Each piece of art, one way or another, reflects the time at which it was created. The author rethinks some historical phenomenon and on the pages of his creation gives his own vision of what is happening.
In the story "The Foundation Pit" A. Platonov questions the correctness of the path chosen by Soviet Russia. "Pit" with a deep socio-philosophical content in allegorical form tells about the construction of a huge building - happiness. More precisely, so far only a foundation pit is being built for this symbolic structure. The action is concentrated mainly in two places - in the collective farm named after the General Line of the Party and at a construction site.
A lot of people are going to build the pit, led by Chiklin's brigade. And the story begins with an acquaintance with one of its representatives - Voshchev. A man worked and worked, lived and lived, and suddenly “on the day of the thirtieth anniversary of his personal life” he was fired from a mechanical plant due to weakness and “thoughtfulness amid the general pace of work.”
He is trying to know his happiness, so that "from spiritual meaning» labor productivity would increase. Voshchev is not a parasite who avoids work. He just begins to guess for some time that the "secret of life" cannot be limited to his senseless existence in the factory shop. From Voshchev's remark, "Without thought, people act senselessly," a peculiar conflict is set up between the "general pace of work" and "thoughtfulness."
As soon as the builders begin to think, they lose their “labor pace”. Such a tendency characterizes not only Voshchev, but also Chiklin, and Safronov, and Morozov. Voshchev's yearning soul is in a state of search for a reasonable beginning, happiness. For the fact that the worker expresses his thoughts aloud, he is fired from the factory, and he ends up on the construction of a house.
Hard labor is used at the construction of the foundation pit, depriving people of the opportunity to think, to enjoy memories. The diggers live in terrible hut conditions, their daily food is very scarce: empty cabbage soup, potatoes, kvass. At the same time, the bosses live happily ever after. The writer critically depicts the life of Russian society in the 20-30s of the 20th century.
The worst part of the story is the death of the characters. Platonov does not believe in socialism that maims or kills people. The class struggle did not pass by the devoted party. Kozlov and Safronov are killed in the village by irresponsible elements. Zhachev lost faith in a bright future.
To understand the meaning of the story, the image of Nastya is important - a little girl living on a construction site with diggers. Nastya is a child of the October Revolution of 1917. The girl had a mother, but she is a "potbelly stove", an obsolete class. But the rejection of the past means the loss historical ties, cultural traditions and replacing them with ideological parents - Marx and Lenin. People who deny the past cannot have a future.
Nastya's world is disfigured, because in order to save her daughter, her mother inspires her to hide her non-proletarian origin. The propaganda machine has already infiltrated her mind. The reader is horrified to learn that she advises Safronov to kill the peasants for the cause of the revolution. Who will grow into a child whose toys are stored in a coffin? At the end of the story, the girl dies, and along with her, the ray of hope for Voshchev and other workers dies. In a kind of confrontation between the foundation pit and Nastya, the foundation pit wins, and her dead body lies at the base of the future house.
The title of the story is symbolic. The foundation pit is not only a construction site. It is a huge hole, a grave that the workers dig for themselves. This is where many people die. It is impossible to build a happy common proletarian home on a slavish attitude to work and the humiliation of human dignity.
Platonov's pessimism could not fit into the cheerful pace of Soviet literature with positive images communists, party meetings and overfulfillment of the planned plans. The author of "The Foundation Pit" did not keep up with the times - he was ahead of this very time.

Desire to explore one of the most difficult problems XX century - the problem of introducing a person to a new life is permeated by the tragic mystery of collectivization, created by Andrey Platonov unusually quickly: from December 1929 to April 1930, just as Chernyshevsky's famous novel “What is to be done?” was created, also written on the topic of the day. Now that we know numerous works devoted to collectivization, we can say with full right that this process is complex and ambiguous. In "The Foundation Pit" the author breaks the myth of a brighter future.

The historical and literary context of the story is "politics complete collectivization". And "liquidation of the kulaks as a class." We meet here both with philosophical generalization and with a deep mythologization of life: the workers are digging a foundation pit for the foundation of a “general proletarian house”, in which the new generation should then live happily. Thinking about the meaning of life and the worker Voshchev, dismissed from a small mechanical plant, because he was afraid of production "among the general pace of work." He thought about the fact that “it is difficult for him to live without truth.” He also gets to dig a ditch: he really wants to "invent something like happiness, so that productivity improves from spiritual meaning."

Voshchev is a folk thinker, an "intimate person", a wanderer, "not moving in accordance with the general line", but having his own path in life. Perhaps he is the first to understand that the foundation pit is a new slavery, it is based on the rituals of a new faith: unconditional obedience to Stalin's commands that led to the creation of a totalitarian state. He does not see himself respected by workers or trade unionists who advise him to remain silent. And then he, who planned

The reorganization of the world, a romantic and a dreamer, bitterly throws in the face of the new bureaucrats: “You are afraid to be in the tail: he is a limb, and they sat on the neck! .. Without a thought, people act senselessly!” creating a dramatic picture of time, Platonov from the very first pages reveals to readers the key words: “themes” and “plan”, thereby defining the themes of the story: performer and creator, personal and public, respect for the dignity of a person and his life.

