Don Rumata
https://socialistworker.co.uk/socialist-review-archive/hard-be-god/
Hard to Be a God is a story about a group of historians from a future socialist Earth observing daily life on a feudal planet. The historian Anton has adopted the disguise of the warlord Don Reba and is transmitting scenes of a palace coup back to his colleagues on Earth as it unfolds before him.
Anton is under a proscription not to interfere in the planet’s political and social development. He has access to technology that makes him a god in comparison to the planet’s inhabitants but he is bound to sit back and watch as anyone who’s literate or cultured in any way is slaughtered by the superstitious locals.
It serves to remind us that progress in history is painfully slow and each advance is to be treasured. It also reminds us of Karl Marx’s insight that “social being determines social consciousness” as Anton, surrounded by filth and bloodshed, regresses to the level of the planet’s inhabitants.
forced to be a passive observer to the unyeilding cruelty of human existance