Two Versions of For a Just Cause

I know I have been going on about For a Just Cause a bit, but that is because: 1) I find it really quite an exciting piece of study; 2) very little has been written about the book, especially in English, therefore pretty much everything I write is kind of new, and so I WIN!

So here I want to point out another aspect of the novel that I find really interesting and it has to do with the publication of the novel. There are two main versions of the novel available, one published in 1952 and the other in 1964. This is due to the heavy censorship imposed on the novel, and there are supposedly about 13 versions of the novel in the archives. Grossman spent five years rewriting the novel for publication and it was finally released in 1952. After Stalin’s death and the relative freedom of the press, Grossman rewrote the novel to make it more like his original version and it was published in 1964. (Interestingly, very first version of the novel was called Life and Fate.) There are some significant differences between the two novels, but I have two favourites in particular. One is the depiction of Abarchuk and the other is the story of Dmitrii, Alexandra Vladimirovna’s son and Serezha’s father. 

In Life and Fate Abarchuk is one of the men imprisoned in the Russian labour camp. He is lonely and finds himself longing for his son. Unlike Mostovskoy, Abarchuk is more obviously a broken man, his strength lay in the power to judge others, and in camp he has lost that right and is not the man he used to be. In For a Just Cause 1952 (as I will call it here), Abarchuk isn’t even mentioned by name, he is only referred to as Liudmila’s husband who leaves her soon after their son is born. In For a Just Cause 1964, however, Grossman spends three pages describing Abarchuk. Here we see the character that is depicted in Life and Fate. Abarchuk is truly unlikeable. He and Liudmila marry when they’re in the first year of university and divorce when they are in the third. Abarchuk is a hard worker at the university and is truly devoted to the Party and the Revolutionary cause; he sleeps no more than four-five hours a night. He is judgemental and unforgiving, calling for an expulsion of a female student for using strong perfume during May 1st celebrations. He imagines that his living space with his wife should consist of two desks (one for the husband and one for the wife), a bookshelf, two beds that fold up, and a hidden wardrobe. When Liudmila becomes pregnant she starts buying various items for the future child, which frustrates Abarchuk as he believes she is too bourgeois. They also argue about the boys name, Abarchuk wants to call him October. When Liudmila decides to visit her brother Dmitrii in his summer house, Abarchuk takes the opportunity to clear out the room of all her things and writes her a six page letter explaining in depth why he is leaving her. Meeting her at university months later he stops and asks: “How do you do Comrade Shaposhnikova?” To this Liudmila silently turns and walks away. He also attempts to have Shtrum excluded from the university, as all three characters study in the same institution. 

Dmitrii is another example of a character that gets two very different stories in the two versions of For a Just Cause. In both novels Dmitrii studies at the Sverdlovsk university, and he also takes part in the Civil War, against the Naval Commander Aleksandr Kolchak.He then quickly gets an important position within an unspecified industry. In the 1952 version Dmitrii becomes severely ill with a heart condition but refuses to take time off work, which leads to his death from a heart attack. He is found dead in his office. In the 1964 edition however, Dmitrii is arrested in 1937 on the charge that he is connected to enemies of the people. Even his wife is arrested, whilst in 1952 version she moves from Moscow to the north and then Serezha moves to the Shaposhnikov’s because of his ill health. In the 1964 version Alexandra Vladimirovna manages to get a pass to see her son and the only time the characters see Alexandra Vladimirovna in tears, is when she describes this meeting. Dmitrii is brought to the meeting in a boat (I assume the prison is on the other side of the river?) and the two stand in silence holding hands, looking deeply at each other. After the autumn of 1939 Dmitrii stops answering Alexandra Vladimirovna’s letters, she sends requests to find out about his fate, even travels to Moscow, but to no avail. This is the last mention of Dmitrii, his fate remains unknown and it is only in Life and Fate that Alexandra Vladimirovna hears that he is in a camp and suffering. 

The differences between the two novels are numerous, however, the above two are my favourite. This is because they clearly show how Grossman was rewriting the novels to fit in with the censorship demands. It also very clearly shows the difference in Soviet publishing between the two decades. In 1952 it was impossible to say that Dmitrii was arrested in 1937 and so boldly point out the terror of that year that has become known as The Great Terror. It was also impossible to depict a devoted Communist in such completely unsympathetic light, Abarchuk is so devoted to the cause that he becomes cruel to his wife and child. Grossman almost pokes fun at the notion of this hard-line believer when he suggests that their son should be called October. Although it was common for children to have names related to the Revolution, in this case it is almost comic as Abarchuk becomes a parody of himself.

