From those first pioneering space-shots in the Twentieth Century, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics blazed a comet-like trail across the Solar System. Its capitalist rivals could not, or would not, compete – leaving the ultimate prize to the Motherland: a future in space, amongst the planets.
With Dimitar Stoyanov’s invention of the faster-than-light ‘jump’ drive in 2029 (the Stoyanov Drive), the future became written, not in the solar system – but in the stars!
Meanwhile, revolution, war, discontent and economic crises began to engulf all of the nations of Earth. Those who had escaped the bounds of Earth began to build a new civilization. They constructed colonies, starships, space-stations, starports and factories. And they created the Union of Soviet Socialist Planets (Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Planety – USSP) to administer it. This socialist utopia amongst the stars is Mankind’s next evolutionary stage, an age of limitless resources, limitless space and limitless potential. Out here, free from want or worry or war, all men will work happily knowing that they have secured the future of the human race.
Of course, that is just the rhetoric …
Mankind’s vices, arrogance, folly and greed followed him into space. Today, in 2168, the USSP is an impersonal bureaucracy, composed of interlocking layers of redundant commissariats, councils, worker’s soviets, constituent assemblies and executive committees. This Byzantine bureaucracy is essentially governed by the elite of the Global Progress Party, all members of the Politburo, the highest policy-making authority within the USSP. The Party apparatus creates a ladder of loyalty and power for those who wish to climb it – but the party machine itself is oiled with bribes, extortions, kick-backs and threats. The frontier colonies have quotas to fulfil in order to keep the richer worlds (home to many of the Party hierarchy) supplied with food stuffs and raw materials.
Life in the USSP is dominated by a stifling bureaucracy, a secret police force that has spies on many worlds, and a command economy without any meaningful free-market. To many, especially time-served military veterans, this way of life has become intolerable and so they make their way out to the fringes of explored space. Here, the rigid authority of the USSP is weak, power has been devolved to local military forces and the colonies have more freedoms. There is even an established system of free market interstellar trade – a direct violation of USSP practice, but a necessary one. Kosmos 68 is at the extreme edge of USSP territory. So weak is the civilian government here that the Soviet military is in charge, ruling from the kosmos capital, Archangel. The military high council, the Stavka, controls all Strategic Rocket Forces, Rocket Infantry and Ground Forces throughout the kosmos.
Page 4, Kosmos 68 by Paul Elliot and Zozer Games
The inspirations for this world-building exercise come from:
- Star Trek, The Original Series, with its implied Communist triumph future. This is the aspiration: what it’s all supposed to look like and what state propaganda tells everyone it is like
- Blake’s Seven. This is a lot more what it looks like: a totalitarian system
- Starship Troopers. Again, the utopian version of life in a hierarchical, militaristic system, in a time of war with an enemy that cannot be bullied or ignored
- Aliens. The dystopian version of life in the near future – not so pretty at all
- The writings of Stanislaw Lem, the Strugatsky brothers, and a long list of other brilliant Soviet era science fiction writers. Their wry humour and insightful predictions inform everything
- Dan Dare. The venerable British comic that informs so much of what a post-war heroic future should look like. Rockets and khaki: that’s what
- Science Fiction movies of the 1960’s and 1970’s
DISCLAIMER
This blog and KOSMOS 68 is not endorsing the USSR or the Socialist system that it administered. Nothing you read here should be interpreted as some kind of apologia, or suggestion that maybe that system could have in reality reformed itself and created this future, fulfilling the promises made to raise all humanity to the sunlight upper fields of true Communism.
This presentation should be taken in the same vein as settings that have the Roman Empire in space, or where ingenious amateur scientists invent space travel in the 1800’s and colonise Mars and Venus.
So why then a Soviet vision of space travel?
There are two very strong reasons.
The first and most obvious is that during the ‘space race’ of the 1950’s and 60’s the Soviets showed a commitment to space technology and were leading by any reasonable measure. Real world history tells us that when the Americans beat them to put a human on the moon, the Soviets abandoned the race. It was only a matter of a few weeks either way in the end: is it so hard to imagine that the Americans might too have ceded space if they had lost? And that’s Paul’s premise in the original Kosmos 68. In this alternate timeline, the Soviets put a man on the moon first and then doubled down on their promises to make space travel available for everyone.
The other reason, one that only dawned on me as I read the original KOSMOS 68, is how thoroughly the attitudes and treatments of Traveller can be seamlessly interpreted through a Soviet lens. Monolithic stellar government? Check. Heavy handed customs officials? Check. Secret intelligence agencies that you really should fear? Check. A system based on social status (swap aristocracy for Party membership)? Check. Everyone leaves school and has a stint in the military before they go on to be useful citizens? Check. And so on.
Traveller was made to be Soviet.
This doesn’t mean that the future should be.
(Traveller RPG)
KOSMOS 68 