Stalingrad

by Vasily Grossman

  He looked at Viktor animatedly, took him by the hand and went on, “Imagine a city where there are some men and women whom everyone recognizes as honest, kind-hearted and educated, as true benefactors of humanity. Every old man, every small child knows who they are. They are central to the city’s life and they give it meaning and beauty. They teach in its schools and universities. They write books, they contribute to its scientific journals and workers’ newspapers. They work and struggle for the working class. They are in the public eye from morning until late in the evening. They are everywhere: in schools, factories and lecture halls, on the streets, in the main squares. At night other people appear, but hardly anyone knows about them. Their lives and work are secret and murky. They are afraid of the light. They are used to stealing through darkness, in the shadow of large buildings. But then something changes—and Hitler’s dark power bursts into the world. Those who are honest and kind, those who bring light to the world are flung into camps and prisons. Some die fighting, others go underground. These people are no longer to be seen in schools, factories and lecture halls, or taking part in workers’ demonstrations. Their books are cast into the flames. And of course, a few turn out to be traitors. A few become Brownshirts, followers of Hitler. As for those who used to lurk in the shadows, they become prominent figures. Their deeds fill the newspapers. And it seems as if reason, science, humanity and honour have all died, as if they have vanished from the face of the earth. It seems as if the nation has degenerated, as if it has lost all sense of goodness and honour. But that’s not true! It’s simply not true! The strength and good sense of the people, their morality, their true wealth—all this will live forever, no matter how hard fascism tries to destroy it.”

  And without waiting for an answer, he went on, “And it’s the same with individuals. There’s a great deal in all of us that is false, coarse and primitive, an unholy mixture of stuff usually kept under wraps. Many people living in normal social conditions have no idea of the cellars and basements of their own being. But there has been a catastrophe—and vermin of every kind have escaped from the cellars. Now they are at large, scuttling through rooms that were once bright and clean.”

  “Dmitry Petrovich,” Viktor replied, “you say everyone’s this unholy mixture. But you yourself, by your very existence, are enough to refute your own words. Everything in you is pure and clear—you have no dark cellars or basements. Yes, I know one’s not supposed to speak of present company—but to prove you wrong, I really don’t need to invoke the memory of such great figures as Giordano Bruno and Nikolay Chernyshevsky.92 All I need do is look around me. Your explanation simply doesn’t hold water. You say a bunch of villains led by Hitler has burst into German life. But there have been far too many times in German history when, at the decisive moment, reactionary forces have been able to seize control. There’s always been some Wilhelm or Friedrich or Wilhelm-Friedrich, ready to do their bidding.

  “So, we’re not just talking about a bunch of villains led by Hitler—we’re talking about Prussian militarism, about the Prussian Junkers who always push these villains and super-villains to the fore.

  “Someone close to me, Nikolay Krymov—he’s a commissar now, at the front—once quoted some words of Marx about the role played by the forces of reaction in German history. I remember them to this day: ‘Led by our pastors, we have never known liberty. Only when she was being buried have we been in her company.’93 And in the epoch of imperialism these same forces have spawned Hitler—a monster of monsters—and 13 million Germans have voted for him in elections.”

  “Yes, that’s how it is today,” said Chepyzhin. “Hitler has conquered in Germany. I understand what you’re saying. But you can’t deny that the people’s morality, the people’s true wealth and goodness are indestructible, stronger than Hitler and his axe. Fascism will be destroyed, and human beings will remain human beings. Everywhere—not only in Nazi-occupied Europe, but even in Germany itself! The morality of the people—this is the measure of free, useful, creative labour. Its essence, its foundation is the belief in the right to equality, to the freedom of all living people. The morality of the people is simple: the sanctity of my own right is inseparable from the sanctity of the rights of all other working people on earth. But fascism asserts the opposite. And Hitler himself, with a frenzy all of his own, claims, ‘My right is to deprive all others of rights. I have the right to make the whole world submit to me.’”

