Alisa Freindlich and other celebrities who survived the siege of Leningrad. The true story of the siege of Leningrad - a tribute to its victims
In the book “The Unknown Blockade” by Nikita LOMAGIN, Eleonora KHATKEVICH found a photo of her brother
“I even had to eat the earth”
The routes of her life are amazing: German roots can be traced on her mother’s side, she survived besieged Leningrad at the age of six, worked in Karelia and Kazakhstan, and her husband was a former prisoner of the concentration camp in Ozarichi...When I was born, the midwife said as she looked into the water: difficult fate destined for the girl. And so it happened,” Eleonora Khatkevich begins the story. My interlocutor lives alone, her daughter and son-in-law live in Vileika, a social worker helps her. He practically doesn’t leave the house - age and problems with his legs take a toll. He remembers what happened more than 70 years ago in detail.
Her maternal grandfather, Philip, was a native of the Volga Germans. When famine began there in the 1930s, he emigrated to Germany, and his grandmother Natalya Petrovna with her sons and daughter Henrietta, Eleanor’s mother, moved to Leningrad. She didn't live long - she was hit by a tram.
Eleanor's father, Vasily Kazansky, was the chief engineer of the plant. Mother worked in the human resources department of the institute. On the eve of the war, her 11-year-old brother Rudolf was sent to pioneer camp in Velikiye Luki, but he returned before the blockade began. On Sunday, June 22, the family was getting ready to go out of town. My father came with terrible news (he went down to the store to buy a loaf of bread: “Zhinka, we’re not going anywhere, the war has begun.” And although Vasily Vasilyevich had a reservation, he immediately went to the military registration and enlistment office.
I remember: before joining the militia, my father brought us a two-kilogram bag of lentils,” says Eleonora Vasilievna. - This is how these lentils stand out in the eyes, similar to valerian pills... Then we lived modestly, there was no abundance of products, as in our days.
Henrietta-Alexandra and Vasily KAZANSKY, parents of a siege survivor
The blockade survivor has a habit: flour, cereals, vegetable oil- There should be a spare amount of everything at home. When my husband was alive, the cellars were always stocked with preserves and pickles. And when he died, he distributed it all to the homeless. Today, if he doesn’t eat bread, he feeds the neighbors’ dogs. Remembers:
During the hungry days of the siege, we even had to eat earth - my brother brought it from the burnt Badayevsky warehouses.
She carefully keeps the funeral memorial for her father - he was killed in 1942...
In the center - Rudolf KAZANSKY
But that was later, and the war brought losses to the family already in August 1941. On the sixth there was heavy shelling of Leningrad; my mother’s brother Alexander was sick at home that day. It was just his birthday, and Elya and her mother came to congratulate him. Before their eyes, the patient was thrown against the wall by the blast wave and died. There were many victims then. The girl remembered that it was on that day that an elephant in the zoo was killed during shelling. Her brother was saved either by a miracle or a happy accident. It turned out that the day before Rudik brought a helmet he found somewhere. His mother scolded him, saying, why are you bringing all this junk into the house? But he hid it. And he put it on in time, when Junkers with a deadly load appeared over the city... Around the same time, the family of another mother’s brother, Philip, tried to escape. They had a house near St. Petersburg and three children: Valentina graduated from the third year of the shipbuilding institute, Volodya was just about to enter college, Seryozha was an eighth-grader. When the war began, the family tried to evacuate with other Leningraders on a barge. However, the boat was sunk and they all died. The only photograph left as a keepsake was of his brother and his wife.
“Crumbs - only for Elechka”
When their own home was completely bombed, Eleanor's family found themselves living in a former student dormitory. Henrietta Filippovna, who was called Alexandra in her family, managed to find only a few old photographs at the site of her apartment after the bombing. At first, after the blockade began, she went to remove corpses from the streets - they were put in piles. The mother gave most of her meager rations to her children, so she fell ill first. Only her son went out for water and bread. Eleonora Vasilyevna remembered that in those days he was especially affectionate:Mommy, I only sniffed the pieces twice, but I collected all the crumbs and brought them to you...
Eleanor Vasilievna collected many books about the siege, in one of them she came across a photograph of her brother collecting water in a half-frozen stream.
Along the Road of Life
In April 1942, the Kazanskys were wrapped in someone else's rags and taken along the Road of Life. There was water on the ice, the truck driving behind them fell through, and the adults covered the children’s eyes so they wouldn’t see this horror. On the shore they were already waiting in large tents and given millet porridge, the siege survivor recalls. At the station they gave out two loaves of bread. 
Elya KAZANSKAYA in a pre-war photo
“The children had an x-ray, and the doctor told the mother: “Your girl probably drank a lot of tea, her ventricle is large,” the interlocutor cries. - The mother replied: “Neva water, it was the only way to escape when you wanted to eat.”
Many Leningraders who arrived with them died with a piece of bread in their mouths: after the famine it was impossible to eat much. And my brother, who never asked for food in Leningrad, begged that day: “Mommy, some bread!” She broke off small pieces so that he wouldn’t get sick. Later in Peaceful time Alexandra Filippovna told her daughter: “There is nothing worse in life than when your child asks for food, and not for treats, but for bread, but there is none…”
Having escaped from the besieged city, the family ended up in the hospital and learned to walk “on the walls” again. Later, the evacuees ended up in Kirov region. Akulina Ivanovna, the owner of the house where they lived, had a husband and daughter at the front:
Sometimes she bakes round bread, cuts it with a half-sickle knife, pours goat milk, and she looks at us and cries, we are so thin.
There was a case when it was only by a miracle that Rudolf did not die - he was pulled into the mechanism of an agricultural machine. Over the years, Eleonora Vasilievna does not remember its exact name. But the name of the horse she helped care for when the family moved to Karelia for logging remains in her memory - Tractor. At the age of 12-13, she was already helping her mother, who worked on the collective farm. And at the age of 17 she got married and gave birth to a daughter. But marriage turned out to be a big disaster, which her mother also sensed in advance. After suffering for several years, Eleanor got divorced. A friend called her to Molodechno, and she and her little daughter Sveta left. Her future husband, Anatoly Petrovich Khatkevich, then worked as a garage manager, met at work.
