Stalingrad

by Vasily Grossman

  11. His surname is derived from the word kozyol, which means “goat.”

  12. Russian peasants—even those who were not believers—continued unofficially following the Christian calendar for many decades after the Revolution.

  13. The Comintern (Communist International), an international communist organization, held seven World Congresses in Moscow between 1919 and 1935. It gradually lost its importance as Stalin abandoned the earlier Soviet goal of world revolution in favour of establishing socialism in one country. In 1943 it was dissolved.

  14. Among the staples of the Red Army diet, especially when it came to field rations, were a dehydrated wheat or millet porridge and a dehydrated pea soup. Both needed only the addition of hot water.

  15. Every unit of the Red Army, from company to Front (equivalent to a German Army Group), had both a military leader and a political leader. The military leaders were called commanders until 1943, when the word “officer” was officially reintroduced. The political leaders were called commissars, except for the most junior rank, which was political instructor (politruk). Catherine Merridale writes: “An individual politruk was likely to combine the functions of a propagandist with those of an army chaplain, military psychiatrist, school prefect and spy.” Ivan’s War (Faber, 2006), p. 56.

  16. This song featured in Eduard Pentslin’s popular film Fighters, which premiered in 1940.

  17. Nikolay Nekrasov (1821–77), the most popular poet of his time, was fiercely critical of serfdom and the autocracy. Nikolay Dobrolyubov (1836–61) was a literary critic and political revolutionary.

  18. A Soviet rocket launcher, generally known by its nickname Katyusha. Mostovskoy jokingly uses the word to refer to his rudimentary cigarette lighter.

  19. The Academy of Sciences was—and remains—immensely important. There are two levels of membership: corresponding membership (the more junior level), and full membership. Even to be a corresponding member is a great honour.

  20. Nikolay Chernyshevsky (1828–89) was a philosopher, revolutionary and literary critic, best known for his utopian socialist novel What Is to Be Done? This greatly influenced Vladimir Lenin, one of whose political tracts bears the same title. Leo Tolstoy also used this title, for a pamphlet about personal moral responsibility. The writer and journalist Alexander Herzen (1812–70) is sometimes called the father of Russian socialism.

  21. The title of a miniature play by Alexander Pushkin, one of his Little Tragedies.

  22. The Irtysh flows through Kazakhstan and western Siberia. The Amu-Darya (once known as the Oxus) is the biggest river in Central Asia.

  23. Most Soviet institutions were linked to at least one “house of recreation.” Usually in an attractive spot in the country or by the sea, these were like holiday hotels for particular sections of society. Universities and factories, unions such as the Union of Soviet Writers—all provided their members with subsidized holidays in their house or houses of recreation.

  24. A standard term for former members of the clergy, bourgeoisie or aristocracy.

  25. Nikolay Gastello (1908–41) was a pilot whose plane was hit by flak and set on fire. He reputedly flew it into a column of German vehicles, destroying a large number of them, including tanks. He was made a Hero of the Soviet Union, posthumously.

  26. Grossman evidently knew the Sherlock Holmes stories well. His daughter, Yekaterina Korotkova, remembers him recounting The Hound of the Baskervilles to her when she was a child: “The sense of horror was both agonizing and splendid [. . .] My father evoked the atmosphere of the story with such inspiration that I can sense its horror and beauty to this day. [. . .] I remember reading the book several years later and feeling slightly disappointed. In my father’s retelling it was more interesting, more powerful and more frightening.” Korotkova-Grossman, Vospominaniya, p. 204. Korotkova—one of Grossman’s most perceptive readers—has put her finger on a central feature of her father’s greatness. Grossman’s psychological understanding is acute. His work is important to historians, and to political and moral philosophers. But he is also a superb storyteller. Many chapters of his dilogy are imbued with a sense of horror that could be described as “both agonizing and splendid.”

  27. A phrase from the Communist Manifesto (1848), by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

  28. The Smolny Institute was Russia’s first educational establishment for women, constructed in 1806–8. During the October Revolution it was the Bolshevik HQ.

