LISTEN 
Do older people need specialist mental health services? Claudia Hammond investigates.
Friday 9 September 2011, 08:01
Editor's note: This coming Monday Andrew Marr discusses the life, work and legacy of the writer Vasily Grossman in a special Start the Week recorded at an event in Oxford to celebrate his novel, Life and Fate. Centred around the bloody battle of Stalingrad, Life and Fate charts the history of both a nation and a family in the turmoil of war. There is a special thirteen part adaptation of Life and Fate with Kenneth Branagh and David Tennant starting on Radio 4 on 18 September. On the Radio 4 blog Andrew Marr introduces what many see as one of the greatest novels of the modern age - PM.
Stalingrad, used under license from the Deutsches Bundesarchiv
Mikhail Suslov, the "cultural" boss of the Soviet Union in the early 1960s, was one of the worst. He read Life and Fate closely. He decided it could be published - but not for more than 200 years.
When you pick up or listen to Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate, you are experiencing a masterpiece plucked from oblivion. KGB officers had raided Grossman's flat and thought they had every copy of the manuscript, even down to copying paper and the ribbons from his typewriter. Grossman died thinking nobody would ever read it.
In fact, he'd given a copy to a friend, and it had been forgotten in a bag underneath some coats in a country home. It was copied by dissidents and made its way eventually to the West. We have Life and Fate by the slenderest of chances.
Why were the authorities so frightened?
Grossman had been a popular and patriotic novelist. He had narrowly escaped Stalin's terrifying Great Purge but when Hitler invaded Russia, became a journalist for the Red Army's newspaper Red Star.
Life and Fate is one of the best examples of journalism elevated and reshaped into a great novel. Grossman saw the Soviet retreat, the heroic defence of Stalingrad, titanic tank battles and the fall of Berlin. His unblinking, pulse-racing prose was devoured by soldiers and airmen all over Russia. He was nominated for the Stalin Prize.
He was also the first reporter to reach the hideous concentration camp Treblinka. His account of the Jewish holocaust there is one of the essential pieces of journalism of the twentieth century.
But there was a lot more to Grossman's uncovering than reporterly objectivity. He was a Jew, who had had to leave his mother behind when the Germans advanced; she was murdered and he never recovered from the guilt and despair. As a Jew, he fell foul of the Stalinist dogma that the Nazi atrocities were aimed indiscriminately at Soviet citizens. Describing the Nazi programme to exterminate Jews in particular was not welcome in the victorious Soviet Union. As a truth-teller, and a Jew, Grossman was in trouble.
After 1945 came full-blown Soviet anti-Semitism and a new round of purges. Grossman became a steadily more open critic. His last and uncompleted novel, Everything Flows, ends with flaming, raging pages which tear into the inhumanity and barbarism of Lenin and Stalin. Like his Treblinka report, it remains essential reading for anyone who wants to know the truth of that bloodiest of centuries.
English readers do not - as yet - have access to Grossman's "Soviet" novels, so we cannot compare them to Life and Fate. But this is the opposite of a propaganda or "political" novel. It is a book written in a spirit of love and pity for human weaknesses, as much as one which celebrates courage. It is a book of foolish regrets, greed, a sparkling love of nature, passionate arguments and tiny details - as well as fighting and killing and courage. Peace, and war.
It is also a book of ideas, up-to-date even today. Grossman was a highly educated scientist, fascinated by the latest thinking. Einstein and the curvature of space-time haunt the imagination of his physicist hero, Viktor Shtrum. He reflects that "The Day of Judgement had come... Truth had been sleeping for centuries... no one in the world could be happier than the scientist."
This book really does stretch its arms round all human life, as does another book about invasion and patriotism, Tolstoy's War and Peace. Tolstoy was one of Grossman's heroes - he paid a pilgrimage to the older writer's home, Yasnaya Polyana, just before it fell to the Nazi invasion. Grossman, ambitious though he was, would be first to say that to compare Life and Fate with the greatest novel of all is absurd.
But here is the extraordinary thing. Snatched from the gloves of the KGB, Grossman's novel, though not perfect, actually can stand this most extreme comparison. It has become a book every educated person should know.
Andrew Marr presents Start the Week
All posts are reactively-moderated and must obey the house rules.
Thursday 8 September 2011, 18:20
Friday 9 September 2011, 14:24
Behind the scenes at Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra from producers, presenters and programme makers.
Stay updated with the latest posts from the blog.
Subscribe using:
Cultural Exchange: Seventy-five leading creative minds choose their favourite cultural work
Find great Arts and Culture programmes, including Front Row's Cultural Exchange, on our website.
Listen to Front Row's Cultural Exchange
Follow BBC Radio 4 & BBC Radio 4 Extra on Twitter for programme highlights and interesting retweets.
