Everything Flows (Vasily Grossman; last worked on in 1964)

Discussion of Grossman and his larger work (Life and Fate) can be found here.

Grossman wrote this work later, and never finished it (still working on it at time of his death). He's exploring a number of events and themes; perhaps not entirely pulled together; but always coming back to "freedom".

The main character (Ivan Grigoryevich) returns to Moscow after 30 years in the camps - this was after Stalin's death, after Khrushchev's denunciation, when quite a few camp survivors were freed. This led to some difficult meetings with folks that had managed to avoid the camps - typically via denunciations and other forms of collaboration. These folks feel intense guilt; but Grossman includes concepts showing lots of sympathy for folks in the impossible circumstances in which all tried to survive.

Chapters on the starve-out of the Ukrainian kulaks and on the conditions in the women's camps in Siberia are presented in a very matter-of-fact manner; but graphic and almost painful to read.

Grossman concludes with a discussion of Lenin, Stalin, the 19th century Russian writers who perceived Russia as having a "great soul" that would end up leading the world (in comparison to decadent Europe and money-chasing US) - this part is pretty interesting. That Stalin was basically a new Tsar with a better-organized secret police force; that Russia had a 1000 year history of slavery that facilitated 20th century totalitarianism.

So the book is pretty much very heavy duty but with an underlying affirmation - maintained in the face of all contrary evidence - about freedom as man's essential condition.

For folks that went through these events, those concepts must have levels of meaning about which we cannot have a clue.

Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (Diarmaid MacCulloch, 2009)

Saw many glowing reviews and references to this book. They were accurate. Going by my usual barometer of dog-eared pages (I dog-ear a page if there's something of interest, don't make notes in books) - there are over 50 in this book. (Though it is 1000+ pages). And I even bought a copy.

The book is interesting and useful to me because it provides perspective on all the other history I read. The undercurrent of religion is incredibly pervasive . . . thus it's helpful to read again about various historical events from a "history of Christianity" perspective.

The history of the papacy alone is simply amazing. There was nothing inevitable about Roman primacy. Jesus certainly had little to do with Rome. Sounds like there were five highly respected churches in the early going (though even that evolution was quite a story). Rome maneuvered well, took advantage of opportunities, ended up going all the way to an "infallibility" declaration - talk about progress.

Starting with Constantine in 312 - Christianity intertwined with political power. The opposite of its founding principle.


And what an amazing amount of energy has been expended debating points of doctrine . . . many of which points have no real anchor anywhere in Scripture . . . though at least debating doctrine is better than killing people over it . . . how odd that a church founded heavily on stories of persons martyred for their beliefs turned around and killed people over their beliefs.

So many beliefs and practices that we grew up with and took for granted turn out to be fairly recent developments.

The author certainly tries to cover an incredible amount of terrain in just over 1000 pages, so his synopses, edits, etc. inevitably must have involved lots of judgment calls.

Nonetheless - this takes a lot of time to work through, but is well worth it.