How strikingly all the Soviet spells and formulas listed above have disappeared! [cm. Grossman’s article “For a Just Cause” - analysis of A. Solzhenitsyn] - and no one will say that this is from the author’s epiphany at 50 years old? And what Grossman really did not know and did not feel until 1953 - 1956, he managed to catch up in the last years of work on the 2nd volume and now, with passion, he stuck everything that was missed into the fabric of the novel.

Vasily Grossman in Schwerin (Germany), 1945

Now we learn that not only in Hitler’s Germany, but also here: mutual suspicion of people towards each other; As soon as people talk over a glass of tea, there is already suspicion. Yes, it turns out: Soviet people live in horrific housing conditions (the driver reveals this to the prosperous Shtrum), and in the registration police department there is oppression and tyranny. And what disrespect for sacred things: a fighter can easily wrap a piece of sausage “in a greasy combat leaflet.” But the conscientious director of Stalgres stood at his death post throughout the siege of Stalingrad, went beyond the Volga on the day of our successful breakthrough - and all his merits went down the drain, and his career was ruined. (And the formerly crystal positive secretary of the regional committee, Pryakhin, now recoils from the victim.) It turns out: Soviet generals may not be at all brilliant in their achievements, even in Stalingrad (III part, chapter 7) - but come on, write something like that at Stalin! Yes, the corps commander even dares to talk to his commissar about the 1937 landings! (I – 51). In general, now the author dares to raise his eyes to the untouchable Nomenklatura - and it is clear that he has thought a lot about it and his soul is very boiling. With great irony, he shows a gang of one of the Ukrainian regional party committees evacuated to Ufa (I - 52, however, as if he reproaches them for their low village origin and caring love for their own children). But it turns out that this is what the wives of responsible workers are like: evacuated comfortably by the Volga steamer, they indignantly protest against the landing on the decks of that steamer of a detachment of military men going to battle. And the young officers at the cantonments hear the downright frank memories of the residents “about complete collectivization.” And in the village: “no matter how much you work, they will still take away the bread.” And the evacuees, out of hunger, steal collective farm goods. Yes, the “Questionnaire of Questionnaires” has reached Shtrum himself - and how rightly he reflects on it about its stickiness and claws. But the hospital commissar is being “bugged” that he “didn’t fight enough against the disbelief in victory among some of the wounded, against enemy attacks among the backward part of the wounded, hostile to the collective farm system” - oh, where was that before? oh, how much truth is still behind this! And the hospital funeral itself is cruelly indifferent. But if the coffins are buried by a labor battalion, then who is it recruited from? – not mentioned.

Grossman himself - does he remember what he was like in the 1st volume? Now? - now he undertakes to reproach Tvardovsky: “how can we explain that a poet, a peasant from birth, writes with sincere feeling a poem glorifying the bloody time of suffering of the peasantry”?

And the Russian theme itself, compared with the 1st volume, is further pushed back in the 2nd. At the end of the book, it is benevolently noted that “seasonal girls, workers in heavy workshops” - both in dust and in dirt - “retain a strong, stubborn beauty, with which a hard life can do nothing.” Also included in the finale is the return of Major Berezkin from the front - well, and the Russian landscape. That's probably all; the rest is of a different sign. Envy of Strum at the institute, hugging another like him: “But the most important thing is that you and I are Russian people.” The only very correct remark about the humiliation of Russians in their own country, that “in the name of friendship of peoples we always sacrifice Russian people,” Grossman inserts into the crafty and boorish party boss Getmanov - from that new (post-Comintern) generation of party promoters who “loved their Russian in themselves they spoke Russian incorrectly,” their strength “lies in their cunning.” (As if the international generation of communists had any less cunning, oh-oh!)

From some (late) moment, Grossman – and he’s not the only one! – deduced for himself the moral identity of German National Socialism and Soviet communism. And he honestly strives to give his newfound conclusion as one of the highest in his book. But in order to do this, he is forced to disguise himself (however, for Soviet publicity it is still extreme courage): to express this identity in an invented night conversation between Obersturmbannführer Liss and the prisoner Comintern member Mostovsky: “We are looking in the mirror. Don’t you recognize yourself, your will in us?” Here, “we will defeat you, we will be left without you, alone against someone else’s world,” “our victory is your victory.” And it makes Mostovsky horrified: is there really any truth in this “full of snake venom” speech? But no, of course (for the safety of the author himself?): “the obsession lasted a few seconds,” “the thought turned to dust.”

And at some point, Grossman directly names the Berlin uprising of 1953 and the Hungarian uprising of 1956, but not on their own, but along with the Warsaw ghetto and Treblinka and only as material for a theoretical conclusion about man’s desire for freedom. And then this desire keeps breaking through: here comes Strum in 1942, albeit in a private conversation with trusted academician Chepyzhin, but he directly picks on Stalin (III – 25): “here the Master kept strengthening his friendship with the Germans.” Yes, Strum, it turns out, we couldn’t even imagine it, has been watching with indignation for years the excessive praise of Stalin. So how long has he understood everything? this was not communicated to us before. So the politically soiled Darensky, publicly standing up for a captured German, shouts to the colonel in front of the soldiers: “bastard” (very implausible). Four poorly acquainted intellectuals in the rear, in Kazan, in 1942, extensively discuss the massacres of 1937, naming famous sworn names (I – 64). And more than once more generally - about the entire terrorized atmosphere of 1937 (III – 5, II – 26). And even Shaposhnikova’s grandmother, politically completely neutral throughout the first volume, busy only with work and family, now recalls the “traditions of the Narodnaya Volya family” of hers, and 1937, and collectivization, and even the famine of 1921. All the more recklessly, her granddaughter, still a schoolgirl, conducts political conversations with his boyfriend-lieutenant and even hums the Magadan song of prisoners. Now we will also find mention of the famine of 1932–33.

And now we are moving towards the last thing: in the midst of the Battle of Stalingrad, the promotion of a political “case” against one of the highest heroes - Grekov (this is Soviet reality, yes!) and even to the author’s general conclusion about the Stalingrad triumph, which after it “ the silent dispute between the victorious people and the victorious state continued” (III – 17). This, however, was not given to everyone in 1960. It is a pity that this was expressed without any connection with the general text, as some kind of cursory interjection, and - alas, is not further developed in the book. And at the very end of the book, excellent: “Stalin said: “brothers and sisters...” And when the Germans were defeated, the director should not enter the cottage without a report, and the brothers and sisters should not enter the dugouts” (III – 60).

But even in the 2nd volume you will sometimes find from the author either “worldwide reaction” (II – 32), or something completely official: “the spirit of the Soviet troops was unusually high” (III – 8); and we will read the rather solemn praise of Stalin that on July 3, 1941, he “was the first to understand the secret of the transformation of war” into our victory (III – 56). And in a sublime tone of admiration Strum thinks about Stalin (III – 42) after Stalin’s telephone call - such lines, too, cannot be written without the author’s sympathy for them. And undoubtedly, with the same complicity, the author shares Krymov’s romantic admiration for the absurd ceremonial meeting on November 6, 1942 in Stalingrad - “there was something in it that was reminiscent of the revolutionary holidays of old Russia.” And Krymov’s excited memories of Lenin’s death also reveal the author’s complicity (II – 39). Grossman himself undoubtedly retains faith in Lenin. And he does not try to hide his direct sympathies for Bukharin.

