It appears that the AH subgenre of self-insert ISOTs has been popular in Russia since the turn of the 21st century. In recent years this type of fiction, locally known as popadantsy or "accidental travel", has become a vehicle for nationalistic propaganda: many such stories are thinly-veiled Russia wanks. I feel that this is something worth digging further into.
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Self-insert ISOT novels as propaganda: the case of Russia's "Popadantsy" stories
- Thread starter Hendryk
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Walpurgisnacht
It was in the Year of Maximum Danger
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Hot-take here but I think the genre based around a single "more advanced" man being dropped into a "backward" society to improve it with his rugged individualist might without much help from the locals is always going to be pretty fertile ground for right-wing political rhetoric.
Steve Brinson
The possum is not OK. Neither are we.
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Someday someone is going to write a 'vanguard of the revolution' Marxist-Leninist isekai (they probably already have, but I'm not aware of it offhand) and it will... sure be something.
I think there's a link to Eric Hoffer's idea of 'frustration' - people who lack, or feel like they lack, control or meaning in their own lives and circumstances are likely to both seek out escapist fiction - 'if only my circumstances were different, I could really be important and make something of myself and have something to be proud of' - and, in the real world of politics, project themselves onto something larger (a nation, a 'culture', a political ideology) in order to try to live vicariously through it. And because of a number of factors, including that sense of individualism, those people are disproportionately going to come to/from the right wing.
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I had no idea Tom Kratman had a Russian publisher.
True. Comrade Hitler is a particularly extreme example of a known problem. This many mask-off ISOTs, all government backed and all printed, is the real 'WHAT' and will make Kratman argue we should be nuanced about it.
(Random thought: isn't Guns Of The South a far right ISOT from the point of view of the time travelling Afrikaners? "What if we went back and stopped the bad thing with our superior future knowledge")
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Indeed, originally this was encountered with Post-Apocalyptic fiction but even from the start those works whilst having a sense of individualism also combine it with “If you don’t work with people, you will die” (unless it’s one of those bad Libertarian tracts ones). A good example is found in Day of the Triffids which despite initial accusations of outright Fascism by critics ends with the main characters leaving there self made habitat to seek refuge on a island lead by a strongly implied Socialistic Trade Unionist.
These novels, don’t have this as much as there point is ‘smart modern person uses future knowledge to support past regimes’ which usually isn’t a starting point for...nuanced writing.
Meppo
Anticommunist Mole
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I find Sumlenny's suggestion that the popadantsy genre was actively pushed by the Russian government mildly questionable (as with about everything stated by that character, frankly speaking), but I can't say the ubiquity of jingoist Russian isekai and assorted fiction beginning in the late 2000s isn't suspect or at the very least deplorable.
I think Greg Grant briefly covered the topic back in 2017 on AH.com.
I think Greg Grant briefly covered the topic back in 2017 on AH.com.
"The problem with Hitler is that he stabbed Stalin in the back instead of staying a loyal ally to the Motherland and finishing off the British" is certainly a take. But then, as we have seen in recent months, many Russians have a very idiosyncratic understanding of Nazism.
This is an interesting contrast to China, who have 'discouraged' AH. I assume that's because even a very nationalistic ISOT or AH about communism earlier means you'd be having someone preempt the real party
Indeed, in China the government doesn't want people to consider the possibility that history could have turned out any differently. I've approached various professional translators and they've all told me that With Iron and Fire wouldn't pass the censorship board, so if a Chinese version is ever written, it will have to be printed in Taiwan.
Huh, interesting that the bulk of this is one publisher. That makes the Tom Kratman jokes more damning since a lot of his stuff comes out of Baen and these book covers remind me a lot of Baen's stuff:
Now I wonder how many would be translated into English and doing the rounds if they weren't about fighting America or Britain (if it was a social Britain, sure).
napoleon IV
Sheer Animal Cunning of the Groundhog
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My understanding is that the Chinese government sees AH and time travel stories (which are also discouraged) as a potential means for people to comment on current affairs, and because the Chinese government is extremely heavy handed they just impose a blanket ban rather than try to sift through the work to discern authorial intent.
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I suspect with China it's also that AH is necessarily a deviation from the more teleological strains of Marxist history.
napoleon IV
Sheer Animal Cunning of the Groundhog
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I'm now picturing a scenario where the government decides to liberalize it's ban on AH, the new rules being that you can write AH, but it has to end with the CCP taking over. The 1911 Revolution never happens? Well the CCP emerges and Mao overthrows the Qing. Genghis Khan is never born? After hundreds of years of native Chinese dynasties rising and falling Mao overthrows them and establishes the PRC. The dinosaurs never die off? Maosaurus overthrows Chiang Kai-Shekcerotops to establish the Sauropods' Republic of China.
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I watched the 1970s Red Western White Sun of the Desert a few months back and what really struck me is that it had something very much like the old American racist canard of 'uplifting the savages,' but couched in explicitly Marxist language i.e. 'advancing the primitives to the next stage of history.'
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i googled this guy when i saw this and i burst out laughing when i saw the first picture
the man could not look any more "demented far right paranoid maniac" unless he looked like the simpson's fake tongue in cheek caricature of Matt Groening
Well a Marxist wouldn't consider it feasible until the objective material conditions have been met.
It's interesting that the trope was deconstructed all the way back in the golden age of SF, in Poul Anderson's story The Man Who Came Early. At first glance it appears that the ISOTed protagonist--a capable US Army NCO transported back to Norse Iceland--will be able to change the course of history, but before you know it he makes critical blunders, the host society sours on him, and he dies without having made any noticeable difference.
Failure to maintain a civil environment
Chris Nuttall thinks highly of him for some reason.
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I'd say it depends on whether you're talking about an orthodox Marxist or a Leninist - because the latter's concept of a Vanguard Party strikes me as more amenable to that sort of thinking.