Without the 1964 version of the novel, Life and Fate  would not make sense, especially the story of Abarchuk. However, Dmitrii’s story is not essential to the two novels, so it is very interesting that Grossman felt that this had to be changed from the 1952 version. It suggests that he wanted to show the effects of 1937, and in that way extend the narrative beyond the war and show the extent of Stalinist terror. The above two are perhaps the most obvious differences that demonstrate the changes that took place in both publishing and in Soviet society during these two decades. Rewriting For a Just Cause Grossman was clearly preparing it to fit in with the sequel that was never published. I would love to read a study of all the versions of the novel (or indeed the versions themselves) to see the changes made during different times, and to see how many of the changes were a preparation for Life and Fate and how many were restorations of past versions. It is always fascinating to see the progress of a novel from inception to publication, but in this case it would also illuminate the inner workings of Soviet censorship. This is one of the many reasons I find this novel so interesting.

The war in For a Just Cause

Some of the best and also the most tedious (for me) parts of For a Just Cause are concerned with the war. War is a constant theme in the novel, it is its very subject, however, at the start of the novel the front hasn’t moved to Stalingrad yet and war is distant. There is a great concern among all the characters about the events at the front and whether the war will reach Stalingrad. In this sense it is much like the beginning of War and Peace that starts with a discussion of politics and the progress of the Napoleonic war. In For a Just Cause the conversation is a lot more sensitive, the characters express half thoughts, showing how fear of war becomes almost unspeakable. Also, perhaps it is the conflict between the silence/fear that permeated the Soviet society and the relative freedom of the war years: the characters find themselves trapped between two different realities. The belief in the Soviet army and the “just cause” of Communism is mixed with the fear of the power of the German forces.

So, the first two-thirds of the novel are concerned with the war moving towards Stalingrad and the preparations for the possible battle, and the last third depicts the actual battle within Stalingrad. One of my favourite early passages is of Vera and Viktorov in the hospital.

Vera returns to her duty after the family gathering (described in the previous post) and looks over the city. To me this is one of the most potent descriptions of a city before the war. Vera leans on the window sill of the hospital and looks over the city, which is enveloped in an aura of death. The moon shines with a cold deathly light over the covered and dusty windows of houses. They no longer emit the warm light of a family home but now reflect the cold and brutal light of the moon. This light is fragile and one only has to look in another direction for all to be bathed in deathly darkness. The fresh air of Volga mixes with the stale air of the hospital, sometimes it wins over this air and sometimes it seemes as if the whole city is enveloped in the smell of carbolic acid and the clouds are cotton pads. Vera stands there and listens to the dying men in the hospital and sees new injured men enter. Here, by the window, Vera feels she is part of two worlds. One that consists of the beautiful stars, the fresh air and water of the Volga, and is timeless. The other world is filled with the smell of cigarettes and people dying, the boring forms she has to fill in and the arguments at home. These two worlds collide as Viktorov approaches her and everything seems united into one. It is this description of death everywhere and the love that is born at this moment that makes this scene so moving. Vera’s thoughts are both beautiful and also childishly deep, the mundane mixes with the real threat of war and death. Out of this presence of death life is born as well (as we find out at the end of the novel). It is this mixture of the grand and epic and the small and particular that I love in Grossman. This is what makes the war real to the reader.

The other aspect of war in For a Just Cause  is the one I found most tedious. This is purely due to my lack of interest in (and knowledge of) military matters. As the front moves to Stalingrad, Grossman depicts the exact movements of the various battalions. Some move across the Volga to the city and some retreat from the Don back to Stalingrad. This is all (in my mind) meticulously documented, and is something that is for me hard to understand. All the various numbers and names of Colonels and Sergeants are hard to follow. However, this is all saved by the fact that Grossman follows these battalions into war. As the German army approaches and starts to bomb Stalingrad, the descriptions turn to the individuals and the personal experience of war. Because Grossman explains the movement of all the various troops, and then return to the same troops it becomes clearer to the reader how many lives were sacrificed during the war. Many of the characters Grossman depicts die during these early battles in Stalingrad. One example is the battle that takes place in the Train Station, which is very engaging. The reader has followed these characters for some time and they all are murdered during this battle (including Kovalev who accompanies Tolia to the family party earlier in the novel).

There is a very potent depiction of a female Senior Sergeant Lena Gnatyuk, who receives a parcel from the United States, as part of some form of charity. As she stands there covered in mud and dried blood she opens a parcel of silk stockings, a woollen patterned cardigan, a dress and some perfume. The uselessness of the items in the parcel seems offensive, but more than that, it is painful. Lena feels how she will never experience all that a young beautiful girl should, she will never wear that dress and go to dances. The contrast between the feminine content of the parcel and her masculine uniform and dirty appearance is painful not only to her but also to the soldiers watching her unwrap the parcel. She throws all the contents in the corner declaring their uselessness to her, and hours later she is killed by a German bomb. Whilst searching the shelter after the raid, a German soldier finds the package that Lena threw into the corner and is pleased with the find that he will send to his wife back home. It is through small episodes such as this, that Grossman depicts the brutality of war.

