{"title":"“野兽电脑”的传说:历史、迁移和文化背景","authors":"A. Panchenko","doi":"10.31860/2712-7591-2022-3-134-159","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In the 2000s, Russian Orthodox believers underwent a moral panic related to the spread of new informational technologies and the rise of state individual identification systems. Among other factors contributing to the panic was the legend about “the Beast Computer in Brussels”. This article deals with its initial history, translations of the legend into Russian, as well as the cultural and ideological contexts that promoted its global popularity. The article supplements previous publications on this topic by the author. The genesis and the immediate context of the legend have been debated by scholars. Only recently, however, Eugene Clay discovered that the story was invented and publicized by the American evangelical preacher David Wilkerson (1931–2011) in 1973. By the end of the 1970s, the legend had become immensely popular amongst evangelical Christians in the US. In the 1980s, it was translated into several languages and spread globally in different confessional and secular contexts. One of its first translations into Russian was published in 1981 by Pavel Vaulin (1918-2007), a professor at the University of South Alabama. Another Russian compilation of the legend was probably composed in the early 1980s in Sacramento by Vera Tyson, an editor at the Russian Baptist newspaper Nashi Dni (“Our Days”). This text was popular with both the Baptists and the Russian Old Believers in the US and abroad. Some other Russian publications about the Beast Computer appeared in Russia in the early 1990s. The initial dissemination of the Russian versions of the legend was related to its popularity among relatively small and marginal émigré groups whose eschatology and conspiratorial fantasies developed from the ideas of anti-globalism and social escapism. In the post-Soviet religious culture, however, the story about the Beast Computer soon became widely known and popular. The reason for its extreme popularity was probably “agency panic”, especially characteristic of the societies that appeared on the fragmented terrain of the post-Soviet empire.","PeriodicalId":134383,"journal":{"name":"Texts and History Journal of Philological Historical and Cultural Texts and History Studies","volume":"52 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"THE LEGEND OF THE “BEAST COMPUTER”: HISTORY, MIGRATION, AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS\",\"authors\":\"A. Panchenko\",\"doi\":\"10.31860/2712-7591-2022-3-134-159\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"In the 2000s, Russian Orthodox believers underwent a moral panic related to the spread of new informational technologies and the rise of state individual identification systems. Among other factors contributing to the panic was the legend about “the Beast Computer in Brussels”. This article deals with its initial history, translations of the legend into Russian, as well as the cultural and ideological contexts that promoted its global popularity. The article supplements previous publications on this topic by the author. The genesis and the immediate context of the legend have been debated by scholars. Only recently, however, Eugene Clay discovered that the story was invented and publicized by the American evangelical preacher David Wilkerson (1931–2011) in 1973. By the end of the 1970s, the legend had become immensely popular amongst evangelical Christians in the US. In the 1980s, it was translated into several languages and spread globally in different confessional and secular contexts. One of its first translations into Russian was published in 1981 by Pavel Vaulin (1918-2007), a professor at the University of South Alabama. Another Russian compilation of the legend was probably composed in the early 1980s in Sacramento by Vera Tyson, an editor at the Russian Baptist newspaper Nashi Dni (“Our Days”). This text was popular with both the Baptists and the Russian Old Believers in the US and abroad. Some other Russian publications about the Beast Computer appeared in Russia in the early 1990s. The initial dissemination of the Russian versions of the legend was related to its popularity among relatively small and marginal émigré groups whose eschatology and conspiratorial fantasies developed from the ideas of anti-globalism and social escapism. In the post-Soviet religious culture, however, the story about the Beast Computer soon became widely known and popular. The reason for its extreme popularity was probably “agency panic”, especially characteristic of the societies that appeared on the fragmented terrain of the post-Soviet empire.\",\"PeriodicalId\":134383,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Texts and History Journal of Philological Historical and Cultural Texts and History Studies\",\"volume\":\"52 1\",\"pages\":\"0\"},\"PeriodicalIF\":0.0000,\"publicationDate\":\"1900-01-01\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"0\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Texts and History Journal of Philological Historical and Cultural Texts and History Studies\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"1085\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.31860/2712-7591-2022-3-134-159\",\"RegionNum\":0,\"RegionCategory\":null,\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"\",\"JCRName\":\"\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Texts and History Journal of Philological Historical and Cultural Texts and History Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.31860/2712-7591-2022-3-134-159","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
THE LEGEND OF THE “BEAST COMPUTER”: HISTORY, MIGRATION, AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS
In the 2000s, Russian Orthodox believers underwent a moral panic related to the spread of new informational technologies and the rise of state individual identification systems. Among other factors contributing to the panic was the legend about “the Beast Computer in Brussels”. This article deals with its initial history, translations of the legend into Russian, as well as the cultural and ideological contexts that promoted its global popularity. The article supplements previous publications on this topic by the author. The genesis and the immediate context of the legend have been debated by scholars. Only recently, however, Eugene Clay discovered that the story was invented and publicized by the American evangelical preacher David Wilkerson (1931–2011) in 1973. By the end of the 1970s, the legend had become immensely popular amongst evangelical Christians in the US. In the 1980s, it was translated into several languages and spread globally in different confessional and secular contexts. One of its first translations into Russian was published in 1981 by Pavel Vaulin (1918-2007), a professor at the University of South Alabama. Another Russian compilation of the legend was probably composed in the early 1980s in Sacramento by Vera Tyson, an editor at the Russian Baptist newspaper Nashi Dni (“Our Days”). This text was popular with both the Baptists and the Russian Old Believers in the US and abroad. Some other Russian publications about the Beast Computer appeared in Russia in the early 1990s. The initial dissemination of the Russian versions of the legend was related to its popularity among relatively small and marginal émigré groups whose eschatology and conspiratorial fantasies developed from the ideas of anti-globalism and social escapism. In the post-Soviet religious culture, however, the story about the Beast Computer soon became widely known and popular. The reason for its extreme popularity was probably “agency panic”, especially characteristic of the societies that appeared on the fragmented terrain of the post-Soviet empire.