Suspended from work, Viktor feels completely isolated. Lyudmila learns at a Council meeting that Viktor was denounced. Sokolov refused to speak, citing his health. More than with his accusers, Viktor is furious with Sokolov’s silence. The family faces financial ruin. He considers volunteering for the front. He is consumed by fear of arrest and grows closer to Nadya. He waits in vain for Marya’s call while continuing his physics work.

The house-manager summons Viktor. As his despair peaks, the telephone rings. A Georgian-accented voice says, “Good day, comrade Shtrum” (762). It is Stalin. Stalin asks about Viktor’s work progress and if resources are adequate. Viktor replies that conditions are satisfactory. Stalin wishes him success, endorsing Viktor and his work. Viktor no longer feels horrified at Stalin’s power; his fear of arrest vanishes, replaced by cool distance from victims like Krymov. That night, Marya calls. She has told Sokolov that she loves Viktor but promised never to see Viktor again.

Krymov’s interrogation begins. The investigator has a file which seemingly contains every conversation of Krymov’s life. He accuses Krymov of being a German agent and produces testimony bearing Krymov’s own signature from February 1938. Krymov feels pathetic. He refuses to sign a false confession. The next day, his interrogation continues under a brutal captain.

After days of interrogation and sleep deprivation, Krymov reflects on past complicity. When he responds to the captain, he is severely beaten. The investigator accuses him of inciting Grekov to treachery. Krymov is beaten again. Suddenly, he remembers the investigator quoted Trotsky’s phrase “pure marble,” an anecdote which he had only repeated to Yevgenia. Believing she denounced him, he wants to confess, only to decide she could not have betrayed him. When Katsenelenbogen returns to the cell, Krymov speaks of a future where the State will only collect evidence of goodness.

On the battle’s final day, Paulus watches Colonel Adam pack while staff burns documents. Paulus had advised Hitler to permit a breakout maneuver; Hitler refused. Paulus’s promotion to Field-Marshal is, he realizes, intended to create a posthumous heroic myth. He fears being killed by undisciplined soldiers.

On February 2, 1943, the German army surrenders. The city fills with celebrating soldiers yet feels dead. Wartime Stalingrad ceases to exist. Snow falls, covering paths that shaped siege life. Defenders feel absurd emptiness. The soul of wartime Stalingrad was freedom. The new city will be built under the shadow of forced labor for a hydroelectric dam.

During the surrender, an unaware officer shoots and wounds a Russian sergeant. Colonel Filimonov orders his execution. Filimonov sees smiling German private Schmidt; misinterpreting, he shouts. A pistol shot rings, and Schmidt falls dead. Lieutenant Lenard, who fired first, is presented. Disturbed by Lenard’s calm, Filimonov orders him taken to prisoner assembly unharmed.

Interpreter Mikhailov accompanies captured Paulus. Paulus is silent, contrasting with other generals. They drive past vast chaotic prisoner columns. The driver and guards await Paulus’s reaction; he remains impassive. Finally, he asks Mikhailov about makhorka. He is anxious about captivity.

Russian civilians watch German prisoners extract corpses from a former Gestapo cellar. Hatred focuses on one tormented young officer. When prisoners carry out an adolescent girl’s body, a woman cries as for her own child. She picks up a brick to attack the officer, but an impulse of pity overtakes her. She wordlessly hands him her piece of bread.

Novikov grows concerned as rapid advances expose his flanks. He wants to halt; Getmanov, set on being first into Ukraine, opposes. Novikov agrees to continue. Preparing to leave, he realizes he has been delaying in the hope Yevgenia might arrive.

Getmanov hands Novikov a letter from Yevgenia. Novikov reports that the men are on the verge of collapse and orders a 10-hour halt. Getmanov explodes, threatening to report him. Novikov reads the letter: Yevgenia is leaving him for Krymov. Novikov is shattered. He destroys her letters. Later, Makarov informs him that Getmanov transmitted a direct Yeremenko order bypassing Novikov: The order to halt has been rescinded.

Three weeks later, Novikov’s corps is withdrawn. Novikov is summoned to Moscow. Nyeudobnov is temporary commander; Getmanov retires to a high Party post. A secretary reveals that Getmanov wrote a letter to the highest authorities defending Novikov, who sleeps soundly.