In the very name "Voshchev" two principles are conjugated: old Russian word wax - something soft, natural, organic, and "in vain" - "in vain" (so vain, will this hero's search for happiness, truth and justice in "The Pit"). A number of phonetic analogies can be continued with the Russian proverb “got like chickens in shchi” (voshchip), in which the central sound complex is “voshchi” - from the root “voshch”, “voek”. Despite the external incompatibility and even contradictory nature of all these meanings in Voshchev's history, they are linked together, mutually complementing each other: this is also connected with psychological world character - he collects in a bag "all the obscurity of the world for memory", looking for the meaning of a common and separate existence - "a plan common life". The plot of the Russian proverb in Voshchev's biography receives a sadly comic incarnation: on the General Line collective farm, an activist defines Voshchev for "chicken business" - "to feel all the chickens and thereby determine the presence of freshly laid eggs by morning." His last name defines him spiritual path- from the hope of finding universal truth to the realization of the insignificance of common efforts in achieving the ideal and personal existence: “Voshchev stood in perplexity over this humiliated child, he no longer knew where communism would now be in the world, if it was not there first in the childish feeling and in convinced impression. Voshev would agree to know nothing again and live without hope in the vague desire of a vain mind, if only the girl was whole, ready for life, even if

Tired over time." Platonov uses in the story a "holy fool", a broken language - the result of a shift, a shift in normative lexical and

Syntactic relations, this language is designed not for those who understand, but for those who remember, the meaning of words is emasculated. Here, politically marked words, labels, ideologically colored vocabulary are used: “send to collectivization”,

"to build on a narrow scale," "you grieve on one collective farm." These party propaganda and slogans used in the Organizational Court in relation to the kulaks: “What kind of face am I to you? I am nobody: we have a party - that's the face! .. Come to the raft today, capitalism,

Bastard! And the method of joining the collective farm is familiar: “Sign up! And then I'll send it to the ocean! Describing dispossession, Platonov uses the technique of the grotesque, since the Hammer Bear takes part in dispossession. Sometimes in it the author emphasizes the human principle, this is what Nastya notes in him. Dying, she asks to take care of Mishka Medvedev. And then the metaphors “work like a beast” and “a disservice” work - this is how one of the secret Platonic ideas manifests itself in the story. The girl Nastya dies - she leaves people in the future, all roads lead to the "Pit" - to world orphanhood, homelessness. Since people don’t have a home (they even sleep in coffins and cook them for themselves “for the future”, which is already inhumane in itself), it means that there is no link between generations, there is no comfort, harmony, peace. And the house that they were supposed to build for a brighter future turns into the grave of a child, into the grave of people.

In a parable form, wisely and not intrusive, Platonov, it seems to me, makes us understand that it is impossible to drive humanity into happiness by force. Then instead of the promised paradise, we can get something opposite. This story is a warning that false ideas can ruin thousands human lives and become the tragedy of the people. Probably, our people have learned to draw lessons from their historical past.

The talented writer A. Platonov created his works in difficult years, when new plants and factories were built, began new life. In the new environment, people became different. The writer sought to reflect the fate of the people, to solve the problem of truly human freedom, true harmony. But he saw that in real life it is impossible to achieve it, therefore, in many of his stories, tragic notes are clearly visible. At the very beginning of creativity, captured by the swift and powerful rhythm of contemplation, Platonov believes that, together with everyone, he is building a just society based on the principles of humanism. He believes that the idea of ​​a just family will be embodied in life.

Platonov thought a lot about what the meaning of writing is, what real freedom is. He tried to discard misconceptions, get rid of imaginary idols, outdated concepts. In his reflections, he moved from a vague consciousness to a real one, from utopias about socialism to a real and clear idea of ​​such a system.

Story " Sand teacher"is one of the best stories he created in the twenties. A young teacher, after completing four summer pedagogical courses, was sent to a remote area Astrakhan province- the village of Koshutovo, on the border with the dead desert. Here she was horrified by the impoverished conditions in which the peasants lived. She came face to face with the elements of nature. This village was almost covered with sand. The streets were covered with whole drifts of sand, which reached the window sills of the houses. Every day, the peasants had to clear the estates from sand drifts. The young teacher faced hard reality for the first time, but did not lose heart. Courageously began work at school, but

The children often skipped classes because they had nothing to wear. Two of them even starved to death. And she decided to fight. She collected the signatures of the peasants and brought an application to the district department of public education, she asked for help

Peasants in the fight against the sand element. Here the writer showed the high moral strength of a girl who did not give up in the face of difficulties. Maria Nikiforovna persuaded the peasants to plant protective forest belts around irrigated vegetable gardens. Further, according to the recommendations, the peasants planted pine trees, because the tree saves moisture and keeps crops from being depleted by the hot wind. Slut shrubs gave the inhabitants a rod, from which they learned to make baskets and even tables and chairs, for them it was a side income. The peasants began to live better, they believed the teacher.

The genre of anti-utopia in the works of Zamyatin "We" and Platonov "The Pit"

Plan

Introduction 3

2.1 Roman E. Zamyatina "We" 9

2.2 "Pit" by A. Platonov 13

Conclusion 17

Bibliography 19

Introduction

With the birth of humanism in Europe, the genre of utopia appeared. The sages of the past portrayed happy world future, where there is no war, disease, and all spheres of society are subject to the laws of reason. Centuries passed, and utopia was replaced by dystopia - the image of a "future without a future", a dead mechanized society, where a person is assigned the role of an ordinary social unit. In fact, dystopia is not the exact opposite of utopia: dystopia develops the basic principles of utopia, bringing them to the point of absurdity. Now it turns out that the same human mind is able to build not only the "City of the Sun" by Tommaso Campanella, but also the "death factories" of Heinrich Himmler, working with the precision of a clockwork. The 20th century has become a century of embodied anti-utopias - in life and literature.

In Russian literature, several bright names can be distinguished. This paper will consider the works of two authors: E. Zamyatin "We" and A. Platonov "The Pit".

The work consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion and a list of references. The first chapter deals with the history of dystopia as a genre. The second chapter is devoted to the analysis of the works: Zamyatin "We" and Platonov "The Pit".

The relevance of the topic is due to the fact that dystopia shows the shortcomings and problems of society, warning future generations from mistakes.

1. Dystopia as a genre of literature: past, present and future

From time immemorial, it has been human nature, not content with the existing order, to dream of a future happy world order or to fantasize about the past fabulous splendor of life. Yes, already ancient Greek philosopher Plato (427–347 BC) in a dialogue called “The State” gives a detailed description of the device of an ideal, in his opinion, society. Citizens of this society are divided into three rows according to their inclinations and abilities: artisans, warriors and philosopher-rulers. This is how a strict hierarchy of the world of utopia appears - the first law of the genre. Another law is art - in such a State it is not perceived as something intrinsically valuable: Plato generally expels poets and artists from the ideal world, since, based on the ideas of the ancients, all human creativity is only secondary, imitative in relation to the divine creativity of nature itself.

