Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman

If you’re not a Russian scholar or at least have not pursued Russian literature, then you’ve probably not run across this magnificent classic, Life and Fate, by Vasily Grossman. Grossman was born in the Ukraine in 1905, so he was just 12 years old at the time of the revolution that deposed the Romanovs and brought Lenin, then Stalin, then Khrushchev to power. He finished the book in 1959, but because the novel is the work of a dissident, it was seized by Khrushchev’s KGB officers in 1960. Rather than arrest the author, it was his book that was taken prisoner. Even his typewriter ribbons were taken. Fortunately, he had given copies to two others, but Grossman died in 1964, long before his book was ever published. It was smuggled out of Russia and finally printed in the West for the first time in 1980. And, what an incredible masterpiece it is.

The content of Life and Fate focuses on the critical World War II event of the German siege of Stalingrad. Hitler and Stalin had signed a non-aggression pact, so the Russians were caught by surprised when Hitler suddenly invaded their country. Including the German assault on Moscow was the year-long unsuccessful siege of Stalingrad, which was an important turning point in the war. It was the first time the German was machine was proven not to be invincible.

There are a number of very scholarly reviews of Grossman’s book which are easily available. In the book's introduction, Robert Chandler wrote, “It is important not only as literature but also as history; we have no more complete picture of Stalinist Russia.” For the most part, this book is historically accurate. Chandler reviewed that Grossman evoked the life of Russia through multiple subplots involving the members of a single family. Aleksandra Vladimirovna Shaposhnikova is an old woman whose spiritual roots were in the Populist traditions of the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia. Her children and their families were the novel’s central figures. Subplots are set in a Russian labor camp, a physics institute, the military careers of the husbands of one of Aleksandra’s daughters, the events at the Stalingrad power station, the German front, an uprising in a German concentration camp, and many others. As Grossman switches from a focus of one character to the next, his language shifts from being base and crude to refined and profound. An example of his profound writing (of which there are many) include a comment about “senseless kindness” from the character Ikonnikov who had just witnessed the massacre of 20,000 Jews. Ikonnikov: “Whenever we see the dawn of an eternal good… whenever we see this dawn, the blood of children and old people is always shed… 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 small kernel of human kindness. Only individuals, it seems, can keep this kernel alive, and it can be spoken of only in a language that has not been appropriated by state ideologies.”

Grossman wrote, “Everyone feels guilty before a mother who has lost her son in a war; throughout human history men have tried in vain to justify themselves.”

His writing about the German death camps literally took my breath:

One of the most astonishing human traits that came to light at this time was obedience. There were causes of huge queues being formed by people awaiting execution – and it was victims themselves who regulated the movement of these queues. There were hot summer days when people had to wait from early morning until late at night; some mothers prudently provided themselves with bread and bottles of water for their children. Millions of innocent people knowing that they would soon be arrested, said goodbye tot heir nearest and dearest in advance and prepared little bundles containing spare underwear and a towel. Millions of people lived in vast camps that had not only been built by prisoners but were even guarded by them.

            And it wasn’t merely tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, but hundreds of millions of people who were the obedient witnesses of this slaughter of the innocent. Nor were they merely obedient witnesses; when ordered to, they gave their support to this slaughter, voting in favor of it amid a hubbub of voices. There was something unexpected in the degree of their obedience…. The extreme violence of totalitarian social systems proved able to paralyze the human spirit throughout whole continents.

Grossman asked, “Have people advanced over the millennia in their concept of good?” And then he spent a chapter addressing the question.

He also gave the clearest discussion of anti-Semitism that I’ve ever seen:

Anti-Semitism can take many forms – from a mocking, contemptuous ill-will to murderous pogroms.

Anti-Semitism can be met with in the market and in the President of the Academy of Sciences, in the soul of an old man and in the games children play in the yard. Anti-Semitism has been as strong in the age of atomic reactors and computers as in the age of oil lamps, sailing boats, and spinning wheels.

Anti-Semitism is always a means rather than an end; it is a measure of the contradictions yet to be resolved. It is a mirror for the failings of individuals, social structures and State systems. Tell me what you accuse the Jews of – I’ll tell you what you’re guilty of.

One of Grossman’s main characters was Victor Shtrum, a physicist and Jew who is married to one of Shaposhnikova’s daughters. Victor is a good man who has struggled with prejudice at every turn, especially as Stalin’s anti-Semitic policies advanced. After having fought for his principles at the risk of his own life, he finally took the easy way out with one dilemma, and having done so haunted him. Grossman wrote, “Good men and bad men alike are capable of weakness. The difference is simply that a bad man will be proud all his life of one good deed – while an honest man is hardly aware of his good acts, but remembers a single sin for years on end.”

I had trouble with Russian names which are so much longer than the names of those of us in the West, and then there are also the diminutive names of the characters, so sometimes it took a little while to figure out who the author was referring to. The book is long, more than 900 pages. So, there were lots of characters, lots of long names, and lots of details. There were a few tedious passages. But, of course that is the richness of a novel of this scope. I saved this book for a vacation week, reading a few hours each day. What a pleasure.

I think I’ve run out of superlatives. This book gets my highest recommendation.