2016/12/12

Life and Fate - Wikipedia

Life and Fate - Wikipedia



Life and Fate

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Life and Fate
AuthorVasily Grossman
Original titleЖизнь и судьба
CountryU.S.S.R.
LanguageRussian
GenreHistorical novelwarphilosophicalpolitical fiction




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Life and Fate (RussianЖизнь 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 Suslov told Grossman that his novel could not be published for two or three hundred years.[4]Suslov's comment reveals both the presumption of the censor and recognition of the work's lasting literary value.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]
As the policy of glasnost was initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev, the novel was finally published on Russian soil in 1988 in the Oktyabr magazine[6]and as a book.
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]

An English-language radio adaptation of the novel was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 from 18 to 25 September 2011. Translated by Robert Chandlerand dramatised by Jonathan Myerson and Mike Walker, the eight-hour dramatisation stars Kenneth BranaghDavid TennantJanet SuzmanGreta Scacchi and Harriet Walter.[9]

Footnotes[edit]


^ 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[edit]
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Life and Fate

Life 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 Books
Life 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

[한겨레] 박노자 글방 :: 自他不二



[한겨레] 박노자 글방 :: 自他不二



自他不二

만감: 일기장 2013/03/01 01:25 http://blog.hani.co.kr/gategateparagate/57307


저는 최근 묘사하기 어려운 슬픔에 빠져 있습니다. 다름이 아니고, 제가 1991년말부터 알고 지냈던 나탈리야 바실례브나 무클라디 (Наталья Васильевна Мухлади)라는 분이 며칠 전 돌아가셔서 그렇습니다. 고령 (금년은 고희이셨습니다)과 말기의 폐암으로 돌아가셨는데, 그 죽음 앞에서는 세상 만사가 다 다소 무의미해 보이기도 합니다. 참, 나탈리야 바실례브나 무클라디가 과연 누구이었는가를 설명드려야 하는데, 이건 좀 힘듭니다. 그녀에게는 사람을 잡는 그 "사"자가 붙은 직업도 없었고 (실은 사회주의 시절 막노동 경험 이외의 정식 직업 경험도 전무했고) 대학졸업증도 없었습니다. 

그녀가 최근 20여년 간 해왔던 일들을, 한국적인 방식으로 설명하자면 아마도 "역술인"이나 "일종의 무속 종사자" 내지 "돌팔이 의사" 비슷한, 다소 어감이 이상한 단어들을 동원해야 합니다. 로서아에서는 이걸 "экстрасенс" (초능력자)라고 부르는데, 대체로 중국에서 말하는 "특이공능" (特異功能)과 통하는 것입니다. 중국 같은 경우에는 모택동 주석 시절 이후부터 서양의학이 미발달된 상태에서 이런 전통적인 치료법이 필요하다고 하여 국가적으로 인정했는데, 로서아 같은 경우에는 국가적 인정은 없고 단 돈이 없는 민간인들에게 많이 이용됩니다. 국내 무속과 같은 전통적인 의례 등이 없고 주로 명상, 즉 "기" 발산을 통한 치료에 집중되는 것입니다. 나탈리야 바실례브나 무클라디가 이와 같은 일로 먹고 살았다고 써야 하지만, 실제로는 "먹고 살았다"는 표현 자체도 부적절합니다. 그녀는 환자들로부터 일푼도 징수하지 않으셨고, 오로지 다소 여유 있는 독지가들의 도움, 즉 보시로만 살아갔기 때문입니다. 말년에는 최저노후연금, 한국 돈으로 다달이 약 20만원 정도 받기도 했습니다. 레닌그라드나 모스크바를 가보신 분이라면, 이런 돈으로 거기에서 살 수 없다는 점을 잘 아실 터인데, 수백만 명의 로서아 등 구쏘련 지역 노인들이 이와 같은 "최저연금"으로 그저 죽지 못해서 살아나갑니다.