  “Yes, Dmitry Petrovich, yes, of course you are right. Fascism will be destroyed, and human beings will remain human beings. Unless one believes this, it is impossible to go on living. Like you, I believe in the strength of the people. It is from you, amongst others, that I have absorbed this belief. And like you, I know that the chief source of this strength is humane, progressive, working people brought up on the ideas of Marx, Engels and August Bebel.94 But where’s this strength now? Where is it in today’s Germany, in the country’s everyday life? Where is it to be found—with hordes of Germans laying waste to our country, burning our towns, fields and villages?”

  “Viktor Pavlovich,” said Chepyzhin reproachfully, “everyday life and scientific theory should never part company. Practice and theory can’t exist separately. What we have been talking about relates not only to the war but also to the work you and I do today. Physical science has, in a sense, progressed very little. The first era, which lasted 100,000 years, was concerned only with changing the shape and position of matter; primitive man threw sticks or used a length of sinew to tie a lump of ore to a cudgel. He didn’t alter the chemistry of matter; he didn’t infringe on the integrity of its molecules. During the second era, which lasted another 100,000 years, man worked on the outer ring of electrons. This era began with the first bonfire, with the chemistry of wine and vinegar, with the extraction of metals from their ore in simple furnaces, and it ends with achievements like the separation of nitrogen from air and the synthesis of paint and rubber. Now we are on the verge of a third era—the era of breaking into the atomic nucleus. A new technology is being created. Soon, our existing technology will appear as primitive as a flint attached to a stick in comparison with today’s steam and mercury turbines.

  “In the course of hundreds of thousands of years we have moved from physics to chemistry and then back again to physics—the physics of the nucleus instead of the physics of stone. During this time we have progressed a tiny fraction of a millimicron. And so it may appear that science does not acknowledge our everyday world, our world full of labour, grief, blood, slavery and violence. It may seem as if science is only a matter of abstract reason, penetrating from the outer ring of electrons to the nucleus, while the entire bitter world of human existence comes and goes like smoke, disappearing without a trace. Well, if that’s what a scientist thinks, then his science is worthless. Nothing he does is worth even a kopek. Science is on the verge of discovering enormous sources of energy. It is the working people who must control these sources—in the hands of fascism their destructive force could turn the whole world to ashes. We cannot understand the reality of today unless we look ahead, unless we try to predict what tomorrow will bring. War is war—but we need to understand how wrong it is to see the temporary triumph of fascist villainy as the destruction, once and for all, of the German people and the inauguration of an eternal kingdom of Hitlerian darkness.”

  Tracing a large circle in the air with one hand, Chepyzhin went on slowly and solemnly, “No matter what is done to destroy it, energy is eternal. The energy of the sun, radiating out into space, passes through deserts of darkness to come to life again in the leaves of a poplar or the living sap of a birch tree. It lies hidden in a lump of coal, in the intramolecular tension of crystals. It is the leaven of life . . . And the spiritual energy of a people is no different. It too may lie hidden and dormant, but it cannot be destroyed. After a period of lying hidden it gathers again and again into massive clumps, radiating light and heat, giving meaning to human life. And do you know? One of the proofs of the
indestructibility of this spiritual energy is the fact that even the most evil of fascist leaders feel obliged to pose as the champions of justice and the greater good. They commit their greatest crimes in secret. They know from experience that evil does not only engender evil; they know that, although it may sometimes suppress what is good, evil can also call good into being. These leaders don’t have the power openly to proclaim their central, amoral principle—that the freedom of a favoured person, race or state is to be achieved through the bloody negation of the freedom of other persons, races or states. They have the power to confuse people, to deceive and intoxicate them for a while, but they cannot refashion the soul of the people. They cannot alter the people’s fundamental convictions.”

