In this article we will tell you about the story that Platonov created - "The Foundation Pit". You will find a summary of it, as well as an analysis in our work. We will try to cover the topic succinctly and as succinctly as possible. Platonov's work "The Foundation Pit" tells about collectivization, its essence and consequences.

The beginning of the story

Voshchev, when he turns 30, is dismissed for his birthday from the factory where he earned his living. The document said that he was fired for the reason that he does not keep up with other workers, as he thinks a lot. The main character leaves the city. He, tired on the road, finds a pit in which he settles down for the night. But at about midnight a mower, working in a vacant lot nearby, came up to him and woke Voshchev.

How Voshchev gets into the pit

He explains to him that construction is planned in this place, and soon it will begin, and invites the main character to settle in the barracks for the night.

We continue to describe the work that Platonov created ("The Foundation Pit"). A summary of further events is as follows. Waking up together with other workers, he has breakfast at their expense, and he is told at this time that a large building will be erected here, in which the proletariat will live. They bring a shovel to Voshchev. The engineer of the house has already made the markings and explains to the builders that about 50 more workers will soon join them, and in the meantime they become the main team. Our hero, together with other workers, begins to dig, because he thinks that if they are still alive, working on such a hard job, then he will cope.

Pashkin's visits

Platonov continues "The Foundation Pit". A summary of further events is as follows. Little by little, everyone gets used to work. Often, Pashkin, the chairman of the Okrprofsovet, visits the construction site to see if the workers are on time. He says that the pace of construction is slow, and that they do not live under socialism, and therefore salaries directly depend on how they work.

Worker Safronov

Voshchev reflects on his future in long evenings. Everything about it is common knowledge. The most diligent and hardworking worker is Safronov. He dreams of finding a radio to listen to in the evenings about various social achievements, but his disabled colleague explains that listening to an orphan girl is much more interesting.

Chiklin finds mother and daughter

At an abandoned tile factory, not far from a construction site, Chiklin discovers a seriously ill mother and daughter. Before he dies, he kisses a woman and realizes that this is his first love, with which he kissed in his early youth. Mom, shortly before her death, asks the girl not to tell who she is. The daughter is very surprised, asks Chiklin why her mother died: due to illness or because she is a potbelly stove. The girl leaves with the worker.

Radio tower

The story continues, which was created by Platonov ("The Foundation Pit"). The content of further events is as follows. Pashkin is installing a radio tower at a construction site. Requirements for workers are heard from there without interruption. Safronov does not like the fact that he cannot answer. Zhachev got tired of this sound and asks for an answer to these messages. Safronov regrets that he cannot gather workers.

A girl who arrived with Chiklin from the factory asks about the meridians, but since he does not know anything about this, he says that these are partitions separating them from the bourgeoisie.

After work, the diggers gather near the girl and ask her where she is from, who she is, who her parents are. Remembering her mother's instructions, she explains that she does not know her parents, but did not want to be born with the bourgeoisie, but was born as soon as Lenin began to rule.

Safonov notes that Soviet power is the deepest, because even small children know Lenin, without knowing their relatives.

Workers go to the collective farm

Kozlov and Safronov are sent together to the collective farm. This is where they die. The workers were replaced by Chiklin and Voshev, as well as some others. The Organizational Yard is being assembled. Chiklin and Voshev are pounding the raft. Chiklin plans to find kulaks so that he can send them along the river. The poor people celebrate to the radio, enjoying life on the collective farm. In the morning, everyone goes to the smithy, where the hammer is constantly pounding.

Residents for work are recruited by workers from the construction site. In the evening, the assembled ones come to the pit, but there is no one in the houses, and there is snow at the construction site.

Nastenka is dying

The novel "The Foundation Pit" by Platonov continues. Chiklin invites people to light a fire, because Nastenka, a little girl, is sick from the cold and needs to be warmed up. A lot of people walk around the barracks, but no one is interested in the girl, since everyone is thinking only of collectivization. In the end, Nastenka dies. Voshchev is very upset. He loses the meaning of life, because he could not save the innocent child who trusted him.

The final

Platonov ends his "Foundation Pit" with the following events. We bring their summary to your attention. Zhachev explains why he assembled the collective farm, but the main character explained that the workers want to get into the proletariat. Chiklin grabs tools, a shovel and a crowbar, and goes to the end of the hole to dig. Turning around, he notices that all the people are also digging, from poor to rich, with wild zeal. Even horse-drawn carriages are involved in the work: a stone is immersed on them. Only Zhachev cannot work, because after the death of the child he will not come to his senses in any way. He thinks that he is a freak of imperialism, because communism is nonsense, in his opinion, that is why he grieves so much for an innocent child. In the end, Zhachev decides to kill Pashkin, after which he goes to the city so as not to return. Chiklin buries Nastya.

"Pit" (Platonov): analysis

The theme of the story is the construction of socialism in the countryside and the city. In the city, it is the construction of a building where the entire class of the proletariat must enter into the settlement. In the countryside, it consists in founding a collective farm, as well as the destruction of kulaks. The heroes of the story are busy with the implementation of this project. Voshchev, a hero who continues a series of seekers of the meaning of life in Platonov's work, is fired due to thoughtfulness, and he ends up with the diggers digging a foundation pit. During its work, its scale increases and reaches, in the end, grandiose proportions. The future "common house" is becoming more and more ambitious, respectively. Two workers sent to the countryside to carry out collectivization are killed by "kulaks". Their comrades deal with the latter, bringing their work to the end.

The title of the work "Pit" (Platonov), which we are analyzing, acquires a symbolic, generalized meaning. This is a common cause, hopes and efforts, collectivization of faith and life. Everyone here, in the name of the general, renounces the personal. The name has direct and figurative meanings: this is the construction of a temple, "virgin lands" of the earth, "shoveling" of life. But the vector is directed inward, down, not up. It leads to the "bottom" of life. Collectivism is gradually beginning to resemble a mass grave, where hope is buried. The funeral of Nastya, who became, as it were, the common daughter of the workers, is the finale of the story. For the girl, one of the walls of this pit becomes a grave.

The heroes of the story are sincere, hardworking, conscientious workers, as the content of Platonov's "Pit", a novel that describes their characters in detail, shows. These heroes strive for happiness and are ready to work selflessly for it. At the same time, it does not consist in satisfying personal needs (as in Pashkin, who lives in contentment and satiety), but in reaching the highest level of life for everyone. The meaning of the work of these workers is in particular the future of Nastya. The darker and more tragic the finale of the work. The result is a reflection on the body of the girl Voshchev.