80-90년대 중국에서 "특이공능"에 대한 수많은 과학적 입증의 시도들이 있었지만, 끝내 입증이 (아직도) 불가능하다는 결론에 왔습니다. 저 또한 그런 입증이 가능할는지 모르겠고, 나탈리야 바실례브나 무클라디가 실제로 사람들을 치료해주었는지 내지 그들에게 용기와 자신감, '나'를 누군가가 배려해준다는 느낌 등을 주어서 그들에게 스스로 재기할 힘을 주었는지 - 즉 심리치료했는지 - 잘 판단하지 못하겠습니다. 그러나 그런 판단보다 더 중요한 것은, 이와 같은 치료의 효과입니다. 특히 각종의 갈등에 시달리고 심리적 내지 정신적 고통을 당하고, 어려움에 처하는 많은 사람들은 "초능력자"의 배려심을 실감하고 "지나치게 욕심 내지 말라", "욕망을 자제하라", "남의 입장이 돼서 사고해보라", "가는 정이 있어야 오는 정이 있다. 먼저 선의를 보이라" 등의 극히 상식적인 그녀의 조언들을 듣고서는 다시 삶을 살 힘을 얻었고, 저도 그 중의 한 명이었습니다. 실은 제게 나탈리야 바실례브나 무클라디가 "초능력자"라기보다는 불가에서 이야기하는 "보살도 실천자"에 더 가까웠습니다. 돈이나 옷 같은 것을 들어오는 대로 다시 필요한 사람들에게 나누어주고 자기 자신을 위해서 시간도 재물도 절대 쓰지 않았기 때문입니다. "초능력"이야 있든 없든 간에, 이와 같은 삶의 태도는 분명히 진리 실천에 해당됩니다.

제가 힘이 닿으면 언젠가 나탈리야 바실례브나 무클라디의 평전이라도 정리해야 할 정도로 그녀에게 얽힌 의미있는 일과 말들이 많았습니다. 그런데 제게 특별히 의미 있었던 것은 그녀의 최근 2년간의 삶이었습니다. 그녀는 약 2년 전에 폐암에 걸렸다는 사실을 알았는데, 누구에게도 말하지 않고 이렇다할 만한 대책도 세우지 않았습니다. 그냥 살았습니다. 매일매일 힘이 줄어들었지만, 5분에 한 번꼴로 걸려오는 전화들을 답하면서 A에게 식이요법의 요지를 알리고 B의 가정 불화를 해결해주고 C의 육아문제 조언해주고... 쉴 사이도 없었습니다. 본인이 죽어가고 있었다고 알고 있었는데, 이것이 천명이라고 생각하는 양으로 순천명(順天命)하면서 남들만을 챙겼다는 거죠. 아마도 정확하게 이야기하자면 남들을 챙기는 와중에서 자신이 죽어간다는 생각을 할 틈이 없었던 것 같습니다. 다른 차원에서 본다면, 뭔가를 이미 깨달은 사람들이 삶과 죽음을 그다지 중요시하지 않을 수도 있다는 것이죠. 양쪽이 상대적인 줄 아니까요. 좌우간, 나탈리야 바실례브나 무클라디는 죽기 약 3개월 전까지 계속 사람들을 치료했습니다. 신체적인 고통으로 5분 이상 대화하지도 못했지만요. 이와 같은 태도는, 많은로서아 서민들이 그녀를 철석같이 믿었던 배경을 다소 설명해줍니다. "초능력"과 무관하게, 인간들이 애타성과 온기, 자신을 망각할 줄 아는 사랑의 맛을 느끼면 바로 찾아오는 것이죠.