This is the limit that Grossman cannot cross.

And all this was written with the (naive) expectation of publication in the USSR. (Is this why the unconvincing one interjects: “Great Stalin! Perhaps the man of iron will is the most weak-willed of all. A slave of time and circumstances.”) So if the “quarrelsome people” are from the district trade union council, but something directly in the forehead of the communist government ? - God forbid. About General Vlasov - there is one contemptuous mention of the corps commander Novikov (but it is clear that it is also the author’s, for who in the Moscow intelligentsia understood anything about the Vlasov movement even by 1960?). And then it’s even more untouchable - once the most timid guess: “What was Lenin smart about, and he didn’t understand,” but it was said again by these desperate and doomed Grekovs (I – 61). Moreover, towards the end of the volume, like a monument, the indestructible Menshevik (the author’s wreath to the memory of his father?) Dröling, the eternal prisoner, looms.

Yes, after 1955-56 he had already heard a lot about the camps, then it was time for “returns” from the Gulag, and now the author of the epic, if only out of good faith, if not for reasons of composition, is trying to cover as much as possible the world behind bars. Now the train with prisoners opens up to the eyes of the passengers of the free train (II – 25). Now the author dares to step into the zone himself, to describe it from the inside using signs from the stories of those who returned. For this purpose, Abarchuk, who dully failed in the 1st volume, emerges, the first husband of Lyudmila Shtrum, however, an orthodox communist, and in his company there is also the conscious communist Neumolimov, and also Abram Rubin, from the Institute of the Red Professorship (in the preferential idiot post of a paramedic, he improbably becomes poor : “I am a lower caste, untouchable”), and also the former security officer Magar, allegedly touched by late repentance for one ruined dispossessed person, and other intellectuals - such and such returned then to Moscow circles. The author tries to realistically depict the camp morning (I – 39, some details are correct, some are incorrect). In several chapters he condensedly illustrates the impudence of the thieves (but why does Grossman call the power of the criminals over the political “the innovation of National Socialism”? - no, from the Bolsheviks, since 1918, don’t take it away!), and the learned democrat unbelievably refuses to stand up during the Vertukhai round. These several consecutive camp chapters pass as if in a gray fog: it seems like it, but it’s fake. But you cannot blame the author for such an attempt: after all, with no less courage he undertakes to describe the prisoner of war camp in Germany - both according to the requirements of the epic and for a more persistent goal: to finally compare communism with Nazism. It is true that he rises to another generalization: that the Soviet camp and the Soviet will correspond to the “laws of symmetry.” (Apparently, Grossman seemed to be unsteady in understanding the future of his book: he wrote it for Soviet publicity! - and at the same time he wanted to be completely truthful.) Together with his character Krymov, Grossman enters the Bolshaya Lubyanka, also collected from stories . (It is also natural that there are some errors in reality and in the atmosphere: sometimes the person under investigation sits directly across the table from the investigator and his papers; sometimes, exhausted by insomnia, he spares no night for an exciting conversation with his cellmate, and the guards, strangely, do not interfere with this. ) He writes several times (incorrectly for 1942): “MGB” instead of “NKVD”; and attributes only 10 thousand victims to the terrifying 501st construction project...

Probably, several chapters about the German concentration camp should be taken with the same amendments. That the communist underground operated there - yes, this is confirmed by witnesses. Impossible in Soviet camps, such an organization was sometimes created and maintained in German ones thanks to the general national adhesiveness against the German guards, and the myopia of the latter. However, Grossman exaggerates that the scope of the underground was through all the camps, almost throughout Germany, that parts of grenades and machine guns were carried from the factory into the residential area (this could still be), and “they were assembled in blocks” (this is already a fantasy). But what is certain: yes, some communists ingratiated themselves into the trust of the German guards, turned their own people into idiots, and could send those they disliked, that is, anti-communists, to punishment or to penal camps (as in Grossman’s case, people’s leader Ershov was sent to Buchenwald).

Now Grossman is much freer on military topics; Now we’ll read something that we couldn’t even imagine in the 1st volume. As the commander of a tank corps, Novikov arbitrarily (and risking his entire career and orders) delays the attack ordered by the front commander for 8 minutes - so that they have better time to suppress the enemy’s firepower and there would be no heavy losses for ours. (And it’s typical: Brother Novikov, introduced in the 1st volume solely to illustrate selfless socialist labor, is now completely forgotten by the author, how he failed; he is no longer needed in a serious book.) Now, ardent envy is added to the former legend of Army Commander Chuikov him to other generals and deathly drunkenness, until he fell into the wormwood. And the company commander spends all the vodka received for the soldiers on his own name day. And their own aircraft bomb their own. And they send infantry to the unsuppressed machine guns. And we no longer read those pathetic phrases about great national unity. (No, there is something left.)

But the receptive, observant Grossman, even from his correspondent position, grasped enough of the reality of the Stalingrad battles. The battles in “Grekov’s house” are described very honestly, with all the combat reality, just like Grekov himself. The author clearly sees and knows the Stalingrad military circumstances, the faces, and even more reliably the atmosphere of all the headquarters. Concluding his review of military Stalingrad, Grossman writes: “His soul was freedom.” Does the author really think so or is he telling himself how he would like to think? No, the soul of Stalingrad was: “for the native land!”

As we see from the novel, as we know from witnesses and from other publications of the author, Grossman was acutely stung by the Jewish problem, the situation of Jews in the USSR, and even more so added to this was the burning pain, oppression and horror of the extermination of Jews on the German side front. But in the 1st volume he froze before the Soviet censorship, and inwardly he still did not dare to break away from Soviet thinking - and we saw to what a degraded degree the Jewish theme was suppressed in the 1st volume, and in any case, not a single touch -or Jewish oppression or displeasure in the USSR.

The transition to freedom of expression was not easy for Grossman, as we have seen, without integrity, without balance throughout the entire volume of the book. The same applies to the Jewish problem. Here the Jewish employees of the institute are prevented from returning with others from evacuation to Moscow - Strum’s reaction is completely in the Soviet tradition: “Thank God, we do not live in Tsarist Russia.” And here it is not Strum’s naivety; the author consistently states that before the war there was neither the spirit nor the rumor of any ill will or special attitude towards Jews in the USSR. Shtrum himself “never thought” about his Jewishness, “before the war, Shtrum never thought about being a Jew,” “his mother never talked to him about it, neither in childhood nor during his student years”; “Fascism made him think about this.” And where is that “vicious anti-Semitism” that was so energetically suppressed in the USSR during the first 15 Soviet years? And Shtrum’s mother: “forgotten during the years of Soviet power that I am a Jew,” “I never felt like a Jew.” Persistence is lost from persistent repetition. And where did that come from? The Germans came - a neighbor in the yard: “Thank God, it’s the end of the Jews”; and at a meeting of townspeople under the Germans, “there was so much slander against the Jews” - where did all this suddenly break out? and how did it hold up in a country where everyone forgot about Jewry?

