Life and Fate (
Russian:
Жизнь и судьба) is a 1959 novel by
Vasily Grossman and the author's
magnum opus. Technically, it is the second half of the author's conceived two-part book under the same title. Although the first half, the novel
For the Right Cause, written during the reign of
Joseph Stalin and first published in 1952, expresses loyalty to the regime,
Life and Fate sharply criticises
Stalinism.
[1] Vasily Grossman, a Ukrainian Jew, was a correspondent for the Soviet military paper Krasnaya Zvezda throughout World War II. He spent approximately 1,000 days on the frontlines, roughly three of the four years of the conflict between the Germans and Soviets.[2] He was also author of the novel The People Immortal. He was one of the first journalists to write about the ethnic cleansing of people in Eastern Europe and he was present at many famous battles.
Life and Fate was his defining achievement.
[1] History of the manuscript[edit]
Life and Fate, the sequel to
For a Just Cause, was written in the aftermath of Stalin's death. Grossman submitted it around October 1960 for potential publication to the
Znamya magazine. At this point, the
KGBraided his apartment.
[3] The manuscripts, carbon copies and notebooks, as well as the typists' copies and even the
typewriter ribbons were seized.
On 23 July 1962, the
Politburo ideology chief
Mikhail Suslov told the author that, if published, his book could inflict even greater harm to the Soviet Union than
Pasternak's
Doctor Zhivago. Suslov told Grossman that his novel could not be published for two or three hundred years.
[4]Suslov's comment reveals both the presumption of the censor and recognition of the work's lasting literary value. Grossman tried to appeal against this verdict to Khrushchev personally:
[5]"I ask you to return freedom for my book, I ask that my book be discussed with editors, not the agents of the KGB. What is the point of me being physically free when the book I dedicated my life to is arrested... I am not renouncing it... I am requesting freedom for my book."
In 1974, a friend and a prominent poet Semyon Lipkin got one of the surviving copies put onto microfilm and smuggled it out of the country with the help of satirical writer
Vladimir Voinovich and nuclear scientist
Andrei Sakharov. Grossman died in 1964, never having seen his book published, which did not happen in the West until 1980.
[5]Some critics have compared Grossman's war novels, and specifically
Life and Fate, with
Leo Tolstoy's monumental work, especially
War and Peace.
[7]Historical context[edit]
Life and Fate takes place during
Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, focusing on the
battle of Stalingrad. The book begins when Germany lays siege to the city, trying to conquer it. Throughout the book there are references to the decaying city and the damage from aerial bombardments and artillery based around the city. There are also occasions in the Russian novel in which the German blockade is quite noticeable. The characters suffer from starvation and thirst. The book ends with the surrender of German field-marshal
Friedrich Paulus' 6th Army remnants and the return of civilians to the city.
The novel's characters are a combination of fictional and historical figures. The famous characters include
Joseph Stalin and
Adolf Hitler. Many of the characters are more loosely based on a historical figure, or a representative Russian. The main character, Viktor Shtrum, is a “self portrait” of Grossman himself, though Shtrum also incorporates elements of the Jewish physicist
Lev Landau, who was dismissed from his job because of the anti-Jewish movement in the Soviet Union.
[citation needed] Viktor Shtrum's opinions and thoughts are really the thoughts and words of Vasily Grossman
[citation needed]. Shtrum's negative thoughts on
communism are Grossman's opinions.
[citation needed]In
Life and Fate there are different times when the Nazi concentration camps are mentioned. A long section of
Life and Fate is about a German prison camp, where many characters are on their way to the
gas chamber to be gassed; then follows a dialogue of ranked Nazi officers inside a new gas chamber who toast its opening. The characters shipped off to Germany had been caught leaving one of the countries under Nazi rule. Grossman's inclusion is historically accurate, since there are records of many Russians in Nazi labor and
death camps. Grossman also includes another German concentration camp where one of his main arguments takes place concerning communism and fascism. Grossman devotes large sections of the book to the prisoners held at Soviet and German labor and concentration camps, which is necessary for a holistic understanding of the time and events.
Main characters[edit]
- Viktor Pavlovich Shtrum
Viktor Shtrum is the primary figure in Grossman's novel, largely based on the author himself. Although there is a multitude of characters in Life and Fate, much of the novel's plot revolves around Shtrum and his family. Shtrum is married to Lyudmila. He works as a nuclear physicist and is a member of the Academy of Sciences. A crucial aspect of Shtrum's character is his academic work. He is constantly thinking about his exploration of nuclear physics. This obsession with his work is obvious from the very start of the novel through the thoughts of Lyudmila, with whom he has drawn apart. Before the war, Shtrum's family had been living in Moscow, yet the city's evacuation caused them to move into Kazan. Throughout the novel, Shtrum hints at his ambivalent feelings toward the state, becoming increasingly disillusioned with Stalin's regime. He is at times an unsympathetic man – self-absorbed, irritable, difficult to live with – yet he is also deeply human, struggling to remain true to himself while navigating the innumerable moral qundaries of life in Soviet society. The war also forces Shtrum to come to terms with his Jewish heritage, largely through the traumatic loss of his mother, who was murdered by the Nazis in Ukraine. Viktor learns this through her last letter to him; based on a letter from Grossman's own mother, who was killed in similar circumstances, this passage is both one of the most iconic and the most devastating in the novel. As the story goes on, Viktor also becomes increasingly aware of the latent anti-Semitism of the world in which he lives.
