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Yiannis Mylonas
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Did there remain in his nation even a small soul, something he could work with in order to bring about general happiness? Or had everything there been so worn away by suffering that even imagination, the intelligence of the poor, had entirely died? Chagataev knew from childhood memory and from his education in Moscow that any exploitation of the human being begins with the distortion of that person’s soul, with getting their soul so used to death that it can be subjugated; without this subjugation, a slave is not a slave.

Platonov, 2013: 103

To be underdeveloped is not merely to be robbed or exploited: it is to be held in the grip of an artificial stasis. Underdevelopment not only kills: its essential stagnation denies life and resembles death.

Berger & Mohr, 2010: 36

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