Vasily Grossman’s Notebooks as a Source on the History of World War II

• In Event: New Perspectives on the Biography and Works of Vasily Grossman: Archival Discoveries of the 2020s

Abstract

The paper deals with some of the topics addressed in Grossman’s notebooks – which were taboo in wartime and during the Soviet period. It examines the “language of war” recorded in Grossman’s notes, the issues of defeatism and desertion, especially in the initial period of the war, violence against one’s own, women in the army and at the front, and the behavior of the Red Army in Germany. The notebooks are also a source for their author’s biography.