Life and Fate

by Vasily Grossman

  ‘Do you know the surname of the young grandee?’ Sokolov asked suddenly, as though reading Viktor’s thoughts. ‘Do you realize whose relative he is?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  Sokolov leant over and whispered in Viktor’s ear.

  ‘You don’t say!’ exclaimed Viktor. He remembered the way both Suslakov and Shishakov had deferred to this youth. ‘O-oh’ he said. ‘So that’s what it’s all about. Now I understand.’

  Sokolov laughed.

  ‘Well, you’ve already established a cordial relationship with the scientific section and the higher echelons of the Academy. You’re like the Mark Twain hero who boasts about his income to the tax-inspector.’

  Viktor didn’t appreciate this witticism.

  ‘You were standing right beside me,’ he replied. ‘Did you really not hear our argument? Or did you prefer not to get involved in my conversation with the tax-inspector?’

  Sokolov smiled. His small eyes looked suddenly kind and beautiful.

  ‘Don’t be upset, Viktor Pavlovich. Surely you didn’t really expect Shishakov to appreciate your work? My God, what a lot of nonsense all this is. But your work’s different. That’s real.’

  In his eyes and voice Viktor sensed the warmth and seriousness he had hoped to find that autumn evening in Kazan.

  The meeting began. The speakers talked about the task of science during this difficult time, about their own readiness to devote their strength to the popular cause and to help the Army in its struggle against German Fascism. They spoke about the work of the various Institutes of the Academy, about the assistance that would be given to scientists by the Central Committee of the Party, about how comrade Stalin, the leader of the Army and the People, still had time to concern himself with scientific questions, about the duty of every scientist to justify the trust placed in him by the Party and by comrade Stalin himself.

  There was also mention of some organizational changes occasioned by the new set-up. The physicists learned with surprise that they themselves were dissatisfied with the projects of their Institute – too much attention, apparently, was being given to purely theoretical matters. Suslakov’s words, ‘The Institute is cut off from life’, were whispered around the hall.

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  The position of scientific research in the country had been discussed by the Central Committee. Apparently the Party was now principally concerned with the development of physics, mathematics and chemistry. The Central Committee considered that science must move closer to industry and become more integrated with real life.

  Stalin himself had attended the meeting. Apparently he had walked up and down the hall, pipe in hand, stopping now and then with a pensive look on his face – to listen either to the speaker or to his own thoughts.

  There had been fierce attacks on idealism and on any tendency to underestimate Russian science and philosophy. Stalin had spoken twice. When Shcherbakov had proposed a reduction in the Academy’s budget, Stalin had shaken his head and said: ‘No, we’re not talking about making soap. We are not going to economize on the Academy.’

  And during a discussion of the danger of idealist theories and the excessive admiration of certain scientists for Western science, Stalin had nodded and said: ‘Yes, but we must protect our scientists from Arakcheevs.’fn1

  Having first sworn them to secrecy, the scientists present at this meeting talked about it to their friends. Within a few days, the entire scientific community in Moscow – small groups of friends and close family circles – were discussing every detail of it in hushed voices.

  People whispered that Stalin had grey hair, that some of his teeth were black and decayed, that he had beautiful hands with fine fingers, that his face was pock-marked.

  Any youngster who happened to be listening was warned: ‘And you watch it! Keep your mouth shut or you’ll be the ruin of us all.’

  Everyone expected a considerable improvement in the position of scientists; Stalin’s words about Arakcheev held out great hopes.

  A few days later an important botanist was arrested, Chetverikov the geneticist. There were various rumours about the reason for his arrest: that he was a spy; that he had associated with Russian émigrés during his journeys abroad; that he had a German wife who had corresponded before the war with her sister in Berlin; that he had tried to instigate a famine by introducing inferior strains of wheat; that it was to do with a remark he had made about ‘the finger of God’; that it was on account of a political anecdote he had told to a childhood friend.

