In this article we will talk about the story that Platonov created - “The Pit”. Summary you will find it, as well as the analysis, in our work. We will try to cover the topic succinctly and as concisely as possible. Platonov's work "The Pit" talks about collectivization, its essence and consequences.

The beginning of the story

Voshchev, when he turns 30, is fired from the factory where he earned his living on his birthday. The document said that he was fired for the reason that he could not keep up with other employees because he thought a lot. Leaves town main character. He, tired on the road, finds a pit in which he settles down for the night. But around midnight, a mower working in a vacant lot nearby comes up to him and wakes Voshchev up.

How Voshchev gets into the pit

He explains to him that construction is planned in this place, and it will begin soon, and invites the main character to settle down in the barracks for the night.

We continue to describe the work that Platonov created (“The Pit”). Summary further developments following. Waking up with other workers, he has breakfast at their expense, and at this time he is told that a large building will be built here in which the proletariat will live. They bring a shovel to Voshchev. The house engineer has already made the markings and explains to the builders that soon about 50 more workers will join them, and in the meantime they become the main team. Our hero, along with other workers, begins to dig, because he thinks that if they are still alive, working at such hard work, then he can do it too.

Pashkin's visits

Continues Platonov's "Pit". A summary of further events is as follows. Little by little everyone gets used to work. Pashkin, the chairman of the regional trade union council, often visits the construction site and monitors whether the workers are on time. He says that the pace of construction is too slow, and that they do not live under socialism, and therefore their salaries directly depend on how they work.

Worker Safronov

Voshchev thinks about his future during long evenings. Everything about it is common knowledge. The most diligent and hardworking worker is Safronov. He dreams of finding a radio to listen to in the evenings about various social achievements, but his disabled colleague explains that listening to an orphan girl is much more interesting.

Chiklin finds mother and daughter

At an abandoned tile factory, not far from the construction site, Chiklin discovers a seriously ill mother and daughter. Before his death, he kisses a woman and realizes that this is his first love, with whom he kissed in his early youth. Shortly before her death, the mother asks the girl not to tell who she is. The daughter is very surprised and asks Chiklin why her mother died: due to illness or because she was a potbelly stove. The girl leaves with the worker.

Radio tower

The story that Platonov created (“The Pit”) continues. The content of further events is as follows. Pashkin installs a radio tower at a construction site. Demands for workers come from there without interruption. Safronov doesn’t like the fact that he can’t answer. Zhachev is tired of this sound and asks for an answer to these messages. Safronov regrets that he cannot gather the workers.

The girl who arrived from the factory with Chiklin asks about the meridians, but since he knows nothing about it, he says that these are partitions separating him from the bourgeoisie.

After work, the diggers gather around the girl and ask her where she is from, who she is, and who her parents are. Remembering her mother’s instructions, she explains that she does not know her parents, but did not want to be born under the bourgeoisie, but was born as soon as Lenin began to rule.

Safonov notes that Soviet power is the deepest, because even small children know Lenin, without knowing their relatives.

Workers go to the collective farm

Kozlov and Safronov are sent together to a collective farm. This is where they die. The workers are replaced by Chiklin and Voshev, as well as some others. The Organizational Court gathers. Chiklin and Voshev are beating the raft. Chiklin plans to find kulaks in order to send them along the river on it. Poor people celebrate under the radio, enjoying life on the collective farm. In the morning everyone goes to the forge, where the sound of a hammer is constantly heard.

Residents for work are recruited by construction workers. In the evening, those gathered approach the pit, but there is no one in the houses, and there is snow at the construction site.

Nastenka is dying

Platonov's novel "The Pit" continues. Chiklin invites people to light a fire, since Nastenka, a little girl, is sick from the cold and needs to be warmed up. A lot of people walk around the barracks, but no one is interested in the girl, since everyone only thinks about collectivization. In the end Nastenka dies. Voshchev is very upset. He loses the meaning of life because he could not protect the innocent child who trusted him.

The final

Platonov's "Pit" ends with the following events. We present a brief summary of them to your attention. Zhachev explains why he assembled the collective farm, but the main character explained that the workers want to join the proletariat. He grabs Chiklin’s tools, a shovel and a crowbar, and goes to the end of the hole to dig. Turning around, he notices that all the people are also digging, from poor to rich, with wild zeal. Even horse-drawn carts take part in the work: stones are loaded onto them. Only Zhachev cannot work, because after the death of the child he will not come to his senses. He thinks that he is a freak of imperialism, because communism is nonsense, in his opinion, which is why he grieves so much for an innocent child. In the end, Zhachev decides to kill Pashkin, after which he goes to the city, never to return. Nastya is buried by Chiklin.

