Comments on "Life and Fate"

Certain books are more powerful than others. I know a book is great, not when I read it, but when I keep thinking about it months after finishing it.

Life and Fate is such a book.

Life and Fate (жизнь и судьба). Author: Vasily Grossman (1905 - 1964), former reporter for the Red army’s newspaper during WWII, official soviet author. Written: 1950, Moscow, USSR. Published: 1980, Lausanne, Switzerland.

Some weirdness here: written 1950, published 1980, after the author’s death! What’s going on? That’s because – as Grossman said – the book was arrested. When he submitted the manuscript to publish, the KGB raided his and his friends’ appartments to find and destroy all its copies. He was told the book couldn’t be published “in two hundred years”. Grossman died 3 years later, not in jail, and from old age (maybe from weariness).

For such a reaction, Grossman must have scared the shit out of the Soviets. Indeed, the book is not an eulogy to Stalin. Actually, if you read the book, it’s not a subtile hint that he thinks Soviet Russia is straight up the next Nazi Germany.

You talk about a “powerfull book”, this one looks like it could have toppled the Soviets.

Why submit such a blasphemous pamphlet to the state? Knowing full well it won’t be published and might very well throw him in jail. Well, he was too respected for that. He knew that throwing him in jail would be an act of self-immolation from the Soviets. Listen, Navalny came back to Russia after being poisoned by its government. People in Russia are brave (or reckless) and will risk their life for what they believe in.

Or maybe Navalny read Life and Fate and it inspired him to keep up with his ideals.

Ok, enough context for now. Let’s talk about the book.

The book itself is a complete bore, it’s structured as a series of self-contained vignettes, like a collection of expositional short stories. There is little action, although the characters’s life change, and drastically. Most of it are descriptions of the characters thoughts and opinions. It’s similar to Chekhov short stories.

A not-so-subtile difference with Chekhov: Chekhov is a magician, his stories are pure beauty, he extracts from the most mundane situations the purest form of wonder and beauty. Now, yes, this is a shining recommendation for Chekhov, please go read some Chekhov short stories, but this post is about Life and Fate. And Life and Fate is about WWII, grind it as much as you want, you won’t find any beauty in that, not even a grain of dust, and by far.

But life is made of more than just beauty, and Life and Fate has plenty of what is not beauty.

There is an awful lot of very interesting ideas in that book, I won’t talk about all of them, not because I respect your time or care about your attention. But I care about my time and going over all of them would pretty much constitute a doctorial thesis spanning two years of work. And that’s from someone who doesn’t know how to read (like a doctoral student).

Socialism in One Country

This requires more context, oh God. This post is going to be long.

“Socialism in One Country” is the euphemism Stalin used to define “National Socialism, but with Soviet wording”. I.e.: galvanizing the folk with ideas about how great the “Russian man” is, how it is the destiny of Russia to show the world that communism is the right system of government. How it is the role of the pure Soviet Russian to show how communism is done to its still impure neighbours (and discipline them if necessary). Now that we established that the Soviet is fuelled by the purity of the Russian blood, anything that isn’t Russian is suspect by nature.

The Stalingrad victory, on the other hand, served mainly to change people’s attitude towards themselves, to develop a new form of self-consciousness in the army and in the population as a whole. Soviet Russians began to think of themselves differently, to adopt a different manner towards other nationalities. The history of Russia was no longer the history of the sufferings and humiliations undergone by the workers and peasantry; it was the history of Russian national glory.

The Soviet didn’t shy from reminding everyone this. Every year, you had to fill a survey. You had to answer questions such as “Nationality”, “Social Origin”, “Social Position”, “Do any of your relatives live abroad”.

A friend of mine once joked: “I’ve got an aunt in New York. I always knew that hunger’s no friendly aunt; now I know that aunts mean hunger.”

Enough context, how is this relevant to the book? One of the main characters, Viktor Shtrum, is Jew.

