Platonov and the Soviet Natural World in the 1930S Carly Tozian Faculty Advisor

Tozian 1 Challenging Stalinist Exploitation: Platonov and the Soviet Natural World in the 1930s Carly Tozian Faculty Advisor: Professor James Goodwin Honors Thesis in Russian Studies 20 April 2021 Tozian 2 Introduction The 1920s and 1930s were not a time of literary liberty in the Soviet Union, nor were they a time for environmental protection. Under Stalin, the literary world and the natural world suffered similar prescriptions of exploitation. Stalin implemented policies such as the First Five Year Plan and the Belomor canal project which had detrimental effects upon the natural landscape. These plans were tailored for political and economic gain, no matter the cost of human or other life. In the literary sphere, writers were published only if they agreed to represent the progression of society into the ideal socialist world by adhering to the genre of Socialist Realism. For this reason, many works from well-known writers remained unpublished from the beginning of the1930s until Stalin’s death in 1953, chief among them, Andrei Platonov. Those of his works that were not published in his lifetime include The Foundation Pit, his short novel “The Juvenile Sea,” as well as other film scripts and plays. His novella “For Future Use” was published, but immediately received harsh criticism from other writers and even from Stalin (Pit 156-7). Through his unique style, Platonov “documented” the experiences he witnessed during the time of the First Five Year plan and the implementation of other Stalinist policies throughout his fictional works. I argue that Platonov fashions his own “real” socialist realist method in contrast to the prescribed one, which was committed to the party line. By “real,” I mean that his style functions as a legitimate critical realism, faithful to its name, by representing the authentic, tragic realities experienced by all living beings under Stalin’s regime, as well as by challenging the predominant utilitarian attitude towards nature. He builds this “real” socialist realism Tozian 3 through anthropomorphism, depictions of sympathy and brutality among his characters, and contrasting images of death and of utopia. First, I will discuss some background on Platonov’s personal life, the origins and elements of Socialist Realism, and Stalinist views of nature. Afterwards I will analyze the works I have chosen, organized by rhetorical devices, and how they challenge the utilitarian view of the natural world. Platonov often employs these devices in his work, but they are especially significant in The Foundation Pit (1930), “Among Animals and Plants” (1936), and “The Cow” (1938-1939). Andrei Platonov When considering certain aspects of Platonov’s personal life, the motivations and inspirations for his writing become clearer. Andrei Platonovich Klimentov was born Voronezh, Russia in 1899 (Jordan 5). He grew up alongside the revolutions and was, from the beginning, a proponent of communism (Chandler, Soul, vii). He was the oldest of eight children and began working at thirteen years old but taught himself science so that he might later study it in a higher institution (Jordan 5,7). During the Civil War, Platonov worked as a journalist for the Red Army. At eighteen years old, he worked at his local publishing press and published articles and poems (Chandler, Soul, viii). Then, in the 1920s, he worked as an engineer on some of Stalin’s land construction projects, switching over from “contemplative work” to physical labor (Chandler, Pit, 155- 6). Since Platonov worked in the natural sciences and engineering as well as in writing, he witnessed first-hand the costs that came with early Soviet large-scale industrialization plans. During the period of collectivization under the First Five Year Plan (1928-1932), writers were typically sent Tozian 4 to “model” collective farms in order to create content about them for the masses; conversely, Platonov was sent as an engineer to ones which were in need of assistance by the Commissariat of Agriculture. Consequently, Platonov saw the real, darker side of collectivization, the side that was not talked about in Soviet media (Chandler, Pit, 156). He documented the failures of these farms in personal journals, an extremely dangerous practice at the time (156). Platonov worked in journalism later in his life as well. He was a correspondent for the Red Army once again from 1942-1946 through its publication “Red Star” (Chandler, Soul, viii). All of his life, Platonov wanted to contribute to humanity in two distinct ways: he was torn by his desire to materially improve the existence of his fellow Soviet citizens, and by his desire to write, embodying “the empathetic interpretation of human life” (Seifrid, Companion, 6). I maintain that Platonov was also motivated by his sensitivity toward the natural world that likely evolved as a result of his experience of the utilitarian aspirations of the Stalin period. Witnessing this exploitation of the environment shaped his opinions, and consequently his writing. According to