Life and Fate () is a novel by Vasily Grossman. Written in the Soviet Union in 1959, it narrates the story of the family of a Soviet physicist, Viktor Shtrum, during the Great Patriotic War, which is depicted as the struggle between two comparable totalitarian states. A multi-faceted novel, one of its main themes is the tragedy of the common people, who have to fight both the invaders and the totalitarianism of their own state. In 2021, the critic and editor Robert Gottlieb, writing in The New York Times, referred to Life and Fate as "the most impressive novel written since World War II."
Vasily Grossman, a Ukrainian Jew, was rejected for military service in 1941 and became a correspondent for the Soviet military paper Krasnaya Zvezda. He spent approximately 1,000 days on the front lines, roughly three of the four years of the conflict between the Germans and Soviets. He was one of the first journalists to write about the genocide of the Jewish people in Eastern Europe and was present at many famous battles. Life and Fate was his defining achievement, its writing in part motivated by guilt over the death of his mother in the Berdychiv massacre at Berdychiv (UkSSR) in September 1941.Chandler, Robert. Introduction to Life and Fate. page xi. 1985. New York, New York Review of Books Classics.
Life and Fate is technically the second half of the author's conceived two-part book under the same title, with the first half published in 1952 under the title For A Just Cause. Although the first half, written by Grossman during the rule of Joseph Stalin, expresses loyalty to the regime, Life and Fate shows the political disillusion of the protagonist and sharply criticises Stalinism. For that reason, the manuscript was censored in the Soviet Union at the time and was only published in the 1980s, nearly two decades after Grossman's death, first in the West and then on Russian soil under glasnost.
Plot summary Life and Fate is a sprawling account of life on the Eastern Front, with countless plotlines taking place simultaneously all across Russia and Eastern Europe. Although each story has a linear progression, the events are not necessarily presented in chronological order. Grossman will, for example, introduce a character, then ignore that character for hundreds of pages, and then return to recount events that took place the very next day. It is difficult to summarize the novel, but the plot can be boiled down to three basic plotlines: the Shtrum/Shaposhnikov family, the Battle of Stalingrad, and life in the prison camps of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. Although Life and Fate is divided into three parts, each of these plotlines is featured in each section.
Viktor Shtrum is a brilliant physicist who, with his wife, Lyudmila, and daughter, Nadya, has been evacuated from Moscow to Kazan. He is experiencing great difficulty with his work, as well as with his family. He receives a letter from his mother from inside a Nazi Jewish ghetto informing him that she is soon to be killed by the Germans. Lyudmila, meanwhile, goes to visit her son from her first marriage, Tolya, in an army hospital, but he dies before her arrival. When she returns to Kazan, she is extremely detached and seems still to be expecting Tolya's return. Viktor finds himself engaging in anti-Soviet conversations at the home of his colleague, Sokolov, partly to impress Sokolov's wife, Marya (Lyudmila's only friend). He consistently compares political situations to physics, and remarks that fascism (Nazism) and Stalinism are not so different. He later regrets these discussions out of fear that he will be denounced, an indiscretion that plagues his decision-making throughout the novel.
Suddenly, Viktor makes a huge mathematical breakthrough, solving the issues that had hindered his experiments. Viktor's colleagues are slow to respond, but eventually come to accept the genius of his discovery. After moving back to Moscow, however, the higher-ups begin to criticize his discoveries as being anti-Leninist and attacking his Jewish identity. Viktor, however, refuses to publicly repent and is forced to resign. He fears that he will be arrested, but then receives a call from Stalin himself (presumably because Stalin had sensed the military importance of nuclear research) that completely and immediately reverses his fortune. Later, he signs a letter denouncing two innocent men and is subsequently racked by guilt. The last details about Viktor regard his unconsummated affair with Marya.
The events recounted at Stalingrad center on Yevghenia Shaposhnikova (Lyudmila's sister), Krymov (her former husband), and Novikov (her lover). After reconnecting with Novikov, Yevghenia evacuates to Kuibyshev. Novikov, the commander of a Soviet tank corps, meets General Nyeudobnov and Political Commissar Getmanov, both of whom are Party hacks. Together they begin planning the counter-assault on Stalingrad. Novikov delays the start of the assault for fear of unnecessarily sacrificing his men. Getmanov later denounces Novikov and he is summoned for trial, even though the tank attack was a complete success.
Meanwhile, Krymov, a Political Commissar, is sent to investigate House 6/1, where a tiny group of soldiers have held back the Germans for weeks, even though they are completely surrounded and cut off from all supplies. Grekov, the commanding officer, refuses to send reports to HQ, and is disdainful of Krymov's rhetoric. He later wounds Krymov in his sleep, causing him to be evacuated from the house. Soon after, House 6/1 is completely leveled by German bombs. Krymov, a staunch Communist, is then accused of being a traitor and is sent to Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, where he is beaten and forced to confess. Yevghenia decides not to marry Novikov and goes to Moscow to try and visit Krymov. He receives a package from her and realizes that he still loves her but may never be released from prison.
