Andrey Platonov – peer and victim of the century

On January 5, 1951, the 51-year-old author of The Pit and Chevengur, the writer Andrei Platonov, passed away in his Moscow apartment after a long illness.

An obituary signed by almost all the leading writers of that time was published in Literaturnaya Gazeta, which, after a brief biography, stated that “Andrei Platonov was closely connected with the Soviet people, devoted all the strength of his heart to him and gave him his talent.”

However, as the writer’s widow, Maria Alexandrovna, later recalled, a month before that, “three fellows from the MGB came to pick him up. (Platonov has not gotten out of bed for a long time – approx. S.I.) – I showed them to him, melting – “take it.” They waved their hand and left.”

(The memoirs of Maria Alexandrovna Platonova are quoted from the book by Alexei Varlamov “Andrey Platonov”, published in the ZhZL series: chapter 24 “On Sunday at Christmas”).

According to the researcher of creativity and biographer of Platonov, candidate of philological sciences Alexei Varlamov, information about the last years of his life is scarce, since, starting from the second half of the 40s, he was already a seriously ill person: the writer was slowly and painfully killed by tuberculosis, which, According to most memoirists, he contracted the disease from his son, Plato, who died of the same disease at the age of 20 on January 4, 1943.

Then Andrei Platonov from the front, where he was a war correspondent, was summoned to Moscow by his wife. As the writer Semyon Lipkin recalled, Platonov, who loved all of Totik very much, “in some kind of madness kissed” his dead son on the lips, ”and, perhaps, it was then that he became infected.

Platon contracted tuberculosis in “places not so remote”, where he got at the age of 15 in April 1938 because he, along with his older friend, the son of the writer Nikolai Arkhipov Igor, allegedly wanted to inform the correspondent of the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Herman Pertsgen, who lived in the same house with them on Tverskoy Boulevard, received some terrible “state secrets”.

As her mother, Maria Alexandrovna, recalled, in April 1938, Plato was suddenly arrested right on the street. According to her, “Andrei Platonov ran around the city in despair and grief for several days, trying to find out where he had disappeared, whether he had died under a car, searched in hospitals, in morgues, until he found out the true reason for the disappearance.”

(The memoirs of Maria Alexandrovna Platonova are quoted from the book by Alexei Varlamov “Andrei Platonov”, published in the ZhZL series: chapter 18 “Word and deed”).

In the certificate of arrest of 15-year-old Platon Andreevich Platonov, there were three points:

“1) He was a member of a fascist youth organization that set itself the goal of overthrowing the Soviet regime and establishing a fascist dictatorship in the USSR.
2) Engaged in recruiting into the organization among young students for anti-Soviet and espionage work.
3) The initiator of establishing contacts with a resident of German intelligence – a foreign correspondent Perzgen.

Despite the fact that these two teenagers, of course, could not know any “state secrets and military secrets”, and their letter to a German journalist was just a hoax, the eldest – Igor Arkhipov, who was already 18 years old, was sentenced to death, and the youngest – Plato was given 10 years in the camps and sent to Norilsk. He stayed there for two and a half years. And then a miracle happened – now this story has been confirmed, there are letters, all the archives have been opened – Platonov managed to get a review of the case and get his son out of the camp in the fortieth year. But, unfortunately, staying there tragically affected Plato’s health, and two years later he died.

What a blow the death of his beloved son was for Andrey Platonov can be judged from the entry made from his words on February 15, 1943:

“I feel like a completely empty person, physically empty. There are such summer beetles. They fly and don’t even buzz. Because they are empty through and through. The death of my son opened my eyes to my life. What is it now, my life? For what and whom should I live? The Soviet government took my son away from me – the Soviet government stubbornly wanted for many years to take away the title of writer from me as well. But no one can take my creativity away from me. They still print me, gritting their teeth. But I am a stubborn person. Suffering only hardens me. I will never leave my position anywhere. Everyone thinks that I am against the communists. No, I am against those who are destroying our country…”.

As the newspapers reported in January 1951, after the death of Andrei Platonov, “a civil memorial service will take place on Sunday, January 7 this year. at 2 p.m., at the Union of Soviet Writers (Vorovsky Street, 52). The funeral will take place on the same day at 3 o’clock at the Armenian cemetery (behind the Krasnopresnenskaya outpost).”

He was buried on Orthodox Christmas Sunday. The description of the funeral made by Yuri Nagibin in his diary has been preserved:

“This very Russian man was buried at the Armenian cemetery. <...> The coffin was placed on the ground, at the edge of the grave, and here Platonov’s younger brother, a sailor who flew to the funeral from the Far East literally at the last minute, wept very well. He had a red, Platonic pretty face. It seemed to me that he was crying so bitterly because only today, at the sight of a large crowd that came to pay his last debt to his brother, wreaths from the Writers’ Union, Detgiz and Red Star, he believed that his brother was really good writer. As for the widow, she suffered too much grief in her life together with the deceased to succumb to such “evidence” …

– Is Fadeev here? – some fat-legged lackey from outside observers asked me.

“No,” I answered, and added: “There is Tvardovsky.

– And where? the lackey asked.

The one over there in the blue coat is smoking.

Speaking of Tvardovsky. One of the best types of education is peasant education. Unfortunately, it appears only in such important and extreme cases as birth or death. All the Jews present at the funeral, and they were the majority, were in confusion about when to take off and when to put on a hat, whether it is possible to move or to stand in mournful silence. Tvardovsky, in all his actions, was impeccable. He bared his head just in time, he put on his hat just when it should have been done. He approached the coffin, when standing still would have been indifference to the deceased, he without any tension kept the pillar of salt immobile, when, according to folk tradition, a quiet angel should fly by. He even lit a cigarette appropriately – as if giving vent to severe male grief.

When the clods of earth began to fall inaudibly into the grave, Ariy Davydovich made his way to the fence and, with an awkward, womanish gesture, threw a clod of earth into the grave. His awkward gesture for a moment acquired the significance of a symbol: the last lump of dirt thrown at Platonov.

As Yuri Nagibin summed up, “having seen enough of these most decent funerals, I promised myself never to die …”.

Sergei Ishkov.