So, even in the distant past, dreaming and hoping for the implementation of their ideal ideas, writers, philosophers, thinkers different eras created States and Worlds where every individual would be happy, where everything would serve a single purpose - the general well-being, this dream of a lost heavenly paradise. All their creations were fantastic, but at the same time they retained the rigor and accuracy of a political pamphlet: social structure states of the future, the role of each member of society (all this is based on a critical look at the already existing wrong world order). Most often, it is precisely the problems of modern society that are resolved in them; they (like any political speech) are topical. Building a society of universal happiness seemed to be a simple matter: it is enough to reasonably structure the unreasonable world order, put everything in its place - and the earthly paradise will overshadow the heavenly paradise. Fortunately, for a long time all attempts to turn utopian dreams into reality ended in failure: human nature stubbornly resisted all the aspirations of the mind to introduce it into a rational channel, to streamline what is difficult to streamline. And only the 20th century, with its catastrophic development of technology and the triumph of scientific knowledge, provided utopian dreamers with the opportunity to transfer their sometimes delusional ideas from paper to reality itself. The first danger of transplanting violent creative fantasies From the world of fiction to reality, the writers felt the danger of turning life itself into a huge utopian work: in the era of the triumph of utopian projects, when only a dream suddenly ceased to satisfy the searching mind of a person, a new, great debater appears - anti-utopia.

At the beginning of the chain of anti-utopias of the 20th century stands, of course, Dostoevsky; he polemicizes with utopias, which so far own only minds, and not life, - with the vision of the "crystal palace", with "Schigalevism", with the great schemes of the XIX century and especially with the metaphysical lie of the Grand Inquisitor, the most impressive herald of the reorganization of mankind "according to the new state ("The Brothers Karamazov"). It is in the poem "The Grand Inquisitor", composed by Ivan Karamazov, that two core motives of subsequent dystopias can be traced quite clearly: the motive of imposed happiness, to which humanity is led with an iron hand, consisting, first of all, in the renunciation of personal freedom, and the motive of opposing personality to , an impersonal community (the main conflict of any dystopia). The burden of freedom is considered unbearable for " little man”, For nothing but torment (the most terrible - the torment of choice) brings him. And there will always be a "Benefactor" who is ready to take on this burden in exchange for the sweet ghost of bliss, which he is ready to generously bestow on those who humbly submit to him. weak man. So, we have gradually identified the main semantic core of dystopia. In utopias, as a rule, a beautiful and isolated world is drawn, which appears before the admiring gaze of an outside observer and is explained in detail to the newcomer by the local “instructor-leader”. In dystopias, the world based on the same premises is given through the eyes of its inhabitant, an ordinary citizen, from the inside, in order to trace and show the feelings of a person undergoing the laws of an ideal state. The authors of early dystopias do not yet question the provisions of utopias regarding material wealth and the brilliance of the future possible society. In the works of Zamyatin and Huxley (“Brave New World”), a sterile and in its own way comfortable world of “aesthetic subordination”, “ideal lack of freedom” (“We”); here it is cramped for the life of the spirit, but, nevertheless, everything is securely built. However, perhaps not without a hint from reality itself, which surpasses all fiction, it gradually opens up that lack of freedom does not guarantee paradise abundance and comfort - it does not guarantee anything but squalor, dullness and poverty. Everyday life. It makes the world poorer, “matter gets tired” (“Invitation to the Execution”, Nabokov), it is accompanied by a dull mechanicalness and rationalism (“1984”, J. Orwell). And one more thing: a utopian world - closed world. The fact that to an outside observer, deceived by the “shell” of life available to him (as shown by the guide-instructor), seems to be the triumph of order and justice, the triumph of human happiness, what he sees “from the inside” turns out to be not at all so perfect, showing its unsightly underside to ordinary members of a utopian society. And this is the main difference between any dystopia and utopia: dystopia is personal, because the subjective view of one person becomes a sufficient criterion for “authenticity”, the perfection of the ideal world, while utopia is content with the assertion of an impersonal “universal happiness”, behind which the tears of individual inhabitants of the utopian world are invisible. states. In other words, for a dystopia, sometimes the “tears of a child” are enough to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the claims of the whole world to the possession of truth.

The peculiarity of the society proposed by the utopians and subjected to analysis by the anti-utopists turned out to be that the happiness that was sought for everyone was not enough for a person in his previous form (his external and internal data, that is, his nature, are such that they contradict the very idea of ​​unification). Utopians in this case would talk about the education of a "new personality." Anti-utopians turned out to be more corrosive and showed that it is impossible to change the very nature of a person by education alone, and therefore a deeper and more radical intervention of the state (and perhaps medicine - surgery) is necessary.

Hence, the anti-utopian motives for education are replaced by the complete reversal of the entire course of an individual's life - from birth to death - everything is put on the conveyor, turning into the production of human automata, not people. In Zamyatin's novel (the earliest work) there is Maternal Norm (poor O-90 is ten centimeters short of her, and therefore she has no right to be a mother); children are brought up by robots (they do not know their parents), and yet only at the end of the novel do the State and the Benefactor achieve a more radical solution to the problem of universal happiness: it is established that fantasy is to blame for all human dissatisfaction, namely, it can be removed with a simple laser beam. The Great Operation finally completes the process of complete annihilation of the individual, the path to universal peace and prosperity has been found. In Huxley, the issue of unification is practically thought out from the very beginning: children are hatched in incubators (completely new “people”, that is, the problem of paternity has been completely removed); at the same time, in order not to have worries associated with individual whims and dreams, the social and industrial status of future workers is determined even in the embryonic period. All these specific motives are, to one degree or another, equally characteristic of any dystopia and, therefore, are one of the the most important characteristics this genre, along with characteristics that do not belong exclusively to dystopias (for example, the obligatory adventurism of the plot). We have deduced the most striking and genre-defining, in our opinion, signs necessary for understanding and feeling this or that work as a dystopia.

