Pen & Ink original drawing, based on the Russian novel “Kotlovan” by Andrei Platonov.
Dated 1977
20″ x 34”
Although Platonov was a Communist, his novel “Kotlovan” was critical of Stalin’s policies and the great cruelty that Soviet collectivization inflicted on working people. The book was not published in the USSR until 1987 but Zhdan managed to acquire an underground copy of it in the 1970s. Banned literature was often secretly copied and distributed in Moscow at that time. It was known as “samizdat.” The publication of his drawings would have caused problems for Zhdan even though it was reputed that many of his magnificent oil paintings were privately collected by Soviet officials and “hung over their beds.”