Two puzzles dominate recent discussions of Soviet literature and Marxist aesthetics in the 1930s. The first is how the official Soviet system tolerated and even at times celebrated such an idiosyncratic writer as Andrei Platonov, who in the last twenty-five years has emerged as the central literary artist of the time. The second

01/17 puzzle is how socialist realism, a literature wholly focused on the future, came to model itself on nineteenth-century realism, with the result that the bulk of socialist realist novels (and works in other literary genres and artistic mediums) read like tedious exercises in nostalgia, while artists who really anticipate the future, like Platonov, became marginalized. Robert Bird đđđđđđđđđđThese two puzzles have brought close attention to the circle around the journal Literaturnyi kritik (Literary Critic), which had Articulations of been created in 1934 as a locus for theorizing socialist realism, became closely allied with (Socialist) Mikhail Lifshits and other progressive Marxist philosophers, and also published the bulk of Realism: Platonov’s critical writings. In August 1936 Literaturnyi kritik broke with its charter to publish two stories by Andrei Platonov, Lukács, “Immortality” and “Among Animals and Plants,” in the same issue that Georg Lukács published Platonov, “Narrate or Describe?,” a foundational work in the theories of narrative and of realism. In this essay I propose to read Platonov’s “Immortality” Shklovsky together with Lukács’s “Narrate or Describe?” and Lukács’s review of “Immortality,” as part of a wide-ranging dialogue that also involved Viktor Shklovsky, about realism in general and the method of socialist realism in particular. This dialogue suggests that, far from legislating an outmoded style for the novel, Lukács derives from Platonov’s fiction a portable model of socialist realist method that will ensure the dual agency of the artist – as composer and medium of history – while allowing literary form to adapt to continual changes in the structure of history. Recovering the ambition of Lukács’s essay not only clarifies its historical context, but also suggests how the realism in question then might be the realism with which we still contend in our own day.1

1. “Immortality” and Socialist Realism “Immortality” was commissioned from Platonov under the auspices of a large project called

e - f l u x j o r n a # 9 1 — m y 2 0 8 đ R b t B i d A r t i c u l a o n s f ( S ) R e m : L k á , P v h y “People of the Railway Empire,” initiated by the Union of Soviet Writers and the railway newspaper Gudok (Horn) in late 1935. In line with the new Stakhanovite movement, which showcased particularly productive individual workers in each major industry, on July 30, 1935 Stalin gathered the most illustrious railway workers for an awards ceremony at the Kremlin. By August 17, working at a Stakhanovite pace,

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The agit-trainđOctober Revolution included ađcarđspecificallyđoutfitted for propaganda purposes.đPhoto:đVertov-Collection, Austrian Film Museum

05.11.18 / 18:21:06 EDT the publishing arm of the rail industry prepared the difficulty of its path, its steep inclines and published a commemorative volume, Liudi and hard hills. But we have managed to velikoi chesti (People of Great Honor), which lead the locomotive of history through all featured brief biographies of the sixty-seven inclines and hills, through all turns and award-winning railway workers. Sometime that bends, because we have had great train autumn a decision was made to commission engineers, capable of driving the literary works about them. Platonov was locomotive of history. We have conquered assigned two Stakhanovites of the rails: 03/17 because our locomotive has been steered pointsman Ivan Alekseevich Fyodorov of by the dual brigade of the great Lenin and Medvezh’ia gora station, and stationmaster Stalin.3 Emmanuil Grigor’evich Tseitlin of Krasnyi (Red) Liman station. Fyodorov became the protagonist Tropes unexpectedly spawn real imperatives. of “Among Animals and Plants,” in which he is Though Platonov had been marginalized since his maimed while trying to stop a runaway train, is stories attracted Stalin’s personal ire in 1929 and honored at a ceremony in Moscow, and promoted 1931, the railway commission promised a way to the position of coupler. Tseitlin was back into print. fictionalized in “Immortality” as Emmanuil đđđđđđđđđđ“Among Animals and Plants” was accepted Semyonovich Levin, the indefatigably caring by the journals Oktiabr’ (October) and Novyi mir chief of Red Peregon station. (The New World), but Platonov refused to make đđđđđđđđđđPlatonov (1899–1951) was a natural choice the changes they demanded. Both “Among for the project. Born in the family of a railway Animals and Plants” and “Immortality” were then engineer, he had frequently set his stories in and rejected by the prestigious almanac God around rail yards. He explained his railway Deviatnadtsatyi (The Nineteenth Year), before obsession in a text later published by his widow being accepted by the journal Kolkhoznye rebiata Mariia: (Kolkhoz Kids), where they appeared in abbreviated adaptation for children.4 The Before the revolution I was a boy, but after decision by the editors of Literaturnyi kritik to it happened there was no time to be young, publish Platonov’s stories as the first and last no time to grow; I immediately had to put on ever works of fiction ever included in the journal a frown and start fighting [i.e., in the Civil demonstrates both their high regard for Platonov War] … Without finishing technical college I and their determination, despite his difficulty in was hurriedly put on a locomotive to help finding outlets for his work, to see him in print. the engineer. For me the saying that the đđđđđđđđđđGiven the political tenor of the moment – revolution was the locomotive of history August 1936 also witnessed the first Moscow turned into a strange and good feeling: show trial of Stalin’s rivals – it was an act of no recalling it, I worked assiduously on the little boldness. In an extended but unsigned locomotive … Later the words about the preface, the editors explained their decision as revolution as a locomotive turned the dictated by the timidity of literary journals’ locomotive for me into a sense editorial boards, which prefer safe “routine” and [oshchushchenie] of the revolution.2 “cliché” to a realism that reveals contradictions and incites reflection: A revolutionary fact gives rise to a feeling and organizes labor, but then returns to a metaphor We categorically reject the formula that rapidly accelerates out of control. This “talented, but politically false.” A truly literal belief in metaphor animated socialist talented work reflects reality with realism, the official aesthetic system of the maximum objectivity, and an objective Soviet Union beginning in 1932, and Stalin relied reflection of reality cannot be hostile to the heavily upon the mobilizing power of metaphor working class and its cause. In Soviet when, in 1935, he placed the rail industry at the conditions a work that is false in its ideas center of public discourse, as seen in railway cannot be genuinely talented.5 commissar Lazar Kaganovich’s speech at the celebration of July 30, 1935: e - f l u x j o r n a # 9 1 — m y 2 0 8 đ R b t B i d A r t i c u l a o n s f ( S ) R e m : L k á , P v h y What sounds like pure casuistry reflects the journal’s consistent position that literary In The Class Struggle in France Marx wrote narrative possesses a degree of autonomy, i.e., that “revolutions are the locomotives of means of efficacy that cannot be mapped history.” On Marx’s timetable Lenin and directly onto ideology: “Vigilance is necessary. In Stalin have set the locomotive of history order that it be real, actual, Bolshevik vigilance, onto its track and led it forward. The however, and not just a bureaucrat’s fear of enemies of revolution prophesied crashes ‘unpleasantness,’ it is necessary first of all to for our locomotive, trying to frighten us with know literature.”6

