The author of the work is life and destiny. The main stages of the creative activity of Vasily Grossman and the history of the creation of the novel "Life and Fate"
Introduction
a chapter devoted to the main stages of the writer's creative biography and the history of the creation of the novel "Life and Fate":
a chapter in which, on the basis of modern ideas about the relationship between philosophy and literature, the philosophical problems of the work are revealed, associated with the author's concept of freedom, I analyze some of the features of the figurative structure of the novel from the point of view of the implementation of this philosophical concept and design;
conclusion, which deals with some features of the ideological and artistic originality of the novel;
bibliography containing 66 titles.
grossman romance concept freedom
The main stages of the creative activity of Vasily Grossman and the history of the creation of the novel "Life and Fate"
More than half a century has passed since the victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War, but the history of the war has not yet been fully written. Immediately after 1945, they started talking about the need for a modern "War and Peace", that the scale of the event deserves it. But the question was not about the quantitative scale. The idea was to cover the entire war, its roots and consequences, core and periphery.
A bright memory, mixed with bitterness, stretches from the post-war years: the first swallow, the first honest story about the war, the chronicle of the trench, the chronicle of the prose of the war - "In the trenches of Stalingrad" by V. Nekrasov. Bitterness is associated with the fact that the author was expelled from his native land.
Created, as the soldiers in the novel of V. Grossman say, different "opupei", but their greatness was purely external: Stalin appeared, Headquarters, marshals and generals appeared, but the author's gaze did not grow larger because of this, there was no greatness in his thoughts, there was no greatness and in spirit.
Vasily Grossman's novel "Life and Fate", an alloy of facts and memory, is a book imbued with the ideas of humanism, love for people.
Yes, by this time such honest books had already been written, such as the stories "Attack on the Move" and "The Dead Doesn't Hurt" by Vasily Bykov, "Killed near Moscow" by Konstantin Vorobyov, "July 41" by Grigory Baklanov and others, but why exactly Did Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate endure the fate of its heroes? Why was the manuscript of the novel "Life and Fate" during the so-called "thaw" arrested and declared an "enemy of the people"? Why was she imprisoned for 27 years and why were even mentions of the novel in print prohibited?
Today the answers to these questions seem simple: the novel "Life and Fate" is not only a work of art, but also a political one.
For many generations of Soviet people, the Great Patriotic War was an "unknown war" for a long time. And not only because decades have passed since its end; in a totalitarian communist state, the true truth about the war was carefully hidden, hushed up, distorted.
In the post-war period, V. Grossman was published very sparingly, with great difficulty: his official reputation was more than dubious.
In 1946, his play "According to the Pythagoreans" was condemned as ideologically vicious. In 1952, the novel "For a Just Cause" was subjected to a fierce, well-organized study by the authorities in the press and at writers' meetings, then the manuscript of the novel "Life and Fate" was arrested (it was confiscated from the author by the state security officers). The story "Tiergarten" and the story "Good to you!" Only three years after the death of the writer, a far from complete collection of post-war novellas and short stories was published, on which, moreover, the censor's pencil passed pretty well.
In 1932, M. Gorky got the manuscript of the first two works of V. Grossman - the story "Three Deaths" and the story "Gluckauf". M. Gorky subjected these works to rather harsh criticism, but encouraged the novice author, after which V. Grossman sat down for a serious revision of "Gluckauf" and in April 1934 presented a new version. After the May meeting of Gorky with Grossman in 1934, the latter was born as a writer.
Vasily Grossman came to literature from the thick of life - provincial, miner's, factory, knowing well how working technicians and engineers live.
The future writer was born in December 1905 in the city of Berdichev. He managed to see a lot in his youth and youth, he remembered the civil war in Ukraine. V. Grossman's parents belonged to that grassroots intelligentsia (father - a chemical engineer, mother - a French language teacher), which was very difficult in the 1920s and 1930s. Both at school and at the university V. Grossman had to earn money for a living. He was engaged in the preparation of firewood, was a teacher in a labor commune of street children, and was hired for the summer months in Central Asia on all kinds of expeditions.
In 1921 V. Grossman entered the Kiev Institute of Public Education, and in 1929 he graduated from the Chemistry Department of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Moscow State University, where he moved in 1923. While studying at the university, a student - chemist begins to write, and in the summer of 1928 his first publications appeared.
After graduating from the university, Vasily left for Donbass. The years spent there gave the future writer the opportunity to get to know the working people closely. Their images passed through all of his work: from the first stories - through the novel "Stepan Kolchugin" - to the Ural miner Ivan Novikov, the Stalingrad steelmaker Andreev, head of the laboratory for labor protection Shaposhnikova in post-war novels.
In Donbass, V. Grossman worked in Makeyevka as a senior laboratory assistant at the research institute for the safety of furnaces, was in charge of the gas analytical laboratory of the Smolyanka-11 mine, then in Stalino - as an assistant chemist at the Donetsk Regional Institute of Pathology and Occupational Hygiene and as an assistant at the Department of General Chemistry at Stalin Medical Institute.
In 1932, V. Grossman fell ill with tuberculosis, doctors recommended that he change the climate, he moved to Moscow, went to work at the Sacco and Vanzetti pencil factory - he was there a senior chemist, head of a laboratory and an assistant to the chief engineer.
The impressions of these years inspired a lot in his works - and not only in the early ones, like "Gluckauf", "The Tale of First Love", "Ceylon Graphite", but also in the novel "For a Just Cause", in the eyes dedicated to the miner Novikov.
V. Grossman managed to see a lot before becoming a professional writer, but he had to endure a lot and then, during the years of rampant repression (his wife Olga Mikhailovna Guber was arrested), during the Great Patriotic War (death remained an unhealed wound for his entire life mother, destroyed by the Nazis in the Jewish ghetto of Berdichev).
O.V. Grossman was then told that he had a difficult character, he was gloomy, unsociable, it was difficult to deal with him. In reality, everything turned out not to be so - intransigence in matters of principle, unwillingness to humiliate oneself before the authorities - self-esteem, dangerous for interlocutors with a not entirely clear conscience, was taken for a difficult character. He was attracted not only by Grossman's amazing artistic gift, not only by his insight, which made it possible to comprehend the hidden meaning of historical processes, the hidden pain of the human heart. He was especially attracted, conquered by his moral charm, his wise humanity.
Shortly before his death, essentially exhibited from literature, excommunicated from readers, this is what V. Grossman pondered with bitterness and hope: "The fame of a writer is not always in full and fair correspondence with his real true place in literature. Time is the Attorney General in cases of undeserved literary glory. But time is not the enemy of truths! To the values of literature, but a reasonable and kind friend to them, a calm and faithful guardian. "
This consoled him then, he hoped for the justice of the time trial.
The Great Patriotic War became for V. Grossman, as for many of our people, a special, sometimes incomparable school of comprehension of people's life. For four war years he was a front-line correspondent for Krasnaya Zvezda, "... for hours he lay in ambush with a sniper, made his way into the garrison, cut off from his troops, spent the night in soldiers' dugouts."
