Life and Fate

by Vasily Grossman

  Chernetsov raised his eyebrows. It looked grotesque – an eyebrow raised in neurotic bewilderment over an empty socket.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘It makes perfect sense. Our masters the Bolsheviks set up the Third International, and our masters the Bolsheviks developed the theory of so-called Socialism in One Country. That theory’s a contradiction in terms – like fried ice. Georgiy Plekhanov wrote in one of his last articles: “Socialism either exists as an international, world-wide system, or not at all.”’

  ‘So-called Socialism?’ repeated Mostovskoy.

  ‘That’s right, “so-called”. Soviet Socialism.’

  Chernetsov smiled and saw Mostovskoy smile back. They recognized their past in these jibes, in this mockery and hatred.

  The sharp blade of their youthful enmity flashed out anew, as though cutting through whole decades; this meeting in a concentration camp reminded them not only of years of hatred, but also of their youth.

  This man, for all his hostility, knew and loved what Mostovskoy had known and loved in his youth. It was Chernetsov – not Osipov or Yershov – who remembered the First Party Congress and names that everyone else had long ago forgotten. They talked excitedly about the relations between Marx and Bakunin, about what Lenin and Plekhanov had said about the hard-liners and the softs on the editorial staff of Iskra . . . How warmly Engels had welcomed the young Russian Social Democrats who had come to visit him when he was a blind old man! What a pain Lyubochka Axelrod had been in Zurich!

  Evidently sharing the same feelings as Mostovskoy, the one-eyed Menshevik grinned and said: ‘Touching accounts have been written of meetings between old friends. What about meetings between old enemies, between tired, grey-haired old dogs like you and me?’

  Mostovskoy glimpsed a tear on Chernetsov’s cheek. They both knew that they would die soon. The events of their lives would be levelled over; their enmity, their convictions, their mistakes, would all be buried beneath the sand.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mostovskoy. ‘If you fight against someone all your days, he becomes a part of your life.’

  ‘How strange to meet in this wolf-pit,’ said Chernetsov. Then, apropos of nothing at all, he murmured: ‘What wonderful words: “wheat”, “corn”, “April showers”.’

  ‘This camp’s a terrible place,’ said Mostovskoy. He laughed. ‘Anything else seems good in comparison – even meeting a Menshevik.’

  Chernetsov nodded sadly. ‘Yes, things are hard for you.’

  ‘Hitlerism!’ said Mostovskoy. ‘I never imagined there could be such a hell.’

  ‘Don’t try and fool me,’ said Chernetsov. ‘There’s not much you don’t know about terror!’

  The melancholy warmth of only a moment before might never have existed. They began to argue furiously and without mercy.

  The terrible thing about Chernetsov’s slander was that it contained an element of truth. What he did was to extrapolate general laws from occasional mistakes and incidental cruelties.

  ‘Of course it suits you to think that some people went too far in 1937,’ he said to Mostovskoy, ‘that the success of collectivization went to people’s heads, that your great and beloved leader is perhaps just a little cruel and megalomaniac. But the truth of the matter is very different: it’s precisely Stalin’s monstrous inhumanity that makes him Lenin’s successor. As you love to repeat – Stalin is the Lenin of today. You still think that the workers’ lack of rights and the poverty in the villages are something temporary, just growing pains. But you’re the true kulaks, you’re the true monopolists – the wheat you buy from a peasant for five kopecks a kilo and sell back to him for a rouble a kilo is the foundation-stone of your whole socialist edifice.’

  ‘So even you, an émigré and a Menshevik, admit that Stalin is the Lenin of today,’ retorted Mostovskoy. ‘It’s true: we are the heirs to all the generations of Russian revolutionaries from Pugachev to Razin. The heir to Razin, Dobrolyubov and Herzen is Stalin, not you renegade Mensheviks!’

  ‘Fine heirs you make!’ said Chernetsov. ‘Do you realize the meaning of the elections for the Constituent Assembly? After a thousand years of slavery! During an entire millennium Russia has been free for little more than six months. Your Lenin didn’t inherit Russian freedom – he destroyed it. When I think of the trials of 1937, I remember a very different legacy. Do you remember the secret-police chief Colonel Sudeykin? He and Degaev hoped to terrify the Tsar by inventing conspiracies, and then seize power themselves. And you think of Stalin as the heir to Herzen?’

