Stalin, meanwhile, dined well, until the day in 1953 when he fell to a stroke in his private library. Ukrainians whispered their stories within the family, telling of soldiers who stole every ounce of food from their homes. The famine was not mentioned, and records were destroyed. Applebaum argues that the destruction was deliberate: eliminating the Ukrainians would help cement Sovietization, and the regime’s control over a resource-rich land.įor decades after the 1930s, the Soviets suppressed this history. The resulting famine killed at least 5 million, including more than 3 million Ukrainians. But Roberts could find nothing indicating a source for his extraordinary authoritarian violence, concluding that whatever rationale existed was Stalin’s alone.Īnne Applebaum delves into the grim fruits in “ Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine.” Beginning in 1929, Stalin forced millions off their land and onto collective farms. Lenin’s ideas drew Stalin’s unstinting approval. He pushed his over-matched forces at Stalingrad to an unlikely victory, though not without threatening their lives. (In an article noting an American claim to “love” the Russian people, Stalin had written “ha ha.”) The dictator’s immersion in military history seems to have served him well. Sorting through what has been preserved of Stalin’s massive collection, Roberts encountered an industrious annotator. In “ Stalin’s Library: A Dictator and His Books,” Geoffrey Roberts reveals the Soviet leader as a diligent self-improver (if only) who believed in the transformative power of reading. Grossman’s wartime dispatches attracted a wide audience that almost certainly included Stalin. Her death haunts the pages of his novels. On their advance through Ukraine, the Nazis murdered the entire Jewish population of Grossman’s native Berdichev, including his mother. Like many in eastern Europe, he found himself stranded between two regimes. Much about Grossman remains unknown, including his precise ideological development. Even so, readers may wonder about sentences praising Stalin’s prowess as a wartime leader, or extolling the wisdom of the people. The Chandlers have restored deleted passages, and labored to bring the text closer to Grossman’s intent. Several editions were published in the 1950s, all heavily censored. A list in the back helps so do maps showing front lines that at one point held Russian defenders to an extraordinarily narrow strip of land beside the Volga River.Īttempting to get the novel into readers’ hands, Grossman encountered multiple obstacles. Many will struggle, as I did, with the constant introduction of characters, and the usual intricacies of Russian names. Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, and running more than 900 pages, the New York Review Books edition appeared in 2019, bringing “Stalingrad” to English readers for the first time. Grossman’s imaginative sympathy seems limitless, extending to German soldiers as well as Soviet generals. If you wish to imagine war through a child’s eyes, or even a camel’s, this is the book. In Grossman’s portrait, everyone counts, and nothing feels missed. Tolstoyan in its sweep, “Stalingrad” captures the dream-like days that precede an invasion, as well as the terror of finally falling under assault. Grossman, a Ukrainian-born Jew, was there as a Russian army journalist. It would prove a turning point in the war, as well as one of the bloodiest battles in modern times. Eighty years ago this summer, they shifted their focus southward, attacking Stalingrad. ![]() In 1941, after Hitler turned against his Soviet allies, German forces moved swiftly through Belarus and Ukraine before stalling near Moscow. “Stalingrad,” the first, centers on the battle that would become synonymous with that city’s name. While “ Life and Fate” is generally considered Grossman’s masterpiece, it functions as the second of two volumes.
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