Vasily Aksyonov's "The Island of Crimea" as a Counterfactual Novel and the History of Counterfactual Thinking in the Soviet Union

Abstract: In Vasily Aksyonov's novel "The Island of Crimea" (1981) the plot focuses on a violent occupation of Crimea by the Soviet Union. Crimea in the novel is not a peninsula, but an island, which could…