Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad is an ambitious novel, and remarkably, it succeeds in its vast ambition. When Grossman set out to tell the story of the Soviet Union’s struggle against Nazi Germany, he was consciously writing in the shadow of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. His goal was to create a twentieth-century epic that captured an entire society confronting war, suffering, sacrifice, and history. I first read this novel a decade ago and now rereading it, I am convinced that Grossman came as close as anyone ever has to achieving that goal.
Like Tolstoy, Grossman moves effortlessly between generals and laborers, scientists and soldiers, mothers and bureaucrats. The coming battle for Stalingrad forms the center of gravity for the novel, but the book is about far more than military operations. Grossman is interested in how ordinary people endure extraordinary circumstances. His characters argue, fall in love, worry about their children, struggle with political loyalty, and attempt to preserve their humanity as the machinery of war closes around them.
One of the great strengths of Stalingrad is that Grossman never loses sight of the immense scale of the conflict while maintaining his focus on individual lives. The Battle of Stalingrad was one of history’s decisive military engagements, but Grossman understands that history is ultimately experienced one person at a time. His achievement lies in making readers care about those individuals while never forgetting the larger forces that shape their lives.
Reading the novel today, however, is a different experience than it was ten years ago. The Russian invasion of Ukraine casts a long shadow over every page. Grossman himself was born in what is now Ukraine, and the Soviet Army he describes was an army composed of Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Georgians, and dozens of other nationalities united against a common enemy. Throughout the novel, Russians and Ukrainians fight side by side against the Nazi invasion, sharing hardships, losses, and victories. Knowing that their descendants now face one another across battlefields is profoundly sad.
The novel also offers insight into the current war. Grossman’s depiction of Soviet resistance reminds readers of the extraordinary capacity for suffering displayed by both Russians and Ukrainians during the Second World War. The people he portrays endure losses that are almost unimaginable, yet continue fighting. Reading Stalingrad today makes it difficult to believe that either side in the current conflict will simply collapse from exhaustion or casualties. The historical memory of sacrifice runs too deep.
Yet Grossman is no simple patriot. Even within the constraints of Soviet censorship, he reveals the tensions and contradictions within Stalin’s state. The seeds of the more daring and devastating second novel Life and Fate are already present. The themes that would later define that masterpiece—freedom, tyranny, courage, and moral responsibility—can be seen emerging beneath the surface of Stalingrad.
As a historical novel, Stalingrad is magnificent. As a portrait of a society at war, it is unmatched. And as a reminder of both the resilience and tragedy of the peoples of Russia and Ukraine, it feels more relevant today than when Grossman first wrote it. Few novels better capture the human cost of war, and fewer still achieve it on such an epic scale.
Now I will reread Life and Fate.
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In 2019 I read Stalingrad and wrote about it here.