- Lyudmila ('Lyuda') Nikolaevna Shaposhnikova
Lyudmila is married to Viktor Shtrum and has a daughter with him named Nadya. This is her second marriage. She was originally married to Abarchuk, who has been sent to a Soviet Labor Camp. In the beginning of the novel, it is clear that Lyudmila and Viktor have drifted apart. Although their estrangement is not expressed openly by either character, it is evident through Lyudmila's discussion of her eldest son, Tolya, who she had with Abarchuk. Lyudmila discusses how Viktor and his mother, Anna Semyonovna, always showed a preference to Nadya and ignored Tolya. Lyudmila describes this best when she says “Nadya, Nadya, Nadya...Nadya's got Viktor's eyes...Nadya's absent-minded, Nadya's quick-witted, Nadya's very thoughtful.” Lyudmila's separation and apathy towards Viktor and Nadya grow greater after the death of Tolya. This plot thread is one of the first to occur in the novel, and Grossman plunges us into Lyuda's consciousness as she struggles to come to terms with the untimely loss of her son. For a long time afterward, she talks to Tolya constantly, sometimes out loud, a habit which Viktor finds hard to cope with.
- Yevgenia ('Zhenya') Nikolaevna Shaposhnikova
Yevgenia is Lyudmila's younger sister. She was originally married to Nikolay Grigorevich Krymov, but when the reader is introduced to her in the novel, she is in a relationship with Colonel Pyotr Pavlovich Novikov. After moving to Kuibyshev, Yevgenia lives with an old German woman named Jenny Genrikovna—a woman who had once worked as the Shaposhnikov family's governess. Yevgenia had a good relationship with Jenny, but after the old woman is deported, along with other Germans living in Kuibyshev, Yevgenia lives alone. Although she is a beautiful, charming, and highly intelligent woman, Yevgenia has much trouble acquiring a residence permit or a ration-card. After many run-ins with Grishin, the head of the passport department, she is finally able to get these documents using societal connections. She receives aid in acquiring official documentation from Limonov, a man of letters, and Lieutenant-Colonel Rizin, her boss at the design office – both of whom are romantically interested in her. As the novel goes on, Zhenya shows herself to be both a strong and profoundly sympathetic character.
- Dementiy Trifonovich Getmanov
Getmanov is the secretary of an obkom and is appointed commissar to Novikov's tank corps. He is described as having large and distinct features: “his shaggy, graying head, his broad forehead, and his fleshy nose.” Getmanov is married to Galin Terentyevna. He has two daughters and a young son. His family lives in Ufa, where his comrades take care of them when Getmanov is away. Getmanov comes off as a strong supporter of the party. His prime objective in life is to move up in the party's hierarchy, regardless of the cost to others. Thus, he is very cautious about what he says and what who are associated with him say, because he does not want to offend the party or Stalin in any way. This is obvious when he is discussing politics with his friends before leaving for the front. When one man discusses how his young son once abused a picture of Stalin, Getmanov is overly critical and says that this behavior, even from a youngster, should not be tolerated. Getmanov is also quite arrogant. He feels insulted at being appointed the commissar to only a tank corps. It may be possible to see Getmanov as a portrait of Khrushchev.
- Abarchuk
Abarchuk is Lyudmila's first husband. He was arrested in 1937 and sent to the gulag. Abarchuk is a strong supporter of the party. He feels as though he has been wrongly imprisoned, yet does not fault the party for its actions. He believes that such erroneous arrests are justifiable in the large scheme of party stability. Abarchuk works with tools and materials in the camp. He works with a criminal named Barkhatov, who blackmails many people and even kills one of Abarchuk's friends, Abrasha Rubin. Abarchuk's actions are shaped by his need of approval by the party. He refuses to even allow Tolya to take his surname, for Abarchuk believes that this might hurt his standing and party image. He insists on doing what he sees as his duty to the state by denouncing Barkhatov, even though this will likely cost him his life.
- Pyotr Lavrentyevich Sokolov
Sokolov is a mathematician in Viktor's laboratory. In the beginning of the novel, Sokolov and Viktor are good friends. They love talking about their academic work and often get together at Sokolov's home to discuss life and politics. In general, however, Sokolov is more cautious than Viktor; it is only at the end of the novel that he finally dares to risk his social position for the sake of his convictions. It is implied, too, that he resents Victor's scientific breakthrough slightly. Furthermore, as the novel progresses, it is evident that Viktor and Marya Ivanovna, Sokolov's wife, have feelings for each other. As Sokolov becomes aware of this, his relationship with Viktor cools somewhat.
- Mikhail Sidorovich Mostovskoy
Mostovskoy is an Old Bolshevik in a German concentration camp. He is the first major character that the reader is introduced to and he appears in the very beginning of the novel. Mostovskoy was involved in the revolution of 1917 and had strong ties to the Communist party, having worked side by side with Lenin. Although the living conditions in the camp are unspeakable, Mostovskoy is reasonable and optimistic. He says that the great mixture of prisoners in the camps, all from different ethnic, political and religious backgrounds, leads to an interesting environment. He can use his knowledge of foreign languages in the camp and he can attempt to understand new perspectives. Those inside the camp, including Mostovskoy, are extremely interested in what is going on in the war. Grossman uses Mostovskoy's character to reveal the philosophical tension that pervaded Europe during World War II. Mostovskoy is constantly involved in philosophical arguments with fellow prisoners such as Major Yershov and Ikonnikov, a former
Tolstoyan. He is eventually singled out by the German officer Liss for a strange series of one-on-one conversations, during which Liss holds forth regarding what he sees as the essential similarities between Stalinism and Nazism. Mostovskoy is disturbed, but remains defiant, choosing to go to his death in a doomed prisoners' rebellion.
