L'ingegnere degli anelli. O come J.R.R. Tolkien stava per diventare un autore di fantascienza in Urss

J.R.R. Tolkien's renowned fantasy work, The Lord of the Rings, has a notably complex history in Russia. The country's ongoing state of change during the decades has influenced the trilogy's fate, turning it into a mirror of the dynamics of assimilation, appropriation, and transformation that are characteristic of Russian culture. In the Soviet Union, the trilogy was censored as a symbol of Western decadence. However, this did not prevent the clandestine circulation (the so-called samizdat) of amateur translations, many of which were not published until after 1991. On the contrary, it prompted unique narrative experiments with the fantasy genre, which was nearly absent in the USSR. One illustrative example from the mid-1960s is Zinaida Bobyr's early translation of the trilogy, The Lay of the Ring (Povest' o Kol'tse). In her failed bid for publication, Bobyr adapted the work to fit the conventions of science fiction, a genre favored by Soviet censorship. Consequently, the magical deeds associated with the Ring are rationally explained by a group of scientists using a narrative device invented by Bobyr to enhance the original's scientific and cognitive potential. Using The Lay of the Ring as a case study, this paper aims to examine how Tolkien's work was altered under the USSR's censorship regime, with a particular focus on the assimilation and metamorphosis of foreign cultural models.