Tales of repression and political upheavals gone wrong, especially if set in the Russian context, cannot but bring to mind George Orwell's Animal Farm, where brutality and persecution are inflicted on the hapless subjects of the ruler of the farm. The influence of Orwell is also felt in subtle echoes of 1984 and his condemnation of doublespeak—the coercive use of language which obliterates its power to express disquiet or rebellion. Where Orwell's Big Brother & Co. turn the War Ministry into the Ministry of Peace, in Arkanar the royal Tower of torture and sadistic interrogation gets renamed the Tower of Joy.

Among the Strugatskys' works, Tale of the Troika and Ugly Swans are only two among other works that mercilessly target the worst excesses of rampant bureaucracy, Soviet or home made. Much like Hard to Be a God they are a sly mix of contemporary socio-political...