Features of the language and style of prose of the Strugatsky brothers Telpov Roman Evgenievich

1.3. The main directions of Soviet science fiction

Before embarking on a study of the language and prose style of the Strugatsky brothers, in our opinion, it is necessary to say a few words about the main trends that existed in Soviet science fiction before the Strugatsky brothers came to it.

One of the first works in which an attempt was made to systematize the directions of Soviet SF was the work of S. Poltavsky “Ways and problems of modern fiction” (see [Poltavsky 1955: 106-162]). S. Poltavsky, who saw the beginning of Soviet SF in such works as the story “Outside the Earth” by K.E. Tsiolkovsky or the poem by V.V. Mayakovsky’s “The Flying Proletarian”, already at the dawn of the genre’s appearance, he distinguished several varieties in its composition:

1. technical fiction(“Outside the Earth” by K.E. Tsiolkovsky, “Aelita” by A. Tolstoy). Poltavsky saw the main purpose of fiction of this kind in “propaganda of distant prospects for the development of science” [ibid.; 123]. Such works include the novels of A. Belyaev, the first Russian writer who worked exclusively in the SF genre.

2. "Social utopia"(“Engineer Garin’s hyperboloid” by A. Tolstoy, satirical plays by V. Mayakovsky “The Bedbug” and “Bathhouse”). The main object of the depiction of the SU, according to S. Poltavsky, was the “class struggle”.

3. Geo-ethnographic fiction includes works whose action takes place in the lost corners of the Earth (a classic example of this type of fiction is “Savinkov’s Land” by V.A. Obruchev). The presence of external “scientific” surroundings in the form of all sorts of pseudoscientific explanations or concentration of action around some scientific discovery, although not always the focus of a science fiction writer, serves as a fundamental criterion delineating the boundaries of the GEF.

4. The work of such science fiction writers of the Soviet period as M. Shaginyan and A. Irkutov, representatives of the movement called "red detective" or "Red Pinkerton" and characterized by S. Poltavsky as “an antidote to the bourgeois detective” [Poltavsky 1955; 123]. The works classified as "red Pinkerton" were anti-bourgeois satire and used grotesque pseudoscientific imagery. According to the observations of the Polish researcher Vaclav Kaitokh, a characteristic feature of “Red Pinkerton” is “the deliberate unscientificness of fantastic motifs with their internal science-fiction character” [Kajtokh 2003; 424]). For example, M. Shaginyan, revising the Marxist postulate about labor transforming a monkey into a man, writes the novel “Mess Mend or Yankee in Petrograd” about the reverse transformation that happened to Western millionaires doing nothing.

At the same time, works by A. Platonov, M. Bulgakov, E. Zamyatin were created, but they were outside the context of Soviet science fiction and were unknown to a wide circle readers. Separate, so-called "romantic" direction Soviet science fiction was represented by the works of Alexander Green.

All of the above areas continued to exist in Soviet literature and in later periods.

Technological fiction which later received priority can truly rightfully be described as “scientific.” In accordance with the views of the 50s of the 20th century, science fiction was supposed to serve the development national science and technology: the appearance of the fantastic phenomena described by her was expected in the foreseeable future - the next 15 years (the so-called “short-range” science fiction). O. Huse, the author of one of the first extensive studies of Soviet science fiction, did not make any fundamental differences between science fiction and popular science fugurological essays [Huse 1953; With. 349-373]. Works of this kind were created by representatives of the scientific and technical intelligentsia, publishers consulted scientific experts, and critics, in turn, used numbers to check the “viability” of this or that fantastic phenomenon.

Among other trends that existed in science fiction literature before the appearance of the Strugatsky brothers in it, one can name "fantasy travel and adventure"(L. Platova and L. Bragina), in line with which books for children and youth were created, as well as fiction political pamphlet(L. Lagin, S. Roswaal). The generally low artistic level of the works written by the listed authors did not allow their prose to be considered within the framework of serious literature.