  29. The words “Everything flows” (Πάντα ῥέι—panta rhei), later chosen by Grossman as the title of his last major work, are often, though probably wrongly, attributed to Heraclitus, a pre-Socratic philosopher. One of Heraclitus’s best-known aphorisms is “You cannot step twice into the same river.” In the third version of the novel Heraclitus is one of the philosophers Mostovskoy has written about for a dictionary of philosophy.

  30. Shooting oneself in the left hand was a common way of trying to escape the fighting, so wounds of this kind aroused suspicion. For more about soldiers shooting themselves in the left hand, see Schechter, The Stuff of Soldiers, chapter 1.

  31. The standard measure for a serving of vodka in a café or restaurant was a hundred grams. This was so common that the word “vodka” was usually omitted. “He drank a glass of vodka” can best be translated as “He drank a hundred grams” (On vypil sto grammov).

  32. The Union of Communist Youth.

  33. The Yak (named after its designer, Alexander Yakovlev) was produced from early 1940. A single-seat fighter, it was fast, manoeuvrable, well armed and reliable.

  34. Chekhov’s “A Man in a Case” is a story about an obtuse and rigid-minded civil servant.

  35. The constituent republics of the Soviet Union were divided into oblasti (provinces), which were in turn divided into raiony (districts). An obkom is the Party committee for an oblast and a raikom is the Party committee for a raion.

  36. I.e. an internal passport, a document of crucial importance in the Soviet Union.

  37. The Soviet Union was a highly militarized society and military terminology infiltrated most areas of life. Such terms as artists’ (or writers’) brigade and shock-workers (by analogy with shock-troops) were standard.

  38. Sofya quotes Apollon Maikov (1821–97), a popular poet, many of whose short poems have been set to music.

  39. The GAZ-M1 car was produced from 1936 until 1942. The M referred to Vyacheslav Molotov, later to become People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, and the car was usually known by its nickname—the Emka. The larger ZIS-101 was produced from 1936 until 1941.

  40. A “Front” was equivalent to a German “Army Group.” According to Rodric Braithwaite, “A Front contained up to nine mixed armies, up to three tank armies, one or two air armies and various supporting formations. A mixed army contained five or six rifle divisions and supporting arms.” (Braithwaite, Moscow 1941, p. 268, note 6.) The word “Front” was used only after the German invasion; the earlier equivalent was “Military District.” Throughout this translation we distinguish between “Front,” as above, and “front” or “front line” in a more general sense.

  41. Here and elsewhere Novikov addresses Zhenya rather formally, by her first name and patronymic. Zhenya is the most common affectionate form of Yevgenia. See Note on Russian Names.

  42. From 1869, this town was called Yuzovka. In 1932 it was renamed Stalino, and in 1961, Donetsk. As a young man, Grossman had worked in the Smolyanka mine, as a safety engineer and chemical analyst.

  43. Russians have always seen the war as beginning with the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. See Chronology.

  44. A Finnish defensive fortification line across the Karelian Isthmus. During the Winter War (1939–40) between Finland and the Soviet Union, it halted the Soviet advance for two months. Both Finnish and Soviet propaganda exaggerated the extent of the fortifications: the Finns wanting to improve national morale, the Soviets needing to explain the slowness of their advance.

  45. After Ger
many and the Soviet Union invaded Poland in summer 1939, they split the country into three parts: a western part annexed by Germany; a central part, also under German control, that was officially called the General Government; and an eastern part annexed by the Soviet Union. The River Bug was the border between the General Government and the Soviet area.