05.11.18 / 18:21:06 EDT đđđđđđđđđđGeorg Lukács was a leading light of the oscillation between documentary source and journal, and the unnamed editors’ opposition fictional invention. Traveling to Krasnyi Liman between “literature” and “bureaucracy” calls to only after finishing the story, Platonov found mind Lukács’s 1939 essay “Tribune or Tseitlin “intelligent (true, I’ve only spoken to him Bureaucrat?” In fact the entire project “People of for ten minutes so far) and very similar to his the Railway Empire” had been conceived along image in my story.”11 Publishing the story in roughly Lukácsian lines, considering his Literaturnyi kritik, Platonov attached an opposition to pure factography in the 1932 essay 04/17 enigmatic note: “In this story there are no facts “Reportage or Portrayal?” The project was to be that fail to correspond to reality at least in a rooted in close study of Soviet life, specifically small degree, and there are no facts copying through an archive of transcripts of worker reality.”12 Platonov strives for realism, but interviews that were commissioned especially realism excludes the “copying” of reality. So for the occasion. As its organizer Vladimir what, for Platonov, was realism? Ermilov stressed, writers would travel to the home locations of their subjects “for personal 2. Realism as Articulation impressions, so that this figure really comes to It was a version of this question, I will argue, that life in the hands of this writer when he is writing, stimulated Georg Lukács to publish “Narrate or working.”7 The result will be that “this literary Describe?,” one of his major statements on the work will not be isolated from the specific nature theory of narrative, in the same issue of of the railway … in order that these works show Literaturnyi kritik as Platonov’s “Immortality.” people in the genuine, specific surroundings in Lukács begins (“in medias res,” he admits) with which they live, work and fight.”8 Unlike previous the coincidence of two parallel scenes in collective documentary projects (e.g., on the contemporaneous novels named for heroic Cheliuskin expedition to the Arctic Sea or anagrammatic heroines; namely, the horse races on the construction of the Moscow Metro), in Emile Zola’s Nana (1880) and Lev Tolstoy’s authors were urged “to provide stories, highly Anna Karenina (1873–1878). Zola’s “brief artistic documentary sketches and literary monograph” about horse racing is a symbolic portraits, written by authors themselves over insert into his novel about the prostitute Nana, their personal signature; not reworked while Tolstoy makes Fru-Fru’s fatal fall into a transcripts but genuine, self-sufficient artistic turning point for multiple plotlines centered on works about the person.”9 In addition to prose the adulteress Anna. Zola’s horse race is exterior works written on the basis of the transcripts, to the central story, while Tolstoy’s is fully Ermilov encouraged the creation of plays and integrated. “In Zola the race is described from also a “railway Chapaev,” modeled on the popular the standpoint of an observer; in Tolstoy it is 1934 sound film about a Civil War-era narrated from the standpoint of a participant,” commander.10 Lukács concludes.13 The question for Lukács is: đđđđđđđđđđPlatonov fulfilled his commission with Which writer – and which method – treats the admirable conscientiousness, completing his event more realistically? two stories by the deadline of February 10, 1936. đđđđđđđđđđWhen it appeared in the original German in For “Immortality,” in addition to renaming his the November and December 1936 issues of protagonist and the location, Platonov appears Internationale Literatur, the Moscow-based to have used the (unknown and possibly lost) organ of the international Popular Front, transcript of Tseitlin’s interview with great Lukács’s essay “Narrate or Describe?” was license, deriving from it only the basic picture of presented itself as an intervention in the heated a railway station chief working tirelessly to keep debate over realism that was instigated on trains on schedule despite the incompetence January 28, 1936 with an editorial in the central and truculence of less conscientious coworkers. Party newspaper Pravda. The anonymous author In Platonov’s story the logistics specialist of “Muddle instead of Music” condemned the Polutorny is preoccupied with finding a Plymouth “formalist” tendencies of Dmitrii Shostakovich’s Rock cockerel for his hens. Another logistics opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, i.e., its specialist, Zakharchenko, spends most of his excessive interest in matters of pure form, time at his pottery wheel producing wares that e - f l u x j o r n a # 9 1 — m y 2 0 8 đ R b t B i d A r t i c u l a o n s f ( S ) R e m : L k á , P v h y leading the opera to be promptly yanked from the he sells at great personal profit. Night supervisor stage of the Bolshoi Theatre. More articles Pirogov is depressed, needy, and incompetent, followed, broadening the initial critique to cover while Levin’s assistant, Yedvak (based on the not only the overemphasis on form (“formalism”), word for “hardly,” yedva), is simply lazy. but also the opposite overemphasis on raw Protected only by his loyal but limited cook sensory data (“naturalism”), both of which Galya, Levin sacrifices sleep and nourishment to become watchwords for modernism. The articles keep a watchful eye over the entire operation. targeted a range of artists in various media: đđđđđđđđđđIn his story Platonov observes a delicate Shostakovich’s ballet The Limpid Stream (with

05.11.18 / 18:21:06 EDT Andrei Platonov, c. 1938. Copyright: Mariia Andreevna Platonova/Wikimedia Commons.

05.11.18 / 18:21:06 EDT librettist Adrian Piotrovsky and choreographer narratively articulated event (Ereignis) coincides Fedor Lopukhov), artist Vladimir Lebedev’s with historical necessity. Lukács even goes so far illustrated children’s books, Mikhail Bulgakov’s as to argue that history itself “objectively drama Molière, and the collected writings of poet articulates” (gliedert) the fictional world and the and novelist Marietta Shaginian. Threatening characters that the realist artist depicts administrative penalties (or worse) for offending (122/108). artists and critics, the campaign against đđđđđđđđđđLukács’s dual concept of “articulation” – modernist excess was quickly extended to all 06/17 history working through narrative, and narrative mediums of art and instilled a deep and lasting working to produce history – draws on Hegel’s chill on Soviet culture. It suggested an end to the use of Gliederung in the second part of the notion of socialist realism as an autonomous Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences. method that could engender a variety of styles Dedicated to the philosophy of nature, this and modes for socialism, and its transformation section traces how simple organisms – plants into an obligatory and uniform style based on the and animals – express their inner idea or replication of safe artistic conventions encoded subjectivity by articulating themselves into in a restricted canon of authoritative exempla.14 complex forms. Through articulation, đđđđđđđđđđIn the process of updating his argument to “subjectivity … is developed as an objective suit the new struggle against formalism and organism, as an image [Gestalt]”: “This moment naturalism, Lukács introduces a fundamentally of negative definition grounds the transition to a new concept of realism based on the treatment genuine organism, in which the outer image of chance (Zufälligkeit). Lukács judges Nana and harmonizes with the concept, so that these parts Anna Karenina by their starkly different are essentially members, while subjectivity is the treatments of chance in the horse race scene: all-pervading unity of the whole.”15 Tolstoy’s horse race is an “exceptional” event đđđđđđđđđđLukács’s was also aware of a famous (112/101, 125/111), but one that is so closely passage in the Grundrisse, where Marx deploys integrated with the novel’s major plotlines that Gliederung to denote the process by which Frou-Frou’s fall reads like a death sentence economic production articulates inchoate social pronounced on Anna herself. Zola’s, by contrast, relations into hierarchical structures, which can is self-contained and easily separable from the retrospectively be read as a palimpsest of rest of the novel. For Lukács, Tolstoy exemplifies economic history. By analogy with evolutionary how truly realist artists “elevate chance to the paleontology, Marx suggests that new forms of inevitable [das Zufällige in die Notwendigkeit society retain structures inherited from more aufheben]” (112/102). Lacking this air of archaic ones: “Bourgeois society … allows inevitability, Zola’s horse race is merely a insights into the structure and the relations of naturalistic “hypertrophy of real detail,” as Zola production of all the vanished social formations himself describes his method (116/104). For out of whose ruins and elements it built itself Lukács, Tolstoy “provides quite another mode of up.”16 Lukács follows Hegel and Marx in using artistic inevitability [künsterlische “articulation” as a way to hold together the Notwendingkeit] than is possible with Zola’s individual and world-historical vectors of exhaustive description” (112/102). Lukács causality. When applied to narrative art, this concludes: “Narration establishes proportions means that the artist freely articulates his or her [gliedert], description merely levels” (127/112). subjective concept in image-forms (Gestalt) or đđđđđđđđđđThe established English translation of this narratives (Erzählung) that coincide with the line obscures the concept I take to be central to objective forms (economic or evolutionary) of Lukács’s new concept of realism: articulation. In historical necessity. the Hegelian tradition articulation (Gliederung in đđđđđđđđđđIt may seem odd, in this light, that Lukács German, raschlenenie in Russian) does not proceeds to pass ethical judgment on Zola’s merely establish proportions and arrange into method, instead of treating it as the objective hierarchical order, but also elevates chance to revelation of historical necessity speaking the status of necessity. True to its etymology in through Nana. Doesn’t the very coincidence of Latin and German (artus and Glied, meaning a such similar contemporaneous novels signify joint, limb, or member), articulation reveals e - f l u x j o r n a # 9 1 — m y 2 0 8 đ R b t B i d A r t i c u l a o n s f ( S ) R e m : L k á , P v h y anything about the paths of modernity, beyond details to be the limbs or members of an Zola’s willful deviation from realism? However, organism. Lukács is most interested in how Lukács thoroughly rejects the notion that every narrative articulates isolated occurrences as work of art bears some truth about history, by events in history, understood in a Marxist vein; means of some “immanent dialectic within he argues that narrative articulation “conforms artistic forms” (119/106). Instead, Zola’s to the laws of historical development and is deviation from realism is grounded in the determined by the action of social forces” alienation of professionalized literature (122/108). Thus the “artistic inevitability” of the (reflecting the capitalist division of labor) and in

