Fresh in Memory

11 hrs. 26 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author I. Grekova

Narrator Lyudmila Kucherenko

Description

The novel “Fresh Is the Tradition” is in the category of books that were predicted to be published only “in two hundred and a few years.” Yet the parallel with Vasily Grossman’s “Life and Fate” does not end there: with a one-year difference—again the same “New World,” the same Tvardovsky, the same safe… Grossman’s epic was printed abroad after 19 years; in Russia—after 27. I. Grekova’s novel saw the light 33 years later (at home—35 years later), to the author’s luck, while she was still alive. In it, Elena Venttsel, a Russian woman with a German surname, touched the impossible for her time—Stalinist anti-Semitism. But the issue with her is not ideological, and not political. The writer raised an alarm the way any decent person would when decent people are destroyed in front of their eyes for no reason. This is a grief and pain not only for them, but for the people that allowed it. And precisely in this Russian person’s voice in the novel are listed the main traits of the Jewish people: “Centuries of persecution didn’t pass in vain—they forged both character and will, and cohesion. Love for children. Love for relatives… And wisdom <…> Such bitter, calm… with humor.”