General welfare, the solution of age-old problems social injustice, improvement of reality - these are the good intentions with which the road to earthly hell turned out to be paved. Faced with the impossibility short time to remake the universe and satisfy all human needs, utopians quickly come to the conclusion that it is easier to remake a person himself: to change his views on life and on himself, limit needs, make him think according to a template that unequivocally defines what is good and what is evil. However, as it turned out, it is easier to disfigure a person and even spoil it than to remake it, otherwise it is no longer a person, not a full-fledged personality. It is the personality that becomes a stumbling block and an object of hatred for any utopians who seek to crack down on her free will, who are afraid of any manifestations of the free "I". Therefore, the conflict between the individual and the totalitarian system becomes the driving force behind any dystopia, allowing one to recognize dystopian features in the most seemingly different works.

2. History of Russian dystopia

2.1 Roman E. Zamyatina "We"

One of the best works written in the dystopian genre was the novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin.

Considering the novel in the context of the literature of the 1920s, we emphasize that feature The worldview of a person of this era and the literature of those years, especially proletarian poetry, was the desire to merge with the masses, to dissolve their own “I” in it, to subordinate the personal will to the tasks of social progress.

How is happiness achieved in the novel, how did the United State manage to satisfy the material and spiritual needs of its citizens?

Material problems were solved during the Bicentennial War. Hunger was defeated due to the death of 0.8 of the population - life ceased to be highest value. Even ten numbers that died during the test, the narrator calls endlessly minor third order. But the victory in the Bicentennial War has another, no less important significance: the city defeats the village, and man is completely alienated from mother earth, now content with oil food.

Spiritual requests are solved by their suppression, limitation, strict regulation. The first step was the introduction of the sexual law, which reduced the great feeling of love to the "pleasant-useful function of the organism", reducing love to pure physiology. The One State has deprived a person of personal attachments, of a sense of kinship, for any connection, except for connection with the One State, is criminal. Despite the seeming solidity, the numbers are absolutely scattered and alienated from each other, and therefore easily manageable. The state also subjugated the time of each number, creating the Hourly Tablet. The United State takes away from its citizens the possibility of intellectual and artistic creativity, replacing it with the United State. State Science, mechanical music and state poetry. Even the element of creativity is forcibly tamed and placed at the service of society. The titles of poetry books speak for themselves: "Flowers of Court Sentences", the tragedy "Late for Work", "Stans on Sexual Hygiene". A whole system of suppression of dissent has been created: the Guardian Bureau (in which spies make sure that everyone is “Happy”), the Operations with its monstrous Gas Bell, the Great Operation, whistleblowing elevated to the rank of virtue (“They came to accomplish a feat,” writes hero about scammers ).

Universal happiness here is not the happiness of every person, but only its suppression, physical destruction. But violence excites people, because the One State has a weapon worse than the Gas Bell. A weapon is a word that can subjugate a person to someone else's will, justify violence and slavery, and even make one believe that lack of freedom is happiness. This is especially important, since the problem of manipulating consciousness is also relevant inXXIcentury.

Each of Zamyatin's heroes is endowed with some expressive feature: splashing lips and scissor lips, a double-curved back and an annoying X. Particularly expressive female images. Contrary to the laws of the genre, Zamyatin introduces three female types:I-330, O-90 and Y. Traditional dystopian heroine-rebelI-330. The passion she inspires D-503 is as painfully sharp as her appearance. However, unlike other dystopian heroines, being a fighter against the new regime, she uses everything: knowledge, her mind, her graceful appearance, and love as an effective weapon in this struggle. For her, as well as for the United State, a person is a battlefield and a material for processing, love is a weapon.

"Honey" O-90, unexpected image women in dystopia, she is “one and”, an ordinary person, nothing outstanding. It is with O that the theme of childhood is included in the world of dystopia: it seems traditionally infantile, but behind this traditionalism there is a real childish spontaneity, sincerity, purity and chastity. With O-90, the motif of the possibility of finding family happiness appears in Zamyatin's novel. The family is one of the enemies of the totalitarian government, which recognizes associations of people only around the state and the leader. But striving for destruction (of the existing system, existing philosophy, or something else), she is the heroine of creation, which is completely unusual for an all-denying fever, showing all the horrors and shortcomings, but at the same time not called to give advice on their elimination. The same heroine Zamyatina is the only soul saved, because she gained freedom and herself thanks to the thirst for procreation, natural desire have a child. So, suddenly, it turns out that the “permitted” love of the United State (primordially associated with depravity among all anti-utopians) suddenly becomes chaste.

And the third type: a woman is a victim of a totalitarian regime, Yu. She is the result of a personality alteration. He has been assigned the honorary role of mentor of the younger generation, which means that it should be an extremely reliable element of the machine of the United State. And she really was. Yu is not just a number, she is the embodiment of the One State: her thoughts are the philosophy of the One State, her feelings are concern for the preservation of the One State and its trustworthy numbers, etc.

The happiness of the numbers is ugly, but the feeling of happiness must be true and poetic, the task of the totalitarian system is not to completely destroy the numbers as a person, but to limit it from all sides: movements - by the Green Wall, lifestyle - by the Tablet, intellectual search - by the Unified State Science, which is not wrong. You can, it would seem, escape into space. But the Integral brings to other worlds "treatises, poems, manifestos, odes or other writings about the beauty and grandeur of the United State." And its flight, alas, is not an attempt to know the Universe, but rather an ideological expansion, the desire to subordinate the Universe to the will of the One State.

Throughout the novel, the hero rushes between human feeling and duty to the One State, between inner freedom and the happiness of unfreedom. Love awakened his soul, his fantasy and helped him free himself from the shackles of the United State, to look beyond what is permitted.

In the novel, the human rebels not only against the benefactor's clans, but also against the author's plan. Zamyatin poses a task, perhaps more difficult and impossible for him than for anyone else: to write about people without a language, about people without names - under numbers, about people for whom, from all world literature, the most understandable is the "Iron Schedule". expensive."

