58. in the midst of height, damp, and an inaudible wind the departed sun had left a yellow glimmer: The word “yellow”—especially when it appears a second time, in “this yellow dusk that was like the light of a burial”—evokes the presence of the peasant with yellow eyes; he has, of course, recently died and is about to be buried. It seems likely that he represents the person most closely associated with Elisha—Elisha’s teacher, Elijah—and that, like Elijah, he has been taken up into the heavens. See II Kings 2:11: “And it came to pass . . . that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.” There is a trace in Platonov’s “inaudible wind” both of this “whirlwind” and of the quiet wind, “the still small voice” (I Kings 18:12), in which Elijah heard the voice of the Lord; and there is a trace of Elijah’s “chariot of fire” in Platonov’s “yellow glimmer.” All this is confirmed by the yellow-eyed peasant’s earlier speech in which he imagines himself, in a sense, being taken up into the sky: “I shall lie me down in my own yard, Yelisey Savvich, beneath an oak-grove maple, at the foot of a mighty tree. I’ve dug a little pit for myself underneath its root—I’ll die, and my blood will course up the trunk like sap, mounting right to the crown.” Also—just as Elisha enters into his full power only after Elijah’s death, so Yelisey becomes stronger after the death of the peasant with the yellow eyes. It is also relevant that Russian folk tradition associates Elijah with the Last Judgment (see note to p. 77).
59. one little old man who had drifted into the Organizational Yard of his own spontaneous accord: Stalin used the word “drift” (samotek or “self-flow”) in a number of mocking references to Bukharin’s belief that the kulaks would, in the course of time, join the collective farms, understand their merits, and become like any other peasants.
60. collecting utility scrap for it: During late 1929 and, still more, during the first four months of 1930, the State conducted an energetic campaign to encourage the collection of “utility scrap”: glass, rags, bones, paper, scraps of metal and leather, etc. By selling this utility scrap abroad, the government would—supposedly—earn the foreign currency it needed to pay for essential items of industrial equipment. A number of magazines carried the formula “RAG + BONE = TRACTOR” (TRYAPKA + KOST’ = TRAKTOR). It is unlikely that much hard currency was actually earned in this way. (Duzhina, p. 113 and personal correspondence.)
61. Most likely Jesus Christ walked in boredom too: Platonov himself—though probably not Voshchev—is alluding here to “These poor villages,” a famous poem by Fyodor Tyutchev (1803–73) about how Christ, in the guise of a peasant, walked all over Russia, “the native land of patience,” blessing her as he went.
62. into the cramped space of the throat: That the throat was the home of the soul was a widespread folk belief to which Platonov often alludes.
63. he was on his way to the reading hut on cultural revolution matters: In May 1929 the Party Central Committee passed a resolution “About Work with Regard to the Liquidation of Illiteracy.” This marked the beginning of a major campaign. As with other such campaigns, the aim was both ambitious and precisely articulated: within a year there were to be no more illiterate industrial workers, and within two years there were to be no more illiterate agricultural workers. The teaching of literacy was combined with “political enlightenment” work.
64. alleluia-monger: This is our translation of the term alliluishchik, which was used to refer to those seen as overeager to praise the status quo.
65. All take the hard sign: Russian consonants are sometimes followed by two signs—the “hard sign” and the “soft sign”—which indicate whether the consonant is hard or soft. Until the Revolution the hard sign was obligatory after every final hard consonant, but Soviet spelling reforms abolished this use—the most widespread use—of the hard sign. The activist, however, turns out to have his own ideas about spelling.
66. only a sparrow, huddled and clenched, was living in the corner: In one of his notebooks from 1929–30, Platonov writes of it being thought that “only sparrows were not going to be collectivized.” (Platonov, Zapisnye knizhki [Moscow: Nasledie, 2000], p. 34.)
67. but the church was empty: A new wave of attacks on the church and the faithful began in April 1929. Bells were removed from churches, and many churches were closed.
