"The Sistine Madonna”
Written in 1955; first published in Znamya (May 1989).
* the Kishinyov pogrom: This pogrom in April 1903, in the city now known as Chişinău (the capital of Moldova), was instrumental in convincing tens of thousands of Russian Jews to emigrate.
* Przemyśl and Verdun: In 1914–15, the Russians besieged Austrian forces in the fortress of Przemyśl (now in southeastern Poland) for 133 days; a soldier in Stepan Kolchugin says to a comrade that the shell holes there have become lakes of blood because no more blood can be absorbed by the earth. The battle of Verdun, fought between the French and German armies, lasted for most of 1916 and resulted in more than 250,000 deaths.
* The Sistine Chapel: Raphael’s painting is known as The Sistine Madonna not because it ever hung in the Sistine Chapel but because it includes a portrayal of Pope Sixtus II, who was martyred in AD 258. This error does not, of course, invalidate Grossman’s juxtaposition of one of the most sublime, and one of the most infernal, moments of Western civilization. Pope Sixtus’s robe is decorated with the stations of the cross; this, perhaps, led Grossman to see the baby Jesus as going forward “to meet his fate.”
* the Horst Wessel song: A marching song written by Hans-Horst Wessel (1907–30), a Nazi activist killed during a brawl with a group of Communists. This song became the Nazi Party’s anthem.
* Moabit prison: The Gestapo used this Berlin prison as a detention center.
* to the sands of Kazakhstan: The mother and son have evidently been arrested as kulaks (supposedly exploitative peasants) and are now being deported.
* in Konotop, at the station: Konotop is a city in northern Ukraine. Grossman was seeing his mother off on a train to Odessa. He described this incident in 1930, in a letter to his father.
* one place of exile to another: Stalin was exiled to eastern Siberia several times. In 1903 he was sent to the village of Novaya Uda, in the province of Irkutsk. He arrived there on November 17, 1903, but escaped on January 5, 1903. In July 1913 he was exiled to Turukhansk, and in early March 1914 he was transferred to the small village of Kureika, north of the Arctic Circle.
PART THREE: Late Stories
* usually considered his masterpiece: The relationship between the two novels is hard to define. Life and Fate has been referred to as “a sequel” or “a semi-sequel” to For a Just Cause; it is also sometimes called the second half of a dilogy.
* growing into a deeper feeling: Nikita Zabolotsky, The Life of Zabolotsky (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1994), 321; see also 323–24 and 336.
* the text he submitted: Fyodor Guber, Pamyat'i pis'ma (Moscow: Probel, 2007), 99.
* Lyolya Klestova: Most published sources refer to this woman as Lyolya Dominikina. Korotkova has explained the origin of this confusion: she remembers Lyolya Klestova as one of the four people—along with herself, Zabolotskaya, and Grossman—who attended the funeral of Grossman’s father in 1956. Some time after Grossman’s death, Zabolotskaya told Korotkova that it was Klestova who had preserved the manuscript of Life and Fate in a locked suitcase under her bed in a communal apartment. Critics and journalists writing about Grossman knew from Zabolotskaya and Korotkova that the manuscript had been preserved by a woman called “Lyolya” but they confused this Lyolya with another Lyolya, the niece (or possibly daughter from a previous marriage) of a family friend by the name of Dominika, who had at one time been married to Grossman’s father. In his letters, however, Grossman refers to this other Lyolya not as “Lyolya Dominikina” but as “Dominika’s Lyolya” (Dominikina Lyolya). No one by the name of Lyolya Dominikina ever existed. Symbolically, however, it seems appropriate that the preservation of Grossman’s manuscript should be ascribed to a mythical figure. See also Yekaterina Korotkova, “O moyom ottse,” Sel´skaya molodyozh´ (March 1993): 48.
* ever considered so dangerous: The OGPU confiscated two copies of the manuscript of The Heart of a Dog from Mikhail Bulgakov’s flat in May 1926; two years later, however, these were returned. A comparison of the authorities’ treatment of Life and Fate with their treatment of Doctor Zhivago is revealing. Pasternak showed Doctor Zhivago to friends and editors and even trusted the manuscript to the Soviet postal service; his offense lay not in writing the novel but in publishing it abroad.
* with Lipkin and Klestova: Before his death Grossman arranged for Klestova to give her copy to another old friend, Vyacheslav Loboda, who lived in a town about 150 kilometers from Moscow. In 1988 Loboda’s widow gave this copy to Guber and it was used to correct textual lacunae before the republication in Moscow of the text established by Yefim Etkind and Shimon Markish.
