The Ideal Construct of I. A. Efremov in the Context of Soviet Global Design of the Mid-20th Century

Abstract

This article discusses the concept of global design in the USSR, focusing on the Soviet artistic futurology of the 1950s that contrasted Soviet ideals — the “Soviet man,” the Soviet system of interpersonal relations and ideas about communist society — with individualistic ideals of the Western type. Using the example of the novel “The Nebula of Andromeda” (1957) by Ivan Antonovich Efremov, the author examines the value foundations of ideal design — anthropological, ethical and ontological — that correspond to the level of a person, to interpersonal relations and to society as a whole. Efremov set himself the task of modeling the political system of the future and determining the ways in which it would be formed. The writer’s political project exists at the intersection of the interests of government and society, refl ecting both the offi cial guidelines of the Central Committee of the CPSU ( formulated in the text of the third party program of 1961) and the hopes of society inspired by scientifi c and technical romanticism.

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