Despite the variety of themes in the works of A.P. Platonov, who was concerned about the problems of electrification and collectivization, civil war and the construction of communism, all of them are united by the writer's desire to find the path to happiness, to determine what the joy of the "human heart" is. Platonov solved these questions by referring to the realities of the life around him. The story "The Pit" is dedicated to the time of industrialization and the beginning of collectivization in the young Soviet country, in the bright communist future of which the author believed very much. True, Platonov

More and more I began to worry that in the "plan of a common life" they practically did not leave a place for a specific person, with his thoughts, experiences, feelings. And with his works, the writer wanted to warn overzealous "activists" from fatal mistakes for the Russian people.

The scene of dispossession in the story "The Pit" very clearly and accurately reveals the essence of the collectivization carried out in the Soviet countryside. The perception of the collective farm is shown through the eyes of a child - Nastya. She asks Chiklin: “Did you set up a collective farm here? Show me the farm!” This innovation is understood as new life, heaven on earth. Even adult “strangers” expect “joy” from the collective farm: “Where is the collective farm good - or did we go for nothing?” These questions are caused by disappointment from the true picture that opened before the eyes of the wanderers: "Outsider, alien people settled down in heaps and small masses around the Orgyard, while the collective farm was still sleeping in a common crowd near the night, faded fire." The “night, faded fire” and the “general accumulation” of collective farmers look symbolic. Behind the simple unsettledness of these people (comparable to the “strong, clean huts” of the “kulak class”), their facelessness is also hidden. Therefore, their main representative is shown as a hammer-bear, half-man, half-animal. He has the ability to productive work, but is deprived of the most important thing - the ability to think and, accordingly, to speak. Thinking is replaced in the bear by "class instinct". However, after all, this was exactly what was required in the new Soviet society, “one ... main man". It is no coincidence that Chiklin takes his breath away and opens the door “so that freedom is visible” when the “reasonable peasant” calls on him to consider the expediency of dispossession. The easiest way is to simply turn away from the truth and let others decide for themselves, shifting the responsibility to the faceless “we”. "None of your business, bitch! Chiklin answers the kulak. - We can appoint a king when it will be useful for us, and we can knock him down with one breath ... And you - disappear! But for some reason, Chiklin screams "from the gnashing strength of his heart", probably protesting inside himself against the right taken from him to think and make decisions independently.

Both Nastya and Nastya are sympathetic to the hammer fighter as to the “most oppressed farm laborer” (“He is also suffering, it means he is ours, right?”), And the bureaucrat Pashkin (“Pashkin was completely sad about the unknown proletarian of the region and wanted to deliver him from oppression as soon as possible." But if the girl sees in the bear, first of all, a suffering creature and therefore feels kinship with him, then the representative of the authorities, instead of a good desire, “to find a residual farm laborer here and, having provided him with a better share of life, then dissolve the district committee of the union for the negligence of serving the member mass”, hurriedly and in bewilderment, he “departed by car back”, formally not seeing the possibility of classifying the bear as an oppressed class. The author objectively depicts the situation of the poor in the countryside, forced to work almost for nothing for wealthy fellow villagers. Through the image of a bear, it is shown how people like him were treated: “The hammerman remembered how in the old years he uprooted stumps on the lands of this peasant and ate grass from silent hunger, because the peasant gave him food only in the evening - what was left of the pigs, and the pigs lay down in the trough and ate the bear's portion in their sleep." However, nothing can justify the cruelty with which dispossession took place: “... the bear got up from the dish, hugged the man’s body more comfortably and, squeezing it with force, so that acquired fat and sweat came out of the man, shouted into his head in different voices - from malice and hearsay, the hammer fighter could hardly speak.

It is terrible that children were brought up on such hatred, who then had to live in a country free from hostility. However, the ideas about our own and others, which have been instilled since childhood, are unlikely to disappear in the course of time. adult life. Nastya was initially opposed to those whom the bear "intuitively" refers to as fists: "Nastya strangled a fat kulak fly on her hand ... and also said:

“And you beat them like a class!”

About a boy from a kulak family, she says: “He is very cunning,” seeing in him an unwillingness to part with something of his own, his own. As a result of such upbringing, all those sailing on a raft for a child merge into one person - “bastards”: “Let him ride the seas: today here, and tomorrow there, right? - said Nastya. “We’ll be bored with the bastard!” Chiklin's words about the party, which, in theory, should stand guard over the interests of the working people, seem ironic to us: "You don't recognize it in person, I can hardly feel it myself."

When analyzing Platonov's works, close attention is drawn to their language. This is the style of a poet, satirist, and, above all, a philosopher. The narrator most often comes from a people who have not yet learned to operate with scientific terms and are trying to answer important, pressing questions of being with their own language, as if “experiencing” thoughts. Therefore, such expressions arise as “because of the lack of my mind I could not say a single word”, “organized people should not live without a mind”, “lived with people - so I turned gray with grief”, etc. The heroes of Platonov think with those linguistic means that they own. The special atmosphere of the 20s of the XX century is emphasized by the abundance of clericalism in the speech of Platonov's heroes ("Chiklin and the hammerer first witnessed economic secluded places"), the vocabulary of slogans and posters ("... Pashkin decided to throw Prushevsky at full speed on the collective farm as a frame of the cultural revolution ..." ), ideologicalisms (“... point out to him the most oppressed farm laborer, who for almost a century worked for nothing in the propertied yards ...”). Moreover, the words of various styles are randomly mixed in the speech of the Platonic wanderers, they often do not understand the meaning of the words they use ("Empty the laborers' property!" Chiklin said to the recumbent. "Away from the collective farm and do not dare to live in the world again!"). One gets the impression that thoughts, ideas seem to collide with each other, attracting and repelling. So, following the traditions of Russian literature, Platonov uses landscapes to convey the general mood of the depicted. But even here we feel roughness, clumsiness and a combination of words of different styles in the descriptions: “The snow, which hitherto fell from time to time from the upper places, now began to fall more often and harder, - some kind of incoming wind began to produce a blizzard, which happens when winter sets in. But Chiklin and the bear walked through the snowy secant frequency in direct street order, because it was impossible for Chiklin to reckon with the moods of nature ... ".

The final scene of sending fists on a raft is ambiguous. On the one hand, we are imbued with sympathy for Prushevsky, who looks with sympathy at the "kulak class", "as if it has lost its way." But there is some truth in the words of Zhachev, who remarks about the sailors: “Do you think these people exist? Wow! This is one outer skin, we have a long way to go to people, that's what I feel sorry for! Let's take a look at the pronoun "we". Zhachev also ranks himself among the "tired prejudices." He pins all his hopes on future generations: “Zhachev crawled after the kulaks in order to ensure him a reliable sailing into the sea with the flow and to calm down more strongly that socialism would be, that Nastya would receive him as her maiden dowry, and he, Zhachev, would rather perish like a tired prejudice." However, as we are convinced, the author's view of the future of Nastya is quite pessimistic. Even childhood happiness cannot be built on someone else's suffering.

