1. Kotkin, Stephen, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley, 1995), especially chapter 5, “Speaking Bolshevik,” 198–237.Google Scholar

2. Dobrenko, Evgeny and Naiman, Eric, eds, The Landscape of Stalinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space (Seattle, 2003).Google Scholar

3. Hodel, Robert, Erlebte Rede bei Andre] Platonov: Von “V zvezdnoj pustyne” bis “Čevengur” (Frankfurt am Main, 2001)Google Scholar; Hodel, Robert and Locher, Ian Peter, eds., Sprache und Erzählung bei Andrej Platonov (Bern, 1998).Google Scholar

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5. The picture's origins in Camille Flammarion's L'atmosphère: Meteorologie populate (Paris, 1888) was first noted by Bodin, Per-Arne, in “The Promised Land—Desired and Lost: An Analysis of Andrej Platonov's Short Story ‘Džan,'” Scando-Slavica 37, no. 1 (1991): 5–24 Google Scholar. For a more detailed interpretation of the image, see Skakov, Nariman, “Prostranstva 'Dzhana’ Andreia Platonova,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 107, no. 1 (2011): 211–30Google Scholar; an English translation of part of this article is available as “Ekphrastic Metaphysics of Dzhan,” Ulbandus 14 (2011/12): 76-92. See also Vasil'ev, Vladimir, “Peizazh s chelovekom na perednem plane: 0 slovesnoi zhivopisi v sovremennoi proze,” Nash sovremennik 12 (December 1984): 150–67Google Scholar; Spiridonova, I. A., “Portret v khudozhestvennom mire Andreia Platonova,” Russkaia literatura 4 (1997): 170–83Google Scholar; Wachtel, Andrew, “Meaningful Voids: Facelessness in Platonov and Malevich,” in Kelly, Catriona and Lovell, Stephen, eds., Russian Literature, Modernism and the Visual Arts (Cambridge, Eng., 2000), 250–77Google Scholar; Vakhitova, Tamara, “Peizazh u reki Potudan',” in Kornienko, N. V., ed., “Strana filosofov” Andreia Platonova: Problemy tvorchestva, pt. 5 (Moscow, 2003), 85–90 Google Scholar; Lepakhin, V., “Ikona v tvorchestve Platonova,” in Kolesnikova, E. I., ed., Tvorchestvo Andreia Platonova: Issledovaniia i materialy, bk. 3 (St. Petersburg, 2004), 61–82 Google Scholar; Zlydneva, N., “Izobrazitel'nyi kontekst prozy A. Platonova: Diskurs 1920-kh godov,” Wiener Slawistischer Almanach 63 (2009): 357–69Google Scholar; Poddubtsev, R., “Ekfrasis u Platonova: Poetika vizual'nosti,” Voprosy literatury 5 (September-October 2011): 173–96Google Scholar; and Bogomolova, Maria, “Portret v proze Andreia Platonova: Itogi izucheniia i nereshennye problemy,” Russian Literature 73, nos. 1-2 (January-February 2013): 229–53.Google Scholar

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7. Seifrid, Thomas, “Platonov's Blindness,” Ulbandus 14 (2011/12): 289 Google Scholar.

8. Rozhentseva, E., “Pis'ma iz poezdki v Turkmeniiu,” in Kornienko, N. V., ed., Arkhiv A. P. Platonova, vol. 1 (Moscow, 2009), 503–4Google Scholar (letter of 28 March 1934). Unless otherwise stated, all translations are my own.

9. Ibid., 504 (letter of 30 March 1934).

10. Ibid, (letter of 1 April 1934).

11. Ibid., 505 (letter of 2 April 1934).

12. Gor'kii, M., Averbakh, L., and Firin, S., eds., Belomorsko-Baltiiskii kanal imeni Stalina: Istoriia stroitel'stva, 1931-1934 (Moscow, 1934).Google Scholar A copy of this book was in Platonov's library (as noted in Natal'ia Kornienko, “Kommentarii,” in Platonov, Andrei, Vzyskania pogibshikh: Povesti, rasskazy.p'esa, stat'i [Moscow, 1995], 639)Google Scholar, and Robert Chandler has interpreted the story “Sredi zhivotnykh i rastenii” (Among Animals and Plants) as an Aesopian commentary on both the Belomor Canal project itself and the writers’ involvement in documenting it. See Robert Chandler, introduction to Andrei Platonov, Soul and Other Stories, trans. Robert, and Chandler, Elizabeth, with Grigoruk, Katia, Livingston, Angela, Meerson, Olga, and Naiman, Eric (New York, 2008), xxi–xxviii.Google Scholar

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14. Edward, Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978)Google Scholar; Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Sheridan, Alan (New York, 1979).Google Scholar

15. See in particular Spurr, David, The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration (Durham, 1993)Google Scholar; Ann, Kaplan E., Looking for the Other: Feminism, Film, and the Imperial Gaze (London, 1997)Google Scholar; Ghose, Indira, Women Travellers in Colonial India: The Power of the Female Gaze (Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar; Hunt, Tamara L. and Lessard, Micheline R., eds., Women and the Colonial Gaze (New York, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pratt, Mary Louise, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, 2nd ed. (London, 2008).Google Scholar More recently, scholars have turned to the question of photography's place in shaping orientalist discourses; see in particular Behdad, Ali and Gartlan, Luke, eds., Photography's Orientalism: New Essays on Colonial Representation (Los Angeles, Calif., 2013).Google Scholar On expeditions and ethnographic practices such as “the census, the map, and the museum” as factors central to Soviet nation-building policy, see Hirsch, Francine, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca, 2005), 13 Google Scholar.

