Vasily Grossman Biography

Vasily Semyonovich Grossman (Russian: Васи́лий Семёнович Гро́ссман, Ukrainian: Василь Семенович Гроссман; 12 December (29 November, Julian calendar) 1905 – 14 September 1964) was a Jewish Russian writer and journalist, who lived the bulk of his life under the Soviet regime. Grossman was trained as a chemical engineer at Moscow State University, earning the name Vasya-khimik, Vasya the Chemist because of his diligence as a student. Upon graduation he took a job in Stalino (now Donetsk) in the Donets Basin, but changed his career in the 1930s and published short stories and several novels. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he became a war correspondent for the Red Army newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda, writing firsthand accounts of the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk and Berlin. Grossman's eyewitness accounts of a Nazi extermination camp, following the discovery of Treblinka, were among the earliest. Grossman also translated Armenian literature into Russian, despite the fact that he could not read Armenian, instead working on the basis of an interlinear translation.

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