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85-623: Platonov or Platonaw is a surname. It may refer to: People [ edit ] Andrei Platonov (1899–1951), pen name of Andrei Platonovich Klimentov, Russian writer of the Soviet period Denis Platonov (born 1981), Russian ice hockey player Dzmitry Platonaw (born 1986), Belarusian footballer Igor Platonov (1934–1995), Ukrainian-Soviet chess grandmaster Oleg Platonov Russian writer Pavel Platonaw (born 1986), Belarusian footballer Sergey Platonov (1860–1933), Russian historian who led

170-524: A "writers' brigade" sent to Central Asia with the intention of publishing a collective work in celebration of ten years of Soviet Turkmenistan . (Earlier that year, a collective work by over 30 Soviet writers had been published about the construction of the White Sea Canal .) Platonov’s contribution to the Turkmen volume was a short story titled “ Takyr ” (or “ Salt-flats ”) about the liberation of

255-409: A Persian slave girl. Platonov returned to Turkmenistan in 1935 and this was the basis for his novella Soul (or Dzhan ) . Dzhan is about a “non-Russian” economist from Central Asia , who leaves Moscow to help his lost, nomadic nation called Dzhan, of rejects and outcasts possessing nothing but their souls. A censored text was first published in 1966; a complete, uncensored text only in 1999. In

340-551: A bureaucratic apparatus which quickly came to include no fewer than 17 different departments. Headed by Anatoly Lunacharsky, this organization sought to expand adult literacy and to establish a broad and balanced general school curricula, in opposition to pressure from the trade unions and the Supreme Council of National Economy , which sought to give preference to vocational education . The as-yet loosely organized Proletkult movement emerged as another potential competitor to

425-591: A citywide theatre organization, declaring their refusal to work with non-proletarian theatre groups. Moscow Proletkult, in which Alexander Bogdanov played a leading role, attempted to extend its independent sphere of control even further than the Petrograd organization, addressing questions of food distribution, hygiene, vocational education, and issuing a call for establishment of a proletarian university at its founding convention in February 1918. Some hardliners in

510-399: A combination of peasant language with ideological and political terms to create a sense of meaninglessness, aided by the abrupt and sometimes fantastic events of the plot. Joseph Brodsky considers the work deeply suspicious of the meaning of language, especially political language. This exploration of meaninglessness is a hallmark of existentialism and absurdism . Brodsky commented, "Woe to

595-673: A demand which brought it into conflict with the Communist Party hierarchy and the Soviet state bureaucracy. Some top party leaders, such as Lenin , sought to concentrate state funding and retain it from such artistic endeavors. He and others also saw in Proletkult a concentration of bourgeois intellectuals and potential political oppositionists. At its peak in 1920, Proletkult had 84,000 members actively enrolled in about 300 local studios, clubs, and factory groups, with an additional 500,000 members participating in its activities on

680-855: A founder of the Proletarian Culture organization, Proletkult. The aim of unifying the cultural and educational activities of the Russian labour movements first occurred at the Agitation Collegium of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet which met on 19 July 1917 with 120 participants. It was attended by many different currents, and when the Menshevik Dementiev suggested that the meeting just be confined to public lectures and that

765-579: A four-year city school and began work at age thirteen, with such jobs as an office clerk at a local insurance company, smelter at a pipe factory, assistant machinist, warehouseman, and the railroad. Following the 1917 Revolution , he studied electrical technology at Voronezh Polytechnic Institute. When Civil War broke out in 1918 Platonov assisted his father on trains delivering troops and supplies and clearing snow. Meanwhile, Platonov had begun to write poems, submitting them to papers in Moscow and elsewhere. He

850-599: A long-time Vpered associate of Bogdanov and Lunacharsky named Fedor Kalinin , among others. Also playing a key role was the future Chairman of the Organising Bureau of the National Proletkult, Pavel Lebedev-Polianskii , another former member of Bogdanov and Lunacharsky's émigré political group. Many of these would be catapulted into leading roles in the People's Commissariat of Education following

