Andrei Platonov Quotes

Andrei Platonov was born in the settlement of Yamskaia Sloboda on the outskirts of Voronezh in the Cherzonem region of central Russia. He was a Soviet author whose works anticipate existentialism. Although Platonov was a Communist, his works were banned in his own lifetime for their skeptical attitude toward collectivization and other Stalinist policies. His famous works include the novels The Foundation Pit and Chevengur. Following the 1917 revolutions, he studied electrical technology at the Voronezh Polytechnic Institute. He had also begun writing poems, submitting to papers in Moscow and elsewhere and was writing prolifically for local periodicals, including Zheleznyi put', the paper of the local railway workers' union, Krasnaia derevnia and Voronezhskaia kommuna, official papers of the Voronezh Communist Party, and Kuznitsa, national journal of the Smithy group of proletarian writers. From 1918 through 1921, his most intensive period as a writer, he published dozens of poems, several stories, and, hundreds of articles and essays, adopting, in 1920, the Platonov pen-name by which he is best-known.