Tragic and comic in A. Platonov's story "The Foundation Pit"

Following the usual logic of things, the tragic and the comic must be considered as components of the eternal antithesis: the presence of one excludes the possibility of the appearance of the other. The paradox of Platonic prose, however, is that even the darkest and most tragic pages of it can cause the reader not only despair or horror, but can also make him laugh. If there was a frequency dictionary of Platonov's language, then the first words in it would probably be “patience”, “boredom”, “sadness”, “sadness”. A world in which "weary patience", "the melancholy of futility", "the sadness of a great substance" reign, it would seem, should be impenetrable for laughter. However, it cannot be argued that in Platonov's prose, the tragic and the comic are "two things incompatible": the element of laughter permeates the entire narrative, invading its most terrible and tragic episodes.

Out of context, individual episodes of The Foundation Pit could be perceived as excerpts from some comedy film about the life of Russia in the late 1920s. For example, a village man who gave a horse to a collective farm and is now lying on a bench with a samovar tied to his stomach: "I'm afraid to fly away, put ... some load on his shirt." Here is a tragicomic "talk show", the participants of which are the "sad freak" Zhachev and the representative of the "maximum class" Pashkin (whose very name - Lev Ilyich - becomes a comic combination of the names of Trotsky and Lenin); Sitting in a flower bed with roses, Zhachev categorically declares to a trade union activist: “Well, bourgeois, or have you forgotten why I put up with you? Do you want to get the severity into the cecum? Keep in mind - any code is weak for me "

The literary "double" of Father Fyodor from the novel "The Twelve Chairs" looks like a Platonic priest, "cut to look like a foxtrot" and collecting a nickle in a church for a tractor for an activist. Comic, absurd transformations permeate the entire scene of the conversation between the priest and Chiklin: the pillars of faith become "podkulak saints", memorial sheets - lists of "unreliable" who dared to be baptized and pray in church, and the priest's immediate political task now is to enroll in a circle of godlessness. However, the last word - "godlessness" - in this episode of "The Pit" sounds not just like another logical dissonance (and not just as a more accessible synonym for the learned word "atheism"). The final remark of the priest returns the original meaning to the word: "It is useless for me, comrade, to live ... I no longer feel the charm of creation - I was left without God, and God without man ..." the story, turns into a spiritual drama of a person and receives an existential dimension in the context of the story.

The complex synthesis of the tragic and the comic, which distinguishes Platonov's prose, defines the character of the grotesque in "The Foundation Pit" - the most important artistic device used by the writer in episodes of dispossession of "prosperous dishonor". The starting point of "continuous collectivization" in the story is the village smithy (a kind of proletarian enterprise in the countryside), in which the main enemy of all kulaks, the bear Medvedev, works. In the character system of the story, he is assigned the role of an "active class" - on a par with an activist or Chiklin. The bear performs punitive functions with the help of "class instinct" - the beast smells the "kulak element" with its nose and unmistakably leads Chiklin to the homes of those who have made good with the flesh of a farm laborer. Literal reading of the ideological formula - "class instinct" - underlies the grotesque transformation of the beast into a "conscientious fellow", and a series of his "visits" to the kulak population turns into a series of surreal illustrations of the concept of "total collectivization".

However, the phantasmagoria does not end there: to the sound of the radio, the roaring "march of the great march", the collective farm rushes into a terrible fantastic dance - the dance of death. Those who were alive "systematically floated away on ... dead water", and those who remained alive became like the dead, circling in a wild round dance: "Elisha ... went to the middle place ... and danced on the ground, not bending at all ... he walked like a rod - alone among the standing ones, - clearly working with bones and torso. " The heroes of "The Foundation Pit" only once appear before the reader amused - but from this fun it becomes creepy! It is no accident that the ghosts huddling in the moonlight will be called a page later dead: “Zhachev! said Chiklin. - Go, stop the movement, they died, or something, for joy: they dance and dance. "

Contradicting common sense, Chiklin's absurd remark actually very clearly expresses the essence of what is happening: the living and the dead in the "Pit" have changed places. Outside of the Platonic context, such a remark could cause cheerful bewilderment - in "The Foundation Pit" it captures a terrible reality.

Alogism is generally one of the main sources of the comic in Platonov's prose. His "smart fools" regularly resort to alogism as a means of self-defense against the obsessive demagogy of "activists". Suffice it to recall Nastya's explanations about her social origin: “The main one is Lenin, and the second is Budyonny. When they were not there, and only bourgeois lived, then I was not born, because I did not want to. And as Lenin became, so I became! " The revolutionary phraseology of the hegemonic class is used by Nastya “creatively”: politically correct vocabulary becomes the basis of an absurd construction from the point of view of logic.

It should be especially noted the importance of alogism in the most tragic situations - dying and death: it is these episodes that are most saturated with comic effects. The death of Safronov and Kozlov is accompanied in the story by Nastya's indignant exclamation: "They died anyway, why do they need coffins!" The girl's remark seems to be nonsense (since the days of Pushkin's "Undertaker" it has been known that "the dead cannot live without a coffin"), if you do not take into account the plot context of the "Pit": in one of the coffins, now intended for the dead, Nastya slept, and the other served her "Red corner" - her toys were kept in it.

One of the following scenes of the story also looks tragicomic: next to the bodies of two victims (Safronov and Kozlov), a "fourth extra" corpse is found! It is the fourth one, since to the village peasant who was "unplanned" killed by Chiklin, one more is added, who "himself came here, lay down on the table between the deceased and personally died."

A completely special sphere of the comic in the story is the political language of the era of the “great turning point”. Numerous ideological clichés and political slogans are subjected to parodic rethinking and reformulation on the lips of the heroes (and the speech of the narrator). An activist, for example, puts the things brought by Voshchev into a special ... column under the title "The list of the kulak liquidated to death as a class by the proletariat, according to the property-excluded remnant." Stereotypical formulas are read literally and ironically played out in puns: "The question has arisen in principle, and it must be put back on the whole theory of feelings and mass psychosis ..."

