Chevengur

by Andrey Platonov

“you’ll never grant rest to anyone at all. You’re not a class but an individual person! Today you’d be an SR, and I’d be writing you off.”7

It was not the first time Kopionkin had come across forgotten childhood places in these parts where he now lived, wandered, and battled.

Long ago he had prayed in a village church just like this, but the place to which he had gone home afterward had been the cramped warmth of his mother— and it was possible that what constituted his childhood had been neither churches, nor the voices of the now-dead birds who had been his childhood companions, nor terrifying old men wandering in summer toward the holy mysteries of Kyiv.

It may well be that what mattered most in Kopionkin’s childhood had been the excitement of a small boy when he has a living mother and the su...

At that time of ascent, all old men truly do seem to be riddles, because their mothers have died—yet the...

The young man, who had a copy of Yevtushevsky’s arithmetic primer lying in front of him, was trying to prove to Chepurny that the sun was twelve times bigger than the Earth and that its powers were more than enough for everyone.9

“Stop thinking, Prokofy,” Chepurny ordered. “It’s for me to think— and for you to formulate.”

You could gather everyone in the world together, for a single joint thrust—but even then they’d be as powerless against the sun as a smallholder against a commune. A waste of time—believe me!”

Kopionkin ordered. “We shall call Sasha here. We must pit mind against mind, to ignite the sparks of communism.”

“We’ve abolished the postal service, comrade,” said Chepurny. “People live in a huddle and see one another in person. What do they want the post for, I ask you now!

“Yes, he can go,” Chepurny agreed. “To him, the road isn’t labor— it’s the development of life!”

NO ONE WORKS HERE—ONLY THE SUMMER SUN. PEOPLE MERELY BEFRIEND ONE ANOTHER WITHOUT LOVE.

With all his tension of thought, Chepurny was unable to think up anything for himself—he could recall only useless, forgotten events that gave him no sense of truth.

COME UNTO ME, ALL YE THAT LABOR. “Get that redone, Soviet style!”

“There’s no one to think up the words, comrade Kopionkin.” “What about Prokofy?” “That’s beyond him—he’s not so very deep. He can manage a subject, but predicates are beyond him.

“You reckon God’s going to give peace to the masses all of his own accord? That’s bourgeois thinking, comrade Chepurny.

“Do you not realize what science is like? It’ll be a returning point for the entire bourgeoisie. Every capitalist will suddenly make out he’s a scientist and start salting organisms with some powder or other—and just you try arguing with them then! And after that science will keep on developing—and there’s no knowing where it will end.”

There would be no labor or other occupations awaiting them the following day, since the sun— honored in Chevengur as the universal proletarian—now worked alone in the town on behalf of all and for the sake of all.

At Chepurny’s instigation, Prokofy had come up with a particular interpretation of labor, declaring it once and for all to be a surviving remnant of bourgeois greed and animal-exploitative voluptuousness, since labor led to the creation of property, and property to oppression.

The sun itself issued rations entirely adequate to support people, and any augmentation of these rations through deliberate human labor merely fed the bonfire of class warfare, since it led to the creation of superfluous harmful objects.

“No, this isn’t labor—these are voluntary Saturdays. Prokofy understood me perfectly. He came out with some grand words.”

“No, not exactly. His narrow mind weakens my grand feelings. But he knows words, and without him I’d be living in mute torment.

The Revolution had won dreams for the district of Chevengur, and the main profession there was now the soul.

Back in his youth he had figured out on his own how a stone can fly: because the joy of movement makes it lighter than air.

Without knowing letters or books, Luy arrived at the conviction that communism must be the perpetual movement of people into the farthest parts of the earth.

asking him to declare that communism meant journeying, and to liberate Chevengur fro...

“He’s like the open ocean, dear comrade. He’s like the harmony of schemes and spheres!”

and the only harmony he knew was that of the squeeze-box.

“A man needs to be bathed by the wind,” he asserted. “Otherwise he’ll go back to oppressing the weak in strength, or else he’ll simply dry up of himself and start pining!

But there’s no getting away from friendship when you’re on the road—and there’ll be plenty for communism to do!”1

more precisely, the district’s whole population must launch itself against capitalism once the latter’s crisis has well and truly come to a head, and from then on our victorious march must never halt, tempering people into a sense of comradeship on the roads of the entire terrestrial globe.

In the meantime, however, it is appropriate to limit communism to the territory already wrested from the bourgeoisie, in order for us to have something to govern.”

“Communism cannot come to be in sedentary stasis. It would have neither enemy, nor joy.”

A few days afterward Luy saw Kopionkin on his stout horse and at once felt ashamed that Kopionkin was going somewhere, whereas he, Luy, was living in a fixed place.

Luy resolved not to return to Chevengur from the provincial capital, but to make his way as far as Petrograd and then join the fleet and set off on a voyage, constantly observing the earth, the seas, and people—as total nourishment for his fraternal soul.

Kopionkin was exercising Strength of the Proletariat out beyond the town boundary, and he saw Luy on his high place.

“Looks as though the vagabond’s turning off toward Kharkiv,” Kopionkin said to himself. “While I’m stuck here in Chevengur—and the golden days of the Revolution are passing me by!”

Due to relocation of buildings, there were no longer any streets in Chevengur; the buildings all stood not in one place, but on the move.

Strength of the Proletariat, accustomed to straight, even roads, grew agitated and broke into a sweat from the frequent turns.

“But a man’s soul is his main profession. And its product is friendship and comradeship! What’s wrong with that, I ask you now! Isn’t that enough of an occupation for you?”

Kopionkin thought a little about the previous life of oppression. “Things are too damned good in your Chevengur,” he said wistfully. “We may need to organize some grief. Communism needs to be caustic—a pinch of poison makes a dish tastier.”

“I think you’re right. We must set about the deliberate organization of grief. Shall we start on that tomorrow, comrade Kopionkin?”

yet his body gave off a warm smell of some kind of motherliness, long grown over and congealed, almost beyond Kopionkin’s memory.

The sun then gave Chepurny its personal attention, lighting up his thin back and slipping inside all the sweaty fissures and flaws of his skin, in order to destroy with its heat the invisible creatures that make a body constantly itch.

Kopionkin looked at the sun with respect; a few years earlier it had warmed Rosa Luxemburg and now it was helping...

“You know, Kopionkin, when I’m in the water, I think I know the truth with utmost precision. But when I’m at the RevCom, it’s all just thoughts and imaginings.”

Kopionkin did not know what a thesis was. He remembered the word from somewhere, but it carried no feelings with it. “It rains, and then the sun shines—so don’t you worry about your theses,” he said reassuringly. “The crops will come up anyway.”

“All right—four theses. Yes, you’re right. Only you should know that if we don’t answer these theses from the provincial capital and confirm that everything’s fine here, they’ll come and liquidate the whole of our communism.”

Driven by some black joy of abundant body, he flung himself through the rushes and into the clear river, to rid himself there of his obscure, yearning passions.

“The vagabond’s full of joy—he thinks he’s released the whole world into the freedom of communism!” Kopionkin said to himself crossly. “But I can’t see that myself.”