Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman, 1959

 Life and Fate is the second half of the two part novel, the first part being Stalingrad which I reviewed above. Life and Fate, as previously mentioned, is the more famous portion of the overall work. It was completely censored in the Soviet Union by the editors rather than allowed to publish with state editing. In 1980, this book was smuggled out of the Soviet Union to the West where it was first published. The book became famous for this story, and further for its literary and political content. As a poignant critique of the Soviet Union, it was politically warmly received, and it may have represented an unleashing of previous Russian literature in the vein of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky rather than a work dominated by Soviet influence. Life and Fate is often likened to War and Peace, and I think this comparison is politically pointed as just mentioned as well as legitimate and obvious. This comparison is due to the wartime subject matter, the large cast of characters, and within the book there are many times when Tolstoy, his work, his Russian military leader characters, and the 1812 invasion are invoked in comparison with the situation of Nazi Germany's invasion in 1941.   

Life and Fate is indeed much more conceptually and thematically complex than Stalingrad, although its plot picks up exactly after the end of its prequel. In keeping with the theme of rereading books for greater comprehension, having read this prerequisite plot and context from Stalingrad helps to explain why I struggled to pick up the plot of Life and Fate the first time I attempted to read it. In this second reading I spent much less time trying to pick apart the Russian names and nicknames and the web of characters and relationships, for I had just spent 900 pages reading about these same names and characters in Stalingrad. I can only imagine that others who have not read Stalingrad would similarly benefit from this. As such, I felt more capable of comprehension this go-around.

This novel present a wholly different appraisal of the Soviet State than its prequel. Whereas previously the Nazi and Soviet states were diametrically opposed, the former evil and the latter good, in Life and Fate we see an investigation into how these states were in fact mirror images. This occurs through parallel plots in the Nazi death camp and the Soviet gulag, it occurs through philosophical dialogue between characters. A Nazi camp commander speaks to an old Bolshevik poisoner, Mostovskoy, and explicitly states that the two regimes are manifestations of the same phenomenon of the totalitarian single-party state. In parallel, Dmitry and Abarchuk languish in the gulag. The nuclear physicist Viktor Shtrum, possibly something of a symbolic stand-in for the author, has the grinding weight of the mammoth state raise him up, cast him out, and raise him up again amid a gradual lurch towards anti-Semitism. It is again difficult here to pick apart why this novel political statement is so different from that of Stalingrad. Is it the case that the author matured and grew disillusioned due to the actions of the Soviet state, or was this the view that would have shone through in Stalingrad if that novel had not been edited by the Soviet authorities? 

There are a few themes to call out. The first, as mentioned in the preceding paragraph, is a gradual deepening rebuke of the Soviet state as one that has abandoned its original mission and morality. Mostovskoy in the camp speaks to several Russians symbolic of ideologies that the Soviet state has progressively used, abandoned, and destroyed. This includes religious, Tolstoyist, Menshevik, and other characters. All try to get Mostovskoy, an old Bolshevik who remains a true believer, to admit that the state as it is bears no resemblance to the one he dreamed of in his revolution. This expands with Krymov's eventual all from grace, and with recollections by characters throughout of prior purges. The soldier Grekov represents an indolence and vitality evocative of the original revolutionaries, but is now a threat to the repressive bureaucratic state. 

Second, is an assessment of totalitarian states and the threat that they pose. In this novel, Grossman explores the Soviet State through the plot as well as discussions among the characters. A particularly striking piece of this exploration is the journey of Viktor Shtrum. As a Jew and a nuclear physicist, Shtrum comes into the crosshairs of the interest of the state for two contradictory reasons - usefulness as a tool to bring about nuclear parity with the United States, and inconvenience as a non-Russian, Jewish, potentially non-conforming individual with some influence. Shtrum in his life prior to the story of the novel has lived in quiet fear as others around him have been purged, including within his own family by marriage. All the while, he remained aloof in his work in physics, retreating into the abstract. During the story of Life and Fate he comes to a striking new conclusion in mathematical theoretical physics during a period of rising anti-semitism largely promulgated by the state and its many layers of bureaucracy, including his research institution, perhaps as a result of rising nationalism from the defense of the Russian motherland from foreigners. Shtrum's lab faces roadblocks, his Jewish colleagues passed over or fired, he personally is attacked by the other researchers. His life is driven towards the cliff and he is nearly purged by his colleagues who previously supported him and befriended him, until Stalin himself intervenes with a simple short phone call. In his direst moment, Shtrum fills out a state questionnaire alone in his office where he sees how the state views him - a collection of data points, such as nationality, class background, relations, that may or may not indicate that he is an enemy. He is consumed with a palpable paranoia that everyone is listening and reporting on him, that he will be purged, he second-guesses many of his prior decisions and statements. I believe Grossman paints a picture of how the Soviet state, and any totalitarian state, acts on its citizens as an enormous weight crushing them, intervenes in all aspects of their lives as an arbitrary decision-maker. It is something on which you must depend and which doles out favor in the sweetest terms, as well as something to guard against with suspicion and lies throughout your life and condemns with the strongest poisons. Beyond Shtrum's experience, Mostovskoy speaks with the head of the Nazi death camp in which he is a prisoner, and this leader directly confronts the prisoner with the fact that the Nazi and Soviet states are in fact of the same kind, and that the Germans were students learning from the Russian masters. 

Third, like in Stalingrad, reading Life and Faith as a Jew is powerful, but here more cutting and painful. Grossman as a wartime journalist was among the first to discover the death camps in the Eastern front. In this book there is one storyline in which several people, including Shtrum's mother, journey from tyhe experience of the ghetto to the death camp and are in the end exterminated. Shtrum's mother encounters a young boy who is alone. The two travel together, and Grossman delves into the details of the journey and interrupts it with flashbacks to the past for these two prior to the war. We get a clear view of what this vibrant world of Eastern Europe was like, and we see the hell into which it was plunged. These sections, along with the other portions describing Russian and German camps, are difficult to read as Grossman effectively shows you a sense of what it was really like.

While in Stalingrad  we get a story of good and evil, in Life and Fate we get a story of human nature. It is complex in theme and storyline, and left me with a much more disparate slate of feelings and impressions. While reading Stalingrad I thought about how the United States in 2020 compared to the two super states of the novel, its political life and societal mission, among other things. In Life and Fate, it is more difficult to think about extraneous thoughts because the novel is itself more demanding and engrossing. The portrait it paints of the region, the times, and the states and actors are flesh and blood in full, and reading the book was for me an attempt to really catch what it was throwing at me intellectually and emotionally. After reading the work, it is clear that the portrait of the totalitarian state and the portrait of the various cruelties at that time and place are lessons to take away.