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 , 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For this reason, many works from well-known writers remained unpublished from the beginning of the1930s until Stalin’s death in 1953, chief among them, . 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 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 “ 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). The most popular among these was the production novel, which includes at least six important plot elements involving the inception of, obstacles to, and fulfillment of a Soviet project (Clark, 256-259). In a word, the Soviet production novel was formulaic, incorporating familiar elements to represent the spirit of Socialist construction.

Even popular writers of the time were not afraid to distinguish Socialist Realism from the style of critical realism. In his speech at the First Soviet Writers’ Congress in 1934, Gorky established that critical realism as it existed before the USSR was not fit to “educate socialist individuality,” which, he asserted, could only be achieved through the implementation of collective labor and freeing the working class from the confines of capitalism (Gorky, Congress,

65). He claimed that the state’s aim should be the education of the masses through its writers, and that “this aim… imposes on us writers the need of strict responsibility for our work… This places us not only in the position, traditional to realist literature, of ‘judges of the world and men,’ ‘critics of life,’ but gives us the right to participate directly in the construction of a new life, in the process of ‘changing the world’” (Congress 67). In other words, the new socialist realism was to transcend its predecessor by giving its writers the power to represent the world how they wanted it to become, and not to criticize the current status quo. Platonov’s publisher

Fadeyev, among others, further developed this formula of Socialist Realism by “demanding from writers above all optimism, an ability to see the promise of tomorrow in the reality of today, however contradictory these two might be” (Jordan 31).

Socialist Realism is perhaps best exemplified by Nikolai Ostrovsky’s How the Steel Was

Tempered, published in two parts in 1932 and 1934. The main character of the two-part novel,

Pavel Korchagin, becomes the classic Socialist Realist positive hero who grows up in Ukraine Tozian 8 during World War I and the Civil War, coming of age in a time of vicious conflict. He fights for the Red Army and overcomes personal obstacles, including physical injuries, in order to contribute to the socialist effort until the day he dies (Clark 132).

Korchagin responds to the obstacles on his path to building socialism with heroic strength: descriptions such as “Pavel did not succumb to typhoid fever. For the fourth time he crossed the borderline of death and came back to life” illustrate his need to live and work, and his noble determination to be of use to the building of socialism (Ostrovsky 68). Throughout the two volumes, Korchagin overcomes many such obstacles: later in volume two, it is discovered that a spinal injury he sustained while fighting in the civil war is causing him painful fits, which, like his contraction of typhoid, temporarily prevents him from working. While recovering from typhoid in a provincial town, Pavel reminisces on the noise of the city life and his previous work:

“But most of all he yearned for the huge brick factory buildings, the sooty workshops, the machines, the low hum of transmission belts. He yearned for the mad spinning of the giant flywheels, for the smell of machine oil, for all that had become so much a part of him. This quiet provincial town whose streets he now roamed filled him with a vague feeling of depression” (72. Emphasis mine).

Though Part 2 of How the Steel Was Tempered was published four years after The

Foundation Pit was written, the expectations of the Socialist Realism were nevertheless taking shape at the time. As Pavel Korchagin later comes to be known as the quintessential positive hero, Platonov’s characters can serve as counterexamples. While there are parallels between

Korchagin and Nastya from The Foundation Pit, there are more striking differences between them. Nastya is a young girl who Voshchev’s co-laborer takes under his wing after her mother dies. To the other characters in the novel, Nastya epitomizes the young socialist who, from her first appearance to her death at the end of the story, goads her comrades to contribute to the effort of digging out the foundation pit. Where these two characters differ is exposed through Tozian 9

Nastya’s death, which is brought on by a cold. While Korchagin faces four near-death experiences and begs for work despite being incapacitated by pain, it is merely a cold that kills the “weak” Nastya. Chiklin, one of the workers on the foundation pit, decides to bury her deep in the ground, “so that the child would never be troubled by the noise of life from the earth’s surface” (Platonov, Pit, 149). The desire for quiet does not emanate from Nastya herself, who is a supporter of socialism and production, but rather is a projection from Chiklin. To Korchagin, in contrast, this end would be most undignified: he is repelled by provinciality and yearns for the noises, smells and motion of life in the city, away from the “melancholy hush on the outskirts of town” (Ostrovsky 73). This noiselessness provided to Nastya after death and Korchagin’s desire for constant noise sharply sets these two quintessential socialist characters apart. Chiklin’s expectation that Nastya would want to be buried away from the noise of life is uncharacteristic of the socialist hero archetype, a role righteously filled by Korchagin.

The expected pattern of a true Socialist Realist novel would be that, after Nastya’s death, the workers would continue their work, and might even be further motivated by her death in order to construct the residential building atop the foundation pit and go on living within it.

Instead, the novel ends when Nastya dies. This sense of loss only breeds listlessness, with one of the construction workers fully abandoning the project and his comrades. The characters of the novel are left without direction after the loss of their faith in socialism, made ideal in Nastya’s form. The Foundation Pit was likely not published at the time it was written in 1930 because it clearly contradicted the optimistic spirit of proletarian literature.

