A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army, 1941–1945 (review)

One would be hard pressed to identify any glimmer of light amid the darkness that befell Soviet society in the summer of 1941. One of the few rays was the rediscovery of self-assertiveness by Soviet servicemen, which had been dulled by more than a decade of terror, indoctrination, and humiliation. Few were more indelible than the famous trio of writers-turned-frontline correspondents: Il′ia Ehrenburg, Konstantin Simonov, and Vasilii Grossman. Their candid and often moving reports from the front were a breath of fresh air for millions of citizens accustomed to the dreary dullness of Soviet reportage. Later, the publication of Ehrenburg’s and Simonov’s memoirs were events whose significance went far beyond their literary tributes.¹ Yet it is Grossman, the one who never had the chance to record his memoirs or even witness the publication of his great wartime masterpiece, who towers above them all. Universally recognized as one of the finest writer-philosophers of the 20th century as well as an uncompromising thinker, Grossman today is widely read and well known, in sharp contrast to his two politically savvy fellow writers. Even those who have not read his novels are familiar with the KGB’s confiscation and ban of his epic, Life and Fate, an episode that embittered Grossman’s twilight and was epitomized by Mikhail Suslov’s cynical remark that the book could well be published in the Soviet Union … only in 200 years or so. Grossman died shortly after the encounter; Suslov lived much longer. But the novel saw the light in Suslov’s lifetime, first outside the Soviet Union in 1980 and then inside it in 1989. Grossman, it would seem, would have the last laugh, albeit posthumously. But would he?

Although the new publication does not add much new to the large segments of Grossman’s wartime diaries that had already been published during and after the writer’s lifetime, it does offer a cohesive and uncensored narrative, including intimate and often heartbreaking entries that break taboos of Soviet and post-Soviet writing about the war, such as the Red Army’s mass rapes in Germany that were excised from previous publications. Capably edited and translated by Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova, and clear of major errors for the most part,² the diary is a superb addition to the now growing number of Soviet personal accounts of the great cataclysm of World War II.

Grossman was not an ordinary observer or participant in the great crucible. His insights and reflections were only sharpened by some of his distinctive features: a privileged member of the caste of Soviet intelligentsia who had no qualms about actual cohabitation with rank-and-file soldiers; an intellectual who was gradually developing a devastating criticism of the essence and politics of the Soviet enterprise while adhering to some of its foundational strictures; and an assimilated Jew who, unlike so many of his brethren, did not develop antagonistic attitudes toward the people and traditions he had personally left behind.

Grossman’s diary does, however, convey human themes and thoughts shared by millions of ordinary men and women who passed through Armageddon and recorded by scores of diarists and memoirists. Grossman was there in person all the way from the initial defeats and retreats, through Stalingrad and onto Berlin, trying his best to adhere to his motto of “[following] the ruthless truth of war” (114), whatever it meant and wherever it would lead him. Anxiety over the fate of loved ones, longing, and the eventual pain upon learning of their deaths were the lot of many Soviet citizens and soldiers, even if only a few could have articulated them with Grossman’s lucid eloquence. Throughout the four-year war and well after it, Grossman was obsessed with the fate of his mother, who remained in German-occupied territory and was murdered by the...