Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
([POST-] SOVIET) ZONE OF DYSTOPIA:
VORONOVICH/TKALENKO'S 'STERVA'
1. For a fuller picture of the post-Soviet Russian comics scene and its travails, see Ala
2010a, especially chapter 4.
2. For discussions of the trade paperback and graphic novel domination of the Ameri
comics market, increasingly at the expense of the pamphlet format, see Rhoades (29), Santo
Gastall, and Hibbs.
3. Among the significant Russian translations of foreign works in the last several years: A
Moore/Dave Gibbons's Watchmen (Amfora, 2009), Charles Burns's Black Hole (Fabri
Komiksov, 2010), David B.'s Epileptic (L'Ascension du Haut Mal, Boomkniga, 2011), a
Maijane Satrapi's Persepolis (Boomkniga, 2013). See Prorokov for an overview of komiks
lishing in Russia.
4. Arkady (1925-1991) and Boris (1933-2012) Strugatsky wrote together under their giv
names, but after his brother's death Boris wrote under the pseudonym S. Vititsky.
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
204 Slavic and East European Journal
The 'Stalkerverse'
Over a four-decade span from the late 1950s that saw the Strugatskys' careers
skyrocket, then Soviet censorship turn against them, then their works appear
more or less freely during Perestroika, then the Soviet Union itself collapse,
the brothers maintained their reputation as the pre-eminent practitioners of
Russian nauchnaia fantastika (NF).5 To this day, both at home and abroad,
the Strugatskys remain the best-known Russian science fiction authors,6 with
Roadside Picnic among the best-known and most widely translated Russian
science fiction novels. But their brand of at times dystopian, politically
skeptical prose made them "unofficial" writers in the Stagnation era.
Like all cultural activity in the Soviet period, over the decades Russian sc
fi strongly reflected the politics of its times. If in the 1920s the genre "gave
self-conscious articulation to revolutionary dreams" (Stites 184), envisioning
5. For more on the terms NF and fantastika in the Russian context, see Menzel.
6. As evidenced by recent film adaptations of their works, such as Konstantin Lopushanky's
The Ugly Swans [Gadkie lebedi, 2006], based on their 1987 novel, and Fyodor Bondarchuk's
two-part The Inhabited Island [Obytaemyi ostrov, 2008/2009], based on their 1971 novel. Erik
Simon notes, "In the 1970s and 1980s the Strugatskys were for a time the most translated So
viet writers; currently they are probably the only SF writers with a considerable oeuvre that is
completely and without interruption available in Russian book editions" (404).
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
([Post-] Soviet) Zone of Dystopia: Voronovich/Tkalenko's 'Sterva' 205
Nauchnaia fantastika was based on the idea of science and progress, science in the Marx
ist interpretation including not only natural science, but equally the laws of social and
historical progress. The genre was closely linked to the communist Utopian project of
wealth and happiness for the masses, and would help to overcome the traditional gap be
tween high and low, or intelligentsia and mass culture. (119)
8. On the journal's state-mandated dominance over the official NF sphere, and its advance
ment of the conservative "Efremov" brand of science fiction, see Simon 394.
9. For a fuller account of the Strugatskys' battles with the official press, see Menzel 133-39
and Simon 392^102. For further insights see Howell.
10. Strukov is referring specifically to the state-sponsored Name of Russia [Imia Rossii] web
project, in which Russians vote on the country's great historical figures, resurrected through var
ious media. As he describes it, "In a truly ventriloquist manner, Peter the Great, Aleksandr
Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and other iconic figures are brought back to life thanks to Rus
sia's contemporary authors and artists" (34), a move emblematic of twenty-first-century Rus
sian culture.
11. As Simon puts it in a more curmudgeonly manner, despite their post-Soviet nihilism con
temporary Russian writers "like to beat the dead horse of Soviet Communism" (404).
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
206 Slavic and East European Journal
what extent new genres like romance and fantasy have been imported, all contemporary popu
lar literature is framed by the Soviet cultural context. Allusions to Soviet novels and stereotypes
are abundant, and often carry an ironic charge.... (149)
12. Griffin and Waldron call Tarkovsky's film "SF noir" (265), while Zaslavsky relates the
Strugatskys' writing to that of hard-boiled detective authors Dashiell Hammet and Raymond
Chandler.