V. Grossman's Stalingrad essays "The Direction of the Main Attack" were written with a thorough knowledge of the leading edge and a firm conviction: an ordinary soldier is a decisive figure ...
In the first days of the defense, the writer ended up in Stalingrad and saw all the subsequent events with his own eyes, from the inside. Getting there in a roundabout way - there was no other way - through the Volga region: scorched steppe, brown dust on the roads, the dreary cry of camels, the end of the world - he acutely felt where the Germans had driven us, "a terrible feeling of a deep knife from this war on the border of Kazakhstan, on the Lower Volga ".
V. Grossman experienced himself, under enemy gunpoint, what a crossing over the Volga is: "A terrible crossing. Fear. The ferry is full of cars, carts, hundreds of people huddled together, and the ferry got stuck in the height
Ju-88 launched the bomb. A huge column of water, straight, bluish-white. Feeling of fear. At the crossing, not a single machine gun, not a single anti-aircraft gun. The quiet, light Volga seems creepy, like a scaffold. "
German aviation, from which there was nothing to defend against, fell upon the city with all its destructive power - Vasily Grossman writes about this as such a personal grief that a person does not have the strength and words to express: “Stalingrad burned down. You would have to write too much. Stalingrad burned down. Stalingrad burned down. "
Only then, having overcome the shock of the first impression, he will restore some of the details: "Dead. People in basements. Everything burned. Hot walls of houses, like the bodies of those who died in a terrible heat and did not have time to cool down ...
Among the thousands of stone hulks, burnt and dilapidated, there is a wonderful wooden pavilion, a kiosk where soda water was sold. Like Pompey, caught in death on a day of full life. "
Judging by his diary entries, Grossman visited many places of the Battle of Stalingrad that went down in history - at the Mamayev Kurgan and at the Tractor Plant, at Barrikads and StalGRES, at the Trumpet - at the legendary command post of Chuikov, in the famous Rodimtseva, Batyuk, Gurtyev, I met and talked for a long time - not after, when it was all over, but at the same time, in the midst of the fighting, - with many participants in the battle: both well-known military leaders and the remaining unknown officers and soldiers.
Grossman did not just accumulate a huge store of primordial observations so important for the artist. Stalingrad was experienced by him, its terrible weight, unbearable stress, he experienced on himself, absorbed it. One should not be surprised at the extreme degree of mental and physical fatigue, about which at the end of the Battle of Stalingrad, when the offensive was already underway, V. Grossman writes in a letter to the editor-in-chief of Krasnaya Zvezda, about overloading with impressions - Stalingrad revealed a lot to him in the character of the its climax of the war with the fascists, and in the life of the people, and in our social and political system. In extreme conditions, which had reached unthinkable stubbornness and fierceness of battles, at the death line both what was our strength, what rallied the people in the fight against the fascist invasion, and what undermined unity - suspicion, lawlessness, lawlessness, stood out with particular sharpness. So great was the pressure of the accumulated material, so burning was the inner need to philosophically comprehend what he saw and experienced, to understand the regularities - both socio-political, and concretely - historical, and universal - of bad and good, grateful and mean, - that immediately, in hot pursuit events, in 1943 Grossman began writing a large work about the Battle of Stalingrad during his rare hours off working in the newspaper.
His first book, For a Just Cause, was published in 1952. In the early 1960s, the second, Life and Fate, was completed. Over these seventeen years, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge: the war ended with the defeat and unconditional surrender of Hitler Germany, the victory won with countless victims was overshadowed by the recurrence of repressions, arrests, destroying studies in science, literature and art that swept the country, then the great leader - General Stalin Iosichif Vissarionov died Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria was convicted and shot during the unfolding struggle for power; The 20th Party Congress took place, which lifted the veil of silence over some events of the recent past and laid the foundation for the ongoing debate about the so-called "personality cult" to this day. Of course, such significant changes in the life of the country somehow affected the novel by V. Grossman, the writer's understanding of the past changed, deepened, acquired new semantic changes.
And yet, the main idea of the work, on which he worked for many years, was groped even then, in the fateful days of the Battle of Stalingrad, for a lot, then his eyes opened. In October 1942, in one of the essays on the Stalingrad cycle, he wrote: “Here was combined a huge spontaneous clash of two states, two worlds fighting for life and death, with a mathematical, pedantically accurate struggle for a floor of a house, for the intersection of two streets; skill, thought, will; here there was a struggle that decides the fate of the world, a struggle in which all the strengths and weaknesses of nations were manifested: one who rose to battle in the name of world power, the other who stood up for world freedom, against slavery, lies and oppression. "
These words - "who stood up for world freedom, against slavery, lies and oppression" - do not seem to be a commonplace, a rhetorical figure. For V. Grossman, they are filled not with banal, but with meaningful content, they are the essence of the philosophical and moral position from which he dares to judge reality.
The well-deserved fame nevertheless came to V. Grossman, but only years after his death, when the novel "Life and Fate" was published - first abroad, and then in the Motherland, the manuscript of which was arrested because the party and literary authorities they thought: "in the foreseeable future, this thing cannot be printed, except in 250 years."
Yes, indeed, V. Grossman's house was searched and the manuscript of "Life and Fate" was seized and taken into custody. And not in a metaphorical, but in the literal sense of the word: they came with a warrant and took all the texts - down to the last leaf. This was in 1961, after the 20th Party Congress. Not long before that, a terrifying campaign of persecution of Boris Pasternak was carried out, which ended with his expulsion from the Writers' Union. Of course, both the quiet reprisal against the novel by V. Grossman and the loud defamation of B. Pasternak are extraordinary incidents; but they, like many other, less dramatic, less ominous events, testified that cultural policy is not flexible and soft, dogmatism and ideological doctrine in honor on the upper levels of state and party power, determine many actions of the leadership of the Union of Writers of the USSR.
It is no coincidence that brothers in the pen were also among the initiators of the reprisal against the novel: after a discussion at the editorial board of the Znamya magazine, in which G. Markov, S. Sartakov, S. Shchipachev took part, the novel was condemned "as a politically harmful, even hostile work. "10, and rejected. And "the zealots of ideological impeccability immediately brought" upward "about the harmful," subversive "composition. Decisive measures were taken (...)"
It is not known where the copies of the manuscript confiscated by the employees of the "competent authorities" disappeared. Miraculously, two copies survived - thanks to the courage and dedication of the writer's friends.
On July 23, 1962, V. Grossman was received by M. Suslov (the archive preserved a recording of the conversation made by the writer on the same day), who was one of the darkest figures of the post-Stalinist leadership of the great country: At 21 congresses of the Communist Party, the changes gradually came to naught. And for the years, now conventionally referred to as "stagnant," tendencies of authoritarian monologism have become firmly established in culture. Those harsh and not primitive prosecutors - prosecutors of the novel were guided first of all by M. Suslov, he determined what in art it is possible and not, when and how to "tighten the screws."
