Энергетическая эволюция и трансформация человека в русских и зарубежных утопиях

Шаги/Steps. 2024. Т. 10. № 1. С. 187–206.

Григоровская А. В.

The article analyzes the relationships between the sources
of energy and of human culture in Russian and foreign utopias. The
author considers the main way of correlation between the evolution of
energy and anthropological evolution, which involves their mutual influence.
Utopian texts demonstrate this interdependence quite clearly.
Technological stagnation is combined with the totalitarian structure
of society in the early utopias: in texts by Plato, Thomas More,
Tommaso Campanella (in Francis Bacon’s utopia it is the pursuit of
modernization). Bacon’s model is reproduced in the novel Andromeda
Nebula by the Soviet writer IIvan Yefremov, however, the discovery
and the implementation of innovative energy sources in this utopia
is accompanied by a qualitative change of human beings and society.
In Ayn Randʼs novel Atlas Shrugged the motif of the “perpetuum mobile”
is organically combined with the motif of human transformation.
Nikolai Chernyshevsky also wrote about the “perpetuum mobile”: in
his stories he emphasized the inextricable link between “energy” and
“anthropology”. Analysis of current trends in the development of this
topic (as seen, for example, in Kim Stanley Robinsonʼs novel The Ministry
for the Future) allows us to conclude that totalitarian narratives
in utopia are being revived. These totalitarian narratives impose on
humankind the inevitability of rapid energy transition.

Keywords: русская утопия, энергетический переход, энергетическая эволюция, зарубежная утопия

Publication based on the results of: Russia and Europe in the 19th Century: Intellectual Interactions in the Socio-Political Context (2024)