126 Bettina Kaibach
its opposite. This man with the telling name Ikonnikov voices the central
message of the novel: “Human history is not the battle of good struggling
to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush
a small kernel of human kindness” (“Istoriia liudei ne byla bitvoi dobra,
stremiashchegosia pobeditʹ zlo. Istoriia cheloveka - ėto bitva velikogo zla,
stremiashchegosia razmolotʹ zernyshko chelovechnosti”). 82 For Grossman,
this “small kernel of human kindness,” too elusive to ever crystallize into
a doctrine, is the only icon that can endure in the age of secular salvational
“-isms.” He is, however, less optimistic as to whether it will prevail against
the new threat of what Lifton and Markusen have termed the ideology of
nuclearism. 83
Life and Fate is set during World War II. Its complex web of narrative
strands centers around the battle of Stalingrad, which in some way or other
affects most of the novel’s characters. Life and Fate depicts die-hard Bolsheviks
as well as critics of communism, high-ranking Nazis as well as common
German soldiers. It explores the mindset of both Hitler and Stalin, and presents the Shoah as a watershed event in history, while at the same time implying that the Nazi crimes and those committed in the name of Stalinism
spring from the same totalitarian mentality. This alone, apart from numerous
other taboos breached in Life and Fate, made the novel unacceptable for the
authorities. 84
One aspect that is seldom discussed, but central to the novel, is its focus
on the nuclear topic. In Life and Fate, the twentieth century is not only characterized as the age of global war and industrialized genocide on a hitherto
unimaginable scale. It also marks the beginning of the atomic era, which for
Grossman is an outgrowth of the same bureaucratic-technological culture
that made the genocidal policy of the Nazis possible. The novel’s protagonist
Viktor Shtrum is a Jewish scientist, who is initially convinced that nuclear
physics will solve humanity’s cardinal problems. Like in The Sistine Madonna,
where thermonuclear reaction becomes a metaphor for what is opposed to
the human spirit, in Life and Fate, too, annihilatory and totalitarian tendencies in twentieth-century culture are discussed in terms of atomic and
molecular physics. After the death of his mother at the hands of the German
Einsatzgruppen, Viktor Shtrum begins to discern a “terrible analogy” between
fascism and modern physics: with its contempt for the individual human
being and the annihilation of entire communities along ethnic and other
lines, fascism pursues a kind of “quantum policy” that follows the same
mechanical laws as twentieth-century physics. 85 Throughout the novel, the
metaphorical tie between totalitarian violence and modern physics is sustained. For the Nazi Liss, deputy to Heinrich Himmler in the concentration
camp administration, entering the mind of a communist Soviet prisoner is
like experiencing the attractive and repulsive forces in an atomic nucleus. 86
Later in the novel, in a sheer unbearable passage, the movement of bodies
soon to be asphyxiated in a gas chamber is compared to the Brownian motion
of molecules. 87
its opposite. This man with the telling name Ikonnikov voices the central
message of the novel: “Human history is not the battle of good struggling
to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush
a small kernel of human kindness” (“Istoriia liudei ne byla bitvoi dobra,
stremiashchegosia pobeditʹ zlo. Istoriia cheloveka - ėto bitva velikogo zla,
stremiashchegosia razmolotʹ zernyshko chelovechnosti”). 82 For Grossman,
this “small kernel of human kindness,” too elusive to ever crystallize into
a doctrine, is the only icon that can endure in the age of secular salvational
“-isms.” He is, however, less optimistic as to whether it will prevail against
the new threat of what Lifton and Markusen have termed the ideology of
nuclearism. 83
Life and Fate is set during World War II. Its complex web of narrative
strands centers around the battle of Stalingrad, which in some way or other
affects most of the novel’s characters. Life and Fate depicts die-hard Bolsheviks
as well as critics of communism, high-ranking Nazis as well as common
German soldiers. It explores the mindset of both Hitler and Stalin, and presents the Shoah as a watershed event in history, while at the same time implying that the Nazi crimes and those committed in the name of Stalinism
spring from the same totalitarian mentality. This alone, apart from numerous
other taboos breached in Life and Fate, made the novel unacceptable for the
authorities. 84
One aspect that is seldom discussed, but central to the novel, is its focus
on the nuclear topic. In Life and Fate, the twentieth century is not only characterized as the age of global war and industrialized genocide on a hitherto
unimaginable scale. It also marks the beginning of the atomic era, which for
Grossman is an outgrowth of the same bureaucratic-technological culture
that made the genocidal policy of the Nazis possible. The novel’s protagonist
Viktor Shtrum is a Jewish scientist, who is initially convinced that nuclear
physics will solve humanity’s cardinal problems. Like in The Sistine Madonna,
where thermonuclear reaction becomes a metaphor for what is opposed to
the human spirit, in Life and Fate, too, annihilatory and totalitarian tendencies in twentieth-century culture are discussed in terms of atomic and
molecular physics. After the death of his mother at the hands of the German
Einsatzgruppen, Viktor Shtrum begins to discern a “terrible analogy” between
fascism and modern physics: with its contempt for the individual human
being and the annihilation of entire communities along ethnic and other
lines, fascism pursues a kind of “quantum policy” that follows the same
mechanical laws as twentieth-century physics. 85 Throughout the novel, the
metaphorical tie between totalitarian violence and modern physics is sustained. For the Nazi Liss, deputy to Heinrich Himmler in the concentration
camp administration, entering the mind of a communist Soviet prisoner is
like experiencing the attractive and repulsive forces in an atomic nucleus. 86
Later in the novel, in a sheer unbearable passage, the movement of bodies
soon to be asphyxiated in a gas chamber is compared to the Brownian motion
of molecules. 87