Gender and sexuality in Happy Moscow

Why was it essential for Platonov to choose a woman as the novel’s protagonist, and what
accounts for the strength and resilience of Moskva Chestnova? What are the “tragic”
limitations of her character?
Before I start talking about Happy Moscow, I’d like to briefly tell about the other two novels of
Platonov – Kotlovan and Chevengur and their female characters. In Platonov’s novels of 1920s
women could be either dead mothers, or a remnant of a past epoch, or an object of desire, or a
girl who cannot survive for a long time in this world of male "utopia."
“Chevengur” – sonya & fekla stepanovna – sasha. If Sonya symbolizes the image of a new
woman of socialism that emerged after the revolution, then fekla is a woman of the past world,
who has the “simplicity” of femininity as an object of desire | rosa luxmburg – kopenkin. Sasha,
clearly aware of this fact, cannot embrace Sonya as an ideal, just as Kopenkin cannot imagine
Rosa Luxemburg as an ordinary woman, therefore Sasha prefers to embrace the ghost of the old
notion of femininity associated with “deceased mother”
“Kotlovan” - the symbol of the future socialism is the girl Nastya, who at the end of the story
unexpectedly dies. Here it is clear that the two symbols of communism are either a dead or a
dying woman. Since Plato's heroes love a distant and dead woman, in the work of Platonov a
woman often had to be "Rose," that is, the dead ideal of ideology.
So, in the 20s, Platonov’s idea about gender and about the role of a woman was definitely
“doubted,” so in his work it was difficult for women to exist as full-fledged living people who
have their own biography. The problem of eros and gender, associated with the traditional
gender concept, lies behind the different metaphors of sexuality and femininity. His characters
are constantly looking for happiness in earthly paradise, and in the process of this search, no
woman could find her place.
But everything changed after the Great Break in the early 30s. A new era began, based on the
mythological idea of communism. During this period, the concept of gender also entered a new
phase. For a great socialist society, a young mother is needed, joyful and “happy”, who could
give birth to large families, who in the future could become “homo sovieticus” - стахановцы. In
the works of Platonov of the 1930s, one can find a changed notion of gender and the most
cultural atmosphere of that time: a woman, playing a full-fledged and main role in the course of
plot development, began to actively look for the meaning of life and ways of living under
communism.
Moscow Ivanovna Chestnova is an accidentally entered into the beautiful female flesh spirit of
revolution, which is immortal, but also volatile. Despite the fact that Moscow Chestnova is a
new type of socialist woman and performs well the gender role of the time, as a mother she does
not really fit the maternal archetype. For example, for Moscow, love is a necessity as food or
water, similar to the idea of a “three glasses” in Kolontai. Only Moscow differs from Kolontay in
that it considers love "a waste of vital energy and exhaustion," does not perceive it as joy:
"Оттого, что любовью соединиться нельзя, а столько раз соединялась", "Любовь – это
не коммунизм." The novel was not finished, and the reason for this, according to Günther, is the
"insurmountable gap between the life of the heroine and the dominant myth" of that time. Over
time, in the works of Platonov, such a gap is bridged, at least Plato's heroes try to bridge them.
From the very beginning of her adult life, the future model of her existence is torn apart by
opposing vectors: her extraordinary feminine charm passionately attracts men seeking to lock her
into the cravings of possessive love (which happened in her seventeen years when she married
“случайный человек”), and she still runs from them irretrievably into the distance of her
“таинственной, но высокой судьбы”.

Platonov dwells on images of the female body to represent Stalin's transformation of the Soviet
capital in the mid-1930s. The destruction and reconstruction of Moscow's body parallel the
demolition and rebuilding of the city of Moscow itself; the relationship og violation, repair, cure
and indeed love which bind the heroine to the novels male characters can all be read as symbolic
accounts of Stalin's relationship to his city.
Analyze her sexual relationships with various men: what is most interesting about the
novel’s views on sexuality?
Bozhko is the second man in Moscow’s life (after her marriage), although they don’t have sex,
and his love for her terrifies him: “После ее посещения Божко обычно ложился вниз лицом
и тосковал от грусти, хотя причиной его жизни была одна всеобщая радость” “Божко
стал есть и пить с молодой Москвой, но сердце его билось с ужасом, потому что оно
почувствовало давно заключенную в нем любовь.”. Moscow changes his thoughts, feelings
and that scares him, makes him feel too much. “Божко робко, от крайней нужды своего
чувства, обнял Москву, а она его стала целовать в ответ. В исхудалом горле Божко
заклокотала скрытая мучительная сила и он больше не мог опомниться, узнавая
единственное счастье теплоты человека на всю жизнь.”

