To the Stars! Space Exploration and Futuristic Visions in Late Soviet Science Books for Children

Abstract

It is the general scholarly consensus that the space enthusiasm that characterized the Khrushchev era, which envisioned high hopes for a technologically advanced near-future where humanity would reap the fruits of realized communism and explore the universe, gradually subsided until disappearing during the subsequent years of economic and social stagnation. A close look at non-fiction literary production aimed at children and teenagers illuminates a different perspective, however. In this article, I analyze the narratives and discourses in several children science books published during the years 1974–1985 in the Soviet Union. Surprisingly, themes connected to the so-called Space Age are omnipresent in these publications. The narratives intertwine and overlap to create a peculiar blend of communist future-oriented ideals and sf motives. In order to explain this tendency, I propose that this phenomenon may be linked to a strong feeling of nostalgia felt by the adult authors toward this recent “future-past” of Khrushchev's times, which was then transposed into their popular science works. Thus, during times characterized by multiple crises, the myth of Space Conquest provided a strong counter-discourse, an escapist utopian vision appropriate to the original communist idea, which the official political discourse itself employed in its propaganda, but obviously devoid of its transformative content. This study sheds a new light on the connection between the sf imagination, popular science, and politics in the late Soviet era.