"Pit" (Platonov): analysis

The theme of the story is the construction of socialism in the countryside and city. In the city, it represents the erection of a building into which the entire class of the proletariat must enter to settle. In the countryside, it consists of founding a collective farm, as well as eliminating the kulaks. The heroes of the story are busy implementing this project. Voshchev, the hero who continues Platonov’s series of searches for the meaning of life, is fired due to thoughtfulness, and he ends up with the diggers digging a foundation pit. Its scale continues to grow as it works and eventually reaches enormous proportions. Accordingly, the future “common home” is becoming increasingly large-scale. Two workers sent to the village to carry out collectivization are killed by “kulaks”. Their comrades deal with the latter, bringing their work to an end.

The title of the work “The Pit” (Platonov), which we are analyzing, takes on a symbolic, generalized meaning. This is a common cause, hopes and efforts, the collectivization of faith and life. Everyone here, in the name of the general, renounces the personal. The title contains direct and figurative meanings: this is the construction of a temple, the “virgin” of the earth, the “shovelling” of life. But the vector is directed inward, downward, not upward. It leads to the “bottom” of life. Collectivism is gradually beginning to resemble more and more a mass grave where hope is buried. The funeral of Nastya, who had become, as it were, the common daughter of the workers, is the ending of the story. For the girl, one of the walls of this pit becomes a grave.

The heroes of the story are sincere, hard-working, conscientious workers, as shown by the content of Platonov’s “The Pit,” a novel that describes their characters in some detail. These heroes strive for happiness and are ready to work selflessly for it. At the same time, it does not consist in satisfying personal needs (like Pashkin, who lives in contentment and satiety), but in achieving the highest level of life for everyone. The meaning of the work of these workers is, in particular, Nastya’s future. The gloomier and more tragic is the ending of the work. The result is a reflection on the body of Voshchev’s girl.

Analysis of an episode from A.K. Platonov’s story “The Pit”

Based on the story by A.K. Platonov “For future use” I.V. Stalin wrote: “Bastard.” And here in front of me is an excerpt from another work of this “scum” - the story “The Pit”. I would like to understand what the writer did to deserve such a harsh assessment of the “leader of all nations.”

The story was written between December 1929 and April 1930, that is, not in the footsteps of the most important historical events, and during them: - during accelerated industrialization and complete collectivization.

It is known that the attitude towards these events at that time was far from unambiguous. What is Andrei Platonov’s point of view?

For me, the first paragraph of the proposed passage became a kind of overture to understanding the author’s position. Somehow I suddenly thought, why does the action take place in an alley, that is, as the dictionary testifies, a short street that serves to connect longitudinal (that is, parallel?) streets? One of these streets is the old, pre-revolutionary road of life, and the other is the happy future, in the name of which the revolution was carried out? Platonov will say that “no one walked right through the alley because it ran up against the blank wall of the cemetery.” (!!!). There Now “deserted”, there is no one, only “one unknown old man.” Why so affectionately, lovingly, with sympathy: old man OK ? Is it because he was about to goback to the old days?

Apparently, A. Platonov is not an ardent supporter of revolutionary changes.

The road motif stated in the first paragraph is repeated several times in the same vein. They usually go forward and upward. Chiklin, “with the power of shame and sadness,” entered the old building and “fell somewhere into the lower darkness.” A woman leaves this life because she “became bored” and “tired out.”

I pay attention to the lexical repetition of the word now: “I now almost don't care", "I Now I don’t feel sorry for you and don’t need anyone”, “they’re all potbelly stoves now they are dying", "now every last one walks around in leather pants”... You don’t feel happiness and stormy jubilation about the present, do you?

In addition to the present, there is also the past. It is described in detail, with admiration and longing for the loss of it, in the inner speech of an unknown man with yellow eyes: “His melancholy mind imagined a village in the rye, and the wind rushed over it and quietly turned a wooden mill, grinding the daily, peaceful bread. He lived like this recently, feeling full in his stomach and family happiness in his soul; and no matter how many years he looked from the village into the distance and into the future, he saw at the end of the plain only the merging of the sky with the earth, and above him he had sufficient light from the sun and stars.”A clear desire, like that unknown old man, to goback to the old days!

