Vasily Grossman - Book Quotes

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Why should we add your book to the atomic weapons arrayed against us by our enemies. Publication of your book would help our enemies.

Vasily Grossman
You know what enormous harm we have been dealt by the publication of Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. Everybody who has read your book, everybody who has seen the reviews are convinced that the potential harm from your Life and Fate would be far more dangerous than that of Doctor Zhivago.

Vasily Grossman
We would only multiply the number of victims. Our duty is to strengthen the state and defend the people, why, then, should we publish your book.

Vasily Grossman
Your book contains direct analogies between us and the Hitlerite fascists. You book incorrectly describes our people, communists. Could we have won the war with the kind of people you describe? In your book you say positive things about religion, God, Catholicism. Your book defends Trotsky. You book is full of doubts about the legitimacy of our Soviet system.

Vasily Grossman
Everyone who has read your book are unanimous in their judgment. They all think it is politically harmful for us. There is no point in giving it for an evaluation to the writers Fedin, Leonov, Ehrenburg, etc. The reviewers could have made a mistake in their aesthetic judgment but they were unanimous in their political judgment, and I have no doubt that their political judgment is absolutely correct.

Vasily Grossman
It is impossible to publish your book, and it will not be published in the next 200 years.

Vasily Grossman