I have been reading Vasily Grossman‘s novel Stalingrad for ages, because it’s 900+ pages long and it’s too heavy to hold, so I can’t read it in bed, only in the daytime, when I can rest it on a table. It’s a wonderful book, full of all sorts of insights which have nothing to do with war or the decisive Soviet defeat of the Nazis at Stalingrad in 1942.
Stalingrad (1952) is based on Grossman’s work as a war correspondent for the Red Star, and it features characters from military real life on both sides of the battle. It is the precursor to Life and Fate (1959, see my review) which continues on with events from September 1942. It is sobering to reach the end of a 900+ page book about the battle that changed the course of the war, and then to remember that the war in Europe was to continue for another three years. The loss of life was appalling, and Grossman’s literary homage to the dead acknowledges these nameless heroes in unmarked graves with lively fictional characters. But as in real life, not all of them survive.
As Robert Chandler says in his excellent introduction, Grossman is a master of character portrayal, with an unusual gift for conveying someone’s feelings through some tiny but vivid detail.
Grossman is equally deft in his shifts of perspective, moving between the microscopic and the epic and showing the same generous understanding towards his German characters as towards his Russians. (p. x)
We are privy to scenes of their family life; their transition from peasant or professor to soldiering; their privations, trials, frustrations and doubts; and their anxieties about their comrades and their loved ones, on both sides of the front.
One of the most compelling images is a letter from Viktor Shtrum from his Jewish mother, who refused to leave her village even as the Nazis advanced and the Soviet forces had to retreat. Viktor becomes aware of Nazi atrocities in occupied territory, and he is distraught with anxiety about her fate, but (again, as Chandler makes the reader aware), Grossman, because of anti-semitism under Stalin, had to be circumspect about what he wrote. But the reader can deduce what happens. We are told about Shtrum’s mother’s last letter and her stoic resignation. We are told about its journey from hand to hand. And we are told how when he finally receives it, Viktor carries the letter about with him wherever he goes, but is unable to talk about it. This authorial silence about the contents of the letter is more poignant when we learn that these events parallel the fate of Grossman’s own mother.
He felt profoundly guilty about having allowed his mother to stay in Berdichev rather than insisting that he join him and his wife in Moscow. Her death troubled him for the rest of his life and the last letter from Anna Semyonova — who is clearly a portrait of Grossman’s mother — lies at the centre of Stalingrad like a deep hole. (p.xvi)
In contrast to Anna’s death in the ghetto, which we must imagine, there are also deaths which are swift, merciless and as the battles intensify towards the end of the book, relentless. Grossman sets a scene, brings a character to life, depicts his thoughts, words and deeds, and while the reader is still absorbing the death of this vividly rendered character, moves on to the next chapter.
These characters are unforgettable.
Lena Gnatyuk tends to the injured in the ruins, pleading with the injured to keep quiet so that the nearby Germans won’t hear them. In these closing chapters the reader has come to know Lena as Kovalyov’s heart’s desire. In the bunker they have had a fraught conversation, because he has a girl waiting for him at home, and she, though she loves him, is overwhelmed by her duty to the wounded who need her. They are part of a desperate effort to delay the German capture of the railway station until the reserves arrive, and both know that they are likely to die.
In the next chapter, we see Lena at work among the wounded. Yakhontov yells in pain, but comforts the young woman who tends to him.
‘You’re good and kind. Don’t cry, I’ll feel better in a while,’ he said, but the young woman didn’t hear this. He thought he was pronouncing words, but all she heard was a gurgle.
Lena Gnatyuk did not sleep that night. (p.833)
She reassures a soldier that his two broken legs will be set:
‘It won’t hurt. Be brave. Be brave until morning.’
In the dawn light, as it went into a dive over the railway station, the nose and wings of the Stuka turned pink. A high-explosive bomb fell in the pit where Lena Gnatyuk and two orderlies were caring for the wounded. Every last breath of life was cut short.
A cloud of dust and smoke, reddish brown in the light of the rising sun, hung in the air for a long time. Then a breeze off the Volga dispersed it over the steppe to the west of the city. (p.834)
Filyashkin is shown as a man of many flaws who rises to the occasion. Despite his wounds, he takes command as the remnants of his men fight off the German artillery.
