Andrei Platonov and the conundrum of the human condition

Andrei Platonov (1899-1951) is probably the most fascinating author of the early Soviet Union. Though his most important novels were banned during his lifetime (eg. Chevengur & the Pit), he was still able to publish and was appreciated by all his colleagues. Both Nobel Prize winners in literature, Boris Pasternak and Mikhail Sholokhov, as well as Ilya Ehrenburg and Konstantin Simonov signed his obituary. Furthermore, he was in close contact with Georg Lukács, who also spoke up for him. As Andrei Platonov comes from a poor proletarian background he participated in the civil war and became later an engineer focused on irrigation. In the second World war he served as a War correspondent. Thus, it is not surprising that he portrayed himself as a proletarian and communist throughout his life. Given that Maxim Gorky wrote to him personally that he recognises his talent but do not know how to evaluate his work, the difficulty of his classification is hardly surprising. His work is still little known outside the former USSR, even though he is usually counted among the most important literary figures in the Soviet Union. Since the end of the Soviet Union, the discussion of him is dominated by a literary studies perspective. Indeed, his aesthetics are astonishing since Andrei Platonov pursued the enterprise of a new proletarian language. But it obscures the view of the exciting political-theoretical reflections on the emergence and early days of the Soviet Union. A main problem in dealing with his work is not only his special language, but that an understanding of his theoretical reflections presupposes a knowledge of materialist theory that goes beyond basics. Furthermore, his thought is ciphered due to the literary form. However, this is a general problem in the study of political theory in literature. In my paper, I will therefore first look at the complex ciphering in Andrei Platonov's work to be able to unfold the central aspect of his reflections: the human condition and his chains before and after the revolution. In his novel Tschwengur, he finally shows that the project of the "new man" is by no means easy, if not bordering on madness. Through his consistently empathetic examination of the human condition, he confronts several problems that faced the young Soviet Union. For example, in his novella Dzhan or the First Socialist Tragedy, he addresses the problem of the developmental contrasts between the European and Central Asian parts of the young state and the have-nots of the Russian tsarist empire. Based on this insight, I will use his particular and pioneering concept of labour and practice to arrive at a rationale, that can be developed with his work, for why the USSR failed. While some of these insights may not seem new from a contemporary perspective, the social sciences were still in their infancy at the time they were written (especially in the 1930s). From the perspective of the history of ideas, however, Platonov remains remarkable.