- Sofya Osipovna Levinton
When the reader first meets Levinton, she is in a train on the way to a German death camp. We later find out that she is an army doctor and an old friend of Yevgenia's. On the train, Levinton meets a six-year-old boy named David. Sent to spend the summer with his grandmother, he was left cut off from his mother in Moscow after the rapid German advance through Ukraine. Levinton realizes that David's grandmother died soon after all the Jews were herded into the ghetto and that he has no relatives with him in the transport. Over the course of the novel, Levinton grows to love David as a son. When, at the camp, the Germans offer to spare certain prisoners of value (such as doctors), but she does not save herself; rather, she stays with David and heads with him to the gas chamber to die. This sequence of events in Life and Fate is especially powerful. It demonstrates how human compassion can rise above the atrocities that defined World War II.
- Captain Grekov
Grekov is the 'house-manager' in House 6/1 – a Soviet stronghold surrounded by German troops. Grekov's superlative bravery, skill, and devotion to the fight are portrayed in an idealized manner. The men in house 6/1 look on Katya, the young radio operator posted to the building, in the disturbingly predatory way shown in the novel to be prevalent in both armies. Yet Grekov, assumed by all to have a kind of leader’s right to sexually possess the young woman, behaves honourably, sending her out of the building unharmed before the final German assault that will kill them all. A kind of gruff chivalry is added to his other virtues. As a courageous and resourceful soldier, he inspires total devotion in his men, to the alarm of Krymov, who sees this as subversive. Grekov is Tension forms between Krymov and Grekov as the novel progresses, because Grekov desires to act independently, and is deeply suspicious of the repressive state bureaucracy that Krymov represents. Although Krymov admires Grekov up to a point, and is eager to come to an understanding with him – albeit on the state's terms – it is heavily implied that the house manager ends up wounding him in order to have him evacuated.
- Nikolay Grigorevich Krymov
Krymov is Yevgenia's former husband. He is the commissar posted to House 6/1. Krymov seems to be a "good communist", with a history of near-fanatical ideological commitment to the party. Indeed, his perceived callousness in this regard caused Yevgenia to leave him. However, he grows progressively more disillusioned as the novel goes on. Furthermore, he worked alongside Mostovskoy in the earliest days of the Bolshevik party, placing him in a compromising position due to his association with various now-discredited figures. Thus, he must watch everything that he does and says. Eventually, a careless comment on the part of Novikov provides the impetus for Krymov's arrest and incarceration, whereupon every politically sensitive detail of his past is turned against him. Despite extensive torture, Krymov consistently refuses to confess to a fabricated series of treasonous acts. Although Yevgenia believes herself to be over Krymov, she constantly thinks about him, and ends up going back to him despite his arrest.
- Colonel Pyotr Pavlovich Novikov
Novikov, Yevgenia's lover, is the commanding officer of a tank corps. As such, he participates in the vital pincer movement which ultimately secures Russia's victory at Stalingrad. At the front, Novikov works with Getmanov, to whom he rashly lets slip a compromising detail about Krymov's past which Yevgenia had confided in him. Getmanov seizes upon this and reports Krymov, with devastating consequences. Until this point, the young man had hoped to marry Yevgenia, with whom he is infatuated, although the two don't appear to have very much in common. While he believes that he is getting closer to her, the reader realizes that Yevgenia is slowly drifting away from him in favour of Krymov.
Plot summary[edit]
The novel at heart narrates the history of the Shaposhnikov family and the
Battle of Stalingrad. It is written in the
socialist realist style, which can make it seem odd in parts to western readers.
Life and Fate is a multi-faceted novel, one of its themes being that the
Great Patriotic War was the struggle between two comparable
totalitarian states
[citation needed]. The tragedy of the common people is that they have to fight both the invaders and the totalitarianism of their own state.
Life and Fate is a sprawling account of life on the eastern front, with countless plotlines taking place simultaneously all across Russia and Eastern Europe. Although each story has a linear progression, the events are not necessarily presented in chronological order. Grossman will, for example, introduce a character, then ignore that character for hundreds of pages, and then return to recount events that took place the very next day. Thus, it is difficult to summarize the novel, but the plot can be boiled down to three basic plotlines: the Shtrum/Shapashnikov family, the siege of Stalingrad, and life in the camps of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. Although Life and Fate is divided into three parts, all of these plotlines are featured in every section.
Viktor Shtrum is a brilliant physicist who, with his wife, Lyudmila, and daughter, Nadya, has been evacuated from Moscow to Kazan. He is experiencing great difficulty with his work, as well as with his family. He then receives a letter from his mother from inside a Jewish ghetto informing him that she is soon to be killed by the Germans. Lyudmila, meanwhile, goes to visit her son from her first marriage, Tolya, in an army hospital, but he dies before her arrival. When she returns to Kazan, she is extremely detached and seems to still be expecting Tolya's return. Viktor finds himself engaging in anti-Soviet conversations at the home of his colleague, Sokolov, partly to impress Sokolov's wife, Marya (Lyudmila's only friend). He consistently compares political situations to physics, and remarks that Fascism and Stalinism are not so different. He later regrets these discussions out of fear that he will be denounced, an indecision that plagues his decision-making throughout the novel. Suddenly, Viktor makes a huge mathematical breakthrough, solving the issues that had hindered his experiments. Viktor's colleagues are slow to respond, but eventually come to accept the genius of his discovery. After moving back to Moscow, however, the higher-ups begin to criticize his discoveries as being anti-Leninist and attacking his Jewish identity. Viktor, however, refuses to publicly repent and is forced to resign. He fears that he will be arrested, but then receives a call from Stalin himself (presumably because Stalin had sensed the military importance of nuclear research) that completely, and immediately reverses his fortune. Later, he signs a letter denouncing two innocent men and is subsequently racked by guilt. The last details about Viktor regard his unconsummated affair with Marya.
