ABSTRACT
If, in Chevengur, Platonov had revealed the untenability o f utopianism, then the works o f the first half o f the 1930s mark a disconcerting return to that very same idealism, as if his utopian senses were stimulated anew by the promise o f social transformation offered by Stalins grand projects. However, despite the return to the utopian maximalism o f earlier works, the relationship between male/ masculine and female/feminine is subtly transformed. Gone is the straightforward solipsism o f the hermetic and homosocial polity, predicated both on the desolate superiority o f the male self and the radical exclusion o f the feminine other: from now on, gender roles are more visibly negotiated, and women play an ever greater role, both as active participants in the establishment o f the new Soviet society under Stalin, and as allegorical emanations o f worthy political imperatives.