At the age of eleven, he ended up in a concentration camp near Ozarichi with his mother and sister, continues Eleonora Vasilyevna. - The camp was a bare space fenced with wire. The husband said: “There’s a dead horse lying, there’s water in a puddle nearby, and they’re drinking from it...” On the day of liberation, the Germans were retreating on one side, and ours were coming on the other. One mother recognized her son among those approaching Soviet soldiers, shouted: “Son!..” And before his eyes, a bullet knocked her down.
Anatoly and Eleanor did not get along right away - for some time the former Leningrad woman went to her brother in the virgin lands. But she returned, and New Year the couple signed. A difficult test lay ahead - my beloved daughter Lenochka died of brain cancer at the age of 16.
Saying goodbye, Eleonora Vasilyevna hugged me like family - we are the same age as her granddaughter:
On the second day after my husband’s funeral, two pigeons flew to our balcony. The neighbor says: “Tolya and Lenochka.” I crumbled some bread for them. Since then, 40 pieces have been arriving every day. And I feed. I buy pearl barley and oatmeal. I have to wash the balcony every day. Once I tried to stop, I was drinking tea, they were knocking on the window. I couldn't stand it. I felt hungry - how can I leave them?..
You can call this a feat, or you can understand that it was precisely the work, loved or necessary in war conditions, that gave people the opportunity to feel the strength of their will, and this was the very life that turned out to be more important than physical existence, and in the end became that very Victory . We collected photographic evidence of this experience.
In dirt, in darkness, in hunger, in sadness,
Where death like a shadow trailed on your heels,
We used to be so happy
We breathed such wild freedom,
That our grandchildren would envy us.
(Olga Berggolts)
Artists and climbers camouflaged city objects
During the blockade, there were about a hundred members of the Union of Artists in the city. In addition to creating propaganda posters, they were engaged in camouflage of city objects. For example, models of buildings were erected on the roofs of workshops, creating the illusion of residential areas.
The high-rise dominants of the city - domes and spiers - were treated like this: those gilded by electroplating (for example, the dome of St. Isaac's Cathedral) were painted with gray oil paint to match the sky (paint from such gilding can be washed off), and those covered with gold leaf were covered with huge covers.
Since most of the climbers were called up to the front, for these works they recruited members of the sports section of the Children's Society "Art": pianist O. A. Firsova, Secretary of the Children's Society A. I. Prigozheva, employee of the Lenfilm film studio A. A. Zemba, junior lieutenant M M. Bobrov, cellist M. I. Shestakov, artist T. E. Wiesel. The team was led by architect S. N. Davydov and engineer L. A. Zhukovsky. The work was carried out in extreme conditions, each member of the brigade showed incredible self-control.
Energy workers and citizens broke through the energy blockade and launched tram traffic
After the blockade ring closed, an energy blockade began in the city. By February 1942, only one station was operating, carrying a load of only 3,000 kW, and when the steam locomotives at the station froze at night and it stopped completely, the workers, with incredible efforts, were able to start one steam locomotive and organize the operation of the enterprise.
To help with the city’s energy supply, 3,000 Leningraders went to cut down the forest, special women’s brigades were formed to harvest peat, and permission was given to demolish all wooden buildings within the city.
Thanks to the efforts of people, tram traffic was restored in the city at the end of February 1942 - according to the recollections of Leningrad residents, this event made many perk up.
In the narrowest place Lake Ladoga it was decided to lay 120 kilometers of armored cable. At the Sevkabel plant there was no water, no steam, no electricity, but by the summer of 1942, plant workers were able to produce more than 100 kilometers of cable that could withstand a voltage of 10 kilovolts - 270 drums of 11 tons each.
Three construction battalions, divers, and signalmen, with the help of mobilized workers from Leningrad enterprises, were able to lay a cable along the bottom of the lake - and on September 23, 1942, at 09:40, energy from the Volkhov hydroelectric station began to flow into the besieged city.
The blockade cable is still in use: it was lifted from the bottom of Ladoga and laid under the sidewalk of Nevsky Prospekt.
5000 people built railways on the Road of Life
In the winter of 1942–1943, construction of a 35-kilometer pile-ice railway crossing began simultaneously on both shores of Lake Ladoga. The construction was led by I.G. Zubkov, thanks to him a street in the Kirovsky district was named.
More than 5,000 people worked at the construction site - mobilized workers (the majority were women) - and military builders. They worked around the clock and lived in dugouts next to the construction site. There were constant enemy attacks on the construction site, people fell through the ice, ice movements broke already driven piles, but despite everything, the work continued again.
On January 18, 1943, troops of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts broke the blockade of Leningrad. There was no longer any need for this road. Its builders were immediately transferred to work on the same bridge across the Neva at the site of the breakthrough.
During the siege, composer Dmitry Shostakovich worked on the construction of defensive lines and, as part of the conservatory team, extinguished fires from incendiary bombs.
Despite the fact that Shostakovich asked to go to the front, submitted an application to the People's Militia, the Military Council of the front ordered the immediate evacuation of the composer and his family to Kuibyshev, where at the end of December 1941 he completed work on the famous Seventh Symphony.
Zoo staff rescued animals
The Leningrad Zoo closed only in the winter of 1941–1942. Already in the spring, exhausted employees began preparing it to receive visitors. 162 animals were exhibited. Over the summer, about 7,400 Leningraders came to see them, which means that people needed the zoo in the besieged city.