The events recounted at Stalingrad center on Yevghenia Shapashnikova (Lyudmila's sister), Krymov (her former husband), and Novikov (her lover). After reconnecting with Novikov, Yevghenia evacuates to Kuibyshev. Novikov, the commander of a Soviet tank corps, meets General Nyeudobnov and Political Commissar Getmanov, both of whom are party hacks. Together they begin planning the counter-assault on Stalingrad. Novikov delays the start of the assault for fear of unnecessarily sacrificing his men. Getmanov later denounces Novikov and he is summoned for trial, even though the tank attack was a complete success. Meanwhile, Krymov, a Political Commissar, is sent to investigate House 6/I, where a tiny group of soldiers have held back the Germans for weeks, even though they are completely surrounded and cut off from all supplies. Grekov, the commanding officer, refuses to send reports to HQ, and is disdainful of Krymov's rhetoric. He later wounds Krymov in his sleep, causing him to be evacuated from the house. Soon after, House 6/I is completely leveled by German bombs. Krymov, a staunch communist, is then accused of being a traitor (this was standard for Russian soldiers who had been trapped behind enemy lines) and is sent to Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, where he is beaten and forced to confess. Yevghenia decides not to marry Novikov and goes to Moscow to try and visit Krymov. He receives a package from her and realizes that he still loves her but may never be released from prison.
The sections that take place in the camps have few recurring characters, with the exception of Mostovskoy, an Old Bolshevik who takes part in a plot to rebel against the Germans, but is dismayed by the prevailing lack of faith in Communism. His interrogator, Liss, asserts that Fascism and Communism are two sides of the same coin, which upsets Mostovskoy greatly. He is later killed by the Germans for his part in the uprising. In one scene,
Sturmbannführer Liss tells
old Bolshevik Mostovskoy, a
Naziconcentration camp inmate, that both Stalin and
Hitler are the leaders of qualitatively new formation: "When we look at each other's faces, we see not only a hated face; we see the mirror reflection. ... Don't you recognize yourself, your [strong] will in us?" Grossman also focuses on Sofya Levinton, a Jewish woman on her way to a Nazi extermination camp.
As Grossman moves into Part Three of the novel, he writes with an increasingly analytic style and abandons many of the characters that he has created. The only plotlines that achieve real closure are those whose protagonists perish during the war. All of these characters, he seems to say, are part of a larger, ongoing story — that of Russia, and of mankind. The final chapter solidifies this notion of universality. The author introduces a set of characters who remain anonymous: an elderly widow observing her tenants, a wounded army officer recently discharged from hospital, his wife and their young daughter.
[8] It is heavily implied, however, that the officer returning to his family is Major Byerozkin, a recurring character from Stalingrad who is shown to be a kind man struggling to retain his humanity. In a sense, therefore, the ending is slightly uplifting – many characters have died, or experienced tragedy, but at least one fundamentally good person gets a happy ending.
Grossman describes the type of Communist party functionaries, who blindly follow the party line and constitute the base for the oppressive regime. One such political worker (политработник), Sagaidak, maintained that entire families and villages intentionally starved themselves to death during the
collectivisation in the USSR.
Major themes[edit]
- Theme on Jewish identity and the Holocaust
Viktor Shtrum is in part a reflection of Grossman's own character. There are many overlaps between Shtrum's life and Grossman's life, such as Grossman's and Shtrum's mother's death in the
Holocaust; both seem to find a place in their
Jewish identity that was not present before the war. Grossman was one of the first to write about the Holocaust in 1944, seeing first hand that Eastern Europe was empty of Jews; Jewish acquaintances he came to check up on were in mass graves, their houses empty. His article on the camp
Treblinka was even used as evidence at the
Nuremberg Trials. Raised as a secular Jew, it becomes clear that Shtrum discovers part of his identity through the suffering he encounters.
- Grossman's idea of humanity and human goodness
In Ch. 15 of Part II, Grossman uses Ikonnikov's letter to provide his own perspective on humanity. He first asks whether a good common to all man exists, and then proceeds to describe how the ideal of good has changed for different races and religions. Grossman criticizes Christianity especially, deeming its attempt to create universal good through peace and love responsible for many of the world's most horrific events. “This doctrine caused more suffering than all of the crimes of people who did evil for its own sake,” he writes (406). Grossman then inquires as to the very nature of life—is it that life itself is evil? And although he provides multiple examples of such evil, Grossman does believe that life itself has some good in it: “Yes, as well as this terrible Good...there is everyday human kindness” (407). But it's not so simple, for “after despairing of finding Good either in God or in Nature, I began to despair even of kindness... Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush a kernel of human kindness. But if what is human in human beings has not been destroyed even now, then evil will never conquer.” (410). Here, Grossman offers an alternative to despair: the idea that, despite such great evil, humanity and good will be the ultimate victors. Simple, often unnoticed, human kindness forms the basis for Grossman's theory, which is to say that despite great evil, small acts of charity reflect the idea that good is both alive and unconquerable no matter what. No matter how great the evil may be, this basic “kernel” of good is a key part of human nature and can never be crushed.