  46. It may now seem surprising that Grossman was able to publish this passage about the Nazi officer (which appears in all the published editions), but it is in accord with the official Soviet doctrine of the time. “Falsifiers of History,” an important document edited and in part rewritten by Stalin in 1948, claims that “No forgers will ever succeed in wiping from history [. . .] the decisive fact that under these conditions, the Soviet Union faced the alternative: either to accept, for purposes of self-defence, Germany’s proposal to conclude a non-aggression pact and thereby to ensure to the Soviet Union the prolongation of peace for a certain period of time, which might be used by the Soviet State better to prepare its forces for resistance to a possible attack on the part of an aggressor; or to reject Germany’s proposal for a non-aggression pact and thereby to permit war provocateurs from the camp of the Western Powers immediately to involve the Soviet Union in armed conflict with Germany at a time when the situation was utterly unfavourable to the Soviet Union and when it was completely isolated. In this situation, the Soviet government found itself compelled to make its choice and conclude a non-aggression pact with Germany.” (See “Falsifiers of History” entry in Wikipedia and http://collections.mun.ca/PDFs/radical/FalsificatorsOfHistory.pdf.) “Falsifiers of History,” needless to say, does not mention the secret protocol to the non-aggression pact according to which Stalin and Hitler divided up the whole of central Europe, from Finland to Romania, with Stalin annexing the Baltic states and eastern Poland. One of Hitler’s conditions was the transfer to German-held areas of all ethnic Germans living in Poland or the Baltic states. Most of these Germans were “resettled” in 1939 or 1940, but a final resettlement was organized in spring 1941. (See “Baltic Germans” entry in Wikipedia.)

  47. Boris Dralyuk writes (private email, 2017), “I see the self-correction as indicative of cognitive dissonance. Like any serious trauma, it upends Novikov’s sense of reality to such a degree that he can neither process it at the time nor forget it later. It is the Nazi officer, of course, whom Novikov has in mind; his haughty face and bizarre uniform makes him look like a sinister fool. But Novikov may also be thinking of Hitler. And Grossman himself may—possibly—also be thinking of Stalin. All three are murderous, self-serious clowns.”

  48. The 1940 German–Soviet Commercial Agreement stipulated that, in exchange for technical and military equipment, the Soviet Union should deliver large quantities of raw materials to Germany. The German war effort against the Soviet Union was partially supported by raw materials—above all, supplies of rubber and grain—obtained through this agreement.

  49. A well-known play by Oleksandr Korniychuk (1905–72), a Soviet Ukrainian playwright, literary critic and politician.

  50. A Red Corner was a special room in a Soviet hostel, factory or other institution, stocked with educational literature and reserved for reading. Before the Revolution the term referred to the corner of a room in a private house or peasant hut where the icons were kept (the word krasny originally meant both “red” and “beautiful”—a connection independent of Communism).

  51. This marked the catastrophic end to the Soviet offensive first mentioned in chapter 4 of Part I, when Shepunov reads to Vavilov from a district newspaper.

  52. Three of the main Soviet fighters of the time. The Yak was designed by Yakovlev (see Part I, note 33). The LaGG-3 was named from the first letters of the names of its three designers: Lavochkin, Gorbunov and Gudkov.

  53. In March 1940, at the end of the Winter War with Finland, the Soviet Union won the right to lease this southernmost point of Finland for thirty years and to set up a naval base there. In the event, this base existed only until December 1941.

  54. Later known as the Po-2, this simple, versatile biplane was produced in large numbers between 1929 and 1953.

  55. The Supreme Command in Moscow, established on 23 June 1941, was known as the Stavka. Its members were Stalin, Semyon Timoshenko (the defence commissar), Georgy Zhukov, Vyacheslav Molotov, Kliment Voroshilov, Semyon Budyonny and Nikolay Kuznetsov.

  56. The Southwestern Front—then under the command of Marshal Timoshenko—was formally disbanded on 12 July 1942.

  57. A traditional token of hospitality.

  58. From 8 April 1942 Bagramyan was the Southwestern Front chief of staff, but on 28 June he was dismissed from this post—unfairly blamed for the catastrophic encirclement following the Soviet recapture of Kharkov.

  59. The phrase “Memory eternal!” is pronounced at the end of an Orthodox funeral or memorial service. It refers to remembrance by God, rather than by the living; it is a prayer that the soul of the departed may enter heaven and enjoy eternal life.

  60. The Douglas C-47 Skytrain, generally considered the best transport plane of the Second World War, was supplied to the Soviet Union through lend-lease. It was also produced locally, under licence, as the Lisunov Li-2.

  61. After the catastrophic Battle of Kiev (August and September 1941) the Southwestern Front was re-established with new forces. From September to December 1941 and from April to July 1942 it was under the command of Marshal Timoshenko. On 12 July 1942 it was disbanded and its forces transferred to the Stalingrad Front and the Southern Front.