Zoo employees, led by director Nikolai Sokolov, restored buildings after the bombing, treated wounded animals, and looked for those who had escaped from destroyed enclosures. They collected corpses of horses killed by shells in the fields, risking their lives, collected vegetables in abandoned fields, mowed the remaining grass in all possible points of the city, and collected rowan berries and acorns. The predators were fed a mixture of grass and cake sewn into rabbit skins. Rats were specially caught for the golden eagle.
The elephant Betty died from a bomb explosion in September 1941, and the hippopotamus Beauty was able to survive thanks to the help of employee Evdokia Ivanovna Dashina. Evdokia Ivanovna brought a forty-bucket barrel of water every day on a sled from the Neva to care for Beauty’s skin, which, without constant hydration, began to become covered with cracks.
In November 1941, Elsa the hamadryas gave birth to a baby. But the exhausted monkey had no milk. A nearby maternity hospital came to the rescue, providing a daily portion of donor milk. And the newborn hamadryas survived the besieged city.
OHM employees in St. Isaac's Cathedral rescued museum valuables from suburban palaces
During the war, St. Isaac's Cathedral was the place where exhibits of Leningrad palace-museums were kept, which they managed to remove from Peterhof, Lomonosov, Pushkin, Pavlovsk, Gatchina - a total of 120 thousand items of museum significance.
The United Museum Economy (UME) was created in the cathedral, where many employees of museums located in the territory occupied by the Nazis worked. The head (OKhM) was Evdokia Ignatievna Ledinkina, the main custodian was a researcher at the Gatchina Palace, Serafima Nikolaevna Badaeva.
All employees were transferred to barracks regime by order of the Administration of Palaces and Parks of Leningrad. They slept on plank bunks, covering themselves with clothes. In the first months of the siege, 62 employees of suburban museums lived in the cathedral; by the spring of 1942, there were only 40 of them. The basements were very damp, so employees had to drag heavy boxes with exhibits outside to dry, and drag them back when the alarm sounded.
In May 2005, at the exhibition “To Remember...” a memorial plaque was unveiled in the basements of the cathedral with the names of those who preserved the treasures of national culture during the years of the blockade.
During the war years, the All-Union Institute of Plant Growing on St. Isaac's Square, 4, had a huge collection of grain. The institute's collections stored several tons of various grain crops. They were intended for post-war reconstruction Agriculture. 28 employees of the institute died of hunger, but they never touched a single grain, a single grain of rice or a potato tuber.
Leningraders donated blood for the front
From the first days of the war, a lot of people came to the Leningrad Institute of Blood Transfusion (now the Russian Research Institute of Hematology and Transfusiology) who wanted to donate blood to help the wounded at the front. In 1941, almost 36 thousand Leningraders were registered as donors, in 1942 - almost 57 thousand, and in 1943–1944 - 34 thousand people each.
When donor depletion began, the single dose of blood collection was reduced to 170 milliliters. Only in 1943 the dose was increased to 200 milliliters, and in 1944 - to 250. In total, during the war years the institute prepared about 113 tons of canned blood.
Donors received special rations, but most of them refused monetary compensation after donating blood, and this money went to the defense fund. At the end of 1942, 510 thousand rubles were collected, and the management of the institute sent a telegram to I.V. Stalin, in which they asked to use these funds for the construction of the Leningrad Donor aircraft.
The newspapers “Smena” and “Leningradskaya Pravda” continued to be published in the city, large-circulation editions of large factories continued to be published, and all-Union publications were also printed using matrices dropped from airplanes. Employees of newspapers and printing houses, at the cost of their lives and incredible efforts, continued to work as usual.
The newspaper "Leningradskaya Pravda" was not published only once - on January 25, 1942, the issue was already laid out, but it could not be printed: on that day there was no electricity in the city.
Photo: aloban75.livejournal.com, integral-russia.ru, topic.lt, myhistori.ru, karpovka.com, kobona.ru, warheroes.ru, zoopicture.ru, isaak.spb.ru, sanktpeterburg.monavista.ru, regnum. ru, marina-shandar.livejournal.com, novayagazeta.ru, mir-i-mi.ucoz.ru, restec-expo.ru, 1944-2014.livejournal.com, waralbum.ru, miloserdie.ru
He arrived at the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin very early, about an hour before the event, and was surprised why the police gave him a military salute at the entrance. Moisei Alshin's gray hair hides 82 years of life, of which he lived almost 900 days and nights in besieged Leningrad, defending the city and its inhabitants. 872 days and nights to be exact. Objectively, of course, the Germans did not need Leningrad, the city bristled, and they decided to starve it out, but they could not. He survived, despite all the deaths. Today, about 100 people live in the Nizhny Novgorod region who were in besieged Leningrad. Many of them came to the memorial Eternal flame to lay flowers in memory of those who stayed in this city forever. September 8 is a special day for the Nizhny Novgorod region; children who were managed to be taken out of the city were brought to the region. They were transported by trains, and those that were able to be transported were carried out in their arms - they could not walk on their own. The vast majority were fed and brought back to life, except for the girl Tanya Savicheva, who kept a diary in which she reported the dates and times of death of all her relatives. Tanya became one of the symbols of besieged Leningrad; at one time they even wanted to rebury her, but they still left her where she died, diligently clinging to life, unable to survive the siege of her city. In St. Petersburg itself, in memory of the victims, a serena will sound, which warned the residents of Leningrad about the beginning of the raid of enemy troops, and then the famous Leningrad metronome, which during the war years notified that enemy bombers were approaching the city, will sound.
01. Moses Alshits:
- So many years have passed, but even now few people know what the blockade of Leningrad is. Such events must be carried out in order to be remembered. It was scary under the bombing, but even worse was the hunger. There was nothing more terrible than him. No city has ever experienced such a blockade as Leningrad, but it survived. He survived and won. This is our northern capital
02. Eila Zavyalova:
- I was the only one left from my whole family in Leningrad, all my relatives died. This city is very memorable for me, for the country... How can we not honor the memory of those who stayed there... How can we not honor the memory of our ancestors? There, because I have everything...
