Hard to Be a Soviet Writer

While they definitely aren't "new", I've enjoyed recently discovering and getting into the writings of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. They've shown up in lists of recommendations from China Mieville and the writer of Disco Elysium, were previously championed by Ursula K. LeGuin, and doubtlessly loved by many. It can feel weird to "discover" something that is already so popular!

 

The other books of theirs I've read have been clear science fiction: set in the near future, writing about humanity bumping up against some mysterious cosmic force. I've just finished reading "Hard to Be a God", which is technically science fiction but had more of a feel of... I was going to say fantasy, but there isn't any magic in it, so maybe more of a historical adventure (or a "romance" in the more classical sense). While I've enjoyed all (three) of their books I've read, this one is probably the most enjoyable and fun.

MINI SPOILERS

The overall setting of the book reminds me in some ways of Rosemary Kirstein's Steerswoman Saga (particularly the wizards/Krue), or Kage Baker's Company novels. The protagonist is an outsider from a technologically advanced civilization, disguised as a member of the less-advanced society he is embedded within. His primary purpose is to observe and record the doings of this primitive people; unlike, say, the Prime Directive in Star Trek, though, he can and does interfere in the lives of the primitives: not uplifting them or revealing his identity, but rescuing certain individuals (artists, poets, nascent scientists) who contribute to the advancement of their species but face the risk of death.

Unlike those other stories, though, the hero here is a proud and committed Communist. Called Don Rumata for nearly the whole book, he is actually Anton, a Russian from Earth. Along with other members of the Moscow Historical Society, he has traveled to another planet, populated with human-like people who are at a feudal stage of development. Playing the part of a wealthy, arrogant and hotheaded noble, Rumata strides around the city of Arkanar: making love to the ladies, issuing duels to the lords, patronizing or berating merchants. This is all play-acting: Rumata is actually a devoted communist and opposed to pretty much everything about this world: the social ranks, the petty squabbling for money, the lack of sanitation. But he's been doing this for many years, and has a sort of detachment, much like how we might look at ants fighting with a feeling of disgust but not horror.

In fact, Rumata doesn't really see these people as human: rather, they are people who will become human. He's very aware that his own ancestors likewise needed to pass through the terrible period of feudalism on the inevitable scientific march towards enlightened socialism. While most of this book reads like an adventure, there are a couple of passages that are straight-up political theory, which I honestly really enjoyed: Rumata muses over how the people in power will seek to crush original thinking to preserve their power, but those who permit free thinking will gain an advantage over their adversaries due to superior technology and processes; so over time free thinking will spread, and yet those leaders are planting the seeds of their own demise, as free thinking will lead to the masses realizing that their collective power outweighs the hereditary few, and eventually forming a new social order.

While the setup is different, this basic relationship made me think of Jack London's "The Iron Heel". In both cases, a futuristic and enlightened communist society observes a barbaric pre-communist one; but in The Iron Heel it's scholars from the future reviewing written records, while in Hard to Be a God it's agents from another planet infiltrating that society in real-time. And yet, Rumata thinks of himself as an agent from the future: he's going to show this planet's future communist society how they evolved.

One thing I especially loved about this book was Rumata's (and, I'm sure, the Strugatsky's) devotion towards art. Most socialist theory I've read has focused on economic and political dimensions, which ultimately revolve around matters of fairness, efficiency and stability. For Rumata, though, the whole point of the communist project is for people to live enlightened, compassionate, fulfilling lives, and the primary measure of those is through art: writing touching stories, expressing feeling through song and verse, observing the majesty of the stars. It's not like you can disentangle the economic and political dimensions from the project, but whereas in the past I've seen the arts discussed as primarily a reflection of health or a means of motivation, it's very cool to here see them centered as the actual purpose of communism.