The main question of the work: can a person withstand the ever-increasing violence against his conscience, soul, will?

Any attempt to resist violence ends in nothing. Riot failed, I-330 hits the Gas Bell main character exposed Great Operation and coolly watches the death of a former lover. The ending of the novel is quite tragic (although, in accordance with the logic of the United State, it sounds optimistic). However, the author leaves us a ghostly hope. Note: I-330 does not give up until the very end, D-503 is operated on by force, O-90 goes beyond the Green Wall to give birth own child, not the state number; there, in the breach of the wall, rush another "fifty loud, cheerful, hard-toothed" . But the opposition to evil in the era of the collapse of humanism is a tragic confrontation, Zamyatin believes.

The question of the genre of utopia - what should be the future? The question of dystopia - what will be the future if the present, changing only externally, materially, wants to become one? And most importantly, we do not need a machine democratic society, but we need freedom based on the eternal principles of humanism.

2.2 "Pit" by A. Platonov

In the most general form, the events taking place in the "Pit" can be represented as the implementation of a grandiose plan for socialist construction. In the city, the construction of a "future immovable happiness" is connected with the construction of a single common proletarian house, "where the entire local class of the proletariat will enter the settlement." In the countryside, the building of socialism consists in the creation of collective farms and the "liquidation of the kulaks as a class." The “pitch”, thus, captures both the most important areas of social transformations of the late 1920s and early 1930s. industrialization and collectivization.

It would seem that in the short space of a hundred pages it is impossible to tell in detail about the large-scale, watershed events of an entire era. The kaleidoscopic nature of the rapidly changing scenes of optimistic work contradicts the very essence of Plato's vision of the world - slow and thoughtful; the panorama from a bird's eye view gives an idea of ​​the "holistic scale" - not about the "private Makar", not about the human person involved in the cycle of historical events. A motley mosaic of facts and abstract generalizations are equally alien to Platonov. A small number of specific events, each of which, in the context of the entire narrative, is full of deep symbolic meaning, - this is the way to comprehend the true meaning of historical transformations in the "Pit".

The plot outline of the story can be conveyed in several sentences. The worker Voshchev, after being fired from the factory, finds himself in a team of diggers who are preparing a foundation pit for the foundation of a common proletarian house. The foreman of the diggers Chiklin finds and brings to the barracks where the workers live, the orphan girl Nastya. Two work teams, at the direction of the leadership, are sent to the village - to help the local activists in carrying out collectivization. There they die at the hands of unknown fists. Arriving in the village, Chiklin and his comrades carry out the "liquidation of the kulaks" to the end, rafting into the sea all the wealthy peasants of the village. After that, the workers return to the city, to the foundation pit. Nastya, who fell ill, dies that same night, and one of the walls of the pit becomes her grave.

The set of listed events, as we see, is quite “standard”: almost any literary work, which touches on the topic of collectivization, cannot do without scenes of dispossession and parting of the middle peasants with their livestock and property, without the death of party activists, without “one day of the victorious collective farm”. Let us recall M. Sholokhov's novel "Virgin Soil Upturned": the worker Davydov comes from the city to Gremyachiy Log, under whose leadership the organization of the collective farm is being carried out. "Demonstrative" dekulakization is given on the example of Tit Borodin, the scene of parting of the middle peasant with his cattle - on the example of Kondrat Maidannikov, the collectivization itself ends with the death of Davydov.

However, in Plato's narrative, the "mandatory program" of the collectivization plot initially appears in a completely different context. The “pit” opens with a view of the road: “Voshchev ... went outside in order to better understand his future in the air. But the air was empty, the moving trees carefully kept the heat in their leaves, and the dust lay dull on the road ... ”Platonov’s hero is a wanderer setting off in search of truth and the meaning of universal existence. The pathos of the active transformation of the world gives way to the unhurried, with numerous stops, the movement of the “thinking” Platonic hero.

The usual logic suggests that if the work begins on the road, then the hero's journey will become the plot. However, the reader's possible expectations are not justified. The road leads Voshchev first to the foundation pit, where he lingers for a while and turns from a wanderer into a digger. Then "Voshchev went off into one open road" - where she led, the reader remains unknown. The road again leads Voshchev to the foundation pit, and then, together with the diggers, the hero sets off for the village. The pit will again become the final point of his journey.

Platonov, as it were, specifically refuses those plot possibilities that are provided to the writer by the plot of wanderings.

The hero's route is constantly lost, he again and again returns to the foundation pit; connections between events are broken all the time. There are quite a lot of events in the story, but there are no cruel causal relationships between them. In the village, Kozlov and Safronov are killed, but who and why remains unknown; Zhachev goes in the final to Pashkin - "never again returning to the foundation pit." The linear movement of the plot is replaced by circling and trampling around the foundation pit.

Of great importance in the composition of the story is the montage of completely heterogeneous episodes: the activist teaches village women political literacy, the hammer-bear shows Chiklin and Voshchev the village fists, the horses prepare their own straw, the fists say goodbye to each other before setting off on a raft to the sea. Certain scenes may seem unmotivated in general: secondary characters suddenly appear in front of the reader in close-up, and then just as unexpectedly. Grotesque reality is captured in a series of grotesque paintings.

Along with the failed journey of the hero, Platonov introduces the failed plot of construction into the story - the common proletarian house becomes a grandiose mirage, designed to replace reality. The construction project was initially utopian: its author "carefully worked on fictional parts of the general proletarian house." The project of a giant house, which turns into a grave for its builders, has its own literary history: it is associated with a huge palace (at the base of which are the corpses of Philemon and Baucis) being built in Faust, crystal palace from Chernyshevsky's novel What Is to Be Done? and definitely tower of babel. The building of human happiness, the construction of which was paid for with the tears of a child, is the subject of Ivan Karamazov's reflections from Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov.