03. Most can barely walk, but they found the strength to come to the Eternal Flame despite the weather, which is more typical for St. Petersburg than for Nizhny Novgorod
04. Less than 100 people who survived the siege
05. These people climbed the roofs of the northern capital and extinguished incendiary bombs that fell on historical and architectural monuments
06. For them there was never a question of surrendering Leningrad. The question was how to preserve it
07. Wind
08. The rain has stopped
09. And stayed behind the back of a lonely policeman
10. Wreaths
11. Parade
12. In the pouring rain, they laid flowers at the memorial
13. And they went home
14. In order to gather again in a year
In world history Many sieges of cities and fortresses are known, where civilians also took refuge. But so that in the days terrible blockade, which lasted 900 days, there were schools in which thousands of children studied - history has never seen anything like this.
IN different years I recorded the memories of schoolchildren who survived the siege. Some of those who shared them with me are no longer alive. But their voices remained alive. Those for whom suffering and courage have become everyday life in a besieged city.
The first bombings hit Leningrad 70 years ago, at the beginning of September 1941, when children had just started going to school. “Our school, located in an old building, had large basement rooms,” Valentina Ivanovna Polyakova, a future doctor, told me. - Teachers equipped classrooms in them. They hung school boards on the walls. As soon as the air raid alarms sounded on the radio, they fled to the basements. Since there was no light, they resorted to an old method, which they knew about only from books - they burned splinters. The teacher met us with a torch at the entrance to the basement. We took our seats. The class attendant now had the following duties: he prepared torches in advance and stood with a lit stick, illuminating the school board on which the teacher wrote problems and poems. It was difficult for students to write in the semi-darkness, so lessons were learned by heart, often to the sound of explosions.” This is a typical picture for besieged Leningrad.
During the bombings, teenagers and children, together with MPVO fighters, climbed onto the roofs of houses and schools to save them from incendiary bombs that german planes they dumped them in sheaves onto Leningrad buildings. “When I first climbed to the roof of my house during the bombing, I saw a menacing and unforgettable sight,” recalled Yuri Vasilyevich Maretin, an orientalist scientist. – Searchlight beams walked across the sky.
It seemed as if all the streets around had moved and the houses were swaying from side to side. The claps of anti-aircraft guns. The fragments drum on the roofs. Each of the guys tried not to show how scared he was.
We watched to see if a “lighter” would fall on the roof and quickly put it out by putting it in a box with sand. Teenagers lived in our house - the Ershov brothers, who saved our house from many incendiary bombs. Then both brothers died of starvation in 1942.”
“To cope with German lighters, we acquired a special skill,” recalled chemist Yuri Ivanovich Kolosov. “First of all, we had to learn to move quickly on the sloping, slippery roof. The incendiary bomb ignited instantly. Not a second could be missed. We held long tongs in our hands. When the incendiary bomb fell on the roof, it hissed and flared, thermite spray flying around. I had to not get confused and throw the “lighter” down to the ground.” Here are lines from the journal of the headquarters of the MPVO Kuibyshevsky district of Leningrad:
“September 16, 1941 School 206: 3 incendiary bombs were dropped into the school yard. Extinguished by the forces of teachers and students.
The front line surrounded the city like an iron arc. Every day the blockade became more merciless. The city lacked the most important thing - food. The standards for bread distribution were constantly decreasing.
On November 20, 1941, the most tragic days began. Critical standards for life support were established: workers were given 250 grams of bread per day, employees, dependents and children - 125 grams. And even these pieces of bread were incomplete. The recipe for Leningrad bread of those days: rye flour, defective - 50%, cake - 10%, soy flour - 5%, bran - 5%, malt - 10%, cellulose - 15%. Famine struck in Leningrad. They cooked and ate belts, pieces of leather, glue, and carried home soil in which particles of flour from food warehouses bombed by the Germans had settled. There were frosts in November. There was no heat supplied to the houses. There was frost on the walls of the apartments, and the ceilings were covered in ice. There was no water, electricity. In those days, almost all Leningrad schools were closed. The blockade hell began.
A.V. Molchanov, engineer: “When you remember the winter of 1941-42, it seems that there was no day, no daylight. And only the endless, cold night continued. I was ten years old. I went to get water with a kettle. I was so weak that while I was fetching water, I rested several times. Previously, when climbing the stairs in the house, I ran, jumping over the steps. And now, going up the stairs, he often sat down and rested. It was very slippery and the steps were icy. What I was most afraid of was that I might not be able to carry the kettle of water, I would fall and spill it.
Leningrad during the siege. Residents leave houses destroyed by the Nazis
We were so exhausted that when we went out to buy bread or water, we didn’t know if we would have enough strength to return home. My school friend went for bread, fell and froze, he was covered with snow.
The sister began to look for him, but did not find him. Nobody knew what happened to him. In the spring, when the snow melted, the boy was found. In his bag there was bread and bread cards.”
“I didn’t take my clothes off all winter,” L.L. told me. Park, economist. - We slept in our clothes. Of course, we didn’t wash – there wasn’t enough water and heat. But then one day I took off my clothes and saw my legs. They were like two matches - that’s how I lost weight. I thought then with surprise - how does my body hold up on these matches? Suddenly they break off and won’t stand it.”
“In the winter of 1941, my school friend Vova Efremov came to see me,” recalled Olga Nikolaevna Tyuleva, a journalist. “I hardly recognized him - he’s lost so much weight.” He was like a little old man. He was 10 years old. Sitting down on a chair, he said: “Lelya! I really want to eat! Do you have… something to read?” I gave him some book. A few days later I found out that Vova had died.”
They experienced the pangs of blockade hunger, when every cell of the exhausted body felt weak. They are accustomed to danger and death. Those who died of hunger lay in neighboring apartments, entrances, and on the streets. They were carried away and put into trucks by air defense fighters.