05.11.18 / 18:21:06 EDT the author’s loss of belief in the possibility of analysis. It is bad enough that modern artists social change after 1848: “Without an ideology “have diminished [verkleinlicht] capitalist reality, [Weltanschauung] a writer can neither narrate rendering its terror weaker and more trivial than nor construct a comprehensive, well-organized, it really is”; even more grave for Lukács that “the and multifaceted epic composition” (143/114).17 methods of observation and description diminish Articulation – as the key to epic narrative and distort the greatest revolutionary process of composition – is the hallmark not of art as such, humanity.”19 Sinking even deeper than Zola into but only of art that has been guided by a 07/17 alienation, contemporary bourgeois writers conscious striving to capture the totality within a suffer from two regrettable tendencies: sequence of seemingly chance events, i.e., of art objectivism and subjectivism. In spurious that is intentionally and studiously realist. objectivism (i.e., naturalism), “the so-called đđđđđđđđđđRead retrospectively, Lukács’s insistence on action is only a thread on which still-lifes are the author’s conscious ideological stand may disposed in a superficial, ineffective fortuitous seem to be an apology for the Communist Party sequence of isolated, static pictures” (144). The under Stalin and its coercive legislating of subjectivist (i.e., formalist) novel, typified by aesthetic style. From the time of the Russian Proust, depicts a life so alienated from the world revolution Lukács had consistently hewed to the that it also turns into something “static and Leninist line concerning the role of the Party as reified” (144). The case of James Joyce shows the proxy of proletarian consciousness, opposing how extreme subjectivism ends up coinciding those like Rosa Luxemburg, Aleksandr Bogdanov, with extreme objectivism, producing a raw or Lev Trotsky who imagined proletarian documentary record of merely subjective consciousness as arising spontaneously and experience, leaving us with unanalyzed and dictating its own terms and forms. Already in a unshaped surface data. 1932 essay, Lukács called upon writers to đđđđđđđđđđSoviet literature also presents a record of jettison any notion of fellow travelers in art (what failure. In a final section on Soviet literature he calls “tendency”) in favor of full-blown (included only in the German-language “partisanship,” which he defines in the following publication in Internationale Literatur, but way: omitted in the Russian-language publication earlier the same year), Lukács reports with what the class-conscious section of the indignation that novelist Iurii Olesha has proletariat wants and does, from an expressed preference for Joyce over Gorky, which understanding of the driving forces of the shows the lingering effect of the “late-bourgeois overall process, and as representative of and Bogdanovite traditions” of conflating form the great world-historical interests of the with method. The choice between realism and its working class, portraying this as a will and alternatives is ultimately “not literary in a a deed that themselves arise dialectically technical sense”; it is, rather, ontological: “The from the same overall process and are new person cannot be formed out of this indispensable moments of this objective episodism [characteristic of both formalism and process of reality.18 naturalism]. We must know and experience in a human way from where it is to come and how it is In short, the Party does much the same work as to undergo its growth.”20 realist artists, “portraying” diverse desires and đđđđđđđđđđIn “Narrate or Describe?” Lukács gives little events as part of a single overall pattern, i.e., indication of how socialist realism might recover articulating them as history. To articulate means the power of realist articulation, creating the to be articulated as a (Party) member (Mitgleid). impression that the only path forward is to At issue in “Narrate or Describe?,” then, is the imitate the narrative techniques of the pre-1848 ability of literary form both to express and to realist novel and of its later stalwarts Dickens produce class consciousness by articulating the and Tolstoy. Lukács’s cursory endorsement of world-historical significance of actually-existing Maxim Gorky – the undisputed hierarch of Soviet material conditions. literature – seems merely a half-hearted acknowledgement of Gorky’s canonical position,

3. Platonov and Lukács e - f l u x j o r n a # 9 1 — m y 2 0 8 đ R b t B i d A r t i c u l a o n s f ( S ) R e m : L k á , P v h y especially in light of his recent death under The most conspicuous gap in “Narrate or suspicious circumstances in June 1936. The Describe?” is the lack of any recent examples of majority of Soviet novels, Lukács avers, realism, so that Lukács is forced to fall back on foreground “neither human fates nor the prerevolutionary models. For Lukács, recent relations among people, mediated by things,” but bourgeois artists (both formalists and rather “the monograph of a kolkhoz, a factory, naturalists) have failed at realism in two etc.”21 What is needed in socialist realism is “a conspicuous ways, both by trivializing reality and view [Blick] on life that exceeds the description by deploying the wrong method for its artistic of its vast surface and the abstract arrangement

05.11.18 / 18:21:06 EDT Page from the Soviet publicationđСССР на стройкеđ(USSR inđConstruction).đ

