Chevengur

by Andrey Platonov

The Revolution had passed, like the day. Throughout Russia—in district towns, in steppes, and throughout remote parts—the shooting had fallen silent for a long time, and the roads of armies, horses, and the whole Bolshevik footsoldiery had gradually been taken over by grass.

others had curbed their horses and were back in their home villages, leading the poor forward not into open steppe but into a better future.

And if anyone did appear in the steppe, no one looked twice at him, since he was sure to be someone harmless and at peace, going about routine tasks of his own.

The Revolution had passed these places by, allowing peaceful longing to settle over the fields while it disappeared somewhere unknown, as if worn out by the paths it had traveled and now hiding away in man’s inner darkness.

And so Sasha had resolved to go to Chevengur, in order to know communism there and return to Zakhar Pavlovich to help him and many others now barely alive.

But communism was not present in Chevengur on the outside—probably it lay hidden inside people.

“My youth is coming to an end,” Sasha thought. “It’s quiet inside me and evening is passing by in all of history.”

The Russia where Sasha lived and wandered was empty and exhausted; the Revolution had gone past, its harvest had been gathered, and now people were silently eating the ripe grains, in order for communism to become the constant flesh of their bodies.

“History is sad, because history is time and it knows that it...

It’s the same here in Chevengur—the constant sound of crickets, and few birds. Because history’s come to an end here! Why, I ask you, didn’t we recognize the signs?”

But the horse did not turn away, his gaze as serious as ever.

“How come we have communism and they’re still grieving?” he said to himself. “Is communism really not enough for them?”

“Deeper out in the steppe, there’s buckwheat growing wild,” said Chepurny. “You can help yourself!” “By the time a man’s walked all that way and found enough grain, he’ll be still hungrier,” Yakov Titych doubted. “Easier to do some work in the smithy.” “Let him do as he wants with the smithy,” Gopner advised Chepurny. “Don’t hinder the man.”

But the Chevengur others had no one to visit and no one likely to call on them. They lived inseparably from one another; during the day they had been wandering around the surrounding steppe in search of nourishing plants, and there was nowhere for any of them to spend time alone.

In Chevengur there was property, there was wild grain out in the steppe, and in the kitchen gardens there were vegetables self-seeded from remnants of the previous year’s crops;

and as a result, without grief of food or the torment of sleeping on bare ground, the others had come to feel bored.

They were useless to themselves, and there was now no substance of use an...

“That was before the Revolution.”

The sun became huge and red and then hid beyond the earth’s border, leaving in the air its already cooling heat; many of these others had believed in childhood that the sun was their father, going somewhere far away and baking potatoes for supper on a large bonfire.

Chevengur’s one and only laborer—the luminary of warmth, comradeship, and communism—settled down for the night;

the moon—luminary of the lonely, luminary of wanderers who wander in vain—gradually be...

Illuminated only by timid moonlight, the steppe and its expanses seemed to lie in the world beyond, where life is pale, thoughtful, and without feeling and where the flickerin...

away from communism and into ...

they had come to Chevengur together but were now going th...

“They’re all dead, Sasha. The future will be setting in soon.”

It was light outside. Amid the sky’s waste spaces, over the steppe emptiness of the earth, the moon was shining its forsaken, soulful light that almost sang from dream and silence.

This otherworldly light slipped through the doors of the smithy—through rickety cracks lined with soot that had settled there in more industrious times.

but we’ve organized the whole of communism here and now and it’s not entirely to our liking.

The path under Sasha’s and Prokofy’s feet was hidden by tall, peaceful grass, which had seized all the land around Chevengur not from greed but from life necessity.

They felt awkward and were unable at first to talk freely. Prokofy was reluctant to yield Chevengur into the hands of wives, proletarians, and others; the only person to whom he did not regret giving gifts was Klavdiusha—though he didn’t know why.

Prokofy surveyed the bright but lifeless steppe and Chevengur itself. Its windowpanes glittered in the moonlight—and behind these windows slept solitary others, and in each of them lay a life that now demanded his thought and concern, lest it emerge from the cramped space of a body and be transformed into extraneous action.

Prokofy, meanwhile, was pointing out that in Russian villages grief was a habit rather than a torment and that a son who has already received his share of the family legacy never returns to visit his father and does not in any way miss him.

Give a man property today and he’ll want a wife tomorrow—and next he’ll be wanting round-the-clock happiness.

We’d do better to gradually diminish people.

They can get used to that—and they’re going to know sufferin...

Organization’s the very smartest thing; everyone knows himself, but no one possesses himself. And everyone feels good.

Only the first person has it bad, because he thinks. With organization one can subtract much of what’s superfluous from a man.”

It will be frightening for you to live alone and separate, above everyone else.

The proletariat live for one another. But what about you—what are you going to live by?”

Sasha wasn’t a Bolshevik, he was a beggar with an empty sack—just one more other.

Out in the vast lunar steppe,

The general silence of Chevengur transformed every sound into thunder and alarm, but it turned out to be only Chepurny.

FYODOR Fyodorovich Gopner had slept well, climbed the bell tower of the Chevengur church, and was observing the whole of the town where he had heard that future time had arrived and communism been achieved once and for all, so that all that remained was for people to live and be present there.

The night dew dripped through them onto Yakov Titych’s body and this had chilled him, but he was unable to change his place of shelter because he pitied the cockroach as much as himself.

It was essential, though, for him to feel attachment to some living thing—so as to find his own patience of life through caring and attending to something, and so as to learn from observation how to live better and more lightly.

On coming to Chevengur, the others had lost their sense of comradeship;

instead, they had acquired property, along with a mass of domestic inventory that they would often reach out to and touch in

bewilderment, wondering where all this could ...

And so, here in Chevengur, Yakov Titych remained almost as alone as after his birth.

Living for the sake of this cockroach in a tumbledown house, he would be woken at night by the freshness of dew dripping down on him through the roof.