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As well as the novel’s three different published editions, there are eleven versions—some complete, some partial—in the main literary archive in Moscow (RGALI). The first of these is a manuscript, almost unreadable because of Grossman’s poor handwriting and the huge number of corrections he made to it. The next version has—inexplicably—gone missing; it is not even known whether it was a manuscript or a typescript. The third version, therefore, is the first readable version we have. It is a fairly clean typescript, with handwritten revisions, and it does not appear to differ greatly from the original manuscript; it is bolder and more vivid than the later versions and it deserves to be published in full.
The fourth and fifth versions incorporate both editorial suggestions and changes introduced by Grossman himself. These versions are less bold, but all the main plot lines are still present. An important feature of the fifth version is the addition of a moving chapter—the account of Tolya Shaposhnikov’s last day before being mortally wounded—that is not in any of the previous versions. The sixth version is the most orthodoxly Soviet of all; most of the chapters about Viktor Shtrum and the Shaposhnikovs have been cut and much about Stalin and his historical role has been added. Interestingly, Grossman’s editors appear to have realized that their caution had weakened the novel; subsequent proofs and published editions are based not on this version but on the less heavily edited fifth version.
The later versions in RGALI are galleys and page proofs for the projected (but cancelled) publication of the novel in Novy Mir in 1950, for the actual publication in Novy Mir in 1952 and for the first book publication in 1954. The most interesting of these versions is the so-called ninth version—about a dozen chapters that were added, in 1951, to the unused 1950 galleys. It is here that Chepyzhin and Ivan Novikov (the coal-miner brother of Colonel Novikov) appear for the first time.
We know that it was not Grossman’s own choice to introduce these two characters. In January 1951 Alexander Fadeyev told Grossman and Tvardovsky that the Central Committee had expressed a “high opinion of the novel” and proposed that the Union of Writers and Novy Mir jointly “decide the question of publication.” Soon after this Fadeyev sent Grossman a number of demands. He was to add new chapters about the heroic wartime work being carried out in mines and factories in Siberia and the Urals, insert the current official view on the wartime alliance with England and America (see below, note on chapter 23), and entirely remove the figure of Viktor Shtrum. This last demand was clearly motivated by official antisemitism. Grossman replied, “I agree with everything, except Shtrum.” Tvardovsky then suggested an artful compromise: to make Shtrum subordinate to a world-famous Russian physicist. Grossman accepted this suggestion and introduced the figure of Chepyzhin.
It would be wrong, however, to assume that these new sections are any the less valuable for being forced on Grossman. Grossman had a remarkable gift for turning an apparent compromise to his own advantage. He himself had worked as a safety engineer in a Donbass mine. His first novel, Glückauf, is set in the Donbass, and it is clear from his memoir An Armenian Sketchbook that he recalled his time in the Donbass with pride. There is no reason to think that he was reluctant to add these chapters. They are extremely vivid and Grossman’s picture of the wartime Soviet Union would be incomplete without them.
Many of the pages devoted to Chepyzhin are equally vivid. The account of his lectures is almost certainly another of Grossman’s tributes to the physicist Lev Shtrum. The recent rediscovery of the life and work of Lev Shtrum lends an added poignancy to such passages as the following: “These formulae seemed full of human content; they could have been passionate declarations of faith, doubt or love. [. . .] Like a valuable manuscript, this blackboard should surely have been preserved for posterity.”9
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An editor or translator must decide which of Grossman’s many versions to follow. The simplest course would be to follow the 1956 edition. This is the best of the three published editions. The year 1956 marks the beginning of Khrushchev’s “Thaw”—the relatively liberal period following Stalin’s death in 1953—and Grossman was able to reinstate many passages omitted in 1952 and 1954. He made only a very few small changes when the novel was republished in 1959 and 1964, and the plot line of Life and Fate begins where the 1956 version ends, with no conflicts or inconsistencies. Until today, all Russian republications and all translations of Stalingrad have followed the 1956 edition.