Even rare joyful events were shadowed by the blockade.
“Suddenly I was given a ticket for New Year tree. It was in January 1942,” said L.L. Pack. – We lived then on Nevsky Prospekt. I didn't have far to go. But the road seemed endless. So I became weak. Our beautiful Nevsky Prospekt was littered with snowdrifts, among which there were trodden paths.
Nevsky Prospekt during the blockade
Finally, I got to the Pushkin Theater, where they put up a festive tree. I saw a lot in the theater lobby board games. Before the war, we would have rushed to these games. And now the children did not pay attention to them. They stood near the walls - quiet, silent.
The ticket indicated that we would be given lunch. Now all our thoughts revolved around this upcoming dinner: what will they give us to eat? The performance of the Operetta Theater “Wedding in Malinovka” has begun. It was very cold in the theater. The room was not heated. We sat in coats and hats. And the artists performed in ordinary theatrical costumes. How could they withstand such cold? Intellectually, I understood that they were saying something funny on stage. But I couldn't laugh. I saw it nearby - only sadness in the eyes of the children. After the performance we were taken to the Metropol restaurant. On beautiful plates we were served a small portion of porridge and a small cutlet, which I simply swallowed. When I approached my house, I saw a crater, entered the room - no one was there. The windows are broken. While I was at the Christmas tree, a shell exploded in front of the house. All residents communal apartment We moved into one room, the windows of which looked out onto the courtyard. They lived like this for some time. Then they blocked the windows with plywood and boards and returned to their room.”
What is striking in the memories of the siege survivors who survived the hard times in at a young age- an incomprehensible craving for books, despite severe trials. The long days of the siege were spent reading.
Yuri Vasilyevich Maretin talked about this: “I reminded myself of a head of cabbage - I had so many clothes on. I was ten years old. In the morning I sat at a large desk and, by the light of a homemade smokehouse, read book after book. Mom, as best she could, created conditions for me to read. We had a lot of books in our house. I remembered how my father told me: “If you read books, son, you will know the whole world.” During that first winter of the siege, books replaced school for me. What did I read? Works by I.S. Turgeneva, A.I. Kuprina, K.M. Stanyukovich. I somehow lost track of the days and weeks. When the thick curtains were opened, nothing living was visible outside the window: icy roofs and walls of houses, snow, a gloomy sky. And the pages of books opened up a bright world to me.”
Children in a bomb shelter during a German air raid
On November 22, 1941, first sleigh convoys, and then trucks with food for the siege survivors, walked across the ice of Lake Ladoga. This was the highway connecting Leningrad with the mainland. The legendary “Road of Life”, as it came to be called. The Germans bombed it from airplanes, fired at it from long-range guns, and landed troops. The shelling caused craters to appear on the ice route, and if they fell into them at night, the car went under water. But the following trucks, avoiding the traps, continued to go towards the besieged city. In the first winter of the siege alone, more than 360 thousand tons of cargo were transported to Leningrad across the ice of Ladoga. Thousands of lives were saved. The norms for bread distribution gradually increased. In the coming spring, vegetable gardens appeared in courtyards, squares, and parks of the city.
On September 1, 1942, schools opened in the besieged city. In each class, there were no children who died from hunger and shelling. “When we came to school again,” said Olga Nikolaevna Tyuleva, “we had blockade conversations. We talked about where which edible grass grows. Which cereal is more satisfying? The children were quiet. They didn’t run around during recess, they didn’t play pranks. We didn't have the strength.
The first time two boys fought during recess, the teachers did not scold them, but were happy: “So our kids are coming to life.”
The road to school was dangerous. The Germans shelled the streets of the city.
“Not far from our school there were factories that were shot at German guns, - said Svet Borisovich Tikhvinsky, Doctor of Medical Sciences. “There were days when we crawled across the street to school on our bellies. We knew how to seize the moment between explosions, run from one corner to another, hide in a gateway. It was dangerous to walk.” “Every morning my mother and I said goodbye,” Olga Nikolaevna Tyuleva told me. - Mom went to work, I went to school. We didn’t know if we’d see each other, if we’d stay alive.” I remember I asked Olga Nikolaevna: “Was it necessary to go to school if the road was so dangerous?” “You see, we already knew that death can overtake you anywhere - in your own room, in a line for bread, in the yard,” she answered. – We lived with this thought. Of course, no one could force us to go to school. We just wanted to learn."
In the surgical department of the City Children's Hospital named after. Dr. Rauchfus 1941-1942
Many of my storytellers recalled how, during the days of the blockade, indifference to life gradually crept up on a person. Exhausted by hardships, people lost interest in everything in the world and in themselves. But in these cruel trials, even the young siege survivors believed: in order to survive, one must not succumb to apathy. They remembered their teachers. During the blockade, in cold classrooms, teachers gave lessons that were not on the schedule. These were lessons in courage. They encouraged the children, helped them, taught them to survive in conditions when it seemed impossible to survive. The teachers set an example of selflessness and dedication.
“We had a mathematics teacher N.I. Knyazheva,” said O.N. Tyuleva. “She headed the canteen committee, which monitored the consumption of food in the kitchen. So the teacher once fainted from hunger while watching how food was distributed to the children. This incident will forever remain in the children’s memory.” “The area where our school was located was shelled very often,” recalled A.V. Molchanov. – When the shelling began, teacher R.S. Zusmanovskaya said: “Children, calm down!” It was necessary to catch the moment between the explosions in order to reach the bomb shelter. Lessons continued there. One day, when we were in class, there was an explosion and the windows blew out. At that moment we didn’t even notice that R.S. Zusmanovskaya silently clasped her hand. Then they saw her hand covered in blood. The teacher was injured by glass fragments.”
Incredible events happened. This happened on January 6, 1943 at the Dynamo stadium. Speed skating competitions took place.
