Fabula Technologiae: Antiquity in Soviet Animation

During my summer fellowship at CHS, I worked on my new project entitled “Fabula Technologiae: Antiquity in Soviet Animation” which examines how the appearance and transformation of the images from Ancient Greek and Roman mythology, literature, and history correlate with the changing ideology and the cultural climate in the USSR during Brezhnev’s rule (1964–1982) and the Cold War Détente (1969–1979). The first element of the project’s title refers to the collection of philosophical essays Summa Technologiae (1964) by Polish science fiction writer and philosopher Stanislav Lem (Lem 2013). In this book, consonant with the futuristic imagination of the 1960-s and 1970-s that was inspired by space exploration and the development of nuclear energy, Lem conducts a predictive analysis of scientific and ethical issues related to the future of civilization within rapid technological progress. Introduced by its title, the overall objective of my project is to investigate a story of technology and civilization manifested in Soviet animation through the reception of ancient Greece and Rome.

In this project, I test the hypothesis that the depiction of the “genealogy” of technology and its role in the human condition, as manifested in the Soviet animated versions of Greek and Roman narratives, serves multiple functions. Firstly, these animated films promote the official ideology by celebrating the innovations and successes of the Socialist state. Secondly, they caution the audience about the potential dangers of technological progress during a time of rapid nuclear weapons development. Simultaneously, through mythical and historical images of the agents of technological progress, such as Prometheus or Archimedes, the creators of these films implicitly express solidarity with the victims of political repressions in the Soviet Union, particularly the repressions of scientists and intellectuals.

I aim to develop this project into a monograph that will include six chapters. Using the resources at CHS, I concentrated on drafting the first two chapters of the project, which were initially the least developed. For chapter 1 (“Studying antiquity in animation: trends and methods”), I explored theoretical advancements in Classical reception studies, with a particular focus on their application in popular culture, to position this study within key trends in the field. Additionally, I outlined several important methodological approaches for this project. In my work on chapter 2 (“Techne and human condition in animated versions of Greek myth”), I analyzed a Soviet animated adaptation of the myth of Heracles, which effectively illustrates the central points of my hypothesis.

In this chapter, I explore several key debates within Classical reception studies, specifically the so-called “democratic turn” and class-conscious perspectives, approaches that have gained significant development in the past decade. I situated my project within the “democratic turn”, a trend in Classical reception studies marked by scholarship that investigates how ancient Greece and Rome have become more accessible and recognized among less privileged groups through the analysis of a wider range of art forms and media that engage with Classical material (Hardwick & Stray 2008; Hardwick & Harrison 2013). Although there are extensive debates regarding the nature and context of the “democratic turn” (e.g., Harloe 2013 and Hardwick 2013), my project focuses on the aspects that most scholars agree upon: the study of Classical reception that emphasizes the plurality of interpretations of studied media, as well as its engagement with diverse communities and mass culture (Lowe & Shahabudin 2009; Kovac & Marshall 2011; Mitchell 2013). Within this framework, I also develop this project with methodologies inspired by class-conscious Classical receptions, as exemplified by Edith Hall and Henry Stead in their research on class and Greco-Roman antiquity in Britain and Ireland from the 17th century to the early 20th century (Hall 2008; Hall & Stead 2020a; Hall & Stead 2020b). My project focuses on cultural products that were primarily disseminated to members of the city population of the Soviet Union, encompassing the combination of several classes, including working and intellectual classes, as well as different age groups (Olechowska & Movrin 2016). With a community of diverse audiences in mind, I base my research on the assumption that these audiences may have varied engagements with the classics, leading to different interpretations and understandings of the examined work. As part of this approach, I explore the complex network of cultural intermediaries through which broader audiences in the Soviet Union learned about antiquity, such as translations, educational materials, theatre, television, art, and fiction—and consider the class associations of these intermediaries at the time.

