Village Council in Paris: “French” Episode in the Story “For Future Use” by Platonov

Abstract

The article focuses on one of the episodes of Andrey Platonov’s story “For Future Use.” The episode dealing with Efim Nechaev’s trip to Paris is a response to international issues as discussed in the Communist Party official speeches and newspaper publications and has recognizable literature parallels with the so-called “foreign texts” by other writers (V.V. Mayakovsky, A.M. Gorky). This scene was written in early 1930 and was only kept in the first edition of the story. The aggravation of Soviet-French relationships and an all-Union recyclable materials collection campaign are both reflected in the passage involving a kolkhoz (collective farm) activist who is ready to start collectivization and dispossession of kulaks in Paris and trying to solve the economic problems of the USSR by a new original type of export which he invented. Explanatory notes reveal the grotesqueness of Platonov’s plot combining the political idea of exporting the socialist revolution to the West and the economic task of waste export.

Keywords

• andrey platonov
• “for future use
• ” collectivization
• international theme
• france
• efim in paris
• scrap
• explanatory notes.