Korchagin’s faith in his work, in contrast, maintains this optimistic spirit. While he has suffered immense pain and illness, he remains convinced that his only utility is in his work; he seeks progress through labor and overcomes his physical limitations to achieve it. One of the Tozian 10 most notable ways that Platonov’s works subvert the optimism of socialist realism is through his rejection of societal progression that is part of the building of socialism. When Platonov’s characters experience loss, poverty, and pain, they fail to overcome this pain, and in fact, move literally closer toward the earth. There are many examples throughout Platonov’s works of characters wanting to become closer to the earth or of sleeping together in packs in low pits; in the beginning of The Foundation Pit, Voshchev, the main character of the novel, loses his job and begins to wander aimlessly around town. At the end of the day, when he is kicked out of the bar and others go to their lodgings, he chooses to sleep on the earth: “Voshchev lowered himself over the crumbs of the earth into the gully and lay down on his stomach there in order to fall asleep and so part from himself” (Pit, 3). Platonov’s fascination with lowering his characters into the earth, especially within the context of The Foundation Pit specifically, is just another reminder of the potential of death pervading his characters’ lives.

Stalinist Views on the Natural World

Platonov’s writing in the 1930s responded not only to Socialist Realism, but also to the changing attitudes toward nature exemplified in the broader effort to exploit the natural world for the goals of socialism. Even in pre-Stalinist Soviet society some of the attitudes toward the natural world were utilitarian, but these attitudes became the prevailing ones as Stalin rose to power (Weiner, Changing Face, 253-6). Zapovedniki, established in the 1890s, were pristine tracts of land demarcated for the purpose of conservation as well as scientific research (253).

Lenin established The People’s Commissariat of Education, a large body containing many different heads that worked to preserve cultural and natural resources without promised monetary return (the arts, the natural world, etc.), where conservationists found a small niche in the Tozian 11 government to promote their ideas in opposition to the exploitation of nature (254). In addition,

VOOP (The All-Russian Society for the Protection of Nature) was established in 1924 and grew in popularity, holding roughly 15,000 members by 1932 (256).1

Despite VOOP’s status, the utilitarian approach to extracting human benefit from nature became a more popular attitude in the 1930s as Stalin promised social progress for Soviet citizens in the form of rapid industrialization. Ziegler claims that “Russian Marxism fell solidly in the Westernizing, technocratic tradition… technological development was the primary causal agent of social and political development; an agrarian society in which nature was not radically remolded to suit civilization’s needs was by definition inferior to an industrial society” (Ziegler

8). Paradoxically, in attempt to set itself apart from the West, the USSR was tasked with keeping up with the level of industrialization in the West, leading to a destruction of nature previously unparalleled in Russia’s history. In fact, Stalin was not the first to be indifferent towards the health and protection of the natural world: “Lenin adamantly rejected the idyllic, pastoral society favored by many Slavophiles… Stalin’s ruthless approach had its roots in Lenin’s activist, realistic approach to society and the economy” (Ziegler 8). These ideas were then concretized in many plans for industrialization, including the notable First Five Year Plan beginning in 1928, which sought to drastically increase industrial productivity and change the agricultural systems in place for greater harvests.

Further justification for exploiting natural areas in the USSR was found in its seemingly boundless geographic spread. Ziegler describes the “fetish of massiveness” as a commonly held

Soviet principle: because of the USSR’s enormous size, natural wealth and diversity, there was a widespread indifference toward resource depletion and pollution (Ziegler 25). It was believed

1 In a reflection of the chagrin times, by the 1940s VOOP lost most members as well as its ability to publish work (Weiner 256). Tozian 12 that these phenomena would not become problematic for a long time: “Pollution in a socialist system has generally been viewed as a temporary anomaly, a deviation from the environmentally benign norm that will be resolved as socialism advances-this is because Soviet theorists are boundlessly confident that the inventive capacities of mankind can overcome inherent limitations of the physical environment” (26). This idea is a necessary component of “utopia in progress” and socialist realism as a whole: problems happening in the present time are unworthy of concern because of the conviction that socialism, in its real-time construction, will right these ills

(26).

According to Weiner’s scheme of the three main attitudes toward the natural world, the

“utilitarian” view of nature, which was the dominant attitude of the time, insisted that the natural world—plant and animal species as well as the land itself—existed for human use or economic benefit (Changing Face 253). This view was in opposition to the “scientific” attitude towards nature (that it should be preserved to study and understand) and the “moral/aesthetic” view (that it should be preserved for its inherent worth) because of its exploitative projects and behaviors, such as the construction of the Belomor canal, rampant deforestation for timber, and other projects (253-256). By the 1930s, the utilitarian view was the only viable approach toward the treatment of the natural world, and those who opposed it had little power to make any change.