  Since the beginning of the war there had been relatively little talk of political arrests. Many people, Viktor among them, thought that they were a thing of the past. Now everyone remembered 1937: the daily roll-call of people arrested during the night; people phoning each other up with the news, ‘Anna Andreevna’s husband has fallen ill tonight’; people answering the phone on behalf of a neighbour who had been arrested and saying, ‘He’s gone on a journey, we don’t know when he’ll be back.’ And the stories about the circumstances of these arrests: ‘they came for him just as he was giving his little boy a bath’; ‘they came for him at work . . . at the theatre . . . in the middle of the night’; ‘the search lasted forty-eight hours, they turned everything upside down, they even took up the floorboards’; ‘they hardly looked at anything at all, they just leafed through a few books for show’.

  Victor remembered the names of dozens of people who had left and never returned: Academician Vavilov, Vize, Osip Mandelstam, Babel, Boris Pilnyak, Meyerhold, the bacteriologists Korshunov and Zlatogorov, Professor Pletnyov, Doctor Levin . . .

  It wasn’t important that these were famous and outstanding people; what mattered was that all those arrested – however famous or however unknown – were innocent.

  Was all this going to begin again? Would one’s heart sink, even after the war, when one heard footsteps or a car horn during the night?

  How difficult it was to reconcile such things with the war for freedom . . . ! Yes, they had been fools to talk so much in Kazan.

  A week after Chetverikov’s arrest, Chepyzhin announced that he was resigning from the Institute of Physics.

  The President of the Academy had called at Chepyzhin’s house; apparently Chepyzhin had been summoned by either Beria or Malenkov, but had refused to alter the Institute’s research programme. In view of Chepyzhin’s services to science, the authorities had been reluctant to resort to extreme measures. Pimenov, the young administrative director who was something of a liberal, was removed from his post at the same time. Shishakov was then appointed both administrative director and scientific director.

  It was rumoured that, as a result of all this, Chepyzhin had had a heart attack. Viktor rang him immediately to arrange to go and see him, but the phone was answered by the housekeeper, who said that Dmitry Petrovich really had been ill during the last few days; on his doctor’s advice he and Nadezhda Fyodorovna had gone to the country and would not be back for two or three weeks.

  ‘It’s like pushing a boy off a tram,’ Viktor said to Lyudmila. ‘And they call it defending us from Arakcheevs. What does it matter to physics whether Chepyzhin’s a Marxist, a Buddhist or a Lamaist? Chepyzhin’s founded his own school. Chepyzhin’s a friend of Rutherford. Every street-sweeper knows Chepyzhin’s equations.’

  ‘That’s putting it a bit strongly,’ said Nadya.

  ‘And you watch it,’ said Viktor. ‘Keep your mouth shut or you’ll be the ruin of all of us.’

  ‘I know,’ said Nadya. ‘Your speeches are only for domestic consumption.’

  ‘Yes, my dear Nadya,’ said Viktor meekly, ‘but what can I do to change decisions taken by the Central Committee? Anyway Dmitry Petrovich himself said he wanted to resign. Even though, as we say, it was “against the wishes of the people”.’

  ‘You shouldn’t get so steamed up about it,’ said Lyudmila. ‘Besides, you were always arguing with Dmitry Petrovich yourself.’

  ‘There’s no true friendship without discussion.�
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  ‘That’s the trouble,’ said Lyudmila. ‘You and your discussions. You’ll end up having your laboratory taken away from you.’

  ‘That’s not what worries me,’ said Viktor. ‘Nadya’s right: my speeches are just for domestic consumption . . . Why don’t you phone Chetverikov’s wife? Or go and see her? You’re a friend of hers.’

  ‘That simply isn’t done,’ said Lyudmila. ‘Anyway I don’t know her that well. How can I help her? Why should she want to see me? Have you ever phoned anyone in that situation?’

  ‘I think one should,’ said Nadya.

  Viktor frowned. It was Sokolov, not Lyudmila and Nadya, whom he really wanted to talk to about Chepyzhin’s resignation. But he stopped himself – it really wasn’t something to discuss on the phone.

  It was odd though. Why Shishakov? It was clear that Viktor’s latest work was very important. Chepyzhin had said at the Council of Scientists that it was the most important development in Soviet theoretical physics for the last decade. And then they’d gone and put Shishakov in charge of the Institute. Was it a joke? A man who’d seen hundreds of photographs with the trajectories of electrons going off to the left, and had then been shown photographs with the same trajectories going off to the right . . . It was as though he’d been presented, on a silver plate, with the opportunity to discover the positron. Young Savostyanov would not have missed it. But Shishakov had just pouted and said the photographs must be defective.