The chief disadvantage of following this edition is that—though more complete than the two earlier editions—it still omits many of the wittiest, most perceptive and most unusual passages of the unpublished third version. The boldness of this early typescript cannot be emphasized enough. It was as daring of Grossman to think of publishing it in the late 1940s as to think of publishing Life and Fate in the late 1950s. To continue to omit many of the finest passages of Grossman’s writing would be unforgivable.
A secondary problem with the 1956 edition is that, at some points, it is weakened by the anti-Stalin censorship characteristic of the decades following Stalin’s death. The most glaring instance of this particular variant of Soviet censorship relates to Grossman’s treatment of Stalin’s Order of 28 July 1942, shortly before the beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad. This still-controversial Order, with its slogan “Not One Step Back,” forbade any further retreat, under any circumstances, and decreed the death penalty for “laggards, cowards, defeatists and other miscreants.” In the third version, and in both the 1952 and 1954 editions, Grossman portrays Krymov reading Stalin’s Order with profound elation. This brief chapter is the climax to a long sequence of chapters in the course of which Krymov has grown ever more enraged by what he sees as an unthinking general acceptance of a seemingly endless Soviet retreat. It is crucial to the novel’s structure. Nevertheless, since Stalin’s role is seen—on this occasion—as entirely positive, the chapter was omitted in 1956. There is little doubt that Grossman would have wanted to reinstate it.
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The third version of Stalingrad deserves to be published in full, both in Russian and in other languages—just as publishers now publish early drafts of such works as War and Peace. Unfortunately, for all its brilliance, this version is only a draft; it is not a finished novel. One plot line—Viktor’s affair with Nina—simply fades out with no explanation. There are other inconsistencies. It was not until the fifth version of the novel that Grossman clearly differentiated Novikov and Darensky; in the first four versions, instead of two characters, there is only one, sometimes called Novikov, sometimes called Darensky. Some long passages relating to this composite character are repeated verbatim, hundreds of pages apart.
There are also conflicts between this third version and the plot line of Life and Fate. In the third version, Vera does not become pregnant and Ivannikov hands Mostovskoy his essay on senseless human kindness while they are both still in Stalingrad. In Life and Fate, on the other hand, Vera has given birth to a child and Ivannikov (renamed Ikonnikov) shows Mostovskoy his essay not in Stalingrad but in a German POW camp, probably Dachau.
A further reason not to consider this version definitive is that many of Grossman’s later revisions were entirely worthwhile. He was required to delete many fine passages, but he also omitted passages that are verbose, confusing or over-detailed. He added not only the mining chapters and the account of Tolya’s day in command of an artillery battery but also the chapters about Marya Vavilova working in the fields, Alexandra being shown around the Stalgres power station and Mostovskoy and Sofya falling into German hands.
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The third version and the 1956 edition are the two most important texts of the novel, yet neither is satisfactory on its own. We have, therefore, drawn on both of them for this translation. With regard to the general plot and the order of the chapters, we have followed the 1956 edition, but we have reinstated several hundred passages—some of just three or four words, some of several pages—from the third version. And where enti
rely new chapters—e.g. the coal-mining chapters—were added at a later stage, we have also drawn on whichever was the earliest typescript in which these chapters appear.
In an attempt to guard against excessive subjectivity on our part, we have tried to keep to two guidelines: not to reinstate any passages that would result in plot conflicts, and not to reinstate any passages unless we had good reason to think that it was Grossman’s editors—rather than Grossman himself—who were responsible for their omission from the published editions. There were, of course, borderline cases—passages that Grossman might have chosen to omit for the sake of concision, but where it was equally possible that his editors might have found something questionable.
The task of faithfully “restoring” Grossman’s novel—as one might restore a damaged painting—is, no doubt, theoretically impossible. In practice, however, it is less difficult than one might imagine. The first step was to carry out a detailed comparison of the three main published editions. This gave us a clear idea of the nature of the disagreements between Grossman and his editors, allowing us to see both what most perturbed the editors and which passages mattered so much to Grossman that he went out of his way to reinstate them when given the opportunity.