Through depicting, sometimes tediously, the movements of the troops and soldiers in these troops, Grossman actually manages to create an impression of the scale of loss during the war. Every soldier he depicts is accompanied by a small episode that makes him/her very human to reader. Having made the soldiers real to the reader Grossman then kills them, including Tolia Shaposhnikov. By luring the reader into the private life and emotions of the soldiers and them killing then off, Grossman shows the reader the unbearable and brutal losses of the war. In this sense the passages that I find so tedious become absolutely vital in order to understand the battle of Stalingrad. Sometimes, even reading comes with boring chores or “musts” that prove to be worth the effort.

Grossman’s Triumph

The recent discussions in the media about Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate have prompted me to think about the importance of the novel’s arrest. Grossman’s career as a writer can be (and often is) divided into two periods, one before the War and one after. Before the war he was  a rather successful and well paid member of the Soviet Writer’s Union, after the war, however, his career took a complicated turn. He went from being relatively easily published to having to spend years trying to publish a seemingly Soviet piece of writing. Grossman died not knowing the fate of his novels Life and Fate and Everything Flows, and as Linda Grant explained at the BBC Radio 4 seminars on Grossman, it is the worst fate for a writer. She was passionate about the difficulty in dealing with an unpublished piece of work, which reminds one about the relationship of an author to their work. It was nice having Linda Grant give Grossman a voice as a fellow writer. This is something that has escaped me until now, although Grossman wrote passionately to both Stalin and Khrushchev about the publication of For a Just Cause  and Life and Fate respectively, it is sometimes hard to imagine what kind of impact the suppression of publication may have.

The advert highlights the arrest of the novel, literally....

Grossman died from stomach cancer not knowing what would happen to his two novels damning the Soviet state. Life and Fate was arrested in 1961 and lying on his deathbed in 1964 Grossman was rewriting his last novel Everything Flows. In a way it may be seen as a last desperate attempt to expose the awful truth of the Stalinist era, however, there is no repetition of the themes in Life and Fate, instead he develops the idea of Russia as a slave soul. I try to imagine what Grossman felt those last days when he was writing, knowing that all his work would be suppressed. He evidently felt the need to write no matter what the outcome would be. However, the fact that there are no parallels between the two novels, and no repetitions,makes it evident that Grossman must have felt that his novel would be published in the end.

The BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Life and Fate brings forth the unbelievable fact that the novel was arrested while the writer remained untouched. This is an incredible story, and the  anger of the authorities about the novel blatantly expose the importance of the novel. A ban of 250 years is perhaps one of the greatest compliments a writer or a novel may get. The brilliant TV advert dy Devilfish for the  BBC  dramatisation concludes: “A novel so dangerous it was arrested”.  It makes the novel’s history sound positively Hollywood-like. Of course, it is very hard  not to focus on this, especially as it highlights to us now how important fiction can be. It is hard to imagine a book being arrested in our time. However, it makes a great marketing tool, as it makes the novel stand out among all the lost masterpieces of the past century. Grossman’s personal tragedy was the arrest of the novel, ironically it also became his greatest selling point.

Many works were banned by Soviet censorship, Grossman’s however is the only known one to be arrested. This fact kept being brought up at the little Grossman festival that the BBC organised in Oxford, and everyone was puzzled by why Grossman submitted the manuscript to the publishers at Znamia. Many suggested that he was naive or that perhaps it was the early days of the Thaw that made him believe it would be published. However, one of the more recent research into the subject by a Russian scholar Yury Bit-Yyunan shows that Grossman was very far from naive. He hid copies of the draft with people who had nothing to do with literature and broke off all ties with them, knowing that he might lead the authorities back to them and the novel would disappear forever. This may explain the profound difference of Everything Flows to Life and Fate, Grossman knew that his novel was alive and did not have to repeat any of the material mentioned in it.

So, it is perhaps Grossman’s cunning way of hiding the novel for posterity that needs to be brought forward… But there is something even more incredible than all of that. It is the courage and the daring of Grossman in submitting the manuscript at all that is significant. Grossman was aware of the bomb that he was giving to Znamia and although he cut pieces of the novel, it was still a damning piece of work and by submitting it to the magazine he managed to get the greatest readership that he could during his lifetime. It is almost as if Grossman lulled the authorities into a sense of security by first producing the relatively “Soviet” For a Just Cause and publishing the safe parts of Life and Fate before submitting the whole manuscript. He put himself in great danger by doing so and perhaps it was a reckless move on his part, but at the same time he must have felt it to be his duty.

His letter to Khrushchev begging for the release of the manuscript shows how strongly Grossman felt about the truth of his novel, and how much it pained him that it was arrested. However, it could not have been a surprise to him that it would at least be banned. Grossman would fight for his novel, but not by keeping it secret – he didn’t write “for the drawer” – he was ready to confront the authorities face on and prepared for the consequences, and for that he should be admired. The fact that BBC are dramatising the novel and that it has been #1 on the Amazon “Movers and Shakers” list and is now #2 on Bestseller list and #3 on the “Most Wished For” list, is a triumph beyond any. I can’t help but feel incredible joy on Grossman’s behalf, finally he gets the recognition he deserves. His daring actions in submitting the manuscript, having it arrested and having saved copies, have all allowed for the novel to become the best seller it is now.