  What was most amazing of all was that no one was in the least surprised by this sort of thing. Somehow it all seemed quite natural. Viktor’s wife and friends, even Viktor himself, all considered it the normal state of affairs. Shishakov was a suitable director, and Viktor was not.

  What was it Postoev had said? ‘Still, what matters is that we’re both Russians.’ But then it would be difficult to be more Russian than Chepyzhin.

  On his way to the Institute the next morning, Viktor imagined that everyone – from doctors to laboratory assistants – would be talking only of Chepyzhin. By the main entrance to the Institute stood a Zis limousine. The chauffeur, a middle-aged man in glasses, was reading a newspaper. On the staircase Viktor met the old caretaker. That summer they’d had tea together in the laboratory.

  ‘The new director’s just arrived,’ the old man announced. Then he asked sadly: ‘What will become of our Dmitry Petrovich?’

  The laboratory assistants were discussing how to set up the equipment that had just arrived from Kazan. There were piles of large boxes in the main hall. The new apparatus from the Urals had also arrived. Nozdrin was standing beside a huge crate. Viktor thought he looked very arrogant.

  Perepelitsyn was hopping around the crate on his one leg, holding his crutch under his armpit.

  ‘Look, Viktor Pavlovich!’ said Anna Stepanovna, pointing at the boxes.

  ‘Even a blind man could see all this,’ said Perepelitsyn.

  Anna Stepanovna, however, hadn’t really been referring to the crates.

  ‘I see,’ said Viktor. ‘Of course I see.’

  ‘The workers will be arriving in an hour’s time,’ said Nozdrin. ‘Professor Markov and I have made the arrangements.’ He spoke in the calm, slow voice of someone who knows he’s the boss. This was his hour of glory.

  Viktor went into his office. Markov and Savostyanov were sitting on the sofa, Sokolov was standing by the window, and Svechin, the head of the magnetic laboratory next door, was sitting at the desk and rolling a cigarette.

  He stood up as Viktor came in.

  ‘This is the boss’s chair.’

  ‘No, no, sit down,’ said Viktor. ‘What are we discussing at the conference?’

  ‘The special stores,’ said Markov. ‘Apparently Academicians will be allowed to spend fifteen hundred roubles, while us lesser mortals will only be allowed five hundred roubles – the same as People’s Artists and great poets like Lebedev-Kumach.’

  ‘We’re beginning to set up the equipment,’ said Viktor, ‘and Dmitry Petrovich is no longer here. The house is burning, but the clock still keeps time, as the saying goes.’

  No one responded to this change of subject.

  ‘My cousin passed by yesterday on his way back from hospital to the front,’ said Savostyanov. ‘We wanted to celebrate, so I bought a half-litre of vodka off a neighbour for 350 roubles!’

  ‘That’s amazing!’ said Svechin.

  ‘We’re not just talking about making soap,’ said Savostyanov brightly. He saw from his colleagues’ faces that his joke had fallen flat.

  ‘The new boss is here already,’ said Viktor.

  ‘A man of great energy,’ said Svechin.

  ‘We’ll be all right with Aleksey Alekseyevich,’ said Markov. ‘He’s had tea in comrade Zhdanov’s own house.’

  Markov really was remarkable. He seemed to have very few friends and yet he always knew everything. He knew that Gabrichevskaya from the next-door laboratory was pregnant, that the husband of Lida the cleaning lady was in hospital again, that Smorodintsev’s doctoral thesis had been rejected . . .

  ‘That’s right,’ said Savostyanov. ‘We may laugh at Shishakov’s notorious “mistake”, but, all in all, he’s not such a bad type. By the way, do you know the difference between a good type and a bad type? A good type is someone who behaves swinishly in spite of himself!’

  ‘Mistake or no mistake,’ said Svechin, ‘they don’t make someone an Academician for nothing.’

  Svechin was a member of the Party bureau of the Institute. He had only joined the Party in autumn 1941 and, like many new members, was unshakeably orthodox. He carried out any task entrusted to him by the Party with an almost religious earnestness.

  ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about, Viktor Pavlovich,’ Svechin went on. ‘The Party bureau wants you to speak at our next meeting on the subject of our new programme.’

  ‘A failure of leadership? The errors of Chepyzhin? Is that what you want me to talk about?’ Viktor was very annoyed. The conversation hadn’t taken the direction he wanted. ‘I don’t know if I’m a good type or a bad type myself,’ he went on, ‘but I’m very reluctant to behave swinishly.’

  Turning to his colleagues, he asked: ‘What about you, comrades? Are you happy about Chepyzhin’s resignation?’

  He was counting on his colleagues’ support and was quite taken aback when Savostyanov gave a non-committal shrug of the shoulders and said: ‘He’s getting old now.’

  All Svechin said was: ‘Chepyzhin refused to undertake any new projects. What else could we do? Anyway, he chose to resign. Everyone wanted him to stay.’

  ‘So an Arakcheev has been uncovered at last,’ said Viktor.

  ‘Viktor Pavlovich,’ said Markov in a hushed voice, ‘I’ve heard that Rutherford once vowed never to work on neutrons. He was afraid it would lead to the development of a colossal explosive force. Very noble, I’m sure – but that kind of squeamishness is plain senseless. Apparently Dmitry Petrovich was equally holier-than-thou.’

  ‘Heavens!’ thought Viktor. ‘How on earth does he know all this?’

  ‘Pyotr Lavrentyevich,’ he said, ‘it seems we’re in a minority.’

  Sokolov shook his head. ‘In my opinion, Viktor Pavlovich, this is no time for individualism and insubordination. We’re at war. Chepyzhin was wrong to think only of himself and his personal interests when his superiors asked something of him.

  ‘You too, Brutus!’ joked Viktor, trying to mask his confusion.

  Curiously, however, as well as feeling confused, Viktor was almost pleased. ‘Of course,’ he thought, ‘just what I expected.’ But why ‘of course’? He hadn’t expected Sokolov to respond like that. And even if he had, why should he be pleased?

  ‘You really must speak,’ said Svechin. ‘There’s no need whatsoever to criticize Chepyzhin. Just a few words about the potential of your research in the light of the decisions taken by the Central Committee.’

  Before the war Viktor had met Svechin occasionally at orchestral concerts in
the Conservatory. He had heard that in Svechin’s youth, when he was a student at the Faculty of Maths and Physics, he had written futurist poetry and worn a chrysanthemum in his button-hole. Now, he spoke about the decisions of the Party bureau as though they were formulations of universal truths.

  Sometimes Viktor wanted to dig Svechin in the ribs, wink and say: ‘Come on now, let’s be frank!’ He knew, though, that there was no way of talking frankly with Svechin. Now, however, amazed by Sokolov’s speech, Viktor did speak his mind.

  ‘What about Chetverikov’s arrest?’ he asked. ‘Is that linked with our new tasks? And is that why Vavilov was sent to prison? And if I allow myself to say that I consider Dmitry Petrovich a greater authority on physics than comrade Zhdanov, the head of the scientific section of the Central Committee, or even than . . .’

  Everyone’s eyes were on Viktor, expecting him to pronounce the name of Stalin. He made a dismissive gesture and said: ‘All right. Enough of that. Let’s go through to the lab.’

  The boxes from the Urals had already been opened. The main part of the apparatus, three quarters of a ton in weight, had been carefully teased out from a mass of wood shavings, paper and rough pieces of board. Viktor laid his hand on the polished metal surface.

  A stream of particles would gush forth from this metal belly – like the Volga by the small chapel on Lake Seliger.

  There was something good about the look in everyone’s eyes. Yes, it was good to know the world had room for such a wonderful machine. What more could one ask for?

  At the end of the day Viktor and Sokolov were left alone in the laboratory.

  ‘Why strut about like a cock, Viktor Pavlovich?’ said Sokolov. ‘You lack humility. I told Masha about your success at the meeting of the Academy – how you managed, in only half an hour, to get off on the wrong foot with both the new director and the young grandee from the scientific section. Masha was terribly upset; she couldn’t sleep all night. You know the times we live in. And I saw your eyes as you looked at this. Why sacrifice everything just for a few words?’