2000 Reports

Fly Me to the Moon: Modernism and the Soviet Space Program in Viktor Pelevin's Omon Ra

Simmons, Cynthia

The impetus of European and Russian Modernsolidated Soviet state of the 1930s and beyond was that thematic underpinning of Futurism that celebrated science and technology. Socialist Realism rejected other thematic concerns of Modernism that were deemed skeptical, erudite, or indecent (e.g., the questioning of conceptions of reality or the nature of the divine and the interest in human sexuality). Likewise, the “elitist” Modernist interest in stylistic innovation and the relationship of the literary word to reality contradicted the tenet of Socialist Realism, narodnost according to which literature was to reflect the nature and concerns of the people.