Andrey Platonov: The Forgotten Dream of the Revolution

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This book traces the originality of Andrey Platonovs vision of the Revolution in readings of his works. It has been common in Platonov scholarship to measure him within the parameters of a political pro et contra the October Revolution and Soviet society, but the proposal of this book is to look for the way in which the writer continuously asked into the disastrous aspects of the implementation of a new proletarian community for what they could tell us about the promise of the Revolution to open up the experience of the world as common. In readings of selected works by Andrei Platonov I follow the development of his chronicle of revolutionary society, and from within it the outline of the forgotten utopian dream of a common world. I bring Platonov into a dialogue with certain questions that arise from the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and that were later re-addressed in the works of Maurice Blanchot, Georges Bataille and Jean-Luc Nancy, related to the experience of the modern world in terms of communality, groundlessness, memory, interiority. I show that Platonov writes the Revolution as an implementation of common being in society that needs to retrieve the forgotten memory of what being in common means.

Reviews

Tora Lane does much to bring out the complexity, the subtlety and the hopefulness of Platonovs work, helping the reader to understand why so many Russian writers and critics see Platonov as the greatest Russian prose-writer of the last century. -- Robert Chandler, English Translator of Andrey Platonov's "The Foundation Pit" and "Soul: And Other Stories"
Andrey Platonov is arguably one of the greatest, aesthetically most original and politically most interesting writers of twentieth century world literature. By stereoscopically examining Platonovs aesthetics as well as the Soviet idea of communism, Tora Lane reveals with brilliance, precision and erudition the originality of Platonovs style and social vision. This is an important book not just for its analysis of Platonov but also for its deep insights into the Russian Revolution and the existential and political energies released by early Soviet communism. -- Stefan Jonsson, Linkping University, author of Crowds and Democracy

Author Bio

Tora Lane is as researcher at Sdertrn University.