1. A. G. Gael', “Otbrosif nazad chernye peski Kara-Kuma,” Pravda, 25 September 1933. Turkmenistan was the last of the five Central Asian republics to be brought under full Soviet political control; only in early 1933, the year of the Moscow-Kara-Kum-Moscow rally, was the Turkmen leader of the “basmachi,” Dzhunaid Khan, driven from the Soviet Union.

2. Among the many works published on the Kara-Kum expedition were poet Mikhail Loskutov's Trinadtsatyi karavan: Zapiski o pustyne Karakum (Moscow, 1933) and his children's book, Rasskazy o dorogakh (Moscow, 1935); S. Urnis's children's book Kara-Kum:Rasskaz o probege (Moscow, 1934); and El'-Registan and L. Brontman's Moskva-Kara- Kum-Moskva (Moscow, 1934). Roman Karmen and Eduard Tisse's film of the expedition is Avtoprobeg Moskva-Karakumy-Moskva (1933).

3. USSR in Construction, no. 2 (February 1934): 84.Google Scholar

4. Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s'ezd sovetskikh pisatelei (Moscow, 1934), 214–15.Google Scholar This term is used by Maksim Gor'kii in his discussion of possible genres and topics for children's literature. See M. Gor'kii, “0 Temakh,” Pravda, 17 October 1933.

5. Rozhentseva, Elena, “Opyt dokumentirovaniia Turkmenskikh poezdok A. P. Platonova,“ in Arkhiv A. P. Platonova, ed. Kornienko, N. V., vol. 1 (Moscow, 2009), 400 Google Scholar. One of Platonov's colleagues on the 1934 writers’ expedition to Turkmenistan had already written a novel plotted around the reversal of the Amu Dar'ia. Petr Pavlenko, a minor Russian writer whose literary works primarily focused on Soviet Turkmenistan, published Pustynia (Leningrad, 1931) to mixed reviews. Natal'ia Kornienko discusses the antagonism between Pavlenko and Platonov and argues convincingly that in Dzhan Platonov polemicizes with Pavlenko's vision of Turkmenistan's development. See Kornienko, Natal'ia V., “Andrei Platonov: ‘Turkmeniia—strana ironii.’ Obraz Turkmenii v sovetskoi i russkoi literature 30-kh godov,” in Alieva, S. U. et al., Natsiia, lichnost', literatura, pt. 1 (Moscow, 1996), 108–9.Google Scholar

6. Platonov sketches out the itinerary for his trips to Turkmenistan in a letter of April 1934. Platonov, Andrei, Gosudarstvennyi zhitel (Moscow, 1988), 560.Google Scholar

7. Elena Antonova points out that Platonov left Turkmenistan on May 7, prior to the Academy of Sciences’ expedition. E. Antonova, “A. Platonov—inzhener tresta ‘Rosmetroves,'“ in Kornienko, N. V., ed., “Stranafilosofov“Andreia Platonova: Problemy tvorchestva, pt. 4 (Moscow, 2000), 791.Google ScholarI have not been able to determine whether this was the expedition to investigate the Amu Dar'ia river project, also completed in the summer of 1934. For a detailed reconstruction of the chronology of the Turkmenistan brigade, see Rozhentseva, “Opyt dokumentirovaniia Turkmenskikh poezdok A. P. Platonova,” 398-407.

8. Natal'ia Kornienko suggests that Platonov may have already traveled to the Kara-Kum desert in the 1920s as a land reclamation engineer. See Kornienko's notes to Andrei Platonov, Zapisnye knizhki: Materialy k biografii, ed. Kornienko, N. V. (Moscow, 2000), 368 Google Scholar.

9. L. Anninskii, for example, writes that for Platonov, Asia is generally “not a geographical space.” Anninskii, L., “Vostok i zapad v tvorchestve Andreia Platonova,” Prostor, no. 1 (January 1968): 93 Google Scholar. One recent analysis uniting geographical and metageographical topoi in Dzhan is Skakov, Nariman, “Prostranstva ‘Dzhana’ Andreia Platonova,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 107, no. 1 (2011): 211–30Google Scholar. For a summary and catalogue of mythological readings of Dzhan, see Seifrid, Thomas, Andrei Platonov: Uncertainties of Spirit (Cambridge, Eng., 1992), 186,245–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. Dirlik, Arif, “Mao Zedong and ‘Chinese Marxism,'” in Makdisi, Saree, Casarino, Cesare, and Karl, Rebecca E., eds., Marxism beyond Marxism (New York, 1996), 128–29Google Scholar. One variation on this formulation (grounded in the same implicit biblical analogy) is Annette Michelson's use of demotic Marxism, quoted in Fredric Jameson, Valences of the Dialectic (London, 2009), 6. Jameson uses the term synonymously with vulgar Marxism, approving of it as the necessary practical counterpart to any theoretical Marxism, and while his definition does not stress local conditions, the emphasis on praxis has some relevance to Platonov's case. Jameson, Fredric, “Actually Existing Marxism,” in Makdisi, Casarino, and Karl, , eds., Marxism beyond Marxism, 50.Google Scholar

