Vasily Grossman and the myths of the Great Patriotic War

This article locates Vasily Grossman's work in the context of the official collective remembrance of the Great Patriotic War' in the Soviet Union. It discusses the evolution of the official war myth and of Grossman's own thinking about the meaning and significance of the conflict. This provides the context for a close reading of Life and Fate, elucidating how it challenged the shibboleths of official war memory, which had already become the key legitimating foundation of the post-war Soviet system. This brings into focus the key political issues at stake in the novel, yet it also reveals some ambivalences in Grossman's attitude, belying simple generalizations about his dissidence in the last years of his life.