935-570: A more casual basis. The earliest roots of the Proletarian Culture movement, better known as Proletkult, are found in the aftermath of the failed 1905-1907 Revolution against Nicholas II of Russia . The censorship apparatus of the Tsarist regime had stumbled briefly during the upheaval, broadening horizons, but the revolution had ultimately failed, resulting in dissatisfaction and second-guessing, even within Bolshevik Party ranks. In

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1020-514: A new mass organization known as the All-Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (VAPP) a year later. The Proletkult organizations of Petrograd and Moscow controlled their own dramatic theatrical network, including under its umbrella a number of smaller city clubs maintaining their own theatrical studios. Petrograd Proletkult opened a large central studio early in 1918 which staged a number of new and experimental works with

1105-491: A new translation of Chevengur . Proletcult Proletkult (Russian: Пролетку́льт , IPA: [prəlʲɪtˈkulʲt] ), a portmanteau of the Russian words "proletarskaya kultura" ( proletarian culture ), was an experimental Soviet artistic institution that arose in conjunction with the Russian Revolution of 1917. This organization, a federation of local cultural societies and avant-garde artists,

1190-416: A par with the political and economic struggle of the working class. But in creating its own culture, the working class by no means should reject the rich cultural heritage of the past, the material and spiritual achievements, made by classes which are alien and hostile to the proletariat. The proletarian must look it over critically, choose what is of value, elucidate it with his own point of view, use it with

1275-465: A paradox characteristic of Marxism), would enable humanity to be "freed from the oppression of matter." Platonov's writing, it has also been argued, has strong ties to the works of earlier Russian authors like Fyodor Dostoevsky . He also uses much Christian symbolism, including a prominent and discernible influence from a wide range of contemporary and ancient philosophers, including the Russian philosopher Nikolai Fedorov . His Foundation Pit uses

1360-404: A reborn philosophical idealism that stood in diametrical opposition to the fundamental materialist foundation of Marxism. So disturbed was Lenin that he spent much of 1908 combing more than 200 books to pen a thick polemical volume in reply — Materialism and Empirio-Criticism: Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy . Lenin ultimately emerged triumphant in the struggle for hegemony of

1445-402: A special report on Platonov. Attached were versions of The Sea of Youth , the play "14 Red Huts" and the unfinished "Technical Novel". The report described For Future Use as "a satire on the organizing of collective farms," and commented that Platonov's subsequent work revealed the "deepening anti-Soviet attitudes" of the writer. In 1934, Maksim Gorky arranged for Platonov to be included in

1530-424: A total of 84,000 members in 300 local groups, with an additional 500,000 more casual followers. A total of 15 different Proletkult periodicals were produced over the course of the organization's short existence, including most importantly Proletarskaia kultura (Proletarian Culture — 1918 to 1921) and Gorn (Furnace — 1918 to 1923). Historically, the relationship between the Russian liberal intelligentsia and

1615-400: A view to producing his own culture. This work on a new culture ought to proceed along a completely independent path. 'Proletkults' should be class-restricted, workers' organizations, completely autonomous in their activities. Proletkult's theorists generally espoused a hardline economic determinism , arguing that only purely working class organizations were capable of advancing the cause of

1700-462: A wave of worker-poets, with only limited artistic success. The insistence upon developing new poets of questionable talent led to a split of the Proletkult in 1919, when a large group of young writers, most of whom were poets, broke from the organization due to what they believed to be a stifling of individual creative talent. These defectors from Proletkult initially formed a small, elite organization called Kuznitsa (The Forge) before again launching

1785-511: A worker nor a stupid editor at Pravda [a rival publication] could understand it." In 1913 Bogdanov, a student of the Taylor system of factory work-flow rationalization, published a massive work on the topic, General Organizational Science, which Lenin liked no better. The pair went their separate ways, with Bogdanov dropping out of radical politics at the end of 1913, returning home with his wife to Moscow . He would later be reinvigorated by