11. Dirlik, , “Mao Zedong and ‘Chinese Marxism,'” 128–29Google Scholar.

12. Osbourne, Thomas, “Utopia, Counter-utopia,” History of the Human Sciences 16, no. 1 (February 2003): 123–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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15. Platonov, Andrei Platonovich, Vzyskanie pogibshikh: Rasskazy i ocherki (Moscow, 2010), 630.Google Scholar

16. See Nemtsov, M. and Antonova, E., “Gubmeliorator tov. Platonov: Po materialam Narkomata zemledeliia, 1921-1926 gg.,” in Kornienko, , ed. “Strana filosofov” Andreia Platonova, pt. 3 (Moscow, 1999), 476–508 Google Scholar.

17. Shklovskii, V., Tret” ia fabrika (Moscow, 1926), 125.Google Scholar

18. Quoted in Andrei Platonov, Sobranie, ed. Kornienko, N. V., Vol. 1, Usomnivshiisia Makar: Rasskazy 1920-kh godov. Stikhotvoreniia, ed. Malygina, N. M. (Moscow, 2009), 616.Google Scholar

19. Platonov, , “Doklad upravleniia rabot po gidrifikatsii Tsentral'noi Asii,” Sochineniia, Vol. 1, bk. 1, Rasskazy. Stikhotvoreniia, 212–16Google Scholar. See also Bobylev, Boris, “Ob Andree Platonove—Voronezhskom gazetchike,” in Andreeva, R. et al., eds., Nash Platonov (Voronezh, 1999), 209.Google Scholar

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21. Platonov, , “Bor'ba s pustynei,” Sochineniia, Vol. 1, bk. 2,278.Google Scholar

22. Ibid., 276. Platonov similarly calls nature itself the “waste, excrement” of history. Platonov, Andrei, “Simfoniia soznania II: Istoriia i priroda,” in Kornienko, , ed., “Strana filosofov” Andreia Platonova, pt. 1 (Moscow, 1994), 318.Google Scholar

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24. Vereshchagin, N. V., “Po povodu neurozhaia tekushchego goda,” Trudy ImperatorskogoVol'nogo ekonomkheskogo obshchestva 2, no. 5 (1891): 183.Google Scholar Quoted in Moon, David, “The Environmental History of the Russian Steppes: Vasilii Dokuchaev and the Harvest Failure of 1891,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 15 (2005): 160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. Solov'ev, Vladimir Sergeevich, Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh (Moscow, 1988), 2:480 Google Scholar. Solov'ev directly addresses Vasilii Dokuchaev's book on the 1891 drought, Nashi stepiprezhde i teper (1892).

26. Platonov, “Na fronte znoia,” 212.

27. Platonov, Andrei, “Strana bedniakov: Ocherki chernozemnoi oblasti,” Sobranie, ed. Kornienko, N. V., Vol. 8, Fabrika literatury: Literaturnaia kritika. Publitsistika (Moscow, 2011), 633.Google Scholar

28. Platonov returns to the Solov'evian pun, with more humor, in his “Story about Many Interesting Things” (1923): “Ivan thought about words: why is a ravine called a ravine? … A ravine [ovrag] is the enemy [vrag] of the peasant.” Platonov, , “Rasskaz o mnogikh interesnykh veshchakh,” Sochineniia, Vol. 1, bk. 1,244.Google Scholar

29. Platonov, “Khlebstanok,” 202.Google Scholar

30. Bobylev, “Ob Andree Platonove,” 210 Google Scholar. Dokuchaev attributed the 1891 famine to the breaking of the steppes’ virgin soil, noting that the fertile but delicate loess soil of the steppe lands became vulnerable to erosion when native grasses were cleared for grain cultivation.