If in the 1st volume Jewish surnames were hardly mentioned, in the 2nd volume we meet them more often. Here is the staff hairdresser Rubinchik playing the violin in Stalingrad, at the Rodimtsev headquarters. There is also combat captain Movshovich, commander of the sapper battalion. Military doctor Dr. Maisel, a top-class surgeon, selfless to such an extent that he conducts a difficult operation at the onset of his own attack of angina. An unnamed quiet child, the frail son of a Jewish manufacturer, who died sometime in the past. Several Jews in today's Soviet camp have already been mentioned above. (Abarchuk is a former big boss in the famine-era Kuzbass construction, but his communist past is presented softly, and today’s enviable position in the camp of a tool storekeeper is not explained.) And if in the Shaposhnikov family itself, in the 1st volume the half-Jewish origin of two grandchildren was vaguely obscured - Seryozha and Tolya, then about the third granddaughter Nadya in the 2nd volume - and without connection with the action, and without necessity - it is emphasized: “Well, there is not a drop of our Slavic blood in her. A completely Jewish girl." – To strengthen his view that nationality has no real influence, Grossman more than once emphatically contrasts one Jew with another according to their positions. “Mr. Shapiro, a representative of the United Press agency, asked tricky questions at conferences to the head of the Sovinformburo, Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky.” There is an artificial irritation between Abarchuk and Rubin. The arrogant, cruel and selfish air regiment commissar Berman does not defend, but even publicly stigmatizes the unfairly offended brave pilot King. And when Shtrum begins to be persecuted at his institute, the crafty and fat-assed Gurevich betrays him, at a meeting he debunks his scientific successes and hints at Strum’s “national intolerance.” This calculated method of arranging characters already takes on the character of the author touching on his sore spot. Unfamiliar young people saw Strum at the station waiting for a train to Moscow - immediately: “Abram is returning from evacuation,” “Abram is in a hurry to receive a medal for the defense of Moscow.”

The author gives Tolstoyan Ikonnikov such a course of feelings. “The persecution that the Bolsheviks carried out after the revolution against the church was useful for the Christian idea” - and the number of victims at that time did not undermine his religious faith; He also preached the Gospel during the general collectivization, observing mass casualties, but after all, too, “collectivization took place in the name of good.” But when he saw “the execution of twenty thousand Jews... - on that day [he] realized that God could not allow such a thing, and... it became obvious that he did not exist.”

Now, finally, Grossman can allow himself to reveal to us the contents of the suicide letter from Shtrum’s mother, which was given to her son in the 1st volume, but it is only vaguely mentioned that it brought bitterness: in 1952 the author did not dare to give it for publication. Now it occupies a large chapter (I – 18) and with deep emotional feeling conveys the mother’s experience in a Ukrainian city captured by the Germans, disappointment in the neighbors, next to whom they lived for years; everyday details of the removal of local Jews into an artificial temporary ghetto; life there, the various types and psychology of captured Jews; and self-preparation for inexorable death. The letter is written with spare drama, without tragic exclamations - and very expressively. Here they are driving Jews along the pavement, and on the sidewalks there is a staring crowd; those were dressed in summer clothes, and the Jews who had taken things in reserve were “in coats, in hats, women in warm scarves,” “it seemed to me that for the Jews walking along the street, the sun had already refused to shine, they were walking among December night cold."

Grossman undertakes to describe both mechanized and central destruction, and tracing it from the plan; the author is tensely restrained, no shouting, no jerk: Obersturmbannführer Liss is busily inspecting the plant under construction, and this is in technical terms, we are not warned that the plant is designated for the mass extermination of people. The author’s voice breaks only at the “surprise” for Eichmann and Lissu: they are offered a table with wine and snacks in the future gas chamber (this is inserted artificially, into the etching), and the author comments on this as a “cute invention.” When asked how many Jews we are talking about, the figure is not given, the author tactfully evades, and only “Liss, amazed, asked: “Millions?” – the artist’s sense of proportion.

Together with Doctor Sophia Levinton, captured by Germans back in the 1st volume, the author now draws the reader into the thickening stream of Jews doomed to destruction. First, it is a reflection in the mind of the distraught accountant Rosenberg of the mass burnings of Jewish corpses. And another kind of madness - a half-shot girl who got out of a common grave. When describing the depth of suffering and incoherent hopes, and the naive last everyday worries of doomed people, Grossman tries to stay within the limits of dispassionate naturalism. All these descriptions require remarkable work of the author’s imagination - to imagine what no one alive has seen or experienced, there was no one to collect reliable testimony from, but you need to imagine these details - a dropped children’s block or a butterfly pupa in a matchbox. In a number of chapters, the author tries to be as factual as possible, or even everyday, avoiding an explosion of feelings both in himself and in the characters, drawn out by forced mechanical movement. He presents us with an extermination plant – generalized, without calling it by the name “Auschwitz”. He allows himself an outburst of emotions only when responding to the music accompanying the column of the doomed and the strange shocks it causes in their souls. This is very strong. And immediately come to grips with the black-and-red, rotten, chemically-treated water, which will wash away the remains of the destroyed into the world’s oceans. And now - the last feelings of people (the old maid Levinton has a maternal feeling for someone else's baby, and in order to be close to him, she refuses to respond to the saving call "who is the surgeon here?"), even - the emotional upsurge of death. And further, further, the author gets used to every detail: the deceptive “dressing room”, women’s haircuts to collect their hair, someone’s wit on the verge of death, “the muscular strength of smoothly bending concrete, drawing in the human flow,” “some kind of half-asleep gliding ", everything is denser, everything is compressed in the chamber, "people's steps are becoming shorter and shorter", "hypnotic concrete rhythm" spinning the crowd - and gas death, darkening the eyes and consciousness. (And that would be the end of it. But the author, an atheist, follows up with the argument that death is “a transition from the world of freedom to the kingdom of slavery” and “The Universe that existed in man has ceased to exist” - this is perceived as an offensive breakdown from spiritual heights , achieved on previous pages.)

Compared to this powerful, self-convincing scene of mass destruction, the novel’s separate chapter (II – 32) of abstract reasoning about anti-Semitism stands weakly: about its heterogeneities, about its content and the reduction of all its causes to the mediocrity of envious people. The reasoning is confusing, not based on history and far from exhausting the topic. Along with a number of correct remarks, the fabric of this chapter is very uneven.