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
([Post-] Soviet) Zone of Dystopia: Voronovich/Tkalenko's 'Sterva' 207
"A Visitor from Outer Space" [Gost' iz kosmosa, 1958]; to acclaimed Polish
SF author Stanislav Lem, it has "properties, as menacing as they are incom
prehensible, [which] abruptly separate it from the outside world" (321); Elena
Gomel describes it as an "empty signifier" which, "[i]n questioning all cul
tural codes [...] undermines the structural basis of allegory which rests on
their fixedness" (103); while at one point the Strugatskys themselves seem to
portray it as very much an allegory—a satire of Soviet-era emigration to the
West, in which masses of people
poured into Harmont [...] to look for exciting adventures, untold riches, world fame, or some
special religion. They poured in and ended up as chauffeurs, construction workers, or thugs—
thirsting, wretched, tortured by vague desires, profoundly disillusioned, and certain that they
had been tricked once again. (73)
The elastic nature of the Zone trope expanded exponentially with the 1979
release of Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky's very loose adaptation of Roadside Pic
nic, written with the Strugatskys. This version depicts a saintly, Holy
Fool-like stalker leading an unnamed Writer and Scientist into the Zone in
search of the Room, where, supposedly, wishes are granted. Here the Zone
appears as an overgrown wilderness strewn with rusting industrial detritus,
made more mysterious and alien by trick photography and editing—though
crucially, the visitors encounter nothing explicitly supernatural. Characteris
tically for this director, the theme is reoriented from the novel's confrontation
with the unknown to one of agonized faith in a materialist society, while cin
ematic longueurs and varying film stocks infuse the Zone's otherworldly
qualities with a psychologized, dreamlike mood; the area's supposed anom
alies, in fact, may be nothing more than the mad Stalker's subjective fan
tasies. In the end, the Stalker's wife delivers a monologue on her "bitter hap
piness," and his daughter, disabled and possibly autistic but still human, may
or may not be exhibiting telekinesis.
As noted by Vida T. Johnson and Graham Petrie, the film's reception, par
ticularly in the West, privileged a politicized reading of the Zone, "picking
up [...] on such 'clues' as Stalker's shaven head, his early comment to his wife
that he is 'imprisoned everywhere,' and the fact that the term 'Zone' had been
used for Stalin's system of prison camps" (142).13 In an interpretation that in
forms my own of Sterva, they paraphrase the Hungarian critics Andrâs Kovâcs
and Âkos Szilâgyi, who describe the Zone in more psychoanalytic terms as
13. As explained by Debora Kaple, in Soviet culture "[p]eople spoke of the malenkaia zona
or 'little zone' (the Gulag camps) and the 'bolshaia zona ', or the 'big zone' (the USSR as one
big Gulag camp)" (Mochulsky xvii), while Anne Applebaum soberly noted:
[T]he Gulag did not emerge, folly formed, from the sea, but rather reflected the general
standards of the society around it. If the camps were filthy, if the guards were brutal, if
the work teams were slovenly, that was partly because filthiness and brutality and sloven
liness were plentiful in other spheres of Soviet life. (Mochulsky xxvii)
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
208 Slavic and East European Journal
the 'Secret' that any society needs in order to exist and maintain its authority; it is the taboo area
of memory and the past that is closed off for investigation and has constantly to be entered or
"probed" by misfits or doubters if the moral health of society is to survive. (143)
At the time of the film's release, some saw the Zone as a veiled reference
to the 1957 Chelyabinsk nuclear waste disaster and evacuations (denied by
the Soviets until 1989),14 but the 1986 Chernobyl accident, with its subse
quent "Zone of Exclusion," made the film seem prophetic—a parable of eco
logical catastrophe. Since the fall of the USSR, Stalker continues to aggregate
cultural "layers"; its murky mise en scène and despairing tone have come to
represent the sordid moral vacuity of the late-Soviet era, the spiritual empti
ness of modern life, a nightmare vision of a post-nuclear world, and much be
sides, in innumerable combinations.15 David Foster called the film's Zone "at
once a prison camp, an ecological disaster site and a dream space" (309);
Vlada Petric echoed the Stalker in calling it "an intrinsic—and necessary—
aspect of human existence" (34); Michael Dempsey labeled it a "mysterious,
cordoned-off natural wonderland" (13); while Tarkovsky himself wrote—in
irritation at how often he was asked for an "explanation"—that "the Zone
doesn't symbolize anything" (200), in short, life itself. All of which recalls
the Stalker's description of the Zone in the film: "It may even seem that it's
capricious, but it is at any given moment what we ourselves make it through
our own state of mind [sostoianie]."16
Writing in 1999, Slavoj Zizek could taxonomize, then deconstruct, the
Zone's various "meanings" thus:
For a citizen of the defunct Soviet Union, the notion of a forbidden Zone gives rise to (at least)
five associations: Zone is (1) Gulag, i.e. a separated prison territory; (2) a territory poisoned or
otherwise rendered uninhabitable by some technological (biochemical, nuclear...) catastrophe,
like Chernobyl; (3) the secluded domain in which the nomenklatura lives; (4) foreign territory
to which access is prohibited (like the enclosed West Berlin in the midst of the GDR); (5) a ter
ritory where a meteorite struck (like Tunguska in Siberia). The point, of course, is that the ques
tion "So which is the true meaning of the Zone?" is false and misleading: the very indetermi
nacy of what lies beyond the Limit is primary, and different positive contents fill in this
preceding gap.
