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Abstract:

The article is devoted to the consideration of various life circumstances related to publications that came to the review of the writer A.P. Platonov in 1936–1940 during his cooperation with literary-critical journals. The author of the publication pays attention to certain aspects of the history of the books “Rudolf Diesel” by L.I. Gumilevsky, “Golden Kolyma” by I.E. Gehtman, “This is How Life Began” by A.F. Savchuk, “In the Mountains of Sikhote-Alin” by V.K. Arsenyev. These examples show a number of situations with which Platonov, the critic, consciously or accidentally came into contact such as the presence of an established stereotype of evaluating a book, cardinal changes in the fate of its author etc. The article also contains previously unknown testimonies of A.P. Platonov’s contemporaries, demonstrating the peculiarities of the perception of the writer’s critical statements by the addressees of criticism. The article ends with a plot clarifying the history of A.P. Platonov’s completion of a planned book about the work of N.A. Ostrovsky after the arrest of his son Platon in the spring of 1938.