The Foundation Pit (Kotlovan) is a gloomy symbolical and semi-satirical novel by Andrei Platonov

Andrei Platonov

Andrei Platonov was the pen name of Andrei Platonovich Klimentov , a Soviet author whose works anticipate existentialism. Although Platonov was a Communist, his works were banned in his own lifetime for their skeptical attitude toward collectivization and other Stalinist policies...

. The plot of the novel concerns a group of workers in the early Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 attempting to dig out a huge foundation pit, on the base of which a gigantic House for all Proletariat

Proletariat

The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...

 will be built. The workers dig daily, but they slowly cease understanding meaning in their work; the enormous foundation pit sucks out all their energy.

Along with Yevgeny Zamyatin

Yevgeny Zamyatin

Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin was a Russian author of science fiction and political satire. Despite having been a prominent Old Bolshevik, Zamyatin was deeply disturbed by the policies pursued by the CPSU following the October Revolution...

, Platonov created one of the first state-control dystopia

Dystopia

A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...

s of the 20th century on the creative level of works such as Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...

and Huxley's Brave New World

Brave New World

Brave New World is Aldous Huxley's fifth novel, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 , the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of...

. However, both English Novels were published long before a translation of The Foundation Pit became available.

The Foundation Pit is a representation of the conflict that occurred between the individual and the collectivized State in the late 1920s. The only existence one has is being part of a whole.

Due to censorship

Censorship

thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...

, The Foundation Pit was not published in the Soviet Union until 1987.