14. The Soviet Narodnykh Komissarov was the Council of People’s Commissars. The less commonly used acronym TseKuBa was the Central Commission for the Improvement of the Living Conditions of Scientists.
15. In the original: “A White Guard Antikolkhoznik” (Belogvardeets-Antikolkhoznik). In the original, the word bantik sounds still more absurd. First, its most obvious meaning is “a little bow”—as in tying a ribbon or shoelaces. Second, Belogvardeets is a term from the Russian Civil War (1918–1921), whereas Antikolkhoznik comes from around 1930, the time of collectivization. Third, in Russian as in English, bantik sounds similar to bandit, as if the speaker might simply have confused the two words.
16. Spring 1931—the second spring since the main thrust of collectivization.
17. A breathtakingly bold allusion to the fact that one of the causes of the Terror Famine was the export of grain to capitalist countries. See the introduction, p. xix.
18. Fourteen Little Red Huts, like The Hurdy-Gurdy, was originally conceived as a comedy. In both instances, Platonov’s horror at the course of events in the Soviet Union forced him to rethink his original idea.
19. Vershkov correctly understands that Futilla considers it necessary to slaughter the ram in order to give the foreign visitor an impression of abundance.
20. In reality, it was the OGPU (as the Soviet security services were then called) that was chiefly responsible for confiscating grain from the Soviet peasantry during these years.
21. An allusion to the journalist and playwright Nikolai Pogodin (1900–1962). The best known of his early plays were Tempo (1929), about the construction of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, and Poem of the Axe (1931), about the production of stainless steel.
22. The number of workdays a peasant was considered to have worked was of critical importance. A peasant with too few workdays to his name would receive only the most minimal rations even when there was no general shortage of food.
23. Karl Marx, in his writings, never touched on individual psychology. In the 1920s and 1930s, various Soviet theoreticians tried to lay the foundation for a Marxist psychology, occasioning much debate. Bos appears to be giving voice to the traditional Marxist view: that the proletariat does not need individual psychology, only class consciousness. The use of “psychosis” instead of “psychology” is a revealing malapropism—as if the speaker considered any concern with psychology to be inherently psychotic (with thanks to Boris Dralyuk for his help with this note).
24. Vershkov has Russified Bos’s first names; Ivan is the Russian equivalent of Johann.
25. Every institute, factory, kolkhoz, and so on would produce its own “wall newspaper”—a propaganda-filled newsletter, posted regularly on a wall.
26. Bast (the inner bark of birch trees) was an essential everyday material in peasant Russia, used to make everything from sandals to bowls and baskets. Perhaps because of its very ordinariness, the word formed a part of several expressions implying shame and disgrace (see Platonov, Duraki na periferii, 708). From 1930, kolkhozes that failed to fulfill their assigned quotas were awarded a black banner.
27. The Russian oblatka, used five times in this passage, has several meanings: a pharmacological capsule, a Holy Communion wafer, and, colloquially, a flat bread. “The impression is created that nourishment and the taking of communion are entirely identified with each other” (E. A. Yablokov, Khor solistov [St. Petersburg: Bulanin, 2014], 399).
28. This verse appears to be nonsense. This seems uncharacteristic of Platonov, but it is certainly not in any Slav, Turkic, or Persian language. Nor is it in Georgian or Avar, one of the main languages of Dagestan, which borders the Caspian.
29. See note 8.
30. See note 7.
31. This unusual stage direction—why does Platonov only tell us “approximately” what she sings?—may be intended to alert the reader to a possible hidden meaning. If these two verses are read as a continuation of an earlier verse sung by Futilla (p. 140), then this meaning becomes evident. The last line of the first verse was “Stalin is far now from my heart.” The “he” of the last line of all, “Science, he tells us, is Bread,” is evidently Stalin, the father now telling his people that, since they have science, they do not need bread.
GRANDMOTHER’S LITTLE HUT
1. Stalin’s Short Course: The Short Course of the History of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) was published in 1938. Between then and 1953, more than forty-two million copies were issued in sixty-seven languages. Stalin supervised and heavily edited the work but himself contributed only one section of chapter 4, about dialectical and historical materialism; after World War II, however, he claimed sole authorship. Most often referred to simply as The Short Course, it was seen as the encyclopedia of Marxism. Lenin and Stalin are repeatedly mentioned together, as if the two of them were inseparable.
2. See, at the end of this volume, “A Note on Names.” “Dimitry” is the correct form of the boy’s Christian name; “Mitya” is a diminutive, or affectionate, form of “Dimitry.” A Russian’s second name is, conventionally, a patronymic—that is, it is derived from the Christian name of the father. Mitya, angry with his father, has rejected his patronymic and chosen to call himself by a matronymic; his mother must have been called Avdotya. Since matronymics have never been used in Russia, Dusya does not, at first, accept “Avdotich” as a real name. “Dusya,” however, is a diminutive of “Avdotya”—the girl does indeed have the same name as Mitya’s mother. This evidently makes an impression on her.