* his vegetable garden: Tatiana Menaker, “Posvyashchayetsya Vasiliyu Grossmanu,” Narod moy 18, 30 (September 2007).
* His walk became a shuffle: Semyon Lipkin, Kvadriga (Moscow: Knizhny Sad, 1997), 582.
* They strangled me in a dark corner: Ibid., 575.
* Even the cat reports to the OGPU: In Russian: Koshka sluzhit v GPU.
* “frozen in time”: E-mail from Tatiana Menaker. Korotkova suggests that Menaker’s sense of Grossman’s tension and sadness can, at least in part, be accounted for by a tension (which Korotkova learned about only long after Grossman’s death) between Grossman and Sherentsis. Her own memories of her father are very different.
* to visit a urologist: Lipkin, 615.
* several months in the hospital: According to Korotkova, John and Carol Garrard are mistaken in ascribing Grossman’s death to stomach cancer.
* reaching out for more work: Ibid., 189.
* I want to write about him: Guber, 41. Grossman continued, probably to the end of his life, to revere Zhelyabov and The People’s Will. In 1961, in a letter to his old friend Yevgenia Taratuta, he wrote: “I’m growing old now, my hair is going white, but my feelings toward the members of The People’s Will are not aging. My feelings about them are the same as when I was sixteen. There is something divine and holy about them, even though they were engaged in work that was bloody and terrible.” [A. Bocharov, Vasily Grossman (Moscow: Sovetsky pisatel´, 1990), 318.]
* theme in Grossman’s work: In his posthumously published “Thoughts and Stories About Animals and People” [“Mysli i rasskazy o zhivotnykh i lyudyakh,” Raduga (October 1988): 122–23], Grossman attacks hunting, fishing, and our treatment of domestic pets. He had a deep love of animals. According to Korotkova, “There were always cats and dogs in his home, and [my father] had a wonderfully funny way of talking to them. I was always entranced when I overheard him chatting to the cat called Misha.” [Korotkova, “O moyom ottse,” 48–50.]
* it’s a terrible phenomenon: Lipkin, 589.
* avid to know: RGALI, fond 1710, opis' 3, ed. khr., 23.
* even in the orphanage: In Grossman’s manuscript there is, in fact, mention of one more mother. [See note for This is my mama.)
* the warming breath of motherly love: Yekaterina Korotkova-Grossman, “Neozhidanny Grossman,” Al'manakh 7–8, 1 [available at http:// almanah-dialog.ru/archive/archive_7-8_1/pr13].
* Grossman admired wholeheartedly: Guber, Korotkova, and Lipkin have all written about the close friendship between the two writers and their admiration of each other’s work.
* “without any settled position”: David Ortenberg, “Andrey Platonov—Frontovoy Korespondent,” in Andrey Platonov: Vospominaniya sovremennikov, N. V. Kornienko and E.D. Shubina, eds. (Moscow: Sovremenny pisatel', 1994), 105.
* material relating to the Minsk ghetto: Platonov is not usually listed among the contributors to The Black Book. Nina Malygina, however, has discovered a document from the archives of the Jewish Anti- Fascist Committee confirming the transmission to Platonov of a variety of materials relating to the Minsk ghetto. Malygina transcribes this document [GARF, fond 8114, opis' 1, delo 945, 164] in her article “Yevreiskaya tema v tvorchestve Andreya Platonova,” in Semanticheskaya poetika russkoi literatury. K yubileyu professora Nauma Lazarevicha Leidermana (Yekaterinburg: 2008), 128–39. See also Shimon
Redlich, War, Holocaust and Stalinism (Luxembourg: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995), 353–54.
* Grossman visited him almost daily: Lipkin, 527. Platonov’s daughter-in-law, Tamara Grigorievna Platonova, has confirmed this in conversation with Malygina [e-mail from Malygina].
* said in Russia about Platonov: Lipkin, 528.
* known only to them: Bocharov, 323.
* like the life of a plant: Lipkin, 527.
* part of a splendid person: Guber writes that Grossman “was ecstatic (byl v vostorge) about his friend’s work and knew all its subterranean [that is, unpublished] parts.” [Guber, 41.] And Lipkin heard Platonov read aloud from Soul (Dzhan), which was first published only fifteen years after Platonov’s death [Lipkin, 524]. There are, however, no accounts of Platonov showing, or reading, Happy Moscow to anyone. It is not impossible that Grossman knew this passage about Sartorius, but it is unlikely.
