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)

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/05/05/stalingrad-1952-by-vasily-grossman-translate... ( )

Cronicas de a segunda guerra mundial ( )

Stupendo, bellissimo, vivissimo. Essere dentro la guerra, nei generali e nei soldati semplici, nel nemico e fra i tuoi commilitoni, fra la gente comune, nel freddo e nel caldo, al fronte e nelle retrovie: libro fantastico, da leggere e rileggere.
841 pagine di splendore. ( )

With the military and strategic insights of a war correspondent and a clear understanding of how to create a feeling of belonging and contribution, Grossman writes a book about war that couldn't be more authentic - and patriotic, for that matter.
He touches all the right spots as he describes an incredible communal effort of the whole country through all levels of society and no matter what distance to the front. The choice and description of characters are so magnificently diverse that the war eats up the entire existence of al those concerned, even a mine worker in the urals.
I myself can't understand what might have been so threatening to the authorities that the book was censored and stowed away by the Stalinist regime after the war, but maybe that is a problem of the second part of the book that was made into "Life and Fate".
As it is, the book paints an incredibly realistic picture of the battle of Stalingrad as deisive for the fate of the nation, with some insights left over for a differentiated - if obviously and rightly negative - view of the Germans who are however not en bloc mindless followers of the Nazi regime.
Reading this book was especially challenging given the fact that Ukraine, that seems to have suffered from Stalinist Russia back then, is suffering from Russia again and has to fend off an unjustifiable onslaught just as Russia had to fend off Germany's 80 years ago.

Chi ha letto "Vita e destino" non può non leggere "Stalingrado", che è la prima parte del dittico qui ricostruita sulle fonti reintegrando le parti eliminate o modificate dalla censura sovietica.
Poi, inevitabilmente, tocca rileggere la seconda parte. Bellissimo, grandissimo, davvero il "Guerra e pace" del Novecento. ( )