At nearly 100 years old, Andrey Platonov’s novel Chevengur is a tome of revolution and grief. What may at first encounter seem a Quixotian expedition across the central Russian steppe, quickly turns into a philosophical novel probing the deepest questions on Russia’s October revolution and the communist society that would follow it. Centered around the fictional city of Chevengur, located in Russia’s central steppe, Platonov’s novel offers a glimpse into what an open and enlightened philosophical debate might have looked like in the early days of the Soviet Union.
Those familiar with Platonov’s work will quickly recognize the author’s hallmark pace of prose. His writing itself lurches at times, and sways like a train picking up speed, where, as translator Robert Chandler reflects, unsuspecting words or phrases “are forced into extraordinary combinations by an intense pressure of experience.” As the novel opens, Platonov remarks, “Old provincial towns have tumbledown outskirts, and people come straight from nature to live there.” He continues:
“A man appears, with a keen-eyed face that had been worked to an extreme of sadness, a man who can fix up or equip anything but who has himself lived through life unequipped.”
While Platonov loves to patch together a sentence by creating odd phrases like a face “worked to an extreme of sadness,” he follows these challenging moments with flowing elegance. Translators Robert and Elizabeth Chandler have carefully brought Platonov’s playful cadence and curious choices of phrase into this English translation. And while some might find this playful diction more entertaining (or tedious) than others, readers of all stripes are fortunate that this edition includes an illuminating introduction by one of the translators, as well as a reflective essay on his five decades of translating Platonov. This New York Review of Books edition also includes a brilliant essay by the late Russian novel Vladimir Sharov, as well as hundreds of notes and a “Further Reading” section that could, taken altogether, form their own dissertation on the novel at hand.
Chevengur generally follows two characters: the peasant-orphan Sasha Dvanov and his comrade Kopionkin, a revolutionary on horseback that Sasha meets while wandering on the steppe. While most characters in Chevengur are either eager to integrate communism into their everyday lives or wary of the whole business, Dvanov and Kopionkin find a bond through their shared commitment to this new world order. What emerges between them strikes one as something more than friendship, but Platonov dances around their close bond with such graceful vagueness that one must only imagine they are acting out some greater example of attraction, beyond the human realms of love and lust.
As they make their way to Chevengur, the two bear witness to all the paradoxes of a young revolutionary state. They watch the labouring class attempt to transform itself into an intellectual one, the rural proletariat superseding the mostly absent bourgeoisie, and revel at the results. Sasha is encouraged that villagers are hosting debates, seeing that “they were excited to be carrying out mental labour and were complicating life out of joy. In the past,” Platonov continues as narrator, “they had worked with their bare hands and with no meaning in their heads — now let them rejoice in their reason!” At this same stopover village, Dvanov and Kopionkin witness one villager proclaim, “I shall abstain for the sake of complication!” before “he was the assigned the role of constant abstainer […] in accord with a proposal from the chairman.”
The philosophy of Chevengur quickly moves beyond argument “for the sake of complication,” launching into wider philosophical queries on communism’s promises and potential in Russia. While communism’s righteousness is never overtly put into question, Platonov’s awkward form of sincerity allows the novel’s meaning to be perhaps interpreted as a critique. Later in the novel another character quips, “Communism’s no joke — it’s the end of the world!” Lines like these, where it’s unclear whether Platonov’s character is pointing this out as a good thing or a bad thing, are likely what kept Chevengur unpublished in full during Platonov’s lifetime.
But as the Chandlers kindly detail in their expansive notes, this novel draws from some of the most important works of 19th century Russian literature. In Chevengur Platonov follows in the footsteps of his literary giants while perhaps posing soft critiques at the emergent Soviet society around him. While the novel didn’t see the light of day during Platonov’s own lifetime, Chevengur stands out today as an emblem of the early Soviet years. With flashes of romance and much of the open steppe, the novel promises both the seasoned Russophile and the curious newcomer something unique on every page.
[Published by New York Review Books Classics on January 2, 2024, 572 pages, $24.95 US paperback]