Comment by ivanb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ivanb | Hacker News Reader

For those looking for a quality read of something Soviet I suggest Soviet science fiction writers.

Take a look at works of Ivan Efremov, Alexander Kazantsev, Kir Bulychev.

Kazantsev is especially Soviet in the sense that he looked forward to the worldwide communism and the greater good it would provide to humanity. Once you get over the overabundance of "tovarisch" his works are truly epic, full of adventures and immensely enjoyable to the former teenage me. "The destruction of Faena" is easy to google. I don't know about any other English translations.

For an easy way in read Bulychev's "Those Who Survive". Bulychev is famous for writing SF books for children but this story is more than that. Read it.

I read just a couple of short stories of Ivan Efremov and I cannot say much about him except for the fact that he has some highly regarded SF novels.

There are also Strugatsky brothers who I think are well known in the West.

Somehow I thought that Stanislaw Lem belongs to the list. His works felt closer to Soviet SF than to the western SF. He was a brilliant Polish writer.

Want a good laugh? Read Ilf and Petrof's "The Twelve chairs".

As you see I am mostly a SF guy. I don't find the prose of the Soviet period interesting maybe because it mostly covers the consequences of the wars and revolutions that Russia had to go through. These events seemed to overshadow everything else in the mind of a Soviet writer. If you want to read about the heroism of the Soviet people during and after the WW2 and atrocities of the revolutions there are a lot of books to chose. My grandmother lived through the WW2 and read and reread the books about it many times.

As for the topic the West praises the works of art that depict only how tough it is to be Russian and live in Soviet Russia. Who wants to intentionally read and study propaganda and counterpropaganda anyway?

Regarding Ivan Efremov, I'd like to mention two of his novels being set in a same "universe" (although separated by something like thousand years):

1. "Andromeda" (literally translated: "Andromeda Nebula"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_(novel)

2. "The Bull's Hour": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bull%27s_Hour

The latter one was even informally prohibited from being published in major media until "perestroyka" had arrived (IMO, due to the author's caricatural depiction of contemporary social and political views towards communism, contraposed - along the story - with what communism should really look like; if you'd ever get to read that, try to guess whom Choyo Chagas (rus. "Чойо Чагас") is intended to resemble).

Some think that both stories (esp. first one) is nothing more than rhapsodic tribute to the communism. Personally, I had read "Andromeda" in my early teens considering it being "just SF". Only after reading "The Bull's Hour" in sixteenth or such and subsequent re-reading in almost decade later, would I realize that SF was for "Social Fantasy" :) The catch is that "communism" in the book stands for the mixture of anarchy (no central government or regulator) and technocracy (councils of recognized specialists - engineers and scientists - were in charge of their corresponding domains of knowledge) with "decision enforcement" being based on high self-consciousness inherent to all and every member of the society (btw, this is explicitly pictured in "Andromeda").

I recommend Bulgakov - I've read "Master and Margarita" in Russian and then in English, and I think it was translated very well. Bulgakov is a favorite writer of many Russians, and probably is a top 5 Russian writer of the 20th century. I'd say there's a lineage: Gogol - Bulgakov - Pelevin.

Re: Stanislaw Lem. You're right, he definitely feels like he belongs in the Soviet writers context. You can tell the difference in culture, context, commercial preoccupations, etc. when you compare Soderbergh's film version of Solaris with Tarkovsky's version. Both films were enjoyable, of course, but Tarkovsky was much closer to the depth of the book.

The thing is, of course, that Lem didn't like both :)

Lem's "Invincible" is my favourite book of all time. It's very hard to buy it for my English friends though, as the only translation seems to be from German(already a translation)->English from 1971, so it's not ideal.

Ilf and Petrof's "The Golden Cath" is a must read, if you speak Russian. Not sure if it translates well. I think both The Golden Cath and 12 Chairs would make awesome comedies if properly adopted to modern day US. I know Mel Brooks tried with the 12 Chairs, but he failed.

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