Trust in the metaphor, so characteristic of the political phraseology of the era, is also recorded in the language of the story. However, the implementation of the metaphor in Platonov's text reveals the hidden absurdity of party clichés, and their meaning is embodied in a chain reaction of puns: “We no longer feel the heat from the fire of the class struggle, but the fire should be: where, then, should the active staff warm themselves”. Those who have turned into abstract concepts of "fire" and "heat" are returned to their direct meaning, and the result of the "exposure" of the official formula is a comic effect.

Thus, the tragic and the comic are combined in Platonov's prose into an inseparable whole. The depiction of one of the most tragic episodes in Russian history is based on the grotesque and combines the terrible and the funny, the fantastic and the real. Platonic world - a world on the brink of apocalypse - the presence of laughter is allowed, but the smile on the face of the reader freezes into a grimace of horror. In this world, the funnier - the worse ...

Problems of A. Platonov's story "The Foundation Pit"

A. Platonov's story "The Foundation Pit" describes the events of industrialization and collectivization that took place in Russia in the 20-30s of the last century. As you know, this time in the history of our country was distinguished by dramatic excesses and absurdities, which turned into a tragedy for the vast majority of people. The era of the collapse of all previous foundations became the subject of the author's attention in the story. Platonov chooses a very specific form for the presentation of events - everything in his story is turned upside down, everything is distorted, hypertrophied and full of paradoxes.

Thus, Platonov's form also becomes content. The paradoxical presentation of events and the Russian language distorted by official cliches shows how stupid, absurd and terrible everything that happens in the country is.

Platonov made the scene of action an unknown town and its environs, as well as an unnamed village. Throughout the development of an action, people work. They hardly rest. They are digging a foundation pit, as if they want to "be saved forever in the abyss of the foundation pit." And here a paradox immediately arises: how can you be saved at the bottom of the abyss, and even forever? People live a terrible and terrible life, which is difficult to even call existence. The author constantly compares them to the dead: they live “without a surplus of life,” they are “thin as the dead,” fall after work, “like the dead,” and sometimes sleep in coffins. Having buried the deceased woman in a stone crypt, the worker Chiklin says: "The dead are people too." All this reminds one of Gogol's Dead Souls: the dead are spoken of as living, and the living are likened to the dead. Only in Platonov's story does Gogol's symbolism acquire an even more terrible and eerie meaning.

The next paradox is that people, digging deeper and deeper down and deepening the foundation pit, are building a gigantic tall "general proletarian house." The deeper they dig, the more difficult it is to believe that a huge house - tower will be built on the site of this foundation pit. In relation to the people working on the construction of the pit, a very interesting parallel arises with the heroes of Gorky's play At the Bottom. Diggers also live at the bottom of life, and each of them came up with "the idea of ​​escape from here." One wants to retrain, the second - to start studying, the third (the most cunning) to go to the party and "hide in the governing apparatus." The question involuntarily arises: what has changed since the time of writing the play? People live in the same, and even worse conditions, and they do not rise to the surface.

The heroes hardly think about what they are doing. The whole rhythm of life does not allow them to do this, and aimless work dulls them so that not a single thought simply remains. However, the story has its own truth-seeker hero. We look at what is happening through his eyes. This is Voshchev, a man who cannot find a place for himself in the new world precisely because he is constantly thinking about what is the purpose of everything that happens. Already his surname itself is associated with the word "in general".

He is looking for the meaning of common existence. He says that his life is not a mystery to him, he wants to see a certain general meaning of life. He does not fit into life and does not want to submit to thoughtless activities. Voshchev was dismissed from the factory "due to ... the thoughtfulness in him among the common work." He is firmly convinced that "without a thought, people act meaninglessly." He utters a very important phrase: "As if someone, one or several of the few, have extracted from us a convinced feeling and have taken it for themselves." People live only on orders from above. They put on the radio to "hear achievements and directives," and the activist "with the lamp still out" is always on duty, because he waits for someone to arrive in the middle of the night with another order.

Voshchev is not even concerned about the exhausting work that he has to do, like everyone else. He worries that his soul "has ceased to know the truth." The word "truth" is perceived in the story as something embarrassing to the general picture of meaninglessness. One of the heroes, Safonov, is afraid: "Isn't the class enemy the truth?" And if you avoid it, then it can dream or appear in the form of imagination.

In the name of Voshchev one can guess not only a hint of the word "in general", the word "futility" is clearly heard in it. Indeed, all the attempts of the protagonist to find the truth remain in vain. Therefore, he envies the birds, who can at least "sing the sadness" of this society, because they "flew from above and it was easier for them." He “yearns” for the future. The very combination of incompatible words already prompts the idea of ​​what kind of future awaits people.

The theme of the future is embodied in the image of the girl Nastya, whom the workers bring to the pit after her mother died (either because she is a "potbelly stove, or from death"). Safonov, making "an active-thinking face", says: "We, comrades, need to have here in the form of childhood the leader of the future proletarian world."

The name of the girl - Nastya - also turns out to be a speaker for Platonov. Anastasia is translated from Greek as "resurrected". Thus, the hope of resurrection is embodied in it. The theme of resurrection also becomes very important in the story.

So, Voshchev collects all sorts of "dead" objects and adds them up "for the future." He picks up, for example, a “withered leaf”, puts it in a bag and decides to keep it there, like everything that “has no meaning in life,” like himself.

"When will something come!" - exclaims an unnamed peasant woman. Apparently never. The girl Nastya dies, and one of the walls of the pit becomes her grave. The story ends with the "resurrected" death. This is the logical outcome of the builders of communism. Voshchev, standing over the deceased Nastya, thinks about whether communism is possible in the world and who needs it? It is no coincidence that the author combines the names of these two heroes in the finale. Hopes for resurrection are in vain. The life that the heroes of the foundation pit lead has no meaning, and there is no future either - this is the author's deep conviction. And even if this "happy" future is built, who will live in it?

HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND Plot-compositional features of the story. The time of work on the story, indicated by the author on the last page of the text (December 1929 - April 1930), indicates that "The Foundation Pit" was written by Platonov practically from life - in the same "Year of the Great Turning Point", the coming of which was announced by the article I. Stalin November 7, 1929 The exact time frame of the events described in the "Foundation Pit" is also set by specific historical facts: on December 27, 1929, Stalin announced the transition to the policy of "liquidating the kulaks as a class," and on March 2, 1930, in the article "Vertigo from success ”briefly slows down violent collectivization.

