Between writing his first novel, Stalingrad, in the aftermath of World War II and his second, Life and Fate, after the death of Stalin, the great Soviet Jewish writer Vasily Grossman became utterly disillusioned with Communism—a transformation that, to Joseph Epstein, is part of what makes the former merely “an important book” and the latter “a masterpiece.” While part of this change in perspective was due to the revelations of Stalin’s crimes, Epstein writes that Grossman’s growing sensitivity to his own Jewish identity played a role as well:
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More about: Anti-Semitism, Hannah Arendt, Holocaust, Jewish literature, Soviet Jewry, Vasily Grossman