68. I must earn my probation in order to be allowed to enter the circle of atheism: At labor exchanges former priests had to register separately from the rest of the unemployed, and they did not receive any benefit. The Circle of the Militant Godless, founded in 1925, had fewer than 500,000 members in 1928, as many as 2,000,000 members in 1929, and 3,500,000 members in 1930. (Platonov, Kotlovan, p. 158.)
69. foxtrot hairdo: several years later, in the mid-1930s–a time when Stalin famously pronounced that “Life has become better, life has become merrier!”—the foxtrot was very fashionable. Platonov’s priest, and indeed Platonov himself, seem here to be showing an unusual sensitivity, sensing a new fashion long before it had spread at all widely.
70. every midnight I forward them in person to the comrade activist: Priests often informed on people, if not for making the sign of the cross, then certainly for having their children baptized. Platonov’s picture of the double role of a priest—mediating not only between his parishioners and God but also between his parishioners and the Soviet authorities—is historically correct. 96 Uncle, how come you’re the cleverest of all but you don’t have a peaked cap?: The first of several allusions to Lenin, who often wore a peaked cap.
71. By way of an answer the activist patted the boy on the head: After relating how he once wept after listening to Beethoven’s “Appassionata” sonata, Lenin famously wrote that “a revolutionary cannot afford to give way to such sentiments, because they make him too weak, wanting to pat his enemies on the head instead of fighting them mercilessly.” (Slavoi Zizek, Revolution at the Gates [London: Verso, 2002], p. 197.) This story was common knowledge in the Soviet Union—and was alluded to in numerous jokes.
72. Voshchev and three convinced peasants were carrying logs: There was a tradition in the Soviet Union of voluntary working on Saturdays (subbotniki). Lenin himself participated in the first all-Russian subbotnik (May 1, 1920), helping to remove building rubble from the Kremlin. An often reproduced (and much parodied) painting by Vladimir Krikhatsky, Lenin at the First Subbotnik, shows Lenin carrying a log.
73. Are you planning to sow capitalism once again, or have you come to your senses?: In several of his most important speeches and articles of the time, Stalin spoke of “planting” collective farms (nasazhdenie kolkhozov/nasazhdat’ kolhozy). Picking up on this imagery, the activist imagines the peasants sowing capitalism.
74. Or are you going to stand there forever in between capitalism and communism?: Compare “And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, ‘How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him.’” (I Kings 19:21.)
75. the activist could not insert a comma after “kulak” since there had been none in the original directive: In his speech to the Conference of Agrarian Marxists, Stalin included a comma in the phrase “the kulak, as a class”; an article by Stalin published on January 21, 1930, however, bore the title, “On the Question of the Politics of the Liquidation of the Kulaks [kulachestvo] As a Class,” without any comma. (Platonov, Kotlovan, p. 159.) Russian punctuation rules differ slightly from those of English. In Russian, the presence or absence of a comma is, in effect, a matter of life and death: with a comma, the phrase implies that what matters is the elimination of class distinctions; without a comma it licenses the murder of every individual kulak.
76. I’m frightened of having to sow Zoya: In the spring of 1930 there was a campaign to force the peasants to sow soya instead of wheat. The peasants resisted this, referring to those behind the campaign as “Zoya’s devils.” It may also be significant that Zoya is, in origin, a Greek word meaning “life.�
�� (Andrey Platonov, Proza [Moscow: Slovo, 1999], p. 642.)
77. Ivan Semyonovich Krestinin: Whereas Platonov leaves the activist nameless and refers to most of the other characters only by either their first name or by their surname, he dignifies this apparently minor character with a first name, patronymic, and surname. All three names are archetypal. The first name, Ivan, is the most typical of all Russian names—the equivalent of John—equally common among peasants, czars, and folktale heroes. The patronymic, Semyonovich, evokes semya, meaning “seed,” but it in fact relates to St. Simeon who took the forty-day-old Christ in his arms and who first spoke the Nunc Dimittis: “Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.” The surname, Krestinin, is derived from krest (“cross”), and is closely related to krestit’ (“baptize”), krestyanin (“peasant”), and khristyanin (“Christian”). Platonov’s few lines about Krestinin are dense with allusions to the Gospel, above all to Christ’s words: “And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance . . .” (Matthew 3:10–11.) Krestinin can perhaps be seen as a second John the Baptist—not prophesying the coming of a Messiah but protesting the coming of a false Messiah.