05.11.18 / 18:21:06 EDT of correctly observed social impressions; a view Drawing on his arguments in “Narrate or that sees the mutual dependence Describe?,” Lukács sees Levin as a “typical” [Zusammenhang] of the two [i.e., of life and its character whose actions bring the elements of arrangement] and brings this mutual chance in socialist character-construction into a dependence together poetically as a story pattern of inevitability: [Fabel].”22 Lukács reports that the most significant Soviet writers are “striving for Negative traits in and of themselves are individual stories ever more energetically,” but as 09/17 incapable of vivifying a literary image. The evidence he names only Aleksandr Fadeev, an living interaction between a person’s author whose authority was more administrative virtues and mistakes; an understanding than artistic (he took over as head of the Union of that these mistakes are no exterior Soviet Writers after Gorky’s death). contingency [sluchainost’], but very đđđđđđđđđđBut Lukács’s reticence regarding socialist frequently emerge from those very virtues; realism should not surprise us given the opening an understanding that these positive traits, words of his essay. “We begin in medias res” not as a whole, are linked with a person’s social only in the sense that the analysis of Tolstoy and fate and with the main problems of Zola requires prior knowledge of the texts, but modernity: this is the only possible basis also in the sense that socialist realism is still in for creating a living literary image.24 the process of being defined and created. Within a year Lukács broke his relative silence about Quirky as Levin is, he is no sluchainost’, but contemporary Soviet literature with an article instead emerges from Platonov’s story as about the protagonist of Andrei Platonov’s neobkhodimost’ – necessity: “Immortality,” presented as a contribution to a special issue of Literaturnoe obozrenie (a It is typical that both here and in other supplement to Literaturnyi kritik where Platonov similar cases [sluchai], in his low frequently published critical texts) dedicated to assessment of his own personality Levin “Heroes of Soviet Literature.” Platonov’s meek constantly upbraids himself for what is station chief Emmanuil Levin makes surprising actually his best quality – for his company for such canonical protagonists as passionate immersion in work. This is no Chapaev and Pavel Korchagin (from Nikolai contingency [sluchainost’], no purely Ostrovsky’s novel How the Steel Was Tempered). individual trait, and even less is it Levin’s Lukács’s provocative canonization of Platonov’s simple eccentricity. This is a broad problem story not only demonstrates his unconventional of the contemporary transitional period, a view of socialist realism, but also confirms his reflection of the social division of labor at argument for realist representation as a crucial the contemporary stage of the development phase within the historical unfolding of of socialism – true, given in subjectivist socialism. distortion, but at the same time necessary đđđđđđđđđđBased on the parameters laid out in [neobkhodimoe] in this very form.25 “Narrate or Describe?,” Platonov’s story is a far from predictable exemplum for Lukács’s theory Platonov’s Levin is not a two-dimensional of realism. Not only is it a short story rather than character illustrating a static ideal, not a “wind- the novels Lukács usually favors, but Lukács up doll” (in Lukács’s phrase), but instead reveals concedes that “Immortality” lacks suspense the logic of his situation through conscious (Spannung) and even a “strong compositional action, primarily labor: “Man is indeed, as backbone (sterzhen’).” However, the critic must dialectics teaches us, the product of his labor, in avoid treating literary works “formalistically, the broadest sense of the word.”26 according to outward characteristics,” Lukács đđđđđđđđđđLevin’s small-scale labor shows how the argues, focusing instead on how Platonov’s story revolution is reversing the large-scale dynamics of the everyday remains free of “naturalistic of chance in history, ridding the world of negative greyness”: contingency. If the bourgeois novel showed the inevitability of accidents, then Platonov’s Levin

Platonov’s main task is to reveal the e - f l u x j o r n a # 9 1 — m y 2 0 8 đ R b t B i d A r t i c u l a o n s f ( S ) R e m : L k á , P v h y asserts control over contingency, or at least its tendencies of the development of people consequences: “Shunting still seemed to entail fighting for socialism within a picture of any number of minor accidents and unfortunate Soviet workdays [budni] … People who build moments with people. But Levin knew very well this economy consciously, by overcoming that every little chance misfortune was, in all outward obstacles and inward essence, a big catastrophe – only it happened to difficulties, become socialist people in the have died in infancy.”27 process of their work and thanks to it.23 đđđđđđđđđđIt is therefore fitting that the story lacks suspenseful contingencies, relying instead on

05.11.18 / 18:21:06 EDT the drama of a protagonist existing on two scales the latter, and out of their fruitful at once, the personal and the world-historical: interaction arises the socialist organization “On the small scale of this station he undertakes of the economy – and is born the new the program for the reorganization of the railway person.31 proposed by comrade L. M. Kaganovich.”28 The way in which small features of the portrait ramify In contrast to the bourgeois-realist novel, where into the larger productive processes are the protagonist is wholly conditioned by the suggested by none other than Kaganovich, who 10/17 external environment, ultimately by history, calls Levin on the telephone in the middle of the Platonov’s Levin defines himself as an night in order to make sure he is taking care of independent agent in his work on the world and himself: “Listen, Emmanuil Semyonovich. If you on other people. As Lukács remarks: cripple yourself at Red Peregon I will seek compensation as if you had ruined a thousand To expose “defects” in people’s personal locomotives. I will check when you are sleeping, lives and to “repair” these defects … but don’t make a nanny out of me … ”29 For exceeds the concrete tasks of organizing Lukács, the fulcrum of this drama is not a tragic labor at the little station: they enable the knot, then, but a mechanical calculation of growth of all of a person’s abilities, not just balance: his “railway” ones, and help him to escape the petty, narrow, crippling frames of the Platonov’s great artistry is evident in the rural or urban petty-bourgeois world.32 way that the small, outwardly insignificant segment of life that he draws shows us an As for Hegel, then, the subject’s self-articulation enormous multiplicity of processes that renders its concept objectively, as history. reveal this inner reconstruction of people. đđđđđđđđđđFor Lukács, Levin’s “sadness” stems from True, Platonov only charts the direction, the his consciousness of the lag of material history tendency of these processes, and – this is behind his concept of it, which expresses itself in another strong side of his art – we do not “impatience” and a “mental leaping ahead,” over see in his work any completely changed the empty expanses of Soviet socialism in its people, seeing only the “fulcrums of anticipatory state, which separate him from his Archimedes” to which Levin applies his ultimate boss Lazar Kaganovich: lever; we see the movement elicited by his stimulus and the wholly definite direction The distant, thick and kind voice fell silent of this movement.30 for a time. Levin stood silent; he had long loved his Moscow interlocutor, but had Time might not be reversible, as Levin’s cook never been able to express his feeling to reminds him, but perspective is, and the drama him in any direct way: all means were of Platonov’s world is rooted in the constant tactless and indelicate … oscillation of intimate and world-historical scales. đđđđđđđđđđThough he does not use the term here, “Here I have to think up people anew, Lazar’ Lukács’s analysis of Platonov’s “Immortality” is Moiseevich … ” clarified by the concept “articulation” from “Narrate or Describe?” Platonov’s Emmanuil Levin is more than a product of his outward “That’s the most difficult, most necessary conditions, in which he struggles against thing [nuzhnoe],” said the distant, clear remnants of capitalism and for the introduction voice; one could hear the fine groaning hum of socialist order. Within these conditions he of the electrical amplifier, reminding both struggles also to manifest himself as a new interlocutors of the long space [dolgoe subjectivity, free of the consequences of the prostranstvo], of the wind, the frost and division of labor, which are still so patently blizzards, of their common concern.33 visible in his coworkers. Therefore, Lukács comments: e - f l u x j o r n a # 9 1 — m y 2 0 8 đ R b t B i d A r t i c u l a o n s f ( S ) R e m : L k á , P v h y The adjective “dolgii” is usually applied to time; the separation between the interlocutors – and His passion for technology and organization the scales which they primarily inhabit – is both has never, not even for a second, given rise spatial and temporal. Overcoming the separation to the dry one-sidedness that is typical of is not merely a goal to be attained in the future managers of capitalist enterprises. For through labor in the present; it also requires an Levin the person and the machine, the intimacy established through media, like the person and technology, are inseparably telephone, or like Platonov’s story. The task of linked to each other. The former controls literature is to animate the life-system with

