Stalingrad

by Vasily Grossman

  On this warm summer evening, as the war raged not far away on the Don steppe, moving relentlessly east, everything in the city seemed strangely solemn and full of meaning: the loud tread of the patrols, the rumble of a nearby factory, the hoots of the Volga steamers, even the meek silence.

  They sat down on an empty bench. Two young couples were sitting nearby. One of the young men, a soldier, got to his feet, walked over to Andreyev and Mostovskoy, his shoes squeaking on the gravel, took a quick look at them, went back again and said something in a low voice. There was the sound of girlish laughter. The two old men coughed in embarrassment.

  “The young,” said Andreyev. He sounded both critical and admiring.

  “I’ve heard that there’s a factory where some of the workers are evacuees from Leningrad,” said Mostovskoy. “I want to go and talk to them. I’m from Leningrad too.”

  “Yes, the Red October steelworks. That’s where I work. I don’t think there are that many of your evacuees. But come along anyway. Come and visit us.”

  “Were you in the revolutionary movement?” asked Mostovskoy. “Back in the days of the tsars . . .”

  “Not really,” said Andreyev. “All I ever did was read leaflets and spend a couple of weeks in prison for taking part in a strike. And I spoke now and again to Alexandra Vladimirovna’s husband. I was a stoker on a steam tugboat and he was a student, getting a few months of practical experience. We used to go up on deck together and chat.”

  Andreyev took out his tobacco pouch. There was a rustle of paper as they rolled their cigarettes. Mostovskoy’s lighter sent up a shower of sparks, but the wick obstinately refused to catch.

  “The old men are giving it their all,” one of the young soldiers said loudly. “They’re trying to operate a Katyusha!”

  There was more girlish laughter.

  “Damn it!” said Mostovskoy. “I’ve forgotten my treasure. Alexandra Vladimirovna gave me a box of matches.”

  “But tell me—what do you really make of it all?” said Andreyev. “Things are going badly, aren’t they? Say what you like about antis and Antaeuses—the Germans still keep advancing.”

  “Things are going badly,” replied Mostovskoy, “but the Germans will still lose the war. I’m sure Hitler has more than a few enemies even in Germany. Germany too has its internationalists and its revolutionary workers.”

  “What makes you so sure?” said Andreyev. “I’ve heard what some of our tank crew have to say—men who’ve taken their share of German prisoners. They say the Germans are all the same. Working class or not, it makes no difference.”

  “We truly are in trouble,” Mostovskoy said quietly, “if an old worker like yourself thinks there’s no difference between the German government and the German working class.”

  Andreyev turned towards Mostovskoy and said sharply, “I understand. You want the Soviet people to fight against Hitler. And you also want them to remember the words, ‘Workers of the World, Unite!’27 But the only thing that matters today is who’s with us and who’s against us. Your thinking’s like the teachings of Christ. All very beautiful—but nobody actually lives by them. They just soak the whole earth with blood.”

  “Times change,” said Mostovskoy. “Nikolay Shaposhnikov once taught you about Marx—and he learned from the books I’d written. And now it’s your turn to teach me.”

  Too sad and exhausted to argue, Mostovskoy slumped down; he could almost have been asleep. In his mind’s eye he was picturing a scene from two decades earlier: a huge congress hall, countless eyes full of excitement and joy, hundreds of faces he loved, dear Russian faces, together with the faces of fellow Communists from all over the world—France, England, Japan, India, Belgium, Africa and America, Bulgaria, Germany, China, Italy, Hungary, Latvia—who were friends of the young Soviet Republic. This huge hall had fallen silent—as if the very heart of humanity had missed a beat—as Lenin raised one hand and, with clarity and assurance, told the Comintern conference, “Soon we will witness the foundation of an international Soviet Republic.”

  Feeling a sudden surge of warmth and trust towards the man sitting beside him, Andreyev quietly lamented, “My son is fighting on the front line, but his wife just wants to go to the cinema with her girlfriends and have a good time. And she and my wife, Varvara, are at each other’s throats. It’s a sorry story.”

