not hurt to remind what kind of newspaper it was. “God forbid!” was released by Boris Yeltsin’s headquarters before the presidential elections in Russia, in which Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, was Yeltsin’s main rival. By that time, the older generation had grown bored with the Soviet times and dreamed of their return. “God forbid!” became the answer to these dreams: the publication actively criticized communists in general and Zyuganov personally, using all available print media – caricatures, feuilletons, satirical poems. And also – anti-utopian techniques.
The dystopian story “Zyugzag of Fortune” depicts a future in which Gennady Zyuganov became the President of Russia. The main characters of the story are brothers who voted differently in the election. One voted for Zyuganov and became a “Zyuk”, while the other did not and became a “Zek”, going to prison. To tell his brother what is happening in Russia now, Zyuk writes a letter to him in prison.
“By the request of the working people, our country, perhaps you have heard, has been renamed – now we live in Yugoslavia. The capital is called Zjugodan. Every day on the radio they say: come in, citizens of Zjugan, to any little shop, buy everything that your heart desires! And we do go: sausage for two twenty, beef for two forty, and that’s about it. Recently, they carried out a currency reform. They introduced new money – zjugriks. But what’s the use? We buy bread in Zjuganda, but now our potatoes come from Southeast Asia,” laments Zjuk.
In the city where he lives, there are only five cars left and power officials – “obrzugy with zyugometas” – walk around the streets with the help of the youth from the “Hitlerjugend”, constantly terrorizing passersby. The residents of Zugoslavia “cannot do anything” (“Zugolovny Code” consists of only this phrase), but there is still something good, notes Zug. For example, crime has been completely eradicated, and the air has been purified.
This story is extremely primitive, but still an anti-utopia, and the main features of the genre are evident here. Firstly, the material for the work becomes the reality of the present, which the author seemingly stretches into the future like a cable. Secondly, this future is described extremely eccentrically, through grotesque, which causes a surge of emotions and makes one scrutinize what is happening more closely. Finally, thirdly – and for anti-utopias, perhaps, the key – the author’s fantasy born in this way should not only shake things up but also serve as a warning. Do you long for the times of the USSR? Do you also long for censorship, shortages, and repression? Or is it still a taboo?
The political regime described in “Zigzag of Fortune” would not have been able to be built in Russia, neither in the 1990s nor in the 2000s – ever. That is, a warning does not equal a prediction, it is a completely different thing. Modern anti-utopia does not even try to look far ahead, it carefully looks around, highlighting the shortcomings of what already exists. Look, it says, will anything come of this? By the way, in this sense, “Zigzag of Fortune” is a very successful representative of the anti-utopia family. The results of those elections are known to us, and the chief editor of “God forbid!” Leonid Miloslavsky even received thanks from Yeltsin “for active participation in organizing and conducting the election campaign”.
But not all dystopias have “worked” in a similar way, and we still periodically turn to most of them as a thermometer of the era, allowing us to measure the temperature of what is happening. Is the situation already heated enough? Has this horror, described decades ago, already come true? And this one?
In other words, we are doing things that are both late and useless to pursue.
Chapter Three. How anti-utopians tell about the present with the help of the future, and as a result, we look back into the past.
Under this angle – we talk about the present, not the future – one should look at absolutely all dystopias of humanity. And at the same time, always remember that they are talking about the present moment of writing dystopias. Of course, this rule also applies to George Orwell’s “1984” (written in 1948) and Vladimir Sorokin’s “Day of an Oprichnik” and “Sugar Kremlin” (2006 and 2008 respectively). They have been mentioned a lot lately, it seems, for any reason, claiming that these books predicted everything that has happened in Russia in recent years, intentionally or unintentionally. In fact, this is a very superficial view of both literature and reality. And to understand why, let’s remember what kind of states are described in these texts.
