Octobriana

Octobriana is a Russian comic superhero created by Petr Sadecký by modifying the work of Czech artists Bohumil Konečný and Zdeněk Burian for an unpublished comic book series Sadecký commissioned them to do, under the working title of Amazona. As a character embodying Communist ideals, Octobriana was said to be usable by anyone who wanted, rather than being copyrighted by an author or corporation. This has resulted in the character appearing in various artistic works since her first official published appearance in the political art book Octobriana and the Russian Underground, by Petr Sadecký, published by Tom Stacey in 1971. Petr Sadecký had created a fictitious real life origin for the character, which he presented as true. In Octobriana and the Russian Underground, Sadecký describes the PPP as a loose group of cells, not only in Russia, but throughout the Soviet Union. This group, Sadecký wrote, started around 1957, after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956. At first they called themselves Progressivnaya Politika (Progressive Politics) and tried to go back to the pure principles of the White movement and their Scandinavian roots; the Rus’ people. They were descendants of the Vikings. Later they put together samizdat comics about the superheroine Octobriana, a character said to embody the principles of the Russian Revolution and battle against both Russian and American oppression. Sadecky provided a history for Octobriana where she is said to be thousands of years old and the child of a Viking and a Toltec princes, whose original name was Mahari (which means “divine maiden” in Sanskrit). She was given radiation treatments that made her immortal and reborn as a superhuman in a radioactive volcano. Her ethnicity has often shifted; the initial Amazona character seems to have been a confused mix of different indigenous backgrounds. In Sadecky’s book, she was said to have Mongolian features. Later portrayals have often ignored this and rendered her as white. Sadecky portrayed her as a legendary figure who has been sighted throughout history; there are reports from Siberia, Spain in the time of the Spanish Inquisition, Chinese explorer Zhang Qian, and an unpublished book by left wing Moroccan politician Mehdi Ben Barka. She has been called The White She-Dragon, The Girl with the White Face Coming from the Sky, The Mother of the Seven Red Stars, Angelic Maiden who Turned into a Devil, the Avenger. It is said that she comes from an ancient civilization and was granted immortality by radiation treatments, then underwent an ordeal in a radioactive volcano which transformed her into a superhuman being. She pilots the Wonder Machine, which travels through time and space, crewed by Native Americans. Her weapons and equipment include a Smith & Wesson revolver, a kris knife, and a shark-tooth necklace which can detect radiation. One story was “The Living Sphinx of the Kamchatka Radioactive Volcano 1934”, in which she swims into a radioactive volcano and kills a giant walrus with her kris. Afterwards she brings the tribesmen of the Koryaks home with a giant flying ball. Another story was titled “Octobriana and the Atomic Suns”. The supposed origin of the character was in actuality Sadecký’s own creation. Petr Sadecký, while still in Prague, enlisted the help of two Czech artists, Bohumil Konečný and Zdeněk Burian, in creating a comic centering on the character of “Amazona.” Sadecký told the two that he had a buyer interested in the comic, and they worked together on writing and illustrating the Amazona comic. However, Sadecký betrayed his friends by stealing all the artwork and escaping to the West. When there was no publisher interest after a number of years, Sadecký changed the Amazona strips into a political statement, by adding a red star to the character’s forehead, creating an elaborate back story, and renaming her as “Octobriana: the spirit of the October Revolution”. When news reached Konečný, he was shocked that his work had been misused without his consent, and eventually managed to confront Sadecký at the office of the German publishing house that Sadecký was employed by. Under the threat of legal action, some of the stolen artwork was returned, but Sadecký went to the UK shortly afterwards with pages and cover art that he had stolen, finding a sympathetic publisher for his fictional Octobriana story in Tom Stacey, who was unaware of the previous controversy. Major inconsistencies in the story Sadecký presented in the published Octobriana and the Russian Underground book, and a panel in his book where Octobriana is referred to as “Amazona” (p. 83), lend credence to this story. In addition, Burian and Konečný sued Sadecký in a West German court, winning the case but never recovering all their stolen artwork. As Octobriana is still widely believed to be the product of dissident cells within the U.S.S.R., she is not copyrighted, and has appeared in a variety of artistic incarnations.