Life and Fate

https://yale.imodules.com/s/1667/GID2/18/interior.aspx?sid=1667&gid=6&pgid=2093

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2004/04/hope-and-memory-lessons-from-the-twentieth-century

Historical context[edit]

Most of the events of Life and Fate take place in the Soviet Union during the late autumn and winter of 1942-43. It was the time of Operation Blue and Operation Fischreiher, the continuation into a second year of Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union that had started with Operation Barbarossa; it was the time of the Battle of Stalingrad.^[16] But, just as much as it takes place as a part of the Second World War, it takes place as part of the history of Stalinist Russia.

Hitler and Stalin had previously signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact which, on the face of it seemed to be advantageous to both.^[17] However, on 22 June 1941, Hitler unilaterally terminated the pact by invading the Soviet Union. There has been much speculation on the Soviet response. But, whatever the reason for this response, they were not ready for what took place; the army had been seriously weakened by Stalin's purges of the army of the late 1930s, and the intelligence that was getting through to Stalin was filtered by their fear of having to tell Stalin things that he did not want to hear. So, though they had increased military spending, they did not yet have an army that could benefit from this. This was compounded by the change in command structure that Stalin initiated in the wake of the 1937 purges and maintained for large periods up to 1942. Political commissars operated alongside military commanders.^[18][19][20]

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 historical figures 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,^[21] though Shtrum also incorporates elements of the Jewish physicist Lev Landau, who had been dismissed from his job because of the anti-Jewish movement in the Soviet Union.^[22]

In Life and Fate there are different times when the Nazi concentration camps are mentioned.^[21] 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.^[21] 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. 

Plot summary[edit]

The novel at heart narrates the history of the family of Viktor Shtrum and the Battle of Stalingrad. It is written, despite attempting to get away from it, in the socialist realist style, which can make it seem odd in parts to western readers.^[9]

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.^[27] 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/Shaposhnikov 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 Shaposhnikova (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 6/1, 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 6/1 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 Mostovskoy 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.^[28] 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.

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,^[2] such as their mothers' deaths 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[edit]

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[edit]

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 unshakeable, 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[edit]

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

Science[edit]

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 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[edit]

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 inside and outside 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[edit]

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 Getmanov 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 “A man who has placed his soul in the service of Fascism declares an evil and dangerous slavery to be the only good. Rather than overtly renouncing human feelings, he declares the crimes committed by Fascism to be the highest form of humanitarianism”.^[29] 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.