The plot line of the story is very simple. The protagonist of the story, Voshchev, was dismissed from a mechanical plant during the hot season of the beginning of leaf fall (late summer - early autumn), and the dismissal falls on the day of his thirtieth birthday. It is interesting that in the year of the events described, the author of the story Platonov also turned 30, and his birthday, like Voshchev's birthday, falls on the end of summer (August 28). This allows us to assume that the hero's world outlook is close to the author's.

The documented reason for Voshchev's dismissal is "the growth of weakness in him and brooding among the general pace of work." In the factory committee, where the hero requests a new place of work every other day, Voshchev explains the reason for his thoughtfulness: he reflects on the "plan for a common life" that could bring "something like happiness." Having received a refusal in employment, the hero goes on the road and after another day gets to the neighboring city. In search of a lodging for the night, he finds himself in a barrack, overcrowded with sleeping workers, and in the morning in a conversation he finds out that he was in a team of excavators who “know everything” because “all organizations are given existence”. In other words, before Voshchev there are bearers of "unrequited happiness", "capable of keeping the truth within themselves without triumph." Hoping that life and work next to these people will give answers to Voshchev's tormenting questions, he decides to join their team.

It soon turns out that the excavators are preparing a foundation pit for a large building intended for the common life of all ordinary working people still huddled in the barracks. However, the scale of the pit in the process of work is increasing all the time, because the project of a “common house” is becoming more and more grandiose. The foreman of the diggers, Chiklin, brings the orphan girl Nastya to the barrack where the workers live, who is now becoming their common pupil.

Until late autumn Voshchev works together with excavators, and then he becomes a witness to dramatic events in the village adjacent to the city. Two workers' brigades are sent to this village at the direction of the leadership: they must help the local activists in carrying out collectivization. After they perish at the hands of unknown kulaks, Chiklin and members of his brigade arrive in the village and carry out the work of collectivization. They exterminate or float down the river (into "distant space") all the wealthy peasants of the village. After that, the workers return to the city, to the foundation pit. The finale of the story is the funeral of Nastya, who died from a fleeting illness, who by this time had become the common daughter of excavators. One of the walls of the pit becomes a grave for her.

As you can see, a few paragraphs were enough to list the main events of the story. However, the plot itself is far from the main level of expression of its deep meanings. For Platonov, the plot is just an eventual framework in which it is necessary to tell about the essence of his contemporary era, about the position of man in the post-revolutionary world.

The main events of the plot - endless digging of a foundation pit and a swift "special operation" to "liquidate the kulaks" are two parts of a single grandiose plan for building socialism. In the city, this construction consists in the erection of a single building “where the entire local class of the proletariat will enter into the settlement”; in the countryside - in the creation of a collective farm and the destruction of "kulaks". Note that the specific historical aspects of the picture created in the story have been significantly retouched: the mythopoetic, generalized-symbolic facets of the events described come to the fore.

This tendency towards symbolic generalization of the image is fully consistent with the title of the story and the features of its spatio-temporal organization. The image-symbol of the foundation pit echoes in the text with a multitude of semantic associations: in it - the “shoveling” of life, the “virgin land being lifted” of the earth, the construction of a temple - only going not up, but down; The “bottom” of life (plunging into the depths of the pit, the diggers sink lower and lower from the edge of the earth); The "cauldron of collectivism" that gathers toilers to itself; finally, a mass grave - both in the literal and figurative sense of the word (here you can bury the dying, here the collective hope for a brighter future dies).

The time frame of the narrative is indicated in the text of the "Pit" not by specific historical dates, but by the most general indications for the change of seasons: from early autumn to winter. At the same time, the internal “chronometry” of the story is far from clear and rhythmic order. Time seems to move in jerks, now almost stopping, now rapidly accelerating for a short time. The first three days of Voshchev's life (from the moment of dismissal until the diggers got into the barracks) can still be judged by the indications of where and how he spends the night, but in the future the alternation of day and night ceases to be accurately recorded, and the plot events seem to “break away” from the calendar ...

The exhausting monotony of the diggers' work is set off by the repetition of monotonous words and phrases: "until evening", "until morning", "next time", "at dawn", "in the evenings". Thus, half a year of plot action turns into an endless repetition of the same “daily clip”. The organization of the collective farm, on the other hand, is proceeding rapidly: the scenes of dispossession of kulaks, the expulsion of kulaks and the holiday of rural activists fit into one day. The finale of the story again returns the reader to the feeling of an endlessly stretching day, turning into an eternal night: starting at noon, Chiklin has been digging a grave for Nastya for fifteen hours in a row. The last “chronometric” detail of the story captures the moment of Nastya's burial in the “eternal stone”: “The time was night ...” Thus, in front of the reader's eyes, the “current time” of fateful socio-historical transformations is melted into a motionless eternity of loss. The last word of the story is the word “farewell”.

In the above quote, the clock is “patiently paced,” as if overcoming the physically felt space. This example illustrates the special nature of the relationship between time and space in Platonov's prose: figuratively speaking, the soles of the feet of a wandering truth-seeker in the writer's world become the main organ of the “experience” of time, the hours and days of his movement shine through for kilometers. The inner efforts of the hero, the tension of his consciousness, are associated with a real feat of expectation. “His path on foot lay in the middle of summer,” the author informs the reader at the very beginning of the story about Voshchev's route. To judge the time, Platonov's character does not need a wristwatch, he just needs to turn to space: "... Voshchev went to the window to notice the beginning of the night." Space and time metonymically touch, and sometimes become mutually reversible, so that the name of “place” becomes a kind of pseudonym for “time”. Platonov's stylistics prompts to read the title of the story itself not only as a “spatial” metaphor, but also as an allegory about the era. The “pit” is not only an abyss or an abyss, but also an empty “funnel” of a stopped, exhausted movement of time.

If the time in Platonov's story can be “seen”, then its artistic space loses its perhaps the most important attribute - the quality of visual clarity, optical sharpness. This quality of the Platonic vision of the world becomes especially noticeable when you observe the movements of the characters. While the routes of Raskolnikov's movements around St. Petersburg in "Crime and Punishment" by F.M. Dostoevsky's or Bulgakov's heroes across Moscow in The Master and Margarita are so specific that each of them can be marked on a map of a real city, the movements of Plato's heroes hardly correlate with clear spatial landmarks, they are practically devoid of topographic “references”. It is impossible for the reader to imagine where the city, factory, barrack, roads, etc. mentioned in the story are located.

