The article relies upon texts of Soviet critics published in literary periodicals and reviews during the latter part of the twenties and the thirties, the subject matter of which (sometimes merely their starting point) were the works of A. Platonov or his personality. The texts illustrate the literary fate of Platonov’s work and his fate as a man, which was paradigmatical for other writerrs belonging to this period who did not use the »method of socialist realism« (ex. M. Bulgakov). The autor also describes the literary life and its politics in the USSR during the thirties and the absurd, but for the writer and his work, dangerous »socio-realistic« approach of criticism to works whose structure challenges the norms and values prescribed by »proletarian« literature and by the later method of socialistic realism.