In a conversation with V. Grossman, Mikhail Andreevich Suslov did not consider it necessary to hide: that he had not read Life and Fate, he had enough internal reviews, in them, he said, there were many quotes from the novel. M. Suslov stated that he fully shares the point of view of the reviewers who believe that the book should not be published because it is politically hostile and can cause incomparably greater harm than "Doctor Zhivago" by B. Pasternak. According to M. Suslov, the novel "Life and Fate" is hostile to the Soviet people and the state, not because it is deceitful, but because such a truth is not needed by the people and even dangerous. Everything that Grossman writes about is “it was or could have been,” but ... it shouldn't be, and therefore it didn't. And M. Suslov condescendingly explained to the author that the novel "failed because of self-isolation, immersion in personal experiences, excessive, unhealthy interest in the dark sides of the personality cult period."
The verdict to the novel by V. Grossman "Life and Fate" was final and was not subject to appeal - there was no one else to turn to, there was nothing to hope for. And after the dismissal of N. Khrushchev, when under the leadership of M. Suslov, a quiet but steady reanimation of the negative sides of the policy of the "Stalin era" began to be carried out, that the period of neutralization, "deactivation" of the novel "Life and Fate", determined by the highest governing authorities, - "250 years "- perhaps not particularly exaggerated.
But in this terrible situation V. Grossman retained his composure. The writer's painful experiences were reflected in an amazing document - a letter to his mother. And of course the author devotes his novel "Life and Fate" to her - Ekaterina Savelyevna Grossman. On September 15, 1941, she was shot by fascist executioners along with all the inhabitants of the Jewish ghetto in Berdichev.
The terrible death of his mother was an unhealed wound of Grossman, for the rest of his life this pain burned him. Twice he tried to pour it out on paper - on the tenth and twentieth anniversary of the tragic death of his mother, he wrote her "letters". The second was written in very difficult days for Grossman - soon after the arrest of the manuscript of Life and Fate:
"Dear Mom, 20 years have passed since the day of your death. I love you, I remember you every day of your life, and my grief has been with me all these 20 years.
I wrote to you 10 years ago, and in my heart you are the same as you were twenty years ago. And ten years ago, when I wrote you my first letter after your death, you were the same as during your life - my mother in the flesh and my heart. I am you, my dear. And as long as I live, you are alive. And when I die, you will live in the book that I dedicated to you and whose fate is similar to yours.
"(...) I cry over the letters - because in them you are your kindness, purity, your bitter life, your justice, nobility, your love for me, your concern and people, your wonderful mind."
The fate and appearance of a loved one were embodied in "Life and Fate" not only in one of the storylines and the figure of Sturm's mother; those bitterness and kindness, justice and nobility, love for people, for life, respect for their dignity and hatred for all types of geneta, humiliation, discrimination of a person, which are mentioned in the "letters" to Ekaterina Savelyevna - all these motives became the basis of lyricism, permeating some pages of the novel.
This is an outstanding work, distinguished by the power of the author's thought, a layer of truth and talent. This is a soul-turning book, about some episodes and characters of which you can say without the slightest exaggeration that they are remembered forever - that is how they were created. But in real literature it is never crowded, and V. Grossman's novel did not clear a place for itself, writing off everything that had been written before, on the contrary, this novel confirmed that the path followed by the most honest and talented writers, comprehending the past and the experience was potentially promising and rewarding.
Composition
For many generations of Soviet people, the Great Patriotic War was an "unknown war" for a long time. And not only because decades have passed since its end. In a totalitarian communist state, the true truth about the war was carefully hushed up, hidden, distorted. V. Grossman's novel "Life and Fate" shared the fate of other honest works of art about the events of 1941-1945. And the fate was a common 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 lines, about the complete mediocrity of many Soviet military leaders?
The former secretary of the regional committee, Dementiy Getmanov, is actively pursuing the "party line" on the frontline. He is a convinced Stalinist who has been promoted to leadership positions thanks to close cooperation with the state security authorities. Commissioner Getmanov is an immoral and shameless 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 surprising ease to sacrifice the lives of ordinary soldiers for his own quick promotion. Getmanov is in a hurry to fulfill Stalin's order to attack. The military page of the biography of Dementy Trifonovich ends in the most natural way for a former state security officer - a denunciation of the commander of a tank corps Novikov.
To match Dementiy Getmanov and the chief of staff, General Neudobnov. Behind the shoulders of the "gallant commander" is the regular service in the OGPU, during which Neudobnov personally interrogated and tortured people (remember the story of Lieutenant Colonel Darensky). On the front line, Illarion Innokentievich feels uncomfortable, lost in the simplest situation. No amount of ostentatious courage can replace organizational skills and 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 tells Novikov: "That'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 has endless pity for the boy recruits. Novikov is really close to soldiers and officers. Grossman writes about his hero and ordinary soldiers: "And he looks at them, the same as they, and what is in them, so in him ..." It is this feeling of closeness that makes Novikov do everything to reduce human losses during the offensive. At his own peril and risk, the corps commander postpones the introduction of tanks into the breakthrough for 8 minutes. And by this, he actually violates Stalin's order. Such an act required real civic courage. However, Novikov's bold decision was dictated not only by compassion for the soldiers, but also by the sober calculation of the commander from God - it was imperative to suppress the enemy's artillery, and only then to advance. It can be said that it was largely thanks to officers such as Novikov that it was possible in the end to turn the tide of the Battle of Stalingrad and win a decisive victory, while 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 commander of the regiment, Major Berezkin, can also be called a true hero of the war. Like Novikov, he takes care of the soldiers, delves into all the little things in frontline life. He is inherent in "judicious human strength." “His strength usually subordinated both commanders and Red Army men in battle, but its essence was not military and combat, it was simple, reasonable human strength. domestic and judicious human strength, and were the true masters of the war. " Therefore, the appointment of Berezkin as the division commander is not so accidental.
Among the "true masters of the war" is Captain Grekov, who commanded the defense of the house "six fractions one" in Stalingrad. On the front line, his remarkable human and combat qualities are fully affected. V. Grossman writes that Grekov combines strength, courage, domination with everyday routine. But there is another very important feature in the captain - a passion for freedom, a 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 death not in the name of Stalin, the party or the communist utopia, but for the sake of freedom. Freedom of the native country from the enslavers and their personal freedom from the rule of a totalitarian state.
"The Stalingrad triumph determined the outcome of the war, but the tacit dispute between the victorious people and the victorious state continued. The fate of man and his freedom depended on this dispute."
The reason for the Russian victory at Stalingrad in 1942 lies, in Grossman's opinion, not in some special military leader's prowess. 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 master of the war is its ordinary worker, an ordinary person who has retained in himself the "seeds of humanity" and a passion for freedom.
And there are many such "invisible" heroes: the pilot Viktorov, the commander of the flight regiment Zakabluka, and the Krymov rushing 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, not the hetmans and the non-renewals, 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 very best in themselves: decency, kindness, humanity. That very humanity that sometimes makes the enemy feel sorry for him. The very humanity in the name of which it is worth living ...
