“Since might is yours, you’ll have the right”
Platonov’s The Foundation Pit
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
The novel The Foundation Pit shows the consequences of separating progress from humanity. The construction project stands for the socialist ideal. At the same time, it also evokes the “free people on free soil” from Goethe’s Faust. One is reminded of Nikolai Fedorov’s “common matter of humanity”, and of the crystal palace which since Chernyshevsky has been a symbol of ideas of a bright, happy future in Russian literature and history. However, what actually occurs is a senseless, brutal destruction of life and of people, “organised” by a state bureaucracy which stifles all life.
(Osteuropa 8-10/2016, pp. 381–392)