The Foundation Pit
Andrei Platonov · 1973
About this book
Platonov's harrowing novella about workers digging an ever-expanding foundation pit for a utopian building that will never be finished is a devastating allegory of Stalinist collectivization. His distorted, bureaucratic prose style mimics and subverts the language of Soviet ideology itself. The work is essential for understanding how totalitarian language warps thought — a theme that remains relevant in Russian discourse.
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