A Writer at War - Antony Beevor + Luba Vinogradova

Vasily Grossman, alongside Ilya Ehrenburg, was the pre-eminent journalist amongst the Soviet forces on the Eastern Front. Writing exclusively for Krasnaya Zvesda (Red Star) he spent 3 of the 4 years of war continually on the frontlines, becoming a true Frontovik

It is hardly a surprise to anyone that I'm a huge fan of Beevor's work, see Stalingrad and Berlin, however here he takes a different tack as demanded by the subject. Beevor acts as the editor of this book and deprieves us of his incisive portrayal of somewhat cataclyismic events but when you're dealing with Vasily Grossman this is no great loss. The man's descriptions are simple, straightforward and, with the expertise of a true craftsman, massively descriptive in just a few words. Just a line or two for the most part, hurried entries in his journal, jotted down as he sees them, but what power they have!

He experiences the gut-wrenching terror of the first few days of Operation Barbarossa from the Soviet side - the huge pincer envelopments, the senseless waste of life and equipment because those in command are completely paralysed - and from a uniquely personal perspective. Everyone knows now what happened in the first invasion months of 1941 and indeed how and why events turned out the way they did but it's only with the perspective of one who was actually there that the reader can truely appreciate what it was like.
From the terrible, heart-rending abandonment of the Ukraine (Vasily's homeland) where he was in many cases just half a step ahead of the marauding panzer columns (and as a Jew his fate would have been all too clear if captured) to the terrible attrition of Stalingrad, the remorseless tank battles around Kursk and Prokhorovnya, the heartbreaking discoveries of Warsaw and Madjanek and the fierce exhileration of entering Berlin itself, Grossman and Beevor take us on a journey of 4 years and many thousands of miles.

In many ways Vasily Grossman was something of a naive optimist as well as a fatalist (his own fate, not that of the Soviet Union), but then so were the majority of the Frontoviki during that war. The problems of later days lay in the fact that he was more politically naive instead of morally so - he condemned the Red Army's rampage through Germany in the strongest terms, yet they were never published.

Read this. Read it now. 8 out of 10