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
([Post-] Soviet) Zone of Dystopia: Voronovich/Tkalenko's 'Sterva' 209
Tkalenko/Voronovich's Sterva
Among the most highly praised and respected komiksisty of the Second
Wave—the generation that emerged after the collapse of the USSR and the
advent of the Internet in Russia21—Andrei "Drew" Tkalenko (b. 1973) hails
from Ukraine, where he completed the architecture program at the Kharkov
State University of Construction and Architecture. Since moving to Moscow
in 1996, he has worked as a web designer, illustrator, graphics artist and
komiksist. Along with wife and writer/creative partner Elena Voronovich,
Tkalenko has distinguished himself from his first publications as a polished
draftsman, injecting an unusual level of professionalism into his work, com
parable to that of KOM-era veterans Askold Akishin and Yury Zhigunov; like
17. The acronym stands for "Scavenger, Trespasser, Adventurer, Loner, Killer, Explorer,
Robber." The American "first-person shooter" video game Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Ac
tivision, 2007) also utilized imagery from the abandoned city of Pripyat, Ukraine, near Cher
nobyl, to construct some of its environments.
18. See <http://zona-smerti.ru/>.
19. First published in Andrei Ayoshin's landmark komiks website/gallery Komiksolet in
2002 and re-published in the journal Rumanga in 2010.
20. See <http://www.stalker-game.com/ru/?page=cxc>.
21. See Alaniz 2010a, chapter 4.
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
210 Slavic and East European Journal
This "new phenomenon" has been "building up speed" for 20 years already. In 1988 the komiks
studio КОМ was formed, in the beginning of the 90s it "expired," and the artists who made up
the studio busied themselves with other things. So I and my "brothers in arms" are not the first
generation of comics artists in our vast motherland. And there's another generation coming up
after us. In all this time the breakthrough has not happened; there were just isolated attempts to
print something or other, but a market has not arisen, because Russia's economy is turned up
side-down. (Suslova)22
The couple's disdain for their country's underdeveloped comics culture led
directly to the Sterva project: a "serious," adult, even pessimistic work in a
format most Russians associated with humor and childishness. As I have writ
ten elsewhere (Alaniz 2010a, 241), Tkalenko and Voronovich had tired of
1^-page komiks jobs that required them to come up with endless gags and
"funny" situations. The prospect of doing the opposite—despite its lack of
commercial viability—freed them creatively.
As described by Zaslavsky23 in his preface24 to Sterva, in 2002 he and the
creators discussed possibilities for a story in an indigenous genre to contrast
with what they saw as Russian artists' often-slavish imitation of Western par
adigms. They alighted on the "stories about Stalkers" genre. The first frag
ments of the novel appeared in 2005, in the LMR compendium Almanakh,
22. Tkalenko told me something similar in 2007: "We already relate to [the industry] with
some skepticism. If a couple of years ago we comforted ourselves with the hope that some
thing's happening or will happen—well, time passes, we're getting older and nothing's chang
ing. Practically nothing." Two years later, when I interviewed the couple again, their opinions
had not budged.
