SCRIITORUL ȘI REVOLUȚIA. CARTOGRAFII ALE IMAGINARULUI PLATONOVIAN

This study analyzes the political imaginary in the literature of Andrei Platonov, highlighting the tension between the utopian momentum of the revolution’s beginning and the absurdity of everyday Soviet existence. Drawing on letters and major literary works (Chevengur, The Foundation Pit, Dzhan, The Juvenile Sea), the essay traces the metamorphoses of Platonov’s imaginary – from a communism infused with humanist ideals to a technologized and violent Bolshevism. In counterpoint to these political projections, Platonov constructs an imaginary world of childhood as a space of resistance and solidarity. The concept of “grey existentialism” proposed here designates the way in which Platonov’s characters embrace the impossibility of existence against the backdrop of a precarious and ideologically oppressive world. The interpretation is brought into dialogue with Sartre’s theories of imagination and with Camus’s ethics of the absurd, suggesting a convergence between Platonov’s universe and the discreet heroism of Camusian figures.