Intergalactic Kicks From a History Addict

About 30 years ago, historian Igor Mozheiko decided Soviet young people needed some intergalactic excitement.


"I think that I started writing because I felt something was definitely wrong with Soviet children's literature," Mozheiko said. "Modern children, reared in front of the television, needed something more entertaining than the traditional scenario of some pioneer Petya who goes to fight Baba Yaga [Russian folklore's best-known witch] to restore order and harmony."


So, using the pen name Kir Bulychyov and his five-year-old daughter as a prototype, Mozheiko created Alisa Seleznyova -- the intrepid daughter of a cosmic zoo director. Alisa braved intergalactic journeys to collect new specimens for Daddy's menagerie. She traveled in time to search for the Purple Ball, an evil object left on Earth by wicked aliens.


"The topics might seem a bit naive, but when I started writing in the 1960s, everybody talked about space with great expectations," said Mozheiko, a modern-day renaissance man whose passions range from collecting old helmets to analyzing Southeast Asian politics. "It seemed that very soon people would freely cruise the galaxy."


The books inspired an hour-long cartoon "The Mystery of the Third Planet," which hit movie and television screens in the mid-1980s and had thousands of young teens daydreaming about Alisa's adventures and memorizing the funny parts by heart. Some of the lines -- like "I'll turn purple if you wish," spoken by Indikator, a chameleon box whose color indicates its current mood, or "The Govorun bird is distinguished by its intellect and shrewdness," about a clever bird character -- became standards among adolescents.


The author is still being visited by Alisa admirers, and sci-fi fans occasionally spend the night on his doormat.


Mozheiko's current project is a four-part novel portraying young people who were born at the turn of the century. "I made only one science-fiction assumption," Mozheiko said, "I gave these people the ability to travel in time." When World War I breaks out, his characters decide to skip three to four years ahead, only to land right in the middle of the Bolshevik revolution. Their other attempts to escape disaster by traveling forward in time also fail: They drop into the civil war, hurtling next into the Stalinist repressions of 1937.


"The idea is to show that running away from today's realities in this century is no good," said Mozheiko, who has done a little forward time travel in the work's writing: He has finished the first and fourth volumes but has not yet begun the second.


A professor and specialist in the history of Southeast Asia, Mozhieko, 60, is the author of more than 50 books and 15 movie scripts. He works at the Institute of Oriental Studies, where he earns 200,000 rubles (about $40) a month. His spare time is divided between his literary pursuits and what he says he is best at -- heraldry studies.


A member of the Awards Commission under President Boris Yeltsin, Mozheiko contributed to the development of a new system of national honors introduced last year to replace obsolete prizes like "Hero of Socialist Labor."


One of his recent books is "Official Insignia of the Russian Empire." Mozheiko said, "It's amazing -- in pre-revolutionary Russia, every position, from master of ceremonies to street attendant, had a special insignia."


Crowning the crowded bookshelves of Mozheiko's office is evidence of one of his other passions -- military headgear. He has collected more than 100 antique helmets, including an 18th-century model worn by a tsar's palace herald and a French helmet used by a soldier in Napoleon's army.


Besides the Alisa children's series, Mozheiko has written dozens of detective stories and adult science fiction books. The author uses the pen name of Kir Bulychyov -- formed from Mozheiko's wife's name, Kira, and his mother's surname -- for works of fiction, while he signs his real name to the rest.


In 1994, the publisher Nadezhda-1 printed his detective novel "The Death One Floor Down." In 1991, he wrote an entertaining book based on his research into the history of pirates in the Indian Ocean. Publication of a 40-volume anthology of Mozheiko's works is under way at Moscow's Khronos publishing house. And Ariada publishers is putting out an official eight-volume edition of the Alisa books. "A Million Adventures," "The End of Atlantis" and "The Underground Boat," as well as two other installments in the collection are already out.


But unofficial printings also abound, Mozheiko said, pointing for example to two freshly published editions from Magadan. "I had absolutely no idea anyone was publishing my works there," said the author. But Mozheiko tends to view the problem philosophically: "I can theoretically go to court and make them stop printing, but this will only mean that my books won't get to the readers."


Among Mozheiko's film scripts include such well-known children's science fiction movies as "Cherez Ternii k Zvyozdam" (Through the Thorns to the Stars) and a five-part series "Gosti iz Budushchego" (Guests from the Future).


The 1993 "Osechka '67" (Blunder '67) is a sarcastic tale for adults that Mozheiko wrote in 1967 and then hid away. In this film, Leonid Brezhnev's Politburo decides to replay the 1917 storming of the Winter Palace. The Hermitage guides decide they would rather die than let "this drunken scum" take over the building, Mozheiko said. As a result, Brezhnev flees into hiding while the Communist Politburo goes underground.


"I have never been a dissident," Mozheiko said. "Scripts like this, I have always hidden as far as possible. Now I'm getting some of them back out."


But it is the Alisa adventures for which Mozheiko is best known. Russians who were in school in the mid-1980s can remember rushing to get their hands on the latest issue of the newspaper Pionerskaya Pravda, where the latest installment of Bulychyov's "Purple Ball" would be printed.


Mozheiko said the paper has a special place in his heart. "I am fond of it because this children's newspaper is often the only one that kids in the most faraway villages ever get."