23. Zaslavsky, a ubiquitous presence in Russian comics for the last 25 years, was Tkalenko
and Voronovich's editor at Edvans Press. He also worked with Lipatov and Chigirinskaya on the
aforementioned Gofman, helping to see it republished in 2010.
24. I used an unpublished, complete version of Zaslavsky's preface provided by the author. The
reader can find another version online at <http://smena-online.ru/stories/legendy-o-stalkerakh>.
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
([Post-] Soviet) Zone of Dystopia: Voronovich/Tkalenko's 'Sterva' 211
25. Although, as pointed out by Kovalev in his review, by the time the novel finally appeared
in a complete Russian edition, most fans had already read the story in these separate excerpts,
in anthologies and/or online, thus producing a Russian version of Bart Beaty's "Cerebus Effect"
(Beaty 1-2).
26. A list of significant Russian graphic novels prior to Sterva would include: Igor Kol
garev's Attack of the Snowmen (1992); Konstantin Komardin's Site-o-polis (2004); and Aleksei
Panteleev and Roman Surzhenko's Azart (2009). Mikhail Zaslavsky and Askold Akishin's Mas
ter and Margarita (1992-93, published 2005) and the book-length works of Russia's most suc
cessful komiksisty, Nikolai Maslov and Yury Zhigunov, are published abroad. Akishin's adap
tation of Erich Remarque's All Quiet the Western Front languishes unpublished. Sterva is the
most important event in Russian comics publishing since Bogdan's landmark Russian manga
book Nika (1998/2002).
27. Kovalev aptly describes the art in Sterva as "a little manga, a little Soviet caricature, a
little Russian art school." The work of Mike Mignola, a favorite artist of Tkalenko's, also casts
its shadow. Like Japanese manga, Sterva uses plentiful sound effects: "fssst!", "tm!", "tomp",
"splasshshshs," etc.
28. The novel reworks elements of past Stalkerverse iterations, such as religious symbolism:
the makeshift altar upon which Rot dies, and at one point Sterva cannot recall if the phrase "an
eye for an eye" originates in the Bible or a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
212 Slavic and East European Journal
needs correcting, like Schuhart and his deformed daughter; nor even the will
to self-knowledge that initially propels the Marked One in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:
Shadow of Chernobyl. A caption in a panel showing the bodies of stalkers
hanged as a warning reads: "Each of them had his own reason: some sought
out rare artifacts to sell on the black market, others were simply trying to es
cape the regime." But at least in this first novel of the series, the reader never
learns why Sterva took up this most dangerous of professions.29 The novel's
action proper begins with the assassination of Boar [Kaban], Sterva's mentor,
which sets in motion her relentless search for the killers, what they were after,
and why Boar had to die.
In this short excursus through the work, I will examine three main themes:
the gender politics introduced by a female stalker; inter-generational So
viet/post-Soviet conflict and misunderstanding in a context of Putinism; and,
to an extent subsuming the other two, the comics depiction of the Zone, itself
in dialog with other media depictions.
29. In an interview, Tkalenko mentions that Sterva explores the Zone in search of some
"higher meaning" [vysshii smysl] (Suslova).
30. The Alien script story is almost certainly apocryphal; see Moore 21 and Stuller 60. The
screenwriters, Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, wrote a "unisex" script to allow for flexibil
ity in casting.
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
([Post-] Soviet) Zone of Dystopia: Voronovich/Tkalenko's 'Sterva' 213
(The man had been defecating when she ambushed him.) Later, in a derelict
church, she raises her weapon point-blank at Rot (Gniloi), the man who shot
Boar. He pleads with her, "You would not dare kill me in God's house." She
replies, "There's been no God here for a long time. He emigrated to another
country. Or another universe."
