Rejecting Cure: The Strugatskys’ Roadside Picnic and Tarkovsky’s Stalker as Disability Narratives

Cure narratives are a major trope of Western science fiction. Such stories prominently feature a speculative cure for physical and developmental disabilities (Allan 2013). I analyze two Soviet classics – the science fiction novel Roadside Picnic (1972) by the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, and the film Stalker (1979), loosely based on the novel and directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Using disability studies approaches, as well as close readings, to argue that Roadside Picnic presents both a cure and an anti-cure narrative: a child’s disability is a motivator for a parent’s quest for her wellness, but this motivator is ultimately abandoned in favor of a utopian approach to human yearning which emphasizes happiness for all. Tarkovsky’s Stalker entirely rejects the idea of a cure for the same child, alongside its rejection of materialistic motivations. While Western cure narratives might be intimately tied to the history of able-bodiedness as a capitalist value, examining these Soviet works highlights that cure narratives exist beyond capitalist societies. The trope of “cure” and the pushback against it are a concern of literary production beyond Western imaginaries. Rejecting cure not just as a trope, but as a legitimate desire of a parental figure for their child, these Soviet speculative classics refuse to embed disabled, neurodivergent, and mentally ill people in systems that dehumanize them, and envision alternate possibilities – which are often in contrast with the lived experiences of disability in the Soviet Union.