Filyashkin was issuing commands to himself and then carrying them out himself. He was, at one and the same time, sub-unit commander, forward observer and machine-gunner.
In his mind, he is not defending himself against a sly, crafty, advancing enemy, he saw himself as the attacker.
A single simple thought, like an echo from the grinding fire of his machine gun, now took up all Senior Lieutenant Filyashkin’s consciousness. This thought furnished him with an explanation of everything of importance: his success and disappointments, his feeling of condescension to those of his peers who were still mere lieutenants and his envy of those who had already reached the rank of major or lieutenant colonel. ‘I began as a machine-gunner and I’m ending as a machine-gunner.’ This simple, clear thought was an answer to all that had troubled him during the last few hours. To machine-gunner Filyashkin, everything bad and painful in his life had ceased to matter.
Shvedkov never managed to bandage Filyashkin’s shoulder with strips of cloth torn off a bathrobe. Filyashkin suddenly lost consciousness, smashed his chin against the back of the machine gun and fell dead to the ground. (p.836)
That bathrobe, BTW, was delivered to Lena as a gift from ‘the women of America’. The parcel was well-meant, but Grossman shows how the pretty clothes and luxury perfume were sent by women who had no idea of the significant role Soviet women played in the war. Time after time he depicts women who’ve accessed education and training and new opportunities, working as equals in senior management, or as skilled artisans or professionals. Reading about Lena’s scornful rejection of these frivolous garments reminded me of Svetlana Alexievich’s The Unwomanly Face of War, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, (1985, see my review). When Filyashkin warns Lena to take a captured pistol in case she’s captured, just in case, she shrugs and replies: ‘I can shoot myself just as well with my own revolver.’
Filyashkin’s fears for Lena were well-founded. Wikipedia tells us about the rape of about 2 million German women by Soviet soldiers, (and by allied troops though that is mentioned less often) but the rape of five times that number of Soviet women by the Wehrmacht was suppressed during the Cold War both by the Soviets and the West. Wikipedia tells us that…
… sources estimate that rapes of Soviet women by the Wehrmacht range up to 10,000,000 incidents, with between 750,000 and 1,000,000 children being born as a result. (Wikipedia, War Crimes of the Wehrmacht/Rape, viewed 2/5/24)
In Kovalyov’s last minutes, he remains focussed on the task at hand. Barely conscious, he takes out his precious notebook of poetry, and pens a report to his superiors. He hands it to Rysev to deliver, but by the time Rysev reports back that everyone is dead and there’s no one to report to, he was unable to hand the report back. Kovalyov lay dead, his chest on his kitbag, his hand on his loaded sub-machine gun. Rysev takes up the gun and the remaining grenades, and pauses to look at his fallen comrade.
He could see a short dark notch on his forehead, between his eyebrows. The wind was catching his fair hair. His eyes were half hidden beneath his delicate eyelashes and he was looking sweetly and knowingly down at the ground, smiling at something that he alone knew, that none but he would ever know.
‘Instantaneous — on the bridge of the nose,’ Rysev said to himself, appalled by death’s swiftness, yet also envious. (p,841)
Mindful of the national conversation we are having about the chilling outbreak of violence against women, I found that my thoughts strayed to a different kind of war when I read the excerpt below.
Vavilov, an ordinary soldier from an ordinary village is confronted by the destruction of the city and he muses on the vast amount of labour that goes into building a city. In the ruins, he realises that there is enough broken glass to glaze the windows of every village in Russia. He thinks of the people who once lived there in the ruined city, and those who are entombed, and he realises that for Hitler, strength was a matter of violence — one man’s ability to exercise violence over another.
And he rejects that…
What we call the soul of the people is determined by a shared understanding of strength, labour, justice and the common good. When we say, ‘The people will condemn this’, ‘The people will not believe this’ or ‘The people will not agree’, it is this shared understanding that we have in mind.