Under Stalin, however, the zapovedniki lost their protection and were subject to his

“transformation of nature” projects (253, 256). Similar to how the idea of “art for art’s sake” was abolished, so was “science for science’s sake” (256). Stalin attacked the conservationists in the

Education Commissariat, considering their pursuits to be bourgeois and elitist (256). Some of these conservationists attempted to resist components of the First Five Year Plan which included collectivization, the introduction of exotic flora and fauna into Russian ecosystems, and the Tozian 13 construction of dams and canals (256). One such conservationist, Vladimir Stanchinskii, made the argument against the introduction of exotic flora and fauna to “empty places” in nature, claiming that it would be costly and detrimental to native animals and plants. Soon after,

Stanchinskii’s research projects were shut down and he was sent to a prison-kolkhoz, which

Weiner posits was a result of his resistance to the Stalinist “transformation of nature” policy

(Weiner, Corner, 44-45).

According to Peterson, “slogans such as ‘all for the good of man’ reinforced a modernist and anthropocentric worldview that the USSR’s boundless riches were ripe for exploitation”

(Peterson 11). Coupled with the Stalinist utilitarian indifference to the natural world and its inhabitants, humans were placed at the top of this species hierarchy, which in the eyes of Stalin, justified his pursuits of heavy industrialization and the alteration of nature (Corner, 38). In his

“On the Struggle with Nature,” Gorky’s attitudes represent those which inspired many of the aforementioned projects:

“I’m speaking of 162-million headed man, of an inexhaustible source of energy, completely capable of altering the surface of the earth in such a way as to be pleasing, convenient and useful for the sake of an easier, more rapid… growth of that energy which is transforming the world... we will improve the climate of swampy areas and destroy the mosquitoes that infect tens of thousands of people with malaria. Our earth is littered with an incalculable quantity of useless and harmful plants that are parasitically exhausting the productive sap of the earth. They need to be destroyed” (Gorky, Struggle with Nature, 1).

As a result of this attitude, the USSR experienced some of the worst resource exploitation ever seen (Weiner, Models of Nature, 149). The administration of forests was handed from the

People’s Commissariat of Agriculture to the Supreme Commission of the National Economy; not long after, expectations and demands for timber increased drastically, and the Western oblast was almost completely deforested in two to three years (150). This is one of many examples in which nature-averse attitudes like Gorky’s presented above had real-life consequences. It is Tozian 14 important to acknowledge that, with deforestation not only is there loss of flora, but all of the animals that live in that ecosystem as well are killed or displaced or starve.

Using the Soviet perceptions of nature as a framework through which to analyze

Platonov’s works offers a new perspective on his writing. There is a notable evolution in the way that he responds to utilitarian thinking in The Foundation Pit (1930), “Among Animals and

Plants” (1934), and “The Cow” (1938-1939). The expectation for Platonov and other cultural leaders of the time was that they would reflect this need to harness and control nature. Platonov does this to a certain degree, but he also goes further by suggesting negative implications of these views and actions, as seen in his works.

It is worth establishing that Socialist Realism and the utilitarian view of the natural world are interrelated because this view of nature was the fundamental motivation for the policy and projects that Stalin implemented in this time. In turn, these projects promoted the progression toward the ideal socialist world that Stalin required to be depicted in Socialist Realist works.

They are two facets of Stalin’s power that allowed him to transform the USSR, both physically and ideologically, according to his preferences. Therefore, Socialist Realism and utilitarianism are reliant on one another; the utilitarian attitude was implicit in the expectations of Socialist

Realism as a means to create the perfect socialist world. This idea can be seen in Gorky’s speech at the First Soviet Writers’ Congress:

“Even the landscape of the country has changed; gone is its motley poverty—the bluish patch of oats, and, alongside of it, the black strip of ploughed land, the golden ribbon of rye, the green band of wheat, strips of land overgrown with weeds—the whole many-coloured sadness of universal dismemberment and disseverance. In our days, vast expanses of land are coloured a single mighty hue. Above the village and the country town looms… the huge buildings of public usage; giant factories glitter with a million panes of glass… The new landscape that has so sharply changed the aspect of our land has not found a place in literature.” (Gorky, Congress, 56).

Tozian 15

In other words, in order to achieve the ideal “single mighty hue” of the new reality, it is necessary to rid the land of its natural features, including plants (and consequently, though not mentioned here, animals). The expectation was that the new landscape would then be written about in Soviet literature. Platonov’s works, in contrast, value each living thing, even inorganic matter, regardless of their significance to the socialist effort, and further, lament them when they are lost. His “real” socialist realism is built through this distinction.

The works that best exhibit how Platonov veers from the Socialist Realist path–The

Foundation Pit (1930), “Among Animals and Plants” (1936) and “The Cow” (1938-1939)–are exemplary representations of Platonov’s use of anthropomorphism, contrasting depictions of sympathy and brutality through his characters, and the juxtaposition of death and utopia, though these devices can be seen throughout many of his works, especially those of the 1930s. The

Foundation Pit follows the protagonist Voshchev as he is fired from his job and afterwards hired to excavate a plot of land which is supposed to serve as the base of a large residential building for the whole proletariat, though this goal is never achieved. Throughout this work, Platonov questions some of the logic and assumptions inherent in Stalin’s socialism that would become integral when Socialist Realism was formally prescribed in 1934. In “Among Animals and

Plants,” a rail worker named Fyodorov observes his surroundings in his rural town, envying the people passing through in trains whom he thinks are real contributors to the socialist effort. He saves some rail-workers from an accident, becoming a local hero of sorts, but never the positive hero imagined in Socialist Realism. In “The Cow,” Vasya Rubtsov’s father sells off the family cow’s sick calf, and the mother cow, at the loss of her son, mourns and eventually commits suicide. Platonov extends his critique of Socialist Realism even further in this story, albeit subtly.

