About the product
The dystopian story “The Pit” by Andrei Platonov was written in 1930. The plot is based on the idea of building a “common proletarian house”, which will become the beginning of an entire city of a “happy future”. Using a philosophical, surreal image, grotesque and harsh satire on the USSR during the times of collectivization and industrialization, Platonov exposes the most acute problems of that time, showing the meaninglessness and cruelty of totalitarianism, the impossibility of achieving a bright future through the radical destruction of everything old.
We suggest that you familiarize yourself with a summary of “The Pit” chapter by chapter, which will help you find out the plot of the work and prepare for the test on Russian literature.
The material was prepared jointly with a teacher of the highest category, Ilyina Galina Sergeevna.
Experience as a teacher of Russian language and literature - 36 years.
History of creation
The story “The Pit” is one of the brilliant works of Andrei Platonov. The text was written during the period of abandonment of the old way of life and the beginning of building a new life. The Bolsheviks who came to power did not always act with humane methods, often committed excesses, and acted thoughtlessly, so not all changes were for the good. The writer could not observe this calmly and reflected his experiences and reflections in a fundamental work.
At first, the story was published only in samizdat, because censorship did not allow it to be published. However, the authorities were tracking down those who kept typewritten versions of “The Pit” in the form of brochures. Opposition-minded citizens were severely punished.
The time spent working on the chapters of the story is indicated in one of the samizdat copies: from December 1929 to April 1930. Literary scholars believe that the dates are not entirely correct. There is a possibility that the work was written earlier, and the years reflect the period when collectivization was most actively carried out.
The attitude towards the “Pit” in the USSR and post-Soviet Russia changed repeatedly, depending on what moods ruled the minds of people. For the first time, censorship allowed the work to be published in the early 80s, and the story was published in 1987.
Main characters
- Voshchev , a thirty-year-old worker, ended up in the pit after he was fired from a mechanical plant. He thinks a lot about the possibility of happiness, the search for truth and the meaning of life.
- Chiklin is an elderly worker who has enormous physical strength, the eldest in the team of diggers. One day he finds and takes in the girl Nastya.
- Zhachev , a crippled craftsman without legs who moves on a cart, is distinguished by “class hatred” - cannot stand the bourgeoisie.
What is the point of the ending?
The ending of Platonov’s story “The Pit” is a confirmation of the deep meaning of the work. Nastya's death indicates the pointlessness of construction. The girl symbolized a bright future. The builders loved the orphan with all their hearts, seeing in her the meaning of their existence. The foundation pit became the grave not only for the girl, but also for the “bright future” of the people working at the construction site.
The foundation pit in Platonov’s work contains another meaning. The construction symbolizes the changes that both townspeople and villagers strive for. People dreamed of a better life, working tirelessly.
But as construction progressed, the size of the pit increased, and there was no end to construction. People realized that they could not wait for change. The foundation pit has become a dead end, indicating that the ideas of communism cannot be realized in reality.
Unlike most of the author's contemporaries, who glorify the achievements of socialism, Platonov's work contains a pessimistic mood. Large-scale tasks and aspirations are alien to the author. The main thing for him is the person and his role in the events taking place. Therefore, Platonov’s story “The Pit” has a deeper meaning, helping the reader to focus on the thoughts and feelings of the characters in the book.
Other characters
- Nastya is a girl whom Chiklin found near his dying mother (the daughter of the owner of a tile factory) and took with him.
- Prushevsky is an engineer, a worker who came up with the idea of a common proletarian house.
- Safronov is one of the workers at the pit and a trade union activist.
- Kozlov , the weakest of the artisans in the pit, became the chairman of the commander-in-chief of the cooperative.
- Pashkin is the chairman of the regional trade union council, a bureaucrat official.
- The bear is a hammer hammer in the forge, a former “farm laborer.”
- Activist in the village.
And we also have:
for the most curious -
Analysis of Platonov's "Pit"
Summary
“On the day of the thirtieth anniversary of his personal life, Voshchev was given a small mechanical calculation. He felt doubt in his life, “he could not continue to work and walk along the road without knowing the exact structure of the whole world,” so he went to another city. After walking all day, in the evening the man wandered into a vacant lot and fell asleep in a warm hole.
At midnight, Voshchev was awakened by a mower, who sent the man to sleep in the barracks, because this “square” would “soon disappear forever under the device.”
***
In the morning, craftsmen woke up Voshchev in the barracks. The man explains to them that he was laid off, and without knowing the truth he cannot work. Comrade Safronov agrees to take Voshchev to dig a pit.
Accompanied by an orchestra, the workers went to a vacant lot, where the engineer had already marked out everything for the construction of a pit. Voshchev was given a shovel. The diggers began to work hard, the weakest of all was Kozlov, who did the least work. Working with the others, Voshchev decides to “live somehow” and die inseparably from people.
***
Engineer Prushevsky, the developer of the pit project, which should become “the only common proletarian house instead of the old city,” dreams that “in a year the entire local proletariat will leave the small-property city and occupy a monumental new house to live.”
In the morning, the chairman of the regional trade union council, Comrade Pashkin, comes to the diggers. Having seen the foundation pit started, it needs to be raised. Soon Pashkin sent new workers.
***
Kozlov decides to switch to “social work” so as not to work in the pit. Safronov, as the most conscientious of the workers, proposes to put on a radio “to listen to achievements and directives.” Zhachev answered him that “It’s better to bring an orphan girl by the hand than your radio.”
Chiklin comes to the tile factory. Entering the building, he finds a staircase “on which the owner’s daughter once kissed him.” The man noticed a distant windowless room where a dying woman was lying on the ground. A girl sat nearby and rubbed a lemon peel over her mother’s lips. The girl asked her mother: is she dying “because it’s a potbelly stove or from death”? The mother replied: “I got bored, I was exhausted.” The woman asks the girl not to tell anyone about her bourgeois origin.