Comment number 1.
Frank Ellis10th September 2011 - 15:02
As a scholar who has devoted a number of years to the study of Vasilii Grossman’s work, I shall be listening very carefully to the forthcoming serialisation of Life and Fate on BBC Radio 4. Some years ago I wrote a draft for a radio adaptation of Life and Fate.
When writing my draft I identified the following themes and scenes as critical for any radio adaptation. They are: the trials and tribulations of Viktor Shtrum, especially the machinations of the cowardly, conformist, politically-correct apparatchiks; Stalin’s phone call; the conflict between the deluded Krymov and the magnificent Grekov (house 6/1); the struggle for professional autonomy (Ershov, Novikov, Darenskii); a portrayal of Getmanov; maternal grief (Liudmila Shtrum); Grossman’s thoughts on the Holodomor and the Holocaust; the role of Russian nationalism at Stalingrad; intellectual freedom (see Mad’iarov’s wonderful defence of free speech); the meeting between Mostovskoi and Liss (← absolutely essential since it is the philosophical core of the novel); and some role for Ikonnikov-Morzh and his testament.
I had intended to submit this to the BBC for consideration in the hope that my draft would be adapted for radio. One reason I did not submit this draft to the BBC was that I was not satisfied that the BBC could be trusted to adapt Life and Fate for radio in a way that did justice to the novels main themes and characters. I feared that the left-wing biases of the BBC, well known, would corrupt any adaptation of the novel. Now, it may well be that the BBC’s radio adaptation will indeed do justice to Grossman and his novel and that my fears about BBC left-wing bias will prove to be groundless. Maybe the BBC will prove me wrong.
Finally, the caption which accompanies the photo on Andrew Marr’s blog states the following: “Battle of Stalingrad, 21st June 1942”. This is a serious error. The first units of German 6th Army to reach Stalingrad were columns of 16th Panzer Division on 23rd August 1942.
Frank Ellis (10th September 2011)
Frank Ellis is the author of Vasiliy Grossman: The Genesis and Evolution of a Russian Heretic (1994); From Glasnost’ to the Internet: Russia’s New Infosphere (1999); Political Correctness and the Theoretical Struggle: From Lenin and Mao to Derrida and Foucault (2004); Marxism, Multiculturalism and Free Speech (2006); E le loro madri piansero: La Grande Guerra patriottica nella letteratura russa sovietica e postsovietica (2010); The Damned and the Dead: The%2
Link to this (Comment number 1)
Comment number 2.
Paul Murphy12th September 2011 - 14:01
Hello Mr Ellis
Thank you for your comment and the correction. I have amended the caption which was based on the date of the picture held in the Deutsches Bundesarchiv. The archive itself does say: "For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Factual corrections and alternative descriptions are encouraged separately from the original description."
Many thanks again,
Paul Murphy
Link to this (Comment number 2)
Comment number 3.
blitzfish12th September 2011 - 14:52
Mr Ellis:
Your " I feared that the left-wing biases of the BBC, well known..." is a contention I as a left winger would dispute. I suspect you will be proved wrong and I would expect a retraction. As for the content of your self publicising contribution, perhaps this would have been better addressed to the producer.
I laud the BBC for adapting this great work, and look forward to it, warts and all.
Link to this (Comment number 3)
Comment number 4.
Frank Ellis12th September 2011 - 16:01
Dear Mr Blitzfish
Thank you for your response to my post. Andrew Marr, a BBC insider, has publicly conceded the left-wing biases of the BBC. Not that his confirmation is essential. Maybe I will be proved wrong by the BBC’s adaptation of Life and Fate. We shall see. Once I have finished my analysis of the serialisation I shall ask the BBC to post it. Should it be posted you can expose any criticisms I might make as unjustified.
Please do not misunderstand me. I think it is a good idea that Life and Fate is being serialised. My fear is that key themes will not be covered properly or will be ignored. Any retraction that I might have to make or would consider making could only be made to you once you have fully identified yourself.
Yours sincerely
Frank Ellis (12th September 2011)
Link to this (Comment number 4)
Comment number 5.
Frank Ellis12th September 2011 - 16:21
Dear Mr Murphy
Thank you for your response (understood). As I pointed out to Mr Blitzfish, it is my intention to write a full analysis of the radio serialisation of Life and Fate. I am doing this as part of a bigger research project related to Grossman.
In view of Mr Blitzfish’s response it occurred to me that other listeners might wish to read and to comment on my assessment. I would also value the critical comments (some of them I assume). If the BBC would like to post my full assessment on the relevant part of your web site, let me know and I will send you a full copy.
Yours sincerely
Frank Ellis (12th September 2011)
Link to this (Comment number 5)
Comments 5 of 12