78. You’ll soon be a collective-farm tart: Many peasants believed that their women—as well as their land and livestock—were going to be collectivized.
79. since some horses already stood dead on their feet: A student drafted to a Ukrainian collective farm in the summer of 1933, immediately after the Terror Famine, describes how “horses had to be kept upright with ropes, for if they lay down they would never rise.” (Conquest, p. 262.)
80. After liquidating all their last breathing livestock: Compare this passage from a January 1929 edition of a Voronezh newspaper: “In response to the vigorous collective-farm movement of the vast poor- and middle-peasant masses, the kulak has unleashed a ferocious propaganda campaign to encourage the destruction of livestock. The city markets are literally heaped with fresh carcasses, which are often disposed of for next to nothing. The province is 110,000 plow horses short for the spring sowing campaign.” (Platonov, Kotlovan, p. 160.)
81. free and empty now in their hearts: Platonov’s peasants have, in effect, carried out an important Russian Orthodox rite, that of Forgiveness Sunday. This vespers service is celebrated on the eve of the first Monday in Great Lent (the Orthodox, like the Jews, start their day in the evening), after the Sunday liturgy commemorating the Expulsion of Adam from Paradise, an event that can be seen as a parallel to the expulsion of the Soviet peasantry from their private holdings.
The Sunday a week before Forgiveness Sunday commemorates the Last Judgment and Christ’s parable of separating the sheep from the goats. Once again the parallel between religious tradition and historical reality is precise; Platonov emphasizes that “the activist had, even before this, designated all the inhabitants—who was for the collective farm, and who was for the raft.” And just as Christ judged people according to whether or not they had been willing to help the poor, naked, hungry, or imprisoned—or, rather, himself as he appeared in their guise—so the activist attempts, though without any reliable criteria, to judge the peasants according to whether they have harmed or helped the village poor.
Maslennitsa, the week between these two important Sundays, is a week of festivities; although one is not allowed to eat meat, one is allowed to eat eggs and milk products, both of which are proscribed during Great Lent itself. Platonov alludes to Maslennitsa in two episodes: in the search for a cock, and in the attempt by one of the kulaks to present the bear with a pancake. More important still, during the week before Judgment Sunday people eat meat every day—even on Wednesdays and Fridays, when meat is normally forbidden. Often the faithful eat a great deal more than usual, looking on meat eating more as a duty than as a pleasure—just as Platonov’s peasants gorge themselves on meat during their macabre Mardi Gras.
82. while the bear was hammering humanly at a strip of incandescent iron on the anvil: Bears figure in many Russian folktales, and there is even one folktale about a bear punishing an old man and an old woman who had previously maltreated him (A. Kulagina, “Tema smerti v fol’klore i proze A. Platonova,” Strana filosofov, vol. 4 [Moscow: IMLI RAN, 2000], p. 350.) Typically, a folktale bear is called Mikhail Ivanovich—or, more familiarly, Misha—and he works alongside the peasants, helping them with their tasks. Something of this kind seems to have occurred surprisingly often in real life. According to Platonov’s brother, Semyon Platonovich, a bear worked regularly in one of the smithies of Yamskaya Sloboda, the village (now part of the city of Voronezh) where Platonov grew up. (Platonov, Kotlovan, p. 160.) Platonov’s bear is also linked, through his position as a hammerer, to two Soviet leaders with “metallic” names—Stalin himself, whose name (a pseudonym) is derived from the Russian for “steel,” and Molotov, whose name (also a pseudonym) is derived from the Russian for “hammer.” Molotov became chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars in December 1930 and, in this capacity, oversaw the collectivization of agriculture. A bear hammering metal was also a popular toy, carved from wood and sold at Russian country fairs.
