---
product_id: 5678441
title: "Everything Flows (New York Review Books Classics)"
price: "₩36003"
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reviews_count: 8
url: https://www.desertcart.kr/products/5678441-everything-flows-new-york-review-books-classics
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---

# 4.6/5 star reader acclaim Classic political fiction gem Set in 1950s USSR historical context Everything Flows (New York Review Books Classics)

**Price:** ₩36003
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Summary

> 📖 Unlock the haunting legacy of freedom and oppression — a must-read classic that flows through history and heart.

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- **What is this?** Everything Flows (New York Review Books Classics)
- **How much does it cost?** ₩36003 with free shipping
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## Key Features

- • **Rare Literary Treasure:** Part of the prestigious New York Review Books Classics series, expertly translated by Robert Chandler.
- • **Emotionally Charged & Nuanced:** Experience deeply human stories of survival, betrayal, and hope in a chilling dystopian reality.
- • **Critically Acclaimed & Beloved:** Join thousands of readers who rate this profound classic 4.6 stars for its powerful storytelling.
- • **A Timeless Political Masterpiece:** Explore the raw truths behind Stalin and Lenin’s USSR through Vasily Grossman’s penetrating narrative.
- • **Historical Insight Meets Literary Art:** Gain unique perspectives on Soviet history rarely captured with such emotional depth and clarity.

## Overview

Everything Flows is Vasily Grossman’s 1960 novel, a profound political and emotional exploration of life in the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death. Through the eyes of Ivan Grigoryevich, a former Gulag prisoner, the book reveals the brutal realities of totalitarianism, the complexities of survival, and the enduring human quest for liberty. This New York Review Books Classics edition features a masterful translation by Robert Chandler and is celebrated for its historical insight and literary power.

## Description

desertcart.com: Everything Flows (New York Review Books Classics): 9781590173282: Grossman, Vasily, Chandler, Robert, Chandler, Elizabeth, Aslanyan, Anna, Chandler, Robert: Books