Chiklin kisses a dying woman and “by the dry taste of her lips” understands “that she is the same” girl who kissed him in his youth. The man takes the girl with him.
***
“Pashkin supplied the diggers’ home with a radio speaker,” from which slogans and demands are constantly heard. Zhachev and Voshchev are “unreasonably ashamed of the long speeches on the radio.”
Chiklin brings the girl to the barracks. Seeing a map of the USSR, she asked about the meridians: “What are these – fences from the bourgeoisie?” Chiklin answered in the affirmative, “wanting to give her a revolutionary mind.” In the evening, Safronov began questioning the girl. She said that she did not want to be born until Lenin came to power, because she was afraid that her mother would be a potbelly stove.
After some time, when the diggers found a hundred coffins hidden for future use by the peasants, Chiklin gave two of them to the girl - he made her a bed in one, and left the other for toys.
***
“The mother place for the house of the future life was ready; now it was intended to put rubble in the pit.”
Kozlov is now the chairman of the commander-in-chief of the cooperative; he “began to greatly love the proletarian masses.” Pashkin informs the artisans that it is necessary to “start a class struggle against the village stumps of capitalism.” To organize collective farm life, the workers send Safronov and Kozlov to the village, where they are killed. Having learned about what happened, Voshchev and Chiklin come to the village. While guarding the corpses of his comrades in the village council hall at night, Chiklin falls asleep between them. In the morning, a man came to the village council hall to wash the corpses. Chiklin mistakes him for a murderer of his comrades and beats him to death.
They bring Chiklin a note from a girl with the words: “Eliminate the kulaks as a class. Long live Lenin, Kozlov and Safronov. Hello to the poor collective farm, but no to the kulaks.”
***
People gathered at the Organizational Court. Chiklin and Voshchev put together a raft from logs “to eliminate classes” in order to send the “kulak sector” along the river to the sea. There is a cry in the village, people are grieving, slaughtering livestock and eating until they vomit, just so as not to give their farm to the collective farm. An activist reads out to the people a list of who will go to the collective farm and who will go to the raft.
***
In the morning Nastya is brought to the village. To find all the kulaks, Chiklin takes the help of a bear - “the most oppressed farm laborer”, who “worked for nothing in the households of the property, and now works as a hammerman at the collective farm forge.” The bear knew which huts to go to, since he remembered who he served with. The discovered kulaks are driven onto a raft and sent down the river.
***
In the Organizational Court, “music calling forward began to play.” Welcoming the arrival of collective farm life, people began to joyfully stomp to the music. The people danced non-stop until the night, and Zhachev had to throw people onto the ground so that they could rest.
Voshchev “collected all the poor, rejected objects around the village” - “not fully understanding”, he accumulated “material remains of lost people” who lived without truth and now, presenting things for inventory, he “through the organization of the eternal meaning of people” sought “revenge for those who lie quietly in the depths of the earth.” The activist, having entered the rubbish into the income statement, gave it to Nastya as toys for signature.
***
In the morning the people went to the forge where the bear worked. Having learned about the creation of a collective farm, the hammerman begins to work with even greater enthusiasm. Chiklin helps him, and in the rush of work they do not notice that they are only spoiling the iron.
***
“The collective farm members burned all the coal in the forge, spent all the available iron on useful products, and repaired all dead equipment.” After the march at the Organizational Yard, Nastya became very ill.
A directive arrived stating that the activist was an enemy of the party and was being removed from leadership. In frustration, he takes the jacket given to Nastya, for which Chiklin punches him, and he dies.
Elisha, Nastya, Chiklin and Zhachev returned to the foundation pit. Arriving at the place, they saw “that the entire pit was covered with snow, and the barracks were empty and dark.” By morning Nastya dies. Soon Voshchev arrived with the entire collective farm. Seeing the dead girl, the man is perplexed, he “no longer knew where communism would be in the world now if it was not first in a child’s feeling and in a convinced impression.”
Having learned that the men wanted to enroll in the proletariat, Chiklin decided that it was necessary to dig an even larger pit. “The collective farm followed him and continuously dug the ground; all the poor and middle-aged men worked with such diligence as if they wanted to be saved forever in the abyss of the pit.” Zhachev refused to help. Saying that now he doesn’t believe in anything and wants to kill Comrade Pashkin, he crawled into the city.
Chiklin dug a deep grave for Nastya, “so that the child would never be disturbed by the noise of life from the surface of the earth,” and prepared a special granite slab. When the man was carrying her to be buried, “the hammerman, sensing movement, woke up, and Chiklin let him touch Nastya goodbye.”
Nastya's image
To understand the meaning of the work, the image of a girl living with diggers during construction is very important. Nastya is a child of the 1917 revolution. Her mother was a potbelly stove, that is, a representative of an obsolete class. Rejection of the past, as is known, means the loss of cultural traditions, historical ties and their replacement by ideological parents - Lenin and Marx. According to the author, people who deny their past cannot have a future.
Nastya’s world is distorted, because her mother, in order to save her daughter, inspires her not to talk about her non-proletarian origin. The propaganda machine has already penetrated into her consciousness. The reader is horrified to learn that this heroine advises Safronov to kill the peasants for the cause of the revolution. What will a child turn into when he grows up if he keeps toys in a coffin? The girl dies at the end of the story, and with her the last ray of hope dies for Voshchev and all the other workers. The latter wins the peculiar confrontation between Nastya and the pit. The dead body of a girl lies at the foundation of a house under construction.
