Lo strano caso del Professor Efremov, o L’Ora del Toro come (anti)utopia comunista

The article is dedicated to the analysis of The Bull’s Hour (Chas byka) by Ivan Efremov, a final novel in a series of his science fiction works about a remote communist future of the Earth. In the description of the terrestrial astronauts’ mission to a planet named Tormans, utopia and dystopia merge: the utopian communist society of the Earth is contrasted with a sinister dystopian reality of Tormans, where terror, violence, and repressions flourish and where the totalitarian mechanism of the State rejects any idea of human life valour. The description of Tormans recalls explicitly the realia of the 20th century, with particular references not only to the USA, China and the Nazi Germany, but – and, maybe, mostly – to the Soviet Union. The Bull’s Hour therefore can be read as a literary act of resistance against the regime and an expression of a hope for possible changes of the Soviet system.