When on treadmill Svet Tikhvinsky flew out, a shell exploded in the middle of the stadium. Everyone who was in the stands froze not only from the imminent danger, but also from the unusual sight. But he did not leave the circle and calmly continued his run to the finish line.
Eyewitnesses told me about this.
The blockade is a tragedy in which - in war as in war - heroism and cowardice, selflessness and self-interest, the strength of the human spirit and cowardice were manifested. It could not be otherwise when hundreds of thousands of people are involved in the daily struggle for life. It is all the more striking that in the stories of my interlocutors the theme of the cult of knowledge arose, to which they were committed, despite the cruel circumstances of the days of the siege.
IN AND. Polyakova recalled: “In the spring, everyone who could hold a shovel in their hands went out to chip away the ice and clean the streets. I also went out with everyone. While cleaning I saw one on the wall educational institution drawn periodic table. While cleaning, I began to memorize it. I rake up the trash and repeat the table to myself. So that time is not wasted. I was in 9th grade and wanted to enter medical school».
“When we returned to school again, I noticed that during breaks I often heard: “What did you read?” The book occupied an important place in our lives,” said Yu.V. Maretin. - We exchanged books, childishly boasted to each other about who knew more poetry. Once I saw a brochure in a store: “Memo for air defense fighters,” who extinguished fires and buried the dead. I thought then: it will pass war time, and this monument will become a historical value. Gradually I began to collect books and brochures published in Leningrad during the days of the siege. These were both works of classics and, say, siege recipes - how to eat pine needles, which tree buds, herbs, roots are edible. I looked for these publications not only in stores, but also at flea markets. I have amassed a substantial collection of these now rare books and brochures. Years later, I showed them at exhibitions in Leningrad and Moscow.”
“I often remember my teachers,” said S.B. Tikhvinsky. “After years, you realize how much the school gave us.” Teachers invited famous scientists to come and give presentations. In high school, we studied not only from school textbooks, but also from university textbooks. We published handwritten literary magazines in which children published their poems, stories, sketches, and parodies. Drawing competitions were held. School was always interesting. So no shelling could stop us. We spent all our days at school."
They were hard workers - young Leningraders. “It turned out that only three older children were alive in our house,” Yu.V. told me. Maretin. - We were from 11 to 14 years old. The rest died or were smaller than us. We ourselves decided to organize our own team to help restore our house. Of course, this was already when the bread quota was increased, and we became a little stronger. The roof of our house was broken in several places. They began to seal the holes with pieces of roofing felt. Helped with water pipe repairs. The house was without water. Together with the adults, we repaired and insulated the pipes. Our team worked from March to September. We wanted to do everything in our power to help our city.” “We had a sponsored hospital,” said O.N. Tyuleva. “On weekends we visited the wounded. They wrote letters under their dictation, read books, and helped the nannies fix their laundry. They performed concerts in the chambers. We saw that the wounded were glad of our arrival.. Then we wondered why they were crying while listening to our singing.”
German propaganda implanted delusional racial theories into the heads of its soldiers.
The people who inhabited our country were declared inferior, subhuman, incapable of creativity, who did not need literacy. Their destiny, they say, is to be slaves of German masters.
Reaching their schools under fire, weakened by hunger, the children and their teachers defied the enemy. The fight against the invaders took place not only in the trenches surrounding Leningrad, but also at the highest, spiritual level. The same invisible band of resistance took place in the besieged schools.
Therefore, it is not surprising that thousands of teachers and schoolchildren who worked in hospitals and in repair teams that saved houses from fires were awarded military award- medal "For the Defense of Leningrad".
Lyudmila Ovchinnikova
A lively discussion on the seemingly purely historical question of whether the first secretary ate Leningrad Regional Committee VKPb Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov cakes and other delicacies during the blockade, unfolded between the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation Vladimir Medinsky and the liberal public, primarily represented by the deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly Boris Vishnevsky.
It must be admitted that although Mr. Minister is an ignoramus and does not know history (details are in our article “The Crocodile of Ensign Medinsky”), in this case he correctly called all this “a lie.” The myth was analyzed in detail by historian Alexey Volynets in his biography of A.A. Zhdanov, published in the ZhZL series. With the permission of the author, APN-SZ publishes the corresponding excerpt from the book.
In December 1941, unprecedentedly severe frosts virtually destroyed the water supply of the city that was left without heating. Bread factories were left without water - for one day the already meager blockade ration turned into a handful of flour.
Recalls Alexey Bezzubov, at that time the head of the chemical-technological department of the All-Union Research Institute of the Vitamin Industry located in Leningrad and a consultant to the sanitary department of the Leningrad Front, a developer of the production of vitamins to combat scurvy in besieged Leningrad:
“The winter of 1941-1942 was especially difficult. Unprecedentedly severe frosts struck, all water pipes froze, and bakeries were left without water. On the very first day, when flour was given out instead of bread, the head of the baking industry N.A. Smirnov and I were called to Smolny... A.A. Zhdanov, having learned about the flour, asked to come to him immediately. There was a machine gun on the windowsill in his office. Zhdanov pointed at him: “If there are no hands that can firmly hold this perfect machine gun, it is useless. Bread is needed at all costs.”
Unexpectedly, a way out was suggested by Admiral of the Baltic Fleet V.F. Tributs, who was in the office. They stood on the Neva submarines frozen in ice. But the river did not freeze to the bottom. They made ice holes and began pumping water through the sleeves using submarine pumps to bakeries located on the banks of the Neva. Five hours after our conversation, four factories produced bread. At other factories they dug wells to get to artesian water...”
As a shining example organizational activities leadership of the city during the blockade, it is necessary to remember such a specific body created by the Leningrad City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks as the “Commission for the consideration and implementation of defense proposals and inventions” - the entire intellect of Leningraders was mobilized for the needs of defense and all sorts of proposals that could bring at least the slightest benefit to the besieged city.