The action of “1984” takes place in London, the capital of the fictional country of Oceania, which is in a state of permanent war. There reigns a special type of socialism – Ingsoc, and the only party – the Socialist one – is in power. The party’s main enemy is Emmanuel Goldstein, who allegedly created an underground resistance organization in Oceania and fled abroad. Party members, who are considered the highest caste in society, are entitled to free housing and free rations, but they must adhere to strict discipline in their actions and thoughts. Life is meticulously controlled – including through receivers that not only transmit propaganda broadcasts and gymnastics sessions, but also allow the state to monitor anyone. Everyone watches everyone else, and even children can report their parents for dissent, which is clearly encouraged by the party leadership. “Morality” is also encouraged – young people who want to climb the career ladder must be members of the youth anti-sex league. In addition, party members are regularly shown videos about Emmanuel Goldstein, in which he is fiercely criticized (this is called the “two minutes of hate”).
The public utilities in Oceania are partially destroyed, and the country is suffering from a terrible shortage. However, newspapers enthusiastically report on the constantly growing production, using a special language consisting of abbreviations in which words lose their original meaning or disappear altogether. Oceania is ruled by Big Brother, a man with a mustache whose image with the caption “Big Brother is watching you” is displayed on all the streets of London. Dissidents of the ruling party are persecuted to be “corrected” and can even be killed – this is called “vaporization”. However, the authorities do not act so harshly towards the proles – representatives of the lower strata of society. Yes, proles are supposed to perform hard physical labor, but their lives are not so controlled (they are even allowed alcohol). To prevent proles from striving for intellectual development, they are surrounded by yellow press and low-brow music.
Reading this text, a modern Russian will occasionally exclaim – but isn’t this exactly what Russia has become! Vladimir Putin is Big Brother, “United Russia” is that same party. The media is constrained by censorship, and there is total control over everyone and everything: law enforcement, video surveillance systems, and vigilant neighbors. Sanctions have caused goods in stores to become scarcer, and dissidents are being persecuted more frequently. At the same time, the main political opponents of the authorities are mostly abroad, and resistance has gone underground. What horrors await us in the future? Mandatory viewing of Vladimir Solovyov’s programs as “two minutes of hate” and the “dissipation” of dissenters?
Two other dystopias that are often mentioned in connection with recent events – Sorokinskie’s “Day of the Oprichnik” and “Sugar Kremlin” – add a few more logs to this ominous fire. The terrible Russia of the future is separated from Western countries by a wall, behind which runs a “pipe” that pumps hydrocarbons. The country earns money from them, as well as from the transit of goods from China. Faith is ultra-Orthodox, the state system copies what was in the times of Ivan the Terrible’s Oprichnina. At the same time, a full cyberpunk is being created around this: high-rise buildings are heated with firewood, elevators do not work in them, but smartphones with video communication and other modern technology are in use. Censorship has been introduced and any dissent is persecuted, and books are considered a harmful form of entertainment and therefore burned.
Both ordinary people and non-ordinary people populate the terrible Russia of the future. The latter, for example, include the boyars – wealthy people who live well (at least until they fall out of favor). There are also official clergymen and, of course, oprichniks responsible for state repression – they ride red cars with dog heads, torture and kill the disgraced, rape their wives, loot. And in their free time from work, they take drugs and indulge in ritual homosexual orgies.
And once again the reader will exclaim – something similar is happening now in Russia! For the past few decades, the country has been moving towards autocracy, quarrelling with the West and actively trying to befriend China. The siloviki, especially the FSB employees, gradually became the most privileged part of society, their prey being not only ordinary Russians, but also large businessmen and officials. The Church has finally merged with the state apparatus. Many Russians live in terrible living conditions, but almost everyone has a smartphone, usually Chinese. It seems that Sorokin really predicted a lot! So, will his other prophecies come true soon? Will the FSB officers be separated into a special caste, Putin declare himself king, and the books be burned?
And then it’s like in a famous meme with a girl and bees – can she be stopped somehow or will it just happen no matter what? But that’s the wrong question, so there is no right answer to it. Dystopia is not a prophecy or a dictate, it is a warning about the present, the most relevant at the time of publication. George Orwell and Vladimir Sorokin should have been read with the intention of stopping something when these texts first came out.
And yes, technically we do live in a dystopia – or rather, in dystopias. And as soon as a new one appears, we immediately settle in it, whether we want to or not.
Chapter Four. What would an anti-utopia written in 2022 be like?
Both Orwell and Sorokin wanted to warn their contemporaries against choosing a dangerous path – a “just” totalitarian dictatorship under the foot of Big Brother or the Tsar. Only the former took as a basis the USSR of the time of Joseph Stalin, and the latter – early Putin’s Russia.