* life in all its manifestations: Lipkin, 526.
* the Russia that was sent to the camps: Lydia Chukovskaya, Zapiski ob Anne Akhmatovoy, vol. 2 (Moscow: 1997), 190.
* allow themselves to be fooled: Bocharov, 336.
* dominates Grossman’s thoughts: “The Avalanche” (1963) can be read as an expression of Grossman’s anxiety about what would happen to his own legacy. An old woman has just died. Her children and grandchildren have difficulty dividing up her belongings; some are rude and grabbing, others hypocritical. The story ends on a note of unexpected grace: Irina, the youngest of the grandchildren, is walking down the street early on a sunny morning. Someone on the other side of the street is whistling the Toreador’s aria from Carmen; a man walking beside Irina joins in, awkwardly humming the same aria. The two men glance at each other. Irina thinks, “Bizet’s inheritance seems so easy to share!” Like Irina, Grossman can be understood to feel both envy and wonder with regard to Bizet. A composer, at least in some respects, is more fortunate than a novelist. A long, complex, and subversive novel cannot, after all, be passed from person to person across a street.
* Viktor Shklovsky: Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman, The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry, David Patterson, trans. and ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002), 219–22.
* I didn’t betray anyone, did I?: Anna Berzer, Proshchanie (Moscow: Kniga, 1990), 251.
"The Elk”
This was first published in Moskva (January 1963), but there has been disagreement about when it was written. Some Russian editions give 1938–40. The four-volume collected works, however, gives 1960–62; Guber broadly agrees. Korotkova recalls her father showing her the story during one of the January holidays she spent with him, probably in 1954 or 1955. This recollection is confirmed by Bocharov, who cites a letter indicating that Grossman sent “The Elk” to a Moscow literary journal in 1956 [Bocharov, 177]. Guber states that the hero is at least partly based on the figure of Pyotr Vavrisevich (the husband of Grossman’s wife’s elder sister, Maria Mikhailovna), who was housebound for many years. The head of an elk he had once shot hung on the wall of his room. Guber remembers Pyotr Vavrisevich being disabled as far back as the late 1930s—so this does not help us to date the story. Yury Bit-Yunan, however, has found that Grossman’s handwriting in the manuscript of this story is much closer to his handwriting in “Mama” than to his handwriting in “A Small Life” or “In the Town of Berdichev.” This confirms the view held by both Guber and Korotkova that it is indeed a late work.
* The People’s Will: The most important of these figures are Andrey Zhelyabov (1851–81); his wife, Sofya Perovskaya (1853–81); and Nikolay Kibal'chich (1853–81). All three were members of The People’s Will, and all three were executed for their part in the assassination, on March 1, 1881, of Tsar Alexander II. Sofya Perovskaya was the first woman to be executed in Russia for political reasons. Nikolay Kibal´chich, the organization’s explosives expert, is a distant relative of the writer Viktor Kibal´chich (better known by his pseudonym of Victor Serge). Nikolay Ishutin (1840–79), one of the first Russian utopian Socialists, was arrested in April 1866 in connection with an earlier attempt to assassinate Tsar Alexander II. The Chaikovtsy was a populist organization that flourished in Petersburg from 1869 to 1874; many of their members later joined The People’s Will. The Black Repartition was a short-lived populist organization opposed to the use of terror. [See also note for I want to write about him.]
* Lizogub of The People’s Will: Sinegub and Lizogub are both historical figures, but Dmitry Petrovich’s confusion is nonetheless comical. “Sinegub” means “blue lips”; “Lizogub” means “lick lips.”
* nitroglycerine: Nitroglycerine, which has the effect of widening the blood vessels, has been used since the late nineteenth century to treat angina.
* DDT on the elk’s head: The insecticidal properties of DDT were discovered in 1939. It was most widely used in agriculture between 1950 and 1980, though in the United States it was banned as early as 1972. Reference to it in this story, which appears to be set in the mid- or late 1930s, seems to be a slip on Grossman’s part.
"Mama”
Written in 1960; first published in Znamya (May 1989).
* an army commissar, second grade: An army commissar was the commissar responsible for the moral and political education of an entire army, just as a battalion commissar was responsible for the moral and political education of a battalion. Grossman’s middle-aged NKVD officer is equivalent in rank to a general; the only higher rank was army commissar, first grade.