05.11.18 / 18:21:06 EDT 11/17

The agit-trainđOctober Revolution included ađcarđspecificallyđoutfitted for propaganda purposes.đPhoto:đVertov-Collection, Austrian Film Museum

05.11.18 / 18:21:06 EDT energy, bringing “organization” into harmony with in 1933–34 and Metro in 1935. At the beginning “feeling.”34 of 1936 Shklovsky became involved in the project đđđđđđđđđđJust as (in the words of Platonov’s narrator) “People of the Railway Empire,” for which “any system of work is just the play of a solitary Platonov was already at work on “Immortality” mind unless it is heated by the energy of all and “Among Animals and Plants.” workers’ hearts,” so also does life need to be đđđđđđđđđđAt organizational meetings at the Union of humanized.35 “Oh, life, when will you get yourself Soviet Writers on January 26–27, 1936 – on the organized so we don’t need ever to sense 12/17 very eve of the anonymous article that [chuiat’] you!” Levin sighs. By articulating and condemned Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth and amplifying the tensions of the “transitional” kicked off the anti-formalism campaign – a moment, Lukács suggests, Platonov’s story group of writers gathered to discuss “People of works like the telephone that conveys the Railway Empire” with professionals from the Kaganovich’s concern to Levin, easing him into industry. True to the tenets of factography, world-historical existence and bringing this Shklovsky strenuously disagreed with Vladimir perspective to bear upon small outbreaks of Ermilov (one of the project’s initiators) on the contingency. And yet the story constantly returns need to impose narrative shape on the raw data to the elusiveness of feeling in a world pervaded of reality, which (in Shklovsky’s view) constantly by concern for technology and other inhuman outstrip the limits of our imagination: “Every day things: you read the newspapers and are surprised by what is happening there.”37 Shklovsky urged But in the darkness of his mind, which was writers to take an example from champion abundantly irrigated by blood, there glowed locomotive driver Petr Krivonos, who a single trembling point; it gleamed through consistently exceeded the speed and weight the gloom of his eyes, half-closed by his limits imposed by over-cautious bureaucrats. eyelids, as if a lantern was burning at a Against such “limitism,” Shklovsky argues that distant guard post, on the entrance signal norms have to be derived from direct observation of the main route from reality, and this of practice, which is every day rewriting the very meek flame could turn at any instant into laws of nature. the broad glow of his entire consciousness đđđđđđđđđđWhat would it mean for a writer to be a and turn on his heart at full strength.36 Stakhanovite? Writer Isai Rakhtanov complained of the draconian submission deadlines – The pilot light of consciousness flickers at the Shklovsky’s own contribution had been due ready, protected from the chill winds of an already on January 10 – but for Shklovsky obdurate world, watching for opportunities to “limitism” was just as pernicious in literary articulate labor as history, as immortality. production as in rail transport.38 Most forcefully Literature not only awaits socialism, but also, for Shklovsky took issue with Ermilov’s insistence on Lukács, socialist realism. writers’ authorship, even their signature, as the source of “genuine” literature. It used to be that 4. Lukács and Shklovsky physical labor was “nameless” and, as such, The alliance between Platonov and Lukács, I am sharply contrasted to that of writers. Now that arguing, was a signal event in Soviet cultural life laborers are becoming heroes, Shklovsky argues, in 1936, but it can only be understood by writers need to work out new ways of considering also the role of Viktor Shklovsky, as appropriating that labor without imposing their instigator and gadfly. Shklovsky is best known for own names or, most importantly, their own his youthful work on literary theory, but he voices, as Shklovsky explained in a speech at a remained prominent throughout the Soviet gathering of Moscow writers in March 1936: period as writer and screenwriter, literary and film critic, and theorist of socialist realism. Take the people of “The Rail Empire.” Having been one of the proponents of radical People write well. People have learned to factography in the late 1920s, Shklovsky’s niche speak. People think well. The transcripts of continued to be the adaptation of documentary their speeches … improve from year to year. material in a constant stream of books and films, e - f l u x j o r n a # 9 1 — m y 2 0 8 đ R b t B i d A r t i c u l a o n s f ( S ) R e m : L k á , P v h y It is not that the stenographers have including the screenplay for the film Turksib learned to take better notes: it is that the (1930), about the construction of a rail line from people have changed. The voice of people Kazakhstan to Siberia, and an accompanying has changed.39 volume. After the dawn of socialist realism Shklovsky was closely involved in many of the Faced with the task of recording Stakhanovite most prominent documentary projects, voices, Soviet writers have succumbed to a new beginning with the collectively researched and division of labor and, Shklovsky suggests, a new written volume The White Sea–Baltic Sea Canal alienation: “People have divided their life into

05.11.18 / 18:21:06 EDT two parts … : work for themselves – of a purely letters but never mastered the skill of combining literary type – and what they write about them into words, leaving him in a world of transport, the Metro, and the White Sea Canal.”40 acronyms: đđđđđđđđđđShklovsky’s argument for the preeminence of the laborer’s speech over the writer’s He didn’t forget the letters because they composition is clearly directed against Lukács, walked alongside him on the rails, printed who had dismissed “factography” already in his onto the locomotive: Ov, ChKZ, Shch

1932 essay “Reportage or Portrayal?” The 13/17 [abbreviations of types of locomotives]. concluding section of “Narrate or Describe?,” omitted in the Russian-language publication (as in later translations), renewed this polemic People at the station – those who were a apropos of Sergei Tret’iakov’s notion of “the bit more important [pokrupnee] – were also biography of a thing” as the epitome of the called not by names and syllables, but by convergence between naturalism and formalism, letters. There were various kinds: TCh, DS, which has resulted in a compositional monotony DSP [abbreviations of posts on the railway]. among novels, united by the same narrative conceits: “The naked theme can only show the socially necessary path without representing it In the carpenter’s family the letters as the result of endlessly crossing contingencies remained linked to railway people and [Zufälligkeiten].”41 Caught at the center of all locomotives, but not reading. these contingent forces, for Lukács characters are reduced to bare schemata: “For people to receive true physiognomies and truly human The carpenter taught his children literacy contours, we must co-experience their actions.” himself, showing them the letters. The Soviet documentary novel, in Lukács’s view, is just as schematic as a naturalist one, only with the opposite sign: instead of novels ending with The first letters which the carpenter’s son the inevitable crisis of capitalism, the Soviet Petr learned were ChKZ [a four-axle novels end with the inevitable victory of the locomotive from the Kolomensk factory]. “hidden and suppressed correct principle.” “The authentic writerly work of discovery, of composition,” Lukács concludes, “should begin The locomotive on which these letters precisely at the point where the majority of our shone was the most cozy; even a small writers complete their work.”42 child could climb onto it.44 đđđđđđđđđđShklovsky, by contrast, insists on the necessity not of articulating a person’s Therefore, Shklovsky writes, physiognomy as a historical forcefield, but rather of providing space for the person to articulate His father bought no toys, making them him- or herself. “The point is not to take a story himself for his children, but only rarely. One and stuff it full of transportation,” Shklovsky time he made something like a model of a added. “One must transfer the sense locomotive part. [oshchushchenie] of labor into the work.”43 In his theoretical writings and speeches Shklovsky tended to make these arguments performatively, It was interesting to watch the wheel spin i.e., through quotation, adduction of examples, on a wooden shaft. Petr called this toy and verbal play. This was the case also with “ChKZ.”45 Shklovsky’s own contribution to “People of the Railway Empire,” namely “Petr Krivonos,” a story- Petr begins the art of combining language and cum-documentary sketch published at the end the world when he begins to learn how to put of 1937 in the literary journal Znamia. Krivonos trains together. Both skills are based on was the most illustrious of railway Stakhanovites elementary montage, exercised on a scale model and the main debunker of limitism in railway e - f l u x j o r n a # 9 1 — m y 2 0 8 đ R b t B i d A r t i c u l a o n s f ( S ) R e m : L k á , P v h y but transferable to full-scale mechanisms and science, just as Shklovsky was in literary processes. science. đđđđđđđđđđAs it expands, Petr’s literacy – and the đđđđđđđđđđWriting in his trademark telegraphic style, consciousness it brings – remain inseparable Shklovsky draws a consistent analogy between from his labor on trains: railway labor and literacy. Krivonos was raised in a poor family. His father Fyodor managed to build Finishing college, the pupil understands a himself a house only through extreme parsimony. locomotive just as one must understand a Having worked all his life, Fyodor knew the phrase in grammatical analysis.