Academician Abram Fedorovich Ioffe, graduate of St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, “the father of Soviet physics” (teacher of P. Kapitsa, I. Kurchatov, L. Landau, Y. Khariton) wrote: “Nowhere, never have I seen such a rapid pace of transition of scientific ideas into practice as in Leningrad in the first months of the war.” .
Almost everything was invented and immediately created from scrap materials - from vitamins from pine needles to clay-based explosives. And in December 1942, Zhdanov was introduced prototypes the Sudayev submachine gun modified in Leningrad, the teaching staff - in the besieged city at the Sestroretsk plant for the first time in the USSR they began production of this best submachine gun Second World War.
In addition to military tasks, issues of food supply and the military economy, the city authorities, led by Zhdanov, had to solve a lot of the most different problems, vital for the salvation of the city and its population. So, to protect against bombing and constant artillery shelling, over 4,000 bomb shelters were built in Leningrad, capable of accommodating 800 thousand people (it’s worth assessing these scales).
Along with the supply of food during the blockade, there was also the non-trivial task of preventing epidemics, these eternal and inevitable companions of famine and urban sieges. It was on Zhdanov’s initiative that special “household detachments” were created in the city. Thanks to the efforts of the Leningrad authorities, even with significant destruction of public utilities, outbreaks of epidemics were prevented - but in a besieged city with non-functioning water supply and sewage systems, this could become a danger no less terrible and deadly than famine. Now this threat, nipped in the bud, i.e. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of lives saved from epidemics are practically not remembered when it comes to the blockade.
But alternatively gifted people of all stripes love to “remember” how Zhdanov “gobbled up” in a city that was dying of hunger. Here the most enchanting tales are used, which were produced in large numbers during the “perestroika” frenzy. And for the third decade now, the spreading cranberry has been habitually repeated: about how Zhdanov, in order to save himself from obesity in besieged Leningrad, played “lawn tennis” (apparently, sofa whistleblowers really like the imported word “lawn”), how he ate from crystal vases of “bouche” cakes (another beautiful word) and how he ate up on peaches specially delivered by plane from the partisan regions. Of course, all the partisan regions of the USSR were simply buried in spreading peaches...
However, peaches have an equally sweet alternative - so Evgeny Vodolazkin in Novaya Gazeta on the eve of Victory Day, May 8, 2009, publishes another ritual phrase about the city “with Andrei Zhdanov at the head, who received pineapples on special flights.” It is significant that Doctor of Philology Vodolazkin more than once repeats with obvious passion and gusto about these “pineapples” in a number of his publications (For example: E. Vodolazkin “My grandmother and Queen Elizabeth. Portrait against the background of history” / Ukrainian newspaper “Zerkalo Nedeli” No. 44, November 17, 2007) He repeats, of course, without bothering to provide the slightest evidence, so - in passing, for the sake of a catchphrase and a successful turn of phrase - almost ritually.
Since the thickets of pineapples in the warring USSR are not visible, we can only assume that, according to Mr. Vodolazkin, this fruit was delivered especially for Zhdanov under Lend-Lease... But in order to be fair to the doctor of philological sciences wounded by pineapples, we note that he is far from the only one , but just a typical distributor of such revelations. There is no need to provide links to them - numerous examples Such journalism can easily be found on the modern Russian-language Internet.
Unfortunately, all these tales, repeated year after year by lightweight “journalists” and belated fighters against Stalinism, are exposed only in specialized historical publications. They were first considered and refuted back in the mid-90s. in a number of documentary collections on the history of the siege. Alas, the circulation of historical and documentary research does not have to compete with the yellow press...
This is what the writer and historian V.I. Demidov says in the collection “The Blockade Declassified”, published in St. Petersburg in 1995: “It is known that in Smolny during the blockade no one seemed to die of hunger, although dystrophy and hungry fainting happened there too . On the other hand, according to the testimony of service employees who knew the life of the upper classes well (I interviewed a waitress, two nurses, several assistant members of the military council, adjutants, etc.), Zhdanov was distinguished by his unpretentiousness: “buckwheat porridge and sour cabbage soup are the height of pleasure.” As for “press reports,” although we agreed not to get involved in polemics with my colleagues, a week is not enough. They all fall apart at the slightest contact with facts.
"Orange peels" were allegedly found in a garbage dump apartment building, where Zhdanov allegedly lived (this is a “fact” - from the Finnish film “Zhdanov - Stalin’s protégé”). But you know, Zhdanov lived in Leningrad in a mansion fenced with a solid fence - along with a "garbage dump" - during the siege, he spent his five or six hours of sleep, like everyone else, in a small rest room behind the office, extremely rarely - in an outbuilding in the courtyard Smolny. And his personal driver (another “fact” from the press, from “Ogonyok”) could not carry “pancakes”: Zhdanov’s personal cook, “received” by him from S.M., also lived in the outbuilding. Kirov, "Uncle Kolya" Shchennikov. They wrote about the “peaches” delivered to Zhdanov “from the partisan region”, but without specifying whether in the winter of 1941-1942 there was a harvest for these same “peaches” in the Pskov-Novgorod forests and where the guards responsible for the life of the secretary of the Central Committee looked with their heads, allowing him to products of dubious origin are on his table...”
The operator of the central communications center located in Smolny during the war, Mikhail Neishtadt, recalled: “To be honest, I didn’t see any banquets. Once, with me, as with other signalmen, the top team celebrated November 7 all night long. There were artillery commander-in-chief Voronov and city committee secretary Kuznetsov, who was later shot. They carried plates of sandwiches past us into their room. Nobody gave the Soldiers any treats, and we weren’t offended... But I don’t remember any excesses there. When Zhdanov arrived, the first thing he did was check the food consumption. Accounting was strict. Therefore, all this talk about “belly holidays” is more speculation than truth... Zhdanov was the first secretary of the regional and city party committees who exercised all political leadership. I remembered him as a person who was quite scrupulous in everything that related to material matters.”
