Information about the author:
Тatiana V. Levchenko
Тatiana V. Levchenko, PhD in Physics and Mathematics, Chief Expert in the Project Laboratory for Studies of Yury Lyubimov’s Work and Director’s Theatre of 20th–21st Centuries, Faculty of Humanities, Higher School of Economics, Staraya Basmannaya St., 24/4-1, 105066 Moscow, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3518-0481
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Abstract:
The article presents materials related to the idea, work and struggle for the publication of the first critical and biographical article about Andrey Platonov, written by the literary critic F.M. Levin. Levin’s article preceded the writer’s first posthumous book of prose, “Selected Texts” (1958). However, as research has shown, the author’s intention was grossly violated by censorship. The versions of three editions preserved in the archive of the critic, as well as the proofs of the scattered collection of A. Platonov “Selected Texts. Stories, tales, articles” (1957) allowed us not only to restore the original appearance of Levin’s article, but also to see the reasons for certain cliches in Platonov’s biographies, written later by M.A. Platonova. The article presents one of the variants of the first edition of Levin’s article, which testifies to G.Z. Litvin-Molotov’s personal acquaintance with its text and discussions with him during the Voronezh period of Platonov’s literary life. An analysis of the biographies of Levin and Litvin-Molotov shows that their acquaintance could have occurred while studying at the Institute of the Red Professorship in the early 1930s, and the evidence about the Voronezh period of Levin’s life suggests that in 1918–1921 the critic was familiar with the socio-political and socio-literary life of Voronezh.