What about the image of the future? Why don’t Platonov’s heroes strive for him with enthusiasm? Even the activist Safronov dreams that “enthusiasm would occur.” So it doesn't exist? What is there? "Conservation"? Zhachev dreams of the future: “Zhachev decided in the morning that as soon as this girl and children like her mature a little, he will finish off all the great inhabitants of his area; he alone knew that the USSR was populated quite a lot by pure enemies of socialism, egoists and vipers of the future world, and secretly consoled himself with the fact that someday soon he would kill their entire mass, leaving only proletarian infancy and pure orphanhood alive.” For Voshchev and other diggers, the future is “a calm land filled with their bones.” It’s a bleak picture... I don’t want to see such a future... Probably, this is not what we dreamed of. “Zhachev, and like him Voshchev, felt unreasonably ashamed from long speeches on the radio; nothing seemed to them against the speaker and instructor, but only more and more felt private a shame". Maybe that’s why Chiklin “reluctantly” reports that he is from the proletariat? And he dreams of explaining the whole world to the child, “so that he can live safely.”

The motif of fear, which clearly manifested itself in the story, testifies to the brilliant insight of its author, who was able to feel and predict terrible events long before the year 1937. Fears force the wise old man to fold “his reverent face for attentive expression.” Fear for the fate of her daughter dictates the mother’s dying words: “Don’t tell anyone that you were born from me...” “...I’m afraid! Otherwise he would have left long ago,” the unknown old man repeatedly repeats.

(“Back to the old days,” remember?) And the girl, this sprout of the future, “she knew that she was present in the proletariat, and she looked after herself, as his mother had said for a long time.” “An unknown man with yellow eyes was whining in the corner of the barracks about his same grief, but he didn’t say why, but tried to please everyone as much as possible”...

Who are the heroes so afraid of? This passage does not contain their names or their positions. But they exist, I’m also afraid of them, because they will “starve”, “arrest”, “touch” so much that it doesn’t seem like much, they will “say” such that you get tired of justifying yourself... There are only four predicate verbs in indefinite-personal sentences, but those whom the writer had in mind recognized themselves! Hence the ban on publishing the novel. It is known that “The Pit” was first published only in 1987.

The more you read this work of Platonov (as, indeed, his other books), the more weighty and informative each of his words seems. Something opens up that I hadn’t noticed before. For example, Chiklin, in a conversation with Nastya, declares that he is “nothing.” And in my ears I have a bravura melody and the words: “We are ours, we will build a new world, whoever was nothing will become everything!” Maybe this is exactly what the author was counting on and this is nothing more than a so-called allusion?

The episode ends with an idyllic picture of Nastya admiring this sprout of the future (after all, this small creature will dominate their graves and live on a calm earth filled with their bones)like this different people: the thoughtful Voshchev, the exhausted diggers, the Zhachev who hates everyone, the activist... They were all united by the dream of a bright future. Will it just come? It’s unlikely, even if through joint efforts the heroes “as suddenly as possible” finish the construction of the foundation pit.

Platonov, as it were, anticipates the ending of the work, putting the following words into Safronov’s mouth: “the actual inhabitant of socialism” lies in front of them “unconscious”, “at rest”...

And I remember Blok’s: “Rest, O Lord, the soul of your servant...”

And it’s not in vain: the ending of the novel is known...

Platonov completed his work “The Pit” in 1930. In the book, on the title page, Platonov specially put down the following dates: December 1929 to April 1930. It was at this time that collectivization was at its peak in the USSR, which is what we're talking about in the second part of the story “The Pit”.

Dissenters were not tolerated at that time. Therefore, ideas that undermined the stand were eradicated. Therefore, at this time, ideas that were against communism and the system at that time as a whole were punished, so writers hid such ideas behind symbols and images. But this did not help either - Platonov never saw his novel published in his homeland.

The very name of Platonov’s story “The Pit” is a symbol. The foundation pit is the construction site where the action of the first part of the story takes place, but it also has another meaning - a hole or a grave. Any work, especially one that appears at the peak of a significant phenomenon, is a mirror reflection of events taking place in society “here and now.” And in this sense, Platonov’s story is the same mirror reflection, more vivid in its symbols and meanings even than reality itself.

It is perhaps impossible to list and reveal all the images of “The Pit”. Not only each new reader, but also each new reading reveals more and more new layers of symbolic soil in this “Pit”. It is impossible not to note Platonov’s own, individual style of presentation, his special words and expressions.

The main character, and those around him, throughout the entire work are busy searching for the truth and meaning of life. At the beginning of the story, he is even fired from his job because he became lost in thought, which distracted him from production. By the end of the work, the hero finds neither meaning nor truth.

Also running through the work is a theme related to the peak of collectivization. What the state has decided to do in the country, and how people cope with it.

To do this, Platonov divides the story into two parts; in the first, the actual construction of that very “pit” takes place and this happens in the city. That is, we can imagine what the structure was like in the city. The second part shows the way of life in the village. But in the end we return again to the pit.

