A Companion to Andrei Platonov's The Foundation Pit (Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures, and History)

Written at the height of Stalin's first "five-year plan" for the industrialization of Soviet Russia and the parallel campaign to collectivize Soviet agriculture, Andrei Platonov's The Foundation Pit registers a dissonant mixture of utopian longings and despair. Furthermore, it provides essential background to Platonov's parody of the mainstream Soviet "production" novel, which is widely recognized as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century Russian prose. In addition to an overview of the work's key themes, it discusses their place within Platonov's oeuvre as a whole, his troubled relations with literary officialdom, the work's ideological and political background, and key critical responses since the work's first publication in the West in 1973. SUPERANNO Written at the height of Stalin's first five-year plan for the industrialization of Soviet Russia and the parallel campaign to collectivize Soviet agriculture, Andrei Platonov's The Foundation Pit registers a dissonant mixture of utopian longings and despair, while also providing essential background to Platonov's parody of the mainstream Soviet "production" novel. In addition to an overview of the work's key themes, Seifrid's companion discusses the place of The Foundation Pit within Platonov's oeuvre as a whole, his troubled relations with literary officialdom, the work's ideological and political background, and key critical responses since its first publication in the West in 1973.

Written at the height of Stalin's first five-year plan for the industrialization of Soviet Russia and the parallel campaign to collectivize Soviet agriculture, Andrei Platonov's 'The Foundation Pit' parodies the mainstream Soviet production novel while recording the mixture of utopian longings and despair that formed his complex reponse to those events. In addition to providing an overview of the key themes in 'The Foundation Pit', this Companion discusses the literary and political contexts essential to the work's meanings, the place of 'The Foundation Pit' within Platonov's oeuvre as a whole, and the unique Russian idiom in which the work is composed.