Habitus

by David Gutherz · 07/09/10

It has been more than half a century now since the death of Josef Stalin, but Vasily Grossman–the great Russian-Jewish novelist whose work we published in issue five–is still suffering on his account. As The Guardian‘s Moscow correspondent Luke Harding details, Grossman’s work–although increasingly popular in the West–still rubs many Muscovites the wrong way. In the midst of the Kremlin’s quiet but persistent campaign to rehabilitate Stalin, Grossman’s work is seen by many as a pesky reminder of just how bleak, savage, and sad life could be under his Iron Fist. And no doubt Grossman would never want us to forget it. But, then again, to judge his novels as bits of war journalism is like reducing Anna Kareninina to a piece of anarchist pamphleteering. For, as his daughter Ekaterina points out, although never one to blunt the reality of suffering, Grossman also had an uncanny skill for finding warmth amidst the agony and goodness in even the darkest of men. His is a message that deserves to be heard, and one can only hope that in the coming years more readers in his home country learn to unplug their ears.