Abstract:
The plot of Aelita can strike as rather strange. A Soviet engineer receives a mysterious radio message and decides to build a spaceship in order to go to Mars and find out its meaning. In the meantime, his jealousy is ruining the relationship with his young and beautiful wife; he finally ends up killing her in a fit of rage before departing for Mars. There he meets queen Aelita, who reigns but does not rule. She has been watching him from her planet and is already in love with him—the feeling seems to be requited, albeit complicated by the memory of engineer’s wife. After an unsuccessful attempt to free Martian slaves, the engineer kills Aelita who was using him to seize the power, and suddenly finds himself back on Earth. His wife is alive and well, and after a reconciliation, he burns his spaceship designs saying that there are enough things on Earth that one should take care of instead of dreaming of Mars—a remark that sounds quite ironic if one considers the so-called Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States.
Introduction:
The Civil War has ended. A widowed Russian engineer goes to Mars with a demobilised Red Army officer and falls in love with a Martian princess. Her ancestors are of mixed descent, some having come from Earth, from Atlantis, in fact, so she is almost human. A workers’ revolt begun by a Martian engineer forces the couple to flee to a cave. The Russian hero tries to commit a double love suicide with her, but she alone drinks enough from the poisoned cup to die. He returns to earth, but hears her voice calling for him across time and space. The Civil War has ended. A Russian engineer grows suspicious that his wife is betraying him and shoots a gun off at her. He goes to Mars with a detective and a demobilised Red Army officer. On the Red Planet the princess has already fallen in love with him by watching him through a telescope. He finds himself in the middle of a proletarian revolution led by the Red Army man, which the princess has tried to defuse by declaring herself a leader of the uprising. He starts confusing her with his dead spouse, only to awaken and find that he is really on earth where his uninjured and all-forgiving wife cradles him like a surrogate mother.
Significance of the Study:
Within this context, the Russian science fiction literature and cinema, which are so significant not only in Russia but also throughout the world, have continued as lesser known across the country for a long time, until recent times. The known works are the works used for anti-Soviet propaganda of the West such as We of Zamyatin. Whereas proto-science fiction works written by Russian writers and intellectuals under the influence of science fiction works written within a utopic and/or dystopic framework arisen after Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution in the West began to be written Dr. Arş. Gör. Emek YILDIRIM ŞAHİN 298 and read in the 18th century. For example, Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky, who was tracing Prince Mikhail Mikhailovich Shcherbatov and Prince Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevsky as two important names not only of the Russian Enlightenment but also of the Russian proto-science fiction as well, and his famous work What Is To Be Done? (Что делать?)1 , which is not a complete science fiction but has significant science fiction attributes with a Fourierian background and has had a great impact upon the Russian science fiction literature for years, are good instances for early Russian science fiction endeavors. Furthermore, Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin, who is a leading name of the anarchist movement not only in Russia but also in the world, described this novel as “a flag for Russian youth” (Yıldırım, 2016: 66). As a matter of fact, in this novel, the fourth dream of Vera Pavlovna substantially contains a utopic science fiction aspect, and it has affected some large and small facts and cases occurring in the Russian political and social atmosphere for a long time. Since then, starting with pro[1]science fiction works in 18th century, the Russian science fiction works have always had a great impact not only upon Russian art but also on political and social facts occurring on national and international bases. Therefore, by this article, it is aimed to study not only artistic but also political and social background of Russian science fiction in literature and cinema by considering the science fiction works produced since the late 19th century.
Additionally, it is also crucial to indicate that there are two pioneering figures of science fiction all over the world, and these are Stanislaw Lem and Isaac Asimov, both of who were born within Soviet geography but later started to live in different lands. In fact, these two famous science fiction writers are actually originated from Russian/Soviet culture. Moreover, while Tarkovsky adapted Solaris of Lem into a film in 1972, Lem had a great impact upon the Russian intellectual life as well. Asimov is also one of the most influential writers of the Russian science fiction by his works translated into Russian during and after the Soviet period. Nevertheless, it is clear that in general the main difference distinguishing Russian/Soviet science fiction from science fiction genres of other countries is basically shaped by the hope for future arisen by enthusiasm of a new kind of collective spirit and creativity, as Efremov also explains in the manifesto he wrote upon Soviet science fiction: