"No wars, no pain, no suffering" - the coming XX century in the forecasts of writers

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

On December 31, 1900, the publisher Suvorin himself described the coming XX century in his newspaper Novoye Vremya: “Crime will sharply decrease and completely disappear, no later than 1997;; "Would Cain raise his hand against his brother if he had a cozy house with a warm water closet and the opportunity to get in touch with a phonographic miracle."

But Suvorin enters into correspondence polemics with the French artist and science fiction writer Robida, who saw the 20th century as a century of war, want, misery and hardship.

How they saw the coming XX century in 1900 was described in the book "Old Petersburg. The Age of Modernity" (publishing house "Pushkin Foundation", 2001).

“The advent of the 20th century forced many to ponder the future. Science fiction writers made gloomy forecasts. One of them, now thoroughly forgotten by the Frenchman Albert Robida, published at the end of the century novels with his own illustrations:“The Twentieth Century”,“Electric Life”,“Wars in the XX century ", which were translated into Russian and published as one book in St. Petersburg, in the printing house of the Panteleev brothers, in 1894. In a parody manner, Robida predicted many great discoveries and sinister cataclysms. He quite accurately guessed the date of the Russian Revolution and World War II war (which the Chinese are starting with him), predicted forms of government of this kind, when the state receives "the right to dispose at its discretion the lives of citizens and cover the earth with their corpses", predicted overpopulation and pollution of the globe, grandiose electrical disasters when "free current" reservoir and powerful electric storms are raging over Europe - something reminiscent of Chernobyl.

Another seer, the writer Jack London, in his novel Iron Heel, portrayed the monstrous dictatorship of the technocratic oligarchy in the United States of the 20th century, a dictatorship that flooded the country with blood and turned most of the workers and farmers into disenfranchised slaves. Fortunately, this did not happen in the USA, but we know about the domination of the “iron heel” firsthand.

The newspapers wrote about the incredible growth of cities in the near future, that in European capitals, in London, for example, the number of carriages and horses would increase so much that cities would be littered with manure.

Many predictions now seem naive and ridiculous, many, alas, have come true. In December 1900, Aleksey Suvorin, the owner of the St. Petersburg newspaper Novoye Vremya, published his own article with caustic arguments about the new and the old, about decadence: “Is there a difference between the new century and the old? An eleven-year-old girl, having argued with the governess, told her: "You do not understand me, because you are the 19th century, and I am the 20th". Her grandfather told her that she had no idea about 19 or 20. “A hundred years difference,” she quickly told him and ran away.

It is human nature to hope, and the expectation of a change for the better is imbued with an article of the "New Time" entitled "1900", published in the newspaper on December 31, 1900:

“Like a traveler who climbed heavily on a steep and high mountain, we climbed 13 days late today to the top of the 19th century to say“I'm sorry”to him. The author considers the 19th century to be the century of wars - there were 80 of them for the century, which began on Tuesday - the day of Mars. It is sad to read these lines today - from the height of the omniscience of the people of the late 20th century who survived monstrous wars.

We quote this article by Suvorin for December 31, 1900:

"An excerpt of a pre-New Year article in the St. Petersburg newspaper" Novoye Vremya "edited by A. Suvorin.

The best minds in Europe make optimistic forecasts about the beneficialness of progress and the softening of the mores of mankind. Already now we can confidently assert that humanity in the twentieth century will completely abandon wars and internecine claims, the forces of science will defeat debilitating diseases, and maybe death itself, the rights of man and citizen of the Russian Empire will be guaranteed by the wise Monarch, from the vocabulary of our grandchildren will disappear disgusting words "hunger", "prostitution", "revolution", "violence".

Crime in any of its ugly faces will sharply decrease, and completely disappear, no later than 1997, and there will no longer be any "blank spots" and undeveloped areas on the world map.

All the whims of the great dreamer Jules Verne will become possible - flying from a cannon to the moon will become as commonplace as a trip in a city omnibus. Judge for yourself, dear readers, would Cain have raised his hand against his brother if he had a cozy house with a warm water closet and the opportunity to get in touch with a phonographic miracle.

Our ancestors can only envy us from the grave - they were unhappy because they were hungry, but did not taste the sweets of the new century - a century without wars and sorrows, we proudly say to our grandchildren, sitting in front of an electric fireplace in 1950 - "We lived at the source of the great era of prosperity!"

But there are also skeptical voices. Let's listen to them.

French skeptic writer Albert Robida, published at his own expense in the Paris publishing house "Societe" which caused a stir in circles "belles lettres", a trilogy with his own illustrations "The Twentieth Century", "Electric Life" "Wars in the XX century". With the last work of the Parisian The reader had the pleasure of meeting the alarmist in the appendix to the Niva, for January 1899.

In each of the three novels, Monsieur Robin paints with pasty paints a picture of the coming horrors, one stroke more absurd than the other, to the delight of the destructive chatterboxes-dekadents. Here, if you please see:

- a war in which all civilized states take part, - cramped, charming cities, where people are flattened, like pressed caviar in a barrel, where even meters of living space do not belong to you, - monstrous octopuses - states where the right of secret offices reigns to dispose of the lives of citizens at their discretion and to cover the ground with their corpses, - London 1965, where the number of carriages and horses has reached such a number that the population suffocates from the miasma of dung, - the impending decline in morals, when maiden honor is considered a mental illness, - unbridled cynicism and general venality of all segments of the population, - an orgy of vulgarity and self-interest, - motherhood and virginity, put up for auction, - unseen before diseases, - soil erosion, drying up of the seas, - surrogates of music and literature for one-dimensional souls swam with mental fat, - and poisonous gases - which is completely impossible - after all, any gas sprayed over an army or civilian population will immediately escape into the air.

But we hope that in the twentieth century even firearms will serve only hunters and collectors. Let's laugh at the mourning fantasy and say:

"Monsieur Robin, leave your terrible Christmas tales to the old nannies. The Great Twentieth Century is coming and no new wine is poured into old wineskins. Let the deadly shots of the 19th century sink into oblivion forever under the cheerful cries of the feast and the bloodless cannonade of corks from bottles of sparkling wine!"