It may surprise you (or not) to learn that the Soviet regime, especially under Stalin, was freaking antisemit.

On the tenth anniversary of this victory Stalin was to raise over their heads the very sword of annihiliation he had wrested from the hands of Hitler.

In chapter 53, Shtrum fills this survey. I said the book is a complete bore, but not really. It picks up at the 2/3 mark. That chapter is amazing. Yes, it’s something like 20 pages of a dude filling a form, and it’s one of the highlights of Russian literature…¹

In it, Shtrum discovers how, by nature he is anti-revolutionary. He’s born in Ukraine (he was born in Bakhmut, but registered in a Kharkov hospital), his nationality is Jew², that his social origin³ is “petit bourgeois”, his social position is “white-collar worker”. That, yes, he has relatives living outside of Russia, and a lot.

He remembered a meeting at which a Party member, confessing his faults, had said: “Comrades, I’m not one of us.”

Shtrum understands that he’s now the enemy. That whatever he said – if before, it was acceptable – would be examinated for signs of discent, that he couldn’t get promotions, or better living conditions. He was suspect, and the suspect can’t be given power.

He remembered looking at his assistant’s face after making a thoughtless joke aobut Stalin having formulated the laws of gravity long before Newton.

“You didn’t say anything, and I didn’t hear anything,” this young assistant had said gaily.

Why, why, why all these jokes? It was mad to make such jokes – like banging a flask of nitroglycerine with a hammer.

This, of itself, isn’t antisemitism. It’s just repression, and a Jew happening to be caught in it. Not counting that the 1918 revolution abolished all the odious discriminations of the Tsarist empire against the Jews.⁴

Yet, yet, there is a few tells. After the start of the Russian counter-offensive, the evacuated Moscovites are to return to the capital. But Shtrum discovers that none of the assistants with a Jewish name are called back. This is not all, as a physicist, Shtrum discovers the puzzling idea according to which “relativity is a capitalist construct”, that Einstein, by dint of being Jew, somehow spews corrupting ideas. Shtrum’s work is criticized not on scientific merit, but as being too abstract, too “Talmudic”. He learns of the Doctor’s plot, an absurd accusation thrown at high society Moscovites, who strangely all happen to hold Jewish names. The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee is disolved. The propaganda denounces the “rootless cosmopolitan” Jew.

Viktor had told him of his failure to secure his nomination. “Just as I expected!” Landesman had said angrily and reproachfully. “Is there something awkward in your background?” Viktor had asked. Landesman had snorted and said, “There’s something awkward in my surname.”

The Jew is yet again a corrupting poison rotting society.

Tell me what you accuse the Jews of – I’ll tell you what you’re guilty of.

The book focuses on antisemitism, because that’s what the author experienced himself. But, Grossman admits that Jews were not the only target. Also Kalmyks, Balkars, Chechens, Crimean Tartars.

How the Soviet state grinds and tames discent

Shtrum refuses to incriminate himself, confess to thought crimes. He doesn’t go to this Science Council where he was to enumerate his anti-patriotic deeds and recuse them (this includes Einstein’s theory of relativity).

He refused, and he felt the full weight of the state fall over him. His very presence became the plague. Everyone avoided him. Ostracization. People avoided talking to him, even talking about him. By fear of being contaminated with the (not even pronounced) accusation of discent. He won’t have his lodging permit renewed, he won’t get his salary, he won’t be able to renew his passport.

I’d be happy if even a dog phoned me

All of that, until…

“Goodbye, comrade Shtrum, I wish you success in your work.”

“Goodbye, comrade Stalin.”

He put down the phone.

Shtrum gets a phone call from Stalin. Not a dog, but Stalin himself.

And now, months of ostracization, fear and isolation. Not reversed, but erased, as if it never happens. The people who avoided him forgot their prejudices, the weariests are now his best friends. Not as if nothing happened, but as if the continuty of history got interrupted, as if Shtrum’s reality got stitched into another one where he always has been recognized as a great genius of major importance to the state.

