21. What’s up, comrade Zhachev?: Zhachev, like Voshchev, is an invented name. Both of these two-syllable names—each stressed on the first syllable—have a similarly proletarian ring. The primary associations with Zhachev are with zhadny (“greedy”), rvach (“grabber,” “self-seeker”), zhat’ (“squeeze,” “press”), zhat’ (“to reap,” “to harvest”), zhevat’ (“chew”), and zhachit’ (a south Russian dialect verb meaning “to work a lot”).
22. “Leon” and then “Ilyich”—just whose side was he on?: That is, was he on the side of Leon Trotsky or of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin?
23. For that, let me organize myself close to you!: Pashkin is, in a sense, acting in accord with one of the most frequently repeated trade-union slogans of the time: “Closer to the masses!” A then popular joke linked this slogan to the tonics, one of which Pashkin has just been taking. (Duzhina, p. 95.)
24. Previously, when Chiklin’s work was the clearing of snags from the river: In the early 1920s Platonov had done work of this kind.
25. Chiklin . . . did not explain Safronov’s doubts: “Nikita” is, of course, a common Russian first name, but it has specific associations; especially in the south of Russia, it is associated with stupidity.
26. But since the line is now directed in favor of technical specialists: May and June 1928 saw the show trial of a group of mining engineers falsely charged with acts of sabotage in the Shakhty coal mines, in the Donets basin. This was symptomatic of an increasing official hostility toward “bourgeois specialists.” In July 1928, however, Stalin backtracked, insisting on the need to make use of the expertise of all technical specialists willing to collaborate with the Soviet authorities.
27. for a thin, slight, strange-kinned person who had silently kissed him on the left side of his face: Platonov had a considerable knowledge of the Russian religious philosophers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and he alludes to them frequently. One of the most important of these philosophers was Pavel Florensky (1882–1937), who remained in the Soviet Union and continued to work and publish until his arrest in 1933. In his most important work, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, Florensky compares the premonition of the Kingdom of Heaven granted to someone on the path of salvation to the joy of a first kiss: “At the beginning of his task, the Bride greets him with a tender kiss . . .. But this kiss, this joy is just a betrothal . . . in betrothal of the future Kingdom.” The memory of this kiss then supports a person as he follows the path to the Kingdom of Heaven. (Translated by R.C.; for Boris Jakim’s translation of this passage, see Florensky, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth [Princeton University Press, 1997], p. 81.) There are a number of significant kisses in The Foundation Pit and in other works by Platonov. Their meaning, like that of all of Platonov’s images, is complex, but this passage of Florensky is certainly relevant.
28. Why, Nikita? I wanted him to receive a grade-one pension!: As someone injured as a result of an accident in the workplace, Kozlov would have received about seventy rubles a month; Zhachev, in contrast, as “a veteran of the Imperialist War,” would have received only twenty rubles a month. Whatever his motives, Zhachev was indeed doing Pashkin a favor.
29. comrade Romanov, the head of the Central Administration of Social Security: A reference, albeit a little confused on Kozlov’s part, to a real figure.
30. since he had sold off his carriage during the epoch of the economy regime: In April 1926, in the resolution “On the Struggle for a Regime of Economy,” the Party Central Committee had called on the population to increase productivity by a reduction in the expenditure of both raw materials and manpower. (Platonov, Kotlovan, p. 151.) Similar calls were repeated in a number of subsequent resolutions until autumn 1929.
31. It’s for the productivity of labor that I want truth.: Trade unions and cultural organizations were, at this time, being asked to address the problem of the workers’ lack of motivation. Voshchev’s proposed solution was, of course, unacceptably radical. (See Duzhina, p. 84.)
32. Every eighty thousand horses will provide us with thirty tractors!: On January 9, 1930, Izvestiya carried an article entitled “Horse Hair for Tractors.” This included a report about how the peasants of a particular village were cutting the manes and tails of horses and collecting them as raw material to be exported.
33. So I challenge you, comrade Voshchev, to join in socialist competition for the highest happiness of mood!: During 1929 a number of articles were published, and decrees issued, on the theme of “socialist competition,” for the main part between different factories.