(Not that the Strugatskys necessarily believed in this rhetoric, I should say! I'm not an expert on them, but just in the little forewards and stuff from these books I've learned that they were masters at the art of hiding subversive messages in their work, dancing with censors, and fighting to get approval for blacklisted topics. I don't have any basis whatsoever for this, but I like to imaging that they had genuine positive feelings for the aspirations of communism, while being horrified at the bleak and brutal actions of their homeland's regime.)

Another thing I thought was really cool about this book was its centering of the conflict between Marxist theory and observed phenomena. That's something I've thought about a lot lately, especially highlighted in China Mieville's excellent October but also more broadly, how often the leaders of a movement are so committed to the theoretical (pure, perfect, rational) theory that they are blind to and caught off guard by the actual circumstances they face. In this book, Rumata is one of maybe fifty or so agents spread across this planet, and the only one specifically planted in Arkanar. He has a strong sense of unease about what's been happening in the city: there's the expected ongoing abuse of the powerful towards the powerless, but something more sinister seems to be afoot.

MEGA SPOILERS

He's particularly concerned about the "Greys", which he (from his futuristic perspective) identifies as proto-Fascists. This is a paramilitary force that upholds the royal regime, but instead of being drawn from the traditional second estate of the nobility, it is drawn from the bourgoise class: sons of shopkeepers and the like. This is concerning because, under Communist theory, fascism shouldn't evolve until after the industrial revolution. Once there, both socialism and fascism will develop, replace the older feudal system, and vie with one another, with socialism inevitably triumphing. In Arkanar, though, fascism has evolved without any socialism to oppose it, so what's a benevolent communist alien to do? This is particularly distressing due to the fierce anti-intellectualism of the Greys: "bookworms" are strung up and executed, literacy is seen as a sign of deviance, and any behaviors of the intelligentsia that aren't actively praising the regime are seen as treasonous.

Rumata reports to his superiors, but they stubbornly refuse to take him seriously: "Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" The theory of feudal development is held to be axiomatically true, so if Rumata's observations contradict the theory, then that proves that Rumata's observations are incorrect, not the theory.

After this, Rumata... he doesn't exactly go rogue, but he's aware that he's off the beaten path, and has a lot of self-doubt about his course. There really isn't much that he can do, except around the margins, trying to find a few people who are actually humans and trying to help them survive; but he can't stop history. (Not because of violating the laws of causality, not because of the Prime Directive, just because it won't work: you can't drop 22nd-century ideas into a 12th-century culture and expect them to flourish.)

The antagonist of the novel is Don Reba, a courtier who has improbably risen in power over the last several years: using political machinations to bump off rival nobles and factions, creating the department of Defense of the Crown, and being de-facto head of The Greys. Reba is not a brilliant schemer or an advanced thinker or anything: he's just a dumb, lucky man, whose flailings have brought him great success. Rumata (and us readers) are preparing for Don Reba to usher in a new military-dominated order with the Greys, and the genuinely surprising twist near the end of the novel reveals that Reba is actually in cahoots with the clergy. He uses the bandits of Waga the Wheel to justify an uprising of the Greys to slaughter the king and the royal family, and then uses the monks to kill off the Greys, restore order and usher in a new ecclesiastical regime. We've seen church-affiliated people throughout the novel, but they're always obsequiously ducking out of the way, and it's shocking to see them rising to command.

In the end, Rumata and his fellow Earthlings more or less take these developments in stride: they kick themselves for not considering this possibility. I think that their shortcoming is ultimately a failure of imagination, which, in turn, gestures back towards the arts as being of paramount importance, over mere political theory or technological advances.

END SPOILERS

I don't think Hard to Be a God has achieved quite the level of international recognition of Roadside Picnic / STALKER, but I can see why it has grown so beloved over the years. In some ways it's just a really fun read, like a good Ankh-Morpork Discworld novel; it gets at some really interesting ideas along the way, with some possibly-satirical commentary arriving from an unexpected angle. If I ever get in the habit of recommending the Strugatsky brothers to others, this may become my recommendation for a first book to try.