Other compositions on this work
"Life and Fate"Vasily Semenovich Grossman is a writer whose most talented and truthful work was published only during the thaw. he went through the entire Great Patriotic War and witnessed the Stalingrad battles. It was these events that Grossman reflected in his work. Life and Fate (a brief summary of it will become our theme) is a novel that culminated in 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, the second took on a different tone - it sounded clearly and distinctly 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 did not correspond to the party line at all. "Life and Fate" (the novel initially received not just terrible, but terrible reviews) was recognized as "anti-Soviet". Then all copies were confiscated by the KGB.
After the manuscript was seized, Grossman wrote to him asking him to explain what awaited his book. Instead of answering, the writer was invited to the Central Committee, where it was announced that the book would not be published.
Getmanov
We continue to analyze the images of the heroes of the novel, which was written by Grossman ("Life and Fate"). The Getmans stand out against the background of the two previous heroes. He is not faced with a choice, he has long decided 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". Indicative is the moment when, worrying about the collective farm workers, he lowered their wages.
Output
A very rare and interesting description of Stalin's time was presented to the reader by Grossman. "Life and Fate", the summary of which we have considered, is a novel aimed at combating totalitarianism. It doesn't matter if he is embodied in the Nazi or Soviet regime.
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Vasily Grossman: life and destiny
1. short biography
Vasily Semenovich Grossman (real name and patronymic Iosif Samuilovich) was born on November 29 (December 12) 1905 in Berdichev, Ukraine.
He came from an intelligent family: his father was a chemical engineer, his mother was a French teacher. Grossman came to literature from the thick of life - provincial, miner's, factory. He managed to see a lot during his youth and youth. He remembered the Civil War in Ukraine, these impressions were later reflected in a number of his works. In the 1920s, his family was financially very difficult, at school and university he had to constantly earn money for a living. He was a firewood sawer, a teacher in a labor commune of homeless children, in the summer months he went on various expeditions to Central Asia.
In 1929, Grossman graduated from the Chemistry Department of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Moscow University and left for Donbass. He worked in Makeyevka as a senior laboratory assistant at the Scientific Research Institute for Mining Safety and Head of the Gas Analytical Laboratory of the Smolyanka-11 mine, then in Stalino (now Donetsk) as an assistant chemist at the Donetsk Regional Institute of Pathology and Occupational Hygiene and as an assistant at the Department of General Chemistry at the Stalin Medical institute. In 1932, Grossman fell ill with tuberculosis, doctors recommended that he change the climate, he moved to Moscow, worked at the Sacco and Vanzetti pencil factory as a senior chemist, head of a laboratory and assistant chief engineer. The impressions of those years inspired a lot in his works such as "Gluckauf" (1934), "Ceylon Graphite" (1935), "A Story of Love" (1937).
2. The beginning of creativity
Grossman began writing during his student years. The first publication was the story “In the city of Berdichev”, published in April 1934 in the Literaturnaya Gazeta (based on this story, film director A. Askoldov made the film “The Commissar” in 1967, which was released only twenty years later). Grossman's story was noticed and highly appreciated by such strict connoisseurs of literature as M. Gorky, I.E. Babel, M.A. Bulgakov. Gorky invited Grossman for a conversation and advised him - despite his negative attitude towards the rapid professionalization of novice writers - to leave his job as a chemical engineer and devote himself entirely to literature. "This meeting with Alexei Maksimovich," recalled Grossman, "greatly influenced my further life path." But in his work he was guided by the Tolstoyan traditions, and even closer to him was the artistic and moral, humanistic experience of Chekhov. He wrote: “Chekhov realized himself in these wonderful people - lovely, intelligent, awkward, graceful and kind, who preserved their spiritual invariance, their purity and nobility in the darkness of Russian pre-revolutionary life. He realized his spiritual being in them, made him visible, weighty and powerful ... ”.
In addition to short stories and novellas, in the pre-war years, Grossman created four parts of the novel Stepan Kolchugin (1937-1940), which reflected the most important events in the history of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. "Life and Fate". Grossman did not graduate from "Stepan Kolchugin" - the Great Patriotic War began.
Throughout the four years of the war, Grossman was a front-line correspondent for Krasnaya Zvezda. In an article written shortly after the victory, he recalled: “I had to see the ruins of Stalingrad, the firstborn of the five-year plan, the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, smashed by the ominous force of German artillery. I saw the ruins and ashes of Gomel, Chernigov, Minsk and Voronezh, blown up copra from Donetsk mines, blown up blast furnaces, destroyed Khreshchatyk, black smoke over Odessa, Warsaw turned to dust and the ruins of Kharkov streets. I saw the burning Eagle and the destruction of Kursk, I saw the blown up monuments, museums and protected buildings, I saw the devastated Yasnaya Polyana and the incinerated Vyazma. "
Not everything is named here - Grossman saw the crossing of the Dnieper, and the monstrous Nazi extermination camp Treblinka, and the agony of Berlin. The first story about the war in Russian literature - "The people are immortal" (the name accurately expresses its main idea) was written by Grossman, it was published in "Krasnaya Zvezda" in July-August 1942.
A special chapter of the front-line biography of the writer is the Stalingrad epic; he was an eyewitness to her from the first to the last day. The surviving notebooks indicate that Grossman more than once visited many places of fierce battles for Stalingrad that went down in history: at Mamayev Kurgan and at Traktorny, at Barricades and Stal GRES, at the command post of V.I. Chuikov, in the divisions of A.I. Rodimtsev, Batyuk, Gurtieva, met and talked for a long time - and not after, when it was all over, but at the same time, in the midst of the fighting, - with many participants in the battle and famous military leaders, and the remaining unknown officers and soldiers, and often saw them in action ... His Stalingrad essays were read out to the bone (this was also evidenced by the famous Stalingrad citizen V.P. Nekrasov).
The popularity and official rank of Grossman were high, however, only during the war years. As early as 1946, semi-official criticism fell upon Grossman's "harmful", "reactionary, decadent, anti-artistic" play According to the Pythagoreans. This was the beginning of the persecution of the writer, which continued until his death.
grossman romance play creativity
3. The history of the creation of the dilogy
In 1943, hot on the heels of events, Grossman began writing a novel about the Battle of Stalingrad during the rare hours free from front-line business trips and editorial assignments. In August 1949, the manuscript of the novel For a Just Cause was submitted to the editorial board of Novy Mir. Editing of the manuscript lasted almost three years, during this time the editorial board of the journal changed, more and more editorial and censorship requirements appeared. There are nine versions of the manuscript, which are kept in the archive. The novel was published in 1952. In February 1953, a devastating article by M.S. Bubennov "On the novel by V. Grossman" For the Right Cause ", which was the beginning of the campaign of defamation of the novel and its author, immediately picked up by other press organs. A separate edition "For the Right Cause" was published only after Stalin's death, in 1954 in the Military Publishing House (with new reinsurance notes), in 1956 "Soviet Writer" published a book in which the author restored some omissions.
The main artistic achievements of the writer are related to the military theme. Throughout the war, Grossman worked as a special correspondent for the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper. The works created during the war years ("Stalingrad Essays", the story "The People are Immortal", essays "Treblin Hell") took a worthy place in military prose. From 1943 to 1949, the writer worked on the novel For the Right Cause, which was published only in 1952 in the Novy Mir magazine, №№7-10. The full text of the novel appeared in 1956.