31. Platonov, , “Chernyi spasitel',” Sochineniia, Vol. 1, bk. 2,156.Google Scholar

32. Platonov, Andrei to Platonova, M. A., Tambov, 10 December 1926, in Arkhiv A. P. Platonova, 1:446.Google Scholar

33. Platonov, Andrei, “Peschanaia uchitel'nitsa,” in Platonov, Andrei, Rasskazy (Moscow, 1962), 37.Google Scholar

34. Pravda described the famous Black Sunday dust storm to its Soviet readers, reporting that “the air is filled with soil particles” and “farmers, cattlemen, and farm hands by the thousands are fleeing the affected areas.” “Pyl'nyi shtorm v S.Sh.A,” Pravda, 14 April 1935,5. For more on the American Dust Bowl, see Worster, Donald, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (New York, 2004).Google Scholar

35. Il'in, M., New Russia's Primer: The Story of the First Five-Year Plan, trans. Counts, George S. and Lodge, Nucia P. (Boston, Mass., 1931), 79.Google Scholar

36. Maksim Gor'kii, “O bor'be s prirodoi,” Pravda, 12 December 1931.

37. Platonov, Andrei, “Pervyi Ivan: Fragmenty ocherka,” Oktiabr', no. 5 (2004): 121 Google Scholar. It is important to note that “Pervyi Ivan” was drawn from fragments of earlier texts and its characters present diverse views on drought and desertification. For a textological comparison of various manuscript versions and the published version in Oktiabr', see Dhooge, Ben, “Istochniki teksta ocherka ‘Pervyi Ivan’ (Zametki o tekhnicheskom tvorchestve trudiashchikhsia liudei),” in Arkhiv A. P. Platonova, 1:52–80.Google Scholar

38. Platonov, Zapisnye knizhki, 135.Google Scholar

39. Platonov, Andrei, “O pervoi sotsialisticheskoi tragedii,” Sobranie, 8:641.Google Scholar

40. Ibid.

41. Engels, Friedrich, Dialectics of Nature, trans. Clemens Dutt (New York, 1940), 291–92.Google Scholar

42. Quoted in Weiner, Douglas R., Models of Nature: Ecology, Conservation, and Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia (Pittsburgh, 2000), 195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Edith Clowes has shown Platonov's close attention to contemporary debates in Marxist-Leninism in her discussion of dialectical materialism in The Foundation Pit. Clowes, Edith, Fiction's Overcoat: Russian Literary Culture and the Question of Philosophy (Ithaca, 2004), 235–57.Google Scholar

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44. Platonov, “O pervoi sotsialisticheskoi tragedii,” 641.Google Scholar

45. A. Miretskii, “Segodnia i zavtra v Karakumskii pustyni,” Pravda, 23 May 1934. For background on the polar theme in socialist realism, see Clark, Katerina, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Bloomington, 2000), 101–2Google Scholar; McCannon, John, “Tabula Rasa in the North: The Soviet Arctic and Mythic Landscapes in Stalinist Popular Culture,” in Dobrenko, Evgeny and Naiman, Eric, eds., The Landscape of Stalinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space (Seattle, 2003), 241–60Google Scholar; and, on the socialist realist language of frontiers and exploration more generally, Widdis, Emma, Visions of a New Land: Soviet Film from the Revolution to the Second World War (New Haven, 2003), 97–119 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also relevant is Clark's treatment of the Stalinist “imperial sublime,” in Clark, Katerina, Moscow, the Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931-1941 (Cambridge, Mass., 2011), 276–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46. Andrei Platonov, “Goriachaia Arktika,” 171.Google Scholar

47. Ibid.

48. Caroe, Olaf, Soviet Empire: The Turks of Central Asia and Stalinism (London, 1967), 23 Google Scholar; Bartol'd, V. V., Istoriia kul'turnoi zhizni Turkestana (Leningrad, 1927)Google Scholar; and Problemy Turkmenii: Trudypervoi konferentsiipo izucheniiu proizvoditel'nykh sil Turkmenskoi SSR,2 vols. (Leningrad, 1934).

49. Significantly, Platonov omits from discussion Chingis Khan, whose complete ruin of Khorezm in the early thirteenth century was notoriously brutal and who was commonly associated with the destruction of irrigation systems in Asia.

50. Platonov, “Goriachaia Arktika,” 170.Google Scholar

51. Yarshater, Ehsan, “Iran: iii. Traditional History,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. 13, fasc. 3 (London, 2004), 303–6.Google Scholar

52. In his works on the multiethnic Turkmen SSR, Platonov discusses the nomadic ethnic Turkmens surprisingly infrequently and with some ambivalence.

