Life and Fate Read Along, Part 3 Chapter 6

This post, covering Part 3, Chapter 6 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.

Krymov’s reflections from his cell today further hone in on the deep sense of unfreedom that he feels in the Lubyanka.

He thinks in detail on how every aspect of his life is now dependent on his interrogators. Everything he needed was “merely allocated to you. Sometimes, in the interests of the investigation, it was necessary to deprive a prisoner of light, food and sleep. And if you were allowed them, that was also in the interests of the investigation,” (p. 631). Pushed to its extreme, the prisoners’ lives themselves are also only permitted because they serve the purpose of the interrogation.