The theme of death is one of the central ones in the work, as an inevitable result of the meaninglessness of everything that happens. Critics note that Platonov was not against Soviet Russia itself; he simply, as a citizen and writer, doubted the correctness of the path chosen by the country. This confirms what is clearly being read - the most terrible thing in the work is the death of the heroes. Death does not provide justification for the chosen path. Just as even such a big deal as the construction of a common house - the Pit - does not justify humiliation and slavery.

Analysis 2

In fact, Platonov wrote the story “The Pit” in 1930, but it was published in 1987. The book talks about collectivization in the USSR.

In those days they did not like dissidents very much. Therefore, all ideas that could undermine the idea of ​​the system were immediately liquidated and eradicated. Authors and writers who openly expressed their opinions against communism were punished. In this regard, Platonov hid his thoughts behind images and certain symbols. But, despite this, the story “The Pit” was never published.

Already in the title of the story you can see an encrypted symbol. The pit is a place at a construction site. This is where the events described in the first part take place. Another pit can be deciphered as a pit or grave. This great work was born during the period of significant political events. The work “Pit” is a mirror reflection of everything that happened in those years. The story contains a lot of symbolic images, secret signs that can only be deciphered by people who know the history of the USSR well.

It is impossible to remember and decipher all the images that are in the work “The Pit” at once and immediately. This story can be reread several times and each time you will be able to see new symbols in it. This makes “The Pit” exciting and unusual. In addition, Platonov has his own and unique manner of presenting information. The author, describing the situation, chooses special expressions.

The main character and everyone around him are in constant search for the meaning of life. This continues throughout the entire story. Thoughts about the truth of existence distract the main character from work. It is for this reason that he is fired. But the worst thing is that he never found the meaning of life.

The work clearly traces the description of collectivization, which reached highest point. The story tells about the actions government authorities and about how ordinary people coped with the problems that the state created for them. Therefore, Platonov divided his creation into several parts. In the first, the actions take place at a construction site; here the life of city residents is more described. The second part talks about life in the village.

One of the strongest images in the work is the girl Nastya, who has no home. It acts as a symbol of faith and hope. As a result, she dies, and her body remains walled up in the wall of the new building.

The theme of death is vividly described in the work “Kotlova”. This is a symbol of the meaninglessness of current events in the country. Because the writer Platonov did not support the actions of the Soviet authorities.

Several interesting essays

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  This story seems quite instructive to me. Nora – good girl, but she is used to obeying others, and this does not lead her to her own happiness, of course.

• Characteristics and image of Ivan Bezdomny in the novel The Master and Margarita Bulgakova essay

  In the novel, the image of a mad poet plays a fairly important role. First he “shadows” Berlioz, and after the Master himself, as I understand it.

• Characteristics and image of Dina in the story Prisoner of the Caucasus by Tolstoy essay

  Dina is an unusually kind and brave girl. She is modest and shy, as befits all mountain women. She gradually comes into contact with Zhilin, who, with tenderness and enviable skill, sculpts dolls from clay

• Essay on the painting (drawing) Pharaoh's army on the campaign (description)

  In front of me is an illustration of one of the many historical subjects - the campaign of the Pharaoh’s army.

The most pressing problem of our time is the protection of what surrounds us. The threat of environmental disaster looms over the planet. And a lot depends on whether the younger generation can protect nature from the thoughtless ax

They died anyway, why do they need coffins!

A. Platonov. Pit

TaleA. Platonov’s “Pit” was written in difficult years for the Soviet country (1929-1930), which remained in the memory of many as the time of the final ruin of the peasantry and the formation of collective farms, which changed not only life, but also the consciousness of people. These and many other accompanying processes (the eternal search for truth, an attempt to build a happy future, etc.) are reflected in the story using a monolithic alloy of comic form and essentially tragic content.

Platonov’s humor seems to me to be somewhat akin to Bulgakov’s humor: it is not just “laughter through tears,” but laughter from the understanding that it should not be the way it is—a kind of “black humor.” The reality of the collectivization period was so absurd that it seemed that the sad and the funny had swapped places. And that’s why we feel uneasy when we laugh at the village peasant who gave his horse to the collective farm and then lies there with a samovar tied to his stomach: “I’m afraid to fly away, put... some kind of weight on his shirt.” Not only a smile, but also a painful melancholy is caused by the indignant exclamation of the little girl Nastya before the funeral of Kozlov and Safronov: “They died anyway, why do they need coffins!” Indeed, why do the dead need coffins, if now the living builders of the “bright future” sleep so well in them and if children’s toys feel so comfortable there?!