Pay attention to how the hero's path is depicted: "Voshchev, who arrived on a cart from unknown places, touched the horse in order to ride back to the space where he was." “Unknown” places of unknown “space” give the characters' wanderings a dreamy, “somnambulistic” character: the hero's route is constantly getting lost, he again and again returns to the foundation pit. The characters in the story move incessantly, but this movement is often conveyed by Platonov outside the real “circumstances of the place” - vague coordinates of abstract concepts. Most often it is the language of undeformed ideological slogans: “into the proletarian masses,” “under the common banner,” “following the barefooted collectivization,” “into the distance of history, to the top of invisible times,” “back to the old days,” “forward to your own hope. ”,“ Into some unwanted distance of life ”. The wanderings of people on the surface of linguistic abstractions, devoid of material density, turn into feverish searches for life support, movements in the space of meanings. “The circumstances of consciousness” mean more for Platonov's characters than the circumstances of everyday life.

The "Brownian" chaotic "walking" of the characters embodies the author's pity about their homelessness, orphanhood and loss in the world of ongoing grandiose projects. Building a “common proletarian home”, people turn out to be homeless wanderers. At the same time, the author is close to his heroes in their unwillingness to stop, to be content with material-specific goals, no matter how outwardly attractive they may be. Platonov connects their searches with "lunar purity of a distant scale", "questioning heaven" and "disinterested, but painful power of the stars."

It is not surprising that in a world devoid of the usual spatio-temporal supports, the described events are also devoid of traditional cause-and-effect relationships. In the story, completely heterogeneous episodes can coexist with each other, and their artistic meaning is revealed only when the reader encompasses the entire picture presented by the writer in his mind's eye, when, through the kaleidoscopic flickering of scenes, he was able to discern a distinct ligature of motives. Let us trace, for example, how the “village theme” arises and develops in the story, connected with the motive of collectivization. It originates in a seemingly casual mention of a peasant “with yellow eyes” who ran to the diggers' artel and settled in a barrack to do household work.

Soon it was he who turned out to be a “guilty bourgeois in cash” for the inhabitants of the barracks, and therefore the invalid Zhachev inflicted “two blows on the side”. Following this, another inhabitant of a nearby village appears with a request to the excavators. In the ravine, which becomes part of the foundation pit, the men hid the coffins, which they had prepared for future use "for self-taxation." “Everyone lives with us because he has his own coffin: it is now an integral household for us!” - the alien informs the diggers. His request is taken completely calmly, as a matter of course; however, a small dispute arises between the workers and the peasant. Two coffins have already been used by Chiklin (one - as a bed for Nastya, the other - as a "red corner" for her toys), while the peasant insists on the return of two "undersized fobs" prepared for the village children in height.

This conversation is conveyed in the story in a neutral emotional tone, which gives the episode an absurd tone: it creates the impression of a bad dream, an obsession. The absurdity of what is happening is sharpened in the conversation of Nastya with Chiklin adjacent to the episode. Having learned from the foreman that the men who came for the coffins were not bourgeois at all, she asks him with the inexorable logic of a child: “Why do they need coffins then? Only the bourgeois should die, but the poor should not! " About the end of the conversation, the author says: "The diggers were silent, not yet realizing the data to speak."

In the actual rural scenes of the story, there are even more semantic shifts: the heterogeneous episodes adjacent to each other create the impression of logical incoherence, kaleidoscopic flashing of fragments of vague dreams: the activist teaches peasant women political literacy, the bear recognizes the village kulaks by smell and leads Chiklin and Voshchev to their huts, horses independently storing up straw for themselves, dispossessed peasants say goodbye to each other before all together go on a raft to the sea.

By weakening or completely destroying the causal relationship between the events depicted, Platonov thereby reveals the monstrous illogicality of his contemporary history, the absurd thoughtlessness of its creators. The grandiose project of the “general proletarian house” remains a mirage, and the only reality of the “new world” is the “abyss of the foundation pit”.

SYSTEM OF CHARACTERS OF THE STORY. The central character of the story, Voshchev, is a type of observer hero, characteristic of Plato's prose. He continues in his work a string of “pensive”, “doubting” and looking for the meaning of life of heroes. “My body will weaken without truth ...” - he replies to the questions of the diggers. All Voshchev's property fits into a bag, which he constantly carries with him: there he puts “all sorts of objects of misfortune and obscurity” - a dead leaf, roots of herbs, twigs, various rags. Behind the external eccentricity of his “gathering” there is an important ideological setting: for every thing in the world, the hero seeks to prolong its existence. His surname is an echo of this love for the substance of the world, for things of different weights and calibers. At the same time, phonetically close words “in general” and “vain” are guessed in it, signaling the direction of the hero's search (he seeks to discover the meaning of common existence) and the sad failure of his all-embracing concern (the search will be in vain).

Voshchev's inner circle is represented in the story by the images of diggers. Many of them are nameless, their collective portrait comes to the fore, composed not of descriptions of faces, but of the most general biological characteristics: “Inside the shed, seventeen or twenty people slept on their backs ... The skin and bones of each was occupied with veins, and the thickness of the veins showed how much blood they must let through during the stress of labor. " Against the background of this impersonal sketch, it is not so much individualized images that emerge as generalized roles: foreman Chiklin, enthusiast Safronov, disabled person Zhachev, “sneaky man” Kozlov. Trying to “forget” in their furious work, the workers stop thinking, leaving this concern to leaders like Pashkin. Truth for them is an intellectual mental game that does not change anything in reality, and they can only hope for their own super-efforts, for the enthusiasm of labor.

The unnamed "activist" and engineer Prushevsky stand apart in the character system. The image of the first of them is a satirical embodiment of the “dead soul” of a bureaucrat leader who hastens to respond to the next directive of the authorities and brings the “party line” to the point of absurdity. He draws up an “acceptance bill” for coffins, arranges the peasants in the form of a five-pointed star, teaches young peasants to read and write, forcing them to memorize words they do not understand: “Bolshevik, bourgeois, hillock, permanent chairman, the collective farm is the blessing of the poor, bravo-bravo-Leninists! Put solid signs on the hill and the Bolshevik ... ”The image of Prushevsky is another version of the traditional type of scientist in Platonov's prose, a lonely thinker who claims to conquer the natural elements. It is he who owns the project of the "eternal home" - a kind of modern Babel tower. Prushevsky's moods are unstable: he either elegiacally recalls youthful love, then experiences bouts of despair and decides to commit suicide, but eventually leaves after the girl “in a poor scarf”, whose eyes attract him with “surprised love”.