  ‘You must be mad,’ said Mostovskoy. ‘Are you serious about Sudeykin? And what about the great social revolution, the expropriation of the expropriators, the factories seized from the capitalists, the land seized from the gentry? Has all that passed you by? Whose legacy is that? Sudeykin’s? And the way the workers and peasants have entered every sphere of social activity? Do you call that a legacy from Sudeykin? I almost pity you.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Chernetsov. ‘One can’t argue with facts. But one can explain them. Your Marshals and writers, your doctors of science, your people’s commissars are servants not of the proletariat, but of the State. And as for the people who work in the fields and on the shop-floors! I don’t think even you would have the nerve to call them masters. Fine masters they make!’

  He leaned towards Mostovskoy.

  ‘Incidentally, there’s only one of you I really respect – and that’s Stalin. He’s a real man! The rest of you are just cissies. He understands the true basis of Socialism in One Country: iron terror, labour camps and medieval witch-trials!’

  ‘I’ve heard all this shit before,’ said Mostovskoy. ‘But I must say, there is something particularly nasty about your way of putting things. Only a man who’s lived in your home since he was a child and then been thrown out onto the street can be that despicable. And do you realize what that man is? A lackey!’

  He stared hard at Chernetsov.

  ‘Still, I’d wanted to talk about what brought us together in 1898, not what separated us in 1903.’

  ‘So that’s what you wanted, is it? A cosy little chat about the days before the lackey was sent packing?’

  At that Mostovskoy really did get angry.

  ‘Yes, that’s just it! A runaway lackey. A lackey who’s been thrown out onto the street! Wearing kid gloves. We don’t wear gloves – we’ve got nothing to hide. We plunge our hands into dirt and blood. We came to the workers’ movement without Plekhanov’s kid gloves. What use have those gloves been to you, anyway? Thirty pieces of silver for some articles in the Socialist Messenger? While the whole camp – the English, the French, the Poles, the Norwegians and the Dutch – believes in us . . . ! The salvation of the world lies in our hands! In the power of the Red Army! The army of freedom!’

  ‘And is that how it’s always been?’ interrupted Chernetsov. ‘What about the pact with Hitler and the invasion of Poland in 1939? And the way your tanks crushed Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia? And the invasion of Finland? Your army and Stalin have taken back everything that was given to the small nations by the Revolution. And what about the suppression of the peasant rebellions in Central Asia? And Kronstadt? Was that in the name of freedom and democracy?’

  Mostovskoy held his hand up to Chernetsov’s face.

  ‘I’ve already told you – we don’t wear kid gloves.’

  Chernetsov nodded.

  ‘Do you remember Strelnikov, the political-police chief? He didn’t wear kid gloves either. He had revolutionaries beaten up till they were half-dead and then wrote out false confessions . . . What was the purpose of 1937? You say you were preparing to fight Hitler. Was your teacher Marx or Strelnikov?’

  ‘None of your filth surprises me,’ said Mostovskoy. ‘It’s what I’ve come to expect. But you know what does surprise me? Why should the Nazis put you in a camp? They hate us frenziedly. That’s clear enough. But why should Hitler imprison you and your friends?’

  Once again, as at the very beginning of the conve
rsation, Chernetsov smiled.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘they haven’t let me go yet. Maybe you should get up a petition for my release.’

  Mostovskoy was in no mood for joking.

  ‘No, you shouldn’t be in one of Hitler’s camps – not with the hatred you bear us. Nor should this character.’ He pointed at Ikonnikov who was making his way towards them.

  Ikonnikov’s hands and face were smeared with clay. He held out some dirty sheets of paper covered in writing and said: ‘Have a look through this. Tomorrow I might be dead.’

  ‘All right. But why’ve you decided to leave us so suddenly?’

  ‘Do you know what I’ve just heard? The foundations we’ve been digging are for gas ovens. Today we began pouring the concrete.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Chernetsov, ‘there were rumours about that when we were laying the railway-tracks.’

  He looked round. Mostovskoy thought Chernetsov must be wondering whether the men coming in from work had noticed how straightforwardly and naturally he was talking to an Old Bolshevik. He probably felt proud to be seen like this by the Italians, Norwegians, Spanish and English – and, above all, by the Russian prisoners-of-war.