개체의 생명은 상대적입니다. 실은 개체적 생명은 그 자체로서는 그다지 의미가 없습니다. 수백년은 물론이고, 아마도 수십년만 지나도 제가 쓴 글들의 99% 이상은 그 시기적 의미를 잃어 그저 지나간 시대의 증인이 될 것이고, 또 우리가 살고 있는 지구도, 지구가 위치한 태양계도 절대적으로 영구적이지 않습니다. 아주 절대적 차원에서 이야기한다면, 우리 모두가 언젠가 흔적없이 다 깨끗하게 사라지고 말 것입니다. 개체는 고립된 상태에서는 이처럼 허무하게도 무의미하지만, 그래도 우리 머리 속에 "나"와 이 별들, 이 태양, 이 나무들, 그리고 이 모든 생명들과의 어떤 무시무종의 "관계성"에 대한 아주 강한 "느낌"이 각인돼 있습니다. 그런 느낌이 있기에 밤하늘에 별들을 응시하고, 그런 느낌이 있기에 맹자 말대로 우물에 빠진 아이를 구하려고 하고, 그런 느낌이 있기에 부처님의 5계를 몰라도 본능적으로 살생을 피하려고 합니다. 타자를 죽이는 순간 나 자신을 죽인다는 걸 인간이 다 느끼거든요. 진정한 사회주의자라고 할 바실리 그로스만 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Grossman) 이 - 물론 대한민국에서 아무도 번역할 생각도 없는 듯한 - 그의 명작 <삶과 운명> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_and_Fate)에서 이 느낌을 "본능적인 착함", "본능적인 善"이라고 명명했습니다. 그는 "본능적인 착함"을 非스딸린적인 사회주의 건설 철학의 기반으로 삼으려 했던 셈이죠. 제가 봐도, 이 생각 이상으로 사회주의의 윤리철학적인 근거를 만들기가 힘들고, 이 "본능적인 착함" 이야기는 결국 佛性에 대한 佛說과도 통합니다. 그러기에 사회주의와 크게 봐서 다를 게 없는 진짜 불교에서는 사찰도 의례도 크게 필요 없다고 봐요. 그냥 "나"라는 존재가 실재하지도 않고 또 언젠가 흔적도 없이 영원히 사라질 것을 뻔히 알면서, "나"를 생각할 틈없이 남들을 챙겼다가 웃으면서 가면 됩니다. 겁없이, 웃으면서 이렇게 갈 수 있다면, 바로 부처가 됐다고 봐야하지 않겠어요? 부처라는 게 뭐 특별한 게 있나요? 잡다한 욕망을 빼고 나와 남이 하나라는 것만을 체득해서 이 진리대로 잘 살 수만 있다면, 이거야말로 부처입니다.

아, 저는 아무래도 불교를 생각하면서 제 심정을 스스로 가라앉히려는 노력을 지금 하는 것 같습니다.

추신: 피 같은 시간을 내주셔서 졸문을 일역하시어 일문판 <한겨레신문>에 실어주신 (http://japan.hani.co.kr/arti/SERIES/8/14145.html) 동지 분들께 어떤 말로 감사드려야 할는지 모르겠습니다. 그저 머리를 깊이 숙여 감사하고 있을 따름입니다.

영산성지 스테이 2박 3일

월간원광

영산성지 스테이 2박 3일
열린 마음, 열린 사람들의
종교 간 대화



‘이제는 원불교를 알고 싶습니다.’
막바지 여름 장마가 대지를 촉촉이 적시던 날. 종교도 다르고, 연령도 직업도 다른 이들이 원불교에 대한 호기심으로 한 데 모였다. 한국종교인평화회의(KCRP)가 종교 간 대화와 협력을 다지기 위해 마련한 이웃종교 스테이. 천주교, 민족종교(수운교), 천도교, 유교, 개신교를 거쳐 여섯 번째 원불교 스테이가 진행된 지난 8월 24일. 40여 명의 참여객들이 영산성지를 찾았다.
영광에 원불교 성지가 있다는 것만으로도 놀라움 그 자체라는 한창현 씨(한신대 2년), 원불교에 대해 알고 싶어 휴가를 대신하여 왔다는 강성임 씨(문화체육관광부 종무실), 아이들에게 부모님의 종교(천주교)가 아닌 다른 종교도 있다는 걸 보여주고 싶어 왔다는 김영현 씨 가족 등 모두 타 종교에 대한 수용력이 남다른 사람들이었다. 이들과 함께 하게 될 2박 3일의 영산성지 스테이, 그 시작부터 마음이 설레었다.