Conversely, in Voronovich's captions, expressing Sterva's private feelings,
a different figure emerges: a stoic philosopher, an anguished survivor, a little
girl psychologically frozen at the moment of her trauma. In short, the captions
represent a much richer emotional life than Sterva ever reveals in public. At
the end of the episode "Dead Season," a treacly billboard showing a happy
family triggers the recall of her infant self, before the Visitation and gunning
down of her parents. The two selves stare wordlessly at each other across a
large panel, a cascade of captions mediating between them. "[W]hat would I
tell this scared, lonely little girl?" Sterva ponders to herself. "That life is
cruel? Hardly. That everything'll be okay? Wouldn't want to lie to her. Prob
ably, I would just hug her. After all, real human warmth is the rarest thing in
the universe" (Fig. I).31
The complex, private/public duality of Sterva's personality—presumably
part of what makes women "always complicated"—opens up an affective
space untrodden by previous male stalkers, who tend to wear their emotions
on their sleeve: Tarkovsky's monologist hero is (ineffectively) expressive to a
fault, while the Strugatskys' more laconic Schuhart tend to act as he feels.
Throughout her adventures, however, Sterva wrestles with her inner turmoil
while maintaining a detached, "tough" façade. The ironic play of visual/verbal
registers so often central to the comics medium enables a more richly ironic
depiction of the heroine's unstable reality.
31. All images from Tkalenko and Voronovich's Sterva used with the permission of the
authors.
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
214 Slavic and East European Journal
Figure 1. Andrei Tkalenko and Elena Voronovich. Sterva. Final page of "Dead Sea
son": Sterva confronts her child self (2, 11). Used with permission.
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
([Post-] Soviet) Zone of Dystopia: Voronovich/Tkalenko's 'Sterva' 215
32. Indeed, Sterva's authors see the father theme in more conventional, dramaturgical terms:
"Appearing and disappearing from the narrative, the 'father,' in one guise or another, creates a
certain gender balance on the one hand, and on the other supports the heroine, underscoring her
human sensibilities" (2011).
33. For an example of cinematic "propping up" of the Russian father image, see my essay on
Alexander Sokurov's Father and Son in Cinepaternity (Alaniz 2010b).
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
216 Slavic and East European Journal
34. On the post-Soviet exhuming of Stalin's victims, see Paperno. The image of Plague atop
a heap of naked corpses resembles the poster to Alexander Rogozhkin's The Chekist (Chekist,
1992).
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
([Post-] Soviet) Zone of Dystopia: Voronovich/Tkalenko's 'Sterva' 217
Figure 2. Andrei Tkalenko and Elena Voronovich. Sterva. Plague's nightmare: atop a
mountain of corpses, evocative of Stalin's victims (3, 41). Used with permission.
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
218 Slavic and East European Journal
[W]e can say that the single image functions as both an imagined timeline—a self-contained
moment substituting for the moment before it, and anticipating the moment to come—and an
element of global page design. In other words, there is a tension between the concept of "break
ing down" a story into constituent images and the concept of laying out those images together
on an unbroken surface. This tension lies at the heart of comics design—and poses yet another
challenge to the reader. (Hatfield 48)36
35. In the novel, government troops at times hesitate to obey, and one commander even
curses his superiors when they instruct him to fire on civilians to make way for the president's
motorcade—but they all follow orders anyway.
36. For an exhaustive semiological treatment of space and page design in comics, see Groen
steen, particularly chapter 1.
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
([Post-] Soviet) Zone of Dystopia: Voronovich/Tkalenko's 'Sterva' 219
into, interacts with and innovates upon previous iterations of the stalkerverse
Zone in different media—in the process, incidentally, legitimating comics as
an independent art form on a par with any other.
Two recent discussions of Tarkovsky's cinematic treatment trace a critical
line similar to the one I want to advance for Sterva. David Foster argues that
Stalker's often jarring transitions between color and black and white photog
raphy, along with its editing and other techniques, emphasize the Zone's
reflexive significance apart from narrative [...] signaling] to the viewer not only that he or she
is watching a film, but that the 'filmic-ness' of this film exists outside the narrative [...] As the
distinction between those images belonging to the narrative present and to other narrative mo
ments or spaces is blurred beyond narrative coherence, these alternations defamiliarize the nar
rative structure for the spectator. (3 ll)37
37. Foster's comments on how certain shots in the film make time "tangible" (314) clearly
have some relevance for my own discussion of comics, as the panel is often figured as a unit of
(ambiguous) time.
38. On the Stalker DVD (Kino), see such shots at 48:00 and 57:00 in Part I, and 1:15 in Part 2.
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
220 Slavic and East European Journal
Figure 3. Andrei Tkalenko and Elena Voronovich. Sterva. The opening page of Sterva
(1, 1). Used with permission.
houses, big squares and buildings" (25); "Empty and stripped, apartment
buildings became reproachful concrete boxes" (38)—and Svetlana Alek
sievich's interviewees—"People have left, but their photographs are still in
their houses, like their souls" (192); the high-caliber action set pieces, which
naturally recall the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. video games as well as sci-fi manga.
