The Foundation Pit, book review. (Andrey Platonov)

Okay, well . . . Er!
What do you get if you cross the bourgeoisie, the kulak (small landowners in pre-revolutionary Russia) with a whole heap of the proletariat - those who own nothing but the feeling an honest day's work gives them?

Trouble is what, and this, this very strange book.

There is a pit to be dug, a Foundation Pit, from where a building of such magnitude will eventually rise that it will house everyone, and so the proletariat toil, day in day out, and ask no questions, for their purpose is to just be, so that the great socialist revolution can prosper.

There are many characters in this book, some you get to know early on, like Safronov and Kozlov, who die one day for no other reason it seems than that they decided they were nothing, had no thoughts and so might not exist, and so they didn't exist and therefore die!
Then there's Chiklin, Zhachev (who is disabled and pushes himself around on a cart), Prushevsky (the engineer) and Pashkin, who seems to be in a more authoritative role, enough to make decisions at least, but nothing is really clear so I could be wrong!

Then Nastya appears. A young orphan, who had been raised on the collective ideals of Stalin's Russia and has a very grownup perspective on things - 'Liquidate the kulak class. Long live Stalin,' she says at one point before Chiklin, who once knew her mother, takes her in. Then things get really strange. Chiklin and Nastya go on a kulak hunt around the outlying homesteads. They stop at the local forge and collect the hammerer there - which happens to be a bear - yes, a bear, the furry kind that fish for salmon in rivers and live in the wild or in zoos - before making their rounds, and it is the bear who calls out when he sees fit, and it is those houses that are raided and their inhabitants evicted.

There is a collectivised farm to be organised too, so on the bear's travels, many are brought into the fold and as they no longer have to think for themselves as individuals - the collective will think for them - they slaughter their livestock and eat them all, making themselves sick from overindulgence, but no matter, it's all for the greater good and so it continues!!

There is a quote on the rear cover of the pictured copy I read, and it refers to the book as 'Andrey Plutonov's absurdist parable' which might give you some idea as to what you're getting yourselves in to with this book but, even with that caveat, approach with caution.

This book is very strange and wasn't really for me, so only two stars I'm afraid.