Life and Fate Read Along, Part 1 Chapter 67

This post, covering Part 1, Chapter 67, is part of The Slavic Literature Pod’s chapter a day read along of Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate. Learn more about our project here.

Today we travel back to Mostovskoy who is still imprisoned in the prisoner of war camp. Rumors are flying across the camp over German strategy and Soviet resistance.

Mostovskoy spends most of the chapter arguing with Chernetsov, a Menshevik émigré who is also imprisoned. Chernetsov frustrates Mostovskoy because, despite his Menshevik leanings, he seems to mostly deeply understand the time in Soviet development that Mostovskoy most loved. As the narrator says, “It was Chernetsov - not Osipov or Yershov - who remembered the First Party Congress and names that everyone else had long forgotten,” (p. 300).