  ‘But how can people carry on working?’ asked Ikonnikov. ‘How can we help to prepare such a horror?’

  Chernetsov shrugged his shoulders. ‘Do you think we’re in England or something? Even if eight thousand people refused to work, it wouldn’t change anything. They’d be dead in less than an hour.’

  ‘No,’ said Ikonnikov. ‘I can’t. I just can’t do it.’

  ‘Then that’s the end of you,’ said Mostovskoy.

  ‘He’s right,’ said Chernetsov. ‘This comrade knows very well what it means to attempt to instigate a strike in a country where there’s no democracy.’

  His argument with Mostovskoy had upset him. Here, in the Nazi camp, the phrases he had repeated so often in his Paris apartment sounded absurd; they rang false even in his ears. The other prisoners were always repeating the word ‘Stalingrad’. Like it or not, the fate of the world hung on that city.

  A young Englishman had made a victory sign and said: ‘I’m praying for you all. Stalingrad’s halted the avalanche.’ Words like these made Chernetsov feel happy and excited.

  He turned to Mostovskoy.

  ‘Heine said that only a fool reveals his weaknesses to an enemy. Very well, maybe I am a fool, but you’re right – I do understand the meaning of the struggle being fought by your army. That’s a bitter admission for a Russian socialist. It’s hard to both rejoice and suffer, to hate you but feel pride in your achievements.’

  He looked at Mostovskoy. For a moment it seemed as though even his good eye had filled with blood.

  ‘But do you really not understand, even here, that man cannot live without freedom and democracy?’

  ‘Come on now!’ said Mostovskoy sternly. ‘That’s enough of your hysterics.’

  He looked round. Chernetsov thought Mostovskoy must be wondering whether the men coming in from work had noticed how straightforwardly and naturally he was talking to a Menshevik, an émigré. He probably felt ashamed to be seen like this by the foreigners – and above all by the other Russians.

  Chernetsov’s blind, bloody pit stared at Mikhail Sidorovich Mostovskoy.

  Ikonnikov reached up and grasped the bare foot of the priest sitting on the second tier of boards. ‘Que dois-je faire, mio padre?’ he asked. ‘Nous travaillons dans una Vernichtungslager.’

  Gardi’s coal-black eyes looked round at the three men. ‘Tout le monde travaille là-bas. Et moi je travaille là-bas. Nous sommes des esclaves,’ he said slowly. ‘Dieu nous pardonnera.’

  ‘C’est son métier,’ added Mostovskoy.

  ‘Mais ce n’est pas votre métier,’ said Gardi reproachfully.

  ‘But that’s just it, Mikhail Sidorovich, you too think you’re going to be forgiven,’ said Ikonnikov, hurrying to get the words out and ignoring Gardi. ‘But me – I’m not asking for absolution of sins. I don’t want to be told that it’s the people with power over us who are guilty, that we’re innocent slaves, that we’re not guilty because we’re not free. I am free! I’m building a Vernichtungslager; I have to answer to the people who’ll be gassed here. I can say “No”. There’s nothing can stop me – as long as I can find the strength to face my destruction. I will say “No!” Je dirai non, mio padre, je dirai non!’

  Gardi placed his hands on Ikonnikov’s grey head.

  ‘Donnez-moi votre main,’ he said.

  ‘Now the shepherd’s going to admonish the lost sheep for his pride,’ said Chernetsov.

  Mostovskoy nodded.

  But, rather than admonishing Ikonnikov, Gardi lifted his dirty hand to his lips and kissed it.

  68

  The following day Chernetsov was talking to one of his few acquaintances among the Soviet Russians, a soldier called Pavlyukov who worked as a medical orderly in the infirmary. Pavlyukov was complaining about having to leave his present job to join the digging gangs.

  ‘It’s the Party members,’ he said. ‘They’ve got everything sewn up. They hate me because I bribed the right people and got myself a good job. But they know how to look after themselves, all right – they always end up working in the kitchens, washrooms and stores. Do you remember what it was like before the war, grandad? Well, it’s the same here. They even get their men in the kitchen to give them the biggest portions of food. An Old Bolshevik gets looked after as if he were in a health-resort, but the rest of us are no better than dogs. They just look straight through you even when you’re starving to death. Is that fair? After all, we’ve had to endure Soviet power too.’