He looked Viktor straight in the eye, Viktor knew this open, frank look; it was characteristic of people who were doing something dishonest.

Shtrum’s thoughts themselves seem to be mangled in that transformation. His defiance has been erased as well. What is there to defy now? He gets all the privileges, because Stalin spoke to him.

Privilege kills a man’s resolve more so than any opression.

Remember that “Doctor’s plot”? That event that hinted to Shtrum that he may be a trator by quality of his name alone? This comes back. Now in his position of privilege and comfort. To condemn the incriminations of the doctors, a committee of Western scientists wrote a letter of support. The Soviets devise a letter that turn the accusation to the West and call the USSR the only wall against depravity:

Your defence of Pletnyov and Levin – degenerates who are a disgrace not only to medicine, but to the human race as a whole – is grist to the mill of the anti-human ideology of Fascism… The Soviet nation stands alone in its struggle against Fascism, the ideology that has brought back medieval witch trials, pogroms, tortue chambers and the bonfires of the Inquisition.

[…]

Nowhere in the world do scientitsts enjoy the affection of the people and the protective care of the State to the same degree as in the Soviet Union…

And Shtrum signs that. Out of weakness? Out of subordination? Well yes. But can we blame the man when everything is done to destroy his will? The totalitarian state is in a constant fight against any form of resistance. The state destroyed him, by sheer strength. Where it failed with fear alone, it won with enticement.

Only people who have never felt such a force themselves can be surprised that others submit to it. Those who have felt it, on the other hand, feel astonished that a man can rebel against it even for a moment.

Was Shtrum a bad man for this? We just know of his regrets. He questioned his own resistance, sometimes regreting it, until his fears got discipated. But now, his regrets for having signed that letter will never fade.

Good men and bad men alike are capable of weakness. The difference is simply that a bad man will be proud all his life of one good deed – while an honest man is hardly aware of his good acts, but remembers a single sin for years on end.

The Gulag society

Shtrum is but one of many characters in Life and Fate. While here I just described “The Life and Woes of Viktor Shtrum”, the book is far from that.

One of those characters is Krymov. Who, once in Lubyanka⁵, meets Katsenelenbogen. Katsenelenbogen (fictional character) helped design the Gulag, and found himself in Lubyanka – being high-graded and having a Jewish name was a quick way to get yourself arrested at the time.

The surgeon came in. The two doctors looked at the X-rays. No doubt they could see all the poisonous dissidence that had collected inside his rib cage over the years.

Katsenelenbogen, despite finding himself in the hellish system he helped build, is still fascinated by his work. He iterates on it in his own head.

He notices – very much like the Nazi concentration camps – that in the Gulag, the mere regular criminals (e.g.: Rapists, murderers) were giving orders to the political criminals. But this is an obvious waste. Politicals come from high society, they are skilled knowledge workers. The Gulags lower them to mere skilless physical laborers, but the Soviets could instead exploit their skill.

What about society? Here as well, we’ve clueless politically appointed managers cattling skilled workers (cue Viktor’s superiors denouncing the theory of relativity). Their decision completely deconnected from the needs of reality.

Why not just make the whole of society a sort of Gulag? The Gulag is the epitom of reason winning over the filthy idea of personal freedom. If we can make the Gulag as efficient as society, then, at this point, the proof is made that freedom is useless, and repression becomes unnecessary.

Way more I don’t care to expand on

Again, I just described “The Life and Woes of Viktor Shtrum”, and maybe a tinny bit more, and that’s not what Life and Fate is.

I did find the first 2/3 of the book a “total bore”. Nontheless, it’s an amazing book that makes transparent and comprehensible to us mere Westerner what the Russian spirit is. And the last 1/3 is seriously amazing.

