1905. Vasily Grossman was born

110 years ago, December 12, 1905, writer Vasily Semenovich (Joseph Solomonovich) Grossman was born. The fate of his main work - the epic novel "Life and Fate" - was not easy. In February 1961, the manuscript and drafts of the novel were confiscated by the KGB officers during a search in the writer's apartment. A copy of the manuscript, located in the editorial office of the magazine "New World", was also seized.

Grossman wrote to Khrushchev: “I ask you to return the freedom to my book, I ask you to talk about my manuscripts and argue with me, not the employees of the State Security Committee ... There is no truth, there is no sense in the current situation, in my physical freedom, when the book, which I gave my life, is in prison, because I wrote it and I would not renounce it ... I still think that I wrote the truth that I wrote it, loving and pitying people, believing in people.

According to the stories, the party ideologist Mikhail Suslov told the writer that the novel could be published in three hundred years. However, Grossman hid another copy of the manuscript of "life and fate" with his friend, poet Semyon Lipkin. In the late 70s, the novel was taken to the west. In 1980, he was published in Switzerland. In his homeland, he was published only during the years of perestroika.