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"Chevengur is a philosophical novel that is also rich in psychological, social, and sensuous detail. Although it was never publishable in the USSR, it now stands as one of the most celebrated of Soviet novels, and along with The Foundation Pit, it is themost ambitious and moving of Andrey Platonov's efforts to take the measure of a world undergoing revolutionary transformation. The full text of Chevengur is here translated into English for the first time by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, whose versions of Platonov and Vasily Grossman have made these towering masters of modern literature accessible to readers of English. Platonov's world is a world of orphans searching for family and home. The Russian people have lost both their Mother Earth and their Father in Heaven. Nothing is left to them but the horizon-a shining but ever-receding future. Thus in part one of the novel Zakhar Pavlovich, a gifted craftsman, moves from traditional village life to the world of industry. He falls in love with steam locomotives; he wishes to harness the power of machines to bring an end to human misery, and yet before long he is disillusioned. In the second part of the book it falls on his adopted son, Sasha Dvanov, to set out across the steppes in pursuit of revolution with, as his companion, Kopionkin, knight errant of the martyred revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg. Perhaps communism will be born spontaneously of human yearning? The last part of the book finds a group of impatient Bolsheviks who live in the fictional town ofChevengur attempting to make communism happen now. They liquidate the bourgeoisie and the half-bourgeoisie, believing that this will inevitably bring about communism, since nothing else will remain. They relocate all the buildings, so that property will become worn out and cease to oppress the proletariat. Finally, Sasha Dvanov arrives in Chevengur as a herald of communism with a human face-and for the briefest moment it bears one"--… (more)
User reviews
Dino Buzzati's “The Tartar Steppe” disturbed me in the most elemental way. I found it extremely hard to finish yet I couldn't put it down. McCarthy's “Blood Meridian” is also unsettling, but in a glorious way. In some respects I found it very similar to “Moby
"Chepurny and Piusya went off to make a personal inspection of the dead bourgeoisie. The dead were lying in clumps, in groups of three or four or even more, evidently trying to get close to one another, if only with parts of their bodies, during the last minutes of mutual separation. Chepurny touched the throats of the bourgeois with the back of his hand, the way a mechanic tests the temperature of a bearing, and it seemed to him that the bourgeois were all still alive.
'I knocked the soul out of Duvailo's neck just for good measure!' said Piusya.
'Quite right. The soul's in the throat,' Chepurny recalled. 'Why do you think the Cadets string us up by the throat? So the soul gets burned up by the rope - then you die good and proper! It's no good messing about, killing a man's not easy.'
Piusya and Chepurny felt every one of the bourgeois and remained unconvinced of their definitive death. Some of them seemed to be sighing; while others had their eyes half-closed as if they were shamming, meaning to crawl away in the night and continue their lives at the expense of Piusya and the rest of the proletariat. Chepurny and Piusya then decided to additionally insure the bourgeoisie against any continuation of life. They loaded their revolvers to the full and shot each prostrate property-owner, one by one, straight through the glands in their neck.
'Now our cause is assured!' said Chepurny once he'd got his task out of the way. 'No proletarian in the world can be poorer than a corpse.'"
Not since I read Isaac Babel's great story "Salt" did I encounter a more disturbing explication of the dehumanized mind of the would-be communist.