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1870-484: A writer, he published dozens of poems (an anthology appeared in 1922), several stories, and hundreds of articles and essays, adopting in 1920 the pen-name Platonov by which he is best-known. With remarkable energy and intellectual precocity, he wrote confidently across a range of topics including literature, art, cultural life, science, philosophy, religion, education, politics, the civil war, foreign relations, economics, technology, famine and land reclamation, and others. It

1955-454: Is considerable. Some - but not all - of his work was published or republished during the 1960s' Khrushchev Thaw . In journalism, stories, and poetry written during the first post-revolutionary years (1918–1922), Platonov interwove ideas about human mastery over nature with scepticism about triumphant human consciousness and will, and sentimental and even erotic love of physical things with fear and attendant abhorrence of matter. Platonov viewed

2040-495: Is different from Wikidata All set index articles Andrei Platonov Platonov was born in the settlement of Yamskaya Sloboda on the outskirts of Voronezh in the Chernozem Region of Central Russia. His father was a metal fitter (and amateur inventor) employed in the railroad workshops and his mother was the daughter of a watchmaker. He attended a local parish school and completed his primary education at

2125-673: The Bolsheviks should be excluded, but this was soundly rejected. Consequently, the Central Council of Factory Committees was instructed to work with the Petrograd Soviet to organise a second conference of "proletarian cultural-educational organizations" to bring them together in a centralized organization. A first conference of these groups was held in Petrograd from October 16 to 19, 1917 (O.S.) . The conclave

2210-630: The New York Review Books Classics series republished The Fierce and Beautiful World with an introduction by Tatyana Tolstaya. In 2007, New York Review Books published a collection of newer translations of some of these stories, including the novella Soul (1934), "The Return" (1946) and "The River Potudan". This was followed by a new translation of The Foundation Pit in 2009, in 2012 by Happy Moscow , an unfinished novel (not published in Platonov's lifetime), and in 2023

2295-528: The Red Army , the Communist Party, and its youth section . The new government of Soviet Russia was quick to understand that these rapidly proliferating clubs and societies offered a potentially powerful vehicle for the spread of the radical political, economic, and social theories it favored. The chief cultural authority of the Soviet state was its People's Commissariat of Education ( Narkompros ),

2380-399: The bourgeoisie . Under a workers' state, some Marxist theoreticians believed, the new proletarian ruling class would develop its own distinct class culture to supplant the former culture of the old ruling order. Proletkult was seen as a primary vehicle for the development of this new "proletarian culture." The nature and function of Proletkult was described by Platon Kerzhentsev , one of

2465-411: The dictatorship of the proletariat . An early editorial from the official Proletkult journal Proletarskaia Kultura (Proletarian Culture) demanded that "the proletariat start right now, immediately, to create its own socialist forms of thought, feeling, and daily life, independent of alliances or combinations of political forces." In the view of Alexander Bogdanov and other Proletkult theoreticians,

2550-413: The surname Platonov . If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name (s) to the link. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Platonov&oldid=1225648526 " Category : Surnames Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description

2635-568: The Bolshevik faction. Relations between them in Western European exile remained tense. During the first decade of the 20th Century Bogdanov wrote two works of utopian science fiction about socialist societies on Mars , both of which were rejected by Lenin as attempts to smuggle "Machist idealism" into the radical movement. The second of these, a book called Engineer Menni (1913), was pronounced by Lenin to be "so vague that neither

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2720-407: The Bolshevik seizure of power which followed less than two weeks later. The October Revolution led to a marked increase in the number of new cultural organizations and informal groups. Clubs and cultural societies sprung up affiliated with newly empowered factories, unions, cooperatives, and workers' and soldiers' councils , in addition to similar groups attached to more formal institutions such as