Despite his acknowledgement of the world's great evil, Grossman believes humanity to be fundamentally good. If mankind is stripped down to its very core, all that will remain is this invincible kernel; therefore, it is this kernel (and perhaps this kernel alone) that is responsible for the basic goodness of humanity.
- Stalin's distortion of reality and values
Ian Buruma wrote in his
New York Review of Books article entitled "Master of Fear",
Simon Sebag Montefiore [the author of the book Buruma is reviewing] “sees Stalin less as a gangster boss than as a malevolent priest of a sinister cult”. Buruma then informs the reader that “when Stalin was about to order the murder of hundreds of thousands of people in
The Great Terror of 1937, he said the following to some of his oldest collaborators who were about to be swept away in the purges: 'Maybe it can be explained by the fact that you lost faith.' Here, writes Montefiore, 'was the essence of the religious frenzy of the coming slaughter.'”. Thus, in Buruma's opinion, Stalin dramatically changed the reality of the U.S.S.R. from a world in which common good, kindness, and humanity were at least alive, to a world in which only
devotion to the Party mattered.
This worldview is reflected in Ch. 40 of Part I, when Grossman describes Abarchuk and his love for Stalinism. “He [Abarchuk] had repeated, 'You don't get arrested for nothing,' believing that only a tiny minority, himself among them, had been arrested by mistake. As for everyone else—they had deserved their sentences. The sword of justice was chastising the enemies of the Revolution. He had seen servility, treachery, submissiveness, cruelty...And he had referred to all this as 'the birthmarks of capitalism,' believing that these marks were borne by people of the past...His faith was unshakable, his devotion to the Party infinite” (179). Abarchuk is incapable of understanding the reality of his situation: that he has been wrongly imprisoned and will suffer in spite of his innocence, as has happened to so many others. Abarchuk is so completely immersed in the aura of the Party and so dedicated to the Stalinist religion that he cannot see the ethical violations occurring all around him. He is a reflection of the “religious frenzy” of Stalinism; the prisoner simply refuses to comprehend his situation and instead chooses to focus on his faith and devotion to the Party (Buruma).
Therefore, Abarchuk and his mentality are, at this point in the book, Grossman's representations of the archetypical Party member and the dream-world in which he lives. Despite being presented with an excellent cause to abandon the Party, Abarchuk maintains his faith.
- Life Goes On
At the end of Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman presents the reader with the broadest concept of his novel: the idea that despite war, genocide, suffering beyond the realm of imagination, and utter destruction, life goes on. This idea is depicted in the last few lines of the book, as Grossman writes, “Somehow you could sense spring more vividly in this cool forest than on the sunlit plain. And there was a deeper sadness in this silence than in the silence of autumn. In it you could hear both a lament for the dead and the furious joy of life itself. It was still cold and dark, but soon the doors and shutters would be flung open. Soon the house would be filled with the tears and laughter of children, with the hurried steps of a loved woman and the measured gait of the master of the house. They stood there, holding their bags, in silence.” (871). All through Life and Fate, Grossman has painted gritty pictures of war, death, and suffering. He has shown us the loss of hope, destruction, and total fatigue. Indeed, the author references these scenes as he describes the sadness in the silence of the forest—the “lament for the dead”—and the “still cold and dark” house (871). Grossman, however, does not conclude the book with these thoughts. He turns instead to the future, and future hope. The author describes a family scene, with a husband, wife, and children, in addition to the flinging open of doors and shutters—an act symbolic of moving on and reclaiming one's life. Therefore, Grossman wants the reader to come away from reading Life and Fatewith an appreciation for the darkness of World War II, but also an understanding of the cyclical nature of life. We may suffer, but, in the end, life always goes on; happiness and peace return eventually.
- Science
As a Soviet physicist, the main character of the novel, Viktor Shtrum, offers an irregular view of the Soviet system. Science, in the novel, plays the role of a calming constant, the last remnant of rationality in a world of chaos. Despite Stalin's alterations and manipulations of societal and human truths, he cannot deny the plausibility of physics. For this reason, Viktor is affected by both the disrupted world of his personal life and the soothing world of mathematics. He finds that his two lives begin to split inexplicably as he becomes more and more pressured from both sides. As his anxiety over his dysfunctional formula eats away at him, he realizes that he can no longer discuss such things openly with his wife. And vice versa, as his friendship with his partner, Sokolov, is threatened by Viktor's anti-Party feelings and temper, his work also suffers.
In Chapter 17 of Part One, Viktor discourses on the new strides made in physics during the forties and fifties. He remarks that the stability of science previously falsely represented the universe. Instead, he wonders at the newfound bending, stretching, and flattening of space. “The world was no longer Euclidean, its geometrical nature no longer composed of masses and their speeds.” (Grossman 79) While this discovered chaos may at first seem to contradict the sanctity of reason, it actually strengthens it. With this realization, Viktor learns that the political and social chaos Russia is undergoing in fact fits right in with the fundamental laws of the universe. This is why science was such a key field under the Soviet regimes.
Under Stalin, free thought was oppressed and discouraged. Therefore, Viktor's work as a physicist was increasingly difficult under the watchful eye of Stalin. During much of the novel, Viktor finds himself at a loss for the solution to a problem concerning an atomic phenomenon. The point at which he finally figures it out, however, is a point when he has just thoroughly slandered Stalinism and Soviet society. This goes to show that Grossman believed that true freedom of thought was entirely impossible in anyone who accepted Stalin as their leader.
