I'm in the middle of Strugatsky brothers' "Probationers" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Apprentice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Apprentice - which

I'm in the middle of Strugatsky brothers' "Probationers" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Apprentice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Apprentice - which paint another picture of motivation than this. Strugatsky brothers are foundational to Soviet sci-fi literature just as Alexander Solzhenitsyn is foundational to Soviet opression literature.