The grotesque situations created by the author (or time itself?) amazingly combine the real and the fantastic, lively humor and bitter sarcasm. People are building something incomprehensible that no one really understands. the right house happiness, but the matter progresses no further than the digging of a common mass grave - a pit for the foundation, because in the poverty, hunger and cold that surround people in the present, few survive. The episode with the man who “just in case” prepared to die was funny and scary at the same time: he had been lying in a coffin for several weeks and periodically added oil to the burning lamp on his own. It seems that the dead and the living, the inanimate and the conscious have switched places. What can we say if the main and respected enemy of the kulaks and friend of the proletarians is the bear Medvedev, a hammerman from the forge. Intuition never fails the beast, which works for a “happy future” along with people, and it always correctly finds the “kulak element.” Material from the site

Another inexhaustible source of Platonov’s humor and sarcasm is the speech of the characters in the story, which fully reflects the next area of ​​excesses and nonsense of this awkward time. A parodic reinterpretation and ironic play on political language saturates the characters’ speech with clichéd phrases, categorical labels, and makes it look like a bizarre combination of slogans. Such a language is also inanimate, artificial, but it also evokes a smile: “milk was promoted from the carts,” “the question arose fundamentally, and it must be put back in the entire theory of feelings and mass psychosis...” The scary thing is that even the language of a small Nastya already turns out to be a monstrous fusion of speeches and slogans that she hears from the ubiquitous activists and propagandists: “The main one is Lenin, and the second is Budyonny. When they weren’t there, and only the bourgeoisie lived, I wasn’t born because I didn’t want to. And as Lenin became, so did I!”

Thus, the interweaving of the comic and tragic in A. Platonov’s story “The Pit” allowed the writer to expose many imbalances in the social and economic life of the young Soviet country, which had a painful impact on the lives of the common people. But it has long been known: when people no longer have the strength to cry, they laugh...

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The story “The Pit” by Platonov is one of the most brilliant, perfect creations of the writer. Its concept dates back to the autumn of 1929, the work was completed in April 1930.

“The Pit” begins with a phrase that has become last years as familiar as “At the gates of the provincial town of NN...” or “In what year - calculate, in what land - guess...” and many other principles that have become firmly entrenched in the consciousness of the Russian reader. “On the day of the thirtieth anniversary of his personal life, Voshchev was given a settlement from a small mechanical plant, where he obtained funds for his existence. In the dismissal document they wrote to him that he was being removed from production due to the growth of weakness and thoughtfulness in him amid the general pace of work.” How capacious and informative the first paragraph is - the beginning! It not only contains the plot of the action, but also suggests the type of hero close to the author - a contemplator, a thoughtful observer, similar to Foma Pukhov, Alexander Dvanov. Here one of the conflicts of the story is set: a living, suffering person, deprived of the most necessary things, and a society that demands only the pace of work, but does not see the individual. You can already feel Platonov’s unsmooth, “wrong” language. In the unusual expression “on the day of the thirtieth anniversary of personal life” two last words are redundant, but in them the scale of the narrative is felt - not everyday, but existential.

After being expelled from the factory, Voshchev finds himself in another city, to build a pit: “... in a year the entire local class of the proletariat will leave the small-property city and occupy a monumental new house" And in 10-20 years there should appear “in the middle of the world a tower, where the workers of the whole earth will enter for an eternal, happy settlement”; in these lines, a mythological element breaks through the thickness of the concrete social.

A team of diggers is working at the construction site - about twenty people, silent, emaciated and “thin as the dead.” Their tortured enthusiasm borders on extreme fatigue and apathy; “having resigned themselves to general fatigue,” the artel falls asleep as they live, in their clothes, so as not to work on unbuttoning buttons, but to save strength for production. The artisans eat “in silence, without looking at each other,” automatically, “without acknowledging the price of the food.”

Among the heroes are the diggers Chiklin, Safronov, Kozlov, the engineer Prushevsky, and the legless invalid Zhachev. The digging of the pit is supervised by Pashkin, chairman of the regional trade union council; he constantly urges the workers: “The pace is quiet!”

In the forgotten premises of a non-working tile factory, Chiklin discovers a dying woman. This is the daughter of the former owner of the plant; Before her death, she bequeaths her daughter Nastya not to reveal to anyone that her mother was a “potbelly stove.” Chiklin takes Nastya with him, she becomes everyone's favorite.

Compositionally, the narrative is divided into two parts: urban, or more precisely, “pit”, and rural. The plot space of the village reveals itself suddenly and ominously: two men come to the construction site - they take away coffins, prepared by the peasants for themselves for future use and hidden in the ravine where they are digging a foundation pit. Voshchev leaves after the men, happy that he is “no longer a participant in crazy circumstances.”

