Platonov: a sentence from Kotlovan (stuchit)

[Robert Chandler]

Dear all,

About 15 pages from the end of Kotlovan Yelisey says this to the activist:
– Там медведь стучит в кузне и песню рычит – весь колхоз глаза открыл: нам
без тебя жутко стало!
(Tam medved’ stuchit v kuzne i pesnyu rychit – ves’ kolkhoz glaza otkryl:
nam bez tebya zhutko stalo.

At one level this means simply that the bear is making a lot of noise
hammering in the smithy and that this has woken everyone up.  But ‘ves’
kolkhoz glaza otkryl’ has, I think, a secondary meaning: that the whole
collective farm has begun to see the truth.  What I want to know is whether
‘stuchit’ could have the secondary meaning of ‘inform’, in the sense of
‘denounce’.  Were ‘stukach’ and ‘stuchit’’ used in this way as early as
1930?

Best Wishes,

Robert

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