Andrei Platonov

The Soviet writer Andrei Platonov (1899-1951) belongs to a Russian philosophical tradition that includes such figures as Vladimir Solov'ev, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Boris Pasternak. This study investigates the interrelation of themes, imagery, and the use of language in his prose. Thomas Seifrid shows how Platonov was particularly influenced by Russian utopian thought of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and how his world view was also shaped by its implicit dialogue with the "official" Soviet philosophy of Marxism-Leninism, and later with Stalinist utopianism.

Preface; List of abbreviations; Introduction: the problem of reading Platonov; 1. Consciousness and matter: Platonov in Voronezh and Tambov (1917-26); 2. Learning the language of being (1926-7); 3. Chevengur and the utopian genre; 4. Platonov and the culture of the Five-Year Plan (1929-31); 5. 'Socialist Realist' Platonov (1934-51); Conclusion; Notes; Select bibliography; Index.