The People Immortal by Vasily Grossman

 

Vasily Grossman was a Soviet war reporter in WWII, He was born in in 1905, in Berdychiv , Ukraine - also the birthpalce of Joseph Conrad. He studied to be a chemical engineer but decided he really wanted to be a reporter. 

In June 1941 Hitler invaded the Soviet Union despite his non-agression pact with Stalin. Stalin's agents had warned him invasion was immanent but he ignored them and the German attack took them completely by suprise, To make matters worse Stalin had purged the army of it's top officers, his army was under-strength and under-led. The  Germans on the other hand were better led, better trained and much better equipped. The Russians were forced to retreat. They staged holding operations and counter attacks that only served to slow the advancing Germans. This is the setting for The People Immortal, in which a batallion thrown into the fight finds itself trapped and needing to breakout of the encirclement.

Grossman was a front line war reporter and witnessed this hopeless attempt to halt the invasion. His reports were very popular both with the troops and the civilian population. He was given leave of absence for two weeks in 1942 to write a novel to inspire the people in their struggle for survival and to give them hope of eventual victory. The result was The People Immortal.

At the beginning of the novel a researcher, Sergey Alexandrovich Bogariov, leaves his books and manuscripts to join the army as a high ranking political officer. 

Now and then he would remember the cool vaults of the institute's manuscript repository, a desk heaped with papers, a shaded lamp, the creak of the stepladder a librarian was moving from one bookshelf to another. Sometimes odd sentences from his unfinished study would come to mind and he would return to the questions that had so passionately engaged him throughout his life.

A young man, Ignatiev, leaves his village, his mother weeping and his father giving him the medal he won in WWI.

His  father had taken out two George Crosses he'd been awarded in the first German war and held them up to his son, his old hands trembling. "Look, Sima, "he had said, "here are my two silver Georges. There were two gold ones as well, but I put those into a Freedom Bond. Your old sapper father once blew up a bridge along with the best part of a German regiment." It was all too clear, however, that for all his attempts to be strong, the old man would rather have joined in with the women and wept. Semion was the favourite of his five sons, the jolliest and the most affectionate.

In thousands of trucks the army streams south and west to repel the invader.

There is dust everywhere: dark brick dust, yellow dust, fine grey dust. Men's faces look like the faces of corpses. These clouds of dust hanging over every road near the front line have been raised by hundreds of thousands of Red Army boots, by truck wheels and tank tracks, by road tractors and artillery, by the small hooves of pigs and sheep, by collective-farm horses and huge herds of cows, by collective-farm tractors, by the creaking carts of refugees, by the bast sandals of collective-farm foremen and the little shoes of girls leaving Bobruisk, Mozyr, Zhlobin, Shepetovka and Berdichev. Dust hangs over Ukraine and Belorussia; it swirls over the Soviet earth.

The People Immortal above all brings out the determination of the Soviet people to defend their homeland against the invading forces. The characters' unwavering commitment to their country and their willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice highlight the profound sense of duty and loyalty that pervades the novel.

Despite the brutality of war, the novel also emphasizes the importance of humanity and compassion. The characters' acts of kindness, their support for one another, and their enduring friendships serve as a testament to the enduring strength of the human spirit.

Grossman does not shy away from depicting the horrors and devastation of war. The graphic and unflinching portrayal of the battles, the suffering of the soldiers, and the destruction of towns and villages underscore the immense toll that the conflict takes on both the individuals and the nation.

The Russian people suffered terribly in the Second World War. They lost 27 million people, 16% of the population - the Uk lost 1%. No wonder they call it The Great Patriotic War. We read in our book group The Siege by Helen Dunmore, set in the siege of Leningrad that lasted 600 days before it was relieved. The people of Leningrad were reduced to starvation level, many of them dying of cold and hunger.

I've read. Grossman's Life and Fate and I've also read The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich, which is a telling testimony to how the lives of ordinary people are tragically affected by war. Terrific courage, humanity and self-sacrifice on one hand and grim, deep hatred on the other.

The humanity of the people and their courage are what come across to me more than anything else in The People Immortal. The soldiers are trying to repel an enemy from taking their land, their home and their memories. The land where parents, grandparents and all their ancestors have toiled to build a heritage. They would rather sacrifice themselves ("hold their manhood cheap") than concede it to the invader?

There's a lovely passage near the end of the book when a messenger breaks through the encirclement to deliver letters:

""How the hell? The road's been cut." "I found ways, Comrade Commissar. I crept four kilometres on my belly. I crossed the river at night, and I shot a German sentry. Look— here's his shoulder strap." "Weren't you scared?" asked Bogariov. "Scared?" the soldier replied, with a little smile. "Why? My soul's not so precious. I'd price it at five kopeks. No more than a balalaika. Why should I be afraid for "Really?"

Grossman can certainly stir the heart. Here's a Land of Hope and Glory moment:

Great is the people whose sons die such stern, simple and sacred deaths on these vast fields of battle. The sky and the stars know about them; the earth has heard their last sighs; the unreaped rye and the roadside trees have witnessed their deeds. They sleep in the earth, with the sky, the sun and the clouds above them. They sleep soundly, they sleep an eternal sleep, as do their fathers and grandfathers, men who worked all their lives as carpenters, navvies, miners, weavers and peasant-farmers of a great land.

It reminded me of this little verse by Alexander Gray

This is my country,

The land that begat me.

These windy spaces

Are surely my own.

And those who here toil

In the sweat of their faces

Are flesh of my flesh,

And bone of my bone.

And also the Band of Brothers speech from Henry V

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

But set this high patriotism against these lines from Wilfred Owen

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

(It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country)

"War is hell," (General Sherman). Yet we can't seem to rid ourselves of it.