Seifrid, Platonov had an ambivalent attitude towards the First Five Year plan (Seifrid, Uncertainties, 153). This is not to say that Platonov’s writing is an absolute condemnation of the Five-Year Plan or man’s struggle with nature in general. Of course, Platonov participated in many of the environmental transformation projects under Stalin, created in the hopes of altering the earth in order to better fit the needs of man. He participated in projects which achieved the excavation of 763 ponds, the digging of 331 wells, drainage of 7600 desyatina of land, the irrigation of land, the construction of bridges and dams and installation of 3 electrical stations (Uncertainties 7). As previously mentioned, he was a proponent of the October Revolution, hoping that it would bring about the changes needed to improve the standard of living in Russia (Companion 6). However, he was fired from an engineering position Tozian 5 for his other passion—writing (Companion 15). As seen from his work as an engineer, Platonov wanted to contribute to remaking physical existence, as his characters do in their respective ways in “Among Animals and Plants,” The Foundation Pit, and “The Cow.” Overall, his attitude towards these plans is well embodied in Seifrid’s word choice of “ambivalent:” he wanted to improve human existence, but simultaneously recognized that to do so under Stalin entailed not only the pain and suffering of the laborers, but also of the non-human living beings whose natural habitats were destroyed in the process. Many of Platonov’s works were not published in his lifetime, and some of those that were received heavy backlash within the literary sphere. His tendency to overtly express skepticism about collectivization and general lack of victory of man over his circumstances (and over nature) was a cause for this (Jordan 33). He was often described as pessimistic, an attitude not conducive to Socialist Realism. Soviet writer Maksim Gorky told Platonov, even before the official establishment of Socialist Realism, that his work would not be picked up by any publishers (28-29). Platonov’s publisher, Alexander Fadeyev, published “For Future Use,” and when this work received harsh criticism, Fadeyev immediately relinquished his support for Platonov, calling him a “kulak agent” (Kemp-Welch 81). Platonov was not the only person in his family who faced consequences for potentially anti-Soviet sentiments. His son was arrested by the N.K.V.D. in 1938 as a teenager for purportedly leading an anti-Soviet terrorist group and was sent to a gulag (Uncertainties, 13). Rumors circulated that Stalin did not like Platonov, thus his status as a writer did not help him get his son out of the gulag (Jordan 99). Writer Mikhail Sholokhov helped to get Platonov’s son released after two years of his ten-year sentence, though in his time at the camp he contracted tuberculosis and died upon returning home (99). With this knowledge of Platonov’s experience Tozian 6 in engineering and journalism in mind, as well as his personal and familial experiences, I assert that these are all motivations for his literary works to be fictionalized documentations of his own “real” socialist realism, by someone who is ideologically committed to socialism but keenly aware of a far-from-perfect reality. Socialist Realism Before characterizing Platonov as an adversary of the mandated Socialist Realism, it is important to know the origins and function of this cultural formula in the artistic spheres of Soviet society. Socialist Realism was firmly established by 1934 as the state-wide method for literature, and all other forms of art. At their core, Socialist Realist works had to adhere to the same political and aesthetic views (Dobrenko 2). In the words of Andrei Zhdanov, the Party Secretary at the time of the first Writers Congress, Socialist Realist writers had to “depict reality in its revolutionary development” while also committing to “the ideological remoulding and education of the toiling people in the spirit of socialism” (Zhdanov 21). These Socialist Realist works had to be “politically tendentious,” “ideologically committed,” and contain the “popular spirit”; as a consequence, the idea of “art for art’s sake,” no longer played a role in the development of literature or culture (Dobrenko 3). In some way, all art produced had to benefit the party. Things that might commonly be seen in a piece of legitimate critical realism were deemed atypical and unacceptable by the party in Socialist Realism, including “economic hardship, difficult living conditions, and political repression” within the USSR. The tendency was to write realistically about the ideal world of socialism as if it were a reflection of the current time (Dobrenko 2-4). Katerina Clark outlines the most common types of Soviet novels that were written as a result of the new nationwide literary mandate as the production novel, the historical Tozian 7 novel, the novel about an intellectual or inventor, the war/revolution novel, spy/villain novel, and the novel about the West (Clark 255).

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