War and the future of mankind: different editions of Andrei Platonov’s story ‘The iron old woman’

The subject of the research is the poetics of war stories about children referring to 1941- 1945. The study aims to show Andrei Platonov’s understanding of the war from the perspective of the future of mankind through a comparison of the versions of the story The Iron Old Woman and their contextual analysis. The theoretical basis of the paper is the works by Russian cosmists such as V. I. Vernadsky, N. F. Fedorov, K. E. Tsiolkovsky; the contextual analysis developed by M. M. Bakhtin supplemented by observations of the fractal structure of the text as well as the principles of concealed metonymical writing substantiated by K. Ginsburg. The methodology of the work is based on the research by L. Karasev, L. Chervyakova, H. Günther and other scholars focused on A. Platonov’s stories to children and about children. The research and its results were determined by the analysis of the socio-political and autobiographical contexts of A. Platonov’s life and work in 1943. At that time, the war was gradually changing from ‘a bloody slaughter to a victorious move’, which required its impeccable ideological coverage. From personal perspective, the year was overshadowed by the death of A. Platonov’s son. The logic of the research was determined by an attempt to penetrate into A. Platonov’s understanding of the war. Firstly, the research compares two versions of the story The Iron Old Woman (written in 1941, 1943). In the 1943 version, three new fragments have been discovered, showing the writer’s genuine attitude to the war as a new civilizational turn. Secondly, the new title of the story is justified by analyzing the fractal composition determined by ontological transformations that are manifested by metonymic rhetorical colors. The fabulousness of the transformations in the central characters’ duel clarifies the meaning of the story’s title. ‘Iron’ people are the result of the intellectual aspirations of mankind devoid of moral foundations. The war is understood as a property of modern civilization. The writer connects the possibility of a ‘better world than the real one’ with the ideas of Russian cosmism and, above all, the Project of resurrecting the dead. He passes on his faith in victory over Death to a little boy who epitomizes the embodiment of the future.