However, Platonov makes hardworking and sincere workers the protagonists of his story. They crave happiness not so much for themselves as for their descendants. Their ideas about happiness are not revealed in any way, but they clearly do not resemble the “paradise” of their leader Pashkin, who lives, as it were, in the future, in satiety and contentment. Loners who believe that "happiness will come from materialism" easily get their share and are well settled. Such is, for example, the weak Kozlov, who leaves for the city in order to "follow everything" and "strongly love the proletarian masses." But for most workers, happiness is, above all, the best life for children. Even though the life of the diggers is hard, it is sanctified by the meaning of the existence of the girl Nastya, an orphan adopted by the workers.

Voshchev regards the girl as in childhood an angel on a church wall; he hopes that "this weak body, abandoned without kinship among people, will someday feel the warming stream of the meaning of life and her mind will see a time similar to the first primordial day." Nastya becomes for the diggers a living symbol of the future, a material confirmation of the reality of their faith. The Greek name Anastasia (“resurrected”) carries in the context of the story the idea of ​​the resurrection of happiness. The more tragic and gloomy is the ending of the story, leading to the death of the once “resurrected” girl (Chiklin found her next to her dying mother). The semantic result of the accomplished event is summed up by the reflections of Voshchev, standing over the little body of Nastya, who had just died: “He no longer knew where communism would now be in the world if it was not at first in a child's feeling and convinced impression? Why does he now need the meaning of life and the truth of universal origin, if there is no small, faithful person in whom the truth would become joy and movement? "

The portrait characteristics of the characters in the "Pit" are extremely scarce, so that the faces of most of the characters are visually unimaginable. Practically ignoring physiognomic signs, Platonov “reads” faces as “existential” signs of the general state of the world. Thus, on the faces of the pioneer girls “the difficulty of the infirmity of early life, the scarcity of the body and the beauty of expression remained”; Kozlov had a "dull, monotonous face" and "damp eyes," and Chiklin had a "small stony head." Particularly interesting is the description of the appearance of a peasant who came running from the village: “He closed one eye, and looked at everyone with the other, expecting something bad, but not going to complain; his eye was of a farmhouse, yellow color, evaluating all visibility with the sorrow of economy ”.

The characters seem to be disembodied, their images are “reduced” to the idea or emotion they express. It is indicative that the inhabitants of the village are absolutely devoid of their own names, people figure under coarse sociological "nicknames": "bourgeois", "semi-bourgeois", "fist", "podkulachnik", "pest", "mobilized frame", "henchman of the avant-garde", " middle peasant old man "," leading poor ", etc. In the “side column” of the list of destroyed kulaks, the activist writes down “signs of existence” and “property mood”: there is no place for living people in the world of realized utopia.

But in full accordance with the logic of the absurd, it has a place for animals acting in rural scenes of the story along with people and subject to the same norms of behavior. Horses, like the pioneers, walk in formation, as if they were “convinced with precision of the collective farm system of life”; the hammer bear works as selflessly in the forge as the diggers do in the pit, as if he realized himself as a “rural proletarian” and was imbued with a “class flair”; and here is a lonely dog ​​in a strange village "in the old way." This artistic solution enhances the semantic ambiguity of the story. On the one hand, the idea of ​​a blood connection between man and nature, the unity of all life on earth, the reciprocity of the human and natural principles is revealed. “His soul is a horse. Let him now live empty, and the wind blows through him, ”says Chiklin about the man left without a horse and feeling“ empty inside ”.

On the other hand, the use of zoomorphic (“animal-like”) imagery unexpectedly “grounds”, materializes, makes the abstract concepts “class struggle”, “class instinct”, “socialization” sensuously tangible and visual. This is how, for example, the erased metaphor “class instinct” is realized, when the blacksmith bear “suddenly growled near a solid, clean hut and did not want to go further”; "After three yards the bear growled again, indicating the presence of its class enemy here." The implementation of the metaphor becomes even more obvious in Chiklin's praise to the activist: "You are a conscious fellow, you sense classes like an animal." People act to match the animals: Chiklin mechanically kills a peasant who happens to be at hand; Voshchev “strikes a blow in the face” to the “podkulachnik”, after which he does not respond; men do not differentiate between killing activists, killing livestock, cutting down trees and destroying their own flesh. Collectivization appears in the story as collective murder and suicide.

In the final scenes of the story, the peasants who joined the workers (who survived after collectivization) find themselves in the depths of the pit: “All the poor and average peasants worked with such zeal of life, as if they wanted to be saved forever in the abyss of the pit”. In this thirst for “salvation forever,” people and animals again unite in the finale: horses carry a rubble stone, a bear drags this stone in its front paws. “To be saved forever” in the context of the “Pit” means only one thing - to die. FEATURES OF ARTISTIC SPEECH. At the first acquaintance, the language of Platonov baffles the reader: against the background of the normative literary language, it seems outlandish, pretentious, incorrect. The main temptation in explaining such a language is to admit that Platonic word usage is ironic, to admit that Platonov deliberately, deliberately twists the phrase in order to expose the absurdity, to emphasize the absurdity of the depicted. “Already now, you can be a henchman of the avant-garde and immediately have all the benefits of the future tense,” decides for himself an activist of the collective farm named after General Line. The formulation of the activist's thought, taken by itself, can be interpreted as a sign of the author's irony towards the new “masters of life”. The problem, however, is that almost all of Platonov's phrases are: with “shifted” word usage, with the replacement of the word with a seemingly unsuitable synonym, with persistently used pleonasms, with incompletely explainable inversions.

In Platonov's prose, there is no noticeable border between the words of the author and the words of the characters: without separating himself from the heroes, the author, as it were, learns to speak with them, painfully searches for words. Platonov's language was formed by the elements of the post-revolutionary years. In the 1920s. the linguistic norm was changing rapidly: the lexical composition of the language expanded, words of different stylistic layers fell into the general cauldron of new speech; everyday vocabulary coexisted with heavy archaism, jargon - with abstract concepts not yet “digested” by the consciousness of a person from the people. In this linguistic chaos, the hierarchy of meanings that had developed in the literary language was destroyed, the opposition between high and low styles disappeared. Words were read and used anew, as it were, outside the tradition of word use, combined indiscriminately, regardless of belonging to one or another semantic field. It was in this verbal bacchanalia that the main contradiction was formed between the globality of new meanings that required new words, and the absence of a stable, settled word usage, the building material of speech.