53. Platonov, Andrei, “Dzhan,” in Platonov, A., Proza (Moscow, 1999), 458.Google Scholar

54. Ibid., 502.

55. Platonov, “O pervoi sotsialisticheskoi tragedii,” 641.

56. Platonov, “Dzhan,” 484–85.

57. Ibid., 494.

58. Ibid., 461.

59. Ibid., 500.

60. Ibid., 472-73.

61. Ibid., 473.

62. Platonov, Andrei, “Takyr,” in Sannikov, Grigorii, ed., Aiding-Giunler: Al'manakh k desiatiletiiu Turkmenistana, 1924-1934 (Moscow, 1934), 51.Google Scholar

63. Platonov, “Dzhan,” 477.

64. Keith Livers remarks on a similar transformation of “filth” into “purity” in Moskva Chestnova's body in Happy Moscow. Livers, Keith A., Constructing the Stalinist Body: Fictional Representations of Corporeality in the Stalinist 1930s (Lanham, Md., 2004), 56.Google Scholar Another companion scene, but one that is more ambivalent, can be found in Platonov's 1934 play Sharmanka (The Barrel Organ), in which a Soviet bureaucrat creates food from unlikely sources. See Seifrid, Uncertainties of Spirit, 179–81.Google Scholar

65. Naiman, Eric, “Communism and the Collective Toilet: Lexical Heroes in Happy Moscow,” Essays in Poetics 26 (2001): 98.Google Scholar For more on the problems of “waste” and “salvage“ in Platonov's works on Turkmenistan, see Kornienko, “Andrei Platonov: ‘Turkmeniia— strana ironii,'” 108-9; and Krapivin, Valerii, “Iranskie grezy: Ariiskaia tema v tvorchestve Khlebnikova i Platonova,” in Kornienko, , ed., “Strana filosofov” Andreia Platonova, pt. 4,301.Google Scholar

66. For more on Nikolai Fedorov's influence on Platonov, see Teskey, Ayleen, Platonov and Fyodorov: The Influence of Christian Philosophy on a Soviet Writer (Amersham, 1982).Google Scholar

67. Platonov, “Goriachaia Arktika,” 172.

68. Platonov, , “Voprosy sel'skokhoziastva v kitaiskom zemledelii,” Sochineniia, Vol. 1, bk. 2,236.Google Scholar While Platonov's suggestion may have a hint of satire, as I discuss elsewhere, it is consonant with Marx's concept of social metabolism, based on the reciprocal exchange of minerals between city and country in the form of waste and food.

69. Paperny, Vladimir, Kul'tura dva (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1985), 142–45Google Scholar; Paperny, , “Men, Women, and the Living Space,” in Brumfield, William Craft and Ruble, Blair A., eds., Russian Housing in the Modern Age: Design and Social History (Cambridge, Eng., 1993), 166–68.Google Scholar

70. Wittfogel, Karl August, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven, 1957).Google Scholar

71. For a historical perspective on “oriental despotism” and the AMP, see Sawer, Marian, Marxism and the Question of the Asiatic Mode of Production (The Hague, 1977)Google Scholar; and Bailey, Anne M. and Llobera, Josep R., eds., The Asiatic Mode of Production: Science and Politics (London, 1981).Google Scholar

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73. Baron, Samuel H., Plekhanov in Russian History and Soviet Historiography (Pittsburgh, 1995), 54–55.Google Scholar

74. The five progressive stages of socioeconomic development in the piatichlenka were primitive-communal, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist, and socialist. Those who believed the AMP was a legitimate mode of production were known as the aziatchiki.

75. Sawer, Marxism and the Question of the Asiatic Mode of Production, 52. The Asiatic mode of production was “revived” in 1964.