These works challenge utilitarian perceptions of the natural world implicitly developed in Tozian 16

Socialist Realism. They are similar in this respect, but when taken together, they suggest an evolution in Platonov’s response to Socialist Realism as he likely became wearier of the utilitarian attitude toward nature and its consequences.

Anthropomorphism

Anthropomorphism is the assignment of human characteristics or behaviors to a non- human entity (Cambridge Dictionary). Platonov’s anthropomorphic style is prevalent throughout most of his works, in which he assigns human-like qualities, behaviors and values to animals, plants, and inanimate objects. One of the most obvious examples of Platonov’s anthropomorphism is through the mother cow in his story “The Cow.”

The cow provides services to Vasya’s family that are congruent with the utilitarian perspective: “instead of saving her strength for herself in fat and meat, the cow gave it all away in milk and work” (Platonov, Soul, 248-249). However, it is clear that the cow is serving this family not unwillingly, as later in the story when she is overwhelmed with grief, she stops grazing and slows her working and eventually runs away (255-257). Her willingness to provide, as a result, invites respect, appreciation, and admiration from Vasya’s family. These attitudes can potentially discourage the kind of militant exploitation of nature that follows from the utilitarian’s logic.

The narrator assigns human-like grief to the cow through the loss of her sick calf, mourning and eventual suicide. He writes extensively concerning the cow’s grief, likening it to a human’s but positing it as even worse, since “[it] could have no end and could only grow” because she cannot distract herself or articulate her suffering (255). Throughout the story, the cow expresses her mourning audibly, which Vasya calls “crying,” and Platonov calls “strange, Tozian 17 guttural screams” (250, 256). And, later on, “From one of the livestock wagons came the low of an unknown heifer, and his own cow, yearning for her son, answered from the shed with a long, plaintive cry” (251). The auditory imagery of these pained cries sets the tone of the passages as utterly despondent, reflective of how the cow has begun working much more slowly, refuses to eat, and rejects affection from her owner’s son Vasya which she previously welcomed. While this is a subtle example of anthropomorphism, it still reminds the reader that the cow has experience and sentience. Platonov contrasts the utilitarian and non-utilitarian value of the cow through Vasya and his mother’s grief over the cow dying via possible suicide in the end. She runs away from home, stands on the train tracks, and is hit by a train, and as a response,

“…mother began to cry, because they had lost their worker and their provider” (256). Vasya, less worried about his sustenance and more worried about this inherent loss, writes at the end: “the cow was very unhappy… [she] gave us everything… she was kind” (259). To him, she was a companion as well as a provider.

Like the cow, Platonov was very familiar with the grief of losing a child; it was part of his own socialist reality. In “The Cow,” he transforms an animal most exploited by man into a sentient being capable of crying, of missing a loved one taken away from her, and of committing suicide as a result of her grief. Knowing that Platonov also lost his son, it is not a far stretch for the reader to imagine the cow transmuted into a human mother who must give up a sick child and commit suicide to end her own suffering. In this sense, Platonov projects his own experience of his reality onto this story, likely felt by many other families facing loss at the time as well.

As previously mentioned, Platonov’s anthropomorphism extends to inorganic matter as well as organic matter. The living links he establishes between organic and inorganic matter, however, are the most unusual aspects of his anthropomorphism. In “The Cow,” he establishes Tozian 18 this ecological interconnectedness through description of the wind and the landscape: “…the wind, after spending all day rustling stubble and bare bushes…now lay itself down in the still, low places of the earth, just gently creaking the wind vane on the chimney from time to time as it began the song of autumn” (249). To give the wind the qualities of intentional movement and singing and the grass the intention of preparing for winter, all in spite of the description of the landscape that is sparsely populated by humans and animals, impresses upon the reader that the earth still holds room for the interdependence of the inorganic and the organic material of the natural world. Additionally, it emphasizes that even inorganic phenomena like wind consciously contributes to the surrounding environment. It plays an integral role in the natural world and is deeply connected to living matter; thus, even though they are all considered “lower beings” (i.e., do not hold significance to a utilitarian), they are nevertheless important in Platonov’s world.

