Life and Fate Read Along, Part 3 Chapter 19

This post, covering Part 3, Chapter 19 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.

As the Stalingrad counteroffensive begins to pick up steam, many Muscovites who had evacuated their city a year prior are itching to return home. 

The narrator very cleanly describes how the military victory at Stalingrad has given a new meaning to the Russian national identity, how “The history of Russia was no longer the history of the sufferings and humiliations undergone by the workers and peasantry; it was the history of Russian national glory,” (p. 664). This point could not continue to be more relevant even today, where Russian national identity is still inextricably tied to victory in WWII.