As a staunch anti-Stalinist, Orwell emphasized all the horrors of the Stalinist regime, which were already prominent enough. The one-party system, control, torture, censorship, Newspeak, and the cruel mustached leader were all things that Soviet citizens knew were no exaggeration. By placing them in an artistic context, Orwell created a terrifying fantasy based on an already terrifying reality to say – do not try this at home. Sorokin, on the other hand, was presented with a more complex reality in the 2000s when “Day of the Oprichnik” and “Sugar Kremlin” were written. Everything was, as they say now, not so straightforward. Nevertheless, the writer managed to note that the Russian government, led by Putin, is too closely examining the past, and there is something to talk about here. Here’s how he described it: “When I was writing ‘Day of the Oprichnik,’ it was largely a search for a metaphor for modern Russia. On the other hand, it was also a caricature and grotesque. And a warning came out of it – one of my friends told me, “You wrote a kind of conspiracy to prevent this from happening.”
At the heart of this conspiracy is the Kremlin’s desire to return to an absurd version of the past. The idea is, if you want to go back, let’s go all the way back, especially since the Russian ruler who surrounded himself with strongmen had already been present in Russian history. Taking from the recent past, they incorporated shortages of everything and the “Iron Curtain” (the Great Wall of the West), and populated this strange world with equally bizarre characters: there is weightlifter Medvedko, magician Pu and Tin, circus clown Volodka Solovey, and many others who can be easily identified as real prototypes. For example, Sorokin names Nikolai Platonovich as the man who took on the role of the tsar and made a conservative turn – this is, of course, the current Secretary of the Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, who at the time held the post of head of the FSB. In general, like Orwell, Sorokin did not predict anything – it was all happening then: conflicts with the West, the return to “traditional values,” and increased repression. This description was not a prediction in the 2000s – it was merely an observation.
And if we’re going to talk about it, many so-called prophecies of Orwell and Sorokin not only didn’t come true – they will never come true. The totalitarian system of Stalinist times ceased to exist, it was succeeded by the Khrushchev thaw and stagnation, and then the USSR fell apart – not at all like the all-powerful Oceania, which judging by the power of its repressive machine, was much stronger and more sustainable as a regime. As for present-day Russia, if you take a closer look, it’s not that similar to Sorokin’s fantasy. In details – perhaps, but still there are too fundamental differences. Self-supporting cyberpunk Russia from the books doesn’t wage war with anyone, diligently supplies hydrocarbons to the West and does its best to maintain its internal “stability” – while the real-life Russia is at war, losing its Western raw materials export market before its eyes and increasingly struggling to control the situation within its own borders. Vladimir Putin doesn’t have his own oprichnina – the power structures of different departments constantly conflict with each other, and this situation is beneficial to the Russian president. He deliberately doesn’t create one all-powerful force structure – otherwise, such all-powerful “oprichniki” might carry out some kind of coup.
It may seem like just a fun exercise to read dystopias of the past, searching for modern features in them and guessing what else from the description will come true tomorrow. However, this activity should rather be called a useless and dangerous waste of time. The most grotesque elements of dystopias rarely come to life (that’s why they are grotesque), and modern Russian intelligence officers are much more fond of the image of Stierlitz and Dzerzhinsky’s coat than a broom and a dog’s head. And this is both good news and bad news at the same time. While we are looking for traces of the present in the warnings of the past that have lost their power, while we consider what is happening predicted and therefore predetermined by default, the future inexorably approaches, completely deprived of our attention. It’s time to finally think about it – there are enough people in Russia who gaze too attentively into the past without us.
The question remains: can one write a dystopia now, when the Russian president threatens nuclear weapons to the world and thousands of mobilized people obediently go to war, not understanding its purpose? Of course. This will be a story about a man who did not particularly strive for supreme power but received it – and made it unlimited. About voters who did not vote for a dictator but have been living under him for decades. About the “invisible” totalitarianism that seems to be non-existent but actually exists. And about people who considered the warning as prophecy – and therefore fell into dystopia and cannot find their way out now.
Perhaps it will be a little easier to find it if we return the original practical meaning of dystopia – a warning that needs to be listened to, rather than a prophecy that makes you freeze in the face of inevitability.