34. every laboring man must assist the accumulation of snow on the collectivized fields: Rudimentary fences were often put up on fields so that the snow would drift against them instead of being blown away by the wind. This snow would then be used to blanket winter crops against the cold.
35. the icebreaker Krasin: A Soviet icebreaker that had taken part in the much-publicized rescue of an Italian Arctic expedition in 1928.
36. Stalin’s most important of all, and then—Budyonny: Semyon Budyonny was a Civil War hero and ally of Stalin. He was not a figure of any special political importance, but his family was from Voronezh Province, where The Foundation Pit is set.
37. for the whole world, forever under construction yet never constructed, to be like his own destroyed life: Prushevsky’s vision has something in common with the dreams of the Russian artistic avant-garde, of Tatlin, and—still more—of Malevich. It also shares some of the features of a real Orthodox church or monastery—except that Prushevsky would have seen such buildings many times and so would not be surprised by them. It may, however, be a vision not of an individual church, but of the Church as a whole—or of some imaginary communist equivalent to the Church. In The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, Florensky describes a vision of the Church that appeared to an early Christian monk by the name of Hermas: “The stones out of which the Church was built were Christians. On entering the body of the construction, these stones had knit so closely together that the whole tower appeared to have been hewn out of a single whole stone.” (Translated by R.C.; see Florensky, p. 245.) After asking “Where does salvation lie?,” Florensky answers his own question with the words: “In entering, as a stone, the tower that is being built.” (Translated by R.C.; see Florensky, p. 248.) Platonov’s “forever under construction yet never constructed” (vechno stroyashchiisya i nedostroennyi mir) echoes “the tower that is being built” (v stroyashchuyusya bashnyu) and also the earlier “The Tower-Church is not yet constructed” (Bashnya-Tserkov’ eshche ne dostroena). (Translated by R.C.; see Florensky, p. 223.) Both Florensky’s Christians and Platonov’s workers are, in a sense, “building material”—except that the former can choose whether they wish to become stones in the church, whereas the latter have no choice but to “squeeze their entire body out for the communal building.”
38. We’ve paid for those coffins out of self-taxing work: “Self-taxation” was the official name for a ruinously heavy tax imposed on private farmers, often exacted from them by force. (Platonov, Kotlovan, p. 152.) Platonov’s peasants, however, have genuinely prepared their coffins through “self-taxing work”—that is, with their own hands, their own money, and by mutual consent.
39. beneath an oak-grove maple, at the foot of a mighty tree: The Russian klyon dubravny means “oaky maple.” This apparent absurdity is a clear allusion to the prophets of the oak groves (proroki dubravnye) who, in the Old Testament, incurred the wrath of the prophet Elisha. Here, however, Yelisey (Yelisey is the Russian equivalent of Elisha) appears to be identifying himself with these prophets of the oak groves, in opposition to the monotheistic cult propagandized by the new regime. The name Yelisey, at least in the south of Russia, is also associated with cunning and hypocrisy. Platonov’s Yelisey is far from cunning or hypocritical, but the characters most sympathetic to the Soviet regime all view him with mistrust.
40. already beginning to grow a coat of protective fur: Two of the most important creatures of Russ
ian folklore, the “house spirits” (domovye) and the “forest spirits” (leshie), looked much like human beings but were coated with fur. The domovye were usually benevolent, unless maltreated; the leshie, though not always malevolent, were mischievous and dangerous. A number of Platonov’s characters, in The Foundation Pit and in other works, inhabit either the border between life and death or the border between the animal world and the human world.
41. the dry ups and downs of life’s everyday sea: This phrase includes our rendering of zhiteiskoe more, words from the Orthodox liturgy that could be translated as “the sea of life.” The funeral-service canon contains the following lines: “Beholding the sea of life raised up against me by the turmoil of calamities, having fled to Thy quiet haven, I cry unto Thee: raise up my life from corruption, O merciful One!”