Problems of A. Platonov's story "Pit"

A. Platonov's story "The Pit" describes the events of industrialization and collectivization that took place in Russia in the 20-30s of the last century. As you know, this time in the history of our country was distinguished by dramatic excesses and absurdities, which turned into a tragedy for the vast majority of people. The era of the collapse of all the old foundations became the subject of the author's attention in the story. Platonov chooses very specific form for the presentation of events - everything in his story is turned upside down, everything is distorted, hypertrophied and full of paradoxes.

Thus, Platonov's form also becomes content. The paradoxical presentation of events and the Russian language distorted by official clichés shows how stupid, absurd and scary everything that is happening in the country is.

Platonov made the scene of action an unknown town and its environs, as well as an unnamed village. Throughout the development of action, people work. They hardly rest. They are digging a pit, as if they want to "be saved forever in the abyss of the pit." And here a paradox immediately arises: how can one be saved at the bottom of the abyss, and even forever? People live a terrible and terrible life, which is even difficult to call existence. The author constantly compares them with the dead: they live “without an excess of life”, they are “thin as the dead”, fall after work, “like the dead”, and sometimes sleep in coffins. Having walled up the dead woman in a stone crypt, the worker Chiklin says: "The dead are people too." All this is reminiscent of Gogol's "Dead Souls": the dead are spoken of as living, and the living are likened to the dead. Only in Platonov's story does Gogol's symbolism acquire an even more terrible and eerie meaning.

The next paradox is that people, digging ever deeper down and deepening the foundation pit, are building a gigantic high "general proletarian house". The deeper they dig, the harder it is to believe that a huge house - a tower will be built on the site of this pit. In relation to the people working on the construction of the foundation pit, a very interesting parallel arises with the heroes of Gorky's play "At the Bottom". The diggers also live at the bottom of life, and each of them came up with an "idea of ​​escape from here." One wants to retrain, the second - to start studying, the third (the most cunning) to join the party and "hide in the leadership apparatus." The question involuntarily arises: what has changed since the writing of the play? People live in the same, and even worse conditions, and they cannot rise to the surface.

The characters hardly think about what they are doing. The whole rhythm of life does not allow them to do this, and aimless work dulls them so that not a single thought simply remains. However, the story has its own hero-truth seeker. We look at what is happening through his eyes. This is Voshchev, a man who cannot find a place for himself in the new world precisely because he is constantly thinking about the purpose of everything that happens. Already his surname is associated with the word "generally".

He is looking for the meaning of common existence. He says that his life is not a mystery to him, he wants to see some general meaning of life. He does not fit into life and does not want to submit to thoughtless activities. Voshchev was fired from the factory "due to ... thoughtfulness in him among common labor". He firmly believes that "without thought, people act senselessly." He utters a very important phrase: "It is as if one or a few of us have extracted a convinced feeling from us and taken it for themselves." People live only according to orders from above. They put on the radio to “listen to achievements and directives,” and the activist “with the lamp on” is always on duty, because he is waiting for someone to drive up in the middle of the night with another instruction.

Voshchev is not even worried about the exhausting work that he has to do, like everyone else. He worries that his soul "ceased to know the truth." The word "truth" is perceived in the story as something confusing the overall picture of meaninglessness. One of the heroes, Safonov, is afraid: "Isn't truth a class enemy?" And if it is avoided, then it can be dreamed or presented in the form of imagination.

In Voshchev's surname one can guess not only a hint of the word "in general", the word "futility" is clearly heard in it. Indeed, all attempts by the protagonist to find the truth remain in vain. Therefore, he envies the birds that can at least "sing the sadness" of this society, because they "flyed from above and it was easier for them." He "yearns" for the future. The very combination of incompatible words already suggests the idea of ​​what kind of future awaits people.

The theme of the future is embodied in the image of the girl Nastya, whom the workers bring to the pit after her mother died (either because she is a "bourgeois woman, or from death"). Safonov, making an "active-thinking face", says: "We, comrades, must have here in the form of childhood the leader of the future proletarian world."

The name of the girl - Nastya - also turns out to be speaking for Platonov. Anastasia is translated from Greek as "resurrected". Thus, it embodies the hope of resurrection. The theme of resurrection also becomes very important in the story.

So, Voshchev collects all sorts of "dead" objects and puts them "for the future." He picks up, for example, a “withered leaf”, puts it in a bag and decides to keep it there, like everything that “has no meaning in life”, like himself.

"When something will come!" exclaims a nameless peasant woman. Apparently never. The girl Nastya dies, and one of the walls of the pit becomes her grave. Death "resurrected" ends the story. This is the logical result of the builders of communism. Voshchev, standing over the deceased Nastya, thinks about whether communism is possible in the world and who needs it? It is no coincidence that the author connects the names of these two heroes in the finale. Hopes for a resurrection are futile. The life that the heroes of the pit lead has no meaning, there is no future either - this is the author's deep conviction. And even if this “happy” future is built, who will live in it?

Andrei Platonov entered the history of literature as the creator of a new prose style, defiantly original and sharply different from others. His manner of writing is so unusual that it confuses the reader and does not allow him to adapt to himself, so some readers cannot even master the school Pit. Accustomed to Turgenev's impeccably smooth prose or Tolstoy's classically long sentences, it is hard to accept an absolutely innovative method, detached from all the historical experience that Russian literature has. Like an alien, Platonov's style has no analogues and connections with our world, as if it was not invented, but brought from unknown countries where they really communicate like that.

The main author's style of Platonov is often called "tongue-tied" because the author violates language norms, the usual connections between words, stringing morphological, syntactic and semantic errors on top of each other. It may seem to many that before them are not great Russian novels and stories, but the clumsy experiments of a mediocre student who has no idea about the rules of the Russian language. However, formal stylistic violations conceal many new meanings and create effects that most accurately reflect the ideological and thematic content. Each seemingly random sentence expresses the author's thought, and not a simple one at that. The “philosophy of the common cause”, which Platonov professed in his own way (like many poets and prose writers of the 20s of the 20th century), cannot be conveyed brighter and more convincingly. The artistic world of Platnov is built on a specific newspeak, as totalitarian state Orwell. There are new forms for new ideas. It is them that we will analyze on the example of the story "Pit".

Analysis of Platonov's story "The Pit"

Many people sincerely do not understand why Platonov uses unnecessary, ridiculous additions. But in order to realize their expediency, you need to clear your blinkered mind and think about what the author wanted to say. Talking about the main character Voshchev, the writer notes that "on the day of the thirtieth anniversary of his personal life" he was fired from the factory. Where does the word "personal" come from? Apparently, personal life is opposed to non-personal, public, collective. This indicates Voshchev's alienation, his restlessness and eccentricity: while everyone works and lives together, in a flock, in the unity of a tribe, the hero strayed from society, flying in the clouds. For "flights" on working days he was expelled. That's how the whole story and the main problem of the hero were told in one sentence, which is so suitable for its hero: the same ridiculous and eccentric.