  With a little smile, Viktor said, “So, Dmitry Petrovich, are you telling me that without darkness we cannot perceive light? That the eternal struggle to assert good is inconceivable without the eternal existence of evil? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Remembering his conversation with Krymov just before the war, Viktor went on, “Dmitry Petrovich, here too I disagree: the study of social relations requires the same degree of scientific rigour as the study of the natural world. You know you can’t bring your own subjective ideas into the laws of thermodynamics. In physics you have always been a defender of the laws of causality, of objective principles. But if I accept the theory you have just outlined, I become, willy-nilly, not an optimist but a pessimist. Your talk of unholy mixtures, of cellars and basements, denies any possibility of progress, of forward movement. I understand, of course: you think that this theory of yours limits fascism’s ability to change the social structure, to cripple humanity. But see what happens if you apply your theory not to fascism, which will rot away of itself, but to progressive phenomena, to revolutions that bring liberation. You will see that your theory promises only stagnation. According to your theory, revolutionary struggle cannot change society. It cannot raise human beings to a higher level—all it can do is reorder the various elements that make up a given society. But that is not the way it is. During the years of Soviet power the country, the economy, our society as a whole, and individual people have changed a great deal. Whatever anyone does now, we can never return to where we were before. But you, Dmitry Petrovich, seem to think of society as something more like a keyboard. One person plays one kind of music, another person plays some other kind—but the keyboard itself remains unchanged. I share your optimism. I share your faith in mankind, in our victory over fascism. But we need to do more, when we have defeated fascism, than just blindly return German society to the way it was before the war. We need to change German society, to restore health to the soil that has given birth to wars, to atrocities, and now to the nightmares of Hitlerism.”

  “Well, that’s certainly put me in my place,” said Chepyzhin. “But who first taught you to argue like that? I must have done a good job!”

  “Dmitry Petrovich,” said Viktor, “please forgive me for being passionate. But you know better than me that physicists love you not only because you are an authority but also because you never use your authority to silence others. The joy of working with you lies in the possibility of escaping from dogmatism into the realm of living, impassioned discussion. When I glimpsed you in the institute corridor, I felt real joy—because I love you and because you are someone I can talk to about what truly matters. But I knew that you wouldn’t be coming to me bearing tablets of stone. I knew that you and I agree on the main things, but I also knew that I might end up arguing with you—and that there is no one I argue with as passionately as I do with you, my teacher, my friend.”

  “Very good,” said Chepyzhin. “So be it. We’ve argued, and we shall argue again. What you’ve just said is serious, and serious matters demand serious thought.”

  Chepyzhin took Viktor by the arm. Stirred and excited by their conversation, they set off, taking long fast strides.

  43

  NIKOLAY Krymov, now the commissar of an anti-tank brigade, had gone several nights without sleeping. Immediately after being in combat, the brigade had been ordered to move along the front to a sector where German tanks had once again broken through.

  Barely had the brigade taken up position when it came under attack.

  This time they were in combat for four hours. The German tanks then continued their advance in a different direction.

  Ordered to retreat to the Great Bend of the Don, the brigade came under attack yet again. It was forced to fight in unfavourable conditions.

  They suffered heavy losses. The army commander ordered the brigade to cross the Don, repair their tanks away from the combat zone, get their vehicles and equipment in order and prepare to defend another area now seen as vulnerable to attack. He made it clear that this period of rest would be short, forty-eight hours at most, but not even twenty-four hours had passed before the brigade was ordered to advance forthwith. After effecting a breakthrough along back roads, enemy tanks were moving rapidly north-east.

  This was in mid-July 1942, perhaps the most searing, difficult days of this difficult period of the war.

  The orderly to the brigade chief of staff went into the bright, spacious house of the chairman of the village soviet, where Krymov was billeted. He found Krymov asleep on a wide bed, a sheet of newspaper over his face to keep off the sun.

  The newspaper was rising and falling with Krymov’s breathing. The orderly glanced at it hesitantly and read a few lines from a Sovinform Bureau bulletin, “After fierce fighting around Kantemirovka . . .”