Such is the linguistic leaven of the Platonic style. It must be said that there is no generally accepted, well-established opinion about the reasons for Platonov's “strange tongue”. One of the versions is that the writer's style of speech is deeply analytical. It is important for a writer not to depict the world, not to reproduce it in visual images, but to express the thought about the world, moreover, “a thought tormented by feeling”. Platonov's word, no matter what abstract concept it expresses, seeks not to lose the fullness of emotional feeling. Because of this emotional burden, words are difficult to "rub" against each other; like bare wires, the connections of the words “spark”. Nevertheless, the combination of words turns out to be possible due to the fact that abstract words are materially denser, lose their usual abstract meaning, and concrete, “everyday” words receive symbolic illumination, shine through with an additional figurative meaning. An allegory can be read literally, as a statement of fact, and an ordinary phrase, a specific designation is fraught with a clot of allegory.

An original verbal centaur appears - a symbiosis of the abstract and the concrete. Here is a typical example: “The current time passed quietly in the midnight darkness of the collective farm; nothing disturbed the socialized property and the silence of the collective consciousness ”. In this sentence, the abstract and unimaginable “current time” is endowed with the features of a material object moving in space: it goes “quietly” (how?) And in the “darkness of the collective farm” (where?). At the same time, the very specific designation of darkness (“midnight gloom”) acquires an additional semantic connotation - the phrase does not so much denote the time of day as conveys the attitude towards “the darkness of the collective farm,” the obsession of collectivization.

According to another version, Platonov deliberately subordinated himself to the “language of utopia,” the language of the era. He adopted the meaningless language of ideological clichés, dogmas and clichés designed for simple memorization (and not understanding) in order to blow it up from the inside, bringing it to the point of absurdity. Thus, Platonov deliberately violated the norms of the Russian language in order to prevent its transformation into a fooling language of utopia. “Platonov himself subordinated himself to the language of the era, seeing in it such abysses, glancing into which once, he could no longer slide on the literary surface, engaging in intricacies of plot, typographical delights and stylistic laces,” Joseph Brodsky considered, naming in the finale of his article Platonov's language "a language that compromises time, space, life and death itself."

Platonov's leading style device is an artistically justified violation of lexical compatibility and syntactic word order. Such a violation enlivens and enriches the phrase, gives it depth and ambiguity. Let's do a little stylistic experiment: put in brackets “extra”, optional from the point of view of common sense, words and phrases in the first sentence of the story: “On the day of his thirtieth birthday (personal life) Voshchev was given a calculation from a small mechanical plant (where he obtained funds for his existence ) ”. The deliberately excessive clarification, marked here with brackets, violates the usual semantic balance of the phrase, complicates the perception. But for Platonov, the main thing is not to inform about Voshchev's dismissal, but to draw the reader's attention to those “grains of meaning” that will later sprout in the story: Voshchev will painfully seek the meaning of his personal life and common existence; the means of acquiring this meaning will be for the excavators hard work in the pit. Thus, already in the first phrase there is a semantic “matrix” of the story, which determines the movement of its speech flow.

In Platonov's language, the word is not so much the unit of the sentence as the unit of the entire work. Therefore, within the framework of a specific proposal, it may be placed outwardly “incorrectly” - “at random”. The word is saturated with a multitude of contextual meanings and becomes a unit of the higher levels of the text, for example, plot and artistic space. Violations of syntactic links in individual sentences are necessary to create a single semantic perspective for the entire story. That is why not every word turns out to be “superfluous”, formally “inappropriate” in the statements of Platonov's characters. As a rule, these are words that convey a stable semantic and emotional complex: life, death, existence, longing, boredom, uncertainty, direction of movement, purpose, meaning, etc.

Signs of objects, actions, states seem to break away from the specific words with which they are usually combined, and begin to wander freely in the story, attaching themselves to “unusual” objects. There are many examples of such word usage in Platonov's story: “ruthlessly born”, “convex vigilance of an asset”, “unpleasant water flowing”, “dreary clay”, “difficult space”. Obviously, signs of objects or actions extend beyond the framework established by the linguistic norm; adjectives or adverbs are out of place. One of the most common features in Platonov's language is the replacement of circumstances with definitions: “knock with a soft hand” (instead of “knock softly”), “give an immediate whistle” (“blow the whistle immediately”), “hit with a silent head” (“silently hit your head” ). In the world of the writer, the properties and qualities of the “substance of existence” are more important and significant than the nature of the action. Hence the preference given by Platonov to an adjective (a sign of an object or phenomenon) over an adverb (a sign of an action).

A compositional connection in the language of a story can arise between qualitatively heterogeneous members: “it became stuffy and boring from the lamp and the words spoken”; "The winds and grasses from the sun were stirring all around." Collective designations can replace a specific noun: "The kulak sector was driving along the river into the sea and beyond." Ordinary verbs begin to function as verbs of movement, receiving the direction: "There is nowhere to live, so you think in your head." Definitions, usually attached to living people, are used to characterize inanimate objects: "patient, bent fences, puny machines." Auditory, visual and gustatory senses mix and interact: the “hot woolly voice”.

Platonov regularly uses the method of realizing a metaphor, when words that have lost their direct, objective meaning in speech use, return their “natural” meaning. Often, such a transformation of a figurative meaning into a direct one is carried out in accordance with the naive children's logic. So, sick Nastya asks Chiklin: “Try, what a terrible fever I have under my skin. Take off my shirt, or it will burn out, I will recover - there will be nothing to wear! "

So, all elements of Platonov's artistic world are subordinated to the main thing - an endless search, clarification of the meaning of what is happening. The scale of the vision of the world - spatial, temporal, conceptual - is the scale of a universal whole, not parts. The local disorder of actions, events, word combinations is overcome by the higher orderliness of the author's view of the world. The semantic shifts within the sentence, episode, plot in Platonov's prose most adequately reflect the real shift, the shift in the world order of the era of global transformations. Words, phrases, episodes in the writer's prose cannot and should not be more understandable, more logical than the life reality that they convey. In other words, it is Platonov's “foolish” prose that is the most accurate mirror of the fantastic reality of Soviet life in the 1920s and 1930s.