Viktor returns to the Institute, his fortunes reversed by Stalin’s call. Shishakov and Kovchenko greet him warmly. His lab is to become an independent institute. Malenkov meets him. He recalls Krymov’s story of a purged investigator who, once rehabilitated, reverted to loyal apparatchik. Viktor feels a growing tendency to criticize others for weakness.

Sokolov has arranged to be transferred to a different post. Viktor’s love for Marya has destroyed their friendship. Lyudmila’s sad expression makes him realize she knows of his feelings for Marya. Shishakov and Markov both say they have important topics to discuss with Viktor.

Viktor meets Shishakov, Badin, and Kovchenko. Western media publicize stories of imprisoned Soviet intellectuals, including doctors Pletnyov and Levin, who were convicted of murdering the scientist Gorky. To counter “slanders,” the Soviet scientists have drafted a public letter for prominent scientists. Viktor is horrified, as he believes the doctors are innocent. Nevertheless, he feels compelled to sign. Later, Anna Stepanovna tearfully thanks him for his integrity, calling him “upright.” Marya calls, saying Sokolov is better, then adds she fears for Viktor, suspecting his uncompromising nature means he has harmed himself over the letter.

Viktor is tormented. He has sacrificed inner freedom and betrayed innocents. He realizes everything is insignificant compared to the truth of an individual soul. He must live with the shame of signing the letter as a constant reproach, humbly struggling to be good, like the person his mother raised him to be.

Krymov reflects on the changing idea of the Revolution. Katsenelenbogen develops a theory: Security organs are a modern deity, and the camps are a vast evolving system. He describes how imprisoned businessman Frankel designed the modern Gulag. His vision culminates in the merger of the camp and the outside world. Krymov calls him wrong.

Krymov learns of the Stalingrad victory from a voice in his cell. He has a delirious vision. He endures another three-day interrogation. Returning, a guard hands him a parcel: onions, garlic, sugar, white rusks. The list is in familiar handwriting, signed “Your Zhenya.” Krymov cries.

In April 1943, Spiridonov is officially reprimanded for abandoning his post and transferred to the Urals. He suspects the real reason is his family connection to Krymov. More than the demotion, he is devastated that he will not receive his medal.

Andreyev returns to the Spiridonovs’ ruined apartment after visiting his former factory settlement. Workers live in squalor while the director has become a distant bureaucrat with a new villa. Drunken Spiridonov comes home and announces his reprimand and transfer to the Urals. He calls his mother-in-law “Mama” for the first time. Strained good humor gives way to uncomfortable silence.

Preparing to leave Stalingrad with Spiridonov and Vera, Alexandra Vladimirovna borrows the new director’s car to visit the ruins of her old home. Driving through the city, she sees three strata of life layered in the wreckage: pre-war shops, wartime bunkers and machine-gun loopholes, and now bread queues, drying washing and children playing amid the rubble. She reflects that the wartime city has eclipsed the ordinary provincial one. At her own house, only the street wall still stands. 

Back at the apartment, the last day is spent packing. Spiridonov drinks steadily, dodging the workers who come to see him; Natalya bakes pies at a friend’s house and weeps, unable to say why. Over the farewell meal, Spiridonov urges Natalya to fetch her son from Leninsk and join them in the Urals and asks Andreyev to come too. Andreyev refuses. Seeing Vera standing by the table with Mitya in her arms and crying, Spiridonov suddenly registers the walls of the room he is leaving and all else falls away. Alexandra Vladimirovna kisses him on the head, saying, “It doesn’t matter. It’s life” (867).

An old peasant landlady lies awake, irritated by the whispering of her tenant and the woman’s husband, a wounded officer just out of hospital, and pieces together fragments of their talk. Sleepless, she broods on the couple and on her own hard life with a drunken, miserly husband who beat her with a poker and once brought her beads from Yekaterinburg. 

Before dawn, the couple set off hand in hand through the forest towards the next village to buy white bread on his ration-card. They walk in silence along the lake before stopping near two bullfinches, feeling keenly aware of the spring season around them. Holding their bags, they stand in silence.