Ya Bass

A few months ago I read this article by Martin Kettle in the Guardian about Russian author Vassily Grossman and his novel Life and Fate. According to Kettle;

Little by little, Vasily Grossman seems to be working his way into the consciousness of the modern world. If his name already means something to you, and especially if you have read his novel Life and Fate, you may share my view that it is only a matter of time before Grossman is acknowledged as one of the great writers of the 20th century. If today is the first time you have encountered his name, take note of it, for your life may be about to change.

So I followed his advice and took note of Grossmans name and got a copy of the book. Anyway a couple of months after reading it for the first time and a day after reading it for the second time i've come to the conclusion that Kettle is correct when he says it is one of the great works from the 20th century. It can and should be mentioned amongst the all time classics like War and Peace or Don Quixote.

We are, however, lucky that we get the chance to read it at all because after Grossman submitted Life and Fate for publication the KGB raided his apartment. The manuscripts, carbon copies, notebooks, as well as the typists' copies and even the typewriter ribbons were seized. He wasn't arrested, but his book was! With the post-Stalinist thaw underway by this time, Grossman wrote to Khrushchev in protest;

What is the point of me being physically free when the book I dedicated my life to is arrested… I am not renouncing it… I am requesting freedom for my book.

It was punished with what amounted to a 200 year jail sentence. Fortunately at some point in the 1980s, sadly long after Grossmans death, someone smuggled out the last remaining manuscript of the book (all the others had been destroyed) and it was published in Switzerland. Whoever it was that saved that last copy and smuggled it out deserves the praise of a generations to come.

Time is a transparent medium. People and cities arise out of it, move through it and disappear back into it. It is time that brings them and time that takes them away. But the understanding that had just come to Krymov was avery different one: the understanding that says, "This is my time," or, "No, this is no longer our time." Time flows into a man or State, makes its home there and then flows away; the man and the State remain, but their time has passed. Where has their time gone? The man still thinks, breathes and cries, but his time, the time that belonged to him and to him alone, has disappeared.
There is nothing more difficult than to be a stepson of the time; there is no heavier fate than to live in an age that is not your own. Stepsons of the time are easily recognized: in personnel departments, Party district committees, army political sections, editorial offices, on the street ... Time loves only those it has given birth to itself: its own children, its own heroes, its own labourers. Never can it come to love the children of a past age, any more than a woman can love the heroes of a past age, or a stepmother love the children of another woman.
Such is time: everything passes, it alone remains; everything remains, it alone passes. And how swiftly and noiselessly it passes. Only yesterday you were sure of yourself, strong and cheerful, a son of the time. But now another time has come - and you don't even know it.

As it's main subject area is the Eastern Front during World War Two, Stalingrad, the German concentration camps, the Soviet gulags, the Lubyanka and so all this makes it sound like it is going to be a thorougly depressing book - but despite what the subject matter is it's not really. The basic premise is summed up by Grossman himself in the question;

Does man lose his innate yearning for freedom? The fate of both man and the totalitarian State depends on the answer to this question. If human nature does change, then the eternal and world wide triumph of the dictatorial state is assured; if his yearning for freedom remains constant, then the totalitarian state is doomed.

For Grossman the yearning for freedom is constant, there is after all;

no higher happiness than to be able to crawl on one's stomach, out of the camp, blind, one's legs amputated, and to die in freedom, even if only ten yards from the cursed barbed wire.

this is a partial repost from an entry i have made on my personal blog