Collectivization in 'Forever Flowing'

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the author's view of collectivization in the Ukraine, and seeks to understand Grossman's criticisms of the Soviet system. It also considers the impact of Grossman's powerful description on the reader, as a literary piece rather than a historical report.

From the Paper:

"At the beginning of the 1930s Stalin embarked on nationwide drive for collectivization and modernity. The novel, "Forever Flowing," takes the case of the Ukraine as an example. The ordeal of collectivization and the subsequent famine is related by Anna Sergeyevna, who was posted to the Ukraine after the persecution of the "kulaks" in 1930. She tells her story to Ivan Grigoryevich on their first night as lovers, a detail which may initially seem frivolous, but is actually a mark of Grossman's skill as a novelist. It ensures that the tale is not seen as the author's tirade against the state, but a real woman's experience, something terrible, "something one cannot escape," "a piece of iron fragment in her heart, like a shell fragment." Anna Sergeyevna needs to explain her memories to her new lover as a way of rendering herself accountable. The ordeal is not an event in history; it lives on in everyday life."

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