정관평, 생활종교로의 면모
여장을 푼 참여객들이 제일 먼저 찾은 곳은 원불교 교조 소태산 대종사가 법설을 했던 대각전. 그곳에서 영산성지 스테이를 총책임 맡은 오광선 교무(영산성지사무소)는 참여객들에게 “지내는 동안 조금 불편할지 모르나, 원불교의 초기교단 모습을 그대로 보존해 놓은 성지라 곳곳에서 교조의 정신을 읽을 수 있을 거”라며 이들을 환영했다.
뒤이어 진행된 영산성지 순례. 김형진 교무의 안내를 따라 영산원-대각터-탄생가-구간도실터-정관평-연꽃방죽-원불교 창립관 순으로 성지를 한 바퀴를 둘러보았다. 끊임없이 내리는 비에도 아랑곳하지 않고 안내에 잘 따라준 아이들과 어르신들을 보며 종교 간 대화와 협력은 열린 마음에 있다는 걸 알게 되었다.
특히 우렁이농법으로 농사를 짓고 있는 정관평 앞에서 참여객들은 또 한 번 놀랐다. 성지에서 친환경농법으로 성직자들이 직접 농사를 짓는 것도 의아했지만, 교조가 생전에 제자들과 함께 간척사업을 해서 교단을 이뤘다는 것이 신선하게 다가왔던 것. 같은 민족종교로서 배울 점이 많을 것 같아 참여했다는 갱정유도의 오동춘 군(18세)도 순례 코스 중 정관평을 제일로 꼽았다. 그는 “출가·재가가 함께 자급자족하여 영육을 쌍전하자는 가르침은 같은 민족종교로서 닮고 싶은 점”이라 했다.





사회 정화의 하모니
어스레한 저녁, 아침 7시부터 시작된 빽빽한 여정을 잠시 놓고 참여객들이 다실에 둘러 앉았다. 정관평 연꽃방죽에서 채취한 부드러운 연꽃 차와 영광의 명물 모시잎 송편을 나누며 시작된 이경옥 영산성지사무소장과의 대화.
제일 먼저 터져 나온 질문은 “원불교는 어떻게 마음공부를 하냐?”는 것이었다. 이에 이 소장은 “모든 것은 마음으로부터 비롯된 것이라, 이 마음에서 죄와 복이 나오므로 자기의 마음을 자기 마음대로 사용할 줄 아는 것이 마음공부의 핵심이다.”고 했다. 이 외에도 성직자 양성과정, 원불교와 불교의 차이, 성직자의 생활과 원불교의 사회적 역할 등에 대한 다양한 질문들이 쏟아졌다.
그렇게 서서히 원불교 정신에 젖어든 이들이 저녁 일정을 마무리하는 기도에 일심을 모아 합장도 해보고 영주도 따라 해본다. 모든 게 어설프고 생경하지만 마음만큼은 원불교와 하나가 되고픈 이들. 그 마음이 고맙다는 듯 정답게 울어대는 귀뚜라미 노랫소리가 비 개인 영산성지를 평온히 잠들게 했다.
다음날 새벽 5시, 이른 일정에도 불구하고 어린 꼬마들까지 모두 대각전에 모여 선을 했다. “고요한 새벽 맑은 공기를 마시며 하루를 시작할 수 있다는 게 좋다.”는 손금숙 씨(천주교). 함께 참석한 두 친구가 있어 더 즐겁다는 듯 웃음이 떠나지 않는다.
이날은 연잎차 만들기와 다도, 우리삶문화 옥당박물관과 백수해안도로 도보체험으로 이어졌다. 그 중 제일 인기는 연잎차 만들기. 연잎 채취부터 차를 덖는 과정까지 참여객들이 직접 체험하고 덤으로 연잎차 선물까지 받았다. 이들과 함께한 변진흥 KCRP 사무총장은 “종교를 떠나 온 마음으로 즐기는 모습이 결국은 종교화합으로 가는 힘이 아닌가 싶다.”면서 “KCRP에서 진행하는 일들이 서서히 용트림 하고 있는 것 같다.”며 뿌듯해 했다.
오후 내 백수해안도로를 걷고도 지칠 줄 모르는 이들. 원불교를 알기엔 너무나 짧은 이틀의 여정을 마무리하고 늦은 밤 두 시간이 넘게 스테이에 참여한 소감을 나눴다. 그 중 정년퇴임을 하고 오랜만에 부인과 함께 여행하듯 참여하게 되었다는 김병채 전 한양대 교수는 “종교화합은 웅대한 오케스트라 연주와 같다.”며 “앞으로 종교가 하나의 하모니가 되어 아름답고 장엄한 소리로 사회를 정화시켜 주었으면 한다.”고 부탁했다.
서로의 종교를 떠나 가슴으로 만난 이웃종교 스테이. KCRP는 ‘2012이웃종교화합주간’으로 펼친 이번 이웃종교 스테이의 힘을 모아 10월 20일 과천 관문체육공원에서 ‘전국종교인화합대회’를 열기로 했다.
먼 친척보다는 가까운 이웃사촌이란 말이 있다. 종교 역시 가까운 내 이웃처럼 자주 만나야 화합이 된다. 이제는 서로가 만나야 할 때다.