The very idea of ​​the House is defined by Platonov already on the first pages of the story: “This is how graves are dug, not at home,” says the foreman of the diggers to one of the workers. The foundation pit will become the grave at the end of the story - for that very tortured child, about whose tear Ivan Karamazov spoke. The semantic result of the construction of a “future motionless happiness” is the death of a child in the present and the loss of hope for finding the “meaning of life and truth of universal origin”, in search of which Voshchev sets off on the road. “I don’t believe in anything now!” - the logical conclusion of the construction of the century.

The common-proletarian house appears before us like a grandiose mirage. A utopian project of "the future of motionless happiness". The construction of the House is replaced by the endless digging of a foundation pit. The future "House" of "communism" and "happy childhood" - and the dilapidated barracks of diggers in the future. A house that has become a child's grave.

Conclusion

In Russian literature, a trend is emerging that unites writers so different both in talent and in ideological and creative attitudes - such as E. Zamyatin, P. Krasnov, I. Nazhivin, V. Nabokov, A. Platonov. This refers to utopian and anti-utopian works.

Both utopia and dystopia, as a genre of literature, are quite actively developing in Russian literature.Fantasy world future, depicted in dystopia, with its rational alignment resembles the world of utopias. But bred in utopian writings as an ideal, in dystopia it appears as deeply tragic. It is noteworthy that in their works the life of an ideal country is given from the point of view of an outside observer (traveler, wanderer), the characters of the people inhabiting it are not psychologically developed. Dystopia portrays the "brave new world" from the inside, from the position individual person living in it.

Dystopia exposes the incompatibility of utopian projects with the interests of an individual, brings to the point of absurdity the contradictions inherent in utopia, clearly demonstrating how equality turns into leveling, reasonable state structure- violent regulation of human behavior, technical progress- the transformation of a person into a mechanism.

The purpose of utopia is, first of all, to show the world the path to perfection, the task of dystopia is to warn the world about the dangers that await it on this path.

In both Zamyatin and Platonov, we see the predominance of the same genre features- with all the differences between style manners. Dystopia in the work of these writers differs from utopia, first of all, in its genre focus on the individual, on his features, aspirations and troubles, in a word, anthropocentricity. A person in a dystopia always feels the resistance of the environment. Social environment and personality main conflict dystopias. Teplinskiy M. From the history of Russian dystopia//Literature. - 2000. - No. 10. – p. 23

Russian literature. XX century: Big reference book. M.: 2003. - P.413.

Zamyatin E.I. We are Roman. - M .: School-press, 2005. - S. 265

Russian literature. XX century: Big reference book. M.: 2003. - S. 260

Teplinskiy M. From the history of Russian dystopia//Literature. - 2000. - No. 10. – p. 33

Completed in the early 1930s and tells about the peak of collectivization. During the life of the writer, the work was not published. In the Soviet Union, it was first published only in 1987.

Brief history of creation

Often, the period from December 1929 to April 1930 is indicated as the time of writing The Pit. The dates were put down by Platonov himself on the title page of the second typewritten version of the work in place of the cut out original version. Modern researchers of the writer's work do not believe that the story was created exactly in the indicated period. However, Platonov did not choose the above time period by chance. This period is the peak of collectivization, about which in question in "The Pit".

Name

Platonov's story was named by analogy with the popular industrial novels of the 1920s and 30s - Panferov's Bars, Gladkov's Cement, Karavaeva's Sawmill, and so on. Most of these names had a metaphorical meaning. In particular, Gladkov's cement is not only construction material, produced at the factory, but also the working class, which is destined to hold together the "working masses" and act as the foundation of a new life. Platonov follows the literary pattern of the time. The foundation pit is the place where a significant part of the action takes place, as well as the pit and the grave. As a result, in Platonov's story, an ordinary building project, of which there were many in the first Soviet five-year plan, turns into a symbol of a historical dead end. Digging a pit in a work is the first stage of construction common house for the proletarians. In the end, the pit was never dug to the end.

Subject

The most important theme of the work is the theme of the search for truth, the meaning of life. Voshchev is chiefly concerned with this. To him, without meaning and without truth, life is not sweet. Trying to find answers to eternal questions, he forgets himself in his work so that it would not be so painful to exist. The meaning of life is sought not only by Voshchev, but also by other characters in the story. For example, a bear working at a forge. Voshchev takes him as a witness that there is no truth, and then notes: “He can only work, but when he rests, thinks, he will start to get bored.” At the end of the work, neither the truth nor the meaning of life can be found. Nastya is dying, the foundation pit has not been dug.

Another important theme of the story is the theme of death. She is constantly mentioned in the work either directly or indirectly. The pit looks like a grave. Nastya is given two coffins - it is assumed that the girl will sleep in one, and store toys in the other. The author calls Voshchev "living in absentia". About the workers sleeping in the barracks, it is said that they "were as thin as the dead." For the engineer Prushevsky, the whole world is a "dead body". Many more examples could be given. By the way, the theme of death and its overcoming is perhaps the most important in all of Platonov's work. As Anatoly Ryasov notes, in Plato's works, the terrible experience of death is at the same time the experience of immortality.

"Pit" is considered one of the most complex works not only in Russian, but also in world literature. Everyone who carefully reads the story will understand it in his own way, and with repeated readings, he will constantly discover new facets.

Characters

In The Pit, Platonov presents the reader with a model of Soviet society against the backdrop of the events of 1929 and 1930. For example, Safronov acts as a spokesman for the official ideology. People like him were considered the ideological support of power. Kozlov is a typical opportunist who decided to leave the pit for the sake of community service. The chairman of the district bureau of trade unions, Pashkin, is a functionary-bureaucrat who receives a solid salary.

As for the girl Nastya, she symbolizes a new Soviet Russia. Her mother - the deceased bourgeois Yulia - is historical Russia. According to Platonov, the new Russia, which is trying to renounce its own past, cannot exist without the old Russia. That is why in the finale Nastya dies, yearning for her mother.

