OCTOBRIANA: The Genesis Of A Comics Legend -- page three
 So that was the PPP group's first official introduction to Octobriana.
The immortality of this creature, and the superman powers that
she acquired in the crater of a radioactive volcano, made her
an ideal vehicle for the ideas of the PPP. Octobriana could travel
anywhere in the world she wished -- a privilege entirely foreign
to Soviet citizens, who can hardly travel outside their own towns
without a great deal of stamping of internal passports and issuing
of Putyovkas (official travel documents). To identify with someone
who could be in North Borneo one day, Washington DC the next,
and in the South Sea Islands the day after was a pleasure which,
although readily available to the Western reader, was heady wine
for the citizens of the Socialist paradise. And when to freedom
of movement in space was added freedom of movement in time, Octobriana
was clearly a being of almost irresistible appeal for the already
disaffected members of PPP.
But when Octobriana deployed her remarkable gifts, to what end
was she to use them? The clue lies in her name. Octobriana may
be loosely translated 'the spirit of the October Revolution'.
Some members of PPP, like other young Communist idealists before
them, believed, and as far as I know still believe, that the principles
of the Communist Revolution were absolutely right, that Lenin,
had his ideals not been perverted by his power-hungry and bloodthirsty
confreres, could really have been what the Communists still persist
in claiming what it was -- a 20th Century saviour of mankind and
the architect of a better world, from which oppression and exploitation
would forever be excluded.
But when they were finally convinced by the excesses of Stalinism,
and by the failure of Stalin's allegedly 'liberal' heirs to implement
the promises of the 20th Party Congress, that while Communism
was good, Soviet Communism was a perversion, they had to create
for themselves a new hero. This hero had to embody the true principles
of the October Revolution, which because of the very truth they
knew must have existed from the beginning of time. Octobriana,
the true spirit of great October, flies about as she pleases in
her wonder-machine, acting sometimes as an agent of the Pentagon,
sometimes on behalf of Peking, but always to combat oppression
of the kind practised by the Kremlin and by the worst colonial
empires of the past. She might turn up in the Gobi Desert, or
in the frozen wastes of Soviet Kamchatka; she might speed to oppose
a Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia, and again she might enlist
the ancient Red Indian tribes of North America in all their glory
to thwart the evil geniuses of Stalin and Beria. In the journal
Mtsyry , Numbers 12 and 13, 1963, a series of comic strips and many stories
were in preparation under the overall title: 'Okhotoiki an golovami
dlya polskoy i checkoslovatskey kompartii' (Headhunters for the
Polish and Czech Communist Parties).
Why was this theme chosen? We had just been discussing the reasons
for and the true nature of the Soviet intervention in Hungary
in 1956. And the question arose of what would happen if a similar
situation were to arise in future. What sort of situation would
it be, and how would the USSR react to it now?
 So we invented a fantastic tale. In 1969 the Kremlin entrusts
the Czechoslovak and Polish Communist Parties with the task of
hiring and organising some of the famous South American head-hunters
-- the Indians of Jivaro tribe with their noiseless method of
killing, the blowing of darts poisoned with curare -- to wreak
political chaos in the USA. Octobriana organises an anti-commando
force made up of North American Sioux and Apache, and wipes out
the Jivaros. But meanwhile a strong faction has appeared within
the Czechoslovak Communist Party fighting for independence, for
an end to the slavish dependence on the Kremlin's dictates. They
seize power, and the USSR intervenes by force of arms. On November
17 1970, Czechoslovakia and Poland are occupied. And finally Krushchev
-- hypothetically still in power -- utters the fatalistic words:
"We would never have preserved socialism without helicopters,
but we lost it even with helicopters. We seem to be in a blind
alley, comrades."
The members of PPP chose Czechoslovakia as a compliment to me,
and also because I was in a position to supply them immediately
with all the collateral -- both texts and photographs. We had
little idea that our fantasy would become reality in 1968 (Stu:
Russia ended up invading Czecholovakia in 1968).
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