This shared understanding — these simple and fundamental thoughts and feelings — is present both in the people as a whole and in each individual. Often only latent, this understanding comes to life when someone feels him- or herself to be united with a larger whole, when someone can say ‘I am the people.’
Those who say that the people worship strength must differentiate between different kinds of strength. There is a strength that the people respect and admire, and there is a strength that the people will never respect, before which it will never abase itself. (p.779)
And I thought, how apt these words are in our current circumstances.
Though there are all kinds of government actions that need to be taken,
and there needs to be funding to support front-line programs,
there are no simple solutions.
But…
We, the people, need to make our values clear, loud and clear, and assert that
we despise violence.
The ABC news last week featured a snippet about some footballer who’d been suspended for inappropriate behaviour towards women.
He has to do some sort of behavioural change course,
and find a club that will have him if he ever wants to play again.
And then the segment cut to some other footballer who was asked
if it was the end of that player’s career,
and what we heard was the same kind of excuse-making that
teachers hear from parents
whenever we try to discuss a child’s aggressive behaviour.
That was our media at work, undercutting the effort to call out unacceptable behaviour.
The reporter chose to ask that question, the player chose to answer it the way he did, and the editor chose to broadcast it without it being challenged.
Our entertainment industry sabotages our values as well.
All those Hollywood movies that depict violence as a solution to a problem.
All those crime novels and thrillers that portray violence against women
so that some hero can ‘solve the crime’.
But there is rarely any mystery about violence in our society.
Emily Maguire had it right in her 2016 novel An Isolated Incident, see my review.
The murder in that novel was not an isolated incident and in that town everyone knew who had done it and they had turned a blind eye to it.
I think that we, the people, do have a shared understanding that
violence has no place in our society.
We do have a shared understanding that
we do not use it to solve interpersonal problems.
And we will never respect those who abuse strength to inflict harm on others
or make excuses for it.
And we should say so, whenever we see it,
and we should never accept excuse-making.
If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault, domestic or family violence,
call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit 1800RESPECT.org.au.
In an emergency, call 000.
ANZ LitLovers LitBlog 
What a history of our world and still we’re heading down memory lane with different twists and turns.
LikeLike
By: Americaoncoffee on May 5, 2024
at 10:27 pm
Indeed, and so often our assumptions about things are overturned by historians who are simply looking at the historical record from a different point-of-view!
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on May 6, 2024
at 12:43 pm
I think there’s a chapter/strand in Life and Fate (the novel not published in his lifetime) which is his mother’s story, or Grossman’s fictional account of what he believes must have happened in her Ukrainian village). There are also pieces about what happened during WWII in Ukraine in the collected stories and other prose in The Road.
LikeLike
By: elkiedee on May 6, 2024
at 12:35 am
I’ve got The Road and will read that soon too.
The good thing about this edition is that it has maps, so when Grossman refers to a town or a village as they retreat over hundreds of miles, a reader can follow what’s happening across a wide front.
In some ways I still find the whole event incomprehensible. I’ve watched a series called Soviet Storm which begins with Operation Barbarossa, and — as elsewhere where there was Blitzkrieg — the German army simply swept resistance aside; killed thousands of soldiers and civilians; took thousands prisoner (and let them die without food or shelter); and destroyed tanks and planes and ships, and towns and villages. They seemed utterly invincible. And yet the Soviets turned it around, and I could never understand how they managed to do it.
But recently I heard (on You Tube) an American history professor called Kotkin from the Bush? Hoover? Institute who’s written the first of a three volume bio of Stalin, who finally said something that made sense to me. He talked about the reasons that are usually given for the Soviet success, (e.g. the Winter, as if it didn’t affect both sides and wasn’t a particularly cold winter anyway) but (as historians do) he looked at the big picture for the answers. He said that wars of attrition are won by those that have the ‘will to fight’ and the ‘means to fight’. The Soviet will to fight emerged as the people became aware that it was an existential fight: Hitler was determined to destroy their towns and cities, access their mineral wealth and use the arable land to feed Germany — and enslave any useful people to do the work while killing the rest. They knew what had happened in the places lost in the retreat, so for them it was either to die in battle or to die — and have their families die — at the hands of the Germans.