And the plot of the Jewish problem in the novel is built more around the physicist Strum. In the 1st volume, the author did not dare to expand the image, but now he decides to do so - and the main line is closely intertwined with Shtrum’s Jewish origin. Now, belatedly, we learn about the sickening “eternal inferiority complex” that he experiences in the Soviet environment: “you enter the meeting room - the first row is free, but I don’t dare sit down, I’m going to Kamchatka.” Here is the shattering effect of his mother’s suicide letter on him.

The author, according to the laws of an artistic text, of course, does not tell us about the very essence of Strum’s scientific discovery, and should not. And the poetic chapter (I – 17) about physics in general is good. The moment of guessing the grain of a new theory is very plausibly described - the moment when Strum was busy with completely different conversations and concerns. This thought “it seemed that he did not give birth to it, it rose simply, easily, like a white water flower from the calm darkness of the lake.” In deliberately inaccurate expressions, Strum’s discovery is raised as epoch-making (this is well expressed: “gravity, mass, time collapsed, space doubles, having no existence, but only magnetic meaning”), “the classical theory itself became only a special case in the new one developed by Strum broad decision,” the institute’s staff directly places Strum after Bohr and Planck. From Chepyzhin, more practically, we learn that Strum’s theory will be useful in the development of nuclear processes.

To vitally balance the greatness of the discovery, Grossman, with the right artistic tact, begins to delve into Strum's personal shortcomings; some of his fellow physicists consider him unkind, mocking, and arrogant. Grossman also reduces it externally: “it was scratching and sticking out his lip,” “he’s schizophrenic,” “shuffling gait,” “sloppy,” likes to tease family and friends, is rude and unfair to his stepson; and one day “in a rage, he tore his shirt and, getting tangled in his underpants, galloped towards his wife on one leg, raising his fist, ready to strike.” But he has “tough, bold directness” and “inspiration.” Sometimes the author notes Strum’s pride, often his irritability, and quite petty one, including his wife. “A painful irritation seized Strum,” “an agonizing irritation coming from the depths of his soul.” (Through Shtrum, the author seems to be releasing the stress that he himself experienced in the straits of many years.) “Shtrum was angry at conversations about everyday topics, and at night, when he could not sleep, he thought about being attached to the Moscow distributor.” Returning from evacuation to his spacious, comfortable Moscow apartment, he casually notes that the driver who brought their luggage “apparently was seriously concerned about the housing issue.” And having received the desired privileged “food package,” he is tormented that an employee of lesser caliber was given no less: “It’s amazing how we know how to insult people.”

What are his political views? (His cousin served a prison sentence and was sent into exile.) “Before the war, Strum did not have any particularly acute doubts” (from Volume 1, let us remember that they did not arise during the war either). For example, he then believed the wild accusations against the famous professor Pletnev - oh, from a “prayerful attitude towards the Russian printed word” - this is about Pravda... and even in 1937?.. (Elsewhere: “I remembered 1937 , when almost every day the names of those arrested last night were mentioned...) In another place we read that Strum even “groaned about the suffering of those dispossessed during the period of collectivization,” which is completely unimaginable. This is what Dostoevsky “would rather not have written The Diary of a Writer” - this is his opinion that is believable. Towards the end of the evacuation, in the circle of institute employees, Shtrum suddenly realizes that in science there are no authorities for him - “the head of the science department of the Central Committee” Zhdanov “and even...”. Here they “expected him to pronounce the name of Stalin,” but he wisely just “waved his hand.” Yes, however, already at home: “all my conversations... the bullet is in my pocket.”

Not all of this is coherent with Grossman (perhaps he did not have time to finalize the book to the last touch) - but what is more important is that he leads his hero to a difficult and decisive test. And so it came - in 1943 instead of the expected 1948 - 49, an anachronism, but this is a device allowed for the author, because he camouflagely transfers here his own, the same ordeal of 1953. Of course, in 1943, a physical discovery promising nuclear use could only expect honor and success, and not the persecution that arose among colleagues without orders from above, and even who discovered the “spirit of Judaism” in the discovery - but this is what the author needs: to reproduce the situation already at the end 40s. (In a series of chronologically unthinkable forays, Grossman already names both the execution of the Anti-Fascist Jewish Committee and the “Doctors’ Plot”, 1952.)

And - it piled up. “A chill of fear touched Strum, something that had always lived secretly in his heart, the fear of the wrath of the state.” A blow is immediately struck against his secondary Jewish employees. At first, not yet assessing the depth of the danger, Shtrum undertakes to express insolence to the director of the institute - although in front of another academician, Shishakov, the “pyramid buffalo”, he is timid, “like a small-town Jew in front of a cavalry colonel.” The blow is all the more painful because it comes instead of the expected Stalin Prize. Shtrum turns out to be very responsive to the outbreak of persecution and, not least, to all its everyday consequences - the deprivation of a dacha, a closed distributor and possible housing restrictions. Even before his colleagues prompted him, Shtrum, by the inertia of a Soviet citizen, himself guessed: “I should write a letter of repentance, because everyone writes in such situations.” Further, his feelings and actions alternate with great psychological fidelity, and are described resourcefully. He tries to unwind in a conversation with Chepyzhin (Chepyzhin’s old servant kisses Shtrum on the shoulder: is she admonishing him for execution?). And Chepyzhin, instead of encouraging people, immediately launches into a presentation of his confused, atheistically delusional, mixed scientific and social hypothesis: how humanity, through free evolution, will surpass God. (Chepyzhin was artificially invented and shoved into the 1st volume; he is just as exaggerated in this invented scene.) But regardless of the emptiness of the hypothesis being presented, the behavior of Shtrum, who came after all for spiritual reinforcement, is psychologically very correct. He half-hears this burden, sadly thinks to himself: “I have no time for philosophy, after all, they can put me in prison,” and still continues to think: should he go to repent or not? and the conclusion out loud: “in our time, science should be carried out by people of great soul, prophets, saints,” “Where can I get faith, strength, perseverance,” he said quickly, and a Jewish accent could be heard in his voice.” Feel sorry for yourself. He leaves, and on the stairs “tears flowed down his cheeks.” And soon we will go to the decisive Academic Council. Reads and rereads his possible statement of repentance. He starts a game of chess - and immediately leaves it absent-mindedly, everything is very lively, and the remarks adjacent to it. Now, “looking around furtively, with pitiful small-town antics, he hastily ties his tie,” he is in a hurry to be in time for repentance - and finds the strength to push back this step, takes off both his tie and his jacket - he will not go.

And then he is oppressed by fears - and not knowing who opposed him, what they said, and what will they do to him now? Now, in ossification, he does not leave the house for several days - they stopped calling him on the phone, he was betrayed by those on whose support he had hoped - and everyday constraints are already suffocating: he was already “afraid of the house manager and the girl from the card bureau” , they will take away the excess living space, the corresponding member’s salary - to sell things? and even, in his last despair, “often thought that he would go to the military registration and enlistment office, refuse the Academy armor and ask to serve as a Red Army soldier at the front”... And then there’s the arrest of his brother-in-law, the ex-husband of his wife’s sister, doesn’t it threaten that Will Strum be arrested? Like any prosperous person: he hasn’t been shaken too much yet, but he feels like the last edge of existence.

