The State Resident; The River Potudan; Fro

Andrey Platonovich Platonov was born into a large family of a locksmith at railroad workshops. He studied at a parish school and starting at age 14 began learning the trades of a locksmith and an assistant locomotive engineer. His first attempts at writing were youth poems that later entered his poetry collection «Blue Depth».

From 1918 to 1921, he actively worked in journalism, combining it with work at the railroad and studies at the Voronezh Polytechnic Institute.

From 1922 to 1926, Platonov worked as a land-reclamation specialist in the Voronezh Governorate and on the construction of a power station, but he stubbornly continued writing. He published journalistic articles, stories, and poems in Voronezh newspapers and magazines, and even in the Moscow journal «Kuznitsa» (The Smithy). In 1927, Platonov left service and moved with his family to Moscow: in Platonov, the writer defeated the engineer. After the publication of «Vprόk» (1931), an ironic description of collectivization, Platonov stopped being printed.

In the mid-1930s, Platonov was a writer who mainly wrote for archival publications. At the same time, the abundance of ideas overwhelmed him. He worked intensely. From the 1980s onward, the master’s vivid individuality sparked a huge wave of interest across the world. Yet to this day, much of Platonov’s work is still in manuscripts.