- Reality of war
Grossman, in many chapters involving Seryozha Shaposhnikov and Novikov, portrays the stark difference between life on the battlefield and in the cities. In chapter 60 of part one, Seryozha is introduced among the war-hardened soldiers of the surrounded House 6/1. Here, Grossman offers an interpretation of war that compares it to an all-engrossing haze. “When a man is plunged up to his neck into the cauldron of war, he is quite unable to look at his life and understand anything.” (Grossman 255) This statement sets up the book to be looked at from two different perspectives: those whose lives are entirely immersed in war, and those who either straddle or are more distanced from it.
In his writing, Grossman gives a very distinct feeling to war scenes that is absent from chapters devoted to city-life and totalitarian rule. Battles are imbued with an intense feeling of isolation, from government, politics, and bureaucracy. Instead, they focus on the thoughts of the human, the individual who is participating. Thoughts of family, lovers, friends, and home become the centerpiece of these violent sections. In House 6/1, even in their vulnerable position, everyone becomes infatuated with the one woman present and 'gossip' reigns. By setting this up, the author seeks to separate the true meaning of the war from the ideologies that supposedly govern it. In addition, their feelings and emotions that are directed towards their relations become a flurry of unrelated thoughts, brought on by the chaos of war.
In domestic settings, however, the focus becomes entirely on meaning behind the war, political ideologies, and largely abstractions. Aside from the direct personal relationships and casualties experienced, conversation in cities often concerns the war as an abstraction, not as an experience. In this way, there is a stark difference in perception in and out of Stalingrad. As Grossman paints it, war completely devours those involved, becoming in many ways an alternative reality irreconcilable with their former reality. There is an increased amount of freedom, lacking the constraints of Russian bureaucracy, but also an increased risk of death. It poses different daily questions to the individuals involved, asking them how they should spend and survive their day instead of asking if it's worth it to do so.
- Grossman's views on totalitarianism
The impact of totalitarianism on society was another major theme in Grossman's novel. The battle of Stalingrad was between two totalitarian governments. One was the Fascist Nazis, who were the clear antagonists throughout the novel. The other group was the Stalinist Communists. Grossman could not blatantly speak out against Communism when writing Life and Fate, but he was able to conceal his beliefs about the Soviet communist regime through his characters and by drawing similarities to fascism.
Many of the characters in Grossman's novel are directly affected by totalitarianism. The character Abarchuk is a devoted Communist who ends up in a work camp. He tells himself that he is only there because it is where he can most help the Communist Party, but it is clear that he is just another victim of an unjust government. The character Krymov is another who has done nothing wrong yet still is detained. He is charged with treason after his ex-wife's lover reports on him. The protagonist of the novel, Viktor Shtrum, is a rebel throughout much of the novel. He does his work for the furthering of science, not to help the Soviet cause. He also refuses to go to work until the Soviet leaders give him adequate staff. But a simple call from Stalin puts him right back to work and he even signs a letter denouncing any claims that the Soviet government imprisons people based on political beliefs.
Grossman sees Soviet totalitarianism to be the same as fascism. He dedicates entire chapters comparing the two. One way this is done is through a dialogue a Nazi concentration camp prisoner has with his SS interrogator. Instead of actually interrogating his prisoner, Mostovskoy, the SS officer Liss attempts to show Mostovskoy the similarities between Communism and Fascism. Liss claims that the Nazis learned from Stalin that “to build Socialism in one country, one must destroy the peasants' freedom ... Stalin didn't shilly-shally- he liquidated millions of peasants. Our Hitler saw that the Jews were the enemy hindering the German National Socialist movement. And he liquidated millions of Jews”.
There are some chapters where Grossman is even more candid in his views on totalitarianism. He declares that “Rather than overtly renouncing human feelings, he declares the crimes committed by Fascism to be the highest form of humanitarianism”. But many of the characters in Life and Fate commit crimes and imprison people in the name of Idealism. Grossman also references events that happened in Russia such as uprisings in Berlin, Hungary and Siberia during the 1950s in his criticism of totalitarianism.
Radio adaptation[edit]
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Jump up to:a b Keith Gessen: "Under Siege." The New Yorker (2006)Jump up^ Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova, A Writer at War, 2005.
Jump up^ Chandler, Robert. Introduction to Life and Fate, page xv. 1985. New York, New York Review of Books Classics.
Jump up^ Chandler, Robert. Introduction to Life and Fate. page xvii. 1985. New York, New York Review of Books Classics.
^
Jump up to:a b Sam Sacks. "Life is Freedom: The Act of Vasily Grossman." .
Jump up^ Bill Keller (28 January 1988).
"Notes on the Soviet Union". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 October 2013.
Jump up^ Ellis, Frank (1989).
"Concepts of War in L. N. Tolstoy and V. S. Grossman" (PDF). Tolstoy Studies Journal. 2: 101–108.
ISSN 1044-1573.
Jump up^ In his Introduction to his own translation of Life and Fate (page xxi), Robert Chandler identifies the anonymous couple in the final chapter as the relatively minor character Major (now Lt. Col.) Byerozkin and his wife.
Jump up^ "Life and Fate". BBC Radio Four. 2011. Retrieved 16 September 2011.
External links[
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Wikiquote has quotations related to:
Life and FateLife and Fate (
ISBN 0-00-261454-5– first English translation edition, other editions
ISBN 0-09-950616-5;
ISBN 1-59017-201-9;
ISBN 1-86046-019-4)
Noise, Fire, and Hunger By Josef Skvorecky Review at The New York Review of Books Volume 33, Number 12. July 17, 1986.
Review in the
London Review of BooksLife and Fate By Vasily Grossman Translated by Robert Chandlerreview at The Jewish Reader. March, 2004.
