Chevengur

by Andrey Platonov

Almost all those whose advent was greeted by the Chevengur Bolshevik Organization had made themselves into human beings through their own personal strength;

these were well and truly self-made people, each of whom had been surrounded by the frenzy of those with possessions and by the death of poverty.

but it is strange and rare for seeds of anonymous steppe grass uprooted by a storm to take root in bare clay or wandering sand—and what springs from such seeds is a life of loneliness, surrounded by empty countries of light, and able to find nourishment even in minerals.

The strength of these newcomers to Chevengur had been consumed by their past life, and to Chepurny they seemed like powerless and unproletarian elements, as if they had been warmed and illuminated all through their lives not by the sun but by the moon.

But, having expended all their strength on maintaining within them this primeval parental warmth—in the face of the oncoming uprooting wind of an alien and hostile life—and having magnified this warmth by laboring for people who were real and endowed with names—these others had fashioned themselves into self-made people of unknown designation;

but also a quickness of feeling ready to trade eternal bliss for a comrade of their own kind, since this comrade had no father or property yet was able to make one forget about both—and within them the others still bore hope, a hope that was fortunate and confident yet melancholy as loss.

if the main thing—staying alive and whole—were successfully accomplished, then they hoped also to accomplish everything remaining, even if it were necessary to reduce the world to its last grave.

“Call this proletariat? Where on earth did you find them?” he said to Prokofy. “They’re nothing but doubt—and they’re not Russian.”

“They’re class all right—first-class working class. Lead them forward and they’ll march anywhere for you without a squeak of protest. This is true international proletariat. Look—they’re not Russian, they’re not Armenian, they’re not Tatars—they’re no one! I bring you live International—and what do you do? Pull a long face!”

and you’ve herded along a crowd of others! How can the barefoot have an iron tread?”

“Let them walk barefoot—they’ve worked their heels so hard you can insert metal screws into them. Come the World Revolution, they’ll march barefoot to the end of the world for you!”

houses and resumed their former lives.

Prokofy saw this as a symbol for their times, signifying that the light of solar life on earth must be replaced by the artificial light of the human mind.

about the tempo, extent, and manifestation of activity unleashed by oppositional classes in relation to NEP; about measures taken against these classes; and also about the strict confinement of NEP policies within a narrow channel.”

Chepurny retorted. Turning to the old man, he asked “What do you think—I ask you now!” “Like that, things won’t be too bad,” the old man concluded. “Get that formulated,” Chepurny ordered Prokofy. “‘Without such classes, things won’t be too bad.’ And let’s move on to more important questions.”

“But how would you formulate this?” “Not too bad,” the old man formulated. Prokofy, however, had other ideas.

“There’s chervil and wheat—just help yourself. Pick it and eat it! The sun shines, the soil breathes, and the rains fall—what more do you need?

Are you wanting to whip up the proletariat again, to drive them into yet more pointless zeal? We’ve gone beyond socialism—what we’ve got here is better still.”

They’re still a long way from socialism—and that’s why they need to suffer their way through the torments of co-operatives.

“To whom?” asked Zheyev. “To them,” said Kirey, without thought. “What them?” asked Chepurny. “Doesn’t say,” Prokofy replied, after looking again at the circular.

“For us, I assure you,” Prokofy explained. “And they’re sent to us not for reading aloud but to be executed.”

“You see, comrade, they want the very cleverest people to figure out the current of life once and for all and forever, and before we’re all lying under the ground. Until they do that, the rest of us must just keep on enduring and drifting along.”

“But we know best how to live our own lives,” the old man explained. “This missive’s not for us, it’s for the rich man. When there were rich people, it was us who took care of them, but there was no one to grieve for your poor man—

Without even meaning to, he’s made a whole world for other people to play with—and he can take care of himself even in sleep. He may not matter to himself, but he knows he’s precious to someone.”

“So, Prokofy, formulate: The proletariat and others within its ranks have themselves organized the entire habitable world through their own concern and attention. It’s a disgrace and a crying shame, then, to think that the world’s first organizers need be organized by others.

“Not bad at all,” judged the old man.

the elderly other squatted down and asked vaguely, “And just who are you lot?”

“And there I was, thinking you were doing all this of your own free will, because no one’s given you any more serious work.”

Do you realize, old fellow, how and why you’ve become a citizen here in Chevengur? It’s because of us.”

“The Revolution is our duty and service. Only follow our instructions—you’ll live, and everything will be excellent for you.”

“It’s not for you to usurp my position. Our elderly comrade has pointed out that those in power should feel shame, but you are obscuring him . . . Speak, comrade other!”

“is that your work’s not real. But you speak high and mighty—as if you’re up on a mound and we’re down below in a gully.

It should be sick people working here, men who’ve lived through their last days and keep going from memory alone.

It’s soft and easy here, you’re like night watchmen. But you’re still hardy men—you should ...

It’s where we should put good-for-nothings who aren’t fit for anything better. As for you lot, you should be doing something real!”

Prokofy led the old man on, hoping to trap him in dialectics.

“They grow out from within, so that what’s dead doesn’t get stuck inside a man. Skin and nails wrap right round a man and protect him.”

“A man’s skin and nails are Soviet power. How come you can’t formulate that for yourself?”

“No different from wool,” said the old man. “Cut it with a knife— it won’t hurt the sheep.”

“Once, when I was a boy, I shaved a kitten and buried it in the snow. I didn’t understand whether or not it was human. And then the kitten caught a fever and died.”

“None of this can be formulated in a resolution,”

“We’re an important organ—and this old fellow shows up from uninhabited parts. He knows nothing about nothing, tells us we’re low qualification and no more than night watchmen and that ...

It’s not even possible to write this resolution down on paper, since paper is only produced thanks to the corr...

“We all have lives to live. But some work in need and poverty, while you sit and think in a room

as if you know all about other people and none of them have feelings of their own in their heads.”

“if you’re up for it. In daytime, some foot-walker might come by. He’ll be walking his own road and he won’t need anything from you, but the sight of him will make you ashamed.

‘thinking how people should live their lives when they can decide that better themselves.’ And then a living person passes by and maybe never comes back again.”

“Motives? All right then. Our crying shame and disgrace in the face of the proletariat and others, who live out their lives in the daytime.

Say that what is unimportant, like what is unseemly, is more fittingly carried out at an invisible time.”

would suggest the church,” said Prokofy. “That’ll expose more contradiction—and the building is, in any case, improper for the proletariat.”