The main idea and main themes of the story "Pit"

In the format of utopias, Platonov often reflected on whether a person can become only an element of society, renouncing individuality and the right to it, if the common good is at stake? He does not fight against the dogmas of socialism and communism. He is afraid of their ugly implementation, because the true meaning of the theory will never be understood without its practical application (fear of the complete merging of people into an impersonal, insensitive mass - main topic in the story "The Pit"). That is why Voshchev is crossed out of his public life on the occasion of his private life. He is initially given an ultimatum: to fully integrate into the collective consciousness or survive on his own, not counting on the support of society and its attention. However, the individual is not just fired, but "removed from production." "Eliminate" a defect, breakage, pollution, but not a person. It turns out that the "thoughtful" worker is a malfunction in production, interfering with the "general pace of work" and hostile to him. Man is valuable as a mechanism in unified system, but if it fails, it is eliminated, like an old worthless piece of iron - Platonov doubts the validity of this. As a consequence, he doubts the new system. That is why many of his works were published only during the perestroika period.

The image of Voshchev in the story "The Pit"

The exact indication of Voshchev's age also makes sense. Firstly, the author was 30 when he wrote "The Pit", and secondly, this is the so-called "age of Christ", which is secularly called "mid-life crisis". A person is neither young nor old, he has achieved something, but this is not enough, and the best time of life is irretrievably lost. He doubts and rushes about, while it is still not too late to change everything for the better and find answers to the most global and difficult questions. It was "in the middle of life in the twilight forest" that Dante got lost and went in search of himself. The symbolic age endows the hero Voshchev with a restless nature, focused on philosophical questions, which is already enough to eliminate a person from the production of the new world.

Linguistic features in Platonov's story "The Pit". Examples from the text

The first paragraph of "Pit" consists of clerical stamps. So the author plays with and ridicules the bureaucratic raid in the everyday language of illiterate contemporaries who did not understand the meaning of this bureaucracy. Platonov does not just copy the cliché, but loosens the stamp from the inside, leaving only the general principle of construction and replacing the essence: "Voshchev received the calculation due to the growth of weakness in him and thoughtfulness."

In the second paragraph, along with the marginal hero, comes the traditional poetic vocabulary: “the trees carefully kept the heat in their leaves”, “the dust was boring on a deserted road.” But Voshchev is a child of the era, the author also does not tire of reminding him: “there was a quiet situation in nature” - a clerical term, but devoid of the usual semantics.

The life of a person is equated with the existence of a thing, which, moreover, is nationalized by the state. It turns out that a person is under total control and in an unimaginable forced asceticism without faith: for example, joy was rarely "relied" on Voshchev.

Andrey Platonov: interesting facts from life and literature

Thus, the "tongue-tiedness" of Platonov's style is not empty expression and innovation, as an end in itself. This is a semantic necessity. Language experiments allow him to retell the contents of the ten-volume descriptions in one story. Unfortunately, his fears, masterfully formulated in The Pit, were not in vain or at least exaggerated. His only son was detained and spent 2 years without guilt in prison, waiting for his case to be considered. He was released, but he was already terminally ill with tuberculosis, which infected the entire family. As a result, without money and care in a kind of isolation from society (no one allowed them to work and write), all the Platonovs soon died. Such was the price of a style that triumphantly entered the history of literature.

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HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND PLOT AND COMPOSITION FEATURES OF THE STORY. The time of work on the story, indicated by the author on the last page of the text (December 1929 - April 1930), indicates that the “Pit” was written by Platonov practically from life - in the same “Year of the Great Break”, the onset of which was proclaimed by the article I Stalin November 7, 1929. The exact time frame of the events described in the "Pit" is also set by specific historical facts: December 27, 1929 Stalin announces the transition to the policy of “liquidating the kulaks as a class”, and on March 2, 1930, in the article “Dizzy with success”, he briefly slows down forced collectivization.

The plot line of the story is very simple. The protagonist of the story, Voshchev, was fired from a mechanical plant during the hot season of the beginning of leaf fall (late summer - early autumn), and the dismissal falls on the day of his thirtieth birthday. Interestingly, in the year of the events described, the author of the story, Platonov, also turned 30 years old, and his birthday, like Voshchev's, falls at the end of summer (August 28). This suggests that the world outlook of the hero is close to the author's.

The documented reason for Voshchev's dismissal is "the growth of weakness in him and thoughtfulness amid the general pace of work." In the factory committee, where the hero addresses a day later with a request for a new job, Voshchev explains the reason for his thoughtfulness: he is thinking about a "plan for a common life" that could bring "something like happiness." Having been refused employment, the hero sets off on the road and after another day gets to the neighboring city. In search of lodging for the night, he finds himself in a barracks crowded with sleeping workers, and in the morning in a conversation he finds out that he was in a team of diggers who “know everything”, because “all organizations are given existence”. In other words, in front of Voshchev, the bearers of "unrequited happiness", "capable of keeping the truth within themselves without triumph." Hoping that life and work next to these people will provide answers to questions that torment Voshchev, he decides to join their team.

It soon becomes clear that the diggers are preparing a foundation pit for the foundation of a large building designed for the common life of all ordinary working people who are still huddled in barracks. However, the scale of the pit in the process of work is constantly increasing, because the project is becoming more and more grandiose” common house". The foreman of the diggers, Chiklin, brings an orphan girl, Nastya, to the barracks where the workers live, who is now becoming their common ward.

Until late autumn, Voshchev worked together with the diggers, and then he was a witness to dramatic events in a village adjacent to the city. Two work brigades are sent to this village at the direction of the leadership: they must help the local activists in carrying out collectivization. After they perish at the hands of unknown kulaks, Chiklin and members of his brigade arrive in the village, who bring the matter of collectivization to an end. They exterminate or float on a raft down the river (to the “far space”) all the wealthy peasants of the village. After that, the workers return to the city, to the foundation pit. The finale of the story is the funeral of Nastya, who died from a transient illness, who by this moment had become the common daughter of diggers. One of the walls of the pit becomes her grave.

As you can see, a few paragraphs were enough to list the main events of the story. However, the plot itself is far from the main level of expression of its deepest meanings. The plot for Platonov is just an event frame in which it is necessary to tell about the essence of his contemporary era, about the position of man in the post-revolutionary world.

The main events of the plot - the endless digging of a foundation pit and the swift "special operation" to "eliminate the kulaks" - two parts of a single grandiose plan for building socialism. In the city, this construction consists in the erection of a single building, “where the entire local class of the proletariat will enter the settlement”; in the countryside - in the creation of a collective farm and the destruction of the "kulaks". It should be noted that the specific historical aspects of the picture created in the story are significantly retouched: the mythopoetic, generalized symbolic facets of the events described come to the fore.