The main character Fyodorov in “Among Animals and Plants” also does not separate inanimate/inorganic objects (machines), animals and humans in the way that a utilitarian-minded person would. As a rail-worker, he constantly works with and around trains and other machines, and his observations of them are often similar to his attitudes of his child and a small rabbit he takes from the forest. When he observes and interacts with machines, his infant daughter, and the baby rabbit, there is a repetition of their physical closeness to him, more specifically to his chest and heart, as though this physical closeness indicates his relatively equal desire to respect/protect all three. He observes the hare and imagines that “he had already tasted all the delights of life; he had eaten, drunk, breathed, inspected the locality, felt pleasure, played about a bit and fallen asleep;” he then picks up this little hare, holds him close to his chest, and takes him home (Soul

158-159). Additionally, Fyodorov claims that “machines and mechanisms are orphans and you need to keep them constantly close to your heart,” and, similarly, throughout the story he holds Tozian 19 and caresses his daughter (159-175. Emphasis mine). He feels a personal obligation to keep these lesser beings physically close as well as to personally understand them. In other words,

“Fyodorov treated metal and machines as he had treated animals and plants, with caution and foresight, trying not only to get to know them but also to outwit them” (166). Fyodorov has a relationship with plants, animals, and machines that differs from the utilitarian’s because of his desire to understand them and treat them with sympathy rather than to merely harness their benefits. His point of view toward the natural world and machines is non-utilitarian because of his non-exploitative treatment of these “lower” beings and objects.

While Fyodorov sometimes expresses a deeper care for animals and machines than the common man, at other times he does exhibit utilitarian attitudes; these make up the Stalinist subtexts of the story. His attitudes culminate in Fyodorov’s ambivalence toward the natural world, but, unlike in Socialist Realism, Platonov does not allow Fyodorov to win the war on nature or fully realize his heroism—he does not become a model citizen or experience a change in status in any meaningful way. Throughout the story, Fyodorov expresses his desire to leave his small town for a bigger one in order to contribute to socialism more significantly. Towards the end, he is given the opportunity to become a hero when he saves a group of workers from being hit by an unlatched train car (which, ironically, Fyodorov unlatches from the rest): “he had to stop the wagon or else there would be fewer people, less humanity—there were animals and plants aplenty, but animals and plants were boring” (178). He injures himself in the process, but nevertheless receives medical care and recognition for his deed in the nearby big city. However,

Platonov does not allow Fyodorov to evolve completely into a hero, which is illustrated by

Fyodorov’s return to the forest at the end of the story, just as it began. Because of this ending, it is clear that Fyodorov has an ambivalent attitude toward the natural world. He recognizes that it Tozian 20 cannot nourish all of humanity, but at the same time, he does not have sufficient drive to capitalize on the opportunity to pursue what he perceives to be a more heroic life in the city. The fact that Platonov preserves ambivalence in Fyodorov’s attitudes is remarkable considering that in the late 1930s, any perceived slight toward state ideology would be punished harshly or, at the very least, not make it onto the shelves.

In The Foundation Pit, Voshchev has a tendency to observe animal behavior with precise anthropomorphism, similar to Fyodorov’s observation of the rabbit in the forest, comparing his boredom with life to that of a dog’s, watching birds plaintively sing as they struggle to find food for their chicks and mates, and wishing that his life was fleeting like that of a mosquito’s

(Platonov, Pit, 3, 17, 38). As a human being who is able to put himself on the same level as these animals, Voshchev represents anthropomorphic attitudes that develop subtly throughout the novel. Understanding and acknowledging the struggles and sufferings of other species is a thought pattern wholly unimaginable to those who held this utilitarian attitude towards the natural world, who saw these creatures in purely utilitarian terms. Because The Foundation Pit is one of his earlier works, his anthropomorphic style is more understated than in his later stories like “The Cow” and “Among Animals and Plants” but it is there all the same, hinting at his budding skepticism about the utilitarian mindset. The way the reader is able to transpose himself upon the cow’s position of grief and loss, they can more generally understand that the suffering of animals that Platonov illustrates is closely tied to humans, if not a symbol for human suffering itself. Through creating these worlds and giving animals the subjectivity of experience,

Platonov’s works provide a subtle commentary on the suffering that all living things underwent—and that progress and utility outweighed most other values, including that of human life. Tozian 21

Contrasting Sympathy and Brutality

Platonov, at times, subjects his readers to hard-to-read passages by crafting imagery of humans brutalizing animals or other people, demonstrating that the positive image of humanity in legitimate Socialist Realist works is not the way in which he himself sees the world. Some examples are fictionalized, while others are a reflection of real events. During the First Five Year

Plan, the most common form of protest against collectivization by peasants was the slaughtering of their own livestock (Fitzpatrick 66), a practice described in The Foundation Pit, when

Voshchev and his co-laborers try to establish a collective farm:

“After liquidating all their last breathing livestock, the peasants had begun to eat beef and had instructed all the members of their households to do the same; during this brief time they had eaten beef as if it were a communion—no one had wanted to eat, but the flesh of dear and familiar carcasses had to be hidden away inside one’s own body and preserved there from social ownership… [some] were unable to part with their cattle and so they destroyed it down to the bone… or else released it into collective imprisonment.” (Pit 102. Emphasis mine).

