Life and Fate - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

The novel at heart narrates the history of the Shaposhnikov family and the Battle of Stalingrad. It is written in the socialist realist style, which can make it seem odd in parts to western readers.

Life and Fate is a multi-faceted novel, one of its themes being that the Great Patriotic War was the struggle between two comparable totalitarian states. The tragedy of the common people is that they have to fight both the invaders and the totalitarianism of their own state.

Life and Fate is a sprawling account of life on the eastern front, with countless plotlines taking place simultaneously all across Russia and Eastern Europe. Although each story has a linear progression, the events are not necessarily presented in chronological order. Grossman will, for example, introduce a character, then ignore that character for hundreds of pages, and then return to recount events that took place the very next day. Thus, it is difficult to synopsize the novel, but the plot can be boiled down to three basic plotlines: the Shtrum/Shapashnikov family, the siege of Stalingrad, and life in the camps of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. Although Life and Fate is divided into three parts, all of these plotlines are featured in every section.

Viktor Shtrum is a brilliant physicist who, with his wife, Lyudmila, and daughter, Nadya, has been evacuated from Moscow to Kazan. He is experiencing great difficulty with his work, as well as with his family. He then receives a letter from his mother from inside a Jewish ghetto informing him that she is soon to be killed by the Germans. Lyudmila, meanwhile, goes to visit her son from her first marriage, Tolya, in an army hospital, but he dies before her arrival. When she returns to Kazan, she is extremely detached and seems to still be expecting Tolya’s return. Viktor finds himself engaging in anti-soviet conversations at his colleague, Sokolov’s house, partly to impress Sokolov’s wife, Marya (Lyudmila’s only friend). He consistently compares political situations to physics, and remarks that fascism and Stalinism are not so different. He later regrets these discussions out of fear that he will be denounced, an indecision that plagues his decision-making throughout the novel. Suddenly, Viktor makes a huge mathematical breakthrough, solving the issues that had hindered his experiments. Viktor’s colleagues are slow to respond, but eventually people come to accept the genius of his discovery. After moving back to Moscow, however, the higher-ups begin to criticize his discoveries as being anti-Leninist and attacking his Jewish identity. Viktor, however, refuses to publicly repent and is forced to resign. He fears that he will be arrested, but then receives a call from Stalin himself (presumably because Stalin had sensed the military importance of nuclear research) that completely, and immediately reverses his fortune. Later, he signs a letter denouncing two innocent men and is subsequently racked by guilt. The last details about Viktor regard his unconsummated affair with Marya.

The events recounted at Stalingrad center on Yevghenia Shapashnikova (Lyudmila’s sister), Krymov (her former husband), and Novikov (her lover). After reconnecting with Novikov, Yevghenia evacuates to Kuibyshev. Novikov, the commander of a Soviet tank corps, meets General Nyeudobnov and Political Commissar Getmanov, both of whom are party hacks. Together they begin planning the counter-assault on Stalingrad. Novikov delays the start of the assault for fear of unnecessarily sacrificing his men. Getmanov later denounces Novikov and he is summoned for trial, even though the tank attack was a complete success. Meanwhile, Krymov, a Political Commissar, is sent to investigate House 6/I, where a tiny group of soldiers have held back the Germans for weeks, even though they are completely surrounded and cut off from all supplies. Grekov, the commanding officer, refuses to send reports to HQ, and is disdainful of Krymov’s rhetoric. He later wounds Krymov in his sleep, causing him to be evacuated from the house. Soon after, House 6/I is completely leveled by German bombs. Krymov, a staunch communist, is then accused of being a traitor (this was standard for Russian soldiers who had been trapped behind enemy lines) and is sent to Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, where he is beaten and forced to confess. Yevghenia decides not to marry Novikov and goes to Moscow to try and visit Krymov. He receives a package from her and realizes that he still loves her but may never be released from prison.

The sections that take place in the camps have few recurring characters, with the exception of Mostovskoy, an Old Bolshevik who takes part in a plot to rebel against the Germans, but is dismayed by the prevailing lack of faith in Communism. His interrogator, Liss, asserts that Fascism and Communism are two sides of the same coin, which upsets Mostovskoy greatly. He is later killed by the Germans for his part in the uprising. In one scene, Sturmbannführer Liss tells old Bolshevik Mostovsky, a Nazi concentration camp inmate, that both Stalin and Hitler are the leaders of qualitatively new formation: "When we look at each other's faces, we see not only a hated face; we see the mirror reflection. ... Don't you recognize yourself, your will in us?" Grossman also focuses on Sofya Levinton, a Jewish woman on her way to a Nazi extermination camp.

As Grossman moves into Part Three of the novel, he writes with an increasingly analytic style and abandons many of the characters that he has created. The only plotlines that achieve real closure are those whose protagonists perish during the war. All of these characters, he seems to say, are part of a larger, ongoing story—that of Russia, and of mankind. The final chapter solidifies this notion of universality. The author introduces a set of characters who remain anonymous: an elderly widow observing her tenants, a wounded army officer recently discharged from hospital, his wife and their young daughter.

Grossman describes the type of Communist party functionaries, who blindly follow the party line and constitute the base for the oppressive regime. One such political worker (политработник), Sagaidak, maintained that entire families and villages intentionally starved themselves to death during the collectivisation in the USSR.