But the means to fight was set in place from the very beginning when Stalin who was a terrible military leader in every other way, evacuated the factories before the Germans could get them. They moved them out of harm’s way, lock, stock and barrel, along with their workers, to hundreds of miles behind the front lines, so that they could continue to produce the weapons and materiel that were needed to win the war. (An astonishing logistical exercise!) Both sides lose stuff in battles, and yes, the USSR got some stuff from LendLease, but ultimately the side that wins can not only replenish what’s been lost, but also make more of it themselves and get it to where it’s needed without having to get it across enemy lines. A winning side needs lots more of it, i.e. always more than the other side has so that they can absorb losses and continue anyway, and new stuff should be preferably from more and more sophisticated i.e. deadly designs. This is where the Soviet education of the masses and modernisation of manufacturing came into play: despite those wicked purges, they had thousands of brilliant engineers and a highly skilled workforce.
Having learned this basic fact about winning wars, I could see here and there in Grossman’s account how the importance of manufacturing crept into the narrative. Whether he understood the principles that Kotkin talks about, Grossman’s skilled engineers and workers play a vital role in proceedings, and it’s not just eulogising the workers as you might expect a Soviet writer to do.
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on May 6, 2024
at 9:23 am
And that very fact makes you think about what’s happening now, doesn’t it?
LikeLike
By: whisperinggums on May 6, 2024
at 4:08 pm
Well, I don’t comment on current events, but yes, Kotkin does, and draws parallels. I’ll see if I can find the link.
I think this is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wdo5VRuZd5k but I watched this one too, both episodes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MzPzfEVjNE
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on May 6, 2024
at 4:15 pm
No that’s why I didn’t name them or say more, but I’ll check the links later. Waiting for a concert right now.
LikeLike
By: whisperinggums on May 6, 2024
at 5:56 pm
Enjoy!
LikeLiked by 1 person
By: Lisa Hill on May 6, 2024
at 6:23 pm
I’ve this sat in my shelf I hope get to it one day
LikeLike
By: winstonsdad on May 6, 2024
at 8:29 am
It’s long!
LikeLiked by 1 person
By: Lisa Hill on May 6, 2024
at 9:23 am
Yes and I think that is what has put me off reading it
LikeLike
By: winstonsdad on May 6, 2024
at 3:40 pm
As I said in my comment to Brona below, start with The People Immortal, it’s a much more manageable length.
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on May 6, 2024
at 4:11 pm
Such a complex issue with no clear path to solution, but I think the media needs to be more aware of its role. I want to say that it all starts at home … but where did home get it? From its home (if that makes sense). The cycle needs to be broken.
Many years ago I wrote that The slap was about violence … not in the slap itself (which was only one form of violence in the novel) but in the way violence is so often the response to anything that crosses another. Why are we seeing all those “we will not tolerate abuse” signs in businesses etc. Has the abuse increased or has awareness that it must not be tolerated strengthened? Either way, it’s a good message for people to be seeing.
LikeLike
By: whisperinggums on May 6, 2024
at 8:49 am
I think so too. Those signs creep me out.
You know, when I was teaching in my last school in a disadvantaged area, we were told that the reason parents were abusive to teachers was because they were powerless, and abusing teachers was a way to exercise power because we, being professionals, could not answer back. We had to take it.
But as I know from my colleagues working in more posh postcodes, middle-class and privileged parents are also abusive. And besides that, I spent my most of my career working in disadvantaged schools and particularly in Springvale, they were places were teachers were respected.
So I think that the sense of entitlement and the abuse that often accompanies it, has little to do with class. I think it has increased, and employers have to do what they can, which is inadequate IMO, to protect their employees from it.
But I also think that we have to stop this nonsensical narrative that excuses violence: #InsertDisadvantageHere. We are told that we must not shame people who are violent, and I ask myself, whyever not? They should be ashamed.
