SOURCE: “Andrei Platonov (1896–1951),” in Early Soviet Writers, Frederick A. Praeger Publishers, 1958, pp. 245–51.

In the following essay, Zavalishin discusses why many of Platonov's short stories got him into trouble with Soviet censors—namely, because of their common theme that Communist machinery too often resulted in “the depersonalization of man.”

Andrei Platonov was one of the most remarkable of Soviet writers, again less because of literary skill than because of moral qualities. Although his stylistically most mature work came long after he had left the Pereval organization (he was a member for only a short time and then struck out as a lone wolf), he spoke from the beginning in his own distinctive voice. The germs of his later work, with its intense strain of compassion for luckless, fear-ridden men were already discernible in his first stories and soon invited the disfavor and vilification which he was to suffer throughout...