For this chapter, I also closely reviewed the field of Classical receptions in children and young adult culture and examined various directions in which this research is evolving (Murnaghan 2011, Maurice 2015; Marciniak et. al. 2016– , Marciniak 2024). My discussion includes an overview of trends in studying antiquity in modern visual media aimed at children and young adults globally (Lindner 2008; Sulprizio 2013– , Cisneros Abellán et al. 2020; Sulprizio & Marshall forthcoming), as well as recent developments in the study of children’s culture and animation in the Soviet Union and Russia (MacFadyen 2005; Pontieri 2012; Voronina 2019). In my analysis of these films, I distinguish the strategies of adaptation and transformation of the ancient material to serve both educational and recreational purposes as some (but not all) animated films I examine are intended primarily for children. At the same time, I consider that these films implicitly or explicitly convey messages that reflect the adult authors’ perspectives on the material (Murnaghan 2011).

Finally, I worked on outlining my methodology and its key strategies. By combining diachronic and synchronic approaches (Foster 2020), I acknowledge both continuity and difference from ancient texts, exploring the motivations behind choices of material within their ideological, pedagogical, and institutional contexts (Hall & Stead 2020b, Ranger 2024). A distinctive feature of this project is its interdisciplinarity and regional perspective within Classical reception studies, concentrating on how ancient material is adapted for Russian-speaking audiences (Karsai et. al. 2013; Marciniak 2024). While looking at the animated adaptations of antiquity as cultural products of the Soviet Union, my project also links these adaptations to global trends in the portrayal of the ancient world in popular imagination across various cultural paradigms.

As a central element of this chapter I was focusing on while at CHS, I proposed a new interpretation of the image of Heracles and his labors as depicted in the Soviet animated film The Return from Olympus (1969), part of the animated series Legends and Myths of Ancient Greece by Aleksandra Snezhko-Blotskaya and Alexey Simukov (1969–1974) (Paulouskaya 2017 and 2020). Through my analysis, I demonstrate that the new labors of Heracles featured in this film refer to contemporary methods of incarceration and military dominance and are linked to the ambiguous nature of the concept of techne . I further argue that Heracles himself is portrayed as a repressed individual, and his final choice in the film serves as a commentary on contemporary ideas of imprisonment, freedom, and sacrifice.

For this chapter, I explored the ethical dimensions of techne as depicted in Greek literary and philosophical texts, linking it to the complex views and anxieties surrounding technological progress that were prominent in the Soviet Union and globally during the 1960-s–1970-s. I concentrated on the analysis of the portrayal of techne and its connection to the human condition in three key texts: Prometheus Bound (442–506), Plato’s Protagoras (320c–322d), and the First Stasimon of Sophocles’ Antigone (332–375) (Segal 1986; Griffith 1999). Then, I conducted a case study focusing on the film’s concluding scene, in which Heracles rejects the opportunity to return to Olympus as a god and instead chooses to remain on Earth to combat the contemporary monsters that continue to torment humanity: fascism, colonialism, and enslavement.

In my analysis, I demonstrated that these new monsters that Heracles is set to fight are portrayed as machines of oppression and destruction evoking post-WWII fascist ideologies in contemporary Greece and Italy, where Classical imagery is extensively used for propaganda and indoctrination (Hamilakis 2007; Roshe & Demetriou 2018). Additionally, by drawing on evidence from the film and testimony from one of its creators (Simukov 2008), I argue that Heracles himself is depicted as a prisoner of a political regime. Thus, while explicitly referencing the political situation in contemporary Greece—an ideological adversary of the Soviet Union at the time—the film also subtly critiques the repressive and policing practices within the Soviet Union itself. Inspired by the example of Prometheus, Heracles becomes a rebel against the system and the old order, standing as a ‘dissident’ figure in his own right.

During the CHS Summer Fellowship, I gained access to a vast array of scholarship on Classical reception studies, both ancient and modern interpretations of Heracles, and the exploration of the myths about human condition in ancient Greek drama and philosophy. Utilizing the resources provided by CHS, I was able to develop further the structure of the project and draft portions of two chapters. Additionally, I completed and submitted a research article to a peer-reviewed journal and prepared two conference abstracts.