Life and Fate Read Along, Part 2 Chapter 15

This post, covering Part 2, Chapter 15 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.

With growing contempt, tempered by a depressed confusion, Mostovskoy reads Ikonnikov’s writings. 

There is little to say here to illuminate Ikonnikov’s words that they cannot do for themselves. The in-fiction text does reinforce the perspective that the problems of the 20th century are not unique to its own time, but rather a continuation of humanity’s oldest problem. That is, the struggle between good and evil, as well as the equally violent struggle between good and good. 

This fight is, as Ikonnikov puts it, the struggle between everything inside and out of a “particular magic circle.” (P. 405). What is inside that magic circle — Christianity, Communism, the State — depends on the place and time. But always, the outcome is bloody.