3. Here, for the first time, Dusya addresses the boy as “Dimitry Avdotich”—an unusually respectful way for an adult, or near adult, to address a child. At the same time, it shows great tenderness on her part; she is accepting his unusual decision to use not a patronymic but a matronymic.
AFTERWORD
1. We also decided to stencil a more complex red, black, and white Malevich design on the backs of the T-shirts. It was the art historian Igor Golomstock who first drew my attention to similarities between Malevich and some aspects of Platonov. The four volumes of Platonov I cotranslated for Harvill Press (London) all bear reproductions of figurative paintings by Malevich on their front covers; Golomstock’s thoughts about Platonov and Malevich are summarized in my preface to the Harvill edition of The Foundation Pit (1996).
2. Geoffrey Hosking, “The Yawning Gap,” Times Literary Supplement (London), December 6, 1996.
FURTHER READING
OTHER WORKS BY PLATONOV AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH
Chandler, Robert, et al., trans. Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov. London: Penguin Books, 2012. Includes Platonov’s versions of six well-known Russian folktales.
Platonov, Andrey. The Foundation Pit. Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler with Olga Meerson. New York: New York Review Books, 2009.
——. Happy Moscow. Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler et al. New York: New York Review Books, 2012.
——. The Portable Platonov. Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler et al. Moscow: Glas, 1999. Includes a long extract from the novel Chevengur.
——. The Return and Other Stories. Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler with Angela Livingstone. London: Harvill Press, 1999.
——. Soul and Other Stories. Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler with Olga Meerson et al. New York: New York Review Books, 2008.
PLATONOV’S WORK IN RUSSIAN
Platonov, Andrei. Arkhiv A. P. Platonova. Moscow: IMLI RAN, 2009. An important publication of material from Platonov’s personal archive, including letters to his wife and early drafts of a number of works, including Fourteen Little Red Huts.
——. Sobranie sochinenii. 8 vols. Moscow: Vremya, 2011. This is by far the most reliable and complete edition of Platonov’s work to date.
——. Zapisnye knizhki. Moscow: Nasledie, 2000. A carefully annotated transcription of the vast quantity of disparate material in Platonov’s personal notebooks.
ABOUT PLATONOV, IN ENGLISH
Bullock, Philip. The Feminine in the Prose of Andrey Platonov. Oxford: Legenda, 2005.
Holt, Katharine, ed. Andrei Platonov: Style, Context, Meaning. Special issue of Ulbandus: The Slavic Review of Columbia University 14 (2011/2012).
Livingstone, Angela, ed. Essays in Poetics. Andrei Platonov special issue, vols. 26, 27 (autumn 2001, autumn 2002, Keele University).
Seifrid, Thomas. Andrei Platonov: Uncertainties of Spirit. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
ABOUT PLATONOV, IN RUSSIAN
Geller, Mikhail. Andrei Platonov v poiskakh shchastya. Paris: YMCA Press, 1982; Moscow: MIK, 1999.
Kolesnikova, E. A. Malaya proza Andreya Platonova. St. Petersburg, 2013)
Malygina, N. M. Andrei Platonov: Poetika vozvrashecheniya. Moscow: TEIS, 2005.
Meerson, Olga. Apokalipsis v bytu. Moscow: Praktika, 2016.
——. Svobodnaya veshch’. Novosibirsk: Nauka, 2001.
Mikheev, M. Andrei Platonov i drugie. Moscow: Yask, 2015.
Rozhentseva, E. A. A. P. Platonov v zhizni i tvorchestve. Moscow: Russkoe slovo, 2014. A clearly written introduction to Platonov and his work.
Strana filosofov. 7 vols. Moscow: IMLI RAN, 1994–. Contains essays on all aspects of Platonov’s work.
Tolstaya, Elena. Mirposlekontsa. Moscow: RGGU, 2002. Includes six essays devoted to Platonov.
Tvorchestvo Andreya Platonova. 4 vols. St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1995–2008.
Vyugin, V. Yu. Andrei Platonov: Poetika zagadki. St. Petersburg: Izd. Rus. Krist. Gum. Inst., 2004.
Yablokov, E. A. Khor solistov. St. Petersburg: Bulanin, 2014. Includes “Zloklyucheniya sovetskoi pastsushki,” a valuable essay on religious themes in Fourteen Little Red Huts.
Fourteen Little Red Huts and Other Plays Page 19