By referring to the carcasses as “dear” and “familiar,” they are transformed from one of the most common animals exploited by humans into something more deeply important; almost as if the peasants are killing off a human member of their families. However, no matter the amount of sympathy the peasants hold for the cows, no matter their ultimate outcome, they experience some sort of brutality—whether it is being killed to be eaten, “destroyed to the bone” or “released into collective imprisonment” (102). These peasants, do, in some way, identify with their cattle; they too are seen as utilitarian objects, i.e., those who will carry out collectivization to feed the rest of the USSR. Though they are trying to resist collectivization in killing their cattle, they are also perpetuating the cycle of exploitation, wherein they make this meat a part of themselves; and their bodies, sustained by this meat, will then be exploited similarly under the guise of “societal Tozian 22 benefit.” At the same time, though, the peasants make the conscious decision to preserve the animals in their own bodies, and nevertheless protect them from the exploitation they would have experienced on the collective farm. As later reflected in the slaughter of the cow by Vasya’s father in “The Cow,” Platonov’s attitude toward this sort of killing of a living thing close to oneself is clear; it is a choice made against the peasants’ own wishes because of their dire circumstances.

A similar destiny is held for the animals in “Among Animals and Plants.” Fyodorov looks back on the times of his youth when his father taught him to hunt—Fyodorov believed the rabbits and birds “looked meek, and sometimes even intelligent, and he had not wanted to eat them, but in the end he had no choice” (Soul 157. Emphasis mine). If these animals are intelligent like he observes, then they must feel pain and suffering. Although he sees this and sympathizes with their struggles, his own poverty prevents him from acting sympathetically in congruity with his thoughts; he must still kill and eat them. Here, the animals are transformed into something much more than what the utilitarian view might ascribe to them: they have feelings and responses to their environment based on their experiences, and Fyodorov and his father must consciously inflict suffering upon them for their own survival.

The final step in the evolution of Platonov’s attitude towards utilitarianism as expressed through his characters’ relationships toward animals happens in “The Cow,” when Vasya’s family sells the mother cow’s carcass to the cooperative for her beef, and with the money earned from her meat, Vasya plans to buy books from the shop (258). He recognizes that the cow gave her milk, her bones, her meat, but even further than that she provides money for Vasya’s family to sustain themselves, and for Vasya to pursue an education; not to mention that she provides him with the memory of their companionship, even after her death. Tozian 23

Despite his family not actually eating her, the mother cow still, in a way, was able to provide this purpose that Fyodorov’s father outlines in “Among Animals and Plants”: that “the meat and bones of dead creatures should do more than just fill you up; they should also provide you with a good soul, and strength of heart and reason” (158). However, this utilitarian thinking is more natural than industrial. The ingestion of animals, Fyodorov’s father believes, imparts on the consumer the strength or qualities of that animal; hence there being more to eating meat than just being satiated. Platonov emphasizes that the animals eaten in The Foundation Pit, “Among

Animals and Plants,” and “The Cow” all provide some sort of service to their owners/hunters that transcends the utilitarian purpose of providing food: the cows slaughtered by the farmers in

The Foundation Pit help the farmers to express their resistance to the brutal system of collectivization, and preserve their pleasant memories of the way of life they have lost as a result; the rabbit provides entertainment and wonder, if temporary, for Fyodorov; and finally,

Vasya builds a companionship and memories with his cow, and her carcass helps him further his education. There is an evolution of potential value in animals, from The Foundation Pit to

"Among Animals and Plants" and finally to "The Cow." In The Foundation Pit Platonov confronts purely utilitarian value through the slaughtering of the livestock. In "Among Animals and Plants," Fyodorov's father’s remarks on how best to treat animals perhaps add to Fyodorov's ambivalence toward of utilitarian value. Finally, in "The Cow" Platonov crafts a being who significantly and dramatically transcends utilitarian value in her companionship with Vasya and grief for her lost son. Despite the value and sympathy that the characters hold for the animals, the characters are often expected to inflict pain and suffering on them in order to sustain themselves.

Through this three-way juxtaposition of Platonov’s characters’ attitudes towards animals, it is Tozian 24 clear that he begins to move away from support of utilitarian thinking and Socialist Realism as his works progress in the 1930s.

Alongside the utilitarian attitude toward the natural world and animals, Platonov also examines brutality of humans toward animals. When Fyodorov’s mother beats a baby hare and throws it out of the house, this brutality is demonstrated: “[Fyodorov’s mother] began dragging him across the floor… beat him, first on the behind then on the ribs—it hurt more there, so venting her rage was all the sweeter. Being an infant, the hare was not yet used to terror…” (Soul

164). This abuse not only an example of violence enabled by a utilitarian view of animals, but also of the suffering Fyodorov’s mother feels in her inability to change her own circumstances— poverty, dismal living conditions and no foreseeable solution to any of it. Additionally, the perspectives of all three in the scene—Fyodorov, the hare, and his mother—become blurred, such that it is as though Fyodorov is the hare himself, suffering a beating from his mother. Since this is likely something that happened to him in childhood, he understands the pain that the hare bears. To Platonov, it is a cycle unable to be broken. Fyodorov’s mother’s act of abuse toward the hare which Platonov previously describes as having “conscious eyes,” and who “almost humanly…chew[s] a blade of grass” is only possible because of the dominating utilitarian attitude toward animals (Soul 158). However, Platonov inserts this violence not with the intention of promoting its validity, but instead to reinforce the dismal way of life these people are forced to live—their experiences of poverty, domestic violence and poor living conditions, ills promised to be corrected in the new socialist utopia, still persist with no indication of changing.