The artel dispatches Safronov and Kozlov to help the collective farm, but it soon becomes known that they have been killed. They are replaced by Chiklin and Voshchev, and later the rest of the heroes join them. In the village there is a “public works activist for the implementation of government regulations”, driving the poor and middle peasants into the collective farm named after the General Line. With the help of Chiklin and the “residual farm laborer” of the region, the hammer bear, dispossession is taking place. Those deemed to be kulaks are sent to “distant silence” “by means of rafting.” The activist is waiting for approval and new instructions. A directive arrives in which the collective farm activist is accused of “wandering into the leftist swamp of right-wing opportunism,” and the activist himself is declared a “saboteur of the party.” Chiklin kills him.

The workers, together with Nastya, return to construction. The girl gets sick and dies. The entire collective farm comes to the construction site: “The men want to join the proletariat.”

Chiklin buries Nastya at the base of the pit.

The title of the story and the time of its creation evoke associations with the era of the first five-year plans for those starting to read. Active construction was underway (at the expense of resources pumped out of the village), newspapers constantly published photographs of enterprises, power plants, residential buildings and foundation pits being built. "Construction" becomes key concept, a sign of the era, the language includes the expressions “party building”, “front of socialist construction”, “personal construction”, etc. The theme of transformations in various areas of life was mastered in those years by L. Leonov, V. Kataev, M. Shaginyan, A. Makarenko, I. Ehrenburg. The titles of “industrial” novels dedicated to industrialization are typical: “Blast Furnace”, “Hydrocentral”, “Time, Forward!”. The creation of a new world is shown in them as a process that requires enormous effort, but at the same time the general atmosphere remains joyful, creative, and optimistic. Platonov sees this time differently. On the last page of the manuscript of the story the dates are indicated: December 29 - April 30. It is natural to understand them as indicating the time of the beginning and end of the work, but at the same time, these dates coincide with the boundaries of the historical period in which the action of the story takes place. IN real life this period was marked, on the one hand, by I. Stalin’s speech “On issues of agrarian policy in the USSR” (December 1929) - about the need to “break the kulaks and eliminate them as a class”; on the other hand, the leader’s cynical articles in Pravda: “Dizziness from success” (March 1930) and “Answer to fellow collective farmers” (April 1930) - they contain violent measures to create collective farms, the fight against the middle peasants, “hasty the pace" of collectivization is called "bungling", "running ahead", "distorting the party line"; responsibility for these “mistakes” was placed on local leaders. The socio-political situation in the country is reflected in the text so accurately that it can be considered as a historical document.

The directive received by an activist from the region openly parodies Stalin’s speech: “... phenomena of excess, zabegovshchina, overzealousness and any sliding along the right and left slopes from the sharpened sharpness of a clear line were noted.” There are several such scenes in the story where one can find a kind of “dialogue” between Platonov and Stalin.

Pashkin’s call to “start a class struggle against the village stumps of capitalism” and “throw (there) something special from the working class” is associated with the decisions of the Plenum of the Central Committee (November 1929) to mobilize 25 thousand proletarians for permanent work on collective farms.

The child, returning the hard, tasteless candy, declares to the activist: “Finish it yourself, there is no jam in the middle: this is complete collectivization, we have little joy!” Playing off the party slogan, which came into everyday speech in 1929-1930, Platonov uses the word “solid” in all sorts of combinations: solid people, solid rocky candy, solid silence.

The historical accuracy of the narrative consists not so much in reflecting specific events and realities of life in the “year of the great turning point”, but in conveying the features of the mythologized, utopian consciousness of the organizers of the earthly paradise. The diggers are convinced that socialism is nearby and its approach depends only on their hard work. For the sake of the child, “the future joyful object,” they begin work an hour earlier, “in order to “build a pit as suddenly as possible,” just like in Chevengur, where the same dreamers firmly know: “The rye will not yet ripen, but socialism will be ready!” » The word of such heroes is “pre-analytical”, it “shorthandizes a person’s very first impression of the world”, because the thinking of the “mass person” is intuitive, limited by incoherent sensory perceptions. This type of thinking is characteristic of the character central to the group of workers - Nikita Chiklin, who resembles Chepurny in his ability to sympathize, kind, caring towards his comrades, Nastya, but merciless towards his enemies. “He could hardly think, and he grieved greatly about it - involuntarily, he only had to feel and silently worry.”

