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Abstract: The article examines Platonov’s literary heritage and numerous problems related to the theory and practice of scientific interpretation of his works in the light of the latest publications, source discoveries, and textual and biographical facts. The author’s strategies, implemented in an implicit and open polemic with aesthetic declarations and dogmatic ideological and propaganda attitudes, are comprehended in modern science in various ways, including during the analysis of manuscripts and authorized typescripts. A comparative analysis of different editions of the essay “A Resident of the Hometown” (“Zhitel’ rodnogo goroda”), first published in the double 38–39 issue of the Ogonyok magazine for 1946, reveals a curious material for studying the correlation of essay and artistic trends in Platonov’s post-war prose. Using the example of this work, conceived as a story but published as an essay in an edition significantly different from the original, the article identifies the most meaningful components of the writer’s creative “self-standing” and examines the specifics of the author’s strategies implementation. The novelty of the research topic determines the research material: the article compares semantically significant episodes presented in authorized typescript and the published text and analyzes intertextual connections, their specifics, and their functional role in different editions of the work. The article clarifies the axiological role of the motif of the native land and the “eternal homeland” for the final plan realization.