  12

  MOSTOVSKOY’S wife had died many years ago. Living alone had taught him the importance of being orderly. He kept his large room clean and tidy. Sheets of paper, journals and newspapers were stacked in neat piles on his desk and the books on his shelves were all in their assigned places. Mostovskoy usually did most of his work in the morning. During the last few years he had been lecturing on philosophy and political economy and writing entries for an encyclopedia and a dictionary of philosophy. His articles were mostly short but always required a lot of work and the correlation of many different sources. Each year he received several packages of books from his editors. He had already written about Heraclitus, Fichte and Schopenhauer. The beginning of the war had found him in the middle of an unusually long article about Kant. Mostovskoy usually signed his articles just with his initials: M. M. His editors kept trying to persuade him to use his full name, but Mostovskoy obstinately and crossly went on using his initials.

  He did not know many people in Stalingrad. Now and again other teachers of philosophy and political economy would drop by for consultations. They were a little afraid of him; he was impatient, and unyielding in argument.

  That spring Mostovskoy had contracted acute pneumonia. The doctors had thought this would be the end of him; he was an old man and he had not yet recovered from his months in besieged Leningrad. But Mostovskoy did recover. His doctor then drew up a careful programme detailing each step of the gradual transition he was to make from the sickbed back to his ordinary routine.

  Mostovskoy read through the programme, put blue or red ticks against particular points—and then, during his third day of being up and about, took a cold shower and polished the parquet floor of his room.

  He was determined and impassioned; he had no time for affability and good sense.

  Sometimes he dreamed of the past and heard the voices of friends long dead. Or he might be giving a speech in a small hall in London. Quick, alert eyes were watching him; he saw black ties, high starched collars and the bearded faces of friends.

  Or he would wake in the middle of the night and be unable to get back to sleep. One after another, pictures and scenes came to mind: student meetings; arguments in the university park; the path to Bakunin’s grave in Bern; the rectangular stone over Marx’s grave; a steamer on Lake Geneva; Sevastopol and a winter storm on the Black Sea; a stifling railway carriage taking political prisoners to Siberia, the rhythmic knocking of the wheels, songs sung in unison, a guard banging a rifle butt against the door; the early Siberian twilight, snow squeaking beneath his feet, a distant yellow light in the window of his hut, the light he had walked back to through all the dark evenings of his six years of exile.

  Those dark, difficult days were the days of his youth, days of unrelenting struggle in anticipation of the great future that was the purpose of his life on earth.

  He remembered his never-ending labour, the many occasions during the first years of the Soviet Republic when he had worked through the night, his work for the Provincial Commissariat of Enlightenment and for the Army Political Enlightenment Committee, his contribution to the theory and practice of the Five Year Plans and the general electrification plan, his work for the State Centre for Scientific Research.

  Sometimes he would let out a long sigh. Why was he sighing? What was he regretting? Or was this merely the sigh of a tired, sick heart struggling day and night to force the blood through his clogged, sclerotic arteries?

  Sometimes he would go down to the Volga before dawn, then walk a long way along the deserted shore, beneath the steep cliffs. He would sit on the cold stones and observe the first stirrings of light. He like
d to watch the grey night clouds swell with the rosy warmth of life while the hot smoke from the factories turned suddenly dull and ashen.

  In the slant sunlight the black water would seem younger. The very tiniest of waves would creep timidly over the dense flat sand and every least grain would start to glitter.

