Salon

The release of the new film by Fyodor Bondarchuk, "The Inhabited Island," revives the never-ending discussions about the brothers Strugatsky, because their novel of the same name was the source for the movie. I haven't seen the film and will not comment on it; most critics agree that the result was a flop.

It would be impossible to understand the later Soviet psyche without studying the Strugatsky phenomenon. A prolific duo, the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, one an astrophysicist, another a Japanese translator (Arkady died in 1991; Boris is alive and well), wrote dozens of sci-fi novels and stories and achieved the status of cult literary figures. Strugatsky-bashing on any Russian-language Internet forum is bound to produce a scandal. An article in the English-language Wikipedia, obviously written by Russians, explains their relative lack of popularity in English-speaking countries with extremely lame excuses, such as a lack of corresponding grammatical structures with which to render colloquial Russian.

The Strugatskys set standards for several types of Russian science fiction. Their early world was light-hearted, comic, extremely witty and brimming with youthful energy. The classic example is their 1965 book "Monday Begins on Saturday" describing the life of an institute of magic research. The young scientists, in love with their mission, provided an excellent alternative to counter-culture feelings of the 1960s. Many quotes from that book are still recognized immediately by many Russians.

Their later work was riddled with the problems of progress and freedom. Set in the "World of Noon" (presented to Soviet censors as "our Communist future"), the novels dealt with Earthlings' predicaments on other planets, where the notion of freedom was far from obvious. Perhaps the most telling example was the novel "It's Hard to Be God" depicting a quasi-medieval society slowly sliding into a totalitarian nightmare with Earth observers powerless to prevent it. (Famed director Alexei German, Jr. has been working on an adaptation of this novel for many years now.)

The brothers' later work became increasingly pessimistic and their worlds more and more anti-utopian. This element of their talent was cleverly exploited by director Andrei Tarkovsky, whose critically acclaimed "Stalker" was also based on their novel.

Critics often accused the Strugatskys of simplification or pressing their metaphysical agenda at the expense of literary merit. But in any case, they were among the very few Russian authors who really shaped today's mindscape. One cannot understand the Russia of today without studying their books.