Garrard John Gordon - The Life and Fate of Vasily Grossman

With love and admiration to

YEKATERINA VASILIEVNA ZABOLOTSKAYA

Who inspired Grossman and preserved his precious testimony

First published in the USA in 1996 by The Free Press
under the title The Bones of Berdichev

This edition published in Great Britain by
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Copyright Study Center Vasily Grossman 2012

ISBN 978 1 78159 001 0

ISBN 9781781594049 (epub)
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The right of John Garrard and Carol Garrard to be identified as Authors
of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the
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This wolfhound century has hurled itself upon my shoulders, But I have no wolfish blood running in my veins.

OSIP MANDELSHTAM

The time of Hitler arrived; a wolfish century. It was a time when people lived like wolves, and wolves lived like people.

VASILY GROSSMAN

Do not rejoice in his demise, you men, for though the world stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again.

BERTHOLD BRECHT

In the cruel and terrible time in which our generation has been condemned to live on this earth, we must never make peace with evil. We must never become indifferent to others or undemanding of ourselves.

VASILY GROSSMAN

THE PIER GIORGIO FRASSATI Cultural Center of Turin, headed by Professor Michele Rosboch (University of Turin), founded the Vasily Grossman Study Center on February 1, 2006.

The Center was born from the experience of a multimedia exhibit and of an international conference both entitled Life and Fate: The Novel of Freedom and the Battle of Stalingrad, realized together in Turin during the months of December 2005 and January and February 2006.

On that occasion, Professor Vittorio Strada (University of Venice) proposed the building of a network that would maintain the links between the many scholars involved (from various Italian universities as well as from the United States, Russia, France, Israel, and England) and that could sustain research and other initiatives regarding the works and the thought of Vasily Grossman, as well as studies generally related to World War II and a deeper understanding of the twentieth century (with special attention to the theme of rights and freedoms in relation to totalitarianism).

Under the scientific direction of Professor Giovanni Maddalena (University of Molise), the Grossman Study Center is committed to cultivate and maintain the network of relationships that has already been created, to collect materials and writings by and about Grossman from any country and language, and to coordinate researches on Grossman as well as promoting the works of the Russian writer. This promotion includes sharing the Turin exhibit in other cities in Italy and around the world.

Thanks to the work of many people coordinated by the executive director Dr. Pietro Tosco (university of Verona), during the last six years the portable exhibit about Grossman has been shown in many cities in Italy and Russia (including Moscow and Saint Petersburg), Buenos Aires, Jerusalem, Mnich, New York City, Oxford, Washington D.C.

At the same time, the Center organized many seminars and lectures around the world and collected almost the whole first and second literature at the Center. This huge collection is going to be digitalized in the next year (2012) so that it will be available for any scholar on the website.

In 2007 the Center published the proceedings of the first international conference: Il romanzo della libert [The novel of freedom], edited by G. Maddalena and P. Tosco, Soveria Mannelli (CT): Rubbettino.

In 2009 the Center organized the Second International Conference, Vasily Grossman between ideologies and eternal questions, held in Turin in February 1921, 2009. The proceedings of this second conference have been published with the title L'umano nell'uomo. Vasilij Grossman tra ideologie e domande eterne, edited by P. Tosco, Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino.

The Center owns the international copyright to this book, which was donated to it by Professor John Garrard and his wife Carol. The Italian edition was published in 2009 as Le Ossa di Berdicev: La Vita e il Destino de Vasilij Grossman, by Marietti 1820, Genoa/Milan. It won the 2009 Giovanni Comisso Premio for biography/history. In 2010 the Spanish translation was published as La Vida y el Destino de Vasily Grossman, by Encuentro, Madrid. (For fuller details, see the Additional Bibliography, .)

In June of 1990, after Inside the Soviet Writers' Union was finished, we proposed this to our editor at The Free Press, Joyce Seltzer. She replied, A biography is either about a famous person, or written by a famous person. No one has heard of Vasily Grossman, and you are unknown academics. Nearly twenty years have passed since the publication of The Bones of Berdichev: the Life and Fate of Vasily Grossman, and while we remain unknown academics, the reputation of Vasily Grossman has grown internationally.

Some of this is due to an unexpected historical serendipity: the Soviet Union had erased Grossman; now the Soviet Union itself collapsed. For a brief Camelot moment, the archives of the secret police opened. But aside from this gift from history, much of the credit must go to the Center for the Study of Vasily Grossman and the Battle of Stalingrad in Torino, Italy. They put together two international conferences on Grossman and a travelling exhibit which has been all over the world. They have opened the field of Grossman studies globally, and it is to them we have donated this book's international copyright and all royalties. Other people, chiefly in England, have also put enormous effort into bringing this writer to the West. Robert Chandler has made excellent translations into English of virtually all of Grossman's works. And in September of 2011, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a thirteen-hour dramatization of Life and Fate which put Grossman's novel on the bestseller lists for Britain.

However, within Grossman's own country, an enormous silence still obtains. We await a complete edition of his works in Russian. He Why the silence? And why has the silence persisted now that the USSR is gone and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union no longer rules?

Grossman ended the war a decorated lieutenant colonel in the Red Army and its most celebrated frontline correspondent for