Information about the author: 

Abstract:

The article reconstructs the history of the first (posthumous) edition of Andrey Platonov’s book “The Reader’s Reflections,” which was published in 1970. For the first time, documents from the collections of the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art and the Institute of World Literature are being published (editor’s conclusions, reviews, excerpts from the minutes of meetings of the editorial board of the “Soviet Writer” publishing house, notes by M.A. Platonova, etc.), which provide a chronicle of the preparation of the collection, restore the circumstances of its creation, explain the changes that occurred in its composition, and add to our understanding of the perception of the writer’s legacy in the 1960s. Despite the fact that the surviving reviews are generally positive, some of Platonov’s opinions and even individual articles were criticized by reviewers and publishers. For example, when Platonov’s texts were published in “Soviet Writer,” they were edited, and several articles (about Prishvin, the novels of G. Fish, K. Čapek, and Mary Mapes Dodge), which were originally planned for inclusion in the collection, were excluded.