Enthusiasm and disappointment
Platonov’s and Igor Sac’s view of the Revolution
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
One of Platonov’s closest friends was Igor Sac, a colleague of many years in the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment. With their lives and work, Platonov and Sac are chroniclers of the early Soviet Union. Platonov was deeply marked by the utopian ideas of the Russian Revolution. For Sac, his experience in the civil war was decisive. Both shared a revolutionary enthusiasm. The New Economic Policy and bureaucratisation of the Revolution led to disillusionment. The social and human costs of collectivisation and industrialisation for the purpose of building socialism in one country, resulted in disappointment, and the Great Terror produced a sense of horror. Platonov reacted with sadness, while Sac escaped into black humour.
(Osteuropa 8-10/2016, pp. 123–145)