The event that changed the situation in Soviet science fiction was the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite, which made it possible to include the topic of space flights in the list of “close-in” subjects. Significant event was the publication of I. Efremov’s novel “The Andromeda Nebula” - an exemplary work of scientific fantastic literature"new wave". During this period, the Strugatsky brothers emerged as writers who accepted and developed the “new trends” that appeared in SF literature: interest in the psychology of heroes, attention to literary form a work of art as opposed to the scientific accuracy of the depiction of technological miracles, etc.

The work of the Strugatsky brothers occupies a special place in the science fiction of the Soviet period. The reasons for this are discussed in the next paragraph.

1.3. The main directions of Soviet science fiction and the originality of the fiction of the Strugatsky brothers

a) Chronological view

We will consider the further development of the SF genre through the prism of stages creative path Strugatsky brothers. Currently, there are several similar periodizations of their work. In our opinion, it would be advisable to begin the consideration of these periodizations with a description of the views of the authors themselves - Boris Strugatsky, who identifies nine stages of his creative path together with Arkady (see the book of memoirs “Comments on what has been covered”),

1) Period 1955-1959. covers such stories as “The Land of Crimson Clouds” and “The Path to Amalthea.” The first work of fiction (the story “The Country of Crimson Clouds”) was written by the authors as a counterbalance to “close-in science fiction,” which struck the co-authors with the insignificance of its themes. “The Land of Crimson Clouds” differed little from most works of technological fiction of the 50s (among the features that distinguished “The Land of Crimson Clouds” are the fact that most of the characters died by the end of the work and the rudeness of their language). The authors themselves were not very fond of this story; nevertheless, “The Country of Crimson Clouds” became the first (and only) work for which the Strugatsky brothers received a state prize. During this period, writers worked to develop their own style, which they came close to creating in the story “The Path to Amalthea.” Special creative manner by the authors themselves was called “Hemingway” by Boris Strugatsky, and its fundamental features were characterized by the writer as follows: “It seems that the story “The Path to Amalthea” was our first story written in a special Hemingway style - deliberate laconicism, meaningful semantic overtones, ascetic rejection of unnecessary epithets and metaphors” [Strugatsky 2003; 57].

2) The period from 1960 to 1961. The second period includes the stories “Return. Noon, XXII century" and "Trainees". By this time, according to the admission of the authors themselves [Strugatsky 2003: 18] and according to the observation of V. Kaitokh [Kaitokh 2003: 438], among the young authors who created fiction of a new type (Ilya Varshavsky, Sever Gansovsky, Gennady Gor, etc.), the Strugatsky brothers turned into leaders of sorts. The publication of The Land of Crimson Clouds, which occurred in 1959, became one of the first evidence of the emergence of a new type of science fiction. The authors themselves named three main reasons among the reasons that brought it to life: the entry into orbit of the first artificial Earth satellite (1957) and the publication of Ivan Efremov’s novel “The Andromeda Nebula”; They considered the third reason “the presence at that time in the publishing house “Young Guard” and in the publishing house “Children’s Literature” of excellent editors who were sincerely interested in the revival and in reaching the world level of Soviet science fiction” [Strugatsky 2003: 18]. As for the first two reasons, their influence on the Strugatskys’ departure from the technological orientation of Soviet science fiction is obvious: the appearance of the first artificial satellite near the Earth pushed the limit of expected scientific and technical discoveries to an infinitely distant distance, where accurate scientific forecasts lost their meaning, and the publication of “The Nebula” Andromeda" clearly demonstrated that a science fiction work can be dedicated to a person. The importance of the third reason cannot be underestimated, since the publishing house "Young Guard", headed by the "writing" science fiction writers Sergei Zemaitis and Bela Klyueva, really became the center around which young Soviet science fiction writers were grouped, including the Strugatsky brothers. At the same time, the Strugatskys created the first story from the series “The World of Noon” (“Return. Noon, XXII century”) - a cycle to which the authors returned throughout their work. The first difficulties that writers encountered in connection with the publication of their own works are also associated with this period (see [ibid.; 78-82]).

