Henrietta Mondry’s participation in a collaborative international project on the topic of the Anthropocene and Russian literature has resulted in the publication of a special issue of the journal Russian Literature. Henrietta’s article is dedicated to speculative fiction which addresses the impact on domesticated animals of human interference in nature.
The term “Anthropocene” is attributed to Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer (an atmospheric chemist and a biologist), who used it in 2000, but when looking towards Russia and the Soviet Union to gain insight into the Anthropocene, it turns out that the term actually originated in the Soviet Union, unbeknownst to Crutzen and Stoermer.
The Soviet geologist Alexei Pavlov coined the term in 1928 to denote an epoch in which human activity was the dominant geological force.
Henrietta’s article analyses how scientific experiments on dogs, which climaxed in Soviet space exploration, led to a futuristic literature with dogs escaping human domination by inhabiting a different planet and forming a new civilization.
“The Anthropocene and Dogs’ Choices in Soviet and Post-Soviet Futurity Fiction”. Russian Literature 114/115. 2020. 67-83.