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5.0 out of 5 starsA great novel that stays with us, the reality of the USSR at war
By Tony Thomas on August 15, 2006
Format: Paperback
I confess Life and Fate devoured me. Tuesday, I had to stop work, stop my normal schedule, stop answering the telephone, and read it. And this was not my first, but my second time through its pages.
Life and Fate's main action takes place from the fall of 1942 until the spring of 1943. It reaches forward in history to the 1950s and reaches back to the Bolshevik revolution itself. it covers every aspect of the Soviet-German war from Stalin and Hitler's offices, to devastated huts inhabited by soldiers and refugees, from the halls of the scientific academies to the dark quarters of the Gulag and the gas chambers of the Nazi death camps.
While there is a lot of action in this book in the smoke and fire of Stalingrad, in the dungeons of Stalin's prisons, and in the death camps of Hitler , the strength of this book is how it covers an important part of history, but also shows the life, loves, yearnings, hearts and minds of real people struggling through the Second World War in the Soviet Union.
Grossman's political target is what he calls the "totalitarian" State. He sees symmetry between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. Mostly he frames Nazi Germany as being identical to the Stalinist Soviet Union, a depiction that harms the accuracy of his depiction of Germany. Like many around the world of his generation, Grossman asserts the strength of the human spirit and the struggle for freedom and socialism against these twin horrors. Yet, Grossman appears too much in awe of Stalin and Hitler, and does not realize that their brutality flowed from their weaknesses, not strength.
Even people I know who should know better, see the heroic defense of the Russian Revolution's conquests against Hitler only through the fantasies produced by Stalinist propaganda. Grossman shows you how this fight was muzzled by Stalin's regime whose abominations did not cease, but grew during the Second World War. Grossman points to the growth of Russian Chauvinism, anti-Semitism, oppression and prejudice against non-Russian nationalities throughout the war.
While he depicts the bravery of the Red Army, Grossman is honest about its real character. We see its brutality--generals slapping and beating up subordinate officers and soldiers, NKVD officers persecuting generals for military decisions, a commissar plans to have heroic frontline soldiers completely surrounded by the Germans disciplined for living in a spirit of equality between officers and men, behind it all Stalin threatening to and sometimes imprisoning or executing generals. We see the corruption of the most celebrated of Red Army commanders: with their special privileges in food and drink, their pastime of preying sexually on women attached to their armies, and their concern for their own fame, and their reveling in Stalin's readoption of the regalia and customs of Tsarist militarism. We see the way science is subordinated to the bureaucracy's whims and how integrity and survival are in conflict in Stalinist Russia.
For many in the USSR the idea of Soviet victory brought forth dreams of a better day for the peoples of the Soviet Union, but the Stalinist bureaucracy had to break those dreams had to be broken and the dreamers throttled. Grossman gives you the feeling of the dreams for socialist democracy, the end of forced collectivization, and scientific freedom held by his characters and their friends are crushed by the Stalin regimes growing persecution, by its growing identification with the rotten legacy of Tsarist racism, discrimination, and prejudice.
Vasily Grossman was in a position to know. A former engineer who became a writer in the 1930s, he was one of the greatest war correspondents of the Soviet Army. His realistic depictions of the war made him widely popular with the front line troops and allowed his articles and dispatches to carry grimy accurate truth that the censors removed from the work of other correspondents.
Vasily Grossman was one of the first correspondents to document that Nazi extermination of the Jews. His article "The Hell of Treblinka" in _A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army, 1941-1945_, a collection of his war correspondence and diaries, is one of the great works of modern literature. The passages in Life and Fate on the death camps rise to this level of brilliance, truth, and beauty.
Likewise, Life and Fate has a marvelous chapter modeled after the murder of the tens of thousand of Jews in the town where Grossman was born, the town where his mother lived and died during the war, the chapter centered on a character modeled on the Grossman's mother. Like so much in this book, this chapter could stand on its own as a masterpiece.
But a great novelist like Grossman must do more than teach history. He must give us characters we care about well enough to struggle its many pages with.
Grossman's characters are full humans, with flaws, with weaknesses, with needs, with enjoyment of little personal desires, with fears, and even crimes they perform to stay themselves. Somehow he can explain not only the hideousness of Stalinism and the terror of war, but the strength of our need for love from family, from colleagues, for romance.
What is missing is any full depiction of the USSR's everyday working class, its peasants, and its rank and file soldiers. All Grossman's major characters are military officers, industrial leaders, party functionaries, scientists, and intellectuals. To be sure, we see the suffering and struggle of ordinary soldiers, workers, and peasants as they cross the lives of his characters, but not through their own lives
Grossman was not allowed to finish this book from him. The NKVD took the book from him. He believed until he died that all the copies of the book had been destroyed. Fortunately, copies survived. One was smuggled out of the USSR and published after his death.
This book suffers from some of the normal problems of a final draft of a great novel has before being edited. In places it is too wordy, we do not know what happens to characters for long sections of the narrative, and Grossman's great digressions distract us from the narrative. For this we can blame the NKVD, not Grossman
Life and Fate is one the great works of Literature. It becomes part of your life beyond the moments its pages are in front of you. We develop such a strong feeling for the lives, hopes, and dreams of his characters that when we finish this book we cannot say "Farewell" to them. We think about their lives and struggles like we do our own. We need to revisit them by reading this book again.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Vastly Rewarding - Grossman's Epic Exceeds Five Stars
By Douglas S. Wood on November 27, 2006
Format: Paperback
Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate, the classic epic novel of WWII Russia, centers on the Shaposhnikova family and their life in totalitarian Stalinist Soviet Russia, and in particular on the Battle of Stalingrad, but there are literally dozens of characters in a multitude of settings.