16. Ashcroft, Bill, Griffiths, Gareth, and Tiffin, Helen, Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts, 2nd ed. (London, 2000), 227–28Google Scholar. Panoptic refers to Foucault's account of the functioning of power in prison, as represented by the operation of the Panopticon (Jeremy Bentham's term for a prison or other institutional space in which the maximum number of inmates can be observed by a single unseen guard): “It is an important mechanism, for it automatizes and disindividualizes power. Power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes; in an arrangement whose internal mechanisms produce the relation in which individuals are caught up.“ Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 202.

17. Platonov, Andrei, “Takyr,” in Sannikov, ed., Aiding-Giunler, 47–59.Google Scholar

18. Nikitin, N., “Dremaf i videt’ napolovinu,” Pravda, 18 January 1935,4 Google Scholar.

19. Sats, I., “Khudozhestvennaia proza v ‘Krasnoi novi’ (N0N0 1-12 za 1934 g.),” Literaturnyi kritik 6 (1935): 203.Google Scholar On the early reception history of the story, see N. Kornienko, “Kommentarii,” in Andrei Platonov, Sobranie, ed. Kornienko, N. V., vol. 4, Schastlivaia Moskva: Roman, povest', rasskazy (Moscow, 2010), 599–602 Google Scholar

20. Platonov, Andrei, “Takyr,” Krasnaia nov’ 9 (1934): 82–93 Google Scholar; Platonov, Andrei, “Takyr,“ Reka Podutari: Sbornik rasskazov (Moscow, 1937), 144–73.Google Scholar

21. Platonov, , “Takyr,” in Sannikov, ed., Aiding-Giunler, 56.Google Scholar

22. There are, for instance, at least one hundred instances of the word glaz (eye) (plus around half a dozen of vek [eyelid]); some one hundred sixty uses of videt’ (to see) and related words (as well as around three dozen occurrences of son or snovidenie [dream], which acquire an explicitly visual aspect due to their frequent proximity to videt); nearly one hundred oigliadet’ (to watch) (plus derivatives); around sixty of smotret’ (to look) (and derivatives such as osmatrivat’ [to survey] and rassmatrivat’ [to contemplate]); but only half a dozen or so of zrenie (vision) and of nabliudat’ (to observe). The first publication of an extract from the novella was as “Vozvrashchenie na rodinu,” Literaturnaia gazeta, 5 August 1938, 5. Subsequent editions of the work were censored to varying degrees; the complete text was published for the first time in Platonov, A., Proza (Moscow, 1999), 437–534 Google Scholar.

23. Platonov, Andrei, “Soul,” in Soul and Other Stories, 3.Google Scholar

24. Ibid., 20.

25. Ibid., 117.

26. Ibid., 133.

27. Seifrid, “Platonov's Blindness,” 290.

28. Platonov, “Soul,” 21.

29. Ibid., 130.

30. Ibid., 3,7.

31. Ibid., 13.

32. Ibid., 42.

33. For an account of Dzhan that explores the transgressive paradoxes of Platonov's handling of identity, see Hutchings, Stephen, “Remembering of a Kind: Philosophy and Art, Miscegenation and Incest in Platonov's ‘Džan,'” Russian Literature 51, no. 1 (January 2002): 49–72 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Holt, “The Rise of Insider Iconography,” 251–71Google Scholar.

34. Platonov, “Soul,” 12.

35. Ibid., 26.

36. Ibid., 23.

37. As Adrienne Lynn Edgar argues, “The fundamental requirement that a state possess a territory with clearly denned borders was met by Moscow through its policy of demarcating 'national’ republics and regions for each ethnic group. The need for administrative structures was filled by republican government and Communist Party hierarchies that duplicated in miniature those on the all-union level. Most aspiring nation-states strive for a single ‘national language’ to replace a plethora of spoken local dialects; by supporting linguistic standardization as well as publishing and education in native tongues, the Soviet regime facilitated the consolation of such languages.” Edgar, Adrienne Lynn, Tribal National: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan (Princeton, 2004), 4.Google Scholar