05.11.18 / 18:21:06 EDT Man is adapted for success and happiness. This here is a noun, with a certain gender, number, and case. This, for example, is a piston shaft; it’s different on other Man can do much more than he has up till locomotives, but here it is like this, playing now.48 the role of a connecting rod and serving to

transfer movement from the piston to the 14/17 As it happens, the transcript of Krivonos’s crankshaft of the wheel; it turns straight interview (with a writer named Kapustianskii) is movement into torque. the only such one known to have survived from the “People of the Railway Empire” project.49 It bears underlinings that coincide with passages These words open up a conscious relation quoted directly in Shklovsky’s biographical to the machine.46 sketch, and which suggest how closely Shklovsky hewed to his source, in contrast to Platonov. With his mastery of grammatical and mechanical đđđđđđđđđđIn a 1940 review of Shklovsky’s book On montage, Petr can begin to put together Mayakovsky (O Maiakovskom) Platonov defines machine-based labor in hitherto unseen ways. Shklovsky’s signature “genre” by its “out- Having determined his vocation, Krivonos enters croppings” (otvetvleniia): “These outcroppings or an apprenticeship with Makar Ruban, who tangential characteristics are so abundant that shares his “passion for locomotives.”47 Together their tangle obscures the main trunk [kriazh] of they overcome the “wreckers” who hold to the the tree on which they grow.”50 But worst of all is “fascist” theory of the limit, and imprint their that this “genre” becomes a “mechanism,” and names on railway labor. the writer a “builder”: “Unless it is renewed, đđđđđđđđđđShklovsky’s challenge is to find a verbal unless it is nurtured by living fate, writerly equivalent for Petr’s feats of labor. Instead of experience is the death of the artist … We have shaping his material as narrative, Shklovsky no need of mutually exchangeable details of the constructs the biographical narrative out of child’s toy ‘Meccano.’”51 contingent, almost random fragments, including đđđđđđđđđđThe result of this mechanical style is that biographical details, local color, personal Shklovsky fails to capture the living subject: memories, instructions on the proper upkeep of locomotives, statistics, news of the day, and He fails to understand that in identical comments on the weather. All of this is arranged circumstances people’s thoughts and in an order that also seems random: actions will also be almost identical (and there is nothing bad or harmful in this), but The days passed in a rising tempo. their feelings always differ, their feelings are always individual and unique. Actions are stereotypical, but life is unrepeatable.52 The aircraft USSR-1b took off on June 27 at 5:25am. It landed safely, having reached an For Platonov, Shklovsky’s style is suited for altitude of 16,000 meters and having stamping identical copies of a single exemplum, performed 50 tests on cosmic rays. but not for resolving the inner dilemmas of socialism experienced as life. đđđđđđđđđđBut Platonov misses the point. What is most 70,654 train cars were loaded. The Donbass striking in Shklovsky’s practice is not his style or railway was among those over-fulfilling the his treatment of his subject, but rather his plan. There was a competition for best continual, full-blooded participation in the conductor. collective editorial process required by a project like “People of the Railway Empire.” In this Shklovsky appears the polar opposite of The glider pilot Kartashov took off, using a Platonov, who maintained a silent presence at

storm front. The storm cloud stretched for e - f l u x j o r n a # 9 1 — m y 2 0 8 đ R b t B i d A r t i c u l a o n s f ( S ) R e m : L k á , P v h y the meetings, intent on getting his work several hundred kilometers. published in a form as close as possible to his original composition. By contrast, Shklovsky’s socialist realism is a process that refuses to Using a powerful thermal stream, the glider settle into a completed text, inhabiting instead a pilot rose to 2,000 meters and, together self-propagating (unfinalizable, one might say) with the storm cloud, flew in the direction cycle of commissioning, speech, recording, of Serpukhov. writing, discussion, reviewing, and new production. It gestures toward communism as a

05.11.18 / 18:21:06 EDT state not of history, but of language. ended in two ways … There is no hero, no đđđđđđđđđđShklovsky’s concept of socialist realism as feat, there is just a accident [sluchai] that a discursive process can be difficult to allowed him to look with one eye into this reconstruct based on the fragmentary other life, and then he again returned back; transcripts and polemics that have come down and the place he has returned to is a quite to us. But in our case it does help to see how meaningless life.55 Platonov’s, Lukács’s, and Shklovsky’s writings can all be taken as links in a single chain of 15/17 Platonov is defended by Semyon Gekht, who utterances about the conditions of realism under says: “An accident can also provoke a person, if socialist construction. there is something in his character.”56 He continues: “I am not against accident. Every 5. Concluding Links narrative [rasskaz] has accident. The accident of In his speech from March 15, 1936, responding to Anna Karenina meeting Vronsky in the train. accusations of formalism, Shklovsky referred in There as many such accidents in life and in an his defense to his work on “People of the Railway artwork as you like. But there is a pernicious kind Empire”: “I took pains to rouse Andrei Platonov of accident.”57 for this work and am proud that he has written đđđđđđđđđđNot only does Gekht insist (like Fyodor such a piece as ‘Red Liman’ [i.e., Levin) on the terminology of “contingency” and ‘Immortality’].”53 Shklovsky had reason to be “accident” when discussing Platonov’s railway proud, since it was he who first brought Platonov story, but he also makes the connection to Anna to broad public notice back in 1925 after he flew Karenina. All of this confirms that Lukács’s essay to Voronezh and interviewed Platonov for a “Narrate or Describe?” and Platonov’s two documentary sketch with photographic railway stories were understood to be links in a illustrations, later adapted for inclusion in the single extended discussion about realism in book Third Factory (Tret’ia fabrika).54 Depicting 1936. Platonov as an eccentric irrigation engineer from đđđđđđđđđđIf one assumes that Platonov and Lukács the provinces suited Shklovsky’s idea of how were in direct contact, one might even go so far industrial labor would produce its own distinct, as to read “Among Animals and Plants” as truly proletarian intellectual culture. Platonov’s direct response to Lukács’s key notion đđđđđđđđđđComing a full five months before the story’s of articulation. It tells of how provincial publication, Shklovsky’s casual comment about pointsman Ivan Fyodorov works his way up, first Platonov’s “Immortality” also illustrates the kind to the more central station of Medvezh’ia gora of circulation that texts enjoyed in manuscript, (Bear Mountain), and then earns himself a especially via the writers’ unions and other promotion to the position of сoupler organizations. It is possible that Lukács’s (stsepshchik). Throughout the story Fyodorov is “Narrate or Describe?” also circulated in depicted as saddened by the profound alienation manuscript as part of the same broad persisting between human and animal, human discussion. In any event, comments by Shklovsky and machine, human and media. He desires and others at a July 13, 1936 workshop called to renown, but achieves it only by causing an critique Platonov’s other railway story, “Among accident that maims his right arm. Fyodorov’s Animals and Plants,” suggest familiarity with world-historical action, in short, comes at the Lukács’s argument concerning realism in cost of his own disfiguration, his own “Narrate or Describe?” before the essay was dismemberment (which in Russian is the same published. This is particularly true of critic word as articulation, raschlenenie). Fyodor Levin, who in his critique of the story’s đđđđđđđđđđAgain we are brought back to Anna bleakness at the writers’ workshop seems to Karenina, this time its finale, where the heroine adopt Lukács’s terms as he complains about the also has a brutal encounter with a train. lack of motivation in the events of the story: “Narrative establishes proportions,” the English translation reads. “Narrative articulates,” says The signals engineer has no joy in life. Joy Lukács in my reading. Given the ambiguity of the occurs only because an accident occurred term Gliederung/raschlenenie, however, there is