Tozian 25

Death and Utopia

The goal of the Soviet effort is to ensure that what one does in life will outlive one biologically. Throughout Platonov’s works, this is time and again proven unachievable as a result of the destruction of lives in the effort. At times, Platonov introduces the potential for a future project or happy circumstance to occur in his stories, but in order to show a realistic, non- idealized depiction of life, these plans are undermined by the introduction of death of some kind.

For example, in The Foundation Pit, the pit is planned to be the base of a large residential building to house Soviet citizens: “Here the building would stand; in it people would be stored away from adversity…” (Pit 17). Though, as it is left unfinished at the end of the novel, its fate turns out to be much different than expected. There are several instances throughout The

Foundation Pit in which Platonov describes the composition of the land being dug out, and it foreshadows that the pit will not be used for its intended purpose, but instead for a grave to house the dead (13, 43, 144). In the beginning, Chiklin, one of the pit diggers, describes the composition to Voshchev, who is just beginning on the project:

“’Beneath the soil for some reason there’s sandy loam. Then clay. And after that—limestone. Seems like anything goes. The earth needs some touch of iron or it lies there like some fool of a woman. It’s sad!’ Because the clay was alien… Chiklin hurried to break up the age-old ground, turning all the life of his own body into blows at the dead places” (13. Emphasis mine).

Here, man’s struggle against nature is directly acknowledged; there is clearly a disconnect between man and what he describes as alien, the earth. Chiklin’s remarks highlight the lack of understanding that exists between man and the earth, which he struggles to change for his own benefit. These “dead places” of organic matter are, of course, dead in the minds of the laborers, but their potential to house life nevertheless exists. Tozian 26

This reference to clay also repeats later when Platonov writes, “Various dreams come to a laboring man at night—some express a fulfilled hope, while others foresense a personal coffin in a clay grave—but daytime is lived… though the endurance of a body digging the earth in order to plant into a fresh abyss an eternal stone root of indestructible architecture” (43. Emphasis mine). Through the idealistic image of the building, Platonov develops the contrasting images of death and utopia, with the manifold consequences of death often preventing utopia from materializing. While the “eternal stone root of indestructible architecture” is a “fulfilled hope” in the dreams of laboring man, the contrasting image of the “personal coffin in a clay grave” foreshadows that this hope remains unfulfilled. In the reality depicted in the novel, the pit is used in order to bury Nastya, the symbol of socialism of the younger generation. Platonov refers to the pit and its potential as an “eternal stone root of indestructible architecture” early in the novel; and at the end, incorporates the same word choice of “eternal stone” to describe the land that

Chiklin digs out from the pit in order to bury the girl (43. Emphasis mine). He writes, “Chiklin began to dig Nastya a special grave…neither a worm nor the root of a plant, nor warmth, nor cold should be able to penetrate it, and so that the child would never be troubled by the noise of life... Chiklin gouged out a sepulchral bed in eternal stone…” (151). In a bleak twist of irony, at least one Soviet citizen is “stored away from adversity” in this land, though the building is never realized. For Nastya, the foundation pit becomes a personal coffin. With Nastya gone and this once natural area ravished for no material gain for the remaining laborers, it is clear that this project is a failure; it is a tomb for the Soviet fantasy of escaping death.

Platonov’s reference to the earth and its potential to store human life reappears, and once again it foreshadows its failure: “The womb matrix for the house of future life was already complete; the next step was to fill the foundation pit with rubble” (69). The word choice of Tozian 27

“womb matrix” (original Russian phrase: маточное место, or “uterine place”) as metaphor for the foundation pit conjures the image of fertility and motherhood: the implication is that something new will be grown and created with the pit as its supportive structure (Platonov,

Kotlovan, 65). The next step, being to fill a place of fertility and growth with “rubble,” inorganic debris or waste, contrasts the image of fertility with barrenness. Filling a womb with trash would take away its ability to reproduce entirely; the end result would be lifeless, the earth no longer able to provide in the way it once could. Platonov sees the potential of the earth and the pit that has been dug out of it to provide for humans, hence the role of fertility it takes on as a “uterine place.” To claim that the betterment of society is achieved through dumping rubble into the earth seems paradoxical. The suggestion is that man is struggling against nature and its matter (alive or dead) to achieve a higher plane of being, and that the relationship between man and earth is highly strained and misunderstood.

Seifrid’s analysis states that the repetitive reference to the earth as “dead matter” would suggest that that man’s struggle is against non-living material, a position that would oppose my previous discussion of the “womb matrix” (Uncertainties 152). There are many references throughout the story to the earth being filled with dead matter and this is prevalent among many of Platonov’s works. It is possible that Platonov includes these descriptions to reflect his own experience of the desolation of the natural world, either anthropogenically or naturally caused.

