The Little Prince in the belly of the whale. How Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was swallowed by Maxim Gorky
Abstract
The study deals with the Tupolev ANT-20 "Maxim Gorky" aircraft, which was built in 1934 in the Soviet Union as a machine intended mainly for agitation purposes. At that time it was the largest aircraft in the world.
However, in May 1935, it tragically crashed. Through an account of its fate, the text explores the relationship between technology, ideology and culture in the Soviet totalitarian regime.
It also brings the reader closer to how the Soviet regime was perceived and evaluated by the French aviator and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of the famous book The Little Prince. Namely, Saint-Exupéry visited Moscow as a journalist in the spring of 1935 and flew as a passenger in the Soviet giant agitprop plane the day before its fatal crash.