This trend towards symbolic generalization of the image is fully consistent with the title of the story and the peculiarities of its spatial and temporal organization. The image-symbol of the pit resonates in the text with many semantic associations: in it - the “shoveling” of life, the “virgin soil” of the earth, the construction of the temple - only going down, not up; the “bottom” of life (plunging into the depths of the pit, the diggers sink lower and lower from the edge of the earth); "the cauldron of collectivism", gathering to itself workers; finally, a mass grave - both in the literal and figurative sense of the word (here you can bury the dying, here the collective hope for a brighter future perishes).

The time frames of the narrative are indicated in the text of the “Pit” not by specific historical dates, but by the most general indications of the change of seasons: from early autumn to winter. At the same time, the internal “chronometry” of the story is far from clarity and any kind of rhythmic order. Time seems to move in jerks, then almost stopping, then briefly speeding up rapidly. The first three days of Voshchev's life (from the moment of his dismissal to getting into the barracks of diggers) can still be judged thanks to indications of where and how he spends the night, but in the future, the alternations of day and night cease to be accurately recorded, and plot events seem to “break away” from the calendar .

The exhausting monotony of the work of diggers is set off by the repetition of monotonous words and phrases: “until evening”, “until morning”, “next time”, “at dawn”, “in the evenings”. Thus, half a year of plot action turns into an endless repetition of the same “daily video”. The organization of the collective farm, on the contrary, is proceeding rapidly: the scenes of dispossession, the expulsion of kulaks and the holiday of rural activists fit into one day. The finale of the story again brings the reader back to the feeling of an endlessly stretching day, turning into eternal night: starting from noon, Chiklin has been digging a grave for Nastya for fifteen hours in a row. The last “chronometric” detail of the story captures the moment of Nastya’s burial in the “eternal stone”: “The time was night ...” Thus, before the reader’s eyes, the “current time” of fateful socio-historical transformations is melted into a motionless eternity of loss. The last word of the story is the word "farewell".

In the above quotation, the clock is “passing patiently”, as if overcoming a physically perceptible space. This example illustrates the special nature of the relationship between time and space in Platonov’s prose: figuratively speaking, the soles of the feet of a wandering truth-seeker become the main organ of “experiencing” time in the writer’s world, hours and days of his movement shine through for kilometers. The internal efforts of the hero, the tension of his consciousness are connected with a real feat of waiting. “His walking path lay in the middle of summer,” the author informs the reader at the very beginning of the story about Voshchev’s route. To judge the time, Platonov's character does not need a watch, he just needs to turn to space: "...Voshchev went to the window to notice the beginning of the night." Space and time meet metonymically, and sometimes become mutually reversible, so that the name "place" becomes a kind of pseudonym for "time". Platonov's style encourages reading the very title of the story not only as a "spatial" metaphor, but also as an allegory about the era. A “pit” is not only an abyss or an abyss, but also an empty “funnel” of time that has stopped, exhausted the movement of time.

If time in Platonov's story can be "seen", then its artistic space loses its most important attribute - the quality of visual distinctness, optical sharpness. This quality of the Platonic vision of the world becomes especially noticeable if you watch the movements of the characters. While the routes of Raskolnikov's movements around St. Petersburg in "Crime and Punishment" by F.M. Dostoevsky or Bulgakov's heroes in Moscow in The Master and Margarita are so specific that each of them can be identified on a map of a real city, the movements of Platonic heroes almost do not correlate with clear spatial landmarks, they are practically devoid of topographical "bindings". It is impossible for the reader to imagine where the city, factory, barracks, roads, etc. mentioned in the story are located.

Pay attention to how the hero's path is depicted: "Voshchev, who arrived on a cart from unknown places, touched the horse in order to ride back to the space where he was." The “unknown” places of the unknown “space” give the wanderings of the characters a dreamy, “somnambulistic” character: the hero's route constantly goes astray, he again and again returns to the foundation pit. The characters of the story are constantly moving, but this movement is often conveyed by Platonov outside the real “circumstances of the place” - the foggy coordinates of abstract concepts. Most often, this is the language of underformed ideological slogans: “to the proletarian masses”, “under the common banner”, “following the bygone barefoot collectivization”, “to the distance of history, to the peak of invisible times”, “back to the old days”, “forward, to our hope ”, “to some undesirable distance of life”. People's wanderings on the surface of linguistic abstractions, devoid of material density, turn into a feverish search for vital support, movements in the space of meanings. “Circumstances of consciousness” mean more to Platonov's characters than the circumstances of everyday life.

The "Brownian" chaotic "walking" of the characters embodies the author's pity for their homelessness, orphanhood and loss in the world of ongoing grandiose projects. By building a “common proletarian home,” people turn out to be homeless wanderers. At the same time, the author is close to his characters in their unwillingness to stop, to be content with materially concrete goals, no matter how outwardly attractive they may be. Platonov connects their quest with "lunar purity of a distant scale", "the inquiring sky" and "the disinterested, but tormenting power of the stars."

It is not surprising that in a world devoid of the usual spatio-temporal supports, the described events are also devoid of traditional cause-and-effect relationships. Completely heterogeneous episodes can coexist with each other in the story, and their artistic sense is revealed only when the reader grasps with his mind's eye the entire picture presented by the writer, when through the kaleidoscopic flickering of scenes he was able to distinguish a distinct connection of motives. Let us follow, for example, how the “village theme” associated with the motif of collectivization arises and develops in the story. It originates in an outwardly accidental mention of a peasant “with yellow eyes”, who ran to the gang of diggers and settled in a barrack to do chores.

Soon, it is he who turns out to be a “guilty bourgeois in cash” for the inhabitants of the barracks, and therefore the invalid Zhachev inflicts “two blows on the side” to him. Following that, another resident of a nearby village appears with a request to the diggers. In the ravine, which becomes part of the foundation pit, the peasants hid the coffins prepared by them for the future “for self-taxation”. “Each of us lives because he has his own coffin: it is now a whole economy for us!” - the alien informs the diggers. His request is taken quite calmly, as a matter of course; it is true that a small dispute arises between the workers and the muzhik. Two coffins have already been used by Chiklin (one as a bed for Nastya, the other as a “red corner” for her toys), while the peasant insists on returning two “small fobs” prepared for the growth of village children.

This conversation is conveyed in the story in a neutral emotional tone, which gives the episode an absurd tone: it gives the impression of a terrible dream, an obsession. The absurdity of what is happening is sharpened in the conversation between Nastya and Chiklin adjoining the episode. Having learned from the brigadier that the peasants who came for the coffins were not bourgeois at all, she asks him with the inexorable logic of a child: “Why do they need coffins then? Only bourgeois should die, but not the poor!” About the end of the conversation, the author reports: "The diggers were silent, still unaware of the data to speak."