2805-628: The Bolsheviks to the seat of power. The Russian Civil War was another matter altogether — a long and brutal struggle which strained every sinew. The radical intelligentsia of Russia was mobilized by these events. Anatoly Lunacharsky, who had briefly broken with Lenin and the Bolshevik Party to become a newspaper correspondent in France and Italy , returned to Russia in May 1917 and rejoined

2890-472: The Party, offering reassurance that he had remained a communist and a Marxist, but he was denied then as on the next two occasions. In 1921 Platonov married Maria Aleksandrovna Kashintseva (1903–1983); they had a son, Platon, in 1922, and a daughter, Maria, in 1944. In 1922, in the wake of the devastating drought and famine of 1921, Platonov abandoned writing to work on electrification and land reclamation for

2975-471: The Proletkult organization even insisted that Proletkult be recognized as the "ideological leader of all public education and enlightenment." Ultimately, however, the vision of Proletkult as the rival and guiding light of Narkompros fell by the wayside, subdued by the Proletkult's financial reliance on the Commissariat for operational funding. Proletkult received a budget of 9.2 million gold rubles for

3060-446: The Soviet leader first called writers "engineers of the human soul". In January 1937, Platonov contributed to an issue of Literaturnaya gazeta in which the accused at the second Moscow Show Trial ( Radek , Pyatakov and others) were denounced and condemned by 30 well-known writers, including Boris Pasternak . His short text "To overcome evil" is included in his collected works. It has been suggested that it contains coded criticism of

3145-525: The Voronezh Provincial Land Administration and later for the central government. "I could no longer be occupied with a contemplative activity like literature", he recalled later. For the next years, he worked as an engineer and administrator, organizing the digging of ponds and wells, draining of swampland, and building a hydroelectric plant. When he returned to writing prose in 1926, a number of critics and readers noted

3230-539: The aftermath of the Tsar's reassertion of authority a radical political tendency known as the " Left Bolsheviks " emerged, stating their case in opposition to party leader Lenin . This group, which included philosophers Alexander Bogdanov and Anatoly Lunacharsky and writer Maxim Gorky , argued that the intelligentsia -dominated Bolsheviks must begin following more inclusive tactics and working to develop more working class political activists to assume leadership roles in

3315-413: The appearance of a major and original literary voice. Moving to Moscow in 1927, he became, for the first time, a professional writer, working with a number of leading magazines. Between 1926 and 1930, the period from NEP to the first five-year plan (1928–1932), Platonov produced his two major works, the novels Chevengur and The Foundation Pit . With their implicit criticism of the system, neither

3400-406: The arts were not the province of a specially gifted elite, but rather were the physical output of individuals with a set of learned skills. All that was required, it was assumed, was for one to study basic artistic technique in a very few lessons, after which anyone was capable of becoming a proletarian artist. The movement by Proletkult to establish a network of studios in which workers could enroll

3485-531: The author ("fool, idiot, scoundrel") and his literary style ("this isn't Russian but some incomprehensible nonsense") to his copy of the magazine. In a note to the publishers, the Krasnaya nov monthly, Stalin described Platonov as "an agent of our enemies" and suggested in a postscript that the author and other "numbskulls" (i.e. the editors) should be punished in such a way that the punishment served them "for future use". In 1933, an OGPU official Shivarov wrote

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3570-526: The author had faced when proposing the story to other periodicals. The following year, this publication came under criticism in Krasnaya Nov , damaging Platonov's reputation. In 1939, the story was republished in the intended collective volume, Fictional representations of Railway Transport (1939) dedicated to the heroes of the Soviet railroad system. Platonov published eight more books, fiction and essays, between 1937 and his death in 1951. Stalin

3655-419: The bills. The government would supply the central Proletkult with a subsidy, to be distributed among provincial affiliates. But because financial dependence on the state clearly contradicted the organization's claims to independence, the central leaders held out the hope that their affiliates would soon discover their own means of support. Proletkult and its desire for autonomy also had another powerful patron in