"For a just cause" - the first part of the dilogy "Life and Fate", the second part of which was submitted to the magazine "Znamya" in 1960, but was rejected as "ideologically vicious". All versions of the manuscript were seized by the security authorities. One copy saved by Grossman, after the writer's death, his friends secretly smuggled abroad, where it was published in 1980 The same version was published for the first time in his homeland in the magazine "October" in 1988 and in the same year came out as a separate edition in the publishing house "Book Chamber". Although the novels "For a Just Cause", "Life and Fate" are connected by common heroes and historical events, chronologically related, but these are two novels, and not one big novel in two parts, as noted by A. Bocharov, a researcher of V. Grossman's work. The same researcher noted the closeness of this dilogy to the Russian epic tradition, which was approved by L. Tolstoy in War and Peace.
4. TraditionsL.N.TolstoyandF.M.Dostoevsky
Like Tolstoy, the Rostov-Bolkonsky family was in the center of the narrative, and Grossman's was the Shaposhnikov-Strum family. As there the key scenes were associated with the battle for Moscow, so here - with the battle for Stalingrad. Like Tolstoy, in Grossman's dilogy, the narrative is transferred from the rear to the army in the field and the enemy army.
There are many private analogies: Platon Karataev - the Red Army soldier Vavilov, Natasha Rostova - Evgenia Shaposhnikova. Like Tolstoy, in Grossman's novel we see a grandiose epic scale of events: the image of the Second World War as an event in history that decides the fate of not only Russia, but the entire world. The heroics of the people's struggle contrasts with the world's evil, which is represented in the pictures not only of fascist crimes, but also of the crimes of the Stalinist totalitarian system (collectivization, repression, arrests, camps).
Some critics find in Grossman's dilogy and Dostoevsky's tradition. This concerns, first of all, the fate of the main characters, in which not only the inevitable suffering, loss, death in the days of war are captured, but there is also something fatal in them that makes them behave unpredictably. These are such restless heroes as Krymov, Shtrum, Novikov, Grekov, Zhenya Shaposhnikov. The life of each of them on its way encounters some obstacles, is tied into a kind of untied knot, into an unexpected and paradoxical contradiction. Krymov, for example, is a Bolshevik-Leninist, devoted to the ideals of the revolution, honest and straightforward to the point of straightforwardness, convinced that he defends a just cause even when he writes a report on Grekov, in the final, when he is arrested, he comes to a terrible disagreement with himself, with his by yesterday's actions. The same thing happens with Strum. He is acting against his own conscience when he signs a false "exposing" letter to the Jews. True, he will later awaken a sense of guilt. Yevgenia Shaposhnikova follows the call of her conscience, deciding to return to Krymov, who has ended up in the dungeons of the prison, thereby giving up her love for Novikov.
5. Chronotope of the novel
Although the action of the dilogy does not last long (from April 29, 1942 to early April 1943), it covers a large area of action (from Hitler's headquarters to the Kolyma camp, from the Jewish ghetto to the Ural tank division). Time in the novel is artistically compressed. The critic defines the genre nature of dilogy as a socio-philosophical novel with elements of a family novel (about half of the text is allocated to family chapters). This is a national novel, about the fate of the Jewish people in the XX century, which is specifically traced on the example of Strum and his relatives. The writer is trying to find the reasons for the obedience with which the Jews went to the Nazi camps for certain death. He explores this phenomenon, tracing the evolution of the character of V. Strum, a talented physicist who makes a deal with his conscience to save his family: “With horror and anguish, he understood that he was powerless to preserve his soul, to protect it. The power grew in him, turning him into a slave, ”the author writes. But the writer leaves the hero a chance for spiritual resurrection. The tragedy of the mother, expressed in the suicide letter, which miraculously got to Strum, will give the hero strength.
6. Composition
Each of the parts of the "Life and Fate" dilogy has its own compositional features.
The chain of episodes in the novel For a Just Cause is concentrated around several epic centers in which the idea of the invincibility of a people who has risen for a just cause is carried out. The first of the epic centers is the image of the Red Army soldier Vavilov. In it, as later in Sokolov by Sholokhov, not only the kindness and gentleness of the people's soul is expressed, but also severity, intransigence, power.
The second center is the description of the defense of the Stalingrad railway station by the Filyashkin battalion, when every one of the yoga fighters are doing their duty. The third center is the August bombing of the city, where the heroism and vitality of not only soldiers, but also ordinary militias of Stalingrad were revealed with amazing force. These centers represent a kind of "story" in the novel.
In the second part - "Life and Fate" - the pace of the story is somewhat accelerated. Here, only one "story" is highlighted - this is the defense of house 6/1 by the battalion of Grekov, these are also episodes associated with the absorption of a train with Jews in the death camp. Much attention is paid here to the inner drama of destinies, their unexpected changes. Instead of direct contrast, which dominates the composition and characters of the first part of the dilogy, the internal contradiction of phenomena, destinies, characters prevails here. The main circle of philosophical problems in the second part of the novel is life and fate, freedom and violence, the laws of war and the life of the people.
7. Main Topics
The novel has two title characters and two leitmotifs. One of them is life, the other is fate. Each of them is associated with an extensive figurative and semantic series. The most important of these meanings: "life" - freedom, originality, individuality, an abundant stream, a winding curve; "Fate" - necessity, immutability, power that is outside and above man; state, lack of freedom, straight line. Such an association arises in the mind of Krymov when he is arrested. “How scary,” he thinks, “to walk along a straight, arrow-lined corridor, and life is such a confused path, ravines, swamps, brooks, steppe dust, uncompressed bread, you wade through, go around, and fate is straight, you walk like a string, corridors, corridors, in the corridors of the door. "
The confrontation between life and fate or freedom and violence is one of the main problems that is solved in the novel. Various types of violence appear in the novel. First of all, this is war, as a terrible form of violence against life and freedom. In the novel there is no violence of fate, irreversible force, it is always clearly defined violence - of fascism, the state, social circumstances.
8. The system of images and the conflict of the novel
Starting the novel "Life and Fate" not with a description of the battles in Stalingrad, but with a description of the Nazi concentration camp, where people of different nationalities were, the writer tries to show the universal scale that the battle of violence and freedom takes on in the 20th century. The spirit of freedom in conditions of lack of freedom lives in people like Captain Ershov, who, at the cost of his own life, managed to organize resistance in a German concentration camp. The spirit of freedom also lives in the defenders of Stalingrad. The Battle of Stalingrad as a turning point in the war is the culmination of the process of awakening freedom among the people. This is specifically traced in the examples of the heroic behavior of the Stalingrad people. The semantic center of the panorama of the Battle of Stalingrad is the house "six fractions one", where the battalion of Captain Grekov operates. The freedom that reigns in this doomed corps is an alternative to totalitarian violence and totalitarian psychology. Each of the belligerents freely speaks about what he thinks. Here everyone is equal, everyone can touch upon such forbidden topics as collectivization, dispossession, repression, arrests. All the defenders of the 6/1 house are united by a sense of inner freedom: no one needs to be forced, prodded, or forcibly held back. They are not subject to formal subordination. Over-vigilant servicemen (like Commissar Krymov) sent here to restore order, see this as anarchy, write denunciations upstairs.
