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Vasily Grossman
17 quotes
“The more difficult a man's life had been before the camp, the more furiously he lied. This lie had no practical purpose; it served simply to glorify freedom. How could a man be unhappy outside the camp?”
Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“National Socialism had created a new type of political criminals: criminals who had not committed a crime.”
Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A soul can live in torment for years and years, even decades, as it slowly, stone by stone, builds a mound over a grave; as it moves towards the apprehension of eternal loss and bows down before reality.”
Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man who has placed his soul in the service of Fascism declares an evil and dangerous slavery to be the only true good. Rather than overtly renouncing human feelings, he declares the crimes committed by Fascism to be the highest form of humanitarianism; he agrees to divide people up into the pure and worthy and the impure and unworthy.”
Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are restoring the Leninist norms of democracy. But Leninist norms are not the same as the bourgeois norms of democracy. You know yourself: when Gorky—affected by traumatic impressions, deprivation, hunger and housing difficulties in the first years after October—abandoned his revolutionary position, Lenin did not hesitate to close down his newspaper Novaia zhizn’.”
Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You believe that we have violated the principle of freedom in your case. Yes, this is so if one understands freedom in the bourgeois sense of the term. But we have a different conception of freedom. Our understanding of freedom is not identical to the one in the capitalist world—as the right to do anything without taking into account the interests of society. Only the imperialists and millionaires need this kind of freedom.”
Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our Soviet writer must be guided in his world only by the need of the people, useful for the society.”
Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have not read your novel but I have carefully read the reviews of your manuscript, responses to it, which contain many excerpts from your novel. Look how many quotes from them I have written down.”
Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everyone who has read your book are unanimous in their judgment. They all think it is politically harmful for us. There is no point in giving it for an evaluation to the writers Fedin, Leonov, Ehrenburg, etc. The reviewers could have made a mistake in their aesthetic judgment but they were unanimous in their political judgment, and I have no doubt that their political judgment is absolutely correct.”
Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is impossible to publish your book, and it will not be published in the next 200 years.”
Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No, we have not destroyed it. Let it sit. We cannot change its fate.”
Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We should not underestimate the harm it would bring should it be published.”
Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why should we add your book to the atomic weapons arrayed against us by our enemies. Publication of your book would help our enemies.”
Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We would only multiply the number of victims. Our duty is to strengthen the state and defend the people, why, then, should we publish your book.”
Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Your book contains direct analogies between us and the Hitlerite fascists. You book incorrectly describes our people, communists. Could we have won the war with the kind of people you describe? In your book you say positive things about religion, God, Catholicism. Your book defends Trotsky. You book is full of doubts about the legitimacy of our Soviet system.”
Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You know what enormous harm we have been dealt by the publication of Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. Everybody who has read your book, everybody who has seen the reviews are convinced that the potential harm from your “Life and Fate” would be far more dangerous than that of Doctor Zhivago.”
Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Death, who had once lived in a fairy-tale forest where a fairy-tale wolf was creeping up on a fairy-tale goat, was no longer confined to the pages of a book. For the first time David felt very clearly that he himself was mortal, not just in a fairy-tale way, but in actual fact. ' He understood that one day his mother would die. And it wasn’t from the fairy-tale forest and the dim light of its fir-trees that Death would come for him and his mother – it would come from this very air, from these walls, from life itself, and there was no way they would be able to hide from it. ' He sensed Death with a depth and clarity of which only small children or great philosophers are capable, philosophers who are themselves almost childlike in the power and simplicity of their thinking.”
Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source