  An elderly woman, the mistress of the house, said quietly, “No, don’t wake him—he’s only just gone to sleep.”

  The orderly shook his head sorrowfully and said in a plaintive whisper, “Comrade Commissar, comrade Commissar, you’re wanted at HQ.”

  The orderly expected Krymov to grunt and groan, to tell him to go away. He thought it would take a long time to rouse him. But the moment the orderly touched his shoulder, Krymov sat up, pushed the newspaper aside, looked around with his inflamed, bloodshot eyes, and began to pull on his boots.

  At Brigade HQ, Krymov learned that they had been ordered to cross the Don yet again and take up defensive positions on the west bank. The brigade commander had already set off for the artillery, now located in a neighbouring village. He had telephoned to say that he would cross the river with the artillery and then go on to Army HQ to learn about any recent developments. Lieutenant Sarkisyan’s mortar unit had already received their instructions and was to advance in three hours. Brigade HQ would follow.

  “Well, comrade Commissar, so much for our two days on the east bank,” said the chief of staff. Seeing Krymov’s bloodshot eyes, he added, “Maybe you should rest a little longer. The lieutenant colonel and I have already had a few hours’ sleep, but you’ve been up and about all night with the units.”

  “No,” said Krymov. “I’ll go on ahead and see how the ground lies. Give me the route—we can meet up later.”

  An hour later, after checking that the units were ready for action, Krymov said to the orderly, “Tell my driver to call at my billet, collect my things and then pick me up from HQ.”

  The chief of staff said sadly, “And there was I thinking we could all go to the bathhouse this evening and then have a drink together. Seems the Germans can’t do without us for even twenty-four hours!”

  Krymov looked at the chief of staff’s round, good-natured face.

  “All the same, Major, you haven’t got any thinner these last few days.”

  “That really would be too much—getting thin because of the Germans!”

  Krymov smiled. “Yes, you’re right. And maybe you’ve even put on a little weight.”

  “Not a gram,” said the chief of staff. “My weight hasn’t changed since 1936.” A map was lying open on the table and he pushed it towards Krymov. “See our new line of defence? Almost ninety kilometres east of where we were fighting yesterday. The Germans are moving fast. I may not be losing weight, but my thoughts keep g
nawing away at me: When are we going to stop them? Where are our reserves? Our brigade is worn thin—people and equipment alike.”

  The orderly came in to report that Krymov’s car was waiting outside.

  “See you this evening. In an hour or so I’ll be getting ready to leave too,” said the chief of staff. He went out to the car with Krymov, map in hand. When Krymov had got in, he added, “But I’d advise you to avoid the main crossing—the Germans are bombing it day and night. You’d do better to cross here, on this pontoon bridge. That’s the way I’ll be taking our HQ equipment.”

  “All right, let’s get going,” said Krymov.

  The air, the sky, the houses surrounded by trees—here in this Cossack village everything seemed calm and peaceful. But once they were back on the main road, this peace was eclipsed by the dust and noise of a major military artery.

  Krymov lit a cigarette and passed his cigarette case over to Semyonov, his driver. Not taking his eyes off the road, Semyonov took a cigarette with his right hand, just as he had hundreds of times before, day and night, west and east of the Dnieper, west and east of the Donets, and now west and east of the Don.

  Krymov barely noticed the front-line road, which somehow always looked much the same, whether it was near Oryol or whether it was in Ukraine, beyond the Donets. He was thinking about the battles ahead, wondering what orders they would receive next.

  44

  THEY WERE nearing the Don.

  “We’d have done better to wait till night, comrade Commissar,” said the driver. “There’s nowhere to shelter, only open steppe—and the Messers like going for cars. They get a reward for every car they destroy.”

  “The war’s got its own ideas, comrade Semyonov. It’s not going to just stop and wait for us.”