Vasily Grossman - People Quotes

7 Sourced Quotes

View all Vasily Grossman Quotes
Our Soviet writer must be guided in his world only by the need of the people, useful for the society.

Vasily Grossman
There are people whose souls have just withered, people who are willing to go along with anything evil - anything so as not to be suspected of disagreeing with whoever is in power.

Vasily Grossman
There is a deep and undeniable sadness in all this: whenever we see the dawn of an eternal good that will never be overcome by evil – an evil that is itself eternal but will never succeed in overcoming good – whenever we see this dawn, the blood of old people and children is always shed.

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
Thousands of people are being buried and no one attends the funerals,' said one of the soldiers. 'In peacetime it's the other way round: one coffin and a hundred people carrying flowers.

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
And in this silence of the dumb and these speeches of the blind, in this medly of people bound together by the same grief, terror and hope, in this hatred and lack of understanding between men who spoke the same tongue, you could see much of the tragedy of the twentieth century.

Vasily Grossman