With the heroic behavior of his heroes, who all perish to the last, the writer refutes the Marxist formula of freedom as a conscious necessity. According to Grossman, freedom is not a perceived necessity, freedom is a surmounted necessity.
This formula, which justified all the cruel necessities (repression, dispossession), is adhered to in the novel by the servants of the system - Krymov, Abarchuk, until they themselves become victims of the system. This formula of the totalitarian system is adhered to in the novel by such party workers as Getmanov, Mostovskaya.
Each of the goodies will experience a moment of freedom (i.e., overcome the need). This is Shtrum, who will decide not to go to the Academic Council. This feeling of freedom covers Krymov in prison, when he realizes that Zhenya could not betray him. Sophia Levinton, who once / shares the tragic fate of the Jews, will also feel freedom. The commander of the tank corps, Novikov, will also show freedom, who will violate the order and delay the attack of the corps for 8 minutes and thereby save the lives of hundreds of soldiers. For Grossman, freedom is more often than not an unconscious, but categorical, irrevocable necessity of truly human existence. "Life," writes Grossman, "is freedom, and therefore dying is the gradual destruction of freedom ... life becomes happiness, freedom, the highest meaning only when a person exists as a world, never repeated by anyone in the infinity of time." But, as shown in the novel, the totalitarian regime sets a terrible price for the slightest manifestation of freedom, which will not bypass either Shtrum, or Novikov (summoned by Getmanov's denunciation for reprisals in Moscow), or Levinton, or Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, or Darensky, or Abarchuk, or Ershov. nor Grekov. And the people will pay for the freedom won during the war by the many thousands of victims of new repressions. This is the fundamental difference between the spontaneous manifestations of humanity, which Ikonnikov calls "bad kindness" in his notes, which comes from truly free actions of a person. This is the bad kindness of a woman who handed bread to a captured German; this is the act of Darensky, who protected the captured German from humiliation.
The writer associates true kindness as a guarantee of the inner freedom of a person with the image of a mother. This is Lyudmila Shaposhnikova, mourning her Tolya; and Anna Semyonovna Shtrum, who shared the fate of the Jewish children who ended up behind the wire of the ghetto with her, and the old maid Sophia Osipovna Levinton, who shared the fate of someone else's child David and experienced the happiness of motherhood.
For the first time in Soviet literature, in a novel on the theme of the Great Patriotic War, Grossman exposed the tragic phenomena of our life, previously hidden, and expanded the picture of the life of our society. This is revealed in the reflections of the heroes about collectivization, about the fate of the "special settlers", about repressions, in the pictures of the Kolyma camp. The tragic fate of the Ershov family, his visit to his father in a special settlement, is shocking in the novel.
The decision to “annihilate as a class” the multimillion-dollar mass of peasants with wives and children evokes in the writer an association with Hitler's decision to annihilate the Jews as a nation together with their children. For the first time in a novel about the war, Grossman spoke of the fundamental closeness of two totalitarian regimes - Stalinism and Nazism. Mostovskoy, Madyarov, Karimov, as well as Lisa and Bach reflect on this topic in the novel.
The strongest side in the novel in this regard is not so much previously forbidden in Soviet literature themes associated with the depiction of arrests, repression, collectivization, camps, as a deep analysis of the corrupting influence of the system on the souls of people, on the morality of the people. We see how brave people turn into cowards, non-spiteful people turn into cruel, honest and staunch people into faint-hearted ones, how double consciousness eats away at heroes, how their disbelief in each other sharpens. Mistrust penetrates even into the relations of the closest people among themselves, into the minds of the purest: Zhenya Shaposhnikova, even for a moment, is capable of suspecting Novikov of denouncing her, and Krymov - Zhenya.
Life and destiny are most often related in the novel as freedom and necessity. Fate acts as an immutability, a certain law of life, an inexorable force that is higher than human capabilities, as an unconditionality, be it a totalitarian state, the unlimited power of a dictator, or the social circumstances generated by them. The attitude to fate, to necessity, to the question of the guilt of the individual's responsibility in the face of the circumstances of life is different for the characters in the novel.
Sturmbannfuehrer Kaltluft, who killed five hundred and ninety thousand people in the ovens, is trying to justify himself by an order given from above, his bondage, fate. Although fate pushed him on the path of an executioner, the author denies the executioner the right to self-justification: "Fate leads a man," the writer will note, but a man walks because he wants, and he is free not to want. "
The meaning of the figurative German-Russian parallels in the novel (Stalin and Hitler, the fascist concentration camp and the camp in Kolyma) is to sharpen the problem of the guilt and responsibility of the individual in a broad universal sense. These parallels help the writer to emphasize the idea of man's natural desire for freedom, which can be suppressed, but cannot be destroyed.
Heinrich Belle, in his review of Life and Destiny, rightly remarked: “This novel is a colossal work that can hardly be called just a book, in fact, these are several novels in a novel, a work that has its own history - one in the past, another in the future. "
9. Later stories
In parallel with the work on the Stalingrad dilogy, Grossman wrote stories, most of which were not and could not be published during his lifetime. Whatever Grossman wrote about in his later stories - about philistine greed, disfiguring the souls of people, breaking even family ties ("Collapse", 1963), about a little girl who, once in a suburban hospital, faces the unattractive reality of the unfairly arranged life of ordinary people and begins to feel the falsity of the prosperous existence of that circle of well-arranged, to which her parents belong ("In the Big Ring", 1963), about the fate of a woman who spent half her life in prisons and camps, met with complete indifference from neighbors who care about nothing but their own vegetative existence, there is no case ("Resident", 1960), about the kindness and heartfelt responsiveness tested for strength by the soulless routine of our time ("Phosphorus", 1958-1962), about a cemetery, which is not protected from the vanity of vanity and unquenched ambitions of the living ( "In eternal rest", 1957-1960), about people who, having pressed the button of the bomb release, turned into ashes tens of thousands of unknown people ["Abel (August 6th)", 1953], about Mat treat the Child as the most beautiful embodiment of the idea of the immortality of the human race ("The Sistine Madonna", 1955) - no matter what Grossman writes about, he wages an irreconcilable war against violence, cruelty, heartlessness, defending the dignity and freedom to which everyone has an inalienable right human.
10. Last years
Soon after the massacre perpetrated by the authorities over his novel, Grossman overtook an incurable disease. But he continued to work. “I have a cheerful, working mood, and it really surprises me - where does it come from? - he wrote to his wife in the fall of 1963. - It seems that they should have given up a long time ago, and they, stupid, are all drawn to work. And Nekrasov, recalling Grossman, singled out the attitude to writing as the main feature of his personality: “... literature. And I will add - the same serious attitude to his - well, how to say it - to his, let's call, behavior in literature, to every word he said. "
In the last years, which were very difficult for him, Grossman wrote two unusually strong books, the summit in his work: Armenian notes “Good to you! (From travel notes) "(1962-1963) and the story" Everything flows ... "(1955-63). The police measures of the authorities did not intimidate him, did not force him to back away from the dangerous, fiercely punishable truth. Both of these last works of his are imbued with the spirit of indomitable love of freedom. In criticizing the totalitarian regime, totalitarian ideology, and totalitarian historical myths, Grossman goes very far. For the first time in Soviet literature, it is thought that the foundations of an inhuman, repressive regime were laid by Lenin. Grossman was the first to talk about the famine of 1933 in Ukraine, which claimed millions of people, showing that the famine, like the bloody typhoon, later called the thirty-seventh year, were purposeful measures of the cannibalistic Stalinist policy.
