City of Thieves

“The fierce souls who survived winter after winter in Siberia possessed something I did not, great faith in some splendid destiny, whether God’s kingdom or justice or the distant promise of revenge. Or maybe they were so beaten down they became nothing more than animals on their hind legs, working at their masters’ command […] and dreaming of nothing but the end.” 

Sitting in prison after his arrest, Lev ponders how prisoners in Siberia manage to survive the ordeal. The passage addresses the theme of survival in extreme circumstances, with Lev speculating whether these prisoners are sustained by faith or dreams of death. Either way, he asserts that they harbor some fortitude that he lacks himself, which ties into his fixation on cowardice and heroism.

“There was nothing behind Kolya’s blue eyes, neither fear nor anger nor excitement about the prospect of a fight—nothing. This, I came to learn, was his gift: danger made him calm.” 

As Lev and Kolya embark on their search for a dozen eggs, Lev witnesses a new aspect of Kolya’s character. While others react to danger with fear, hysteria, or some other heightened emotion, Kolya exhibits calm clarity, a trait Lev comes to admire.

“You couldn’t let too much truth seep into your conversation, you couldn’t admit with your mouth what your eyes had seen […] You kept your mind on the tasks of the day, the hunt for food and water and something to burn, and you saved the rest for the end of the war.”

This passage reveals how a single-minded focus is essential to surviving extreme hardship. Decompression comes afterward, when there is time and safe space for vulnerability. By slipping into second person, the narration pulls readers in to the story so they can share in this mindset and better understand the traumatic reality of war.

“We walked away from the Kirov’s remnants and I could not hear my footsteps. I had become a phantom. There was no one left in the city who knew my full name. I felt no great misery for myself, just a kind of dull curiosity that I still seemed to be alive.” 

Lev and Kolya return to the Kirov only to discover that Lev’s home is gone, destroyed by bombs. Upon this discovery, Lev wonders how people maintain their sense of self and identity when their entire world lies in ruin. His reaction—numb, detached curiosity rather than despair or anger or another strong emotion—demonstrates how repression serves as a coping mechanism in wartime.

“When the police took my father, I had been a dumb boy, unable to understand how a man—that willful, brilliant man—could cease to exist at the snap of an unseen bureaucrat’s fingers, as if he were nothing but cigarette smoke exhaled by a bored sentry in a watchtower in Siberia.” 

The novel examines the Nazi regime’s impact on Russia, but it also depicts the effects of the Russian regime that took Lev’s father from him years earlier. Lev lost part of his youthful innocence after his father was taken and never returned, and this experience reveals how the Russian government oppressed its own people long before the Nazis rose to power.

“Kolya was a braggart, a know-it-all, a Jew-baiting Cossack, but his confidence was so pure and complete it no longer seemed like arrogance, just the mark of a man who had accepted his own heroic destiny.” 

As Lev and Kolya survive various dangerous and traumatic experiences together, each boy develops a more rounded understanding of the other. This passage shows Lev learning to see beyond Kolya’s gregarious exterior to see the truth of his character. It also reveals how Lev admires Kolya, seeing (and envying) the heroism in Kolya’s actions.

“I never understood people who said their greatest fear was public speaking, or spiders, or any of the other minor terrors. How could you fear anything more than death? Everything else offered moments of escape: a paralyzed man could still read Dickens; a man in the grips of dementia might have flashes of the most absurd beauty.” 

Lev shares his belief that nothing is more terrifying than death, that unequivocal cessation of life. This observation ties into the theme about survival, which is framed as a fight against death, via starvation, violence, or some other horror, throughout the novel.

“Perhaps a hero is someone who doesn’t register his own vulnerability. Is it courage, then, if you’re too daft to know you’re mortal?” 

As much as Lev admires Kolya, he struggles to reconcile Kolya’s flashes of heroism with his haughty, often careless behavior. In considering the origins of Kolya’s courage, Lev wonders if perhaps that foolish arrogance acts as a shield or buffer against the outside world.