Among the artisans, the “conscious” socialist stands out, the “most active” one is Safronov, who strives to correspond to the “prosperous line” and ideological guidelines. He feels above the “gray mass” and condemns “human uncultured dullness.” His speech is one of the channels through which the sophisticated, tongue-tied element of official speeches and directives enters the story. So he asks the disabled person Zhachev: “...bring this plaintive girl to us on your transport, we will begin to live more coherently from her melodic appearance.” Such speech is characterized by a mixture of styles - clerical, newspaper, colloquial, non-normative use of syntactic models, artificiality of the dictionary, and inaccurate understanding of the meaning of words. Safronov constantly “makes” his face (“actively thinking”), his voice (“powerful,” “moralizing,” “supreme voice of power”), his gait (either “intelligent” or “easy leading”). Everything in his behavior seems artificial, mechanical, deliberate. But he also experiences moments of sadness and doubt; “If you look only down at the dry fine soil and grass... then there was no hope in life...

- Why, Nikit, is the field so boring? Is there really melancholy within the whole world, and only within us is the five-year plan?”

What M. Gorky wrote to Platonov about his understanding of “Chevengur” - “you gave the coverage of reality a lyrical-satirical character” - can largely be attributed to “The Pit”, to the way of depicting the characters.

The worst worker in the pit, Kozlov, is depicted in an ironic way. This is an opportunist, he leaves the construction site due to illness, but returns as a public figure - in a gray three-piece, plumper, confident. He reads books to memorize “formulations, slogans, poems, testaments, all sorts of words of wisdom, theses of various acts, resolutions, stanzas of songs, etc.” and then frighten “already frightened employees with his scientific knowledge, outlook and knowledge.” He begins each of his speeches to the working people with “certain self-sufficient words”: “Well, good, well, great.” Having eliminated “as a feeling” love “for one average lady,” he sends her “the last final postcard: “Where there used to be a table of food, Now there is a coffin.” Among the new diggers who arrived for construction, there are no longer enthusiasts; everyone “came up with the idea of ​​​​future salvation” from the foundation pit. And there are those who are preparing to repeat Kozlov’s path, “to join the party and hide in the leadership apparatus.”

The digging of the pit is supervised by Pashkin, chairman of the regional trade union council; he constantly urges the workers: “The pace is quiet!” To characterize this character, the techniques of satire and grotesque are used. Pashkin lives “in a solid brick house,” as he is concerned that “it will be impossible to burn out”; he improves his health and “scientifically preserves his body.” This figure captures the features of a new layer - the Soviet bureaucracy, the most unprincipled and dexterous. The brilliant scene of Pashkin’s conversation with his wife will be included in the collection of revealing “marital” scenes in Russian literature (remember the dialogues of the Gorichs and Manilovs): “Pashkin’s wife knew how to think out of boredom: “You know what, Lyovochka?.. You should somehow organize this Zhachev , and then he took it and moved him to a position... After all, every person needs to have at least a small dominant importance... " - "Olgusha, little frog, you have a giant sense of the masses! Let me get organized for this."

The theme of the intelligentsia and revolution is connected with the engineer Prushevsky in the story. The author of the project of the general proletarian house and the producer of the work, he is nevertheless closer to the workers, and they also do not take him into account. Unlike the diggers, he is aware of his position (“I’m being taken advantage of, but no one is happy”), feels thrown out of life, constantly experiences melancholy and thinks about death. The future seems empty and alien to him.

Chiklin brings Nastya, the daughter of a deceased potbelly stove, to the construction site; the girl becomes everyone's favorite. There is little childish or natural in her; she remembers her mother’s behest - to hide her origin: “... she knew that she was present in the proletariat, and she guarded herself.” Nastya avoids answering the question about her parents and prudently rushes to say: “I know who is in charge... The main one is Stalin, and the second is Budyonny.” It would seem that Nastya quickly and easily learns to evaluate people according to the class norms accepted here: “Only the bourgeoisie should die,” “Go kill them” (about fists); becomes ruthless: “They died anyway, why do they need coffins?” But listening to explanations about the liquidation of an entire class, one cannot help but ask: “Who will you be left with?” And he quickly gets tired and gets bored from these conversations: “I’m getting bored with you.”