And then - a completely Soviet turn: Stalin’s magical friendly call to Shtrum - and immediately everything changed fabulously, and employees rush to curry favor with Shtrum. So the scientist won and survived? A rare example of resilience in Soviet times?

Not so, Grossman unmistakably leads: and now the next, no less terrible temptation is from affectionate hugs. Although Shtrum proactively justifies himself that he is not the same as the pardoned camp prisoners, who immediately forgave everything and cursed their former co-martyrs. But now he is afraid to cast the shadow of his wife’s sister, who is busy with her arrested husband, on himself; his wife also irritates him, but the favor of the authorities and “getting on some special lists” became very pleasant. “The most amazing thing was that” from people “who had recently been full of contempt and suspicion towards him,” he now “naturally perceived their friendly feelings.” I even felt with surprise: “administrators and party leaders... suddenly these people opened up to Strum from the other, human side.” And with such and such a complacent state of his, these Novolask bosses invite him to sign the most vile patriotic letter to the New York Times. And Shtrum doesn’t find the strength or trick to refuse, and weakly signs. “Some kind of dark, sickening feeling of humility,” “powerlessness, magnetization, an obedient feeling of fed and pampered cattle, fear of a new ruin of life.”

With this plot twist, Grossman executes himself for his obedient signature in January 1953 in the “Doctors’ Case.” (Even, for the sake of literality, so that the “doctors’ work” remains, he anachronistically inserts here those long-destructed professors Pletnev and Levin.) It seems: now the 2nd volume will be published - and repentance has been pronounced publicly.

But instead of that, the KGB officers came and confiscated the manuscript...

(II option)
Man's natural desire for freedom is ineradicable; it can be suppressed, but cannot be destroyed. A person will not voluntarily give up freedom. V. Grossman
“Manuscripts don’t burn...” How many times has this phrase of Woland been quoted, but I want to repeat it again. Our time is a time of discoveries, returned masters who were waiting in the wings and finally saw the light. V. Grossman’s novel “Life and Fate,” written thirty-five years ago, came to the reader only in 1988 and shocked the literary world with its modernity, the great power of its truthful words about war, about life, about fate. He reflected his time. Only now, in the nineties, has it become possible to talk and write about what the author of the novel is thinking about. And therefore this work belongs to today, it is topical even now.
Reading “Life and Fate,” you cannot help but be amazed by the scale of the novel and the depth of the conclusions made by the author. It seems that philosophical ideas are intertwined, forming a bizarre but harmonious fabric. Sometimes it is difficult to see and understand these ideas. Where is the main thing, what is the main idea that permeates the narrative? What is life, what is destiny? “Life is so confusing... paths, ravines, swamps, streams... But fate is straight, straight, you follow a string... Life is freedom,” the author reflects. Fate is unfreedom, slavery; it is not without reason that people doomed to death in gas chambers feel how “the sense of fate grows stronger in them.” Fate does not obey the will of man.
The main theme of Grossman's work is freedom. The concept of “freedom”, “will” is also familiar to wild animals. But is it physical freedom or lack of freedom? With the advent of the human mind, the meaning of these concepts changed and became deeper. There is moral freedom, moral freedom, freedom of thought, non-enslavement of the soul. So what is more important - maintaining the freedom of the body or the mind? Why did this particular philosophical problem worry the author? Obviously, this was predetermined by the era in which he lived. Two states stood over the world at that time, fought, and the fate of humanity depended on the outcome of this battle. Both powers, according to one of the characters in the novel, are party states. “The strength of the party leader did not require the talent of a scientist or the gift of a writer. She found herself above talent, above talent.” The term “will of the party” meant the will of one person, whom we now call a dictator. Both states were similar in that their citizens, deprived of the official right to think, feel, and behave in accordance with their individuality, constantly felt the force of fear prevailing over them. One way or another, government buildings, more like prisons, were erected and seemed indestructible. Man was given an insignificant role in them; much higher than he stood the state and the exponent of his will, infallible and powerful. “Fascism and man cannot coexist. At one pole is the state, at the other is human need.” It is no coincidence that Grossman, comparing the two camps, compares totalitarian states - Germany and the Soviet Union of the thirties and forties. People are imprisoned there for the same “crimes”: careless words, bad work. These are “criminals who have not committed crimes.” The only difference is that the German camp is presented through the eyes of Russian prisoners of war, who know what they are imprisoned for and are ready to fight. People in Siberian camps consider their fate a mistake and write letters to Moscow. Tenth-grader Nadya Shtrum will understand that the one to whom her letters are addressed is, in fact, the culprit of what is happening. But the letters keep coming... The Siberian camp is perhaps worse than the German one. “Getting to your own camp, your own to your own. That’s where the trouble is!” - says Ershov, one of the heroes of the novel. Grossman leads us to a terrible conclusion: a totalitarian state resembles a huge camp where prisoners are both victims and executioners. It’s not for nothing that the “philosopher” Kazenelenbogen, a former security official who is now in a cell at Lubyanka, would like to turn the entire country into a camp, but continues to declare that “in the merger, in the destruction of the opposition between the camps and behind-the-wire life, there is. .. the triumph of great principles.” And so two such states entered into a war against each other, the outcome of which was decided in a city on the Volga in 1942. One people, intoxicated by the speeches of their leader, advanced, dreaming of world domination; the other, retreating, did not need calls - he was accumulating strength, preparing to give millions of lives, but to defeat the invader and defend the Motherland. What happens to the souls of those who oppress the enemy army, and what happens in the hearts of those oppressed? In order to turn back the enemy, the power that has little influence over the people, freedom is necessary, and in this difficult time it came. Never before have people had such courageous, truthful, free conversations as during the days of the battles at Stalingrad. The breath of freedom is felt by people in Kazan, in Moscow, but most of all it is in the “world city”, the symbol of which will be the house “six fraction one”, where they talk about the year 1937 and collectivization. While fighting for the independence of their homeland, people like Ershov and Grekov are also fighting for individual freedom in their country. Grekov will tell Commissar Krymov: “I want freedom, and I’m fighting for it.” In the days of defeat, when free power rose from the very bottom of people's souls, Stalin feels that... it was not only his enemies today who won on the battlefields. Following Hitler’s tanks in the dust and smoke were all those whom he seemed to have forever pacified and calmed. “It is not only history that judges the vanquished.” Stalin himself understands that if he is defeated, he will not be forgiven for what he did to his people. A sense of Russian national pride is gradually rising in the souls of people. At the same time, insight comes to the surrounded German soldiers, to those who several months ago crushed the remnants of doubt in themselves, convinced themselves that the Fuhrer and the party were right, like Chief Lieutenant Bach. The Stalingrad operation determined the outcome of the war, but the silent dispute between the victorious people and the victorious state continues. So who will win - the state or the individual? After all, freedom begins with a person. Totalitarian power suppresses, the feeling of fear for life fetters, gives rise to submission to this power. However, many people sincerely believe that their strength lies in admiration for the state, the party, in the perception of the leader’s statements as holy truths. Such people may not bend before the fear of death, but with a shudder they reject doubts about what they believed in throughout their lives. Such is the old Bolshevik, Leninist Mostovskaya, having heard from the lips of the Gestapo Liss what tormented him, which he was even afraid to admit to himself in his soul, only for a moment loses confidence: “We must renounce what we have lived by all our lives, condemn what that he defended and justified.” This strong, unbending man himself seeks unfreedom, feels relief, once again submitting to the will of the party, approving the sending of Ershov, who despises violence, to the death camp. Others, like Magar, Krymov, Shtrum, needed defeat in order to become human, see the truth, and return freedom to their souls. Krymov begins to see the light once he is in the cell. Magar, having lost his freedom, tries to convey his conclusions to his student Abarchuk: “We don’t understand freedom, we gave it away... It is the basis, the meaning, the basis above the basis.” But, faced with mistrust and fanatical blindness, Magar commits suicide. He paid a high price for spiritual emancipation. Losing illusions, Magar loses the meaning of existence. The influence of freedom on human thoughts and behavior is especially convincingly shown using the example of Strum. It was at that moment when the “mighty power of free speech” completely absorbed his thoughts that his scientific victory, his discovery, came to Strum. It was precisely when his friends turned away from him and the power of the totalitarian state pressed and oppressed that Strum would find the strength not to sin against his own conscience, to feel free. But Stalin’s call snuffs out these sprouts of freedom, and only by signing a vile, deceitful letter will he be horrified by what he has done, and this defeat will again open his heart and mind to freedom. The strongest, unbroken, unenslaved human personality in the novel will be the pathetic prisoner of the German Ikonnikov camp, who proclaimed ridiculous and absurd categories of supra-class morality.