The tale is unrelentingly grim. Nearly every character dies, is betrayed to the Soviet authorities, or simply suffers - and no ordinary suffering, but genuine Slavic deprivation. With a few temporary exceptions, universal hunger and material deprivation prevail. Hunger ranges from ever-present to starvation. Political betrayal runs rampant across every class of Stalinist Soviet society with mind-boggling inefficiency. Grossman also describes the very beginnings of the Nazi Holocaust at Treblinka and other extermination camps, including a blood-chilling scene with Eichmann having dinner at the camp to celebrate its opening.
Grossman's characters engage in extensive internal dialogue about their suffering and especially about their political punishments. Grossman recreates the frustration of not knowing why one has been accused of infidelity to the Revolution. Often the victim doesn't know by whom or of what they have been accused.
Grossman was a decorated Soviet military journalist who moved gradually toward the dissidence that flowers in his epic novel. What is remarkable, and a matter of some debate today, is how Grossman ever imagined that his book would be published in the Soviet Union - as he proposed during the thaw under Nikita Khrushchev. Instead, while Grossman was not molested, his book was taken "under arrest" by the KGB in 1961. Fortunately, Grossman kept two undeclared copies that were smuggled out to the West in 1980 and published in 1985.
Life and Fate is not an easy book to read on several levels. It is long - some 871 pages. It is ceaselessly grim and gritty. Keeping track of the characters and various plot lines is a challenge (The book contains a handy listing of the main characters in an 8-page appendix. For the Western reader, the Russian surnames are hard to keep straight. I recommend keeping an extra bookmark in place at the Appendix). Grossman's characters engage in lengthy intellectual dialogue.
For some of these same reasons, the book is also vastly rewarding. As the excellent introduction to the New York Review of Books edition puts it, Life and Fate is "almost an encyclopedia of the complexities of life under totalitarianism" and the pressures brought to bear on the individual. Absolutely the highest recommendation. Five stars don't do it justice.
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5.0 out of 5 starsBrilliant Thoughtful Work
By Lonya VINE VOICE on July 18, 2004
Format: Paperback
Vasily Grossman submitted his manuscript for Life and Fate in 1960 at the height of Khrushchev's post-Stalinist cultural thaw. Subsequent to a review of the manuscript Grossman was advised that the book was being arrested. The book could not be published for at least 200 years. All copies of the manuscript were rounded up and sent to party headquarters for safekeeping. The manuscript was arrested because it dared to imply that Hitlerism and Stalinism bore more similarities than differences. Grossman made this point obliquely by putting these words into the mouth of a despicable SS death camp commandant. Nevertheless this was too much for both Khrushchev and the apparatchiks at the National Union of Writers and the book was banned. Life and Fate was eventually published because a manuscript remained at large. The author Vladimir Voinovich helped smuggle a copy to Switzerland where it was published in 1980, 15 years after Grossman's death in 1965. The book was published in the USSR in 1989 to sensational results. Nevertheless, Grossman remains relatively obscure outside Russia and that is a great pity.
Grossman was born in 1905. Although Jewish by birth, Grossman was never particularly religious and his family supported the 1917 revolution. After receiving a degree in chemistry Grossman found work in the Donbass coal mines. Encouraged by Maxim Gorky, Grossman began writing short stories and plays. Grossman adopted Stalin's maxim that writers were engineers of human souls and his work was firmly rooted in the rather tedious school of socialist realism. Grossman's play "If You Believe the Pythagoreans" attacked the philosophical rants of intellectuals and argued that they were garbage not "worth a good worker's boot." For all intents and purposes, Grossman was a true believer. How and why did this change? Life and Fate begins to answer that question.
Grossman volunteered for the front after the German invasion in 1941 and worked as a reporter for Red Star, an army newspaper known for its forthright reports from the front lines. Grossman received national fame due to his reporting from the front lines. Grossman was the first reporter to write first hand accounts of German concentration camps and his experience there had a devastating impact on his world view. Grossman learned after the war that his mother, who he failed to move from Berdichev to Moscow after the invasion perished in Hitler's genocide. It was the death of his mother and the post war anti-Semitic campaigns of Stalin that may have led Grossman to challenge his own acceptance of Soviet orthodoxy and set him to work on Life and Fate and his other major work, Forever Flowing.
Life and Fate is a remarkable novel despite its occasional unremarkable prose that contains a trace of Grossman's earlier socialist realism style. The book's emotional core involves humanity's struggle for freedom in an unfree world. Josef Skvorecky put the central question of Life and Fate thusly: "Does man lose his innate yearning for freedom? The fate of both man and the totalitarian State depends on the answer to this question. If human nature does change, then the eternal and world wide triumph of the dictatorial state is assured; if his yearning for freedom remains constant, then the totalitarian state is doomed."
The scope of the story and the cast of characters are vast and in the tradition of both Tolstoy and Pasternak. This edition contains a list of characters and their geographic location during the story. The central characters include Viktor Shtrum, a scientist, and his extended family. Other central figures include Captain Grekov, the leader of a group of soldiers doing battle with the Nazi's in a bombed out apartment building in Stalingrad. Grekov is an iconoclast doing battle not only with the Nazis but the political commissars that spent more time concerned with political orthodoxy than fighting. Key scenes in the book also take place in a German concentration camp and a Russian labor camp.
Life and Fate is a wonderful book. Grossman's assertion towards the end of his work that we can be slaves by fate but not slaves by nature is an important concept to keep a hold of today.
L. Fleisig