There are even more semantic shifts in the actual rural scenes of the story: heterogeneous episodes adjacent to each other create the impression of logical incoherence, kaleidoscopic flickering of fragments of a vague dream: an activist teaches peasant women political literacy, a bear identifies village kulaks by smell and leads Chiklin and Voshchev to their huts, horses independently prepare their own straw, the dispossessed peasants say goodbye to each other before they all go on a raft to the sea.

By weakening or completely destroying the causal relationship between the events depicted, Platonov thereby reveals the monstrous illogicality of contemporary history, the absurd thoughtlessness of its creators. The grandiose project of a “general proletarian home” remains a mirage, and the only reality of the “new world” is the “abyss of the pit”.

THE SYSTEM OF THE CHARACTERS OF THE STORY. The central character of the story, Voshchev, is a type of hero-observer characteristic of Plato's prose. He continues in his work a string of “thinking”, “doubting” and looking for the meaning of life of heroes. “Without the truth, my body weakens...” - he answers the questions of the diggers. All of Voshchev's property fits into a bag that he constantly carries with him: there he puts "all sorts of objects of misfortune and obscurity" - fallen leaves, grass roots, twigs, various rags. Behind the external eccentricity of his “gathering” is an important worldview setting: the hero seeks to prolong the existence of every thing in the world. His surname is an echo of this love for the substance of the world, for things of different weights and calibers. At the same time, phonetically close words “in general” and “in vain” are guessed in it, signaling the direction of the hero’s search (he seeks to discover the meaning of common existence) and the sad failure of his all-encompassing concern (the search will be in vain).

Voshchev's inner circle in the story is represented by images of diggers. Many of them are nameless, their collective portrait comes to the fore, compiled not from descriptions of faces, but from the most general biological characteristics: “Inside the barn, seventeen or twenty people slept on their backs ... the skin and bones of each were occupied by veins, and the thickness of the veins showed how much blood they must pass during the stress of labor. Against the background of this depersonalized sketch, it is not so much individualized images that emerge as generalized roles: foreman Chiklin, enthusiast Safronov, disabled Zhachev, “telephone caller” Kozlov. Trying to "forget themselves" in furious work, the workers stop thinking, leaving this concern to leaders like Pashkin. Truth for them is an intellectual mental game that does not change anything in reality, and they can only hope for their own super efforts, for the enthusiasm of labor.

The unnamed “activist” and engineer Prushevsky stand apart in the system of characters. The image of the first of them is a satirical embodiment of “ dead soul”the leader-bureaucrat, in a hurry to respond to the next directive of the authorities and bringing the“ party line ”to the point of absurdity. He draws up an “acceptance account” for coffins, arranges the peasants in the form of a five-pointed star, teaches young peasant women to read and write, forcing them to memorize words they do not understand: “Bolshevik, bourgeois, hillock, permanent chairman, the collective farm is the blessing of the poor, bravo-bravo-Leninists! Put firm signs on the hillock and the Bolshevik ... ”The image of Prushevsky is another version of the traditional type of scientist in Platonov’s prose, a lonely thinker who claims to conquer the elements of nature. It is he who owns the project of the "eternal home" - a kind of modern Tower of Babel. Prushevsky’s moods are unstable: either he elegiacly recalls youthful love, or he experiences bouts of hopelessness and decides to commit suicide, but in the end he leaves after the girl “in a poor headscarf”, whose eyes attract him with “surprised love”.

However, Platonov makes hard-working and sincere workers the main characters of his story. They crave happiness not so much for themselves as for their descendants. Their own ideas of happiness are not revealed in any way, but they clearly do not look like the “paradise” of their leader Pashkin, who lives, as it were, already in the future, in satiety and contentment. Loners who believe that “happiness will come from materialism” easily get their share and are well settled. Such, for example, is the feeble Kozlov, who leaves for the city in order to "keep an eye on everything" and "strongly love the proletarian masses." But for most workers, happiness is above all the best lot for children. Even if the diggers' own life is hard, it is consecrated by the meaning of the existence of the girl Nastya, an orphan adopted by the workers.

Voshchev regards the girl as in her childhood an angel on a church wall; he hopes that “this weak body, abandoned without kinship among people, will someday feel the warming stream of the meaning of life and its mind will see a time like the first primordial day.” Nastya becomes for the diggers a living symbol of the future, a material confirmation of the reality of their faith. The Greek name Anastasia (“resurrected”) bears in the context of the story the idea of ​​the resurrection of happiness. The more tragic and gloomy is the ending of the story, leading to the death of the once “resurrected” girl (Chiklin found her next to her dying mother). The semantic result of the accomplished event is summed up by the reflections of Voshchev, standing over the body of the just-dead Nastya: “He no longer knew where communism would be in the world now, if it was not there at first in a childish feeling and a convinced impression? Why does he now need the meaning of life and the truth of universal origin, if there is no small, faithful person in whom the truth would become joy and movement?

The portrait characteristics of the characters in The Foundation Pit are extremely meager, so that the faces of most of the characters are visually unrepresentable. Practically ignoring physiognomic signs, Platonov “reads” faces as “existential” signs of the general state of the world. So, on the faces of the pioneer girls “there remained the difficulty of the infirmity of early life, the poverty of the body and the beauty of expression”; Kozlov had a “cloudy monotonous face” and “damp eyes”, while Chiklin had a “little stony head”. Particularly interesting is the description of the appearance of a peasant who came running from the village: “He closed one eye, and looked at everyone with the other, expecting the worst, but not intending to complain; his eyes were of a farmer's, yellow color appreciating all appearances with the grief of economy”.

The characters seem to disincarnate, their images are “reduced” to the idea or emotion they express. It is significant that the inhabitants of the village are absolutely devoid of their own names, people appear under coarse sociological “nicknames”: “bourgeois”, “semi-bourgeois”, “fist”, “sub-kulak”, “pest”, “mobilized cadre”, “avant-garde assistant”, “ middle peasant old man”, “leading poor people”, etc. In the “side column” of the list of destroyed kulaks, the activist writes down “signs of existence” and “property mood”: in the world of a realized utopia there is no place for living people.

But in full accordance with the logic of the absurd, there is a place in it for animals acting in the rural scenes of the story along with people and obeying the same norms of behavior. The horses, like the pioneers, walk in formation, as if they were "accurately convinced of the collective farm system of life"; the hammer-bear works at the forge just as selflessly as diggers work in the foundation pit, as if he realized himself as a “rural proletarian” and was imbued with a “class instinct”; but a lone dog is lying on a strange village “in the old way”. Such an artistic decision reinforces the semantic ambiguity of the story. On the one hand, the idea of ​​a blood connection between man and nature, the unity of all life on earth, the reciprocity of human and natural principles is revealed. “His soul is a horse. Let him now live empty, and let the wind blow through him, ”says Chiklin about the man left without a horse and feeling “empty inside”.