However, as Seifrid also asserts, that this matter is dead does not make it any less valuable to

Platonov’s characters, especially Voshchev, who “empathizes with sundry suffering and forgotten ‘beings’ and seeks to avenge their loss to entropy by collecting them” (153). I assert that even if the earth is inorganic matter, or dead places, this does not mean that it does not contribute to ecological interdependence to Platonov. Tozian 28

Similar to the characters in The Foundation Pit, Vasya, in grieving the loss of his cow, fails to see the bright socialist future he is asked to contribute to. Vasya’s exam at school requires that he respond to the prompt which reflects the classic Socialist Realist attitude, “How I will live and work in order to be of service to our Motherland” (Soul 259). In direct opposition to the expectations laid out by the prompt, Vasya responds in a lament for the loss of his cow: “I do not know how I will live, I have not thought yet” (259). He groups the calf into his own family as beneficiaries of the cow’s milk: “there were three of us and he made four,” and his child’s perspective offers a new lens through which to understand the cow’s grief—though it is less floridly described, it is all the more real through his experience of her suffering— “the cow was very unhappy, but soon she died from a train. And she was eaten too, because she was beef. Now there is nothing. The cow gave us everything, that is her milk, her son, her meat, her skin, her innards and her bones, she was kind” (259). In life, the cow was more than these things to Vasya: she was a companion, she spent time with him and accepted his affection. Subjected to this fate, she has now been transformed back into an object of utility, though her consciousness in life, exemplified by her impenetrable grief and potential suicide, made him see in her something greater. Vasya’s experience of grief parallels her own, as well as Platonov’s, leaving the reader with a sense that loss is widespread and inescapable.

Platonov subtly hints as the grim consequences of societal progression through

Fyodorov’s reflections on his meager role in socialist society. He muses: “But then one day the forest would be cut down; and it was getting better and better, more and more enigmatic, to be a part of humanity. Great machines and prefabricated places for the people were being transported along the railway on platform wagons…” (176-177. Emphasis mine). Platonov equates progress,

“getting better and better” with the forest being cut down; then immediately after he describes it Tozian 29 as “more enigmatic,” as a part of this process. While “enigmatic” (загадочно in the original

Russian text, which translates to “enigmatic” or “mysterious”) is not an overtly negative word choice, it still reflects this moral ambiguity as perceived by Platonov in his lived reality; humanity is advancing, but one must recognize that it advances at the cost of other life (Platonov,

Zhivotnykh, 397). Not only are trees killed, but all inhabitants of the forest as well. To only acknowledge the positive aspects of societal progression (here, humanity’s creation of machines and “places” in which to shelter humankind) minimizes the experience of non-human living beings that are affected as a consequence, and reading between the lines, all the human lives lost in the socialist effort. It is worth recalling that Platonov was a self-described socialist and communist and that he does not wholly renounce this system, but perhaps is pointing out the contradictions found within its practices. He even goes further, seeming to suggest that these contradictions and ambiguities are unresolvable. The positive utopian image of constant human progression is, to Platonov, soiled when one recognizes the loss of life in the process. On the other hand, other obedient socialist realist writers might totally avoid recognizing this death in the way Platonov does, and instead prioritize positive narrative-building. In fact, Ostrovsky does this at the end of Part 2 of How the Steel Was Tempered. While Korchagin is completely blind and cannot leave his bed, he still manages to write a book, lose half of it in the mail, rewrite it, and send it off for publishing. Although this is presumed to be Korchagin’s last great feat before his death, there is no mention of his death at the end: in contrast, in the last lines of the novel, the narrator asserts that the publishing of Korchagin’s book allows him to “[return] to the fighting ranks and to life” (Ostrovsky 242). While How the Steel Was Tempered ends with yet another triumph of Korchagin against his grim circumstances, The Foundation Pit’s end is marked by the Tozian 30 death of the socialist hero Nastya and her permanent silence, and “The Cow” also ends with the death of the mother cow.

Platonov anthropomorphizes creatures in his works as part of a broader commentary on the suffering that all animals, humans included, must face in order to survive in their trying circumstances. All are tasked with what at times is the exhausting burden of finding nourishment, shelter, and simple means to exist. He blurs the line between sympathetic and brutal characters and events to illustrate that many of the choices made by humans in life

(especially the way they must act toward animals) are not a consequence of their own worldview, but instead of their dire need to endure the conditions they are placed under. The contrasting imagery of death and utopia in his works incorporates the classic Soviet expectation of virtuous contribution to the socialist effort while oftentimes crushing it with the brutal circumstances of reality—namely, death of an important character. Together, these devices illustrate the world as

Platonov saw it and not as he was expected to depict it according to Socialist Realist qualifications. In addition, as the years passed, the value he placed on non-human life increased along with his skepticism toward utilitarianism. Platonov also challenges the Soviet notion of overcoming adversity and eventually mortality. While his characters often preach the positivity and optimism of society’s progression, the acts of violence and deaths that they commit and experience demonstrate otherwise: that humanity in its current state fails to meet not only the unrealistic notions of Socialist Realism, but even to provide man with the most baseline material for a modest existence. In a fictionalized way, his own “real” socialist realism pulls back the curtain on much of the strife undergone by any living thing subjected to the period of Stalinism and utilitarianism. Tozian 31

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