Revelations of the Sturmbannführer Liss

Which was not included in the film adaptation of the novel by Vasily Grossman

Revelations of the Sturmbannführer Liss. The scene of “Life and Fate” for the Soviet regime, which in the early 60s caused the “arrest” of the book by state security authorities, the creators of the television series from the film chose to remove. Meanwhile, this is the key to understanding the life and fate of Vasily Grossman himself. The New Times considered it necessary to remind readers of the main thing that the writer said first in his novel 50 years ago

One of the key figures of the novel by Vasily Grossman “Life and Fate” is Mikhail Sidorovich Mostovskaya, the old Bolshevik, one of the founders of the Bolshevik party, a former close associate of Lenin.
By the will of circumstances, he finds himself in the German concentration camp. His camp fate does not particularly differ from the fate of thousands of other prisoners, although the camp authorities, apparently, knows who he is. Mostovskaya understands that he cannot continue for a long time: sooner or later he will be pulled out of the crowd of prisoners and begin to deal with him in a special way-as he deserves it. And so, it seems, this terrible moment, which he was waiting and for which he was ready for a long time, came.
At night, the non-commissioned officer of the SSCOVER brought him out of the audit, led him along the street. They entered the door of the camp control. Bypassing the second floor, they went up to the third, passed the polished door with a small plank “commandant” and stopped in front of the same elegant door with the inscription “Sturmbannführer Liss”. Mostovskaya often heard this surname - it was a representative of Himmler at the Main Directorate.
Mikhail Sidorovich has no illusions about what awaits him behind this elegant polished door. There will be an interrogation. Most likely, with Muzzle. Maybe even with torture.
However, he was not ready for what awaited him in this office. Because he was waiting for him here something unimaginable, fantastic. This was not in the most terrible dream to dream.
Mikhail Sidorovich knew from the prisoners who were already interrogated in this office that Liss was a Riga German and spoke freely in Russian. Therefore, he was not surprised that the Sturmbannführer in the office was alone: ​​he knew that he would not need a translator for interrogation. Surprised by him another.
Strange provocateur
“Hello,” the short man with the SS emblem on the sleeve of a gray uniform said quietly. In the person of Lissa there was nothing repulsive, and therefore it seemed especially scary to Mikhail Sidorovich to look at him ... Liss waited until Mikhail Sidorovich was coughed and said: “I would like to talk to you.” “But I don’t want to talk to you,” Mostovskaya answered and squinted at the far corner, from where Liss’s assistants were to appear - the labeling shoulder shafts - to hit the old man in the ear.
Black workers, however, do not appear, and Mostovsky’s conversation with a fox from beginning to end is quite peaceful. But the essence of this conversation is such that Mikhail Sidorovich, perhaps, would even prefer him the most severe interrogation, with torture and scammers.
“You look at my uniform,” Liss told him. “But I was not born in him.” The leader, the party send, and people go, party soldiers. I have always been a theoretician in the party, I am interested in issues of philosophy, history, but I am a member of the party ... If the Central Committee instructed you to strengthen the work in the check, can you refuse? Hegel was laid and went. We also postponed Hegel. Mikhail Sidorovich squinted at the speaker - strangely, the name of Hegel sounded blasphemously, pronounced by dirty lips ... A dangerous, experienced thief came up to him in a tram longtime and started a conversation. He would have listened-he would only follow his hands, is about to sparkle a razor, hit his eyes. And Liss raised his palms, looked at them, said: - You have hands, like yours, love a great job, are not afraid of dirt. Mikhail Sidorovich grimaced, the movement and words that repeated his own appeared so unbearable.
It was at that moment that the conversation broke and immediately took another turn. Mostovskaya is still looking at the interlocutor as a crook, an experienced SS provocateur, who only thinks about how to catch him on something and make him get sick. But only the gesture and the phrase that followed him immediately reminded him that this was his own gesture and his own phrase, which he repeated more than once. And it seemed to burn him. And the demolition demon continued his temptatory speeches.
- When we look in the face of each other, we look not only at the hated face, we look in the mirror. This is the tragedy of the era. Can't you recognize yourself, your will in us? Isn't your will peace for you, can you be shaken, stop? Lissa's face approached Mostovsky's face. - Do you understand me? I am not good in Russian, but I really want you to understand. It seems to you that you hate us, but it seems: you hate yourself in us. Terrible, right? Do you understand? <...> - You see, understand? - Liss spoke quickly, and he no longer saw Mostovsky, he was so worried. “We strike at your army, but we beat ourselves.” Our tanks broke through not only your border, but also ours, the caterpillars of our tanks are crushed by German national socialism. It is terrible, some kind of comprehension in a dream. This can end tragically for us. Do you understand? If we win! We, the winners, will be left without you, only against someone else's world who hates us. The words of this person were easy to refute. And his eyes approached Mostovsky even closer. But there was something even more nasty, dangerous than the words of an experienced SS provocateur. It was that sometimes timidly, then evil moved, hung in the soul and brain of Mostovsky. These were ugly and dirty doubts that Mostovskaya found not in other people's words, but in his soul.
Gemini brothers
And the further Liss Mostovsky draws into this terrible, unthinkable, impossible, unacceptable conversation for him, the more painful, unbearable he becomes for the old faithful Lenin. “Oh, it would be better to immediately start a face,” a thought flashes from him. And he does not cunning: it would really be easier for him to take out the face and in fact, because every new reasoning, every new example, Liss is more and more alarm, reminding him more and more painfully about what he himself sometimes thought about, could not help but think about.
