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Abstract: The article examines Andrei Platonov’s story “Love for the Motherland, or the Sparrow’s Journey,” its heading text, structural features, intertexts, and autobiographical references. The story’s heading text, constructed as a collision of the “grand narrative” created by Soviet ideology and genres associated with its possible undermining, evokes heterogeneous reader expectations. A striking intertextual element is Schubert’s vocal cycle “Winterreise,” which alludes to the fate of the character of the story and Platonov himself. The article demonstrates the presence of a number of hidden autobiographical elements and the crucial role of the opposition high/low as a structural feature in the story and Platonov’s work in general.