This post, covering Part 3, Chapter 45 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 finally meet the end of the war—the Germans have surrendered.

Finally, people are able to return to the city. The chapter shows us how “From the Stalingrad bank it looked as though the people crossing the Volga were being formed out of the mist itself, as though they had been sculpted by the wind and frost. They had no mission to accomplish in Stalingrad; the war here was over and no one had sent them,” (p. 795). For the first time in what feels like forever, people are able to aimlessly wander into Stalingrad. They don’t need to be bringing emergency medicine or rations, travel across flaming rivers, or risk being shelled by enemies.