원불교성지순례>종교테마관광>테마관광>Enjoy영광>영광군 문화관광

원불교성지순례>종교테마관광>테마관광>Enjoy영광>영광군 문화관광



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원불교 성지순례

원불교는 영광에서 비롯된 종교이다. 교조 박소태산(본명 박중빈; 1891~1943)은 영광군 백수면 구수리 영촌 마을에서 태어났다.
20여년의 구도과정을 통하여 깨달음을 얻은 곳이며 그 깨달음을 바탕으로 원불교를 창립했던 곳도 영촌 마을이다. 
그러므로 영광은 원불교를 개창한 박소태산(이하 소태산)의 고향이자 원불교의 발생지이다.
원불교 성지는 영광 길용리, 부안 변산, 익산 신룡동, 진안 만덕산, 성주 소성동 등 5대 성지를 들 수 있다.
그 중에서도 영산은 원불교의 근원성지로 대종사의 10상(십상) 가운데 7상이 이곳에서 이루어진 성지 중의 성지라 할 수 있다. 

따라서 영광은 대종사의 탄생부터 구도과정, 대각, 회상의 기초를 세운 방언답과 기도봉 등 원불교의 문화유산이 그대로 남아있는 문화유산의 보고라 할 수 있다.
영산성지에 산재하고 있는 문화유산은 영촌 마을에 있는 탄생가, 대종사 대각 이전 가장 많이 사셨던 구호동 집터, 산신령을 만나려고 기도 드렸던 삼밭재 마당바위, 강변입정상을 나툰 선진포 입정터, 대각을 이룬 노루목 대각지, 최초 법어를 설한 돛드래미 이씨제각, 최초 교당인 구간도실터, 9인 제자들의 정성이 깃든 구인기도봉, 정관평 방언답, 대각전, 영산원, 학원실과 대종사 이후 건축되었지만 가치가 있는 영모전, 영산선학대학, 융문당과 융무당, 우리삶문화옥당박물관 등을 들 수 있다
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정관평



정관평





영산출장소 앞에 펼쳐진 들판으로 교단 초창기에 대종사님과 9인 선진께서 이룩한 간척답이다. 대종사는 당시의 일반적인 풍조였던 허황된 미신을 타파하고 구세주의 출현을 통한 구원만을 추구하던 민중들에게 허례폐지, 미신 타파, 금주금연 등의 생활운동 전개와 저축조합운동 등을 통한 근검저축, 협동단결 정신을 실질적으로 보여준 것이 간척사업이다.
정부나 외부의 도움과 협조를 받지 아니하고 순수한 조합원들의 노력과 협력으로 이루어진 것으로 당시 길룡리에는 논을 구경할 수 없었는데 이 정관평으로 인해 비로소 논농사를 지을 수 있게 되었다. 처음 경지 정리를 시작할 즈음에 조합원에게 각각 할당해 주었고 개간한 사람의 소작지로 사용하게 하였다.
이 방언답을 처음엔 구호농장이라고도 부르다가 후에 정관평이라 하였다. 구호농장이라고 한 것에 대해서는 구호동의 이름을 따서 구호농장이라 하였다는 의견도 있고 아홉 조합원이 일심단결의 정성으로 이루어진 것이라고 해서 지어진 이름이라고 하는데 확실한 근거는 잘 알려져 있지 않다.
다만 이 구호농장이 정관평이라 불리게 된 시기는 원기 19년 10월 {회보} 12호 [영광지부 각지 상황]에 [정관평]이라는 이름이 나오는데 정관평이라는 이름은 대종사 당대에 지어진 이름이라 할 수 있다. 정관평의 [정관]이란 당나라 태종시의 연호로 태평성대를 노래한데서 유래되었으며 일원의 광대무량한 낙원세계 건설의 의미를 찾을 수 있다.




