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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: Krymov in Moscow

Grossman's War: Life and Fate: Krymov in Moscow

Life and Fate

Krymov in Moscow

BBC Radio 4 - Grossman's War, Life and Fate, Krymov in Moscow

Kenneth Branagh and David Tennant star in Vasily Grossman's epic tale of Soviet Russia.

Krymov has been denounced and arrested while his ex-wife Zhenya faces the consequences of her actions. Starring Raquel Cassidy.

Moscow, Winter 1942. Commissar Nikolai Krymov has been denounced and arrested. He's taken to the dreaded Lubyanka prison in Moscow: a place where, in the past, he has denounced others.  

Meanwhile his ex-wife Zhenya arrives in Moscow, to stay with Viktor and Lyuda, and to face the consequences of her actions. 

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

Commissar Nikolai Krymov  .....  David Tennant
Viktor Shtrum  .....  Kenneth Branagh
Lyuda Shaposhnikova   .....  Greta Scacchi
Zhenya Shaposhnikova  .....  Raquel Cassidy
Marya Sokolova  .....  Harriet Walter
Nadya  .....  Ellie Kendrick
Katsenelenbogen  .....  Ewan Bailey
NKVD Interrogator  .....  Elliot Levey

With Simon Bubb, Elaine Claxton, Jonathan Forbes, James Lailey, Gerard McDermott, Chris Pavlo, Peter Polycarpou, Carl Prekopp, Alun Raglan and Susie Riddell 

Dramatised by Jonathan Myerson.

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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