Platonov believed that he was fighting for the future. According to him, children were the reason that he and others were working toward socialism. This theme is easily observable in the quotations of Voschev and Zhachev. In this way, Nastya serves as a symbol of the Soviet Union's future. She is young, intelligent, and happy, but Platonov uses her death to symbolize his worries about the country's state of affairs. The concludes "The Foundation Pit" with a quick note: "Will our soviet socialist republic perish like Nastya or will she grow up into a whole human being, into a new historical society? … The author may have been mistaken to portray in the form of the little girl's death the end of the socialist generation, but this mistake occurred only as a result of excessive alarm on behalf of something beloved, whose loss is tantamount to the destruction not only of all the past but also of the future."