These three editions constitute a unique resource for the study of Soviet censorship. There are, of course, instances where the omissions (mostly in 1952) and reinsertions (mostly in 1954 or 1956) relate to matters of obvious political sensitivity—criticisms of kolkhozes and mentions of military defeats or of labour camps. More often, however, the differences between the editions are less a matter of substance than of tone. Many of the passages omitted in 1952 could not possibly have been construed as anti-Soviet; they must simply have been considered too silly or frivolous for a novel about so epic a subject as the Battle of Stalingrad. During the last years of the Stalin regime, only the most dignified of styles was acceptable. Soviet soldiers or officials could not be portrayed as behaving childishly or selfishly at a moment of critical military importance. And there was a strong taboo on any overt mention of petty crime. In the third version and in 1956, Seryozha’s mess tin was “stolen” (ukrali) the day he graduated from military school; in the more heavily edited 1952 and 1954 editions, it “disappeared” (propal). The same substitution was made in the scene at Kazan station, when a kolkhoz woman has her money and documents stolen. The taboo on mentions of lice, fleas, bedbugs and cockroaches seems to have been equally strong. There is no doubt that Andrey Sinyavsky, one of the first and most important of Soviet dissidents, was right to define socialist realism as a twentieth-century version of neoclassicism.10
A passage about Major Berozkin illustrates this strikingly:
He had fought in the summer of 1941 in the forests of western Belorussia and Ukraine. He had survived the black horror of the war’s first days; he knew everything and had seen everything. When other men told stories about the war, this modest major listened with a polite smile. “Oh, my brothers,” he would think. “I’ve seen things that cannot be spoken about, that no one will ever write down.”
Now and again, though, he would meet another quiet, shy major like himself. Recognizing him—from little signs known to him alone—as a kindred spirit, he would talk more freely.
“Remember General N.?” he might say. “When his unit was surrounded, he plodded through a bog in full uniform, wearing all his medals, and with a goat on a lead. A couple of lieutenants he met asked, ‘Comrade General, are you following a compass bearing?’ And what did he answer? ‘A compass? This goat is my compass!’”
The general acts correctly and courageously; he does not take off his uniform and medals, even though these may attract the attention of German soldiers. And he is intelligent and resourceful; a goat is more likely than a compass to lead him safely out of the bog. Nevertheless, it is undignified for a Soviet general to entrust his life to a goat. There is also an interesting ambiguity in these paragraphs: is Berozkin unable to speak about what he saw in the summer of 1941 because of its “black horror,” or because some of it is too strange or seemingly absurd to fit the official picture?
The final paragraph, in any case, was omitted in 1952 and 1954. Grossman was, fortunately, able to reinstate it in 1956. But the third version includes many other examples of his best writing that he was never able to publish. It has been a joy to include them in this translation, and so to restore to the novel much of its original sweep, humour and vigour. Like Anton Chekhov, whom he loved, Grossman is, amongst much else, a great comic writer.
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Most of Grossman’s characters remain broadly the same in the third version and the published editions. There are, however, a few important differences.
First, there are three characters who had to be completely or partially removed from Stalingrad; later, Grossman included all three in Life and Fate. In the third version, Jenny Genrikhovna, the former German governess to Ludmila and Marusya, is living with the Shaposhnikovs in their Stalingrad apartment. To have the novel’s central family giving shelter to a German, as the Wehrmacht approached Stalingrad in the summer of 1942, was extraordinarily daring on Grossman’s part. It is no surprise that he had to remove all the passages about Jenny Genrikhovna. We would have liked to reinstate them, but this would have led to plot conflicts with Life and Fate.