3740-592: The center of Proletkult's own organizational gravity shifted simultaneously. Lines became blurred between the Proletkult organization and the Division for Proletarian Culture of the People's Commissariat of Education, headed by Proletkult activist Fyodor Kalinin. While the organization retained its staunch supporters in the Narkompros apparatus seeking to coordinate activities, it also contained no small number of activists like Alexander Bogdanov who tried to promote

3825-413: The central government of the Soviet state was weak, with factory workers often ignoring their trade unions and teachers the curriculum instructions of central authorities. In this political environment any centrally-devised scheme for a division of authority between Narkompros and the federated artistic societies of Proletkult remained largely a theoretical exercise. In the early days of the Bolshevik regime

3910-651: The course of events to become a leading figure in the Moscow Proletkult organization — a fact which emphasizes the tension between that organization and state authorities. The February Revolution of 1917 which overthrew the Tsarist regime came comparatively easily. So, too, did the October Revolution which followed, events which overthrew the Russian Provisional Government of Alexander Kerensky and brought Lenin and

3995-637: The dead. In the minds of his characters, it is associated with the coming arrival of communism . A planet discovered in 1981 by Soviet astronomer L.G. Karachkina was named after Platonov . The short story collection The Fierce and Beautiful World , which includes his most famous story, "The Potudan River" (1937), was published in 1970 with an introduction by Yevgeny Yevtushenko and became Platonov's first book published in English translation. During 1970s, Ardis published translations of his major works, such as The Foundation Pit and Chevengur . In 2000,

4080-469: The end of the war, Platonov's health worsened, and in 1944 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. In 1946, his last published short story, "The Return," was slammed in Literaturnaya Gazeta as a "slander" against Soviet culture. His last publications were two collections of folklore. After his death in 1951, Vasily Grossman spoke at his funeral. Platonov's influence on later Russian writers

4165-470: The first half of 1918 — nearly one-third of the entire budget for Narkompros's Adult Educational Division. Requisitioned buildings were put to the organization's use, with the Petrograd organization receiving a large and posh facility located on one of the city's main thoroughfares, Nevsky Prospect — the name of which was actually changed to "Proletkult Street" (Ulitsa Proletkul'ta) in the organization's honor. Proletarskaya Kul'tura (Proletarian Culture)

4250-436: The first years of the regime. Political activists disputed the authority of the central state, the role of the Communist Party within it, and the influence national agencies should wield over local groups. Altercations over scarce resources and institutional authority were intertwined with theoretical debates over the ideal structure of the new policy. Moreover, in the early revolutionary period control over local institutions by

4335-408: The future would require forging a fundamentally new perspective of the role of science, ethics, and art with respect to the individual and the state. Together all these ideas of Bogdanov, Lunacharsky, Gorky, and their co-thinkers came to be known in the language of the day as "god-building" (bogostroitel'stvo). These ideas did not exist in a vacuum; there was a political component as well. During

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4420-609: The interim board of the newly-formed Voronezh Union of Proletarian Writers and attended the First Congress of Proletarian Writers in Moscow in October 1920, organized by the Smithy group. He regularly read his poetry and gave critical talks at various club meetings. In July 1920, Platonov was admitted to the Communist Party as a candidate member on the recommendation of his friend Litvin (Molotov). He attended Party meetings, but

4505-423: The local apparatus of Proletkult retained the most powerful hand. With its adherent Anatoly Lunacharsky at the helm of Narkompros, the Proletkult movement had an important patron with considerable influence over state policy and the purse. This did not mean an easy relationship between these institutions, however. Early in 1918 leaders of Petrograd Proletkult refused to cooperate with an effort by Narkompros to form

4590-401: The mid-1930s Platonov was again invited to contribute to a collective volume, about rail workers. He wrote two stories: "Immortality", which was highly praised, and "Among Animals and Plants", which was severely criticized and eventually published only in a heavily edited and far weaker version. In August 1936, The Literary Critic published "Immortality" with a note explaining the difficulties