Review: NYRB brings back another worthwhile obscure classic. - How hard it must be to write about what was wrong and evil with Lenin and Stalin. Where do you start? When the whole system is a lie that leaves even the believers exploited, enslaved and likely dead how do you try to sound rational in your rebuke? Vasily Grossman does it through the voices of the people caught up in the maelstrom of the USSR. The 1960 novel "Everything Flows" is so superb in putting flesh and bones to all parties that conspired to create the truly horrible dystopia and those who suffered from it. Thru imaginary but realistic first person accounts, explanations, excuses, denials and confessions he does more in 200 pages than most of the millions of pages that document the sad 20th century history of the Soviet Union. Ivan Grigoryevich is released after nearly 30 continues years in prisons and work camps. He is used largely as a straw man to draw out the thoughts and words of the characters in Grossman's 1950's Soviet Union. Stalin has died. The peak in the purging and enslavement has passed. Many political prisoners are now returning to uncertain futures after years of destitution in Siberia. Grossman uses this unique moment of slight liberation in to make the characters reflect on their own actions or observations. Thru their experiences he obliderates even the faintest illusion that life in the Soviet Union was anything but cold, hostile and insufferable. Those not broken physically or emotionally have acquiesced, collaborated, compromised or stood silent. The problem is that that no one can make sense of it all. It's too big and in 1960 it was still real and present. Grossman spends about a quarter of the book in a sidebar considering the nature of enslavement and freedom in Russia for the past 1000 years as he explains the betrayals of Stalin and particularly Lenin. While it's worthwhile and painful it is not rooted in the story which is already so good and as such it slows what is otherwise electrifying and tense. The description of the Ukraine famine of 1930 alone is worth the price of the book. This is well worth reading however in the context of when it was written and who Vasily Grossman was it's a treasure.
Review: "Not under foreign skies, Nor under foreign wings protected - I shared all this with my own people There, where misfortune had abandoned us." Anna Akhmatova's Requiem If Life and Fate (New York Review Books Classics) may rightfully be seen as Vasily Grossman's masterpiece, his Everything Flows may rightfully be seen as his testament, a requiem if you will not only for his own life but for the lives of those who lived in his time and place. "Everything Flows" tells a simple, yet emotionally deep and politically nuanced tale. The story begins with the 1957 return to Moscow of Ivan Grigoryevich after 30 years of forced labor in the Gulag. 1957 marked the year, following Khrushchev's denunciation of the excesses of Stalin, in which the tide of prisoners returning from the Gulag reached its peak. He arrives at the Moscow flat of his cousin Nikolay. Nikolay, a scientist with less than stellar skills, has reached some measure of success at the laboratory through dint of being a survivor. The meeting in the flat is entirely unsatisfactory for both parties. Grossman paints a vivid picture of Nikolay, more than a bit jealous that Ivan's light had always shone brighter than his own prior to Ivan's arrest. Nikolay suffers from the guilt of one who was not arrested and who is painfully aware of the choices he made to keep from being arrested. It seems clear that Ivan represents a mirror into which Nikolay can see only his own hollow reflection. Ivan leaves Moscow for his old city of Leningrad, the place where he was first arrested in 1927. By chance, he runs into the person, Pinegin, whose denunciation placed him in jail in the first place. Once again, Ivan is a mirror and Pinegin is horrified at what he is faced with, what he has buried for thirty years. Ironically, and to great effect, we see Pinegin's horror recede once he settles down to a sumptuous lunch at a restaurant reserved for foreigners and party officials. Ivan does not know about the denunciation and Grossman here embarks on a discourse on the different types and forms of denunciation available to the Soviet citizen. It is a remarkable discourse that shows how many different ways there are to participate in a purge and how many ways there are to legitimize ones participation and/or acquiescence. From Leningrad Ivan travels to a southern industrial city where he finds work and eventually finds a deep and satisfying love in the person of his landlady Anna. The centerpiece of that relationship is the brutal honesty involved; Anna spends a night detailing her role in the pointless, needless famine that swept the Ukraine in 1932-1933. It is an account made even more chilling by the straightforward, confessional nature of its telling. But it is also redemptive and shines a light on what might be called Grossman's vision that love and freedom are two goals, not mutually exclusive, that an honest accounting of our lives forms the essence of our shared humanity. The above summary does not do justice to the power of Grossman's prose or to the literary and political importance of the work. Since the death of Stalin, the Soviet line had remained relatively firm - Stalin's excesses were the product of a disturbed mind that represented a horrible deviation from the theory and principles of Leninism. The USSR's best path was the one that returned it to the path created by Lenin. Khrushchev first enunciated this line. Even Gorbachev's perestroika was based on the theory that a return to first-principles, i.e. Leninism, would save the USSR from destruction. Grossman, prophetically, did not buy into this line and Everything Flows'last chapters are notable for a remarkable attack not only on Stalin but on Lenin and Lenin's anti-democratic tendencies that had more in common with Ivan the Terrible than the principles of revolutionary democracy. "All the triumphs of Party and State were bound up with the name of Lenin. But all the cruelty inflicted on the nation also lay - tragically - on Lenin's shoulders." Grossman may have been the first to make this leap and he paid the price for making that leap. (This involves the suppression of his Life & Fate and Everything Flows.) Grossman's explicit claim that Stalin was not a deviationist from Leninism but its natural-born progeny was profoundly subversive and there is no doubt in my mind that it was this difference that explains why, under Khruschev's 'thaw', that One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was publishe while Life and Fate and Everything Flows was banned. Despite the horrors set out, quietly and without excess rhetoric, Grossman returns to a somewhat optimistic vision of mans search for freedom: "No matter how mighty the empire, all this is only mist and fog and, as such, will be blown away. Only one true force remains; only one true force continues to evolve and live; and this force is liberty. To a man, to live means to be free." Robert Chandler's translation of Everything Flows is exquisite. He brings the same clarity and emotional investment in Grossman's work that he brought to his prize-winning translations of Platonov and Hamid Ismailov's The Railway . In short, Everything Flows is a treasure and I cannot recommend this book highly enough. L. Fleisig

## Features

- Used Book in Good Condition

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #154,365 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #397 in Political Fiction (Books) #4,127 in Classic Literature & Fiction #8,321 in Literary Fiction (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.6 out of 5 stars 271 Reviews |

## Images

![Everything Flows (New York Review Books Classics) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81hwNKuiImL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ NYRB brings back another worthwhile obscure classic.
*by D***S on March 15, 2012*

How hard it must be to write about what was wrong and evil with Lenin and Stalin. Where do you start? When the whole system is a lie that leaves even the believers exploited, enslaved and likely dead how do you try to sound rational in your rebuke? Vasily Grossman does it through the voices of the people caught up in the maelstrom of the USSR. The 1960 novel "Everything Flows" is so superb in putting flesh and bones to all parties that conspired to create the truly horrible dystopia and those who suffered from it. Thru imaginary but realistic first person accounts, explanations, excuses, denials and confessions he does more in 200 pages than most of the millions of pages that document the sad 20th century history of the Soviet Union. Ivan Grigoryevich is released after nearly 30 continues years in prisons and work camps. He is used largely as a straw man to draw out the thoughts and words of the characters in Grossman's 1950's Soviet Union. Stalin has died. The peak in the purging and enslavement has passed. Many political prisoners are now returning to uncertain futures after years of destitution in Siberia. Grossman uses this unique moment of slight liberation in to make the characters reflect on their own actions or observations. Thru their experiences he obliderates even the faintest illusion that life in the Soviet Union was anything but cold, hostile and insufferable. Those not broken physically or emotionally have acquiesced, collaborated, compromised or stood silent. The problem is that that no one can make sense of it all. It's too big and in 1960 it was still real and present. Grossman spends about a quarter of the book in a sidebar considering the nature of enslavement and freedom in Russia for the past 1000 years as he explains the betrayals of Stalin and particularly Lenin. While it's worthwhile and painful it is not rooted in the story which is already so good and as such it slows what is otherwise electrifying and tense. The description of the Ukraine famine of 1930 alone is worth the price of the book. This is well worth reading however in the context of when it was written and who Vasily Grossman was it's a treasure.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "Not under foreign skies, Nor under foreign wings protected
*by L***3 on December 4, 2009*

