![]() ![]() Like his master, Grossman was a dissenter: he fell foul of the Soviet authorities during the anti-Jewish campaign of the last year of Stalin’s life. In his writings the tradition of Tolstoy mingles with that of Dostoevsky. ![]() While Tolstoy painted his picture of Russia in chiaroscuro, Grossman’s image is one of unrelieved darkness and gloom. Both artists chose a canvas of huge dimensions to portray events that shook the world both also turn a penetrating and compassionate gaze at the strains and stresses, torments, sufferings and longings of innumerable individuals, whose life and fate have been cruelly affected or shattered by those events. The author himself makes it obvious that Tolstoy’s masterpiece not only inspired him but served as a model for his saga of a great country fighting against enormous odds for its very existence. Vasili Grossman’s massive novel has rightly been compared with War and Peace. ![]()
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