The Foundation Pit

Platonov’s brilliant nightmarish novel describes the lives of a group of industrial workers who, in digging out the foundation pit for a huge commercial apartment block, really believe they are laying the foundations for the radiant future. Then some of them are ordered to kickstart ‘collectivisation’ (collective ownership of farming land) in a village of reluctant peasants, and what had begun in optimism quickly turns to hallucination and murder. Platonov shows his understanding of the dehumanising effects of Soviet jargon, shows how collectivisation led to the starvation of whole villages and the exile of whole populations and he succeeds in taking back control of language to serve vital purposes of communication and freedom.