In Everything Flows, Vasily Grossman gives a glimpse into many different scenes of Russian life during the troubles they faced in the early 20th century. Approaching these issues from various perspectives, it is much more obtainable a goal to figure out who, or what, was guilty for what happened in Russia during the 1930s. On a massive scale, the helpless and submissive condition of victims, coupled with the human tendencies of greed, betrayal and hatred, empowered people like Lenin and the State to drive the country further into despair. Grossman's story of what was going on in the lives of Russians across the board depicts the struggle that plagued the country for decades.
One of the more telling issues that Grossman illustrates in his book is the helpless, submissive and, at times, seemingly ambivalent state of mind of those forced into the camps, especially in relation to what their lives were like on the outside. Undoubtedly, some of those sent to camps had lived almost equally, if not more, difficult lives outside of the barbed wire. At one point, Ivan remembers a conversation with a tsarist general who slept near him in the in a camp barrack. "I'm not leaving the camp to go anywhere. It's warm in here. There are people I know. Now and again someone gives me a lump of sugar, or a bit of pie from a food parcel." Clearly, life outside the camps for many of the unfortunate presented an even greater struggle than life behind the fences. For this man, life in the camp meant that he was fed, albeit meagerly, at regular hours. He was also able to form relationships with people without contemplating the longevity of the relationships like he may have had to back in solitude of free life. Others, Grossman says, upon being condemned to a camp, realized that they now know firsthand how people are thrown into camps for nothing and at this "merely sighed submissively. This is not to say that those in forced labor did not value what freedoms they knew.
