Robert Chandler, Vasily Grossman’s primary English translator. With totalitarian regimes growing increasingly powerful in every continent, it is no surprise that Grossman’s work should seem crucial to all who attempt to withstand them. Those who have felt it, on the other hand, feel astonished that a man can rebel against it even for a moment - with one sudden word of anger, one timid gesture of protest.”
This force was inside him it could dissolve his will and cause his heart to stop beating… Only people who have never felt such a force themselves can be surprised that others submit to it. He could feel its weight, its hypnotic power it was forcing him to think as it wanted, to write as it dictated. “But an invisible force was crushing him. Take the scene in which Grossman describes his alter ego, the physicist Viktor Shtrum, wrestling with his conscience, wondering whether or not to yield to the authorities’ demand that he put his name to a mendacious letter protesting against foreign criticisms of Soviet repression: Life and Fate is an encyclopedia of the complexities of life under totalitarianism, and no one has articulated better than Grossman how hard it is to withstand its pressures.
Jews are asked to set a place for arrested journalist Evan Gershkovich at Passover Seders.
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