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The novel was first published in 1988.
1 epic novel
2.Political novel
3.Philosophical
4.Social
5.Intelligent
Ideological center: Battle of Stalingrad.
Grossman begins the novel by describing the Hitlerite camp. The camp brings together people of different nationalities, ages and political convictions. Thus, the universal nature of what is happening is emphasized. The conflict between good and evil. A common misfortune does not unite people; misunderstandings still arise between them.
All honest and decent people face one fate - death. The main idea: the question of the relationship between lofty goals and cruel means.
Grossman believes that cruel means do not pay off, even if they are done for lofty goals.
The heroes of the novel have different attitudes towards the problem of life and fate, freedom and violence. Therefore, they have different attitudes towards responsibility for their actions. Drawing a parallel between Stalin and Hitler, the fascist concentration camp and the Kolyma camp, Vasily Grossman says that the signs of any dictatorship are the same. And its effect on a person's personality is destructive. The main epic idea of the novel: life is a synonym for the word freedom; death is violence.
The conflict between the individual and the state. Various forms of violence:
1. War is the worst.
2. Fascism (National Socialism) - superviolence.
3. The politics of state nationalism.
It is no coincidence that the author has chosen such a historical period in the life of our country as the Great Patriotic War to reveal this topic. The writer believed that the war with all its acuteness revealed the problems of our time, exposed the main contradictions of the era, the writer sees in war not only a clash of armies, but a clash of different views on life, on the fate of a person and a people.
The main problems raised by Grossman in the novel are life and fate, freedom and violence, the laws of war and the life of the people.
The conflict between man and the state is conveyed in the reflections of the heroes about collectivization, about the fate of the “special settlers”; it is felt in the picture of the Kolyma camp.
The victorious Battle of Stalingrad in the novel is both a heroic deed and a misfortune for the people, who, while liberating the country, freeing the world from fascism, simultaneously win the glory of Stalin. “The Stalingrad triumph determined the outcome of the war, but the tacit dispute between the victorious people and the victorious state continued. The fate of man and his freedom depended on this dispute ”.
The title of the book is symbolic. Life determines fate. For example, Sturmbannführer Kaltluft, the killer executioner who killed five hundred and ninety thousand people, is trying to justify himself with an order from above, the power of the Fuhrer, fate (“fate pushed ... on the path of the executioner”). But then the author says: "Fate leads a person, but a person goes because he wants, and he is free not to want."
A huge number of problems.
1. The Jewish question: about the position of this people in the camps, in our country, in the world.
2. The problem of choice. Everyone chooses for himself: good or evil. Rebecca's behavior is that of a slave. Fear makes people lose their human form.
3. The theme of violence and fear flows into the theme of submission. The humility with which people go to be shot is striking. The very structure of a totalitarian state is such that it forms obedience. The closer a person is to death, the less the influence of the state.
17) Compositional features, figurative system of Grossman's novel "Life and Fate".
The book is divided into three parts, divided into small chapters. There are no epigraphs, except for one in front of the work itself, but it seems to me that this is the initiative of the publisher, so I will not give it here.
There are few large-scale battle scenes in the work. The emphasis is on people's experiences, on their relationships with each other. People in the book are shown as they are in life, and not worked according to the scheme of "negative" and "positive". The author seeks to prove that ordinary people perform immortal feats. Grossman does not at all show the party as the organizer of the victory - neither in the rear, nor in the army.
The main circle of philosophical problems of V. Grossman's epic "Life and Fate" is life and destiny, freedom and violence, the laws of war and the life of the people. The writer sees in war not a clash of armies, but a clash of worlds, a clash of different views on life, on the fate of an individual and a people. The war revealed the fundamental problems of our time, revealed the main contradictions of the era.
The novel has two main themes - life and destiny.
“Life” is freedom, originality, individuality; “Fate” is a necessity, pressure from the state, lack of freedom. Commissar Krymov says: “How strange it is to walk along a straight, arrow-shot corridor. And life is such a muddled path, ravines, swamps, streams, steppe dust, uncompressed bread, you wade through, go around, but fate is straight, you walk like a string, corridors, corridors, corridors, doors in the corridors ”.
The fate of the main characters is tragic or dramatic. Grossman sees heroism as a manifestation of freedom. Captain Grekov, the defender of Stalingrad, the commander of the reckless garrison "at home six, fraction one", expresses not only the consciousness of the "just cause of the fight against fascism", attitude to war as a hard work, dedication and common sense, but also rebelliousness of nature, audacity, independence of actions and thoughts. "Everything about him — his gaze, his quick movements, and the wide nostrils of his flattened nose — was cocky, insolence." Grekov is an exponent of not only the national, national, but also the universal, freedom-loving spirit (not without reason his surname is Grekov).
The main conflict of the novel is the conflict between the people and the state, freedom and violence. “The Stalingrad triumph determined the outcome of the war, but the tacit dispute between the victorious people and the victorious state continued. The fate of man, his freedom depended on this dispute. " This conflict breaks out in the reflections of the heroes about collectivization, the fate of the "special settlers", in the pictures of the Kolyma camp, in the thoughts of the author and the heroes about the thirty-seventh year and its consequences.
The Kolyma camp and the course of the war are linked. Grossman is convinced that "part of the truth is not the truth." The arrested Krymov catches himself thinking that he hates the special person who tortures him more than the German, because he recognizes himself in him.
Grossman depicts the suffering of the people: this is also an image of camps, arrests and repressions, and their corrupting influence on the souls of people and the morality of the people. Brave people turn into cowards, good people turn into cruel ones, and staunch people turn into fainthearted. People are destroyed by double consciousness, disbelief in each other. The reasons for these phenomena are Stalinist autocracy and universal fear. Since the revolution, the consciousness and behavior of people have been governed by ideological schemes that have taught us to believe that the goal is higher than moral, the matter is higher than the person, the idea is higher than life. How dangerous such a rearrangement of values is, can be seen from the episodes when Novikov delayed the offensive for eight minutes, that is, risking his head, he goes to non-compliance with Stalin's order in order to save people. And for Getmanov "the need to sacrifice people for the sake of the cause always seemed natural, undeniable, not only during the war."
The attitude to fate, to necessity, to the question of the guilt and responsibility of the individual in the face of the circumstances of life is different for the heroes of the novel.
Sturmbannführer Kaltluft, the killer executioner who killed five hundred and ninety thousand people, tries to justify this by an order from above, his servitude, the power of the Fuhrer, fate: “fate pushed him to the path of the executioner”. But the author asserts: "Fate leads a person, but a person goes because he wants, and he is free not to want."
