In Everything Flows, Vasily Grossman illustrates the struggles of Ivan Grigoryvich, who has recently come back from the Gulags into a new Soviet society. Along Ivan’s journey of finding his place in the world, Grossman introduces several memorable characters such as Anna Sergeyevna, Ivan’s landlady and companion. Anna Sergeyevna is a widow who works as a cook in a canteen; she is kind and compassionate, and understands Ivan’s sufferings and sorrow. In the past, she had been a chairman of a collective farm in Ukraine and took part in deporting the kulaks and overseeing the extraction of grain from the Ukrainians. Under the influence of the lies of the State, she condemned the kulaks as not being human and took part in confiscating grain from the Ukrainian farmers. Anna’s story about the dekulakization and her experiences as a primary witness of the Ukrainian famine is introduced in the middle of the novel as an intimate conversation between Anna and Ivan in bed at night. She comes to him when “he called out to his mother in a dream” (Grossman 115) – she comes to Ivan when he is in despair – and stays with him throughout the night; they lie in bed together, without regard to time, sharing their painful memories and understanding each other. Grossman uses a confession and a characteristic of a memoir to illustrate the redemption of Anna, how life continues to move on, and the idea that the past cannot be forgotten. Anna Sergeyevna suffers from her guilt of deporting the kulaks and perpetuating the Ukrainian famine. Anna is a victim of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD), a mental disorder that results when the level of stress from trauma and grief become too much (“PTSD”), because she is permanently scarred from her time as a chairman of a collective farm. She clearly has PTSD because she “doesn’t want to remember it – it’s too painful [for her] – but it’s impossible to forget it…Asleep or not, it’s still living. A piece of iron in [her] heart, like a shell fragment” (Grossman 116). Anna lives day by day with the horror and guilt that she saw the kulaks as animals and that she did not do anything to help the starving families; she cannot get away from the fact that she perpetuated the famine, causing her to live in the shadow of her memory and shame of her past. Techniques in helping people with PTSD involve “deliberately re-living the disturbing event under safe conditions” (“PTSD”). The person suffering from PTSD needs to re-live the traumatic experience and see that he/she can deal with the past and move on. Through a safe environment and talking with someone who understands, patients with PTSD are “gently led to face memories anew” (“PTSD”) and to cope with the memory of the original traumatic experience and its negative emotions. Confessing to Ivan is Anna’s treatment for her PTSD. A confession in literature is where a subject’s “intimate and hidden details” (“Confession”) about his/her life is revealed, and in religion, confessions are made to seek forgiveness and redemption. Anna’s dark past is revealed to the reader, and upon closer examination, although Grossman depicts Anna and Ivan having a conversation, Anna is mainly talking. Her story about the terrible Ukrainian famine gushes forth, revealing her past actions and her remorse on what she had done. She admits that she looks on Ivan “as Christ. [She] keeps wanting to confess – to repent before [Ivan], as if before God” (Grossman 116). She wants to be redeemed, cured, and reconciled with her past; she cannot forget what she has done, but she needs to accept it and move on. Throughout Anna’s confession, the reader sees that Anna is a changed person. From the cold hearted Party leader who “truly didn’t think of [the kulaks] as human beings” (Grossman 120), Anna restores her humanity through her confession and realization of the wrong that she has committed. In addition, by taking care of Ivan in his time of need, she is forgiven and redeemed by showing her kindness and care. She had neglected the kulaks and the starving people in her past, but through Ivan, who represents all the prisoners and the people who suffered, she does her “motherly duties” and compensates for what she had not done in the past. Anna confesses all throughout the night to Ivan, and in the morning, she is redeemed.
Grossman uses Anna’s confession to illustrate how life continues to move on. Before Anna confessed to Ivan, she lived an unfulfilled life because of her guilt. However, through her confession, she finally realizes that although she will never forget her past, her life could go on and she could start anew. Just as grass constantly grows over the ground, life does not stop because of human suffering; the past cannot constrain how a person lives the present because nature or life does not stop to weep or empathize with humans. Anna realizes that she can live her life without constraint or guilt from the remembrance of the past, and at the end of the novel, Ivan finally realizes that he can live a new life despite the horrors from the remembrance of the Gulags and past injustice because the past does not hinder his present or future. Anna’s confession also shows a characteristic of a memoir because it is narrowly focused on a specific story or event that is part of Anna’s whole life – it represents a part of the whole. Grossman utilizes this characteristic of a memoir to emphasize the importance of remembering the lives of individuals. Anna’s memoir is about the Ukrainian famine, called the Holodomor or “death by hunger,” that occurred from 1932-1933 (Marlaina, “Ukrainian Famine”). As the “breadbasket” of Europe, Ukraine ironically suffered through a terrible famine caused by Stalin’s initiative to force collectivization. She recalls specific memories from this terrible period, like the time when a policeman “pushed his hand in the old man’s face…saying, ‘How can I pick up a spoon with a hand that’s just touched the filthy mug of that parasite?’” (Grossman 26). The recollection of this incidence illustrates how from 1928 to 1930, over a million kulaks were forced off their lands and sent away to Siberia and other remote lands to fend for themselves. Even though history does not record the injustice done to this man specifically, his story and the collection of other individuals’ stories formed history on the brutalization of the kulaks. In addition, Anna remembers the starving children as having “heads as heavy as cannonballs; thin little necks…faces look[ing] old and tormented…as if they’d been on this earth for seventy years” (Grossman 131). By 1933, 25,000 Ukrainians – about half of them being children – were dying every day from starvation, and in total – from the years 1932-1933 – it is estimated that around 10 million Ukrainians died from the lack of food (Marlaina, “Ukrainian Famine”). The published facts illustrate the monstrosity of the famine, but it is the stories of the individuals that were not published that make up these facts. By showing the importance of individual lives through a memoir, Grossman illustrates how important the little things – the individuals – are. Grossman mocks the Soviet idea that “the State is everything, and people are nothing” (Grossman 125) because the people make up the State. Without the people, there is no State, and without the stories of individuals, there is no history. As it is important to remember the terrible Ukrainian famine, it is of the utmost necessity to remember the people who suffered during that time. Through Anna’s confession and memoir, Grossman illustrates the redemption of Anna, the concept that life goes on, and the importance of individual stories. Although Anna is only a short part of the entire novel, she represents the struggle that patients with PTSD go through and emphasize the lack of remembrance of the individual lives that died during the terrible Ukrainian famine. Grossman’s use of the confession and characteristic of a memoir add to the meaning of Anna’s recollections because confessions are made for the individual to be forgiven and a memoir is written to highlight a snippet of a person’s whole life. Anna wants to be forgiven and redeemed and wants to highlight the famine so that other people know about the injustice that was done. Grossman effectively accomplishes Anna’s desires and connects her recollections to the rest of the novel through her confession to Ivan and her memoir.
References
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