The originality of thought, the realism of the plot and the truthfulness of the story are distinguished by Andrei Platonov's "Pit". Instead of fictional cheerful everyday life of workers, the author described the pain and tragedy of a person.

The harshness of reality

Reading the story, one can carry out not only an analysis of Platonov's "Pit", but also the mood of the people in general. The plot begins with the fact that Voshchev's thirty-year-old man was fired from the factory. The reason was his thoughtfulness. In search of a better life, he ends up in a town where they plan to build a "general proletarian house", which will serve as a roof for local workers. Work begins with a foundation pit.

In the course of the events, the reader gets acquainted with other characters, each of whom spares no effort for the good of the homeland. All as one believe in a happy future, so far very vague and distant.

The everyday life of poor people is shown by a work written by Platonov ("The Foundation Pit"). The summary, analysis and even the story of writing the story are filled with the bitter truth of the life of that time.

Raising the problem

Working hopelessly, a person does not have time to think. Everything changes when the excavator Chiklin finds a dying woman, whom he once loved, in a bourgeois factory. Together with her - little Nastya. Chiklin takes the little girl to his barrack. There the child is asked who she is. At the insistence of the mother, the child does not talk about his parents, while notes that she herself chose the time when to be born. Automatically Nastya becomes a child of communism.

Andrei Platonov is building another line. "Pit" (analysis of the work can be carried out on this situation) - a story about human cruelty. Two workers are killed. This leads to an even greater wave of aggression. The process of division into the poor and the kulaks begins.

Unhappy ending

The story is full of tragedy and drama. Due to the lack of love, Nastya fell ill. Few cared about the girl. After a while, she dies. Together with her, all the bright hopes of the supporters of communism collapsed.

An analysis of Platonov's work "The Foundation Pit" allows us to see the grief of a particular person in the soulless machine of progress and system. The collective dream is the exact opposite of personal happiness.

Stalin himself forbade the publication of this work. For a long time it was studied underground. And although the leader of the people loved the writer and considered him a talented person, repression and persecution awaited Andrei Platonov. The leader never forgave the master for his sharpness and realism in the story.

Territory of deception

The severity and drama of the first Soviet five-year plan is the main theme that Platonov reflected. "Pit" (analysis of the work can be carried out based on historical facts) was written in 1930. At that time, the author had already established himself as a successful writer. The plot that he reveals is very true.

The established Soviet power is confidently establishing its own order. Conducted an intensive totalitarian system is gaining momentum. At a time when the country is making plans for several years ahead, the author shows the individual and her experiences.

If you analyze Platonov's story "The Foundation Pit", then you can trace how the writer through satire shows the world of the Soviet Union. There is a dystopia in this work.

The tragedy of a philosopher

The first hero the author introduces us to is Voshchev. The reader is immediately imbued with sympathy for this character. His personality remains a mystery until the end of the work. The image is uncommon and absolutely unlike other heroes of Soviet literature of the 30s. The character of this person stands in comparison with Shakespeare's Hamlet.

An analysis of Platonov's "Pit" shows that Voshchev's mood reflects the essence of the story in general. This is a man of a different era. A man does not want to obey the system and turn into a soulless machine, the only purpose of which is to fulfill the plan. He strives for high art, thinks about the meaning of life. It is hard for a philosopher at heart, Voshchev to get used to the established order, where material welfare prevails over spiritual values.

The hero cannot stand aside when injustice and lies rule. Excessive honesty and a desire to change the outlook of others for the better are often the cause of deep sadness.

How fragile souls can be is shown by the analysis of the work "The Foundation Pit". For a long time Platonov was condemned for the strange and incomprehensible character of Voshchev. But today the reader understands well the philosophical nature of the hero.

Versatility of characters

Everyone who is a supporter of the writer's creativity has their own favorite character. There are many bright, extraordinary and lively personalities in the story. Not only Voshchev's subtle nature is striking, but also the extravagance of other characters. It should be noted that the author was not afraid to add to his heroes earthly, even low ones. Each of them is endowed with both pluses and minuses. Therefore, in order to better understand the essence of the work, it is necessary to make a detailed analysis of Platonov's story "The Foundation Pit" and to understand the complex characters of the heroes.

One of the most interesting characters is Pashkin Lev Ilyich. The name gives references to two communist leaders. He is a tireless leader. Throughout history, he actively promotes the ideas of the party. Zhachev helps him in this. This man is a disabled person of the First World War. He believes in communism, fights against the bourgeoisie. But his confidence breaks down with the death of the girl Nastya.

No less important for the work of Chiklin Nikita. This is a simple person, the essence of whose existence lies in constant work. But the hero's fate is not easy. He is tormented by a bright past.

Analysis of Platonov's "Pit" shows that each character is lonely in his soul, and this becomes the cause of cruelty, greed, and anger.

Symbol of light

She became a symbol. Everyone who surrounded her saw the future in her. It was for people like this child that the workers worked without sparing themselves. The girl herself lived up to the hopes placed on her. Tiny thought many times about the meaning of communism. So, she said that she did not even want to be born until Lenin began to rule the people.

Despite this part of the story, the Soviet government forbade the publication of one of the author's most important works. The topics raised by Andrei Platonov were considered incorrect. "The pit" (the analysis of the work can be carried out on the history of the girl) is a tragic plot.

In the finale, along with the death of Nastya, faith in a bright socialist future disappears from both the heroes of the story and the readers. The idea that the people so diligently cultivated did not live up to expectations and was extinguished only when it caught fire.

Invisible companion

They played a large role in the work. With the help of landscape excerpts from the text, you can analyze the "Pit". Platonov is considered a master of detail. It is due to the little things that he introduced that the reader gets into the world of the story, better understands the moods of the heroes.

At first glance, invisible strokes, the author enhances the work. So, very often the wind, sky, plants become a reflection of the inner state. It is worth noting here that most of the colors that the writer gives are sad. The fate of each of the heroes is filled with sadness. Their thoughts are gloomy, their plans are disappointing. The negative they are experiencing is exacerbated by the weather. The wind is prickly, the sky is cold, even the plants are preparing for the worst. The characters are surrounded by gray, dull colors.

A very transparent analysis of Platonov's story "The Foundation Pit". The author intended to reflect as deeply as possible the start of a new era. In order to enhance the impression, I used elements of nature.