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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: Viktor and the Academy

Grossman's War: Life and Fate: Viktor and the Academy

Life and Fate

Viktor and the Academy

BBC Radio 4 - Grossman's War, Life and Fate, Viktor and the Academy

Kenneth Branagh stars in Vasily Grossman's epic tale of family and war in Soviet Russia.

Viktor's scientific breakthrough had not brought success, instead he’s accused of being 'anti-Soviet'. Stars Kenneth Branagh.

Viktor's scientific breakthrough has not brought him the success he expected. Instead he is gradually ostracised for his 'anti-Soviet' science. He starts to dread the knock at the door. 

Zhenya's visit to Moscow brings some distraction but it is Marya in whom he longs to confide. 

Conclusion of Vasily Grossman’s epic saga.  

Viktor Shtrum ..... Kenneth Branagh
Lyuda ..... Greta Scacchi
Marya Sokolova ..... Harriet Walter
Zhenya ..... Raquel Cassidy
Nadya ..... Ellie Kendrick
Shishakov ..... Jack Shepherd
Boris Badin ..... Carl Prekopp
Anna Stepanovna ..... Alex Tregear
Markov ..... Simon Bubb
Chepyzhin ..... James Greene
Vanya ..... Gerard McDermott
Stalin........ Philip Madoc

With Elaine Claxton, Jonathan Forbes and James Lailey

Dramatised by Mike Walker.

Original music by John Hardy with Rob Whitehead

Performed by Oliver Wilson-Dickson, Tom Jackson, Stacey Blythe and Max Pownall. 

Translated by Robert Chandler

Director:  Alison Hindell

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 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by Soviet authorities to be so dangerous that the manuscript itself was arrested and Grossman was told that it would not be published for at least 200 years. He   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

Life and Fate

Viktor and the Academy

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