On the other hand, the use of zoomorphic (“animal-like”) imagery unexpectedly “earths”, materializes, makes sensually perceptible and visual the abstract concepts of “class struggle”, “class instinct”, “socialization”. Thus, for example, the erased metaphor “class instinct” is realized when the blacksmith bear “suddenly growled near a solid, clean hut and did not want to go further”; “Three yards later, the bear growled again, indicating the presence of its class enemy here.” The realization of the metaphor becomes even more evident in Chiklin's praise of the activist: "You are a conscious fellow, you smell classes like an animal." People act to match the animals: Chiklin mechanically kills a peasant who happens to be at hand; Voshchev "makes a blow in the face" to the "kulakist", after which he does not respond; men do not distinguish between killing activists, killing livestock, cutting down trees and destroying their own flesh. Collectivization appears in the story as collective murder and suicide.

In the final scenes of the story, the peasants who joined the workers (survivors after collectivization) find themselves in the depths of the pit: “All the poor and average peasants worked with such zeal of life, as if they wanted to be saved forever in the abyss of the pit.” In this thirst for “salvation forever”, people and animals unite again in the finale: horses carry a rubble stone, a bear carries this stone in its front paws. “Saved forever” in the context of “The Foundation Pit” means only one thing - to die. FEATURES OF ARTISTIC SPEECH. At the first acquaintance, the language of Platonov confuses the reader: against the background of the normative literary language, it seems outlandish, artsy, and wrong. The main temptation in explaining such a language is to recognize Plato's word usage as ironic, to admit that Platonov intentionally, consciously twists the phrase in order to expose the absurdity, to emphasize the absurdity of what is depicted. “Already now you can be an assistant to the avant-garde and immediately have all the benefits of the future time,” decides for himself an activist of the General Line collective farm. The wording of the activist's thought, taken by itself, can be interpreted as a sign of the author's irony towards the new "masters of life." The problem, however, is that almost all of Platonov's phrases are like this: with “displaced” word usage, with the replacement of a word by a synonym that at first glance is not very suitable, with persistently used pleonasms, with inversions that are not quite explicable.

In Platonov's prose there is no noticeable boundary between the words of the author and the words of the characters: without separating himself from the characters, the author, as it were, learns to speak with them, painfully looking for words. Platonov's language was shaped by the elements of the post-revolutionary years. In the 1920s the language norm was rapidly changing: the lexical composition of the language expanded, into a common cauldron new speech there were words of different stylistic layers; everyday vocabulary coexisted with heavy archaism, jargon - with abstract concepts not yet “digested” by the consciousness of a person from the people. In this linguistic chaos, the hierarchy of meanings that had developed in the literary language was destroyed, the opposition of high and low styles disappeared. Words were read and used as if anew, outside the tradition of word usage, combined indiscriminately, regardless of belonging to one or another semantic field. In this verbal bacchanalia, the main contradiction was formed between the global nature of new meanings that required new words, and the absence of a stable, settled word usage, the building material of speech.

Such is the linguistic leaven of the Platonic style. It must be said that there is no generally accepted, well-established opinion about the causes of Platonov's “strange-speaking”. One of the versions is that the style of the writer's speech is deeply analytical. It is important for a writer not to depict the world, not to reproduce it in visual images, but to express an idea about the world, moreover, “a thought tormented by feeling”. Platonov's word, no matter what abstract concept it expresses, strives not to lose the fullness of emotional feeling. Because of this emotional load, words are difficult to “grind” to each other; like unstripped wires, word connections "sparkle." Nevertheless, the connection of words is possible due to the fact that abstract words are materially compacted, lose their usual abstract meaning, and specific, “everyday” words receive symbolic highlighting, shine through with an additional figurative meaning. An allegory can be read literally, as a statement of fact, and an ordinary phrase, a specific designation is fraught with a clot of allegory.

There is an original verbal centaur - a symbiosis of the abstract and the concrete. Here characteristic example: “The current time passed quietly in the midnight darkness of the collective farm; nothing violated the socialized property and the silence of the collective consciousness.” In this sentence, the abstract and unimaginable “current time” is endowed with the features of a material object moving in space: it goes “quietly” (how?) and in the “darkness of the collective farm” (where?). At the same time, a very specific designation of darkness (“midnight darkness”) acquires an additional semantic connotation - the phrase does not so much designate the time of day as it conveys an attitude towards the “darkness of the collective farm”, the obsession of collectivization.

According to another version, Platonov deliberately subordinated himself to the "language of utopia", the language of the era. He adopted the language of ideological clichés, dogmas and clichés, meaningless and designed for mere memorization (not understanding), in order to blow it up from the inside, bringing it to the point of absurdity. Thus, Platonov deliberately violated the norms of the Russian language in order to prevent its transformation into the stupefying language of utopia. “Platonov himself subordinated himself to the language of the era, seeing in it such abysses, having looked into which once, he could no longer slide on the literary surface, engaging in the intricacies of the plot, typographic delights and stylistic lace,” considered Joseph Brodsky, naming in the finale of his article Platonov's language is "a language that compromises time, space, life and death itself."

Platonov's leading stylistic device is an artistically justified violation of lexical compatibility and syntactic word order. Such a violation enlivens and enriches the phrase, gives it depth and ambiguity. Let's do a little stylistic experiment: we put in brackets “extra”, words and phrases that are optional from the point of view of common sense in the first sentence of the story: )”. Knowingly excessive clarification, marked here with brackets, violates the usual semantic balance of the phrase, complicates perception. But for Platonov, the main thing is not to announce the dismissal of Voshchev, but to draw the reader's attention to those "grains of meaning" that will later sprout in the story: Voshchev will painfully search for the meaning of his personal life and common existence; the means of acquiring such meaning for the diggers will be hard work in the pit. Thus, already in the first phrase, the semantic “matrix” of the story is laid down, which determines the movement of its speech flow.

In Plato's language, the word is not so much the unit of the sentence, but the unit of the entire work. Therefore, within the framework of a specific proposal, it can be placed outwardly “incorrectly” - “at random”. The word is saturated with many contextual meanings and becomes a unit of the higher levels of the text, for example, the plot and art space. Violations syntactic links in separate sentences are necessary to create a single semantic perspective of the whole story. That is why not all words turn out to be “superfluous”, formally “inappropriate” in the statements of Platonov's characters. As a rule, these are words that convey a stable semantic and emotional complex: life, death, existence, languor, boredom, uncertainty, direction of movement, purpose, meaning, etc.

Signs of objects, actions, states seem to break away from the specific words with which they are usually combined, and begin to wander freely in the story, attaching themselves to “unusual” objects. There are many examples of such word usage in Platonov's story: “ruthlessly born”, “convex vigilance of the asset”, “uncomfortable water flowed”, “dreary clay”, “difficult space”. Obviously, the signs of objects or actions extend beyond the framework established by the language norm; adjectives or adverbs take “the wrong places”. One of the features often found in Plato's language is the replacement of circumstances with definitions: “knock with a quiet hand” (instead of “knock softly”), “give an immediate whistle” (“blow the whistle immediately”), “hit with a silent head” (“silently hit with your head” ). In the writer's world, the properties and qualities of the "substance of existence" are more important and significant than the nature of the action. Hence the preference given by Plato to the adjective (sign of an object or phenomenon) over the adverb (sign of action).

