<p>Young adult and children’s dystopias enable young readers to engage with social structures and their contradictions; as these are culturally specific, dystopia may be understood as culturally contingent, which suggests the need to expand critical discussions that have largely centred on the anglophone production of this genre. This article focuses on dystopia within socialist and post-socialist contexts. During the Cold War, children’s literature, particularly fantasy narratives, provided Eastern European authors with a medium for articulating veiled political critiques. Jože Snoj's <i>Auto-Moto Ants</i> (1975) provides an interesting illustration of Hunt’s (2009) claim that the best children’s literature preserves traditional structures while subtly undermining them, since it hyperbolically subverts socialist ideology in the dystopian world and contrasts it with a nostalgic patriarchal family idyll in the primary world. The representation of technology further intensifies this subversive-conservative ambivalence, functioning both as an instrument of control over the auto-moto ant collective and as a means of empowerment and liberation for the child protagonists. The 2023 adaptation preserves the original’s core narrative, but the strategy of indirect critique shaped by the need to evade censorship is replaced by a predominantly visual allegory that is no longer intended to conceal meaning. The cross-over appeal of the original is maintained, enticing novice readers with its immersive dystopian atmosphere, while inviting informed readers to recognise layered references. The juxtaposition of socialist-era monuments, contemporary technological motifs, and global political imagery produces a collage-like narrative space in which multiple temporal layers intersect.</p>