The sections that take place in the camps have few recurring characters, with the exception of Mostovskoy, an old Bolshevik who takes part in a plot to rebel against the Germans, but is dismayed by the prevailing lack of faith in communism. His interrogator, Sturmbannführer Liss, asserts that fascism and communism are two sides of the same coin, which upsets Mostovskoy greatly. He is later killed by the Germans for his part in the uprising. In one scene, Liss tells Mostovskoy that both Stalin and Hitler are the leaders of qualitatively new formation: "When we look at each other's faces, we see not only a hated face; we see the mirror reflection. ... Don't you recognize yourself, your [strong] will in us?" Grossman also focuses on Sofya Levinton, a Jewish woman on her way to a Nazi concentration camp.
The final chapter introduces a set of characters who remain anonymous: an elderly widow observing her tenants, a wounded army officer recently discharged from hospital, his wife and their young daughter.In his Introduction to his translation of Life and Fate (page xxi), Robert Chandler identifies the anonymous couple in the final chapter as the relatively minor character Major (now Lt. Col.) Byerozkin and his wife. It is implied, however, that the officer returning to his family is Major Byerozkin, a recurring character from Stalingrad who is shown to be a kind man struggling to retain his humanity.
Main characters Viktor Pavlovich Shtrum Viktor Shtrum is the primary figure in Grossman's novel, largely based on the author himself. Although there are a multitude of characters in Life and Fate, much of the novel's plot revolves around Shtrum and his family. Shtrum is married to Lyudmila. He works as a nuclear physicist and is a member of the Academy of Sciences. A crucial aspect of Shtrum's character is his academic work. He is constantly thinking about his exploration of nuclear physics. This obsession with his work is obvious from the very start of the novel through the thoughts of Lyudmila, from whom he has drawn apart. Before the war, Shtrum's family had been living in Moscow, but the city's evacuation caused them to move into Kazan. Throughout the novel, Shtrum hints at his ambivalent feelings toward the state, becoming increasingly disillusioned with Stalin's regime. He is at times an unsympathetic man – self-absorbed, irritable, difficult to live with – yet he is also deeply human, struggling to remain true to himself while navigating the innumerable moral quandaries of life in Soviet society. The war also forces Shtrum to come to terms with his Jewish heritage, largely through the traumatic loss of his mother, who was murdered by the Nazis in Ukraine. Viktor learns this through her last letter to him; Grossman has her suffer the same fate as his own mother, who was killed in similar circumstances. This passage is both one of the most iconic and the most devastating in the novel. As the story goes on, Viktor also becomes increasingly aware of the latent anti-Semitism of the world in which he lives. Lyudmila ('Lyuda') Nikolaevna Shaposhnikova Lyudmila is married to Viktor Shtrum and has a daughter with him named Nadya. This is her second marriage. She was originally married to Abarchuk, who has been sent to a Soviet labor camp. In the beginning of the novel, it is clear that Lyudmila and Viktor have drifted apart. Although their estrangement is not expressed openly by either character, it is evident through Lyudmila's discussion of her eldest son, Tolya, whom she had with Abarchuk. Lyudmila discusses how Viktor and his mother, Anna Semyonovna, always showed a preference to Nadya and ignored Tolya. Lyudmila describes this best when she says “Nadya, Nadya, Nadya ... Nadya's got Viktor's eyes ... Nadya's absent-minded, Nadya's quick-witted, Nadya's very thoughtful.” Lyudmila's separation and apathy towards Viktor and Nadya grow greater after the death of Tolya. This plot thread is one of the first to occur in the novel, and Grossman plunges us into Lyuda's consciousness as she struggles to come to terms with the untimely loss of her son. For a long time afterward, she talks to Tolya constantly, sometimes out loud, a habit which Viktor finds hard to cope with. Yevgenia ('Zhenya') Nikolaevna Shaposhnikova Yevgenia is Lyudmila's younger sister. She was originally married to Nikolay Grigorevich Krymov, but when the reader is introduced to her in the novel, she is in a relationship with Colonel Pyotr Pavlovich Novikov. After moving to Kuibyshev, Yevgenia lives with an old German woman named Jenny Genrikovna, who had once worked as the Shaposhnikov family's governess. Yevgenia had a good relationship with Jenny, but after the old woman is deported, along with other Germans living in Kuibyshev, Yevgenia lives alone. Although she is a beautiful, charming, and highly intelligent woman, Yevgenia has much trouble acquiring a residence permit or a ration card. After many run-ins with Grishin, the head of the passport department, she is finally able to get these documents using societal connections. She receives aid in acquiring official documentation from Limonov, a man of letters, and Lieutenant Colonel Rizin, her boss at the design office – both of whom are romantically interested in her. As the novel goes on, Zhenya shows herself to be both a strong and profoundly sympathetic character. Alexandra Vladimirovna Alexandra is mother of Lyudmila and Yevgenia.
Dementiy Trifonovich Getmanov