Into the Storm

15 hrs. 18 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Daniil Granin

Narrator Vyacheslav Zadvornykh

Description

The mysterious, romantic world of physicists, the world of daring, quests, and discoveries in Daniil Granin’s novel is also a battlefield where a real struggle unfolds between genuine scientists, real people such as Dan and Krylov, and careerists and mediocrities such as Denisov, Agatov, and Lagunov. Incapable of creativity and pursuing administrative careers in science by fair means or foul, they nearly derailed, for selfish ambitions, the scientific work of Tulin and Krylov, who seek an effective method of storm destruction. Nevertheless—and herein lies the writer’s talent—the nerve of the work is not in a frontal clash between good and evil, but in the comparison of the characters of two friends, the physicists Krylov and Tulin. In that inner argument which for a long time, without openly realizing it, they conduct with one another. Tulin treats his friend from student days—awkward, impractical, slow-witted Krylov—with patronizing tenderness. Apparently, such is his fate: to look after this bungler, this “sleepwalker,” all his life. And Tulin himself? “Wherever Tulin went, the wind always blew at his back, taxis showed green lights, girls smiled at him, and men envied him.” Krylov, naturally, is in love with Tulin. But even for his sake he cannot compromise his principles. “If I have convictions, I must defend them, and if I failed, then I’d rather leave than make a deal”—this is the basis of Krylov’s character, something hard as metal against which Tulin strikes. As the novel develops, the fundamental difference in the scientific and life positions of these heroes emerges ever more clearly. Their relationship is a collision of principle and opportunism. It reveals the moral foundation of scientific heroism, which always lies in an uncompromising striving for truth. Dan was a great scientist because “he was, above all, a human being.”