A writing connection in the language of a story can arise between qualitatively heterogeneous members: “the lamp and the spoken words made it stuffy and boring”; “The winds and grasses were agitated around from the sun.” Collective designations can replace a specific noun: "The kulak sector rode along the river into the sea and beyond." Ordinary verbs begin to function as verbs of motion, getting the direction: “There is nowhere to live, so you think in your head.” Definitions usually attached to living people are used to characterize inanimate objects: "patient, bent wattle fences, frail machines." Auditory, visual and taste sensations mix and interact: “hot woolen voice”.

Platonov regularly uses the technique of implementing a metaphor, when words that have lost their direct, objective meaning in everyday speech are returned to their “natural” meaning. Often this transformation figurative meaning into a direct one is made in accordance with the naive childish logic. So, sick Nastya asks Chiklin: “Try, what a terrible fever I have under my skin. Take off my shirt, otherwise it will burn, I will recover - there will be nothing to walk in!”

So, all the elements of Platonov's artistic world are subordinated to the main thing - an endless search, clarification of the meaning of what is happening. The scales of the vision of the world - spatial, temporal, conceptual - are the scales of the universal whole, not parts. The local disorder of actions, events, combinations of words is overcome by the higher order of the author's view of the world. Semantic shifts within a sentence, episode, plot in Platonov's prose most adequately reflect the real shift, the shift in the world order of the era of global transformations. Words, phrases, episodes in the writer's prose cannot and should not be more understandable, more logical than the life reality they convey. In other words, it is Platonov's "foolish" prose that is the most accurate mirror of fantastic reality. Soviet life 1920-1930s

Our brief retelling"Pit" can be used for a reader's diary.

The text of this story by Andrei Platonov (see his brief biography) is divided into 11 parts, which have neither subtitles nor numbering. In our article, these parts are conditionally called "chapters". The Pit is written in a typical Platonic style, with elements of surrealism, symbolism and a kind of "black humor". The story gives a picture of the era of Stalin's industrialization and collectivization.

On our website you can also read the full text of The Pit, with important, rarely published fragments in printed editions, which were excluded at one time by the author not for artistic, but for censorship reasons. Vivid examples of the original, figurative literary language of Andrei Platonov are given in Platonov's article "The Pit" - quotes.

Platonov "Pit", chapter 1 - summary

On the day of his 30th birthday, the worker Voshchev was fired from the factory: feeling empty in his soul, he often began to think about the meaning of life right at the workplace, and this led to a drop in labor productivity. Having lost his job, Voshchev goes to a pub, and then to a neighboring town. On its outskirts, near the forge, he meets the legless disabled beggar Zhachev. Night falls, and Voshchev goes to sleep in the grass on a wasteland. But soon the mower comes there. Having finished to Voshchev, he wakes him up and sends him to fill up in a neighboring barrack, where the workers of the pit sleep.

Platonov "Pit", chapter 2 - summary

Construction is going on all over the city. The most important object is a huge foundation pit for the construction of a "common proletarian house" - a gigantic building where it is planned to resettle the entire local working class, leaving small "individual dwellings" to overgrow with weeds. This pit in Platonov's story appears as a kind of symbol of the industrialization of the first five-year plan.

In the morning, the digger workers wake up in the barracks. The wasteland where Voshchev slept has already been marked out for the future foundation pit. The inhabitants of the barracks begin to dig it. Voshchev, who lost his job at the factory, joins them.

Voshchev meets the members of his new artel: its leader, the sincere but narrow-minded Safronov, the hardworking strongman Chiklin, and the sick weakling Kozlov, whom his comrades do not like.

Andrey Platonov. Pit. Audiobook part 1

Platonov "Pit", chapter 3 - summary

The developer of the foundation pit project, engineer Prushevsky, dreams that in 10 or 20 years a tower will be erected in the middle of the world, where the working people of the whole earth will enter into an eternal, happy settlement. Despite such bold dreams, Prushevsky, like any intellectual, is tormented by doubts: will the growth of production lead to a simultaneous increase in the additional product of the soul? Mental torments bring the engineer to insomnia, he even has the thought of suicide.

The next morning, the workers continue to dig the pit. To inspire them comes the chairman of the regional trade union council, Pashkin, who points out that the pace of digging is too slow for socialism. The weak Kozlov stalks around Pashkin with slander and denunciations.

The digger Chiklin examines the neighboring ravine and comes to the conclusion that they started digging the foundation pit in the wrong place. It is better not to dig it from scratch, but to use a ravine under the foundation pit: it will only have to be slightly expanded. The engineer Prushevsky, called to the place of work, takes soil samples and agrees with Chiklin.

In the evening, the legless invalid Zhachev drives up on his cart to the rich apartment of the chairman of the regional trade union council Pashkin and loudly resents the prosperity of this official and his small pension. Fearing to spoil relations with the proletariat, Pashkin orders his beefy wife to take out a package of food for Zhachev. Zhachev goes to the barracks of the excavation workers and has supper with Safronov and Chiklin.

Voshchev spends the same evening in sorrow: his hope to find the meaning of life in tireless work on the foundation pit is not fulfilled. And Chiklin and Prushevsky each think of their old young love. Chiklin recalls how once, before the revolution, he was suddenly kissed by the daughter of the owner of the tile factory where he then worked, and Prushevsky - about a beautiful unfamiliar girl who once passed by his house on a warm summer evening. The engineer no longer remembers her face, but since then he has been peering at all the women, trying to recognize that one ...

Platonov "Pit", chapter 4 - summary

Not wanting to work hard on the pit, Kozlov decides to switch to " community service to "keep the working class from petty-bourgeois revolt". The rest continue to stubbornly dig a pit, but the trade unionist Pashkin still finds the pace of production "quiet".

Chiklin, in his memories of the past, goes to the same tile factory where he was once kissed by the owner's daughter. The plant is now abandoned. Walking inside it among the ruins, Chiklin suddenly discovers a hidden room in which lies a dying woman. Her little daughter rubs a lemon peel over her mother's lips. Chiklin recognizes in the woman the same daughter of the former owner. She dies before his eyes, instructing the baby before her death not to tell anyone about her bourgeois origin. Chiklin takes the girl with him to the workers' barracks.

Platonov "Pit", chapter 5 - summary

The diggers of the foundation pit are given a radio, which incessantly calls for the mobilization of all resources for socialist construction. Zhachev and Voshchev do not like the radio, but Safronov does not allow it to be turned off, because it is necessary "to throw everyone into the brine of socialism so that the skin of capitalism peels off and the heart pays attention to the heat of life around the fire of the class struggle."