  62. Ivan Michurin (1855–1935) was an agronomist and plant breeder, a founding father of scientific agricultural selection. His belief that environmental influences could bring about changes to the genotype was the starting point for the pseudo-scientific theories of Trofim Lysenko (1898–1976).

  63. In the Soviet Union, maids and servants were known as “domestic workers.”

  64. For the Orthodox Church, St. Tatyana is the patron saint of students. Students traditionally celebrated her day by getting drunk.

  65. This was founded in 1922. It collected funds to publicize the plight of political prisoners in capitalist countries and to provide material assistance to their families.

  66. Someone who profited, or was thought to have profited, from a business venture during the period (1921–28) of relative economic liberalization known as the New Economic Policy (NEP).

  67. During the first decade after the Revolution, fervent Communists often gave their children politicized names like this. October, Vladlen (Vladimir Lenin), and Marlen (Marx–Lenin) are among the more common examples.

  68. See Part I, note 19.

  69. One of the stores for privileged sections of the population—in this case, families of members of the Academy of Sciences—where it was possible to obtain goods and products not generally available.

  70. Having no envelopes or postcards, Red Army soldiers used to fold a letter in such a way as to make it into its own envelope. All mail had to be checked by censors and these letters were folded rather than sealed. They were delivered free of charge; there was no need for stamps.

  71. Two of the greatest Russian landscape painters, from the second half of the nineteenth century.

  72. For Nekrasov, see Part I, note 17. For Herzen, see Part I, note 20. Nikolay Ogaryov (1813–77) was Herzen’s collaborator and closest friend. In 1840, on the Sparrow Hills above Moscow, the two men famously swore not to rest until their country was free.

  73. Pyrethrum is a natural insecticide, made from chrysanthemum flowers. Sulfonamide, the only effective antibiotic available before penicillin, was used to treat coughs and allergies.

  74. From a song about Stenka Razin, the Cossack brigand who in 1670–71 led a major peasant rebellion. In the song he casts his young Persian bride into the Volga—as a sacrifice to the river—and to placate his comrades, who are jealous of her.

  75. The first line of a famous quatrain by Fyodor Tyutchev (1803–73): “Russia is baffling to the mind, / not subje
ct to the common measure; / her ways—of a peculiar kind . . . / One only can have faith in Russia.” Translated by Avril Pyman, The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry (Penguin, 2015), p. 111.

  76. Between the signing of the Nazi–Soviet non-aggression pact (23 August 1939) and the German invasion of the Soviet Union (22 June 1941) all criticism of Hitler and Nazi Germany was suppressed. By speaking so openly, Maximov is endangering himself.

  77. See Part I, note 62.

  78. This paragraph is based on an actual dream of Grossman’s. His mother, Yekaterina Savelievna, was killed in the first and largest of the mass executions of Berdichev Jews, on 14 September 1941. See Popoff, Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century, chapter 6.

  79. The Moscow metro had been designed from the start to provide shelter in time of war. At night, when metro services were suspended, and during air-raid alerts in daytime, civil-defence troops “put wooden duckboards on the rails and closed off all apertures through which a bomb blast might penetrate [. . .] Invalids, children, and the elderly were accommodated in the trains and in the stations [. . .] The remainder went into the tunnels themselves for shelter. The stations were comparatively well lit. Water was available from drinking fountains on the platforms and from taps in the tunnels.” (Braithwaite, Moscow 1941, p. 189.)

  80. Balloons sent high into the sky and trailing fine steel wires designed to wreck any aeroplane that flew into them.

  81. Perfectum and futurum—Latin for “past” and “future.”

  82. For more about the biologist and plant breeder Nikolay Vavilov, see Introduction, pp. xvii–xix, and Afterword, p. 990.

  83. The first Russian translations of Sherlock Holmes appeared in 1903 and were followed by a wave of cheap imitations. Holmes remained popular after the Revolution, without encouragement from the Soviet authorities. For some time, the stories were passed around only unofficially. In 1945, however, “The Man with the Twisted Lip” was published in a series titled “The Little Library of the Journal of the Red Army Soldier” and it seems likely that close to 11 million copies of the complete works were published in the late 1950s.