Composition

For a long time, the Great Patriotic War was an “unknown war” for many generations of Soviet people. And not only because decades passed after its end. In a totalitarian communist state, the real truth about the war was carefully hushed up, hidden, and distorted. V. Grossman's novel "Life and Fate" shared the fate of other honest works of art about the events of 1941-1945. But the common fate was ban. And how could it be otherwise with a book that tells the truth about the reasons for our failures in the initial period of the war, about the true role of the party in the rear and on the front line, about the complete mediocrity of many Soviet military leaders?

The former secretary of the regional committee, Dementy Getmanov, is actively pursuing the “party line” on the front line. This is a convinced Stalinist who rose to leadership positions thanks to close cooperation with state security agencies. Commissioner Getmanov is an immoral and unscrupulous person, which, however, does not prevent him from lecturing other people. Dementiy Trifonovich does not understand military affairs at all, but he is ready with amazing ease to sacrifice the lives of ordinary soldiers for the sake of his own quick promotion. Getmanov is in a hurry to carry out Stalin's order to attack. The military page of Dementiy Trifonovich’s biography ends in the most natural way for a former state security officer—a denunciation of the tank corps commander Novikov.

Chief of Staff General Neudobnov matches Dementiy Getmanov. The “brave commander” has a full-time service in the OGPU, during which Neudobnov personally interrogated and tortured people (let us remember the story of Lieutenant Colonel Darensky about this). On the front line, Illarion Innokentievich feels uncomfortable, lost in the simplest situation. No amount of ostentatious courage can replace organizational abilities and military leadership talent. The heavy burden of practical leadership of the tank corps rests entirely with Novikov. General Eremenko also understands this. Remembering Getmanov and Neudobnov, he bluntly says to Novikov: “Here’s what. He worked with Khrushchev, he worked with Titian Petrovich, and you, son of a bitch, soldier’s bone, remember - you will lead the corps into a breakthrough.”

The commander of the tank corps, Colonel Novikov, is a true hero of the Great Patriotic War. At first glance, there is nothing particularly heroic or military about this man. And he dreams not of military exploits, but of a peaceful and happy life. Scenes depicting the relationship between Novikov and Evgenia Nikolaevna play an important role in the novel. The corps commander feels endless pity for the boy recruits. Novikov is truly close to the soldiers and officers. Grossman writes about his hero and ordinary soldiers: “And he looks at them, the same as they are, and what is in them is also in him...” It is this feeling of closeness that forces Novikov to do everything to reduce human losses during the attack. At his own peril and risk, the corps commander delays the introduction of tanks into the breakthrough by 8 minutes. And by doing this, he actually violates Stalin’s order. Such an act required real civil courage. However, Novikov’s bold decision was dictated not only by compassion for the soldiers, but also by the commander’s sober calculation from God - it was imperative to suppress the enemy’s artillery, and only then attack. It can be said that, largely thanks to officers such as Novikov, it was finally possible to turn the tide of the Battle of Stalingrad and win a decisive victory. The fate of Novikov himself is uncertain. After Getmanov's denunciation, he was recalled to Moscow. "..And it was not entirely clear whether he would return to the corps."

The regiment commander, Major Berezkin, can also be called a true hero of the war. Like Novikov, he takes care of the soldiers and delves into all the little details of front-line life. He is characterized by “judicious human strength.” “His strength usually subdued both commanders and Red Army soldiers in battle, but its essence was not military and combative; it was simple, reasonable human strength. Only rare people could preserve it and demonstrate it in the hell of battle, and it was they, these owners of civil, homely and judicious human strength, and were the true masters of the war." Therefore, the appointment of Berezkin as division commander is not so accidental.

Among the “true masters of the war” is Captain Grekov, commander of the defense of the house “six fraction one” in Stalingrad. His remarkable human and combat qualities are fully reflected on the front line. V. Grossman writes that Grekov combines strength, courage, authority with everyday routine. But there is another very important feature in the captain - a passion for freedom, rejection of totalitarianism, Stalinist collectivization. Perhaps it is in the name of liberating his native country from the iron grip of the communist regime that Captain Grekov sacrifices his life. But he does not die alone, but together with his entire small detachment.

The writer again and again draws our attention to the fact that people went to their death not in the name of Stalin, the party or the communist utopia, but for the sake of freedom. Freedom of your native country from enslavers and your personal freedom from the power of a totalitarian state.

“The Stalingrad triumph determined the outcome of the war, but the silent dispute between the victorious people and the victorious state continued. The fate of man, his freedom, depended on this dispute.”

The reason for the Russian victory at Stalingrad in 1942, according to Grossman, was not due to any special military leadership prowess of the Soviet military leaders. Following the traditions of Leo Tolstoy, the writer is not inclined to overestimate the role of commanders and generals (although, of course, he does not deny it). The true owner of the war is its ordinary worker, an ordinary person who has retained in himself the “grains of humanity” and a passion for freedom.

