Slavic SFF is a fascinating corner of our beloved genre. Often times it gets unfairly overlooked, or lumped in with Western European SFF and dismissed as just another faux medieval fantasy vaguely inspired by (Western) historical events.
But the reality is a completely different matter.
Eastern European genre fiction doesn’t just differ substantially from that of American or Western European pickings on a cultural level. Its simultaneously ancient and painfully recent history regarding the USSR, socialism, the Russian revolution, space pioneering—as well as Slavic folklore that builds more upon myth and pagan legend than the Christian side of scale—provides a ripe playing field to explore unique themes and cultural concerns. The juxtaposition of harsh suppression and censorship with liberal freedom of expression in science fiction and fantasy also provides an interesting case study for the power of the pen.