Also during this period, the Strugatsky brothers had their first doubts about the fairness of the existing order of things, which is why the world described in the story “Trainees” does not look at all cloudless. In it, for example, there was a place for capitalism, represented by the image of the semi-gangster company Spice Pearl Limited. It is also important to characterize this period that “Trainees” became the last work of the Strugatsky brothers, entirely devoted to space themes: “Having finished it, the authors did not yet suspect that their interest in space exploration, as the most important occupation of people of the near future, had already completely exhausted, and they will never return to this topic again” [ibid: 88].

In the early 60s, science fiction writers abandoned depictions of the wonders of science and technology in favor of the most plausible description inner world characters. The first publications reflecting the specifics of the Strugatskys’ ideas about the ways of development of Soviet science fiction and its genre features(see [Strugatsky 2007: 263-270; 271; 295-297]), and articles are also published in defense of “fiction as literary device": "It seems to us that FICTION IS A BRANCH OF LITERATURE, SUBJECT TO ALL GENERAL LITERARY LAWS AND REQUIREMENTS, CONSIDERING GENERAL LITERARY PROBLEMS (such as man and the world, man and society, etc.), BUT CHARACTERIZED BY SPECIFIC LITERATURE NIMAL RECEPTION - INTRODUCTION OF AN UNUSUAL ELEMENT" [Strugatsky 2007; 281].

3) Period 1962-1964. The third period includes the works “Attempt to Escape”, “Distant Rainbow”, “It’s Hard to Be a God”, “Monday Begins on Saturday”. It is marked by the discovery of a technique that we, following the authors, will call “refusal of explanations” - a technique that gave the style of the Strugatsky brothers lightness and emancipation, and also significantly increased the artistic level of their works: “Next, this is [“An Attempt to Escape” - T. R.] our first work, in which we felt all the sweetness and magical power DISCLAIMER OF EXPLANATIONS. Any explanations - science fiction, logical, purely scientific and even pseudoscientific. How sweet it turns out to be to tell the reader that THIS and that happened, but WHY it happened, HOW it happened, where it came from is NOT SIGNIFICANT! For the point is not this, but something completely different, the very thing that the story is about” [ibid.: 90]. At this time, the Strugatskys were also disappointed in the ideals of communism, largely due to the events of 1963: the visit of N.S. Khrushchev exhibition in the Manege, a meeting of the leaders of the Communist Party and the Soviet government with cultural and artistic figures, where “comments and wishes on the development of literature and art” were expressed.

5) Period 1965-1968. At this time, such works as “The Snail on the Slope”, “The Second Invasion of the Martians”, “The Tale of Troika” and “ Inhabited island" This stage is characterized by the symbolism of the language, extreme topicality and satirical orientation of the works (V. Kaytokh defined it as a “writer’s crusade” [Kaytokh 2003: 507]). The beginning of this period (1965) coincides with the end of the Khrushchev Thaw, caused by the removal of Nikita Khrushchev from power. The Strugatsky brothers, who by this time had won the respect of readers and fellow writers, considered it necessary to respond to the “cooling” of the socio-political situation. This time was marked by the first serious difficulties in publishing works - “The Snail on the Slope” was only partially published. At the same time, the emigrant publishing house "Grani" published the story of the Strugatsky brothers "The Tale of the Troika", as a result of which the authors were persecuted by the party leadership, and then were forced to abandon publication and tried to move on to purely entertaining fiction (an example of such an attempt was the story "Inhabited Island")

6) Period 1969-1971 characterized by an attempt by the authors to completely transition to entertainment literature. As a result, the stories “Hotel “At the Dead Climber”,” “Baby” and “Roadside Picnic” appeared.

7) In the period from 1972 to 1978, such works as “The Guy from the Underworld”, “A Billion Years Before the End of the World”, “The Doomed City” and “A Tale of Friendship and Unfriendship” were written. However, none of the works of the Strugatsky brothers was published. The first stories appeared, written “for the table” - for example, the story “The Doomed City” - a retrospective reflection on the place of man in a totalitarian society, which sharply contrasted with utopias written “for the broad masses” like “The Guy from the Underworld” or unobtrusive children's half-fairy tales, a model which is “The Tale of Friendship and Unfriendship”.