42. Our task, according to the plenum, is to liquidate them as a class and nothing less: Safronov, as always, is being muddleheaded. Stalin made his crucial pronouncement about the kulaks not at a plenum but at the Conference of Agrarian Marxists held on December 27, 1929: “This means that we have moved from a policy of limiting the exploitative tendencies of the kulaks to a policy of liquidating the kulaks, as a class.” (Duzhina, p. 88.)
43. a Rochdale cooperative rather than a Soviet cooperative! So you’re hardly a milestone from the high road to Socialism!: Disciples of Robert Owen, “the father of English socialism,” opened their first cooperative store in Rochdale in 1844, and its democratic principles attracted followers throughout the world. In the Soviet Union, however—and especially during the late 1920s—the supposedly apolitical Rochdale cooperative was contrasted unfavorably with the supposedly revolutionary Soviet cooperative. In his article “The Year of the Great Breakthrough,” Stalin used the phrase “high road” (stolbovaya doroga) several times, though with regard not to different kinds of cooperatives but to the importance of the collective farm. At one point he said: “It is clear that, when there was no mass collective-farm movement, it was lower forms of cooperation that constituted the ‘high road’… but when there appeared on the scene a higher form of cooperation, its collective-farm form, then it was this that became the ‘high road’ of development.” (Duzhina, p. 91.)
44. all the passive man wanted was his daily black bread: A distorted quotation from Ivan Nikitin (1824–61), a writer of pastiche folk poems. He lived in Voronezh Province. Kozlov—who affects to believe in decisive action—has replaced the word “meek” with the more contemptuous “passive.”
45. chairman of the cooperative’s store commission: A commission the supposed role of which was to prevent corruption and represent the interests of the workers who bought goods from the store in question. In reality, these commissions were themselves notoriously corrupt. (Platonov, Kotlovan, p. 154.)
46. Don’t be opportunists in practice!: The report of the Party plenum of December 17–21, 1930, lists various inadequacies in the work of consumer cooperatives; these include “elements of drift, bureaucratism, and opportunism in practice.” (Platonov, Kotlovan, p. 155.)
47. to begin class struggle against the village stumps of capitalism: It was decided at the November 1929 plenum “to send at least 25,000 workers with adequate political and organizational experience to reinforce the collective farms.” “To uproot the roots of capitalism” (vykorchevyvat’ korni kapitalizma) was a cliché of the time; Stalin even spoke of “uprooting each and every bourgeois theory with its roots.” Platonov has “corrected” this tautology—writing “stumps of capitalism” rather than “roots of capitalism.” (Duzhina, p. 106.) Victor Kravchenko, himself a former activist, remembers being told at a meeting in early 1930: “The local authorities need an injection of Bolshevik iron. That’s why we are sending you. You must assume your duties without whimpering, without any rotten liberalism. Throw your bourgeois humanitarianism out of the window and act like Bolsheviks worthy of comrade Stalin. Beat down the kulak agent wherever he raises his head. It’s war—it’s them or us!… The kulaks, and even some middle and ‘poor’ peasants, are not giving up their grain . . .. Your job is to get the grain at any price. Pump it out of them, wherever it is hidden, in ovens, under beds, in cellars, or buried away in back yards.” (Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow [New York: Oxford University Press, 1986], p. 147.)
48. Dig the matrix pit four times bigger!: One of the novel’s central images—that of digging a vast foundation pit for a building that will never be built—foreshadows one of the most surreal episodes in the cultural history of Stalinism: “The dominant in the structure of the future Moscow was to be the Palace of Soviets and a decree authorizing its construction was issued in February 1932. The largest church in Moscow—the Church of Christ the Savior near the Kremlin—had been pulled down shortly before, and it was on this site that the stepped tower, 415 metres high and crowned by a 100-metre statue of Lenin was to be erected. Taller than the recently constructed Empire State building, it was to house the supreme organs of Soviet power and the apartments of the Leader . . .. An entire large institute worked on the project for many years, until the beginning of the 1950s. A vast foundation pit was dug on the site of the church, and the press never tired of describing the future grandeur of a construction which was to contain 17,500 square metres of oil painting, 12,000 of frescoes, 4,000 of mosaics, 20,000 of bas-reliefs, 12 group sculptures up to 12 metres high, 170 sculptures up to 6 metres high, and so on. Both the architecture as a whole and the symbolism of the décor were intended to express the power of the Country of Victorious Socialism. Nothing of the Palace of Soviets . . . was ever constructed. (Igor Golomstock, Totalitarian Art [London: Collins Harvill, 1990], pp. 274–75.) The story of the Palace of Soviets is an almost exact fulfillment of the prophecy made by Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor: “In place of your temple a new edifice will be raised, the terrible Tower of Babel will be raised again, and though, like the former one, this one will not be completed either . . .” (Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov [London: Vintage, 1992], p. 253.)