  Chernetsov admitted it was twenty years since he had last lived in Russia. He knew that the words ‘émigré’ and ‘abroad’ immediately made Soviet Russians keep their distance. But Pavlyukov didn’t react at all.

  They sat down on a pile of planks. Pavlyukov, who seemed a real son of the people with his wide nose and forehead, looked at the sentry pacing about his concrete tower and said: ‘I’ve got no choice. I’ll have to join up with Vlasov. Otherwise it’ll be the end of me.’

  ‘Is that your only reason?’ asked Chernetsov. ‘Is it just a matter of survival?’

  ‘I’m certainly not a kulak,’ said Pavlyukov, ‘and I’ve never had to slave away in the camps felling trees, but I’ve got my own grudges against the Communists. “No, you mustn’t sow that . . . No, you mustn’t marry her . . . No, that’s not your job . . .” You end up turning into a parrot. Ever since I was a child, I’d wanted to open a shop of my own – somewhere a man could buy whatever he wanted. With its own little restaurant. “There, you’ve finished your shopping – now treat yourself to a beer, to some vodka, to some roast meat!” I’d have served country dishes. And my prices would have been really cheap. Baked potatoes! Fat bacon with garlic! Sauerkraut! And you know what I’d have given people to go with their drinks? Marrow-bones! I’d have kept them simmering away in the pot. “There, you’ve paid for your vodka – now have some black bread and some bone-marrow!” And I’d have had leather chairs so there wouldn’t be any lice. “You just sit down and be quiet – we’ll look after you!” Well, if I’d come out with any of that, I’d have been sent straight off to Siberia. But I really don’t see what harm it could have done anyone. And I’d only have charged half the price of the State shops.’

  Pavlyukov cast a sidelong glance at Chernetsov.

  ‘Forty men from our barracks have already signed up.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For a bowl of soup. And a warm greatcoat. And because they don’t want to be worked to death.’

  ‘Any other reasons?’

  ‘Some of them have ideological reasons.’

  ‘What exactly?’

  ‘Oh, various ones. The people killed in the camps. The poverty in the villages. They just can’t stand Communism.’

  ‘No,’ said Chernetsov, ‘that’s not right. It’s despicable.’

  The Soviet citizen
looked at the émigré with half-mocking, half-bewildered curiosity.

  ‘It’s just not right,’ repeated Chernetsov. ‘It’s dishonourable. This is no time to settle scores. And it’s the wrong way to go about it. You’re not being fair to yourself or to your country.’

  He stood up and rubbed his buttocks.

  ‘No one could accuse me of sympathy for the Bolsheviks,’ he said. ‘But believe me – now’s not the time to settle accounts. Don’t do it. Don’t join Vlasov!’ In his excitement he had begun to stammer. ‘Listen to me, comrade,’ he repeated, ‘don’t do it!’

  Pronouncing the word ‘comrade’ took him back to the days of his youth. ‘Oh God,’ he muttered, ‘oh God, could I ever . . . ?’

  . . . The train drew away from the platform. The air was thick with dust and carried a variety of disparate smells – lilac, fumes from the kitchen of the station restaurant, smoke from the locomotives, the smell that comes from rubbish-dumps in the spring.

  The lantern drew slowly further away. In the end it was just a still point among the red and green lights.

  The student stood for a while on the platform and then went out through the gate beside the station. As she said goodbye, the woman had flung her arms round his neck and kissed his hair and forehead, overwhelmed – like he was – by a sudden surge of emotion . . . He walked away from the station. His head span and a new happiness welled up inside him; it was as though something were beginning that would eventually fill his whole life.

  He remembered that evening when he finally left Russia. He remembered it as he lay in hospital after the operation to remove his eye. He remembered it as he walked through the cool, dark entrance to the bank where he worked.

  The poet Khodasevich, who had also left Russia for Paris, had written about just this:

  A pilgrim walks away in the mist:

  It’s you who comes into my mind.

  On a fume-filled street a car drives past:

  It’s you who comes into my mind.

  I see the lamps come on at six,

  But have only you in my mind.