And there are many such “invisible” heroes: the pilot Viktorov, and the commander of the flight regiment Zakabluka, and Krymov, rushing about in search of justice, and the radio operator Katya Vengrova, and the young Seryozha Shaposhnikov, and the director of the Stalingrad State District Power Plant Spiridonov, and Lieutenant Colonel Darensky. It was they, and not the Hetmans and Inconvenients, who bore on their shoulders all the hardships of the war. It was they who defended not only the freedom and independence of the Motherland, but also the best in themselves: decency, kindness, humanity. That same humanity that sometimes makes you feel sorry for your enemy. That very humanity in whose name it is worth living...

Other works on this work

Vasily Grossman

"Life and Fate"

The old communist Mikhail Mostovskoy, captured on the outskirts of Stalingrad, was brought to a concentration camp in West Germany. He falls asleep to the prayer of the Italian priest Hardy, argues with Tolstoyan Ikonnikov, sees the hatred of the Menshevik Chernetsov and the strong will of the “ruler of thoughts” Major Ershov.

Political worker Krymov was sent to Stalingrad, to Chuikov’s army. He must sort out a controversial case between the commander and the commissar of the rifle regiment. Arriving at the regiment, Krymov learns that both the commander and the commissar died under the bombing. Soon Krymov himself takes part in the night battle.

Moscow physicist Viktor Pavlovich Shtrum and his family are being evacuated to Kazan. Shtrum's mother-in-law Alexandra Vladimirovna, even in the grief of war, retained her spiritual youth: she is interested in the history of Kazan, streets and museums, and the everyday life of people. Shtrum's wife Lyudmila considers this interest of her mother to be senile egoism. Lyudmila has no news from the front from Tolya, her son from her first marriage. She is saddened by the categorical, lonely and difficult character of her high school daughter Nadya. Lyudmila’s sister Zhenya Shaposhnikova ended up in Kuibyshev. Seryozha Shaposhnikov’s nephew is at the front. Shtrum's mother Anna Semyonovna remained in a Ukrainian town occupied by the Germans, and Shtrum understands that she, a Jew, has little chance of surviving. He is in a heavy mood, he accuses his wife of the fact that, due to her harsh character, Anna Semyonovna could not live with them in Moscow. The only person who softens the difficult atmosphere in the family is Lyudmila’s friend, shy, kind and sensitive Marya Ivanovna Sokolova, the wife of Shtrum’s colleague and friend.

Strum receives a farewell letter from his mother. Anna Semyonovna tells what humiliations she had to endure in the city where she lived for twenty years, working as an ophthalmologist. People she had known for a long time amazed her. The neighbor calmly demanded to vacate the room and threw out her things. The old teacher stopped greeting her. But a former patient, whom she considered a gloomy and gloomy person, helps her by bringing food to the ghetto fence. Through him, she conveyed a farewell letter to her son on the eve of the extermination campaign.

Lyudmila receives a letter from the Saratov hospital, where her seriously wounded son lies. She urgently leaves there, but when she arrives, she learns about Tolya’s death. “All people are guilty before the mother who lost her son in the war, and have tried in vain to justify themselves to her throughout the history of mankind.”

The secretary of the regional committee of one of the German-occupied regions of Ukraine, Getmanov, was appointed commissar of the tank corps. Getmanov worked all his life in an atmosphere of denunciations, flattery and falsehood and now transfers these life principles to the front-line situation. The corps commander, General Novikov, is a straightforward and honest person who is trying to prevent senseless human losses. Getmanov expresses his admiration for Novikov and at the same time writes a denunciation that the corps commander delayed the attack for eight minutes in order to save people.

Novikov loves Zhenya Shaposhnikova and comes to see her in Kuibyshev. Before the war, Zhenya left her husband, political worker Krymov. The views of Krymov are alien to her, who approved of dispossession, knowing about the terrible famine in the villages, justified the arrests of 1937. She reciprocates Novikov, but warns him that if Krymov is arrested, he will return to his ex-husband.

Military surgeon Sofya Osipovna Levinton, arrested on the outskirts of Stalingrad, ends up in a German concentration camp. The Jews are being transported somewhere in freight cars, and Sofya Osipovna is surprised to see how in just a few days many people go from human to “dirty and unhappy cattle, deprived of a name and freedom.” Rebekah Buchman, trying to escape the raid, strangled her crying daughter.

On the road, Sofya Osipovna meets six-year-old David, who just before the war came from Moscow on vacation to his grandmother. Sofya Osipovna becomes the only support for a vulnerable, impressionable child. She feels a motherly feeling towards him. Until the last minute, Sofya Osipovna calms the boy and reassures him. They die together in a gas chamber.

Krymov receives an order to go to Stalingrad, to the surrounded house “six fraction one”, where the people of Grekov’s “house manager” are holding the defense. The political department of the front received reports that Grekov refused to write reports, conducted anti-Stalin conversations with soldiers and, under German bullets, showed independence from his superiors. Krymov must restore Bolshevik order in the surrounded house and, if necessary, remove Grekov from command.

Shortly before Krymov’s appearance, the “house manager” Grekov sent soldier Seryozha Shaposhnikov and young radio operator Katya Vengrova from the surrounded house, knowing about their love and wanting to save them from death. Saying goodbye to Grekov, Seryozha “saw that beautiful, humane, intelligent and sad eyes were looking at him, such as he had never seen in his life.”

But the Bolshevik commissar Krymov is only interested in collecting dirt on the “uncontrollable” Grekov. Krymov revels in the consciousness of his significance and tries to convict Grekov of anti-Soviet sentiments. Even the mortal danger to which the defenders of the house are exposed every minute does not cool his ardor. Krymov decides to remove Grekov and take command himself. But at night he is wounded by a stray bullet. Krymov guesses that Grekov fired. Returning to the political department, he writes a denunciation against Grekov, but soon finds out that he was too late: all the defenders of the house “six fraction one” were killed. Because of the Crimean denunciation, Grekov was not awarded the posthumous title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

In the German concentration camp where Mostovskoy is imprisoned, an underground organization is created. But there is no unity among the prisoners: brigade commissar Osipov does not trust the non-partisan Major Ershov, who comes from a family of dispossessed kulak people. He is afraid that the brave, straightforward and decent Ershov will gain too much influence. Comrade Kotikov, thrown from Moscow into the camp, gives instructions to act using Stalinist methods. The communists decide to get rid of Ershov and place his card in the group selected for Buchenwald. Despite his spiritual closeness with Ershov, the old communist Mostovskoy submits to this decision. An unknown provocateur betrays the underground organization, and the Gestapo exterminates its members.

The institute where Shtrum works returns from evacuation to Moscow. Strum writes a paper on nuclear physics that is of general interest. A well-known academician speaks at the scientific council that work of such significance has never yet been born within the walls of a physical institute. The work has been nominated for the Stalin Prize, Strum is on a wave of success, this pleases and excites him. But at the same time, Shtrum notices that the Jews are gradually surviving from his laboratory. When he tries to stand up for his employees, he is made to understand that his own position is not very reliable due to the “fifth point” and numerous relatives abroad.

