If domesticated plots, psychologism, and the suspension of irony toward the Soviet world are the means by which Platonov acquiesces to the demands of socialist realism, what becomes in these works of 1934–1951 of his literary style, in which, I have argued, is invested so much of his identity as a writer? The short answer to this question is that verbal effects produced through the deformation of Soviet ideological clichés are the most evident sacrifice of Platonov's later period. From the mid 1930s on, Soviet rhetoric is no longer subjected in his works to the kind of awkward literalizations typical of Chevengur and Kotlovan. Indeed, as a distinct genre of speech “Soviet-speak” virtually disappears from the texts altogether, which is to say that the later texts no longer orient themselves overtly toward a language of “utopia.” Phrases whose awkwardness would earlier have signalled some important underlying theme thus appear embedded in the later texts in a normalizing context of psychological or other “realist” motivation.

Yet semantically productive violations of standard literary Russian persist into Platonov's later prose, where they support a familiar orientation toward existential themes. The later texts preserve the atmosphere, if not of egregious deformation, then at least of unlettered, “primitive” speech, often through a kind of empathetic infection with the speech habits of the characters themselves.