Russian Legislators Increasingly Take Their Ideas from Anti-Utopian Literature, Loboyko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 2 – Those who have produced anti-utopian novels in the future wrote them as warnings; but in Putin’s Russia today, Dmitry Loboyko says, legislators appear to view them not as warnings of what to avoid but as guides to how they should behave and what laws they should impose on the country.   

            The director of Samara’s Regional Research Center says that Russians have always been focused on literature and so the Duma deputies have taken their ideas not from one anti-utopia but from a wide range of them including those of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Yevgeny Zamyatin (t.me/loboykoru/82 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/utopaya-v-antiutopiyah).

            In support of his argument, the political analyst points to Russian laws promoting pregnancies, limiting women’s access to higher education, and mass meetings at which loyalty to the ruler is the central message and to the promotion of a culture that has no respect for or even belief in truth.

            What makes this disturbing, Loboyko suggests, is that the more disturbing the ideas these authors have offered, the more likely today’s Duma deputies are to make them come to life in Russia, a trend that suggests those concerned about the future should be reading the anti-utopian authors at least as closely as the deputies and their advisors are.