38. Platonov, , “Soul,” 23–24.Google Scholar

39. Tamara L. Hunt, introduction to Hunt and Lessar, eds., Women and the Colonial Gaze, 1.

40. Sultan-Niiazov, Berdy, “Gory,” in Sannikov, , ed., Aiding-Giunler, 126.Google Scholar

41. Sultan-Niiazov, Berdy, “Ona pobedila,” in Sannikov, , ed., Aiding-Giunler, 127–28.Google Scholar

42. Wood, Elizabeth A., The Baba and the Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia (Bloomington, 1997), 3.Google Scholar This argument forms the substance of Massell's, Gregory J. earlier The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia, 1919-1929 (Princeton, 1974).Google Scholar

43. Rozhentseva, “Pis'ma iz poezdki v Turkmeniiu,” 508 (letter of 12 April 1934).

44. Edgar, Adrienne Lynn, “Emancipation of the Unveiled: Turkmen Women under Soviet Rule, 1924-29,” Russian Review 62, no. 1 (January 2003): 132–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Northrop, Douglas, Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia (Ithaca, 2004).Google Scholar

45. For a reading of the film in the context of Soviet policy in Turkmenistan, see Holt, , “The Rise of Insider Iconography,” 157–76.Google Scholar

46. MacKay, John, “Allegory and Accommodation: Vertov's Three Songs of Lenin (1934) as a Stalinist Film,” Film History 18, no. 4 (2006), 381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47. Hicks, Jeremy, Dziga Vertov: Defining Documentary Film (London, 2007), 93.Google Scholar

48. Platonov, “Soul,” 52.

49. Ibid., 79.

50. Platonov, Andrei, Zapisnye knizhki: Materialy k biografii, ed. Kornienko, N. V., 2nd ed. (Moscow, 2006), 138.Google Scholar See also his assertion that “the respect that a Turkmen shows to a woman is purely economic.” Ibid., 141.

51. Platonov, , “Soul,” 82.Google Scholar

52. Platonov, Andrei, “Dzhan,” in Schastlivaia Moskva, 180.Google Scholar

53. Platonov, , “Soul,” 127-28.Google Scholar

54. Ibid., 126.

55. Ibid., 7-8.

56. Ibid., 16.

57. Elaborated initially within the field of film studies, the theory of the male gaze draws on Freudian notions of voyeurism and scopophilia to argue that mainstream cinematic depictions of the female body are contingent on both representation and reception; in its projection of a sexualized view of the female body, the male gaze denies autonomous feminine subjectivity while simultaneously obliging the viewer to take up a position that is structured in terms of its implied masculinity. See Mulvey, Laura, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16, no. 3 (1975): 6–18 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, republished in Mulvey, Laura, Visual and Other Pleasures, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke, 2009), 14–27 Google Scholar; and Ann, Kaplan E., “Is the Gaze Male?,” in her Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera (London, 1983), 23–35.Google Scholar

58. Platonov, “Soul,” 17. Elsewhere in Dzhan words related to impatience ﹛neterpenie) often carry connotations of sexual desire, and Chagataev's affection indeed appears to contain an element of displaced erotic longing. When, for instance, Chagataev later confesses his feelings for Ksenia to her mother, he uses the phrase “ia ne vyterpel,” translated by the Chandlers et al. as “I couldn't help it” (ibid., 19). When Nur-Mokhammed embraces Aidym, he does do “because he did not have the time or surplus strength to endure his love any longer,” where “to endure” similarly translates the Russian terpet’ (ibid., 180).

59. “For Vertov, the image of unveiling represents not only the political trope of casting off the shackles of religion, opening onto light as knowledge, but also filmic awakening. Unveiling becomes a metaphor of liberated vision, embedded within a political metaphor. It is another image like the eye superimposed on the camera lens, standing for the renewed and enhanced vision granted by cinema alone.” Hicks, 93. Emphasis added.

60. Platonov, “Soul,” 5.

61. Ibid., 6.

62. Ibid., 7.

63. Ibid.

64. Ibid., 7-8.

65. Ibid., 7.

66. In addition to the frequent use of words related to sight, Dzhan contains nearly two dozen words related to blindness (slepoi, slepota, etc.), reinforcing the lexical expression of the work's theme of vision. For a sustained reading of such imagery in other works by Platonov, see Seifeid, “Platonov's Blindness.“

67. Platonov, “Soul,” 41.

68. Ibid., 83.

69. Ibid.

70. Ibid., 38.

71. Ibid., 39. Emphasis in the original.

72. Ibid., 120.

73. Ibid., 146.

74. The name of Chagataev's mother, Giul ‘chatai, is interpreted in the novella as meaning “mountain flower” (ibid., 5), Aidym is a Turkmen word for “song,” and Vera (alongside Nadezhda Bostaloeva in “Iuvenil'noe more” and Liubov’ in “Reka Potudan'“) alludes to the three Petrine virtues of faith, hope, and love. (Other characteristic examples from this period include Moskva Chestnova in Schastlivaia Moskva and the allusion to Aphrodite in the title, plot, and characterization of “Fro.“)