  Sometimes Mostovskoy remembered the Leningrad winter: mountains of snow and ice on the streets; the silence of death and the roar of death; a piece of bread on the table; sledges carrying water; sledges carrying firewood; sledges carrying corpses covered with white sheets; frozen paths down to the Neva; frost-covered apartment walls; his many journeys to factories and military units; the talks he gave to meetings of volunteer militia; a grey sky sliced by searchlights; dark windows with pink stains that were the reflections of burning buildings; the howl of air-raid sirens; sandbags around the equestrian statue of Peter the Great; and, everywhere in the city, the living memory of the first beats of the Revolution’s young heart: the Finland station, the deserted beauty of the Field of Mars, the Smolny Institute;28 and—over and above all this—the pale, deathly faces and living, suffering eyes of children and the patient heroism of women, workers and soldiers. And his heart would be overwhelmed by a burden that was heavier, a pain more extreme, than he felt it could bear. “Why, why did I ever leave?” he would ask in anguish.

  Mostovskoy wanted to write a book about his life. He already had a clear idea of its basic structure: childhood; his village; his father, who had been a sexton; the school he had attended as a small boy; the political underground; the years of Soviet construction.

  He did not like to correspond with those of his old friends whose letters were mainly about illnesses, sanatoriums, blood pressure and loss of memory.

  Mostovskoy knew one thing for sure: never in Russian history had events succeeded one another with such dizzying speed as during the last twenty-five years. Never had life’s various strata been so comprehensively rearranged. Everything had, of course, always been changing and flowing. Even before the Revolution it had been impossible for one man to step into the same river twice—but in those days the river had flowed very slowly, its banks had never looked any different and Heraclitus’s revelation had seemed strange and obscure.29

  Was there anyone at all in Soviet Russia who would feel surprised by the revelation that had so struck the Greek philosopher? This truth had moved from the realm of philosophical speculation to that of common experience; it was now equally obvious to full members of the Academy of Sciences, to factory and collective-farm workers and to children still at school.

  Mostovskoy had thought a great deal about all this. Precipitate, indomitable movement! There was no escaping it. Movement was everywhere: in the almost geological transformation of the landscape; in the vast campaign that had brought literacy to the entire country; in the new cities appearing all over the map; in the new districts of cities, in the new streets and buildings, in the ever-growing number of new inhabitants of these buildings. This movement had mercilessly plunged once-famous names into obscurity and at the same time—from remote and misty villages, from the vast spaces of Siberia—it had called up hundreds of new names now celebrated throughout the country. Journals published ten years ago seemed like ancient yellowed papyri, so momentous were the events of the last decade. People’s living conditions had been transformed. Soviet Russia had advanced a hundred years. With its vast landmass and forests the new country had leaped into the future, changing everything that had seemed most unchangeable: its agriculture, its roads, the beds of its rivers. Thousands of inns, taverns and cabaret venues had disappeared—as had parish schools, institutes for the daughters of the nobility, monastery lands, private estates, stock exchanges and the grand mansions of wealthy capitalists. Scattered and annihilated by the Revolution, whole classes of people had disappeared: not only the exploiters but also those who enabled them to exploit; people whose misdeeds had been castigated in popular songs but whose position had seemed unassailable; people whose characteristics had been described by the greatest of Russian writers: landlords, merchants, factory owners, stockbrokers, cavalry officers, moneylenders, chamberlains, police chiefs and police sergeants. Senators had disappeared—as had full state councillors, privy councillors and collegiate assessors—the whole of that complex and cumbersome world of Russian officialdom, divided into no fewer than seventeen different ranks. Organ grinders, foot-men and butlers had disappeared. Concepts and words had disappeared: Lady, Sir, Your Grace, Your Excellency, and the like.

  Workers and peasants had become the masters of life. A whole new panoply of professions had been born: industrial and agricultural planners, peasant scientists, beekeeper scientists, cattle breeders, vegetable growers, kolkhoz engineers, radio operators, tractor drivers, electricians. Russia had attained an unprecedented level of literacy and general enlightenment, a sudden leap whose power can be compared only with that of some cosmic force; if there were an electromagnetic equivalent for Russia’s cultural explosion in 1917, astronomers in other galaxies would have registered the birth of a new star, a star growing ever brighter. The common people, the “fourth estate” of workers and peasants, put their strength, their honest directness and all their unique abilities at the service of the state—they became field marshals, generals, the fathers of giant cities, important Party officials at every level, the directors of mines, factories and agricultural projects. The hundreds of new industrial enterprises brought out new and unexpected abilities in people. Pilots, flight mechanics, air navigators, radio operators, drivers of cars and trucks, geologists, industrial synthetic chemists, electrochemists, photochemists, thermochemists, specialists in the applications of high-voltage electricity, automobile and aircraft engineers—these were the protagonists of the new Soviet society.