The meaning of the parallels Stalin - Hitler, the fascist camp - the Kolyma camp is to sharpen the problem of the guilt and responsibility of the individual in the broadest, philosophical sense. When evil is happening in society, everyone is to some extent guilty of it. Having gone through the tragic trials of the 20th century - World War II, Hitlerism and Stalinism - humanity begins to realize the fact that humility, human dependence on circumstances, slavery turned out to be strong. And at the same time, in the images of the heroes of the Patriotic War, Grossman sees love of freedom and conscience. What will exceed in man and humanity? The end of the novel is open.
The old communist Mikhail Mostovskaya, taken prisoner on the outskirts of Stalingrad, is taken to a concentration camp in West Germany. He falls asleep under the prayer of the Italian priest Hardi, argues with the Tolstoyan Ikonnikov, sees the Menshevik Chernetsov's hatred of himself 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 commissar of a 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 scientist-physicist Viktor Pavlovich Shtrum and his family are in evacuation in Kazan. Shtruma's mother-in-law, Alexandra Vladimirovna, preserved her spiritual youth even in the grief of war: 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 selfishness. Lyudmila has no news from the front from Tolya, a son from her first marriage. She is saddened by the categorical, lonely and difficult character of her high school daughter Nadia. Lyudmila's sister Zhenya Shaposhnikova ended up in Kuibyshev. Nephew Seryozha Shaposhnikov is at the front. Shtrum's mother Anna Semyonovna remained in the German-occupied Ukrainian town, and Shtrum realizes that she, a Jewess, has little chance of surviving. His mood is heavy, he accuses his wife of the fact that, because of 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. The 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 on the other hand, a former patient, whom she considered a gloomy and gloomy person, helps her by bringing food to the ghetto fence. Through him, she handed a farewell letter to her son on the eve of the destruction action.
Lyudmila receives a letter from the Saratov hospital, where her seriously wounded son lies. She urgently leaves there, but upon arriving, 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 regions of Ukraine occupied by the Germans, Getmanov, was appointed commissar of the tank corps. Getmanov worked all his life in an atmosphere of denunciations, flattery and falsehood, and now he is transferring these principles of life to the frontline situation. The corps commander, General Novikov, is a straightforward and honest man, trying to prevent senseless human casualties. Getmanov expresses his admiration to 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, comes to her in Kuibyshev. Before the war, Zhenya left her husband, political worker Krymov. She is alien to the views of Krymov, 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 Sophia Osipovna Levinton, arrested on the outskirts of Stalingrad, ends up in a German concentration camp. Jews are being taken somewhere in freight cars, and Sofya Osipovna is surprised to see how, in just a few days, many people go from a man to a "dirty and unhappy cattle deprived of name and freedom." Rebekah Buchman, trying to hide from the raid, strangled her crying daughter.
On the way, 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 has a motherly feeling for him. Until the last minute, Sofya Osipovna calms the boy down, reassures him. They die together in the gas chamber.
Krymov receives an order to go to Stalingrad, to the surrounded house "six fractions one", where the people of Grekov's "house manager" are holding the defense. Reports reached the front political administration that Grekov refuses to write reports, is conducting anti-Stalinist conversations with soldiers and, under German bullets, is showing independence from his superiors. Krymov must establish Bolshevik order in the surrounded house and, if necessary, remove Grekov from command.
Shortly before the appearance of Krymov, the "house manager" Grekov sent the soldier Serezha Shaposhnikov and the 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, human, intelligent and sad eyes, which he had never seen in his life, were looking at him."
But the Bolshevik Commissar Krymov is only interested in collecting dirt on the "uncontrollable" Grekov. Krymov revels in the consciousness of his significance, tries to catch Grekov in 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 was shooting. Returning to the political department, he writes a denunciation of Grekov, but soon learns that he was late: all the defenders of the house "six fractions one" were killed. Due to the Crimean denunciation, Grekov is not awarded the posthumous title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
In the German concentration camp, where Mostovskaya sits, an underground organization is being created. But there is no unity among the prisoners: the brigade commissar Osipov does not trust the non-partisan Major Ershov, who comes from a family of dispossessed people. He is afraid that the brave, direct and decent Ershov will gain too much influence. Comrade Kotikov, abandoned from Moscow to the camp, gives instructions - to act by Stalinist methods. The communists decide to get rid of Ershov and put his card in the group selected for Buchenwald. Despite the emotional closeness with Ershov, the old communist Mostovskaya submits to this decision. An unknown provocateur betrays the underground organization, and the Gestapo destroys its members.
The institute where Strum works is returning from evacuation to Moscow. Strum is writing a work on nuclear physics that is of general interest. The well-known academician says at the Academic Council that a work of such importance has not yet been born within the walls of the Physics Institute. The work was nominated for the Stalin Prize, Strum is on the wave of success, it pleases and worries him. But at the same time, Strum notices that Jews are gradually surviving from his laboratory. When he tries to stand up for his employees, he is given to understand that his own position is not very reliable in connection with 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 takes her word not to see Shtrum. Just at this time, the persecution of Strum begins.
A few days before the Stalingrad offensive, Krymov was arrested and sent to Moscow. Once in a prison cell on Lubyanka, he cannot recover from surprise: interrogations and torture are intended to prove his treason to the Motherland during the Battle of Stalingrad.
In the Battle of Stalingrad, the tank corps of General Novikov is distinguished.
In the days of the Stalingrad offensive, the persecution of Strum becomes more acute. A devastating article appears in the institute newspaper, he is persuaded to write a letter of repentance, to come out with a confession of his mistakes at the academic council. Shtrum collects all his will and refuses to repent, does not even come to the meeting of the academic council. The family supports him and, while awaiting arrest, is ready to share his fate. On this day, as always in the difficult moments of his life, Marya Ivanovna calls Shtrum and says that she is proud of him and longs for him. Shtrum is not arrested, but only fired from his job. He finds himself isolated, friends stop seeing him.
But in an instant, the situation changes. Theoretical work in nuclear physics attracted Stalin's attention. He calls Strum and asks if the outstanding scientist is lacking in anything. Shtrum is immediately restored at the institute, all conditions for work are created for him. Now he himself determines the composition of his laboratory, without regard to the nationality of the employees. But when Shtrumu begins to think that he has left the black streak of his life, he again faces a choice. He is required to sign an appeal to British scientists who spoke out in defense of the repressed Soviet colleagues. Leading Soviet scientists, to whom Strum is now ranked, must, by the strength 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 arrives in Moscow after learning about Krymov's arrest. She stands in all the lines in which the wives of the repressed are standing, 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 the Lubyanka office and hears the conversation of his executioners about the victory at Stalingrad. It seems to him that he sees Grekov walking towards him over the broken Stalingrad brick. The interrogation continues, Krymov refuses to sign the accusation. Returning to the cell, he finds a transmission from Zhenya and cries.
The Stalingrad winter is coming to an end. In the spring silence of the forest, one can hear the cry for the dead and the fierce joy of life.