«Ремонт земли»: технократическая утопия в русской литературе 1920-1930-х годов

«Repair the earth»: a technocratic utopia in Russian literature of 1920-1930-s

Russian culture of 1910-1930-s saw a widely spread criticism of nature – man’s natural habitat. It was named “first nature” and assessed as a living space unable to provide adequate living conditions for people. This attitude created a pre-requisite for forming a radical technocratic stand with a focal demand to create a “second nature”, that is the nature that would be constructed by people by means of science and technology. Based on that stand, there emerged a number of projects, utopian in character, seeking to change man’s natural living environment. Their authors perceived the structure of the earth and outer space as a simple mechanical arrangement that could be improved by man. Writers of various ideological and artistic platforms took part in the discussion on improvement of people’s natural living environment. Leaders of the discussion were writers of the proletarian and later industrial subjects (in particular, M. Gorky, A. Platonov, proletarian poets) and representatives of “scientific poetry”. Even peasant writers sympathized with the idea of radical change of nature. Projects on the rebuild of nature were proposed in works of fiction, scientific treatise and publicist essays. A desire to overcome hunger, poverty, inconveniencies of landscape and climate was the driving motivation for authors of such projects. The article considers specific ideas in the abovenamed area proposed by famous representatives of culture of that period – K. Tsiolkovsky, A. Platonov and L. Leonov.