- Two poles! Of course so! If this were not absolutely true, our terrible war would not have gone today. We are your deadly enemies, yes. But our victory is your victory. Do you understand? And if you win, then we will die, and we will live in your victory. It is like a paradox: having lost the war, we will win the war, we will develop in a different form, but in the same creature. <...> Today you are scared by our hatred of Judaism. Maybe tomorrow you will take our experience for yourself. And the day after tomorrow we will be tolerant. I went a long road, and a great man led me. You were also led by a great man, you also went through a long, difficult road. Have you believed that Bukharin is a provocateur? Only a great man could lead along this road. I also knew Rema, I believed him. But so it is necessary. And now I am tormented by: your terror killed millions of people, and only we Germans understood all over the world: it is necessary! Absolutely true! Understand, as I understand it. This war should terrify you. Napoleon should not fight against England. And the new thought struck Mostovsky. He even closed his eyes, either from sudden rubbing in his eyes, or he wanted to get rid of this painful thought. After all, his doubts, perhaps, were not familiar with weakness, powerlessness, dirty bifurcation, fatigue, unbelief. Perhaps these doubts, occasionally timidly, then the evil suddenly covered him, were the most honest, the cleanest that lived in him. And he pressed them, repelled, hated it. Maybe they have the grain of revolutionary truth? They have a dynamite of freedom! In order to push the Lissa, his slippery, loving fingers, you need to <...> Dip the what he lived all his life, condemn what he defended and justified ... But no, no, even more! Do not condemn, but with all the power of the soul, with all the revolutionary passion to hate - camps, Lubyanka, bloody Yezhov, Berry, Beria! But little - Stalin, his dictatorship! But no, no, even more! We must condemn Lenin! The edge of the abyss! Here she is, the victory of Lissa, the victory is not in the war that was going on the battlefields, but in that full snake poison, which was going without shooting the war, which the Gestapovets now fired against him. Liss continued: there are two great revolutionaries on Earth: Stalin and our leader ... For me, brotherhood with you is more important than war with you because of the eastern space. We are building two houses, they should stand nearby ... You and I must understand: the future is decided not on the battlefields. You personally knew Lenin. He created a new type of party. He was the first to understand that only the party and the leader express the impulse of the nation, and committed the constituent meeting ... Then Stalin taught us a lot. For socialism in one country, it is necessary to eliminate peasant freedom to sow and sell, and Stalin did not tremble - he eliminated millions of peasants. Our Hitler saw - the enemy - Judaism interferes with the German national socialist movement. And he decided to eliminate millions of Jews. But Hitler is not only a student, he is a genius! In the thirty -seventh year, Stalin saw your cleansing of the party in our purification from Rem - Hitler also did not tremble.
The terrible truth
Mostovskaya is sure that he does not cost anything to refute all this "vile provocative chatter." He defeated his minute doubts, strangled them. All that Liss kept telling him about, he is ready to throw off himself like a dirty, sticky web. Forget this monstrous conversation like a wild, ridiculous nightmare. Shake it off yourself and forget! Forget forever!
He is sure that he will succeed. Already succeeded!
But the logic of the further development of events in the novel, including the logic of further behavior of Mostovsky himself, irrefutably convinces us that in these wild, nightmare, blasphemous speeches of the Sturmbannführer Lissa, a terrible but undoubted truth was.
In the German concentration camp, the soul of the old Mostovsky conquered the outstanding character of Major Ershov. Although the major was non -partisan, it so happened that it was to him that everyone he did not break the camp, who wanted and could continue the struggle. And of course, it was Ershov who would be destined to become the leader of the uprising of the prisoners of the concentration camp if such an uprising flashed (and it was prepared). But it turned out differently.
Osipov (one of the prisoners of war) told Mostovsky that he managed to contact the factory, began to arrive with weapons - machine guns and grenades.
- This is Ershov arranged, well done! - said Mostovskaya ... Osipov said: - I must inform you as a senior party comrade: Ershov is no longer in our camp. - What, how is it - no? - He was taken for transport, to the Buchenwald camp ... - But how is it, why happened? Osipov frowned: “A split in the leadership was immediately discovered.” To Ershov, there was a spontaneous craving from the part of many, it circled his head. He would never obey the center. He is an obscure man, a stranger. With each step, the situation confused. After all, the first commandment of the underground is steel discipline. And we got two centers - non -partisan and party. We discussed the situation and made a decision. The Czech comrade working in the office, put Ershov’s card into a group of selected for Buchenwald, he was automatically included in the list. “Which is easier,” said Mostovskaya. “That was the unanimous decision of the Communists,” Osipov said. He stood in front of Mostovsky in his miserable clothing, holding a rag in his hand, harsh, unshakable, confident in his iron right, in his terrible, greater than God, the right to set the matter to which he serves, the highest judge over the fate of people. And the naked, thin old man, one of the founders of the Great Party, sat, raising his thin, leaning shoulders, his head, and was silent ... He straightened up the same as always, like ten years ago, at the time of collectivization, just as at the time of political processes that brought his youth comrades to the block, “I obey this decision, I take it as a member of the party” ...

This scene is the artistic result of those mental torment that have been scribbled in Mostovsky’s mind of the terrible revelations of Sturmbannführer Liss.
Perhaps there perhaps there are probably no more terrible sentence to these “people of a special warehouse made of special material”, as Stalin called himself and his partners in the party.