A Trio of World War Two Books

I just finished reading three extraordinary books, each about World War Two in their own way. The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (European Classics) by Vladimir Voinovich is a sendup of the absurdities of life in Soviet Red Army. Suite Française by Irene Nemirovsky is a haunting novel written in Occupied France between 1940 and 1942, lost when the author was arrested and taken to Auschwitz and not rediscovered an published until 2006. A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945 by Vasily Grossman relates life in the actual Soviet Army through the notebooks of Grossman, a famed military journalist.

The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (European Classics) by Vladimir Voinovich.

Ivan Chonkin is an inept private in the Soviet army on the cusp of World War Two who first finds himself ordered to guard an airplane in a distant village, then finds himself forgotten by the authorities, and finally remembered and with a vengeance.

`The Life and Extraordinary Times of Private Ivan Chonkin' might be called a Soviet Catch-22 [Catch-22: A Novel (Simon & Schuster Classics)] for its seemingly absurdist send up of life in the Red Army. I say 'seemingly absurdist' because, like Catch-22, one suspects there is more than a little truth in Voinovich's portrayal of bureaucratic tomfoolery. Chonkin himself calls to mind George Macdonald Fraser's McAuslan (McAuslan in the Rough), the bumbling private in a Scottish Highland regiment. Others have likened it the The Good Soldier Svejk: and His Fortunes in the World War (Penguin Classics), which I have not yet read.

The background of Stalinist terror gives Voinovich's work a darker cast. Army bureaucrats endeavor at all costs to keep a low profile to avoid attracting the attention of the higher ups. Such attention is too often accompanied in their minds with imprisonment, exile, or death.

A favorite bit occurs late in the book when a regiment has surrounded the village in order to take Chonkin into custody. Chonkin has taken seven members of the secret police captive and the regiment has come to the rescue. (In the meantime, Chonkin has turned this group of seven into such efficient farm workers that word soon reaches the newspapers and even Comrade Stalin. The local chairman feels certain doom is sure to follow such success.) The captain of the secret police escapes, but falls into the hands of army, which he mistakenly thinks is the German army. Much hilarity ensues.

Although the book is somewhat an artifact of the Stalinist era and is almost certainly even better if one can read it in the original Russian (alas, I cannot), the book still rates five stars and my highest recommendation in part for the rare look it provides into life in the wartime Soviet Union and in part for its timeless portrayal of army bureaucracy, and the universal slacker, Ivan Chonkin.


Suite Française by Irene Nemirovsky.

To call Irene Nemirovksy's Suite Francaise merely moving would constitute a failure of language. Her work is not only moving, but also haunting, nuanced, and bitter. Considering that Nemirovsky was writing about events in occupied France as they occurred, she is almost supernaturally insightful as to the motivations and feelings of the French and the occupying Boche.

Suite Francaise cannot be read, experienced really, outside of its context and Nemiorvsky's ultimate fate. Suite Francaise was originally planned to consist of five books, but she had completed (more or less) only two novellas: Storm in June and Dolce. A Jewish Russian immigrant from a well-to-do family, Nemirovsky was an established writer (David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, The Courilof Affair (Everyman's Library (Cloth))) when the war began and she fled to the countryside with her husband and two young children. In July 1942 she was arrested and vanished into the Nazi vortex. The story of how her books survived the war before being found and published is well told in the preface to the French edition (included at the end of the Vintage International edition). This volume also includes Nemirovsky's notes as well correspondence. Do not put this book down without reading all of this additional material.

In `Storm in June', Nemirovsky describes Parisians' reactions to the German invasion and focuses primarily on the upper and middle classes with whom she was most familiar. The pictures she paints does very few of the characters much credit. Easy generosity snaps shut once the fleeing realize the extent of their peril. They find that the familiar levers of power no longer function quite so efficiently. Abject fear and growing deprivation reduces nearly everyone to a brutal equality. This commonality proves short-lived as the French army collapses almost immediately and many find their way back to Paris.

`Dolce' relates life in a French village and the interaction between the inhabitants and the German occupiers. German officers are billeted in the better homes, except for the aristocratic Chateau Montmorts whose owners have reached other accommodations. The story centers on the developing relationship between the German officer Bruno and Lucille Angellier. Nemirovsky deftly explores the conflicting human feelings. In Dolce, Nemirovsky implicitly accepts human needs and emotions sometimes lead to less than ideally honorable conduct.

Oddly, Jews are the missing piece of Suite Francaise, but Nemirovsky planned to include them in the third book, `Capitivity', which of course was never written due to her own captivity and death in Auschwitz.

Suite Francaise became a literary phenomenon upon publication in 2006. Remarkably, the book actually exceeds the hyperbole. Highest recommendation.

A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945 by Vasily Grossman

Vasili Semenovich Grossman was a decorated Soviet military journalist best known in the West for his epic novel, Life and Fate (New York Review Books Classics). In 'A Writer at War' editors and translators Anthony Beevor (Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943), an esteemed historian and author in his own right, and Luba Vinogradova, follow Grossman's progression through the war by piecing together stories from his notebooks and writings. At times one would have liked a bit more context to be provided by Beevor, but that is a minor quibble.

Grossman, while still a loyal Communist at this point, managed to maintain a relatively objective viewpoint. He often pushed his editors to allow him to write stories they did not want written, in particular regarding the fate of the Jews in the Ukraine under German occupation and the role of the Ukrainians.

While at time the stories have to be stitched together from bits and pieces, `A Writer at War' is a gold mine and provides a rare view into the inner workings of the Soviet military and Soviet military journalism in particular. Grossman experienced the initial German onslaught and the Russian flight from it, Stalingrad, the tank battle at Kursk, and the death camps. The book includes an extensive article on the workings of the German death camp Treblinka. Earns the highest recommendation.