and someone performed a feat [podvig], e - f l u x j o r n a # 9 1 — m y 2 0 8 đ R b t B i d A r t i c u l a o n s f ( S ) R e m : L k á , P v h y also a morbid possibility: “Narrative dismembers moreover not a feat that he had prepared [gliedert/raschleniaet].”58 Is one supposed to for, but simply a contingency [sluchainost’]. think of Anna’s suicide at this moment in It might have worked out that the carriage Lukács’s essay? Perhaps Lukács’s editor or that he was guilty of releasing had not been censor did, which would explain why this stopped, and then instead of an award he sentence was struck from the Russian version of would have received a punishment. He let “Narrate or Describe?” published in Literaturnyi the carriage go and stopped it himself. This kritik in August 1936, against the backdrop of the is an accident [sluchai] that could have first Moscow show trial.

05.11.18 / 18:21:06 EDT đđđđđđđđđđBut to articulate means also to clarify đđđđđđ1 RGALI 631.2.140 l. 10. An Substantial links between overview of films planned for linkages, and in his essay Lukács supplements Lukács and Platonov have long 1937 includes screenplays by the principle of Gliederung with that of been suspected, but have never both Andrei Platonov been examined in depth. In (“Transport” at Mosfilm) and Verknüpfung – linkage. For instance, with the general terms Natal’ia Viktor Shklovsky (“Mashinist,” at death of Fru-Fru, Lukács writes: Poltavtseva has proposed that Lenfilm, based on the biography “Platonov’s art was a of locomotive driver Petr metacommentary not only on Krivonos); see V. Usievich, “Plan socialist realism … but also on iubileinogo goda,” Iskusstvo kino Tolstoy has made the coupling of this ‘the movement’ (of Lukács, 7 (1936): 12–13. Platonov also episode with the central life-drama as tight 16/17 Lifshits et al.)”; “Platonov i adapted “Immortality” for the Lukach (iz istorii sovetskogo radio, published in: N. Duzhina, as possible. The race is, on the one hand, iskusstva 1930-x godov),” Novoe “Stantsiia Krasnyi Peregon,” merely the occasion for the explosion of a literaturnoe obozrenie 107 Strana filosofov Andreia (2011): 253–70. While Platonova: Problemy tvorchestva conflict, but, on the other hand, through its acknowledging that Lukács was (IMLI RAN, 2011) 521–38. There coupling with Vronsky’s social ambition – “Platonov’s supporter in the is no record of any of these 1930s,” Nariman Skakov has adaptations being produced. an important factor in the subsequent recently proposed to read tragedy – it is far more than a mere Platonov’s novel Dzhan đđđđđđ11 59 (translated as Soul) through Letter to M. A. Platonova from incident. Lukács’s early books Soul and February 12, 1936; Andrei Form (1912) and Theory of the Platonov, “…Ia prozhil zhizn’”: Novel (1916); Nariman Skakov, Pis’ma (1920–1950 gg.), 410. Lukács is no doubt consciously echoing Tolstoy’s “Introduction: Andrei Platonov, famous description of his practice in Anna an Engineer of the Human Soul,” đđđđđđ12 Slavic Review 73, no. 4 (Winter A. Platonov, “Bessmertie,” Karenina, in a letter to Nikolai Strakhov from 2014): 722–24. Keen to preserve Literaturnyi kritik 8 (1936): 114. April 1876: the notion of Platonov as an outcast, A. Mazaev has đđđđđđ13 dismissed “Immortality” as an Georg Lukács, “Narrate or “opportunistic” story and Describe?,” Writer and Critic and In everything, almost everything that I have diagnosed Lukács’s interest in it Other Essays, ed. and trans. written, I have been governed by the need as a symptom of his “inability to Arthur D. Kahn (Grosset and distinguish genuine art from its Dunlap, 1971) 111; Georg to gather together thoughts coupled with counterfeit”; A. Mazaev, “O Lukács, “Erzählen oder each other, for expressing the self; but each ‘Literaturnom kritike’ i ego Beschreiben? (Zur Diskussion estesticheskoi programme,” über Naturalismus und thought expressed in words separately Stranitsy otechestvennoi Formalismus),” Internationale loses its meaning, is terribly denigrated, kul’tury. 30-e gody Literatur 11 (1936): 102. Further (Gosudarstvennyi institut references to the English when it is removed from the coupling in iskusstvoznaniia, 1995), 179, translation and first installment which it is located. The coupling itself is 181. of the German original will be given parenthetically in the text. composed not by thought (I think), but by đđđđđđ2 something else, and it is impossible to M. Platonova, “…Zhivia glavnoi đđđđđđ14 zhizn’iu (A. Platonov v pis’makh k On the ways in which socialist express the basis of this coupling directly zhene, dokumentakh i realism was originally an open- through words; you can do so only in ocherkakh),” Volga 9 (1975): 161. ended, dialectical aesthetic As far as I have been able to method (instead of a prescribed mediation, by describing images, actions ascertain, the original for this style) see: Harold Swayze, and situations in words.60 text has never been identified or Political Control of Literature in dated. the USSR, 1946–1959 (Harvard University Press, 1962), 13–14; đđđđđđ3 Christina Kiaer, “Lyrical Socialist What is realist in the realist novel, then, is not its “Priem rabotnikov Realism,” October 147 (2014): style or even its genre, but its operations of zheleznodorozhnogo transporta 56–77; Robert Bird, “Sotsrealism v Kremle,” Pravda, August 2, kak teoriia” (Socialist Realism as articulation and coupling, just like working on 1935, 1. Theory), Russkaia the railway. intellektual’naia revoliutsiia đđđđđđ4 1910–1930-kh gg., eds. Sergei đđđđđđđđđđHow, Lukács asks, will the realist novel, this In issues 4 and 12 for 1936. A Zenkin and E. Shumilova (NLO, machine of articulation and linkage, be retooled second version of “Among 2016), 205–21. Animals and Plants” was printed for the aims of socialism now that history has under the title “Life in a Family” đđđđđđ15 made its ultimate turn? Lukács’s answer, I have in the journal Industriia G. W. F. Hegel, Werke in zwanzig sotsializma (The Industry of Bänden (Suhrkamp Verlag, been arguing, is that Andrei Platonov’s modest Socialism) (no. 4, 1940). The 1969–79) Bd. 9/II. S. 371, 429; cf. story “Immortality” provides the clearest story has been published in G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of English in: Andrei Platonov, Soul, Nature, trans. A. V. Miller, with indication of how his model of socialist realism trans. Robert Chandler et al. Foreword by J. N. Finlay will produce – indeed, is already producing – a (New York Review Books, 2008), (Clarendon Press, 1970), 303, 155–83. 350. All translations are my own, literature for socialism, one that works by unless otherwise noted. coordinating intimate and world-historical scales đđđđđđ5 Literaturnyi kritik 8 (1936): 113. đđđđđđ16 together without eliding the friction, even the Karl Marx, Grundrisse:

e - f l u x j o r n a # 9 1 — m y 2 0 8 đ R b t B i d A r t i c u l a o n s f ( S ) R e m : L k á , P v h y đđđđđđ6 Foundations of the Critique of violence, of their encounter. Literaturnyi kritik 8 (1936): 113. Political Economy (Rough Draft), đđđđđđđđđđ× trans. with a Foreword by Martin The author thanks Christina Kiaer for her critique, and đđđđđđ7 Nicolaus (Penguin Books, 1973), audiences at Columbia University and the Literature and RGALI 631.15.78 l. 74. 105. On “articulation” in Marx, Althusser, and Balibar see Aidan Philosophy Workshop at the University of Chicago for their đđđđđđ8 Foster-Carter, “The Modes of responses to earlier versions of this article. RGALI 631.15.78 l. 6. Production Controversy,” New Left Review 107 (1978): 53–54. đđđđđđ9 RGALI 631.15.78 l. 6. đđđđđđ17 Lukács, “Narrate or Describe?” đđđđđđ10 143; “Erzählen oder

05.11.18 / 18:21:06 EDT Beschreiben?” Internationale đđđđđđ36 Soiuze pisatelei,” 343. Literatur 12 (1936): 114. In Platonov, “Bessmertie,” 116. subsequent notes this source đđđđđđ57 will be given as Lukács, đđđđđđ37 N. Kornienko, “Soveshchanie v “Erzählen oder Beschreiben?” RGALI 631.15.78 l. 45. Soiuze pisatelei,” 343. pt. 2. đđđđđđ38 đđđđđđ58 đđđđđđ18 RGALI 631.15.78 ll. 70–71. The homonymy between Georg Lukács, “‘Tendency’ or articulation and Partisanship?” Essays on đđđđđđ39 dismemberment was earlier Realism, ed. Rodney Livingstone, V. Shklovskii, “Vzrykhliaia recognized by the formalists; trans. David Fernbach (MIT tselinu,” Literaturnaia gazeta, 17/17 see Il’ia Kalinin, “Istoriia kak Press, 1981), 43. March 15, 1936, 3. iskusstvo chlenorazdel’nosti (istoricheskii opyt I đđđđđđ19 đđđđđđ40 meta/literaturnaia praktika Lukács, “Erzählen oder RGALI 631.15.78 l. 45. russkikh formalistov), Novoe Beschreiben?” pt. 2, 122. literaturnoe obozrenie 71 (2005): đđđđđđ41 103–31. đđđđđđ20 Lukács, “Erzählen oder Lukács, “Erzählen oder Beschreiben?” pt. 2, 119. đđđđđđ59 Beschreiben?” pt. 2, 120. Lukács, “Narrate or Describe?” đđđđđđ42 112; “Erzählen oder đđđđđđ21 Lukács, “Erzählen oder Beschreiben?” Internationale Lukács, “Erzählen oder Beschreiben?” pt. 2, 119. Literatur 11 (1936): 102. Beschreiben?” pt. 2, 118. đđđđđđ43 đđđđđđ60 đđđđđđ22 RGALI 631.15.78 l. 45. L. N. Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii Lukács, “Erzählen oder v 22 tomakh (Khudozhestvennaia Beschreiben?” pt. 2, 120. đđđđđđ44 literatura, 1978–85), vol. 18, 784. V. Shklovskii, “Petr Krivonos: đđđđđđ23 Ocherk,” Znamia 12 (1937): 56. Georg Lukács, “Emmanuil Levin,” Literaturnoe obozrenie 19–20 đđđđđđ45 (1937): 56. My full translation of Shklovskii, “Petr Krivonos: this essay appears in the Ocherk,” 57. present issue of e-flux journal. As far as I know the German text đđđđđđ46 has been published only once: Shklovskii, “Petr Krivonos: Georg Lukács, “Die Ocherk,” 60. Unsterblichen,” Werke 5: 472–83. The lack of editorial đđđđđđ47 comment and the incorrect title Shklovskii, “Petr Krivonos: (Olga Halpern’s translation of Ocherk,” 63. Platonov’s story was published as “Unsterblichkeit” in đđđđđđ48 Internationale Literatur 3, 1938: Shklovskii, “Petr Krivonos: 15–29) raise questions about the Ocherk,” 66. provenance of the German text. đđđđđđ49 đđđđđđ24 RGALI 2863.1.699; this is the Lukács, “Emmanuil Levin,” 59. personal collection of documentary writer Aleksandr đđđđđđ25 Bek. Lukács, “Emmanuil Levin,” 60. đđđđđđ50 đđđđđđ26 Andrei Platonov, Fabrika Lukács, “Emmanuil Levin,” 58. literatury (Vremia, 2011), 463–64. đđđđđđ27 Platonov, “Bessmertie,” 131. An đđđđđđ51 English translation by Lisa Platonov, Fabrika literatury, 467. Hayden and Robert Chandler of this story also appears in the đđđđđđ52 present issue of e-flux journal, Platonov, Fabrika literatury, 467. under the title “Immortality.” đđđđđđ53 đđđđđđ28 Shklovskii, “Vzrykhliaia tselinu.” Lukács, “Emmanuil Levin,” 56. đđđđđđ54 đđđđđđ29 See Viktor Shklovsky, Third Platonov, “Bessmertie,” 125. Factory, trans. Richard Sheldon (Dalkey Archive Press, 2002). Cf.: đđđđđđ30 A. Galushkin, “K istorii lichnykh i Lukács, “Emmanuil Levin,” tvorcheskikh vzaimootnoshenii 57–58. A. Platonova i V. B. Shklovskogo,” Andrei Platonov: Vospominaniia đđđđđđ31 sovremennikov. Materialy k Lukács, “Emmanuil Levin,” 56. biografii (Sovremennyi pisatel’,

1994): 172–83; Michael Finke, e - f l u x j o r n a # 9 1 — m y 2 0 8 đ R b t B i d A r t i c u l a o n s f ( S ) R e m : L k á , P v h y đđđđđđ32 “The Agit-Flights of Viktor Lukács, “Emmanuil Levin,” 58. Shklovskii and Boris Pil’niak,” The Other Shore 1 (2010): 19–32. đđđđđđ33 Platonov, “Bessmertie,” 125. đđđđđđ55 N. Kornienko, “Soveshchanie v đđđđđđ34 Soiuze pisatelei,” Andrei Platonov, “Bessmertie,” 118. Platonov, vol. 1 (Sovremennyi pisatel’, 1994), 333. đđđđđđ35 Platonov, “Bessmertie,” 118. đđđđđđ56 N. Kornienko, “Soveshchanie v

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