The girl Nastya, brought by Chiklin, settles in the barracks, becoming the object of universal love. Safronov inspires her with the foundations of communist ideology.

Platonov "Pit", chapter 6 - summary

Chairman of the regional trade union council Pashkin own initiative decides to increase the size of the pit by 6 times. Kozlov, who made his way into trade union activists, now travels to the foundation pit with Pashkin in a car and scolds the workers as "opportunists in practice" for the "low pace of work." However, soon he had to go with Safronov to collectivize a neighboring village.

Safronov and Kozlov are killed there by "kulaks". Upon learning of this, Chiklin and Voshchev set out for the village. The rural activist who is in charge of the creation of the collective farm enrolls Chiklin and Voshchev in the "mobilized cadres".

Andrey Platonov. Pit. Audiobook part 2

The bodies of Safronov and Kozlov lie in the village council, covered with a red banner. Chiklin spends the night next to them. When a village peasant accidentally enters the village council, Chiklin takes him for the murderer of his comrades and kills him with blows of his fist.

The "Organization Yard" on the edge of the collective farm is full of arrested people. The activist gathers the "advanced" peasants and tells them to go agitating with flags for collectivization in neighboring villages. The peasants see the end of the world in the collective farm. Some of them lie down in pre-prepared coffins and try to die by themselves. The village priest, out of fear of reprisals, cuts his hair like a foxtrot, applies for admission to a circle of atheists, gives the proceeds from the sale of church candles to a tractor, and writes down on the memorial leaflet for denunciation to the Activist everyone who dared to cross himself in the temple.

Platonov "Pit", chapter 7 - summary

Chiklin, Voshchev and three "conscious" peasants, on the instructions of the Activist, are building a raft on which the local "kulak sector" will be sent along the river to the sea. The activist gathers all the inhabitants at the "Organization Yard" and demands from them "to stop standing between capitalism and communism", that is, to join the collective farm. The people ask for the last night of respite, but the Activist agrees to wait only until the end of the raft construction: everyone who does not go to the collective farm will sail on it into the ocean.

Weeping and wailing rise up through the village. Expecting the imminent "socialization", the peasants have long ceased to feed the horses, and in recent days they have also slaughtered livestock, overeating beef to the point of vomiting. No one wanted to give their living creatures to "collective farm imprisonment".

Now, at the “Organization Yard”, before entering the collective farm, the peasants say goodbye to each other, as before death - kissing and hugging, releasing each other mutual sins.

Platonov "Pit", chapter 8 - summary

Prushevsky, sent there as a "cadre of the cultural revolution", and Zhachev, who arrived of his own free will as a freak, come to the new collective farm. They bring with them Nastya, who in the city managed to resemble a Soviet kindergarten and now demands "to liquidate the kulak as a class."

Chiklin discovers in the list of villagers a certain oppressed farm laborer, who all his life from his youth, almost for nothing, works in local yards and in the smithy. He goes to the blacksmith to save this proletarian from exploitation. The laborer turns out to be a forest bear who knows how to inflate furs and hit an anvil with a hammer.

Chiklin takes a bear with him so that, like a poor proletarian, he can show him the houses where the kulaks live. Having reached the hut of the next "world-eater", the bear begins to growl furiously, and Chiklin comes in to dispossess kulaks. One fist, smiling, prophesies that today the workers have "liquidated" him, and tomorrow they will also "liquidate" them - and " one of your main people will come to socialism". The fists driven onto the raft are floated into the river and, downstream, into the sea.

Platonov "Pit", chapter 9 - summary

After the rafting of the kulaks, the Activist sets up a radio mouthpiece on the porch of the OrgDom, and the entire collective farm, to the march of the great campaign, joyfully marks time. Even socialized horses, having heard the music, come to the Orgyard to neigh. The march on the radio gives way to calls to procure willow bark. The trampling and dancing on the spot continues until midnight - until the invalid Zhachev starts, rolling up in a wheelchair, knocking people to the ground to rest.

The compassionate dreamer Voshchev wanders around the village and collects all the orphaned rubbish in a bag. He pities these useless objects, like lonely, forgotten people. When Voshchev returns to the Orgdvor, the Activist busily brings the rubbish from his bag into the receipt sheet of collective farm property, and then, against signature, gives it to little Nastya as toys.

Chiklin, passing by the smithy, hears from there the energetic blows of a bear-hammer. The blacksmith explains to him: Misha, having learned about the creation of a collective farm and seeing how a red revolutionary slogan was hung on a nearby wattle fence, began to “buzz” on the iron with such enthusiasm that now there is no way to stop him.

Platonov "Pit", chapter 10 - summary

Waking up in the morning, the entire collective farm gathers to the forge, from where the blows of the hammer do not cease to be heard. Next to the slogan “For the Party, for fidelity to it, for hard work that breaks through the doors to the future for the proletariat” hanging on the wattle fence, the bear continues to tirelessly strike the iron. Chiklin helps him.

The men notice that the blows are too strong. Chiklin and the Bear crush iron as an enemy of life, and they harden it incorrectly - horseshoes and teeth for harrows turn out to be brittle. But in the heat of the proletarian labor impulse, the forgers do not notice this. Only by the threat of being expelled from the collective farm can they be driven away from the anvil.

Engineer Prushevsky, with his characteristic sadness, thinks at the wattle fence that even the conquest of the stars is unlikely to change the essence of human life: in the bowels of distant planets there are the same copper ores, and the Supreme Economic Council will still be needed there. He is brought out of his thoughts by the exclamations of the local youth, who call him to the reading room to start a cultural revolution.

Platonov "Pit", chapter 11 - summary

Having caught a cold during the collective farm trampling on the spot under the march of the great campaign, Nastya becomes seriously ill. A rider on a hot horse flies into the village with directives from the district. One of them severely accuses the Activist: he has run into the leftist swamp of right-wing opportunism and therefore is a wrecker of the party, an objective enemy of the proletariat and must be immediately removed from the leadership forever. Realizing that he will never again take a district post, the Activist immediately loses the desire to serve the masses. He even takes off his jacket from the sick Nastya, which he had previously allowed to cover her. In response, Chiklin gives the Activist a blow with his powerful hand, like a sledgehammer. The activist falls and dies. Voshchev is elected the new head of the collective farm. The body of the Activist is thrown into the same river, along which he himself recently rafted his kulaks.

Chiklin, Zhachev and Prushevsky return to the city, taking Nastya with them. They see that the foundation pit is already covered with snow, and their hut is empty. Zhachev, after a new run-in with Pashkin, takes out a bottle of cream and two cakes for Nastya. But the girl cannot be saved: she dies. Voshchev, who arrived from the village with the entire collective farm on socialized horses, is late to see Nastya alive. Chiklin, trying to stifle his longing for the girl, digs deep into the snow-covered ditch all night. All the kolkhoz peasants join him.

For Nastya, Chiklin hollows out a special grave in stone and carefully buries it, covering it with a granite slab.