I shared all this with my own people There, where misfortune had abandoned us." Anna Akhmatova's Requiem If Life and Fate (New York Review Books Classics) may rightfully be seen as Vasily Grossman's masterpiece, his Everything Flows may rightfully be seen as his testament, a requiem if you will not only for his own life but for the lives of those who lived in his time and place. "Everything Flows" tells a simple, yet emotionally deep and politically nuanced tale. The story begins with the 1957 return to Moscow of Ivan Grigoryevich after 30 years of forced labor in the Gulag. 1957 marked the year, following Khrushchev's denunciation of the excesses of Stalin, in which the tide of prisoners returning from the Gulag reached its peak. He arrives at the Moscow flat of his cousin Nikolay. Nikolay, a scientist with less than stellar skills, has reached some measure of success at the laboratory through dint of being a survivor. The meeting in the flat is entirely unsatisfactory for both parties. Grossman paints a vivid picture of Nikolay, more than a bit jealous that Ivan's light had always shone brighter than his own prior to Ivan's arrest. Nikolay suffers from the guilt of one who was not arrested and who is painfully aware of the choices he made to keep from being arrested. It seems clear that Ivan represents a mirror into which Nikolay can see only his own hollow reflection. Ivan leaves Moscow for his old city of Leningrad, the place where he was first arrested in 1927. By chance, he runs into the person, Pinegin, whose denunciation placed him in jail in the first place. Once again, Ivan is a mirror and Pinegin is horrified at what he is faced with, what he has buried for thirty years. Ironically, and to great effect, we see Pinegin's horror recede once he settles down to a sumptuous lunch at a restaurant reserved for foreigners and party officials. Ivan does not know about the denunciation and Grossman here embarks on a discourse on the different types and forms of denunciation available to the Soviet citizen. It is a remarkable discourse that shows how many different ways there are to participate in a purge and how many ways there are to legitimize ones participation and/or acquiescence. From Leningrad Ivan travels to a southern industrial city where he finds work and eventually finds a deep and satisfying love in the person of his landlady Anna. The centerpiece of that relationship is the brutal honesty involved; Anna spends a night detailing her role in the pointless, needless famine that swept the Ukraine in 1932-1933. It is an account made even more chilling by the straightforward, confessional nature of its telling. But it is also redemptive and shines a light on what might be called Grossman's vision that love and freedom are two goals, not mutually exclusive, that an honest accounting of our lives forms the essence of our shared humanity. The above summary does not do justice to the power of Grossman's prose or to the literary and political importance of the work. Since the death of Stalin, the Soviet line had remained relatively firm - Stalin's excesses were the product of a disturbed mind that represented a horrible deviation from the theory and principles of Leninism. The USSR's best path was the one that returned it to the path created by Lenin. Khrushchev first enunciated this line. Even Gorbachev's perestroika was based on the theory that a return to first-principles, i.e. Leninism, would save the USSR from destruction. Grossman, prophetically, did not buy into this line and Everything Flows'last chapters are notable for a remarkable attack not only on Stalin but on Lenin and Lenin's anti-democratic tendencies that had more in common with Ivan the Terrible than the principles of revolutionary democracy. "All the triumphs of Party and State were bound up with the name of Lenin. But all the cruelty inflicted on the nation also lay - tragically - on Lenin's shoulders." Grossman may have been the first to make this leap and he paid the price for making that leap. (This involves the suppression of his Life & Fate and Everything Flows.) Grossman's explicit claim that Stalin was not a deviationist from Leninism but its natural-born progeny was profoundly subversive and there is no doubt in my mind that it was this difference that explains why, under Khruschev's 'thaw', that One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was publishe while Life and Fate and Everything Flows was banned. Despite the horrors set out, quietly and without excess rhetoric, Grossman returns to a somewhat optimistic vision of mans search for freedom: "No matter how mighty the empire, all this is only mist and fog and, as such, will be blown away. Only one true force remains; only one true force continues to evolve and live; and this force is liberty. To a man, to live means to be free." Robert Chandler's translation of Everything Flows is exquisite. He brings the same clarity and emotional investment in Grossman's work that he brought to his prize-winning translations of Platonov and Hamid Ismailov's The Railway . In short, Everything Flows is a treasure and I cannot recommend this book highly enough. L. Fleisig

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Very good, 4.5 Stars
*by R***K on November 21, 2014*

This is one of my favorite books about the soviet era. I have read both of Vasily Grossman's major works, and I felt that this one is easier to read than Life and Fate. This is actually more like an Alexandr Solzhenitsyn book.

## Frequently Bought Together

- Everything Flows (New York Review Books Classics)
- Life and Fate (New York Review Books Classics)
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