Socialist Realism with a Human Face: History and Mediation in Andrei Platonov’s 'Immortality'

• In Event: Left Perspectives on Narrative II: Processing the Revolution in Media and History

Abstract

Andrei Platonov's story "Immortality" (1936) is often considered his most "socialist realist" work. However, in the mid-1930s, socialist realism was far from being a settled and unified doctrine. In my paper, I will argue that "Immortality" should be considered in the context of Georg Lukacs's theory of (socialist) realism and especially the concept of mediation, which can be applied to Platonov's story on various levels. To begin with, Platonov mediates the real story of the railway worker through the socialist realist literary form (or at least his own version of it), transforming it into a "proper" revolutionary narrative. In doing so, he presents the story's protagonist, Emmanuil Levin, as a mediator between the everyday life of a small station in Soviet Ukraine and the world-historical process of socialist construction. His function in the narrative is similar to that of Lukacsian "average hero" described in "The Historical Novel" (1937-1938): he makes "great historical trends" tangible in "the typically human terms." Analyzing these various kinds of mediation, I will trace how "the history appears" (as Fredric Jameson would put it) in the narrative. I will also attempt to complicate our understanding of the socialist realist project and Platonov's relationship with it.

Author

• Konstantin Mitroshenkov, Columbia University in the City of New York