Stalingrad, Vasily Grossman, 1952

 The first in a two-part novel with Life and Fate, Stalingrad is often overshadowed by its more famous sequel. The publication of Life and Fate is itself an exciting spy story, and its critique of the Soviet Union primed itself for reception by Western audiences. Stalingrad only recently received a Western publication. I myself read Stalingrad this year after unexpectedly discovering it on the bookshelf at Politics and Prose in Washington, DC.I had previously read Life and Fate in my high school years, and picking up this new prequel gave me the opportunity to reread that book as part of my 2020 reading theme mentioned above. 

This novel was published in the Soviet Union with Soviet editing, and this is usually "blamed" for the nationalistic and optimistic tone of the novel. Stalingrad features a wide cast of characters and mingling subplots, but it all girds a vast and simple impending confrontation between two titan states at Stalingrad. Grossman writes about the grand national purpose of the Soviet fighters locally and Soviet society globally, and he clearly felt a part of that. A portrait of the prewar and wartime cities of Stalingrad are critical pieces to the work. Descriptions of the construction of Stalingrad and the taming of the steppe through collective labor speaks to the prewar mission of the Soviet Union - a wholesale industrialization of a large and backward feudal empire. 

I have read some commentary that suggests that the Soviet editors embellished the portrayal of the Soviet Union and its soldiers throughout the work, but also there is a suggestion that Grossman himself had not yet grown disillusioned about his native country while writing this work. 

German Nazis and their plots stick out in this novel for their humanizing and disturbing sections.

For me, reading this novel in the political environment of 2020 added to the themes of the work. Grossman wrestled with how the Nazi regime could have changed the German people and state into what it was through conversations among Russian characters as well as Germans. In what seemed to me a very high-stakes 2020 election with a waxing fascistic movement, it was useful to compare the United States to both of the presentations of Germany and Russia in the book. How might a claimed advanced nation willingly fall into barbarity? How does an ideological nation define and propel itself and its program? What program should it choose? 

The edits of the Soviet censor or the simplistic worldview of the author offered a concise read for me. In a work with so many characters and plots, it was helpful to have such a clear overarching momentum to Stalingrad. The inevitable, impending conflict of civilizations at Stalingrad loomed ahead throughout the work. The propagandistic plot elements themselves were interesting to study, as it shows what the Soviet state wanted to look like and what it meant to itself. The soldier characters in this strand were likeable and interesting. 

Furthermore, it was also meaningful to me to read this work as a Jewish American with roots in this area. Eastern Europe fascinates me because of these roots. As a Jew, in some ways that is my homeland, but that cultural heritage was destroyed and doesn't exist there anymore. I have no personal family connections to that area, and in fact I have many aversions to it. The Jewish cultural connections in that region would not anyway cleanly overlap or connect with the other cultures of that region, and so it is difficult to connect to the other cultures there that remain. As an American, Eastern Europe is an enemy and a battlefield both from the Cold War into the present. It is a depressed, chaotic, and alien place. I feel in my heart a very deep sadness when I try to meditate on what occurred in Eastern Europe in the 20th century. To me a vibrant, diverse world was ruined, and what could have been may have been wonderful. Reading this novel helped me meditate on this part of myself. 

I read this work largely on vacation in the summer of 2020. I could very well focus on reading it and think about what I had read. There were many moments that hit me and made me pause. I thought about myself and my identity, history, the future of my country, humanity, and many other things that I have tried to touch upon in these simple and short notes on the work and what it meant to me.