  Even now, in this darkest period of the war, Mostovskoy could see the might of the Soviet state. He knew it was many times greater than the strength of the old Russia; he understood the strength that its millions of working people now drew from their faith, literacy, knowledge and love for the Soviet motherland.

  He believed in victory. And he had only one wish: to forget his age and join in the fighting, to take part in the struggle for the freedom and dignity of the people.

  13

  AGRIPPINA Petrovna, the brisk, alert old woman who washed Mostovskoy’s clothes, prepared his morning tea and brought him his meals from the Party canteen, could see how shaken he was by the way the war was going.

  Often, when she came round in the morning, she found his bed as she had made it the day before. Mostovskoy would be sitting by the window in his armchair, a full ashtray on the sill beside him.

  Agrippina Petrovna had known better days: before the Revolution her late husband had owned a Volga ferry. In the evening, she usually had a glass of moonshine in her room. Not wanting to dilute its effect, she didn’t eat anything with it. Then she would go out and sit on a bench in the yard. Her companions would be sober, but she herself would be feeling pleasantly tipsy and she would chatter away animatedly. Usually she covered her mouth with the hem of her shawl and tried not to breathe over the others: Markovna, the severe concierge, and Anna Spiridonovna, the cobbler’s widow. Agrippina did not like gossip, but her need for conversation—especially when she’d had a drink—was overwhelming.

  “Well, my friends,” she said, brushing the dust off the bench with her apron before she sat down. “There was a time when it seemed to old women like us that the Communists were closing churches.” She turned towards the open ground-floor windows and continued in a loud voice, “This accursed Hitler is truly the Antichrist. Truly Hitler is the Antichrist—and may no good ever come to him, in this world or in the next. I’ve heard tell that the Metropolitan bishop is celebrating the liturgy in Saratov and that prayers are now being said in every one of the churches. Yes, the churches are packed. And it’s not only the old—it’s young and old alike. Everyone has risen up against Hitler, everyone has arisen as one against this accursed An
tichrist.” Then she went on more quietly, “Yes, my girls, our beloved Soviet authorities are leaving us. People in our building are packing their belongings. They’re going to the market and buying suitcases. They’re sewing bags and sacks. As for my dear Mostovskoy, he looks ashen. Today he’s been to see that old woman he knows, to arrange to be evacuated. He hasn’t even had his lunch.”

  “What’s he got to worry about? He’s old, and he’s got no family.”

  “What do you mean? Really, what on earth do you mean? If anyone needs to leave, it’s Mostovskoy. The Germans will make mincemeat of a man like him. He’s rushing about like crazy, trying to work out what to do. Today he’s been out and about all day long. After all, he’s a Party member, an Old Bolshevik from Leningrad. Yes, he’s in a bad way now. Stays up all night. Smokes like a chimney . . . A pension of 1,500 roubles and a pass to the Party dining room. An apartment that’s warm and dry. A trip to the Caucasus every summer. The man’s done well for himself. No wonder he doesn’t want to be liquidated by Hitler!”

  It turned dark. The women went on talking—about this, that and everything. Markovna glanced up at the windows above her and said, “I can see light again in the window of that whore on the second floor. Let’s hope she’s not signalling to the Germans.”

  In a loud and intimidating bass, Markovna bellowed, “Hey! You on the second floor! In a moment we’ll shoot!”

  The old women got up from their bench. Agrippina went back to her room.