Prisoners of Power by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (Russian, 1971)

Summary:
Maxim is an explorer who no one took seriously on Earth. He arrives to another land full of radiation, where he gets captured and his ship destroyed. Maxim starts to learn the language of the locals and escapes. Then he meets a woman whose brother is part of the military team called The Legion. The legion was in charge of capturing the "degens" that were anarchists who suffered headaches everyday which they believed came from the ABM towers. While the degens suffered those headaches, the "normal" people sang and thanked "The Creators" for their life. Maxim discovers that the radiation came from those towers and that it controlled people completely. The degens couldn't be controlled and that was why they were being captured and killed by the Legion. Maxim decides that he has to destroy the control center, and make people see they are being controlled. Maxim finally destroys the control center but people start to suffer because of the lack of radiation and continue the war they were in. Maxim believed that Strannik is one of the main men who controls everyone with bad intentions but at the end he finds out that Strannik is also a human from Earth trying to help those people too. Maxim decides not to return to the Earth and to make sure no control center is built again so people can think and act freely.

Another summary:
The book narrates the adventures of Maxim, a native from Earth and a space traveller who gets stranded on a planet called Saraksh. Saraksh is a planet different from the Earth Maxim knows; while the Earth appears to live under a comunist organization, Saraksh is a sort of primitive society (in the eyes of Maxim) that has a totalitarian government. After he lands on the planet his spaceship is destroyed so he adventures into the unknown land and is soon imprisoned since he is thought to be mentally ill. He escapes and later joins the military, where he learns more about the society and how it works. The rulers are known as The Creators, they control the society using towers that broadcast signals that keep the population’s mind in such a state that they cannot critically think and are easily manipulated by the propaganda spread by the government. Maxim leaves the army and sets his mind into taking down the current system. He manages to get into the center, where the government controls the broadcast, with the help of one Creator (who thinks Maxim will handle the control to him) but deceives him by destroying the center, and frees the society from mind control for good. As the society was not used to be free, some of Maxim’s allies foresee a.revolution and upcoming chaos, so Maxim decides to stay in the planet and help that society to recover.

Another summary:
Prisoners of Power deals with the adventures of Maxim Kammerer, an Earthling who is a member of the Independent Reconnaissance Unit (IRU) in a strange and dangerous planet. The natives, a kind of humanoids destroy Maxim’s ship and treat him, at first, as a mental patient. The protagonist soon learns the local language, gaining the favor of the authorities of the land, and is eventually recruited as a soldier; he befriends a soldier called Guy Gaal and falls in love with Rada, Guy’s sister. But when he is ordered to execute a woman prisoner, he refuses and is shot several times. He survives the shooting and escapes to the South, where he is rescued by rebels, called the underground people, and where he discovers that he is immune to this planet’s weapons and that they live under a totalitarian government —a select group of anonymous people called the All-Powerful Creators— that exerts control over people’s minds by means of nuclear radiation. Maxim also finds out that the underground people are the famous degens (degenerates), who are treated as the enemy because the radiation has no effect on their minds but it does inflict pain on their bodies; the Creators are also degens. Together with a group of these rebels, Maxim leads an attack to one of the towers that emits the radiation doses and succeeds, but most of the squad gets killed. Maxim manages to escape to a neighbor country, which he realizes is full of cruel, sadistic people, and decides to come back to the land of the Creators and give himself up. He is sentenced to serve as a soldier on an invasion and is sent to rehabilitation afterwards; some time later, he is installed as a researcher in an institution. There he is contacted by one of the Creators, called Zef, with the purpose of helping him overthrow the system. They carry out a plan and Maxim destroys the Control Center only to find out that Strannik, another of the Creators is an Earthling who has been working for the welfare of the planet for a several number of years. Strannik reveals to Maxim that the radiation towers are the least of these people’s problems, for there are other issues to deal with: famine, diseases, poverty, and threatening enemies. When Strannik orders Maxim to return to Earth, he refuses and determines to stay there in order to improve the life of the place he now calls “Home.”

World view: The world portrayed in the story is an hypothetical society which seems to be worse than the one the author lives in.
Future projections: It’s a negative emotional reaction against technological (transcendental, evolutive) or social progress. As such, It shows the horrible consequences of utopia or at least portrays skepticism or disappointment in regard to scientific or technological miracles.
Ideology: The majority is oppressed by a ruling elite or an individual powergroup that come to dominate society to their own interests.
Characters, plot and writing style: The story features a rebellion against the adverse circumstances (revolutionaries may exploit newer technologies for these ends).
Classification: Non-dystopia