A Writer at War

This book about writer Vasily Grossman's wartime notebooks provides a fitting companion volume to Antony Beevor's critically acclaimed histories of Stalingrad and Berlin, but also stands as a tribute to a great writer.

At the outbreak of the Second World War Grossman was declared unfit for service in the Red Army. Instead, he joined the Red Army newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda as a journalist; as a result he saw as much - if not more - of the war than the average frontoviki (front-line soldier).

Grossman's notebooks record with candour the horrors wrought by the mighty Nazi war machine as it advanced on Moscow in 1941 and their relentless push towards the Volga in 1942. He was in Stalingrad for the desperate and brutal last-ditch defence of the city at the end of the year, and the subsequent Red Army's encirclement of the German Sixth Army.

In 1943, with the tide of war turning in the Russians' favour, Grossman followed the army back across the steppe as it destroyed the Germans at Kursk and forced them back to Berlin.

Along the way, he recorded in his notebooks his impressions of the devastation meted out by both armies. Concerned primarily with the effect of the war upon the 'ordinary' person, he interviewed hundreds of soldiers and civilians, making short notes about their bravery and their anger. His finished articles for the newspaper reflect this fascination with the individuals defending the Motherland rather than simply espousing Stalinist propaganda; as a result - and to his great annoyance - his work was sometimes substantially edited. In fact, he was lucky not to get into more trouble with the political wing of the army.

As a Jew, Grossman was particularly traumatised by the discovery of the death camps in Poland; his piece on Treblinka is a harrowingly detailed account of the fate that awaited the Nazis' most innocent victims.

Feted by the readers of Krasnaya Zvezda during the war, Grossman nevertheless came into conflict with the authorities in the post-war years. His great novel Life and Fate, based on his experiences throughout the conflict and the death of his mother, was denounced and destroyed, but one copy made it out of the Soviet Union and was published in Switzerland after the war.

Beevor and Vinogradova have provided a careful and considered historical framework around Grossman's words, which provides the reader with sufficient context but also allows his deep humanity to speak for itself. The book is a fitting tribute to both the writer and those who took part in the war.