LikeLiked by 1 person
By: Lisa Hill on May 6, 2024
at 9:36 am
I was school board chair in one of the ACT’s most disadvantaged primary schools (by the socio-economic indicators used back then) and what you say is our experience. Disadvantaged parents were often the first to pay their voluntary contributions, or to talk to the office staff about how to pay by instalments. They wanted to do the right thing. We had a good small school, bit if someone was not willing to pay, it was more likely the well-off who argued that education is supposed to be free! As you say, these things are not rarely about class – or, if they are, they are counter-intuitive.
(When we moved several kilometres to a higher socio-economic suburb, we kept our daughter at that school for her last couple of years, because it was the best. A mixed cohort, supportive parents, and a pastoral-care focused principal.)
My son loves teaching, but he often feels poorly supported for the sorts of reasons you say. Parents hold the power, and principals, in his experience, will cave to them and the teachers are expected to take it. And I agree, I can’t help thinking it is getting worse. More and more people feel empowered to make demands, and often those demands are about their own child and not about what’s right or fair for the group.
LikeLike
By: whisperinggums on May 6, 2024
at 2:22 pm
How has it come to a situation where people bully shop assistants, hospital and paramedical staff and even volunteers like the SES?
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on May 6, 2024
at 2:44 pm
That’s the $64,000 question!
LikeLike
By: whisperinggums on May 6, 2024
at 4:11 pm
Now that you’ve read both Lisa, do you recommend reading them in publishing order or historical chronological order?
I have no idea when I might get to them, but I have both on my TBR.
LikeLike
By: This Reading Life on May 6, 2024
at 2:14 pm
Oooh, tough question.
TBH, I think I’d start with The People Immortal. It was written contemporaneously with events and it covers the initial devastating retreats and the advance towards Moscow.
Then Stalingrad (1952), and finally Life and Fate (1959).
It might seem like a lot but these three form a 20th century War and Peace, and they tell a history that wasn’t told in the West, a history that is still relevant today.
And if you’re like me and know very little about the Soviet role in WW2, I’d also recommend that before you start, you watch the first 6 episodes (up to the defeat of the Germans at Stalingrad) of the documentary ‘Soviet Storm’ on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CerdjvePsg&list=PLwGzY25TNHPC_SsXFcIH-ba0nWuNbHOM6&index=2) because it gives some background that Grossman’s readers would all have known, and it puts events in context with maps and footage and simulations.
You can find all my reviews of Grossman’s books here: https://anzlitlovers.com/category/writers-editors-aust-nz-in-capitals/grossman-vasily/
LikeLiked by 1 person
By: Lisa Hill on May 6, 2024
at 3:01 pm
Thanks for such a thoughtful response Lisa. I don’t think I have The People Immortal on my TBR (part of my plan when I unpack the book boxes is to document what’s there in a better way). I suspect I will make these three books and the doco’s one of my year-long projects, so I can give them the time they obviously deserve.
LikeLike
By: This Reading Life on May 7, 2024
at 8:45 am
It’s just a suggestion, but you have an opportunity while those books are waiting patiently in the boxes. Buy a hand scanner, and scan them into a Goodreads shelf as you unpack them, either Read or Want to Read as appropriate. Then you will know what you have!
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on May 7, 2024
at 9:18 am
Gosh! A lot to unpack here. Thanks for the terrific review of what must be a tough book to read, and also your thoughts on abuse and violence.
At least we have come a little way from the time when it was dismissed as “just a domestic” and the police didn’t want to know.
LikeLike
By: Eleanor Dilley on May 6, 2024
at 3:58 pm
Thanks Eleanor, yes indeed, though things could always be improved, front line services are better than they were.
LikeLiked by 1 person
By: Lisa Hill on May 6, 2024
at 4:10 pm
I haven’t read this one but did read his book Life and Fate which was just over 1000pages. A wonderful,y written book. I do ‘t have the energy for another one any time soon.🌻
LikeLike
By: TravellinPenguin on May 6, 2024
at 10:28 pm
Yes, that’s exactly how I felt!
I thought it was wonderful, but when I heard that The People Immortal was available I thought, I’ll buy it for later on when I have the energy. *chuckle* I left it so long I forgot I had it and borrowed it from the library.
LikeLike
By: Lisa Hill on May 7, 2024
at 7:56 am