![]() Even as the Germans advance, the Shaposhnikov matriarch, Alexandra Vladimirovna, refuses to leave Stalingrad. In the rubble of the bombed-out city, Soviet forces dig in for a last stand. ![]() Launched in the summer, the campaign soon picked up speed, as the routed Red Army is driven back to the industrial center of Stalingrad on the banks of the Volga. In April 1942, Hitler and Mussolini meet in Salzburg where they agree on a renewed assault on the Soviet Union. The chapters devoted to the long retreats of 1941 and the first half of 1942 are perhaps still more vivid than the battle scenes in the later novel". The chapters in the earlier novel about the Shaposhnikov family are as tender, and sometimes humorous, as in the later novel. ![]() In reality, there is little difference between the two novels. Scholars and critics seem to have assumed that, since it was first published in Stalin's lifetime, it can only be considered empty propaganda. The first half, originally titled Stalingrad but published in 1952 under the title For a just cause, has received surprisingly little attention. Most readers, however, do not realize that it is only the second half of a dilogy. ![]() This has often been described as a Soviet (or anti-Soviet) War and Peace. "Vassily Grossman (1905 - 1964) has become well-known in the last twenty years - above all for his novel Life and Fate. ![]()
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