Queer Masculinity in Platonov’s 'Chevengur'

• In Event: Russian Masculinities II: Othering Late Imperial and Soviet Masculinities

Abstract

Andrei Platonov’s seminal novel, Chevengur, written in 1928, recounts the Sovietification of the provincial Russian countryside during wartime communism and the start of the New Economic Policy. The novel was not published in full in Soviet Russia until 1988 due to its perceived “anti-communist” tenets; as this paper will show, however, Chevengur does not destabilize communist principles, so much as envision an alternative queer Soviet Project that subverts Stalin’s staunch homophobia. While Platonov was writing this novel, there was a shift in Stalin’s social policies towards conservatism. Dan Healey, the leading historian of queer Russia, argues that this shift marks a return to compulsory heterosexuality as exemplified in the legalization of homophobia, specially the recriminalization of sodomy in 1931. I argue that the Soviet men in Chevengur, who band together to attain the Soviet ideal of productivity, resonate with a modernist queer utopia, and relate to what renowned gender theorist Eve Sedgewick refers to as a homosociality. Platonov queers the Soviet Project to challenge Stalin’s totalitarianism and reflect a more inclusive and constructive Soviet reality.

Author

• Devin Culley McFadden, U of Vermont