Sometimes Shtrum meets with Marya Ivanovna Sokolova and soon realizes that he loves her and is loved by her. But Marya Ivanovna cannot hide her love from her husband, and he makes her promise not to see Strum. Just at this time, the persecution of Strum began.

A few days before the Stalingrad offensive, Krymov was arrested and sent to Moscow. Finding himself in a prison cell at Lubyanka, he cannot recover from the surprise: interrogations and torture are aimed at proving his treason against his Motherland during the Battle of Stalingrad.

The tank corps of General Novikov stands out in the Battle of Stalingrad.

During the days of the Stalingrad offensive, the persecution of Strum intensified. A devastating article appears in the institute's newspaper, he is persuaded to write a letter of repentance and come forward admitting his mistakes at the academic council. Strum gathers all his will and refuses to repent, does not even come to the meeting of the academic council. His family supports him and, pending his arrest, is ready to share his fate. On this day, as always in difficult moments of his life, Marya Ivanovna calls Shtrum and says that she is proud of him and misses him. Strum is not arrested, but only fired from his job. He finds himself isolated, his friends stop seeing him.

But in an instant the situation changes. Theoretical work on nuclear physics attracted Stalin's attention. He calls Strum and wonders if the outstanding scientist is lacking anything. Shtrum is immediately reinstated at the institute, and all conditions for his work are created for him. Now he himself determines the composition of his laboratory, without regard to the nationality of the employees. But when Strum begins to think that he has come out of the dark period of his life, he again faces a choice. He is required to sign an appeal to English scientists who spoke out in defense of their repressed Soviet colleagues. Leading Soviet scientists, of whom Shtrum is now included, must, by the power of their scientific authority, confirm that there is no repression in the USSR. Shtrum does not find the strength to refuse and signs the appeal. The most terrible punishment for him is a call from Marya Ivanovna: she is sure that Shtrum did not sign the letter, and admires his courage...

Zhenya Shaposhnikova comes to Moscow, having learned about Krymov’s arrest. She stands in all the queues in which the wives of the repressed stand, and a sense of duty towards her ex-husband fights in her soul with love for Novikov. Novikov learns of her decision to return to Krymov during the Battle of Stalingrad. It seems to him that he will fall dead. But we must live and continue the offensive.

After torture, Krymov lies on the floor in his Lubyanka office and hears his executioners talking about the victory at Stalingrad. It seems to him that he sees Grekov walking towards him on broken Stalingrad brick. The interrogation continues, Krymov refuses to sign the charge. Returning to the cell, he finds a transmission from Zhenya and cries.

The Stalingrad winter is ending. In the spring silence of the forest one can hear the cry of the dead and the fierce joy of life.

The novel describes the fates of heroes connected only by the time of concentration camps, bloody battles at Stalingrad and repressions.

Mostovskoy, an ardent communist, was captured at Stalingrad and taken to a concentration camp. An underground organization is created there and the communists, wishing the death of the non-party Ershov, throw his card to those selected for Buchenwald. Soon the organization is exposed and everyone is destroyed.

The family of Viktor Pavlovich Shtrum, a talented physicist, is being evacuated to Kazan. His wife is constantly worried about her son Anatoly, who is now at the front. He is sad about his daughter, who, having a difficult character, prefers loneliness and is far from her mother. And Shtrum himself blames his wife for not being able to make friends with his mother, and she had to stay in Ukraine instead of living next to her son in Moscow. And now his Jewish mother has practically no chance of surviving in a country occupied by the Germans. Soon Viktor Pavlovich received a letter from his mother, who is now in the ghetto. In it, she says goodbye and talks about all the humiliations she went through. Being a respected ophthalmologist, she was thrown out onto the street by her own neighbor only because she was Jewish and now only one of her former patients brings her food to the ghetto fence. Shtrum's wife, Lyudmila, received a letter from the hospital where her son is, but did not have time to see him - he died.

Soon Strum returns to Moscow after their evacuation. His work on nuclear physics has been noticed and is in contention for a Stalin Prize, but he is Jewish and risks arrest. He is expelled from the institute. But Stalin personally calls him, inquiring about his work. Shtrum is being reinstated at the institute. Strum, having signed a letter to his English colleagues, confirms that there is no, and never has been, repression in the union.

The secretary of the regional committee, Getmanov, was transferred to the tank corps as a commissar. He was used to living all his life in an atmosphere of lies and denunciations. He carried this over into the war. He directly praises and admires his corps commander Novikov, who prevented the death of people and immediately wrote a denunciation against him that he delayed the attack for 8 hours in order to save people.

Levinton Sofya Osipovna was taken from Stalingrad, and is now being transported on freight trains to a concentration camp. She watches the other prisoners and is amazed at the baseness of people. Her neighbor, Rebekah Buchman, strangled her crying daughter while trying to avoid being noticed by the raid. And all the way he takes care of 6-year-old David, who ended up in Stalingrad because he came to his grandmother for the holidays from Moscow. All the way to the concentration camp, she took care of him, surrounded him with warmth and care, like her own mother. They died together in the gas chamber.

Vasily Semenovich Grossman is a writer, whose most talented and truthful work saw the light only during the Thaw. he went through the entire Great Patriotic War and witnessed the battles of Stalingrad. It was these events that Grossman reflected in his work. “Life and Fate” (a brief summary of it will be our topic) is a novel that became the culmination of the depiction of Soviet reality.

About the novel

From 1950 to 1959, Vasily Semenovich Grossman wrote this epic novel. “Life and Fate” (a brief summary of the work is presented below) completes the dilogy, which began with the work “For a Just Cause,” completed in 1952. And if the first part absolutely fit into the canons of socialist realism, then the second acquired a different tone - it sounded clearly and distinctly as a criticism of Stalinism.

Publication

The novel was published in the USSR in 1988. This was due to the fact that the creation that Grossman composed was completely inconsistent with the party line. “Life and Fate” (the novel initially received not just terrible, but terrible reviews) was recognized as “anti-Soviet.” Afterwards, all copies were confiscated by the KGB.

After the manuscript was confiscated, Grossman wrote a letter to him asking him to explain what was in store for his book. Instead of answering, the writer was invited to the Central Committee, where they announced that the book would not be published.

Getmanov

We continue to analyze the images of the heroes of the novel written by Grossman (“Life and Fate”). Getmanov stands out against the background of the two previous heroes. He is not faced with a choice; he decided long ago that the main thing is to act expediently. At first glance, this is a very charming and intelligent character. He is completely sincere in his delusions and does not suspect that he has a “second bottom”. An indicative moment was when, worrying about collective farm workers, he lowered their wages.

Conclusion

Grossman presented a very rare and interesting description of Stalin’s time to the reader. “Life and Fate,” a brief summary of which we reviewed, is a novel aimed at combating totalitarianism. And it doesn’t matter whether it is embodied in the Nazi or Soviet regime.