The Poetics of Censorship: Allegory as Form and Ideology in the Novels of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

The article discusses the generic nature of the Strugatsky brothers' oeuvre in terms of two opposing generic modes: sf and allegory. Allegory is seen as striving to produce a total control of meaning and to direct the reader's hermeneutical activity to a specific end, while sf texts are open to multiple interpretations. Allegory is widespread in authoritarian societies as a strategy of protection against censorship; neverthless, it is an itself an authoritarian form whose rigid structure often runs counter to its politically subversive meaning. In the Strugatsys' works allegory appears first as a subsidiary generic element but its importance intensifies toward the end of their joint career. Their major novels are discussed as structured by the tension between allegory and sf.