Comment by pgaddict | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pgaddict | Hacker News Reader

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The funny thing is the local communist newspaper "Red Truth" (as if there were non-communist ones, ...) published a review of LOTR in 1977, in which they pretty much took the side of the Mordor. (It might be a made-up joke from the 90s, but the spirit of absurdity is spot on for 1977.)

The reasoning was roughly:

* Mordor is obviously meant to be USSR, as it's in the east.

* The orcs are clearly heavy industry workers, building the world of future.

* Bilbo is obviously a son from a bourgeoisie family, disgusted by hard work.

* The west is represented by elves = aristocracy, people = bourgeoisie, hobbits = landowners.

* The group of reactionaries are afraid of a made up "threat from the east", led by Gandalf.

* Gandalf = a reactionary ideologue, keeping people in state of fear of progress and knowledge.

* Saruman = protector of the oppressed, declared a traitor and destroyed by the reactionaries.

* But socialism can't be destroyed by throwing something in the fire. All the power to Mordor, surrounded by reactionary neighbors.

Mordor revisionism is very popular in Russia(due to the reasons you already outlined).

See from example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer as perhaps the most famous from the genre

And these days many Russian ultra-patriots are proudly accepting the representation of Russia as Mordor and its soldiers as orcs in the war in Ukraine.

The outlined reasons are cartoonishly communist, but "The Last Ringbearer"'s worldview is not communist. It is more like "the West are liars". And yes, this does resonate in Russia.

Russia also has a fascination with "cryptohistory" as a legitimate form of fantasy, to a degree I've not seen in other countries.

Comrade Führer and other books as genre only exist in Russia I think.

Well, they are not entirely wrong: Tolkien was a big fan of "old England", as he saw it, with its primarily agricultural focus, and held rather dim view on industrialization and modernism. While Soviets of course were fanatics of industrialization and considered the petty bourgeoisie and kulaks (and Bagginses certainly look a lot like kulaks) their mortal enemies. Tolkien was very adamant that he does not do allegories, and yet the Soviets were right to consider him ideologically opposed to them. He was also a devout Catholic and ardent anti-Communist, so whether or not the Red Truth really declared him an enemy, they certainly would have strong reasons to.

This is unlikely, because "The lord of the rings" was translated much later. "The Hobbit" was first published in 1976, there was an announcement that there is more, but the first volume of "The Lord of the Rings" was published only in 1983.

I found an article in English [1] that mentions a newspaper article called "Tolkien's Cosmos" that does indeed find political meaning in "The Lord". But that article was written much later, in 1997. I cannot find the article itself, but judging from the time and the newspaper ("The Independent Newspaper", proudly liberal) I would guess the author was not a proponent of communism, but the opposite: he equated Mordor or Saruman with Soviet Union because he considered himself to be the part of the winning forces of the West.

[1] https://muse.jhu.edu/article/176070

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