VASILIJ GROSSMAN/ From Ukraine to Berlin and Beyond, Narrating the Man Without Lies
An exhibition at the Meeting is dedicated to the great Soviet writer Vasiliji Grossman, author of masterpieces such as "Life and Fate" and "Stalingrad".
On the occasion of the 120th anniversary of his birth, an important exhibition on the Russian writer Vasilij Grossman (1905-1964), author of the great novel Life and Fate , and other works that are perhaps less well-known in Italy, is being presented these days at the Rimini Meeting.
The exhibition, promoted by the Vasilij Grossman Study Center, is an unmissable opportunity for visitors to the Meeting, as it allows them to retrace the stages of the writer's human and literary development, from his involvement with the socialist ideals of his youth to what the exhibition curators define as a metaphysical and religious realism.
Through the explanation of his works, the viewing of many unpublished photographs and a short film based on an episode of Life and Destiny ( A Telephone Call from Stalin , starring Alessandro Preziosi, which addresses the issue of human fragility in the face of the subtle violence of ideology), the visitor is accompanied by the narration of the exhibition guides who facilitate the approach and understanding.
Grossman was born in 1905 in Berdychev, Ukraine, to a Jewish family. He was the son of a chemist and studied physics and mathematics at Moscow University. From 1932, he worked as a chemical engineer in the Donbass mining basin. In the 1930s, he began to establish himself as a writer.
His life, like that of many other citizens of the Soviet Union, was turned upside down on June 22, 1941, with the start of Operation Barbarossa. Germany, violating the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact signed in 1938, attacked the Soviet Union. The entire Soviet population was mobilized in the Great Patriotic War, which would end with 25 million victims, including 17 million civilians.
In just over three weeks, the German army advanced over 350 kilometers into Soviet territory. On July 7, 1941, the German Sixth Army occupied Berdychev, and Grossman's mother was killed by the occupiers. The writer, like many others, responded to the government's appeals and volunteered for the Red Army.
In 1941, Grossman was 35, wore glasses, and was overweight. His application was rejected because of his physical appearance, which made him appear much older than he actually was (his neighbors, who saw him walking with a cane, nicknamed him "Uncle").
After his mother's tragic death, Grossman wants to contribute to the defense of the homeland at all costs and, despite not being a Party member, begins bombarding the Red Army's Political Directorate with letters. General David Ortenberg, editor of the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda ( Red Star ), hears about him. Although he has never met him personally, he has read one of his novels and requests that he be assigned to him, with a surprising motivation to say the least: Ortenberg says that, while knowing nothing about the army, Grossman knows everything about the human soul.
Since he wasn't a member of the Communist Party, Grossman couldn't serve as a political commissar and couldn't be appointed an officer. On July 28, 1941, he was conscripted as an orderly, serving as a special correspondent for Krasnaya Zvezda . Grossman showed up at the editorial office in uniform with his service pistol, claiming he was ready to leave immediately for the front, even though he had never actually used a rifle or a pistol. Ortenberg then entrusted him to Colonel Ivan Chitrov, who trained him in the use of weapons for two weeks.
On August 5, 1941, Grossman left for the front. Over the next four years, he spent over a thousand days on the front lines of combat, quickly becoming the most popular journalist and publicist of the time, witnessing the most important phases of the war on the Eastern Front, interviewing generals, soldiers, and nurses. These experiences would later form the basis of his major novels.
Grossman witnessed all the major battles on the Russian front: the German invasion, the Battle of Moscow, the Battle of Stalingrad (where he remained on the front line for four months, crossing paths with, among others, General Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, later General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964), Operation Zitadelle, the Battle of Kursk, considered the largest armored clash of the Second World War, the Vistula Offensive and the capture of Warsaw, the arrival of Soviet troops at the Treblinka extermination camp, up to the final battle in Berlin in April 1945.
In Treblinka , he was the first reporter to describe a Nazi extermination camp, where deportees passed directly from trains to gas chambers in the chilling efficiency of a death-dealing machine. During the Red Army's occupation of Berlin, Grossman recounted episodes of ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Soviet soldiers against civilians, particularly German women. It was precisely this tendency to take politically incorrect positions that led to his marginalization in the 1940s. He died in poverty from cancer on September 11, 1964.
English historian Antony Beevor, editor of the book A Writer at War (Adelphi, 2020), has collected and analyzed the notebooks in which Grossman took notes for his correspondence from the front, which Grossman himself would later use as inspiration for Life and Fate . This is perhaps the only Soviet-biased narrative written by a non-Communist, and therefore not completely subject to the partisan rhetoric common to many other writings by Russian veterans.
With his ability to movingly describe both the human soul in the face of the drama of war and the glimpses of humanity he encounters, Grossman combines the description of war events with a narrative quality that transforms the dramatic events of which he is a chronicler and witness into great literature.
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