Vasilij Grossman
VITA E DESTINO

There are books that, due to the beauty and depth of their literary images, evoke intense emotions in the reader, so that when the reading is concluded, one leaves the text with a sense of nostalgia and regret. "Life and Fate" by Vasily Grossman, a book that can be considered a classic of 20th-century Russian literature, belongs to this category of literary works due to its depth and beauty.

Vasily Grossman wrote this book over more than ten years of work, and managed to represent in a narrative divided into three parts, remarkable for its literary perfection, the era of Stalinism, the fight against Nazism, the nature of the two European totalitarian regimes, communist and Nazi, the Second World War. In the first part, the reader finds themselves immersed in a terrible place: a Nazi concentration camp.

In the Nazi camp, Soviet prisoners, whose country was invaded by the Germans in 1941, are held. The Bolsheviks, deprived of their freedom, anguished by the thought that Hitler's armies have managed to advance to the Volga, fear for the fate of their own country. They consider themselves lucky to find themselves in a camp run by the Nazis, rather than in a similar place governed by the Bolsheviks.

The description of the military operations around the Volga, with Russian soldiers and officers engaged in repelling the German invader, is precise, attentive, engaging, and emotional. Alongside the depiction of military events, the book tells the story of a Soviet family of intellectuals. Victor Strum is a nuclear physicist of extraordinary value; with his wife Ljudmila Nikolaevna and daughter Nadia, he had to leave Moscow after the German invasion of Soviet soil in 1941, and with his fellow scientists, he took refuge in Kazan.

In the book, Victor Strum embodies the torment of the Soviet intellectual who cannot understand nor tolerate the cruelties committed by Stalin in order to build socialism in one country. Strum, while talking about politics and literature during wartime with his colleagues and other intellectuals in the modest salons of Kazan, has a clear sense of not being able to express his viewpoint freely; he fears that a traitor might be among his interlocutors, who could denounce him and cause his human and intellectual ruin.

Strum recalls, horrified and saddened, the silence of Soviet intellectuals in the face of the Stalinist purges of '37, before the mock trial against Bukharin and Stalin's other opponents, in front of the horrors related to the forced collectivization of land. In this part of the book, the author clarifies his perspective on the nature of totalitarian systems.

For Grossman, political violence constitutes the foundation of totalitarian power, due to which the human being finds themselves oppressed and crushed by a powerful and suffocating State. In this regard, the book narrates an episode of extraordinary beauty, which unequivocally exemplifies this writer's thought on the symmetry between Nazism and Communism. Mostovskoy, a prisoner in a Nazi camp and a Bolshevik by philosophical convictions, is summoned one evening by Officer Liss, who wishes to have a conversation with him.

Mostovskoy feels contempt for the Nazi officer before whom he finds himself. While Liss speaks and claims that there should not be war between communists and Nazis since both are proponents of a doctrine that presupposes the Party State, Mostovskoy feels an overwhelming sense of disgust and rage. Then, the Nazi officer, commander of the camp where Mostovskoy is held, reminds him that Stalin also eliminated his opponents by force, imprisoned his critics in the camps, and concludes his monologue, plunging the prisoner into an abyss of despair, with the surprising assertion that Nazism and Communism must be considered two hypostases of the same substance.

The narrative and literary structure of the book, endowed with an epic breath thanks to which the reader has a clear image of the tragic history of the twentieth century, is founded on the representation of events linked to the fate of the members of intellectual Victor Strum's family, on the description of the fundamental moments of the Battle of Stalingrad, on the narration of the painful fate of the Soviet prisoners held in Nazi camps. In a part following the memorable meeting between the Bolshevik prisoner and the Nazi officer, there is a text in the book, written by the Russian prisoner Ikonnikov, where an extensive dissertation on Good and Evil is developed.

For the humanist Ikonnikov, human history should not be considered a battle of Good against Evil. In reality, the history of man, both ancient and modern, demonstrates that evil attempts to extinguish and suffocate in every era the humanitarian impulse present in the soul of every person. However, as long as human actions are directed toward affirming goodness and love toward fellow humans, evil cannot triumph. Indeed, Ikonnikov writes, good, understood as mute and blind love, is the essence of man. In this way, this character from the book, who reflects Grossman's thought, relates Soviet and Nazi totalitarianism to evil, which has always been present in human history. Another very beautiful episode, of extraordinary depth, features a high-ranking officer who is sent on a mission in the Kalmyk steppe.

Darensky crosses the Kalmyk steppe in his car, observing the nature, the sky, and the earth that seem to merge on the horizon, the colors of the plants and grass, and within his soul arises the sublime thought that man is a creature that aspires to freedom, without which he cannot live and be happy. In the second and third parts of the book, the military strategy followed by the Soviets is narrated and described, thanks to which they managed to encircle the Nazi and German troops, led by General Paulus, commander of the VI Army, in a terrible grip.

In this battle, memorable for the abilities demonstrated by the Soviets in repelling the Nazi invader, the Germans were reduced to the brink both by the cold and ice and by the isolation in which they found themselves due to the encirclement carried out by the Russian troops. Alongside the description of the final phases of the war, the second part of the book tells the story of Victor Strum. Strum and his family return to their home in Moscow.

In Kazan, where he had taken refuge during wartime, during a difficult period he had an extraordinary scientific intuition, wondering whether knowledge derives from observing physical phenomena or from the thoughts that spontaneously arise in the human mind. Strum resumes working in his research laboratory to implement the scientific insight he had on the atom and nuclear physics.

Soon, since he does not accept the notion that scientific research should be subordinate to party directives, he comes into conflict with his fellow scientists, who accuse him of having elaborated a theory based on Talmudic lucubrations, being of Jewish origin. This part of the book describes how the totalitarian lie silenced and rendered helpless the best Soviet intellectuals.

Strum, ousted after a summary political trial held before the academic council, from his research laboratory, finds himself alone, feels guilt, despairs because he can no longer conduct his research on the atom. Thanks to a phone call from Stalin, which he receives at night, Strum is rehabilitated and readmitted to his research lab. His brother-in-law Krimov, accused of being a follower of Trotsky and a traitor, is imprisoned in the Lubyanka prison, where he is forced through torture to make a false confession of guilt, as happened to many Bolsheviks during the gloomy period of Stalinism.

In the final part of the book, there is an extraordinary and memorable description of the city of Stalingrad reduced to a heap of ruins after a bloody war fought to defeat the German armies.