* Moscow Tailoring Combine: Clothes produced by this factory were notoriously ugly. A sketch by the Soviet satirists Ilf and Petrov describes a young man and woman who fancy each other when they meet on a beach, then put on their Moscow Tailoring Combine clothes and run away from each other in horror, each shocked at the ugliness of the other.
* Negoreloye Station: From 1921 until 1939 the small town of Negoreloye, fifty kilometers west of Minsk, lay on the Polish-Soviet frontier. During the Great Terror there were many instances of Soviet citizens being recalled from foreign capitals only to be taken off the train at Negoreloye and shot by the NKVD. By having Nadya’s parents bend down over her, perhaps saying their last goodbyes, Grossman suggests they may have foreseen their fate. His first draft includes the more explicit description: “her mother’s pale face with eyes wet from tears, and the gloomy face of her father, who already knew his implacable fate.” [RGALI, fond 1710, opis´ 3, ed. khr., 23.]
* Marfa Domityevna: We have slightly changed the nanny’s patronymic. In reality, the name of the little girl’s nanny was Marfa Grigoryevna, but Grossman calls her Marfa Dementyevna. The Russian name “Dementii” is derived from the Latin name “Domitianus,” which is related to the participle domitus, meaning “having been tamed.” We have chosen to emphasize this etymology rather than risk the reader being misled by the apparent link between “Dementyevna” and “demented.”
* and sang her a little song: The man with the guttural voice and the laugh is Vyacheslav Molotov, chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars (the equivalent of prime minister) from 1930 to 1941. The other three men, in order of appearance, are Betal Kalmykov, the Party boss in Karbardino-Balkaria, an autonomous republic in the North Caucasus; Georgy Malenkov, the Central Committee’s personnel officer; and Lazar Kaganovich (“Iron Lazar”), the People’s Commissar for Transport.
* he had a little daughter too: These two “guests” are Kliment Voroshilov, a marshal of the Soviet Union, and Lavrenty Beria, who in November 1938 was to replace Yezhov as head of the NKVD.
* pictures she had seen of them: Stalin’s three most loyal henchmen.
* Mama, Nyanya, Papa: “Mama, Nanny, Daddy”—all three words are stressed on the first syllable.
* and understood, a great deal: In both manuscript and typescript this is followed by two sentences that Grossman later deleted [RGALI, fond 1710, opis'3, ed. khr., 23]:
Marfa Domityevna understood that she must never, through word or look, show how much she had seen and understood
—neither to the cleaner, nor to the yellow-eyed cook, nor to the guards who opened the door to her.
Her calm, just, and straightforward mind noticed many things that the perceptive and sensitive Isaak Babel, whom she thought the kindest of Nikolay Ivanovich’s guests, would have been avid to know.
* to be heard in their home: Kalmykov remained in his post as Communist Party First Secretary of the Kabardino-Balkar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic until November 1938. In 1940, on Beria’s orders, he was tortured and shot.
* speak again on the telephone: The childhood friend is Zinaida Glikina, who went to school with Yevgenia in Gomel. Glikina was arrested on November 15, 1937. Yevgenia and her husband would have understood that Beria was responsible both for this arrest and for that of another close friend of Yevgenia’s [Marc Jansen and Nikita Petrov, Stalin’s Loyal Executioner: People’s Commissar Nikolai Ezhov 1895–1940 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2002), 123, 168, and 191; see also Vitaly Shentalinsky, Donos na Sokrata (Moscow: Formika–S, 2001), 418].
* and in the Butyrka: Three of Moscow’s most notorious prisons. Feliks Dzerzhinsky (founder of the Cheka) and the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky were both imprisoned in the Butyrka under the tsarist regime; Isaak Babel and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn were two of the many writers imprisoned there under the Soviet regime.
* Bay of Nogayevo: Towns and regions associated with important labor camps.
* This is my mama: Another passage that Grossman chose to shorten [RGALI, fond 1710, opis´ 3, ed. khr., 23]. Both the manuscript and the first version of the typescript read:
“Marfa Domityevna,” said the mistress of the house. “Let me introduce you, this is my mama.” And Marfa Domityevna immediately thought that the mother and daughter had similar noses and eyes.
Marfa Domityevna could see that the old woman felt timid both before her and before Nadya, that she was afraid of touching Nadya’s toys, that she was afraid of the cook.
The Road Page 35