Description
In The Years of War, Vassili Grossman does not tell of the battles of the Great Patriotic War — he transmits the spiritual thought of a world, an entire war waged between light and darkness, civilization and savagery, Man and Beast. On the banks of the Volga, in the forests of Byelorussia, in the death-smoke of Treblinka, the Soviet peoples led by the Russian people fought a war for all mankind at immense cost.
When the Hitlerite horde came from the West, they did not come as men. They came daubed with dragons and skulls, bearing manuals with only Russian phrases to give orders — “Surrender” and “Hands up” — with medals, amulets and rotten, savage instincts in place of thoughts. Their boots trampled on the graves of Russian mothers, their tanks crushed the cherry trees of the Ukraine. The Germans came claiming to be a race of conquerors, and left a gang of terrorists and criminals, tails tucked between their legs like rats.
And against this inferno rose Russia and its centuries-long history of heroism — suffering deep wounds, but ever unbreakable. The Soviet Union, the first republic of workers and peasants, lifted its sword and demonstrated its superiority. Its millions, forged by the Revolution of the great Lenin, steeled by industrialization and collectivization, taught to read, to build, to transform the world — rose as a single flame. In this, as before the war, they had the great fortune of having the genius of mankind, a man with an iron will and strategic clarity, Marshal Stalin, at their head. The great Stalin is no abstraction in these pages. He is the will of the people in human form.
Grossman takes us into the soul of this war. We see Ivan Rodimtsev, kind-hearted, who weeps with joy at the sight of fleeing fascists. We hear the voice of the child saying, “I’m not afraid of the Fritzes!” We walk beside women who endure bombings and bury their sons, and beside soldiers who tremble not at death, but at the idea of losing the respect of Russian women, who are outstanding in their honour.
At Stalingrad, Grossman sees not merely a military stand, but a battle determining the path forward — extermination or life? It is there, on the Volga, that history itself takes a stand.The men who fight at Red Tsaritsyn’s ruins prove themselves worthy of the Revolution, worthy of Dzerzhinsky and Frunze, worthy of its immortal, glorious namesake — Stalin. They are not simply fighters. They are guardians of every high ideal, defenders of human dignity against the apocalypse of degenerate fascism.
And then Grossman writes of Treblinka.
At Treblinka, it was not merely the cruelty of fascism, but the moral collapse of “civilized” Germany, Europe and the West. It was the Red Army alone that unearthed the bones and exposed the pits. In meticulous, soul-shaking prose, Grossman catalogues the German art of annihilation: expert stranglers, baby-killers, gas-chamber designers, and the guards who assaulted young women by night and marched them to the chambers by morning.
As for the others — the Pope, the Anglo-Americans — only one Army, one state, one united peoples, fought to their utmost ability when mankind’s fate was in the balance. The Soviet Union alone stood. It pounded away at fascism, disturbed the quiet with artillery. It challenged the aggressors not only with words and declarations from across channels and oceans, but with four years of blood, steel and clarity. And in spite of the fact that the German working class never rose up against Hitler, and with all of collective Europe aimed at the Land of Soviets.
Still, Grossman’s book allows no despair. The Years of War affirms the strength of Soviet principle combined with the immortal spirit of Russian civilization — stronger than any enemy. And as for all those who perished in this sacred struggle, Grossman writes simply:
“They Died for Humanity.”