Visions of the Future

Dr. Natasha Grigorian is a Comparative Literature scholar. She studied Modern Languages at the Universities of Oxford and Paris-Sorbonne. She completed her DPhil at Magdalen College, Oxford. In 2007-2010 she was the Rutherford Research Fellow at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, followed by her position as a Research Associate at the University of Konstanz.

“Grigorian states that this publication is a pilot study of thought experiments in Russian literature. As the study is devoted to futurity, Grigorian attempts to explain the relationship between thought experiments and utopias and/or dystopias…It will appeal to everybody interested in discourses of futurity, their structure, dynamics and efficacy.”—Henrietta Mondry, Australian Slavonic and East European Studies“[This] book can thus be seen as a thought experiment itself—and certainly a very interesting and thought-provoking one.”— Eliane Fitzé, University of Fribourg, Modern Language Review“Grigorian’s book should be credited as thought provoking for scholars seeking methodological inspiration – a useful thought experiment of sorts. It also testifies to the entangled character and richness of Russian social thinking and literature, bringing attention to some lesser known authors and inspiring further study of their work.”— Piotr Kuligowski, Ab Imperio“While Grigorian carefully follows the narrative of each text, she discovers the connections between them, thanks to her consistent viewpoint. As she maintains, she successfully brings chronologically isolated utopian or dystopian dreams into a dialogue with each other, with Malthus and so on. … Finally, let me remark on the practical significance of this book. Grigorian argues that thought experiments investigated here will provide helpful insight into social and environmental problems in the post-2020 world. This global crisis has become much more serious after February 24, 2022. The cosmic scenarios concerning Malthusian theory provided by Russian writers will enable us to think about the world today from new perspectives.”— Yuki Fukui, Studies in East European Thought“Engagingly and clearly written, Visions of the Future represents an original approach to Russian utopian fiction and utopian fiction in general. This originality emerges primarily in the book's orientation to the strictly formal influence of counterfactual or hypothetical reasoning on the narrative strategies employed in utopian fiction, while its persuasive force lies in its careful account of well-chosen examples of this influence.”—  Jeff Love, Research Professor of German and Russian, Clemson University

• IntroductionThomas Malthus, the Problem of Population, and Counterfactual Thought Experiments: A Concise OverviewThought Experiments in Vladimir Odoevsky’s Russian Nights (1844)Thomas Malthus and Nikolai Chernyshevsky: Struggle for Existence or Mutual Help? Utopian Dreams in What Is to Be Done? (1863)Revolution on Earth and Mars: Alexander Bogdanov’s Red Star (1908) and Aleksei Tolstoy’s Aelita (1923)A Peasant Utopia: Alexander Chaianov’s My Brother Aleksei’s Journey (1920)Overpopulation in Nina Berberova’s Short Story “In Memory of Schliemann” (1958), in the Context of Malthusian TheoryConclusionBibliographyIndex