The protagonist of the story is Voshchev, a man trying to find the truth, to find the meaning of life. Without this, nothing in the world pleases him. Voshchev has strange hobby- to collect all kinds of rags "for socialist revenge." In the final, he will also gather the villagers and lead them to the construction of the foundation pit. Voshchev's activity is closely connected with the real installation of the Soviet government for the delivery of scrap, which was supposed to help raise money for industrialization and create a raw material base for industry. In The Pit, the village people whom Voshchev brought to the construction site are, in fact, the same junk consumable. Nothing good awaits him.

Composition

The story consists of two parts. The first is urban. In the center of the story is the digging of a pit. The second is rural. Here, the main attention is paid to the creation of a collective farm and dispossession. Such a composition does not arise by chance. It correlates with Stalin's speech "On Agrarian Policy in the USSR", delivered at the end of December 1929 at a conference of Marxist agrarians. In her special attention devoted to the issue of "destroying the opposition between town and countryside". In the finale, the action returns to the pit - the composition loops.

Language features

The Pit, like other Platonic works, is distinguished by a special language. One of its key features is individual-author's combinations. They serve as a means of artistic representation, and also help to reflect the author's philosophy, draw the attention of readers to the problems that concern the author.

Literary direction and genre

In 1920, while still a novice author, Platonov filled out the questionnaire of the First All-Russian Congress proletarian writers. Among others, there was the following question: "Which literary movements do you belong to or sympathize with?". Platonov replied: "None, I have my own." He adhered to this position throughout his entire career.

According to the definition of Platonov himself, the genre of "Pit" is a story. In addition, various researchers found elements of other genres in the work. Among them are a dystopia, a production novel, and even a mystery.

Genre of anti-utopia in the works of Zamyatin "We" and Platonov "The Pit"

2.2 "Pit" by A. Platonov

In the most general form, the events taking place in the "Pit" can be represented as the implementation of a grandiose plan for socialist construction. In the city, the construction of a "future immovable happiness" is connected with the construction of a single common proletarian house, "where the entire local class of the proletariat will enter the settlement." In the countryside, the building of socialism consists in the creation of collective farms and the "liquidation of the kulaks as a class." The "pitch", thus, captures both the most important areas of social transformations of the late 1920s - early 1930s. industrialization and collectivization. Teplinskiy M. From the history of Russian dystopia//Literature. - 2000. - No. 10. - p. 33

It would seem that in the short space of a hundred pages it is impossible to tell in detail about the large-scale, watershed events of an entire era. The kaleidoscopic nature of the rapidly changing scenes of optimistic work contradicts the very essence of Plato's vision of the world - slow and thoughtful; the panorama from a bird's eye view gives an idea of ​​the "holistic scale" - not about the "private Makar", not about the human person involved in the cycle of historical events. A motley mosaic of facts and abstract generalizations are equally alien to Platonov. A small number of specific events, each of which, in the context of the entire narrative, is full of deep symbolic meaning - this is the way to comprehend the true meaning of historical transformations in the Foundation Pit. Russian literature. XX century: Big reference book. M.: 2003. - S. 260

The plot outline of the story can be conveyed in several sentences. The worker Voshchev, after being fired from the factory, finds himself in a team of diggers who are preparing a foundation pit for the foundation of a common proletarian house. The foreman of the diggers Chiklin finds and brings to the barracks where the workers live, the orphan girl Nastya. Two work teams, at the direction of the leadership, are sent to the village - to help local activists in carrying out collectivization. There they die at the hands of unknown fists. Arriving in the village, Chiklin and his comrades carry out the "liquidation of the kulaks" to the end, rafting into the sea all the wealthy peasants of the village. After that, the workers return to the city, to the foundation pit. Nastya, who fell ill, dies that same night, and one of the walls of the pit becomes her grave. Teplinskiy M. From the history of Russian dystopia//Literature. - 2000. - No. 10. - p. 33

The set of events listed above, as we see, is quite “standard”: almost any literary work that touches on the topic of collectivization cannot do without scenes of dispossession and parting of the middle peasants with their livestock and property, without the death of party activists, without “one day of the victorious collective farm”. Let us recall M. Sholokhov's novel "Virgin Soil Upturned": the worker Davydov comes from the city to Gremyachiy Log, under whose leadership the organization of the collective farm is being carried out. "Demonstrative" dekulakization is given on the example of Tit Borodin, the scene of parting of the middle peasant with his cattle - on the example of Kondrat Maidannikov, the collectivization itself ends with the death of Davydov.

However, in Plato's narrative, the "mandatory program" of the collectivization plot initially appears in a completely different context. The “pit” opens with a view of the road: “Voshchev ... went outside in order to better understand his future in the air. But the air was empty, the movable trees carefully kept the heat in their leaves, and the dust lay dull on the road ... ”Platonov’s hero is a wanderer setting off in search of truth and the meaning of universal existence. The pathos of the active transformation of the world gives way to the unhurried, with numerous stops, the movement of the “thinking” Platonic hero.

The usual logic suggests that if the work begins on the road, then the hero's journey will become the plot. However, the reader's possible expectations are not justified. The road leads Voshchev first to the foundation pit, where he lingers for a while and turns from a wanderer into a digger. Then "Voshchev went off into one open road" - where she led, the reader remains unknown. The road again leads Voshchev to the foundation pit, and then, together with the diggers, the hero sets off for the village. The pit will again become the final point of his journey.

Platonov, as it were, specifically refuses those plot possibilities that are provided to the writer by the plot of wanderings.

The hero's route is constantly lost, he again and again returns to the foundation pit; connections between events are broken all the time. There are quite a lot of events in the story, but there are no cruel causal relationships between them. In the village, Kozlov and Safronov are killed, but who and why remains unknown; Zhachev goes in the final to Pashkin - "never again returning to the foundation pit." The linear movement of the plot is replaced by circling and trampling around the foundation pit.