8 The period 1979-1986 is characterized by the completion of previously begun cycles: in particular, it was at this time that the stories “The Beetle in the Anthill” and “The Waves Quench the Wind” were created, which became the completion of the cycle dedicated to the World of Noon. At the same time, the novel “Lame Fate” was published - in many ways autobiographical work, where fantastic phenomena (the image of an angel selling scores Last Judgment; the image of the writer, in which the features of Mikhail Bulgakov, etc. clearly appear) play only the role of colorful details.

9) Period 1987-1991 ended with the death of Arkady Strugatsky. This period includes the story “Burdened with Evil” and the play “The Jews of the City of St. Petersburg.” It is characterized by a search for new means of expression applicable in the conditions of impending changes, an appeal to dramaturgy that is atypical for the Strugatsky brothers (“The Jews of the City of St. Petersburg”), etc.

The periodization proposed by Boris Strugatsky is based primarily on the peculiarities of life circumstances experienced by the authors in a given period, as well as on the facts of their joint creative biography. At the same time, when compiling it, Boris Strugatsky took into account the role of various creative discoveries and unexpected solutions, the evolution of his joint style with his brother.

From a slightly different angle, although maintaining the same chronological framework, the work of the Strugatskys was characterized by E.V. Bardasova. The researcher identifies five periods of creativity of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, and her classification is based primarily on the evolution of the aesthetic assessment of the surrounding reality:

1) For the period 1957-1964. characteristic attempts of the authors to create a social utopia. The first period includes such works as “The Country of Crimson Clouds” (1957), “The Path to Amalthea (1959), “Return. Noon. XXII Century" (1960), "Trainees" (1961) and "Distant Rainbow" (1962). The pathos of the Strugatsky brothers’ creativity, characteristic of this period, E.V. Bardasova outlined in the following words: “He embodies the ideas of the triumph of Communism in the future, as the most just and “humane” system; harmonious development of the individual and society; reckless service of the individual to the cause of a just social order; educating a new person capable of participating in the establishment of the principles of communism on the scale of the entire Universe" [Bardasova 1995: 15].

2) For the period 1965-1967. characterized by a departure from descriptions of all kinds of scientific and technical inventions towards moral problems. E.V. Bardasova includes the works “Snail on the Slope” (1965), “The Second Invasion of the Martians” (1966) and “The Tale of the Troika” (1967). This period is not as optimistic as the first; Writers often turn to the theme of the tragedy of a person’s collision with the future. A characteristic feature of the works belonging to this period, according to E.V. Bardasova becomes “the problem of Choice [...], which here and in the future is cross-cutting for A. and B. Strugatsky, integrating all aspects of the aesthetic ideal. At the second stage, Choice appears at the psychological level, as a property inherent in a reasonable person, and the problem of choice becomes the driving force, the basis internal conflict a person with himself and with society" [Bardasova 1991: 15-16].

3) Period 1968-1982. characterized by a departure from moral issues and an appeal to the fact that E.V. Bardasova called it “sci-fi aspects.” This period includes such works as “Hotel “At the Dead Climber” (1969), “Baby” (1970), “Roadside Picnic” (1971), “The Guy from the Underworld” (1973), “A Billion Years to Go” light" (1974), "The Doomed City" (1974), "A Tale of Friendship and Unfriendship" (1977), "A Beetle in an Anthill" (1979), "Lame Fate" and "Ugly Swans" (1982). At this time, the Strugatsky brothers touched upon problems characteristic of the 60s: the relationship between man and the surrounding world, the fate of human civilization, the search for alternative ways of developing human society (see [Bardasova 1991: 17]).

4) To the stage of 1982-1990. There are only three works: “Waves Quench the Wind” (1984), “Burdened with Evil” (1988), “Jews of the City of St. Petersburg, or Gloomy Conversations by Candlelight” (1990). The appearance of such works as “Burdened with Evil” and “Jews of the City of St. Petersburg”, E.V. Badasova was seen as a sign of a new “experimental” stage in the work of the Strugatsky brothers [Bardasova 1991: 21] - a stage cut short by the death of Arkady.

