In the spring of 1935 Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich, one of Stalin’s most loyal adjutants, was appointed People’s Commissar for Transport. At a ceremony in the Kremlin in July 1935, he awarded medals to a number of railway workers. Soon afterwards Platonov was invited to contribute to a collective volume in praise of the heroism of Soviet railway workers.
In January 1936 Platonov was sent to the industrial Donbas region, to meet a railway station director who had been awarded the Order of Lenin. This led to him writing “Bessmertie” [“Immortality”], a story that won enthusiastic approval at a Writers’ Union meeting held on 10 March. Platonov then received another commission: in late March he was sent to a remote station in the forests of Karelia to meet a pointsman who had been
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Citation: Chandler, Robert. "Sredi zhivotnykh i rastenii". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 February 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=14444, accessed 21 November 2024.]