The novel goes deep into the war, much like War and Peace, but unlike Tolstoy, Grossman experienced himself the war, and unlike Tolstoy, Grossman wrote his book after reading Chekhov. I said earlier that no beauty could be found in WWII. But I lied, there are some nuggets of beauty in there:

For some reason she didn’t feel any fear at all; instead, she thought of the wonderful, fairy-tale life she had enjoyed before the war.

It turned out to be the starlings imitating bullets… The lieutenant had even put us on alert – they did it perfectly

“Once, when we were in the steppe,” he told her, “something suddenly hit me. I thought it must be a shell at the end of its trajectory. But guess what? It was a hare. He stayed with me till evening. Then things quietened down a bit and he left.”

Krymov is an odious character, despite the fact he ended in prison. He was a Chekist and eagerly denounced people as Kulaks.

What’s a Kulak you ask?

There had been a fine harvest in 1930 […] the little children kept up a constant, barely audible whine as they crawled about like living skeletons. The men wandered aimlessly around the yards, exhausted by hunger […] Meanwhile the young men from the city went from house to house […] digging holes in the barns, prodding the ground with iron bars… They were searching for the grain hidden away by the kulaks.

[…] Just then the young men from the city had come back to the hut. One of them, a man with blue eyes and an accent just like Semyonov’s, had walked up to the corpse and said: “They’re an obstiante lot, these kulaks. They’d rather die than give in.”

Maybe Krymov came to recognize his heinous crimes once in prison, but not the ones he was accused of, not the ones the KGB wanted him to admit, those made-up crimes. Maybe Krymov was a good man? Became one?

Were these old women braver and more honourable than Old Bolsheviks like Mostovskoy and Krymov?

That’s not all. I also learned about “10 years without the right of correspondence”; How clueless buraucrats with simply lie to get rid of relatives trying to find the whereabouts of their close ones; How considerate of human life the Russian army was.

Not once had he known a superior officer show real anger because an operation had been wasteful in terms of human lives. He had even known officers send their men under fire simply to avoid the anger of their superiors, to be able to throw up their hands and say: “What could I do? I lost half my men, but I was unable to reach objectives”

About Russian folklore.

If you kiss with your eyes open, you are not in love

About honesty.

“He was honest as a boy and he remained honest all his life. And then suddenly – ‘espionage, plotting to murder Kaganovich and Voroshilov’ … A wild, terrible lie. What’s the point of it? Why should anyone want to destroy people who are sincere and honourable?” Once Lyudmila had told her: “You can’t vouch for Mitya entirely. Innocent people don’t get arrested.” She could still remember the look her mother had given her.

Is it history?

The Russians have seen everything during the last thousand years – grandeur and super-grandeur; but what they have never seen is democracy

Have the Russians ever seen democracy? I would say between 1999 and 2005 maybe? Even then, it’s a bit of a stretch.

Can you imagine what it’s like to have freedom of the press? One quiet morning after the war you open your newspaper, and instead of exultant editorials, instead of a letter addressed by some workers to the great Stalin, […] instead of stories about workers in the United States who are beginning the New Year in a state of despondency, poverty and growing unemployment, guess what you find… Information! Can you imagine a newspaper like that? A newspaper that provides information!

I used the past tense to describe Russian society during the 1940s and 1950s. But it feels weirdly contemporary.

Grossman calls Stalingrad the turning point in Russian society, the first step toward totalitarianism. After Stalin’s death, his image of hero of the nation eroded. Outside of Russia, he’s considered as a monster. In Russia as well, just a bit.

Memorial (of which Oleg Orlov was chairman) fought for the discovery and rememberance of crimes committed during Soviet times. Memorial is now dissolved, Orlov is now an exhile.

The name of Volgograd may change again to Stalingrad.

New statues of Stalin pop a bit everywhere in Russia.

History books are re-edited to excise and shorten the shamefull parts of Stalin’s reign.

But most importantly, history is still “the history of Russian national glory”. Arguably, this vision of history, as seen by Germany and Italy, is exactly what started WWII.