방언공사는 두 차례에 이루어졌는데 1차 방언 공사는 원기 3년(1918) 4월부터 이듬해 3월까지 1년간 둑의 길이 1,632m, 면적 4만 1천 89평으로 큰 언답 200 마지기와 작은 언답 30마지기가 이루어졌으며 대종사 당대에 9인 제자와 함께 이룬 간척답이다. 2차 방언공사는 정산종사가 주도한 것으로 원기 40년(1955)부터 3년에 걸쳐 2만 7천 4백 82평을 개간하였다. 3차 방언지는 동네 사람들이 언 밖에 다른 언을 막고 사용하던 것을 당시 교육부, 교화부, 공익부에서 매입한 것이다.




재방언공사시 재방언의 노래가 있었는데 '구인혈심(九人血心) 다시 이어 재방사업(再防事業) 이루었네. 오는 세상 두고두고 많은 동지 표본되어 무량겁의 대천세계 사부도덕(師父道德) 빛을 내리'로 이는 대산 종사가 기술한 내용이다. 이러한 간척사업은 원불교 교단사상 매우 중요한 의미를 가지는데 간척사업으로 인하여 교단의 창립토대를 마련하는 것은 물론 원불교 교단을 영육쌍전, 이사병행의 생활종교로 발전케 한 하나의 터전이 되었던 것이다.

방언 공사는 교단의 경제적 기반 확립 이상으로 정신적인 큰 의미도 가지고 있는데 대종사는 방언공사의 의의를 "믿기 어려운 이 일을 할 때에 신심이 있고 없음을 알 것이며, 시종을 볼 때에 사업 성취의 힘을 알 수 있고, 근로작업으로 복록의 근본을 알 것이며, 괴로운 일을 할 때 솔성하는 힘을 얻을 수 있을 것"이라 밝혀주고 있다.

지금은 영산출장소에서 전 면적을 관리하지만 당시에는 소작을 주어 3분작으로 1/3을 선원에 내는 것을 원칙으로 하였다.
하지만 언을 막고 얼마동안은 염수로 인해 농사짓기가 어려워 생활의 빈곤이 있었다.
당시 방언공사를 할 때의 서약문은 다음과 같다.




우리들은 다행히 대도대덕(大道大德)의 초창 시대를 당하여 외람히 단원의 중한 책임을 맡았는 바 마음은 한 사문(師門)에 바치고 몸을 공중사(公衆事) 에 다하여 영원한 일생을 이에 결정하옵고 먼저 방언 공사를 착수하오니 오직 여덟 몸이 한 몸이 되고 여덟 마음이 한 마음이 되어 영욕고락(營辱苦樂)에 진퇴를 같이 하며 비록 천신 만고와 함지 사지를 당할 지라도 조금도 퇴전하지 아니하고 후회하지 아니하고 원망하지 아니하여 종신토록 그 일심을 변하지 않기로써 혈심 서약하오니 천지신명(天地神明)은 일제히 통촉하사 만일 이 서약에 어긴 자 있거든 밝히 죄를 내리소서. 또는, 종사주께옵서도 이 배신자에 대하여는 조금도 용서하지 말으시고 상당한 중죄를 내리시며 일반 동지께서도 공동 배척하여 어떠한 죄벌이라도 다하여 주소서. 만일 배신 행동을 자행한 자로는 일체 죄벌을 감수하겠으며 또한 조금도 여한이 없을 것을 이에 서명 날인 함.

(박정훈. {한울안 한이치에} 이리. 원불교출판사. 1982년)