Description of the panels

Vasily Grossman (1905-2005) Life and Fate: The novel of freedom and the battle of Stalingrad

Life and Fate was Vasily Grossman’s (1905-1964) masterpiece, the work of one of the most important and most ignored writers of the 20th century.

The theme of the novel is the absolute irreducibility of the individual man by any form of power. It is in the battle of Stalingrad that Grossman discovered this truest face of man, defined by one’s own freedom above all. He caught glimpses of this hidden face in all the actions of men, and he was the first to suffer in name of this freedom: the manuscript of the novel was confiscated by the KGB in 1961 and Grossman died without seeing its publication, which came about first in the West, twenty years later.

On the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of Grossman’s birth, the Pier Giorgio Frassati Cultural Center—in collaboration with the the non-profit Foundation for Jewish Art, History, and Culture of Casale Monferrato and the Western Piedmont, and with the Christian Russia Foundation—intends to reconstruct the fascinating events of the novel, to give homage to the author’s courage, and to allow all of the visitors to immerse themselves in this experience of freedom.

The exhibit, realized in close collaboration with the State Cental Museum of Contemporary History of Russia, and the Memorial Foundation of Moscow, reproposes the story of the novel through photographs, documents, artifacts, pamplets, and newspapers from the time of the battle of Stalingrad.