The second character whom Grossman moved to Life and Fate is Vladimir Sharogorodsky, the poet and Russian historian who—like Jenny Genrikhovna—is a part of Zhenya’s social circle in Kuibyshev (L&F, I, 25). Sharogorodsky was too much an aristocrat, and too fiercely anti-Soviet, to be included in the published editions of Stalingrad, but, unlike Jenny Genrikhovna, he plays an indispensable role in the plot. He introduces Ivannikov/Ikonnikov to Mostovskoy and so enables Anna Semyonovna’s last letter from the Berdichev ghetto to reach Viktor’s family. Unable to remove Sharogorodsky from the novel completely, Grossman split him into two separate figures: the Sharogorodsky we meet in Life and Fate, and Gagarov, the more acceptable, less anti-Soviet version of Sharogorodsky whom we meet in the published editions of Stalingrad.
The third character whom Grossman had difficulty including in Stalingrad is Ivannikov himself. In the third version he is an important presence, the bearer of two important documents both of which are a response to the Shoah. Not only does he carry Anna Semyonovna’s last letter across the front line, but he also shows Mostovskoy his essay on senseless kindness. Mostovskoy reads this essay and is shaken by it.
Grossman evidently realized that Ivannikov’s essay was unpublishable and removed it from Stalingrad, possibly already hoping he might be able to include it in Life and Fate. The essay appears in the fifth version of Stalingrad but not in the sixth, and there is no mention of it in any of the stenograms of editorial meetings. But Ivannikov, like Sharogorodsky, plays a necessary role in the plot and it was impossible for Grossman to remove him entirely. Instead he just reduced his importance. The reader does not meet Ivannikov; he merely hears about him from Gagarov. And there is no mention at all of his essay.
In Life and Fate, Ikonnikov—as Grossman renames him—regains his importance. His essay is included in full and he argues with Gardi, the Catholic priest, and Mostovskoy, the Old Bolshevik, insisting that, with regard to personal moral responsibility, their points of view are indistinguishable. Both Gardi and Mostovskoy believe they can be absolved from responsibility for their actions. Gardi trusts in the forgiveness of God, and Mostovskoy believes his actions are determined by historico-economico-political forces so all-determining as to be equivalent to what a Catholic understands by God. Ikonnikov, in contrast, takes a position we could call Protestant; he insists that he has free will, and is therefore responsible for his actions, no matter what degree of force he is subjected to. Ikonnikov then proves he means what he says, condemning himself to death by refusing to work on the construction of a gas chamber.
Socialist realism favours consistency and decorum. Positive characters should be entirely positive and negative characters enti
rely negative. And there is little room—still less in a novel about the Battle of Stalingrad—for pettiness, excessiveness and frivolity. Nearly all Grossman’s characters, therefore, are somewhat less complex, somewhat more stereotyped in the published editions than in the third version. As Grossman originally conceived them, they are more fully developed and have more rough edges. Vera is ruder. Zhenya is more unpredictable. Abarchuk is more fanatical and Marusya takes up a still more hard-line position when reprimanding Tokareva, the orphanage director, and arguing about art with Zhenya. Viktor and Ludmila quarrel more bitterly and Viktor’s affair with Nina is sexual, not platonic. Vera’s friend Zina Melnikova possibly has an affair with a German officer. And on the part of the minor characters, there are more instances of bad behaviour, drunkenness and petty crime.
In most cases there is little doubt what Grossman would have preferred. The quarrels between Viktor and Ludmila, for example, are of obvious importance both for Stalingrad and for Life and Fate. Alexandra Vladimirovna is two-dimensional in the published editions of Stalingrad; in the third version, Grossman tells us more about her past and this makes her a more rounded and convincing character. Grossman was evidently compelled to omit not only the mentions of her wealthy merchant father but also the passages about her life in Western Europe. The published versions of the Zina Melnikova chapters are yet more unsatisfactory; since most instances of her suspect behaviour have been deleted, it is hard to see why the Shaposhnikov sisters so disapprove of her.
Wherever possible, therefore, we have restored the more interesting and unexpected details from the third version. With regard to Viktor’s affair with Nina, however, we have stayed closer to the 1956 edition; as with Jenny Genrikhovna, it was impossible to follow the third version without confusing the plot.
Stalingrad Page 108