Of great importance in the composition of the story is the montage of completely heterogeneous episodes: the activist teaches village women political literacy, the hammer-bear shows Chiklin and Voshchev the village fists, the horses prepare their own straw, the fists say goodbye to each other before setting off on a raft to the sea. Certain scenes may seem unmotivated in general: secondary characters suddenly appear in front of the reader in close-up, and then just as unexpectedly. Grotesque reality is captured in a series of grotesque paintings.

Along with the failed journey of the hero, Platonov introduces the failed plot of construction into the story - the general proletarian house becomes a grandiose mirage, designed to replace reality. The construction project was initially utopian: its author "carefully worked on fictional parts of the general proletarian house." The project of a gigantic house, which turns into a grave for its builders, has its own literary history: it is associated with a huge palace (at the base of which are the corpses of Philemon and Baucis) being built in Faust, a crystal palace from Chernyshevsky's novel What Is To Be Done? and, of course, the Tower of Babel. The building of human happiness, the construction of which was paid for with the tears of a child, is the subject of Ivan Karamazov's reflections from Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov.

The very idea of ​​the House is defined by Platonov already on the first pages of the story: “This is how graves are dug, not at home,” says the foreman of the diggers to one of the workers. The foundation pit will become the grave at the end of the story - for that very tortured child, about whose tear Ivan Karamazov spoke. The semantic result of the construction of a “future motionless happiness” is the death of a child in the present and the loss of hope for finding the “meaning of life and truth of universal origin”, in search of which Voshchev sets off on the road. “I don’t believe in anything now!” - the logical conclusion of the construction of the century.

The common-proletarian house appears before us like a grandiose mirage. A utopian project of "the future of motionless happiness". The construction of the House is replaced by the endless digging of a foundation pit. The future "House" of "communism" and "happy childhood" - and the dilapidated barracks of diggers in the future. A house that has become a child's grave.

Conclusion

In Russian literature, a trend is emerging that unites writers so different in talent, ideological and creative attitudes - such as E. Zamyatin, P. Krasnov, I. Nazhivin, V. Nabokov, A. Platonov. This refers to utopian and anti-utopian works.

Both utopia and dystopia, as a genre of literature, are quite actively developing in Russian literature. The fantastic world of the future, depicted in dystopia, with its rational alignment resembles the world of utopias. But bred in utopian writings as an ideal, in dystopia it appears as deeply tragic. It is noteworthy that in their works the life of an ideal country is given from the point of view of an outside observer (traveler, wanderer), the characters of the people inhabiting it are not psychologically developed. Dystopia depicts the "brave, new world" from the inside, from the position of an individual person living in it.

Anti-utopia exposes the incompatibility of utopian projects with the interests of an individual, brings the contradictions inherent in utopia to absurdity, clearly demonstrating how equality turns into leveling, a reasonable state structure - violent regulation of human behavior, technical progress - turning a person into a mechanism.

The purpose of utopia is, first of all, to show the world the path to perfection, the task of dystopia is to warn the world about the dangers that await it on this path.

In both Zamyatin and Platonov, we see the predominance of the same genre features - with all the differences between stylistic manners. Dystopia in the work of these writers differs from utopia, first of all, in its genre focus on the individual, on his features, aspirations and troubles, in a word, anthropocentricity. A person in a dystopia always feels the resistance of the environment. Social environment and personality - that's the main conflict of dystopia.

Bibliography

1. Zamyatin E.I. We are Roman. - M.: School-press, 2005. - 461 p.

2. Lanin B.A. Dystopia in the literature of the Russian diaspora // http://netrover.narod.ru/lit3wave/1_5.htm

3. Platonov A.P. Pit. - M.: Bustard, 2002. - 284 p.

4. Romanchuk L. Utopias and anti-utopias: their past, present and future // Threshold. - 2003. - No. 2.

5. Russian literature. XX century: Big reference book. M.: 2003. - 672 p.

6. Teplinskiy M. From the history of Russian dystopia // Literature. - 2000. - No. 10. - pp. 23-35

A.V. Druzhinin about the stories of F.M. Dostoevsky 40s

The story of F.M. Dostoevsky's "Weak Heart" was published in the February book "Notes of the Fatherland" by A.A. Kraevsky for 1848. In this story, F.M...

Analysis of translation transformations on the example of O. Wilde's story "The Happy Prince"

Quality translation artistic text a person with the highest level of skill can. Such works often reflect the culture and history of the author's country, and translators who are not familiar with the traditions and history of this country...

1. Images of children As an understanding of life, according to which a person, before becoming a comprehensively developed personality, goes through hard way social education, beginning in childhood, predetermines A...

Genre originality of A. Platonov's stories of the 40s

Research of A. Platonov's creativity. Barsht "Poetics of Prose"

The work of Andrei Platonov has not been fully explored. For a wide range readers of Platonov's works were discovered only in the 1990s. Such is the fate of a true artist, because the glory of a true master is posthumous...

The study of Andrei Platonov's work has long gone beyond purely literary or linguistic analysis...

Religious and philosophical foundations of A.A. Akhmatova

Anna Andreevna Akhmatova is an artist of a truly philosophical disposition, since it is precisely philosophical motives constitute the ideological and substantive core of all her poetry. Whatever topic the poetess touches ...

Transcultural poetics in Li Yang Fo's novel "When I was a boy in China"

Analyzing the understanding of culture, it is necessary to say that it should become itself the entire sphere of human activity, tied up with self-expression of a person, and manifesting a subjective character, in this knowledge. Culture is closely tied to human creativity...

The dates of the work on the manuscript were put down by the author himself - December 1929 - April 1930. Such chronological accuracy is far from accidental: it was during this period that collectivization peaked ...

Artistic features Andrey Platonov's story "The Pit"

Seeing the proximity of the humanistic views of A. Platonov with other artists of the word, the researchers of his work N.P. Seyranyan, L.A. Ivanova note that in Plato's works it is more definite than in the prose of the mid-twenties...

Art world short stories by Andrey Platonovich Platonov

Books should be written - each as the only one, leaving no hope in the reader that the author will write a new, future book better! (A. Platonov) Andrei Platonov sought to materialize spiritual concepts in his stories...

Humor and satire of the 20s