Life and Fate
In memory of Vasily Grossman’s novel
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
2005 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vasily Grossman. It took 28 years for his novel Life and Fate to reach its readers. Despite the liberalization of Soviet cultural policy during the Thaw period from 1956 to the beginning of the 1960s, no suggestion of any similarities between the Stalinist and Nazi systems, or thoughts about the absolute value of individual freedom, could be tolerated. 60 years after the defeat of Nazi Germany, these ideas are topical once again.
(Osteuropa 4-6/2005, pp. 257–264)