Platonov first introduces the bear as if both Chiklin and the reader have always known about him. In Russian this effect is achieved through word order. (Olga Meerson, Poetika neostraneniya u Andreya Platonova [Novosibirsk: Nauka, 2002], p. 18; previously published by Berkeley Slavic Specialties, 1997. For an English summary, see “Andrei Platonov’s Re-familiarisation: The Perils and Potencies of Perceptive Inertia,” in Essays in Poetics 26 [Autumn 2001], 21–38.) We have reproduced this effect in translation through an unexpected use of the definite article: “the bear was hammering” rather than “a bear was hammering.” The effect is to implicate the reader: How is it that we have been so blind to the strangeness of the bear’s position, to his working as a member of the proletariat without being fully human?
83. The bear suddenly let out a roar outside a clean, solidly built hut: Village sorcerers sometimes employed the help of a tame bear. This bear would enable them, for example, to find objects that another sorcerer had buried on someone’s land in order to call down bad fortune on them. In the late 1920s an ethnographer working in Kaluga Province recorded the belief that “a clean home, outside which a bear stops of his own accord, not going in but refusing to budge—that home is an unhappy home.” (Mikhail Zolotonosov, “Lozhnoe solntse” in Kornienko and Shubin, Andrey Platonov: Mir Tvorchestva [Moscow: Sovremennyi Pisatel’, 1994], p. 281.) p. 281
84. Here today and gone tomorrow—isn’t that right?: Nastya is quoting the refrain of a song that was popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
85. Your sense of the classes is just like an animal’s: In his short novel Everything Flows, Vasily Grossman explains how the authorities drew up the lists of kulaks to be dispossessed: “And who drew up the lists? A troika. A group of three confused people determined who was to live and who was to die. So, there were bribes . . .. There were scores to be settled because of a woman, or because of some other past grievance . . .. There was nothing that didn’t happen. Often it was the poorest peasants who were listed as kulaks, while the richer peasants managed to buy themselves off.” One member of each troika would be the secretary of the Party committee; one would be an OGPU officer; and one would be a member of the village soviet. (Conquest, p. 128.) Chiklin, Nastya, and the bear are a parodic version of just such a troika.
86. Liquidating the kulaks into the distance: That the kulaks are liquidated by being sent off downriver has long been seen as an example of Platonov’s way of literally realizing a metaphor or political cliché. As is often the case, however, Platonov is at his most accurate when he seems most surreal. Compare this passage from a memoir by V.P. Astafiev: “In spring 1932 all the dispossessed ‘kulaks’ were collected together, placed on rafts and floated off to Krasnoyarsk, and from there to Igarka . . ..When they start
ed loading the rafts, the whole village gathered together. Everyone wept; it was their own kith and kin who were leaving. One person was carrying mittens, another a bread roll, another a lump of sugar.” (Platonov, Kotlovan, p. 159.)
87. the triumph of the collective farm: Platonov is alluding to “The Triumph of Agriculture,” a long poem by Nikolay Zabolotsky (1903–58). Extracts from this were first published in October 1929 in the Leningrad journal Zvezda, and Platonov spent the first three months of 1930 in Leningrad. One of Zabolotsky’s translators, Eugene Ostashevsky, writes: “‘The Triumph of Agriculture’ treats of the extension of Communism to animal liberation. The author is of the opinion that man, having thrown off his chains, will extend a helping hand to other species, and that science of the future will set animals free from sickness and death. The poem’s human agitator, a soldier like those that came back from the front in 1917, promises animals that the arrival of the tractor will free them from exploitation; in the future, they will live and work in scientific institutes, where ‘horses, friends of chemistry’ eat ‘polymeric soup’ and ‘a cow in formulas and ribbons’ bakes ‘pie out of elements.’ The text ends with the communal destruction of old farm tools, portrayed as instruments of oppression.
“For Zabolotsky, the liberation of nature paradoxically results from its conquest by man. Entailing birth and death, growth and putrefaction, oppression and freedom, nature needs to be ‘corrected’ by science and human reason. The poet’s weird utopianism draws on several Russian thinkers: the great botanist Kliment Timiriazev, for instance, argued that not only animals but even plants are endowed with consciousness of sorts, while the philosopher Nikolai Fyodorov believed that science, in time, would enable the resurrection of the dead . . ..
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