Russia in John Wyndham's Books
The “Reds”
The Soviet threat
The Cold War was a (mostly) peaceful conflict lasting from 1947 to 1990, “fought” between two superpowers, each supporting their own ideology; in the West, there were the United States of America with its capitalism, while in the East the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) lurked with its communism. Having started soon after the Second World War, and ending with the fall of the Berlin wall in 1990, the Cold War spanned 43 years.
Coinciding with this “war” was John Wyndham`s career of being a writer of full-fledged literature. In those days, every news outlet ranging from television to radio broadcast, from printed media like newspapers to simple word-of-mouth, reported the latest antics of the two ideological blocks. The East was impregnating its citizens with the idea that communism, or socialism in general, was a valid and effect way of ruling a country, and ranted about how evil and corrupted the capitalists were, who in turn were warning everyone who wanted to listen about the dangers hidden behind the iron curtain. While the Cuban Missile Crisis was perhaps the most famous aspect of this timeframe, conflicts like the Korean War (started in 1953, and is currently in a state of cease fire) and the war in Vietnam kept the world on the brink of a nuclear holocaust.
In these eventful days, Wyndham, like most other well-known writers of his time, resided in the West, living and writing with little of the restrictions that were imposed in the USSR. As such, it was almost inevitable that the ever-present Cold War would seep into both the fiction and non-fiction written in the time.
Arguably the most famous example is George Orwell`s 1984, a story that mocked just about every aspect of the USSR. In later generations the book was better remembered for its love story and dark portrayal of life in a country ruled with an iron fist, rather than the political message Orwell, a socialist himself, tried to convey, namely that
The Soviet threat
The Cold War was a (mostly) peaceful conflict lasting from 1947 to 1990, “fought” between two superpowers, each supporting their own ideology; in the West, there were the United States of America with its capitalism, while in the East the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) lurked with its communism. Having started soon after the Second World War, and ending with the fall of the Berlin wall in 1990, the Cold War spanned 43 years.
Coinciding with this “war” was John Wyndham`s career of being a writer of full-fledged literature. In those days, every news outlet ranging from television to radio broadcast, from printed media like newspapers to simple word-of-mouth, reported the latest antics of the two ideological blocks. The East was impregnating its citizens with the idea that communism, or socialism in general, was a valid and effect way of ruling a country, and ranted about how evil and corrupted the capitalists were, who in turn were warning everyone who wanted to listen about the dangers hidden behind the iron curtain. While the Cuban Missile Crisis was perhaps the most famous aspect of this timeframe, conflicts like the Korean War (started in 1953, and is currently in a state of cease fire) and the war in Vietnam kept the world on the brink of a nuclear holocaust.
In these eventful days, Wyndham, like most other well-known writers of his time, resided in the West, living and writing with little of the restrictions that were imposed in the USSR. As such, it was almost inevitable that the ever-present Cold War would seep into both the fiction and non-fiction written in the time.
Arguably the most famous example is George Orwell`s 1984, a story that mocked just about every aspect of the USSR. In later generations the book was better remembered for its love story and dark portrayal of life in a country ruled with an iron fist, rather than the political message Orwell, a socialist himself, tried to convey, namely that