Belief and Prediction Narratives in Rethinking Discourse: The Experience of Soviet Science Fiction and Ad in the 1950s

Abstract

In the USSR of 1950s, the sociocultural foundations for the functioning of social practices and institutions were the opposite to those in subsequent periods of the USSR history and modern Russia. In addition, they are opposite to the currently dominant trends in world’s development, depicted in “Retrotopia” of Zygmunt Bauman. In the culture of that time, people poorly expressed mass nostalgia as they searched for an emotional community with collective memory. Rationality was the main defining feature of the 1950s. From this point of view, the author examines narratives aimed at correcting the “Soviet” discourse, discredited during the Second World War and political changes in Soviet society in the late 1940s — early 1950s. There are two types of narrative: the belief and prediction, which were broadcast through commercial advertising and science fiction literature. The prediction narrative remained a specific attribute of the1950s culture and did not receive further promotion.