Completing benchmarking periodizations, we note that E.V. Bardasova notes the interest of the Strugatsky brothers in space theme, which manifests itself in the first and third stages of creativity of these authors. It reflects the general trends in science fiction of those years. The social aspects of life at the second stage of the Strugatskys’ work receive a negative aesthetic assessment, and the fourth stage is characterized by “an increase in social-critical pathos to the level of universal human problems” [ibid.: 23].

Thus, we can state the existence of a strict relationship between individual episodes of the Strugatskys’ biography and the transformation of the aesthetic ideal characteristic of their work, which is quite fully reflected in the presented periodizations. At the same time, the work of the Strugatsky brothers is heterogeneous not only in the assessments that the authors gave to the world around them and the socialist system, but also in the specifics of the essential characteristics of the worlds they depicted. For example, the stories belonging to the “World of Noon” cycle, which runs like a “red thread” through the entire work of the Strugatskys, have similar characters and tell about the same worlds, but, nevertheless, belong to different periods.

b) typological classification

Differences in the poetics of works belonging to different periods of the Strugatskys’ work gave rise to the need for a “specific” classification of their prose. This typology was proposed by the Polish researcher V. Kaitokh, who divided the creative heritage of authors into four “types of fiction conventions”:

A. Technological utopia of the classic Jules Verne variety. The realistically described world of modernity is intruded by a fantastic element, which is the main purpose of the description - taken seriously, completely rational and plausible. The writers clearly indicate the truth of his description (“From Outside”).

B. A parody of this type of utopia. A fantastic element intrudes into modern reality; in appearance and formally it is the main purpose of the description - it is considered seriously, completely rational and plausible, but in fact it is irrational and fabulous. The contradiction between the essence of fantastic motifs and their formal function in the work, as well as their interpretation, is a source of comedy (“Monday begins on Saturday”, partly “The Tale of Troika”).

B. A new type of socio-technological utopia. Fantastic elements grow into moments of a whole fantastic world and are combined into it. As a whole, it is rational and plausible, as a result of which it becomes the main object of the author’s description, made as true. The Strugatskys created a utopia of the beginning of communism (“Land of Crimson Clouds”, etc.) and developed communism (“Return”). V. Kaitokh considered the story “Predatory Things of the Century” to be an inconsistent, unsuccessful interpretation of this convention.

G. Modern SF. The previously developed world is no longer the main object of description, but the background of the corresponding action. The main carriers of the meaning of the work are the experiences of the characters. The fantastic element that makes up the background of the action is plausible, rational and realistically described (just like the background of the action in realistic, historical and modern stories). Sometimes it still retains truth or is described as if it retains it. The works of the Strugatsky NF exploit either a communist utopia (“Inhabited Island”, etc.) or an uncertain world of the near future (“Roadside Picnic”), and sometimes are halfway (see for more details [Kaytokh 2003: 522-623]).

V. Kaitokh was the first to draw attention to the components present in the text that violate the constitutive principles characteristic of the SF genre (primarily the principle of a single premise). According to V. Kaytokh, such components are of three types:

1) fantastic elements, which are, first of all, allegories of actual, real life phenomena. Their allegorical nature may be formally not emphasized at all (“Ugly Swans”) or explicitly expressed (“The Second Invasion of the Martians”);

2) fantastic elements that violate the principle of a single premise, but do not lead to the creation of an allegory. As a fantastic element of this type, V. Kaitokh cited, for example, the use of dream poetics in the story “Snail on the Slope”, in the chapters related to the “Pepper” storyline.

3) Fantastic elements become an allusion, borrowed from a communist utopia or from the American classical “space-opera”. In this case, the reality of the works is completely conditional, and its pathos becomes purely entertaining. As an example of a fantastic work written using fantastic elements of this type, V. Kaytokh cites the story “Expedition to the Underworld” - a little-known fairy tale created by A. Strugatsky based on motifs typical of science fiction (see [Kaytokh 2003: 623]).