Sambikin is a surgeon and somewhat necrophilic: in chapter 8 he thinks about marrying a dead
girl he is dissecting “...у него прошла мысль о возможности жениться на этой мертвой —
более красивой, верной и одинокой, чем многие живые, и он заботливо обвязал ей бинтом
разрушенную грудь”, and later, after he performed amputation on Moscow, he “Ее обнимал
Самбикин и пачкал кровью ее груди, шею и живот”, он “поцеловал ее в рот”, угарно
дышащий хлороформом. His love for Moscow is so ecstatic that it does not stop him. He sent
her taken-away foot to his house for storage as part of a dear person, although Moscow
reasonably said about herself.: “Я не нога, не грудь, не живот, не глаза — сама не знаю
кто...”
Sartorius is an engineer, whom Moscow meets at the party, dances with him, drinks and talks
and at the end of the night the go to the field, and then, in a pit (metaphorical grave) they have
sex. And it reveals all the pointlessness and torment of the existing form of love, which does not
give true integrity, fusion and unity. He cries after, he doesn’t want to let Moscow go because
“Он хотел откупиться от всякого нынешнего и будущего содрагания своей жизни
посредством простой, любимой жены и решил поэтому дождаться возвращения Москвы»,
but she leaves and he follows her request and joins Bozhko in creating the most accurate scales.
Both Sartorius and Sambikin — from the lineage of Plato's heroes who broke out of the usual
norm of existence — forget and eat and sleep — both are clumsy, disharmonious (unless one is
short, and the other is long), as if transient beings, maybe, into that very “homo sapiens
explorans” (“rational person exploring”), about which the Russian physicist N. A. Umov spoke,
also from a galaxy of cosmist thinkers.
I will tell a little more about Sartorious’s fate later, but now I will tell about the last person. He
appears as a nameless «вневоенник», as Moscow charges him, and after he leaves, crying, she
follows. She comes to him once again after having sex with Sartorius, and then Platonov deepens
his characteristics of a man, precepting himself in that boring mortal world. His name is
Komyagin, and he does not feel anything but emptiness, empty peace (“Я человек-ничто”), so
he thoroughly swept his inner world from any thought, feeling or desire, and as soon as
something like this was born in him he immediately aborts it, “например, усиленной жизнью с
женщиной и долгим сном” So Komyagin took his measures against the suffering and anguish
of self-conscious mortal life. Once he lived differently: he tried to draw pictures, he began to
write both a diary and poems cut short in half-words. He shows Moscow his half-finished
painting that depicts philosophical motive of sad idiocy of his existence. In the 12 chapter is
revealed, that Moscow married Komyagin. This chapter is specially grotesque and ugly, as we
learn (through eavesdropping Sartorius) that it was Komyagin, running with the torch, the whole
heroic and tragic nature of the children's shock impression is dispelled. Moscow tells him to
strangle himself and he obeys. Then Sartorius enters and watches Moscow as she falls asleep,
and after he discovers that Komyagin is alive, leaves.
He goes to the flea market and by some reason buys there a new passport, and he is no longer
Sartorius, but now he is Grunyahin. He marries to a woman who is very annoying, and her son is
too, and he stays in condition of such voluntary self-abasement, philosophical austerity.

Moscow says to all her lovers that she loves them, but it looks more like a pity. All men idealize
her, for example, even when she calls herself “хромой, худой и душевной психичкой”,
Sartorius still sees her as “прежняя, любимая Москва, еще более милая и сердечная для
него, что счастье и слава ее временно остановились”
They cry, they feel yearning all the time, all in all – they don’t act and feel typically masculine.
Moscow tells Sartorius that he is a girl, and she is a woman. Their weakness and sensibility
remind me of Daniil Kharms’ short novel “Unarmed”, where a man suddenly finds himself
unable to have sex due to disappearance of his genitals. This novel is often analyzed, and man’s
inability to have sex because of oppressing female sexuality is a common opinion about absurd
novels. Man’s libido shrinks, becomes oppressed and his body starts to metaphorically decay –
and it all because of woman’s blooming sexuality, and I think that in Happy Moscow situation
with man’s libido is quite similar.
Conclusion
All the characters of the novel come to a different form of “derogation” and “fall”: the crippled
Moscow, having passed through its humiliations and disappointments, disappears somewhere,
Sambikin freezes in the tetanus of his fixed idea, Bozhko marries the bourgeois Lisa, left by
Sartorius, Sartorius-Grunyahin turns into the humble henpecked his unhappy wife shrews,
Komigin buys his coffin, preparing in advance for the elimination into complete nothing.