4675-478: The most brilliant Russian writer of the twentieth century". Each year in Voronezh the literature exhibition is held in honour of Platonov, during which people read from the stage some of his works. One of the most striking distinguishing features of Platonov's work is the original language, which has no analogues in world literature. It is often called "primitive", "ungainly", "homemade". Platonov actively uses

4760-475: The movement's top leaders in 1919: The task of the 'Proletkults' is the development of an independent proletarian spiritual culture, including all areas of the human spirit — science, art, and everyday life. The new socialist epoch must produce a new culture, the foundations of which are already being laid. This culture will be the fruit of the creative efforts of the working class and will be entirely independent. Work on behalf of proletarian culture should stand on

4845-552: The next round of anti-Tsarist revolution. Among the Left Bolsheviks, Anatoly Lunacharsky in particular had been intrigued with the possibility of making use of art as a means to inspire revolutionary political action. In addition, together with the celebrated Gorky, Lunacharsky hoped to found a "human religion" around the idea of socialism , motivating individuals to serve a greater good outside of their own narrow self-interests. Working along similar lines simultaneously

4930-455: The official St Petersburg school of imperial historiography Viacheslav Platonov (1939–2005), Russian volleyball player and coach Vladimir Petrovich Platonov (born 1939) Russian-Belarusian mathematician Yuriy Platonov (born 1945), psychologist Yuriy Mihailovich Platonov , mayor of Rybnitsa, Transnistria Play [ edit ] Platonov (play) , by Anton Chekhov [REDACTED] Surname list This page lists people with

5015-553: The organization as an independent cultural institution with a homogeneous working class constituency. In September 1918, the first national conference of Proletkult was convened in Moscow, including 330 delegates and 234 guests from local organizations from around Soviet Russia. While no delegate list has survived, the stenogram of the conference indicates that the bulk of attendees hailed from trade unions, factory organizations, cooperatives, and workers' clubs. Delegates were split between those favoring an autonomous and leading role for

5100-436: The organization in general education in Soviet society and those who favored a more narrow focus for the group as a subordinate part of the Narkompros bureaucracy. While those favoring autonomy were in the majority at the first national conference, the ongoing problem of organizational finance remained a real one, as historian Lynn Mally has observed: Although the Proletkult was autonomous, it still expected Narkompros to foot

5185-454: The organization set up an elaborate bureaucratic apparatus resembling that of Narkompros. Moscow Proletkult, for example, had departments for literary publishing, theatre, music, art, and clubs. In addition to this central bureaucracy, Proletkult established factory cells attached to the highly concentrated mills and manufacturing facilities. Finally, Proletkult established "studios" — independent facilities in which workers learned and developed

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5270-540: The party in August. Following the October Revolution, Lunacharsky was appointed Commissar of Education of the new government. Lunacharsky's factional ally, Alexander Bogdanov, remained sharply critical of Lenin and his political tactics and never rejoined the Communist Party, however. Instead he served at the front as a doctor during World War I, returning home to Moscow in 1917 and becoming involved there as

5355-477: The people into whose language Andrei Platonov can be translated." Elif Batuman ranked Soul as one of her four favorite 20th century Russian works. (Batuman is author of The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them and was Pulitzer Prize finalist for her novel The Idiot .) Novelist Tatyana Tolstaya wrote, "Andrei Platonov is an extraordinary writer, perhaps

5440-414: The period between the failure of the 1905 revolution and the outbreak of World War I , Alexander Bogdanov stood as the chief rival to Lenin for leadership of the Bolshevik party. To the intellectually rigid Lenin, Bogdanov was not only a political rival, but also a positive threat to the ideology of Marxism . Lenin saw Bogdanov and the "god-building" movement with which he was associated as purveyors of