V. Kaitokh's classification reveals a literary approach to the typology of fantastic motifs, taking into account their figurative characteristics (primarily the degree of credibility, compliance with the principle of a single premise, etc.).

We offer our own classification, which is based on linguistic criteria reflecting essential characteristics worlds depicted in literary texts Strugatsky. In our opinion, all the works of the authors can be divided into three main types, to which the writers alternately turned throughout their entire creative career, and which find their consistent embodiment at the two levels of text considered in this work (traditional for fiction, lexical-word-formation and super-phrase ). An analysis of the linguapoetic features of the listed types will be presented later, but for now we will give a brief description of each of these types:

1) Realistic type of works- it includes the vast majority of what the Strugatsky brothers wrote (“Land of Crimson Clouds”, “The Path to Amalthea”, “Trainees”, “A Billion Years Before the End of the World”, “Roadside Picnic”, chapters from “Snails on the Slope”, related to the storyline of “Candide”, all works of the “World of Noon” cycle). If we use the terminology of one of the representatives of the Tartu school, Yu.I. Levin, the ontological status of what is described in these works can be designated as a presentation of “specific facts about specific events tied to a specific place in our space-time [even if in the future - T.R.]. This type works are formed with the help of K (concrete) - statements" [Levin 1998: 521]).

2) Allegorical type of works, which includes a fairly small number of works (“The Second Invasion of the Martians”, storyline"Pepper" in the story "Snail on the Slope"). The events depicted in these works can be characterized “as having the status of a parable, or M (model) status” [Levin 1998; 521]. All the images and scenes of these works exist as certain expressers of implicit meanings and abstract ideas, like symbols used in mathematical formulas.

3) Type of works which can be characterized as game(“Monday Begins on Saturday”, “The Tale of Troika”, “Burden with Evil”). To characterize this type, we will use the terminology of another representative of the Tartu school - Yu.M. Lotman. The game type is created using the technique that Yu.M. Lotman called “text within a text” - a special type of text encoding, characteristic of the poetics of postmodernism, when not a single integral artistic world is created, but a multi-level world, uniting many cultural codes, scattered in reality, but united by the will of the author within the boundaries of a single artistic works, albeit with the preservation of features that separate cultural codes: “The text in the text is a specific rhetorical construction in which the difference in coding different parts the text becomes an identified factor in the author’s construction and reader’s perception [...]: from the position of another method of encoding, the text acquires the features of increased conventionality, its playful character is emphasized: an ironic, parodic theatrical meaning” [Lotman 2000: 432]. Most simple case using the “text within text” technique Yu.M. Lotman considered staging the play “The Mousetrap” within the framework of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”. The literature of the 20th century discovered new and more sophisticated ways of encoding text in a similar way, using which the laws of text construction, various cultural codes, etc. become the object of the author's reflection. Examples of this type of text are the stories of the Strugatsky brothers, which belong to the game type.

Let us note right away that the constitutive features of the SF genre that we highlighted above (the presence of a scientific and technical setting, the use of fantastic motifs as the main objects of the image, adherence to the principle of a “single premise”) are fully present only in works that make up the realistic type. In the works that we classify as playful and symbolic, of the constitutive features of the SF genre, only the scientific and technical surroundings are preserved. However, specific signs of the allegorical and game types appear only against the background of realistic fiction, the motives of which are either subject to comic rethinking (in texts that we classify as game fiction) or serve as signs of the allegorical embodiment of philosophical ideas (in works of the allegorical type).