Other less derivative episodes in Sterva involve uniquely comics techniques
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
([Post-] Soviet) Zone of Dystopia: Voronovich/Tkalenko's 'Sterva' 221
HCAëAAAÂ
Я йМЛААА
m,то
TO, ЮТША&:
ЧТО XOWA& -
Ш ПШАРкАД УБИЙЦ.
Я ПОКАРАЛА ШШ.
m
» откуда
откуда югдд
тогда эта
il©
МАР0ИЛЙ§0€
МАзЮЙЛИ&СС ОЩУЩМШ
ОЩУ&ЩЁШб
ПОРАЖШШР
тршттг
m потто >m
m одного
одного
человбкд,
héao§«ka, который
АОЖИА ш
АОЖИА ШmДО СОРОКА,
СОРОКА,
дожярмо
жутто
щшдшдш»
ттАытть вs решу,
решу.
зонд
зонатжмрАът
тжмрш ЛЮДЕЙ
люд&й
smêotë С
SMECTË е ЖЕЛАНИЯМИ.
ш акм«я«йми.
ЫВЧТ&МШ
ЖЧТАШ Й И ТАЙНАМИ.
ТША»1
ШЯ
ОНИИСЧЕЗАЮТ,
исчезАЮТ, КАК
СТАТИСТЫ
статисту ш Иг!фиаьмо#
ФИЛЬМОВ
моего
моегодегсгад.
щеш
но то
этоmж шшшо.
ьшыо.
с&мас
Штт мтш§«ужён
тжт
тмж
тмж один
одш -
рштш*
ртмш> этой
этой
ГРЯЗНОЙ 2МИШ*УЩ
грязном зттпт,
и
ию шт§умт
шашкончено<
ттшю<
ДОЙДУ AM ДО КОНЦА,
лощусь m
когы-т&у&ь
Aommmr
m mm.
МО й ПОСТАРАЮСЬ
ПОСТАРАЮСЬ
mo всех сил.
СНОВА
СНОВА ПШ11А
ПОШЁЛ ДОЖДЬ..
ДОЖДЬ... ]
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
222 Slavic and East European Journal
tell of the heroine's sense of defeat and will to vengeance; they do not describe
her literal surroundings. Instead, the emptiness is figurative—the notion of the
Zone as ultimate mystery, where human understanding dissolves, is reinforced
through the contrast of gray shades (in the "normal" first panel and in the cap
tions, whose tone visually echoes that of the church doors) with the Zone's
stark white space and black rain-drops. The effect is akin to a narratival trajec
tory stopped cold before a Malevich-like absoluteness.
Tkalenko and Voronovich also resort to page designs that "cascade" panels
and/or captions over a page-size illustration to emphasize the Zone's perva
siveness, how it constantly threatens to overwhelm the narrative in ways sim
ilar to Foster's and Bird's readings of Stalker. As Plague and Sterva explore
the underground tunnels, we see them in two panels entering a murky hatch;
a third panel shows only the gloomy doorway that has consumed them, while
a fourth depicts the close-up of a sign warning: "Danger!" Enveloping these
smaller panels and dominating the composition, however, is a bleak portrait
of the forsaken tunnel, all shadows and industrial debris (Fig. 5). The gutted
machinescape super-panel—in Groensteen's parlance, the "hyperframe"
(30)—penetrates and "contaminates" the minor panels with its oppressive
hopelessness; it seems to gaze into them. As if in response, Sterva looks out
uncertainly towards the reader as she enters; she feels something watching.
As argued by Herman, the different panels imply different subjectivities
(Plague's, Sterva's, an "omniscient" narrator's), while the hyperframe nearly
subsumes them all with its foreboding hyper-subjectivity.