49. Our projection for regional agricultural production next year is half a billion: In his November 1929 article “The Year of the Great Breakthrough,” Stalin declared: “We are, once and for all, resolving the cereal-grain crisis, or have already resolved it. Within three years or so our country will have become one of the greatest of grain-producing countries, if not the greatest in the world.” In reality, much of the population was still going hungry, and bread rationing had recently been introduced.
50. I told you the tempo was quiet: During the November 1929 plenum of the Bolshevik Party it was decided, after reports of the fulfillment and even “over-fulfillment” of the goals set for the first year of the Five-Year Plan, to speed up the tempo and increase the goals that had been set for the second year of the plan.
51. Nearby was an old village: The first half of The Foundation Pit is set in a town or city, the second half in a village. This mirrors the construction of one section of Stalin’s crucial speech at the Conference of Agrarian Marxists. In this section, titled “Town and Village,” Stalin claimed that “the gathering tempo of industrialization” would erase the contrast between town and village.
52. Socialized Property No. 7 of the General Line Collective Farm: Stalin’s policy was to force the pace—or as he put it, “the tempo”—of both industrialization and collectivization, and he referred to this policy as “the general line of the Party.” Nikolay Bukharin, who argued for a more gradual approach, was removed from the politburo in November 1929.
53. when he knew that it was possible to be an assistant to the vanguard: Activists, typically, were not members of the Communist Party but representatives of the village poor. The Communist Party was seen as the vanguard of the proletariat; the activist therefore thinks of himself as an assistant to the vanguard (podruchny avangarda).
54. taking some kind of dense liquid out of a bottle with his depicting finger: Instead of ukazatel’ny palets, the Russian equivalent of “in dex finger,” Platonov writes
izobrazitel’ny palets. In the liturgy, the word izobrazitel’ny, with the meaning “prophetic,” is used in reference to the initial sections of two especially important psalms, Psalms 103 and 146 (102 and 145 according to the Orthodox numbering), which are seen as prophetic portrayals of the mercy of God. Though apparently foretelling only his own imminent death, the index finger of Platonov’s peasant may be writing something equivalent to the mysterious “writing on the wall” that appears in the book of Daniel 5:5 (“In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand”) and prophesies the end of the biblical Belshazzar, the oppressive king of Babylon. Stalin has more than once been identified with Belshazzar.
55. better for a thousand men to take a hundred strides than for one man to walk three miles: Compare John 11:49–50: “And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, ‘Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.’ And this spake he not of himself: but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation.” The activist’s “disciplinarian calculation” may suggest that he considers it “expedient” that the whole nation should die for one man—that is, Stalin—and that the one man perish not.
56. there’s more than enough poor class around without you lot!: The activist’s rhetoric refers to something only too real: no sooner had the collective farms been set up than they were being purged of suspected kulaks. Some collective farms were even declared “false collective farms” (lzhekolkhozy) and subjected to particularly fierce purges. Peasants typically surrendered all their property on entering a collective farm and then were excluded without being able to take any of it back.
57. and set off for the council of the soviet: To a Russian familiar with Orthodox liturgy, Platonov’s use in this sentence of an apparently ungrammatical preposition (na sel’sovet instead of the normal v sel’sovet) conjures up a line from the first psalm: “Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the wicked” (Blazhen muzh izhe ne ide na sovet nechestivykh).
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