Daniil Natanovich Alshits (Al), native St. Petersburg, Doctor of Historical Sciences, graduate, and then professor of the history department of Leningrad State University, private in Leningrad people's militia in 1941, writes in a recently published book: “...At the very least, the constantly repeated reproaches against the leaders of the defense of Leningrad sound funny: the Leningraders were supposedly starving, or even dying of hunger, and the bosses in Smolny ate their fill, “gobble up” . Exercises in creating sensational “revelations” on this topic sometimes reach the point of complete absurdity. For example, they claim that Zhdanov ate himself on buns. This couldn't happen. Zhdanov had diabetes and did not eat any buns... I also had to read such a crazy statement - that during the hungry winter in Smolny, six cooks were shot for serving cold buns to the authorities. The mediocrity of this invention is quite obvious. First of all, the chefs don't serve buns. Secondly, why are as many as six cooks to blame for the fact that the buns had time to cool down? All this is clearly the delirium of an imagination inflamed by the corresponding trend.”
As one of the two waitresses on duty at the Military Council of the Leningrad Front, Anna Strakhova, recalled, in the second ten days of November 1941, Zhdanov called her and established a strictly fixed, reduced food consumption rate for all members of the Military Council of the Leningrad Front (commander M.S. Khozin, himself, A.A. Kuznetsov, T.F. Shtykov, N.V. A participant in the battles on the Nevsky patch, the commander of the 86th Infantry Division (formerly the 4th Leningrad People's Militia Division), Colonel Andrei Matveevich Andreev, mentions in his memoirs how in the fall of 1941, after a meeting in Smolny, he saw a small black pouch with a ribbon in Zhdanov’s hands, in which a member of the Politburo and First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional and City Committees of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks carried the ration of bread that was due to him - the bread ration was given to the leadership several times a week for two or three days in advance.
Of course, this was not the 125 grams that a dependent was entitled to during the most critical period of the blockade supply, but, as we see, there is no smell of lawn tennis cakes here.
Indeed, during the blockade, the highest state and military leadership Leningrad was supplied much better than the majority of the urban population, but without the “peaches” beloved by the whistleblowers - here the gentlemen whistleblowers are clearly extrapolating their own morals at that time... Making claims to the leadership of besieged Leningrad for better supplies means making such claims to the Lenfront soldiers who were fed the townspeople are better in the trenches, or blame the pilots and submariners for feeding better than ordinary infantrymen during the blockade. In the besieged city, everything without exception, including this hierarchy of supply standards, was subordinated to the goals of defense and survival, since the city simply had no reasonable alternatives to resisting and not surrendering...
A revealing story about Zhdanov in wartime Leningrad was left by Harrison Salisbury, the Moscow bureau chief of the New York Times. In February 1944, this tenacious and meticulous American journalist arrived in Leningrad, which had just been liberated from the siege. As an ally's representative anti-Hitler coalition he visited Smolny and other city sites. Salisbury wrote his work on the blockade already in the 60s. in the USA, and his book certainly cannot be suspected of Soviet censorship and agitprop.
According to the American journalist, most of the time Zhdanov worked in his office in Smolny on the third floor: “Here he worked hour after hour, day after day. From endless smoking, a long-standing illness worsened - asthma, he wheezed, coughed... His deeply sunken, coal-dark eyes burned; tension dotted his face with wrinkles, which became sharper when he worked all night long. He rarely went beyond Smolny, even to take a walk nearby...
There was a kitchen and a dining room in Smolny, but Zhdanov almost always ate only in his office. They brought him food on a tray, he hurriedly swallowed it, without looking up from work, or occasionally at three in the morning he ate as usual with one or two of his main assistants... The tension often affected Zhdanov and other leaders. These people, both civilian and military, usually worked 18, 20 and 22 hours a day; most of them managed to sleep in fits and starts, laying their heads on the table or taking a quick nap in the office. They ate somewhat better than the rest of the population. Zhdanov and his associates, as well as front-line commanders, received military rations: 400, no more, grams of bread, a bowl of meat or fish soup and, if possible, a little porridge. One or two lumps of sugar were given with tea. ...None of the senior military or party leaders fell victim to dystrophy. But their physical strength was exhausted. Nerves frayed, most of them suffered chronic diseases hearts or vascular system. Zhdanov, like others, soon showed signs of fatigue, exhaustion, and nervous exhaustion.”
Indeed, during the three years of the blockade, Zhdanov, without stopping his grueling work, suffered two heart attacks “on his feet.” His puffy face of a sick man, decades later, will give well-fed whistleblowers a reason to joke and lie from the comfort of their warm sofas about the gluttony of the leader of Leningrad during the siege.
Valery Kuznetsov, the son of Alexei Aleksandrovich Kuznetsov, second secretary of the Leningrad regional committee and city committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Zhdanov’s closest assistant during the war, in 1941, a five-year-old boy, answered a correspondent’s question about the nutrition of the Leningrad elite and the Smolny canteen during the siege:
“I dined in that canteen and remember well the food there. The first one relied on lean, thin cabbage soup. For the second course - buckwheat or millet porridge and even stewed meat. But the real delicacy was jelly. When my dad and I went to the front, we were given army rations. It was almost no different from the diet in Smolny. The same stew, the same porridge.
They wrote that while the townspeople were starving, the smell of pies came from the Kuznetsovs’ apartment on Kronverkskaya Street, and fruit was delivered to Zhdanov by plane...
I have already told you how we ate. During the entire blockade, my dad and I only came to Kronverkskaya Street a couple of times. To take wooden children's toys, use them to light the stove and at least somehow warm up, and pick up children's things. And about the pies... It will probably be enough to say that I, like other residents of the city, was diagnosed with dystrophy.
Zhdanov... You see, my dad often took me with him to Zhdanov’s house, on Kamenny Island. And if he had fruit or candy, he would probably treat me. But I don’t remember this.”
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