76. These historiographical shifts are traced in Tillett, Lowell R., The Great Friendship: Soviet Historians on the Non-Russian Nationalities (Chapel Hill, 1969).Google Scholar

77. Mandelstam, Osip, “Humanism and the Present,” in Brown, Clarence, Mandelstam (Cambridge, Eng., 1973), 103.Google Scholar For the original, see Mandel'shtam, Osip, Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh (Moscow, 1990), 2:205.Google Scholar

78. Mandelstam, “Humanism and the Present,” 103.

79. Platonov, Andrei, “Epifanskie shliuzy,” Sobranie, ed. Kornienko, N. V., Vol. 3, Efirnyi trakt: Povest’ 1920-kh-nachala 1930-kh godov, ed. Malygina, N. M. (Moscow, 2009), 101.Google Scholar

80. Ibid., 3:95, 3:118.

81. Paperny, “Men, Women, and the Living Space,” 168.

82. Platonov, Andrei to Platonova, M. A., Tambov, 5-6(?) January 1927, in Arkhiv A.P. Platonova, 1:459.Google Scholar

83. Quoted in Kornienko, Natal ‘ia, “Istoriia teksta i biografiia A. P. Platonova (1926- 1946),” in Fainberg, Vladimir, Zdes i teper’ (Moscow, 1993), 218 Google Scholar. In evoking pedagogy, Platonov is referring to the claim that forced labor on the canals would re-educate political prisoners—a process known as perekovka (reforging).

84. Allworth, Edward, ed., Central Asia, 130 Years of Russian Dominance: A Historical Overview (Durham, 1994), 9,13 Google Scholar; Letunov, P. A., Gerasimov, I. P., and Kovda, Viktor A., Glavnyi Turkmenskii Kanal: Prirodnye usloviia i perspektivy orosheniia i obvodneniia zemel' iuzhnykh raionovprikaspiiskoi ravniny zapadnoi Turkmenii, nizov'ev Amu-Dar'i izapadnoi chasti pustyni Kara-Kumy (Moscow, 1952), 7.Google Scholar

85. A. Miretskii, “Segodnia i zavtra v Karakumskii pustyni,” 4. Decades-long construction of the Kara-Kum Canal began in 1954. It is one of the major causes of the Aral Sea's desiccation. See Orlovsky, Nikolai S., “Creeping Environmental Changes in the Karakum Canal's Zone of Impact,” in Glantz, Michael H., ed., Creeping Environmental Problems and Sustainable Development in the Aral Sea Basin (Cambridge, Eng., 1999), 225–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

86. Platonov, “Dzhan,” 452.

87. Ibid.

88. Ibid., 505. Bais, in Central Asia, referred to rich peasants, i.e., kulaks.

89. Ibid., 476-77.

90. Gellner, Ernest, foreword to Khazanov, Anatoly M., Nomads and the Outside World (Madison, 1994), xi.Google Scholar

91. Ibid., x. Emphasis in original.

92. Platonov, “Goriachaia Arktika,” 170.

93. Ibid., 171.I am grateful to Alexander Nakhimovsky for a helpful discussion on Platonov's meaning in this passage.

94. Ibid. A takyr is a clayey, saline soil formation with limited vegetation found in ancient river deltas throughout Central Asia. Takyrs retain water because of their high clay content and are often used to water herd animals. For a brief description of a takyr, see Kharin, Nikolai, Vegetation Degradation in Central Asia under the Impact of Human Activities (Dordrecht, 2002), 18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

95. Platonov, “Dzhan,” 490,452.

96. Platonov, “Goriachaia Arktika,” 171.

97. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), 93.Google Scholar

98. Platonov, “O pervoi sotsialisticheskoi tragedii,” 641.

99. Ponomareva, Svetlana, “'Ia rodilsia na prekrasnoi zhivoi zemle …': Opyt kommentirovaniia meliorativnoi praktiki A. Platonova,” in Kornienko, , ed., “Strana filosofov“ Andreia Platonova, pt. 4, 440.Google Scholar

100. Platonov, “Dzhan,” 465.

101. Nazar also connotes spiritual or mystical vision in Sufi tradition. See Ismailov, Hamid, “Dzhan as a Sufi Treatise,” Essays in Poetics 26 (2001): 72–82.Google Scholar

102. Platonov, “Dzhan,” 454.

103. Platonov, Zapisnye knizhki, 137.

104. Savkin, I. A., “Na storone Platona: Karsavin i Platonov, ili Ob odnoi ne-vstreche,“ in Kolesnikova, E. I., ed., Tvorchestvo Andreia Platonova: Issledovaniia i materialy, bk. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1995), 158–59.Google Scholar Savkin identifies the same nontraditional (i.e., “non- Platonic“) Utopian landscapes in the works of the writer Lev Platonovich Karsavin, playing throughout the essay with the alternation between the names Platon, Platonov, and Platonovich.

105. Platonov, “Dzhan,” 457.

106. Jameson, Fredric, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (London, 2005), 399–400.Google Scholar

107. Platonov, “Goriachaia Arktika,” 171.

108. Platonov, “Dzhan,” 467