Some confusion may be caused by the fact that a number of works (“Snail on the Slope”; “Burdened with Evil”) in our work are considered separately - i.e. their constituent chapters are included in different types of fiction. The prerequisite for such a distinction is not only the stylistic difference, but also the history of the creation of these works. As for “Snail on the Slope,” this story was published in its entirety in our country only in 1988, and before that, the chapters that made up the “Pepper” storyline were published only once - in the magazine “Baikal” in 1968 year, and the chapters that made up the storyline of “Candide” twice - in the magazines “Hellenic Secret” for 1966 and “Young Leninist” for 1983. These storylines were published separately and abroad: the “Candide” storyline was published in Polish (1977), German (1980, 1982, 1988) and Czech (1983); the storyline “Pepper” was published in Croatian (1979) and Danish (1984) (about the history of publication of the story “Snail on the Slope”, see in more detail [Kuznetsova 2006], [Kuznetsova 2004], [Bondarenko 2006]). The Strugatsky brothers wrote about the story “Burdened with Evil” that the chapters that made up the so-called. “The OZ Manuscript” was conceived by them as the basis of the third book, intended to become a continuation of the stories “Monday Begins on Saturday” and “The Tale of Troika”. Then the plan changed: chapters dedicated to the teacher G.A. were added to the existing ones. Nosov. Thus, the history of the creation of the listed texts demonstrates to us the deep internal unity of the stories “Monday Begins on Saturday”, “The Tale of the Troika” and the chapters from the story “Burdened with Evil”, which we will conventionally call “The OZ Manuscript” [Strugatsky 2003; 289-298].

In connection with our identification of works of the symbolic type, it is quite natural to question the place of “Aesopian” language in the works of the Strugatsky brothers. After all, reading the works of the Strugatsky brothers through the prism of “Aesopian” language gives M-status to almost all the works of these authors, and not just stories belonging to the allegorical type. To resolve this contradiction, two caveats must be made.

Firstly, decoding the hidden meanings of the Strugatsky brothers can be interpreted not only through the prism of “Aesopian” language, i.e. allegorically, but also from the angle of view of the reminiscences contained in the Strugatsky works, which turns their stories into examples of postmodern prose. An example of such views on the work of the Strugatsky brothers is the so-called. the mechanism of “prefigurations” proposed by the American researcher Yvonne Howell, when the images of the Strugatsky brothers are perceived as allusions referring to “forgotten” by the Soviet reader works of art: for example, in the image of a pit, past which one passes main character story “The Doomed City”, the researcher saw an allusion to “The Pit” by Andrei Platonov (cited from [Kaspe 2007: 206-207]). On the other hand, the very question of the “Aesopian” reading of the images present in the works of the Strugatsky brothers is very complex, since the same texts were interpreted differently at different times: for example, if in Soviet criticism the Strugatsky brothers were persecuted for their depiction that contradicted the laws of socialist construction future, then in perestroika criticism they began to be vilified for an almost “lackey” attitude towards the Soviet regime. Often, the “Aesopian” reading did not coincide with the creative intentions of the authors themselves. Bright to that an example is the story “Inhabited Island”: the Strugatsky brothers themselves defined in their memoirs this work as a “toothless, thoughtless, purely entertaining novel,” and the censorship and the majority of readers saw in it an obvious and unambiguous satire on Soviet society of those years: the censorship recommended that the authors change the Russian names of the main characters Rostislavsky And Pavel Grigorievich into German Camerer And Sikorsky; As for the reaction of Soviet readers, it is best reflected in the following memoirs: “We read the plot unambiguously: Unknown Fathers - Politburo, good place- well, probably America, Sick Planet - USSR, psychotropic weapon- a propaganda machine, and the “geeks” are dissidents, that is, we” (quoted from [Kuznetsova 2006: 152]).

Secondly, we do not set out to decipher the hidden meanings contained in the stories of the Strugatsky brothers. Our goal is to reveal the essential features of the worlds presented in the stories of the Strugatsky brothers, those features that are reflected at the linguistic levels we are considering. Here it is appropriate to quote Tsvetan Todorov’s statement: “...We can talk about allegory only when the text itself contains explicit indications of it. Otherwise, we have the usual reader's interpretation; in this sense there is no literary text that is not allegorical, for literary work tends to be the subject of endless interpretations and reinterpretations” [Todorov 1997: 126]. The idea expressed by Tsvetan Todorov can be extended not only to the allegorical, but also to all other types of worlds depicted by the Strugatsky brothers. We will consider their specific linguistic features in the next chapter, but for now we will summarize some preliminary results.