5525-402: The person of Nikolai Bukharin , editor of Pravda . Bukharin provided favorable coverage for Proletkult during the organization's formative period, welcoming the idea that the group represented a "laboratory of pure proletarian ideology" with a legitimate claim to independence from Soviet governmental control. Proletkult made use of different organizational forms. In large industrial cities,

5610-431: The primacy of Narkompros. This confusing welter of competing institutions and organizations was by no means unique to the cultural field, as historian Lynn Mally has noted: All early Soviet institutions struggled against what was called 'parallelism,' the duplication of services by competing bureaucratic systems. The revolution raised difficult questions about governmental organization that were only slowly answered during

5695-537: The regime. In May 1938, during the Great Terror , Platonov's son was arrested as a "terrorist" and "spy". Aged 15 years old, Platon was sentenced in September 1938 to ten years imprisonment and was sent to a corrective labour camp, where he contracted tuberculosis . Thanks to efforts by Platonov and his acquaintances (including Mikhail Sholokhov ), Platon was released and returned home in October 1940, but he

5780-410: The technique of ostraneny , his prose is replete with lexical and grammatical "errors" characteristic of children's speech. Yuri Levin highlights Platonov's characteristic techniques: According to the researcher Levin, with the help of these turns, Platonov forms a "panteleological" space of the text, where "everything is connected with everything", and all events unfold among a single "nature". In

5865-465: The techniques of the various arts. Narkompros, for its part, sought to influence Proletkult to concentrate its efforts upon the expansion of the network of studios. In April 1919, People's Commissar of Education Lunacharsky declared that Proletkult "should concentrate all its attention on studio work, on the discovery and encouragement of original talent among the workers, on the creation of circles of writers, artists, and all kinds of young scholars from

5950-403: The working class was that of teacher and student. This situation presumed a "higher" level of culture on the part of the aristocratic teachers — an accepted premise of the Bolsheviks themselves during the pre-revolutionary period. Under Marxist theory, however, culture was conceived as a part of the superstructure associated with the dominant class in society — in the Russian instance, that of

6035-401: The working class". Proletkult and its studios and clubs gained a certain measure of popularity among a broad segment of the urban Russian population, particularly factory workers. By the end of 1918 the organization counted 147 local affiliates, although the actual number of functioning units was probably somewhat fewer. At the peak of the organization's strength in 1920, Proletkult claimed

6120-408: The works of Andrey Platonov, form and content form a single, indissoluble whole, that is, the very language of Platonov's works is their content. Among the key motives of Platonov's work is the theme of death and its overcoming. Anatoly Ryasov writes about Platonov's " metaphysics of death». Platonov in his youth came under the influence of Nikolai Fedorov and repeatedly refers to the idea of raising

6205-505: The world as embodying at the same time the opposing principles of spirit and matter, reason and emotion, nature and machine. He wrote of factories, machines, and technology as both enticing and dreadful. His aim was to turn industry over to machines, in order to "transfer man from the realm of material production to a higher sphere of life." Thus, in Platonov's vision of the coming "golden age" machines are both enemy and savior. Modern technologies, Platonov asserted paradoxically (though echoing

6290-468: Was Lunacharsky's brother-in-law Bogdanov, who even in 1904 had published a weighty philosophical tome called Empiriomonism which attempted to integrate the ideas of non-Marxist thinkers Ernst Mach and Richard Avenarius into the socialist edifice. (Lunacharsky had studied under Avenarius in Zurich and was responsible for introducing Bogdanov to his ideas.) Bogdanov believed that the socialist society of

6375-532: Was a journal issued by Proletkult from July 1918 to February 1921. The issues had a series numbered up to 21, which with double issues comprised 13 different publications While the Proletkult movement began as independent groups in Petrograd (October 1917) and Moscow (February 1918), it was not long before the group's patrons in the Soviet state intervened to help forge a national organization. The Soviet government itself moved from Petrograd to Moscow in March 1918 and