Another element of the Zone, its strange physical and temporal nature, is
suggested by a "cascading captions" technique (Fig. 6). As Plague and Sterva
prepare to set out on their final expedition, the narrative breaks away to a
splash page depicting Moscow as a jumble of decrepit buildings in rainfall. In
six grey-toned captions, Sterva elaborates on the spatial elasticity of the Zone:
"Sometimes these distances ... change. They get longer or shorter. In the lit
eral meaning of the word. It's like someone is stretching and contracting
space, like a rubber band" (ellipsis in original). Tkalenko's drawing accentu
ates this topographical impossibility by combining different photographs of
buildings while retaining each picture's perspective—this, together with the
oddly-spaced captions, gives the illustration its "jumbled" quality,39 an effect
not unlike the reverse perspective of Russian icons.
Moreover, the tension between image and text here produces its own elas
ticity of time, since as with any comics work there exists no set pace for read
ing the page. But Voronovich takes this quality a step further by anticipating
time: the last two captions, describing the military patrols that roam the Zone
"destroying] anyone they meet," more properly "belong" to the first panel on
39. For Sterva's backgrounds, Tkalenko downloads images of Moscow streets from the In
ternet and alters them to suit the story's needs (2011).
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
([Post-] Soviet) Zone of Dystopia: Voronovich/Tkalenko's 'Sterva' 223
Figure 5. Andrei Tkalenko and Elena Voronovich. Sterva. The underground tunnel as
hyperframe: the Zone pervades the "minor" panels (3, 59). Used with permission.
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
224 Slavic and East European Journal
*ÇTAAKÉPAНОГИ
ХТАЛКЕРА НОГИКОРМЯТ"
КОРМЯТ""TAX
м ТАК
ЛЮБИЛ
лют* ГОВОРИТЬ
ГОВОРИТЬ КАЕ
kaeah.
АН.
Зона оеширна, и, для того,
ЧТО&Ы
что&ы попасть
ПОПАСТЬиз
източки
точки Д
л
В
8 ТОЧКУ
ТОЧКУ 5, ПРИХОДИТСЯ
ПРЕОДОЛЕВАТЬ МНОГО
КИЛОМЕТРОВ
километров наНА
своих
С8отдвоих.
двоих.
НЕЛЬМ РАёЫВАТЬ
НЕЛЬЗЯ ЗАВЫВАТЬ
И
И ПРО
ПРОРАЗНОГО
разного рода
РОДАловушки.
ЛОвУШИ.
НЕКОТОРЫЕ
некоторые m
m НЖ
нж БЕЗОБИДНЫ.
безобидны.
ВРОДЕ
ВРОДЕ УЧАСТКОВ
УЧАСТКОВС НУЛЕВОЙ
С НУЛЕВОЙ
ГРАВИТАЦИЕЙ,
ГРАВИТАЦИЕЙ, НО ЬОЛЬШИНСТвО
КО ЬОЛЬЩИМСТВО
- СМЕРТЕЛЬНЫ.
они появляются, потом
ИСЧЕЗАЮТ, ЧТ06Ы
ЧТОВЫ ВОЗНИКНУТЬ
ВОЗНИКНУТЬ
В ДРУГОМ МЕСТЕ.
КАРТЫ Зоны
С ОБОЗНАЧЕНИЯМИ ТАКИХ
ловушек высот ценятся
НА
НАЧЁРНОМ
ЧЕРНОМРЫЖЕ,
РЫНКЕ,
И И
ЧЁМ
ЧЁМНОВЕЕ
НОВЕЕКАРТА,
КАРТА,
ТЕМ ОНА
СНА ДОРОЖЕ.
ХОТЯ ВСЕ ЭТИ КАРТЫ -
ДЕРЬМО €06
СОБАЧЬЕ.
А ЧЬЕ ЖАЛКАЯ
ЖАЛКАЯ
ПОПЫТКА ОТСЛЕДИТЬ
то, что ОТСЛЕДИТЬ
НЕВОЗМОЖНО, - ЗОНУ.
И ОНИ УНИЧТОЖАЮТ
лю&ого, кто
ВСТРЕТИТСЯ НА ПУТИ,
Figure 6. Andrei Tkalenko and Elena Voronovich. Sterva. The Zone as comics:
"cascading panels" overlay a multi-perspectival Moscowscape (3, 43). Used with
permission.
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
([Post-] Soviet) Zone of Dystopia: Voronovich/Tkalenko's 'Sterva' 225
the next page, which actually shows one of these patrols. The "jumbled"
Moscow page opens up space (through the multiple perspectives) and time,
through captions that move backwards (reminiscences of Boar) and forward
(military patrol) in the story's chronology.
