In August 1991, a series of hardliners moved against Mikhail Gorbachev and his liberalising reforms. The attempted putsch failed, and shortly thereafter, the Soviet Union collapsed. That same month, the heavyweight literary journal

[

] published an unknown novel by Andrei Platonov, the rediscovery of whose works had been a signal feature of

and

[see separate entry]. Despite this inauspicious start,

[

] has gone on to become one of the most commented on of all Platonov’s works, and indeed of all Soviet literature.

It is, truth to tell, an odd work. Left seemingly incomplete by its author, it is one of those exceptional fragments (like the poems of Sappho) that enjoys almost canonical status. One of the first of

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Citation: Bullock, Philip Ross. "Schastlivaia Moskva". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 December 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=14440, accessed 22 November 2024.]