Thirtieth anniversary of the publication of Vasily Grossman’s “Life and Fate”

newcriterion.com

39 points·merrier··7 comments

One of his other books "A Writer at War : a Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945" is an excellent, if censored description of WW2 from an eyewitness on the Soviet side.

Its description of the liberation of Treblinka [0] was used at the Nuremberg Trials.

[0] https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-human-behavior/hell-...

I'll toss in my two cents in support of this recommendation. It provides a great narrative history of the Eastern Front. Somehow Grossman is on the periphery of every major event of the Eastern Front.

This is a wonderful book. The title is a clear play on Tolstoy's masterpiece about the previous invasion of Russia, but so what? I was introduced to it by a dear friend whose father was purged by Stalin so it's doubly poignant.

I still don't understand how a single person could have created a convincing and compassionate portrait for such a wide range of characters. I think this range is much larger than what you have in "War and Peace". An awe-inspiring book...

(I read the book as series of publications in a soviet literary journal some thirty years ago, time moves fast if you come to think of it)

I haven't read this but that's really high praise considering how war and peace is impressive in exactly that way

> 'Life and Fate' depicts Communism and Fascism as ideological mirror-images, two quarreling heads on one great monster.

I'm really worried that Grossman's definition is pretty unpopular now, because ignoring that may lead to similar monstrosities in the future.

That's nonsense, it's not his definition at all.

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