Through such techniques—abandoned cityscapes, disorienting chronoto
pography and oppressive mood that yields to unexpected epiphanies—Serra
effectuates the comics version of a "Zone sublime."40
40. The term is partly inspired by Polina Barskova's "siege sublime" in her discussion of the
World War II Leningrad blockade, whereby the observer "replacefs] the horrific with the beau
tiful, or reconstructs] the horrific as beautiful" (331, emphasis in original).
41. Voronovich/Tkalenko's continuation of Sterva, an excerpt of which appeared on the
KomMissia Festival website in 2010 (<http://www.kommissia.ru/gallery/thumbnails.php?
album=1940>) makes these links to the Stalinist past even more explicit: it features a scene of
political torture by government agents, in a room presided over by a portrait of Felix Dzerzhin
sky, first director of the Cheka secret police.
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
226 Slavic and East European Journal
REFERENCES
42. In this "mash-up" sense of an adaptation that preserves the "essence" of a classic while
presenting it in a completely unrelated style, Sterva has some similarities to Robert Sikoryak's
conceptualist Masterpiece Comics (Drawn and Quarterly, 2009), which among other stories
presents Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment as a Dick Sprang-era Batman comic.
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
([Post-] Soviet) Zone of Dystopia: Voronovich/Tkalenko's 'Sterva' 227
Goscilo, Helena, and Yana Hasharaova. Cinepaternity: Fathers and Sons in Soviet and Post
Soviet Film. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2010.
Griffin, Michael, and Dara Waldron. "Across Time and Space: The Utopian Impulses of Andrei
Tarkovsky's Stalker." Exploring the Utopian Impulse: Essays on Utopian Thought and
Practice. Ed. Michael Griffin. Oxford: Lang, 2007. 257-72.
Groensteen, Thierry. The System of Comics. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2007.
Hatfield, Charles. Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature. Jackson: UP of Mississippi,
2005.
Moore, George. "The Alien Feminist." Meanings of Ripley: The Alien Quadrilogy and Gender.
Ed. Elizabeth Graham. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010. 13-22.
Paperno, Irina. "Exhuming the Bodies of Soviet Terror." Representations 75.1 (Summer 2001):
89-118.
Petric, Vlada. "Tarkovsky's Dream Imagery." Film Quarterly 43.2 (1989): 28-34.
Prorokov, Grigorii. "Komiksy i graficheskie romany: Vosem' vazhneishikh izdatel'stv...."
Afisha, August 3, 2011. <http://www.afisha.ru/article/9841/>.
Rhoades, Shirrel. Comic Books: How the Industry Works. New York: Peter Lang, 2008.
Ryklin, Mikhail K. "Bodies of Terror: Theses Toward a Logic of Violence." Trans. Molly
Williams Wesling and Donald Wesling. New Literary History 24. 1 (1993): 51-74.
Santoro, Frank. "The Bridge is Over." Comics Comics, August 1,2009. <http://comicscomicsmag
.com/2009/08/bridge-is-over.html>.
Sikoryak, R. Masterpiece Comics. Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly, 2009.
Simon, Erik. "The Strugatskys in Political Context." Science Fiction Studies 31.3 (2004):
378^106.
Stites, Richard. Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian
Revolution. New York: Oxford UP, 1989.
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
228 Slavic and East European Journal
Strugatsky, Boris and Arkadii. Roadside Picnic. Trans. Antonina W. Bouis. Harmondsworth,
England: Penguin, 1979 [1972].
Strukov, Vlad. "Possessives and Superlatives: On the Simulation of Democracy in Russia." Rus
sian Cyberspace 1.1 (2009): 31-39.
Stuller, Jennifer K. Ink-stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern
Mythology. London: I. B. Tauris, 2010.
Suslova, Ekaterina. "Vam slovo, narisovannyi personazh!" Komp'iuArt, No. 6, June, 2008.
<http://www.compuart.ru/article.aspx?id=19145&iid=888>.
Tarkovsky, Andrey. Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema. Austin, TX: U of Texas P,
1989.
Реферат
Хосе Аланиз
This content downloaded from 150.209.8.48 on Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:35:38 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms