Because Krymov has not been charged, he cannot be put on trial. He exists in the limbo of Lubyanka Prison, serving out an indeterminate sentence.
Once a fellow prisoner advised him:
One of the main characters in Life and Fate is a man named Krymov — a party commissar, tasked with making sure all men carry out their patriotic duty in service to the state. Somewhere around p. 600, he is denounced. Which is a very special process, not sure yet how it works, but apparently someone denounced Krymov, and without much ado, he becomes Political Prisoner xxx. No time to tell anyone, his head is shaved, his belt is removed, the buttons of his trousers are cut off, and he has the full-body search. Finally, he finds himself in a cell with a bunch of other people whose last names begin with “K.”
Self has to remind herself over and over, this is not Kafka. This is real. Vasily Grossimov was a journalist and worked with some of the biggest dailies in Russia. He felt Russian most of his life, until he was reminded that he couldn’t be Russian, because he was a Jew.
The prisoners got ready to go to sleep. The light continued to glare down; Krymov could feel someone watching through the spy-hole as he unwound his foot-cloths, pulled up his pants and scratched his chest. It was a very special light; it was there not so that they could see, but so that they could be seen. If it had been found more convenient to observe them in darkness, they would have been kept in darkness.
— life and fate, p. 625
Russia seemed like a wounded animal that had been driven back into the sand-dunes, into steppes fit only for camels; there she was, lying on the harsh earth, impotent, unable ever to rise again.
— life and fate, p. 294
The sweep of Life and Fate is simply amazing. There are dozens of characters, self reads with one finger inserted in the List of Chief Characters at the back of the book. The mains are the Shaposhnikov Family. But there are a dozen characters in a German concentration camp, 15 in a Russian labour camp, a dozen in a cattle car on the way to the gas chambers, a handful in the Lubyanka Prison, another handful in the Stalingrad power station, members of a fighter squadron of the Russian air force, members of a Russian Tank Corps, Officers of the Soviet Army in Stalingrad, and finally Soldiers in House 6/I, which became the axis of attack for the Germans as they began the siege of Stalingrad.
In this house are: a captain, several sappers, a young girl (the radio operator), a gunner, several “observers” (lookouts), a “plotter”, a scout, a mortar crew, and several soldiers.
Major General Krylov orders the captain to make daily reports at twelve-hundred hours, but the captain ignores the order, he is too busy fighting.
Finally, orders are sent to have one of the soldiers at House 6/I report in person to the General, and update him on the situation.
They send a very young boy (Shaposhnikov is the boy’s name), who very reluctantly accepts his mission (he wants to stay and help his captain). The boy keeps trying to turn back, explaining to everyone at Divisional Headquarters that his captain needs him. But he is ordered to stay at headquarters until he has delivered his report, and unfortunately General Krylov is very busy, and the boy has to hang around for two full days.
Every time the chief of staff came into the bunker, he felt Shaposhnikov looking at him. Sometimes he said: “Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten,” but at other times the boy’s constant look of entreaty really got under his skin. “Anyway,” he demanded, “what are you complaining about? It’s nice and warm here and you get lots of food. There’ll be time enough to get yourself killed back at the front.”
— life and fate, p. 255
At the end of the shift, Nyeumolimov came in, black with coal-dust. “Well,” asked Abarchuk, “how’s the work going? Are people entering into the spirit of competition?”
“Little by little. The coal’s a military necessity — at least everyone understands that. Today the Culture and Education section received some posters: Let us help the Motherland with our shock labour!”
“You know what, someone ought to write a treatise on despair in the camps. There’s a despair that crushes you, another that attacks you suddenly, another that stifles you and won’t let you breathe. And then there’s a special kind that doesn’t do any of these things but somehow tears you to pieces from within — like a deep-sea creature brought suddenly up to the surface.”
The Chinese were making sure they would have graduates who could speak the mother tongue of every economically-relevant country on the planet.
— K: A Novel, p. 28
Kanlaon 