Life & Fate
from archive.org
BBC Radio 4's ambitious eight-hour dramatisation of Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman's epic masterpiece set during the Battle of Stalingrad.
This powerful work, completed in 1960, charts the fate of both a nation and a family in the turmoil of war. Its comparison of Stalinism with Nazism was considered by Soviet authorities to be so dangerous that the KGB placed the manuscript under arrest and Grossman was informed his book would not be published for at least 200 years.
Having been a household name as one of Russia's most distinguished war correspondents, Grossman died in 1964 aged only 58 - the banning of his book hastening the end of his life - and he would never know the fate of his masterpiece: smuggled out of the Soviet Union on microfilm, to freedom and eventual publication in the West in 1980. Today it is increasingly hailed as the most important Russian novel of the 20th century.
Viktor, a nuclear physicist, is evacuated with his family from Moscow eastwards to Kazan. It's October 1942 and the Russians are defending Stalingrad from the ferocious attack of the Germans. Viktor has a revelatory breakthrough in his research but his wife Lyuda learns of the death of her son and her grief drives a wedge between the couple.
Viktor's mother, Anna, writes him a farewell letter in September 1941. As a Jew in Berdichev, in the Ukraine now occupied by the Nazis, she has been forced into a ghetto and understands what will come next. The letter somehow finds its way to Viktor and is to be a source of strength for him in the days to come.
Evacuated from Moscow to Kuibyshev before the invading German army, Lyuda's sister, the beautiful Yevgenia (Zhenya), is alone. While she tackles Soviet bureaucracy for the residence permit she needs for food, her ex-husband, the Commissar Nikolai Krymov, is posted into the heart of the battle for Stalingrad, hundreds of miles away.
In a forest in northern Russia, Lenya, a pilot, longs to see his pregnant girlfriend, Vera. She is stranded in Stalingrad with her father, Stepan. Her mother (another sister of Lyuda) has drowned in the Volga. She watches the planes daily, hoping to catch sight of Lenya.
Viktor Shtrum.....Kenneth Branagh
Lyuda Shaposhnikova.....Greta Scacchi
Nadya.....Ellie Kendrick
Alexandra .....Ann Mitchell
Pyotr Sokolov.....Nigel Anthony
Akhmet Karimov....Stephen Greif
Marya Sokolova.....Harriet Walter
Leonid Madyarov.....Ralph Ineson
Sister.....Elaine Claxton
Anna Stepanovna....Alex Tregear
Anna Semyonovna ..... Janet Suzman
Nikolai Krymov ..... David Tennant
Zhenya Shaposhnikova ..... Raquel Cassidy
Jenni ..... Eleanor Bron
General Rodimtsev ..... Bruce Alexander
Major Byerozkin ..... Sam Dale
District Inspector Grishin ..... Peter Polycarpou
Limonov .... Adrian Scarborough
Seryozha Shaposhnikov ..... Freddie Fox
Lenya Viktorov ..... Luke Treadaway
Vera Spiridonov ..... Morven Christie
Pavel Andreyevich ..... Malcolm Tierney
Stepan Spiridonov ..... Kenneth Cranham
Skotnoy ..... Jonathan Forbes
Solmatin ..... Carl Prekopp
Mukhin ..... Simon Bubb
Zakabluka ..... Gerard McDermott
Written by Vasily Grossman
Dramatised by Mike Walker and Jonathan Myerson
Director: Alison Hindell and Jonquil Panting
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2011.
- Viktor and Lyuda (52Mb)
- Anna's Letter (12.7Mb)
- Krymov and Zhenya - Lovers Once (40.3Mb)
- Vera and Her Pilot (12.6Mb)
- Journey (40.3Mb)
- Abarchuk (12.7Mb)
- Building 6/1 - Those Who Were Still Alive (40.3Mb)
- Lieutenant Peter Bach (13Mb)
- Novikov's Story (40.1Mb)
- A Hero of the Soviet Union (12.3Mb)
- Krymov in Moscow (40.3Mb)
- Fortress Stalingrad (48.8Mb)
- Viktor and the Academy (51.3Mb)
MP3 files hosted by archive.org.