In the village there is a “public works activist for the implementation of government regulations”, driving the poor and middle peasants into the collective farm named after the General Line. His role is terrible - he is an inspired executor of the cruel will of the Center. The activist does not have a name, he is a generalized image of a party leader, his features are sharpened and given a grotesque look. The activist does not know compassion for people; he only experiences strong feelings for government papers. At night, with the lamp not extinguished, he waits for a horseman to gallop out of the area; He reads each new paper “with the curiosity of future pleasure,” cries over it, admiring the signatures and stamps, and then “greedily” reports on its completion. Despite all the sincerity of his experiences, the activist is not entirely disinterested: he “did not want to be a member of the general orphanhood,” for it is better “to be an assistant of the avant-garde now and immediately have all the benefits of the future.” His activities sow seeds of suspicion, fear, and hypocrisy. Deprived of his parish, the humiliated priest does not want to live anymore, since “he was left without God, and God without man.” On the memorial leaflet he now includes those who still come into the church to light a candle, and at night he reports these names to the activist. The peasants do not even dare to “grief grief for the rest of the night” without the permission of this main man of the village.

The murders of Safronov and Kozlov open a chain of deaths that happen easily, as if “accidentally”, and do not cause regrets in anyone. The activist rejoices at yet another, “accidental” death: “And rightly so: in the region they won’t believe me that there was one killer, but two—that’s a completely kulak class and organization.” Death becomes commonplace.

An atmosphere of absurdity reigns around the activist. So, he conducts a “end-to-end interrogation” in search of the person who ate the rooster (he is silent about the latter, since he ate it himself). About the dead man who found himself next to Safronov and Kozlov, he reports that he “came here himself, lay down on the table between the deceased and personally died.”

The behavior of the men contrasts sharply with this madness. This is how they say goodbye to each other on the eve of joining the collective farm: “Everyone began to kiss the entire line of people, hugging someone else’s body, and all their lips sadly and friendly kissed everyone.

…. “Farewell, Egor,” we lived fiercely, but we end according to our conscience. After the kiss, people bowed to the ground - each to everyone.” In the face of a new life, equal to death for them, a simple person remembers the eternal, Christian laws. Hatred and enmity are opposed by a love-family relationship with one's neighbor.

The workers, along with the sick Nastya, return to the abandoned construction site. Before her death, Nastya asks Chiklin to bring her her mother’s “dead bones,” kisses and hugs them, and soon dies. The death of a girl named Anastasia (“resurrected”), who was a living socialist element for the builders and gave hope, warmth, and energy for the life of work, becomes a symbol of the collapse of the new social utopia.

The meaning of the title of the work and the entire story as you read it becomes filled with more and more complex, tragic content. The pit dug for the foundation of a grandiose building becomes not the beginning of a happy kingdom, but a death sentence for a social experiment, an abyss in which dreams, the present and the future are buried. There is no end to digging a hole (it will be “even wider and deeper”) - this is a symbol of collective self-destruction, self-destruction. Here is not only the author’s skeptical attitude towards revolutionary changes, but also bitter thoughts about man exceeding his physical and spiritual capabilities. This is a metaphysical melancholy from the “uncertainty of the place and role of man in the world order”, from the “futility of efforts to find harmony.”

"Pit" - philosophical work, here the writer’s close attention to ontological issues was reflected: the nature of being, the status of a living, spiritual being in the material world and in the natural world. The common proletarian home must not only accommodate oppressed people, but also become a refuge from the destructive influence of the world, and preserve the meaning of “common and separate existence.” These problems are revealed with particular force in pictures of nature, in the cross-cutting motifs of dying and death, boredom and orphanhood. The solution to these questions is connected with the image of the main character of the story, Voshchev; it is the compositional and ideological core of the work.

Voshchev is a type of “intimate person” already known to us, who doubted the forcibly offered recipes for happiness. He is united by the spirit of wandering with other Platonic heroes. Just like the “mentally poor man” from the story “For Future Use,” he is exhausted by concern for universal reality; he does not have “the main golden billion, our ideology” in his soul - he is a person with an open, unclouded soul. Voshchev is not satisfied with the truth of the historical moment; he agrees to endure only for the sake of getting closer to the highest, “ultimate” truth. Without a higher meaning, his “body weakens” and his head “gets bored.” The “Voshchevskaya” line in the story—the line of doubt and search—is the leading one; gradually it captures other heroes, initially “believers.”

Voshchev is the most “author’s”, conceptual character; it is largely through him that Fedorov’s ideas are introduced into the story. This hero is absorbed in the highest task - confronting oblivion, death, decline (entropy). He moves through the space of history with his duffel bag (perhaps this is where his last name comes from; according to another version, it is derived from “in vain” - the idea of ​​vanity); in it he collects various small objects, “forgotten trifles” containing a particle of the essence of the dead. Voshchev’s strange activity opposes the construction of a common proletarian home, reveals a different type of cultural reference point, and reminds of eternal moral values. The role of Voshchev’s image is significant. He calls for the restoration of the broken ideal order of life and spirit, continuing the traditional Russian classical literature XIX century direction.