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Grossman's War

Drama

Factual: History

Programmes around Russian writer and journalist Vasily Grossman's two epic wartime novels.

A season of programmes around Russian writer and journalist Vasily Grossman's two epic wartime novels, 'Stalingrad' and  'Life and Fate'.

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Life and Fate: Novikov's Story

Grossman's War: Life and Fate: Novikov's Story

Life and Fate

Novikov's Story

BBC Radio 4 - Grossman's War, Life and Fate, Novikov's Story

Vasily Grossman's epic tale of a family torn apart by war in Soviet Russia.

Novikov, a tank commander, prepares his troops for Operation Uranus, a critical campaign. Starring Don Gilet and Philip Jackson.

November, 1942. Novikov, a tank commander, prepares his troops for Operation Uranus, the campaign which is to be the turning point in the Battle of Stalingrad.  

On his way to the front, he visits Zhenya, his lover, in Kuibyshev. He dreams of marrying her but she is still torn between him and Krymov.  She tells an anecdote about Krymov and Trotsky, a slip of the tongue that leads to betrayal.

Kenneth Branagh and David Tennant star in Vasily Grossman’s epic saga. 

Pyotr Pavlovich Novikov ..... Don Gilet
Getmanov ..... Philip Jackson
Nyeudobnov ..... Peter Wight
Zhenya Shaposhnikova ..... Raquel Cassidy
Nicky ..... Simon Bubb
Vershkov ..... Stuart Mcloughlin
Galina Terentyevna ..... Jane Whittenshaw
Mashuk ..... Peter Polycarpou
Zhakharov ..... Sean Baker

With Jonathan Forbes, James Lailey, Daniel Rabin and Alun Raglan

Dramatised by Mike Walker

Original music by John Hardy with Rob Whitehead

Directors: Alison Hindell and Jonquil Panting.

Producer: Alison Hindell.

Set against the ferocious Battle of Stalingrad, Vasily Grossman’s huge novel charts the fate of both a nation and a family in the turmoil of war and is increasingly hailed as the most important Russian novel of the 20th century. Its comparison of Stalinism with Nazism was considered by Soviet authorities to be so dangerous that the manuscript itself was arrested.  Grossman died in 1964, never knowing that his book would be smuggled to the West and eventually published in 1980.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2011.

Grossman's War: Life and Fate

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Vasily Grossman's sweeping historical tale set against the ferocious Battle of Stalingrad.

Set against the ferocious Battle of Stalingrad, Life and Fate is a sweeping historical tale that charts the fate of both a nation and a family in the turmoil of war.

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Grossman's War

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