6460-531: Was also a prolific contributor to local periodicals. These included Zheleznyi put ("Railroad"), the paper of the local railway workers' union; the Voronezh Region Communist Party newspapers Krasnaia derevnia ("Red countryside") and Voronezhskaia kommuna ("Voronezh commune"); and Kuznitsa , the nationwide journal of the " Smithy " group of proletarian writers. From 1918 through 1921, his most intensive period as

6545-482: Was ambivalent about Platonov's worth as a writer. The same informer's report in July 1931 claimed that he also referred to the writer as "brilliant, a prophet". For his part, Platonov made hostile remarks about Trotsky, Rykov, and Bukharin but not about Stalin, to whom he wrote letters on several occasions. "Is Platonov here?" asked Stalin at the meeting with Soviet writers held in Moscow at Gorky's villa in October 1932 when

6630-835: Was called by Lunacharsky in his role as head of the Cultural-Educational Commission of the Petrograd Bolshevik organization and was attended by 208 delegates representing Petrograd trade unions, factory committees, army and youth groups, city and regional dumas, as well as the Petrograd Committee of the Bolshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary parties. This October 1917 conference elected a Central Committee of Proletarian Cultural-Educational Organizations of Petrograd which included among its members Lunacharsky, Lenin's wife Nadezhda Krupskaya , talented young journalist Larisa Reisner , and

6715-553: Was expelled from the Party on 30 October 1921 as an "unstable element". Later, he said the reason was "juvenile". He may have quit the party in dismay of the New Economic Policy (NEP) . like a number of other worker writers (many of whom he had met through Kuznitsa and at the 1920 writers' congress). Troubled by the famine of 1921, he openly and controversially criticized the behaviour (and privileges) of local communists. In spring, 1924 Platonov applied for re-admission to

6800-496: Was most prominent in the visual, literary, and dramatic fields. Proletkult aspired to radically modify existing artistic forms by creating a new, revolutionary working-class aesthetic, which drew its inspiration from the construction of modern industrial society in backward, agrarian Russia. Although funded by the People's Commissariat for Education of Soviet Russia , the Proletkult organization sought autonomy from state control,

6885-463: Was not unusual around 1920 to see two or three pieces by Platonov, on quite different subjects, appear daily in the press. He has also been involved with the local Proletcult movement, joined the Union of Communist Journalists in March 1920, and worked as an editor at Krasnaia Derevnia ("Red countryside"), and the paper of the local railway workers' union. in August 1920, Platonov was elected to

6970-399: Was seen as an essential part of training this new cohort of proletarian artists. Despite the organization's rhetoric about its proletarian exclusivity, however, the movement was guided by intellectuals throughout its entire brief history, with its efforts to promote workers from the bench to leadership positions largely unsuccessful. Proletkult expended great energy in attempting to launch

7055-714: Was terminally ill and died in January 1943. Platonov himself contracted the disease while nursing his son. During the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945), Platonov served as a war correspondent for the military newspaper The Red Star and published a number of short stories about what he witnessed at the front. The war marked a slight upturn in Platonov's literary fortunes: he was again permitted to publish in major literary journals, and some of these war stories, notwithstanding Platonov's typical idiosyncratic language and metaphysics, were well received. However, towards

7140-630: Was the theoretician György Lukács and Platonov built upon connections with the two philosophers. A turning point in his life and career as a writer came with the publication in March 1931 of For Future Use (″Vprok″ in Russian), a novella that chronicled the forced collectivisation of agriculture during the First Five Year Plan. According to archival evidence (OGPU informer's report, 11 July 1931), Stalin read For Future Use carefully after its publication, adding marginal comments about

7225-459: Was then accepted for publication although one section of Chevengur appeared in a magazine. The two novels were only published in the USSR during the late 1980s. In the 1930s, Platonov worked with the Soviet philosopher Mikhail Lifshitz , who edited The Literary Critic ( Literaturny Kritik ), a Moscow magazine followed by Marxist philosophers around the world. Another of the magazine's contributors

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