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St. Petersburg

Page 54

by Jonathan Miles


  43 Almedingen, Tomorrow Will Come, p. 123.

  44 Buchanan, Meriel, Petrograd, pp. 225–6.

  45 Goldman, Living My Life, Vol. II, p. 790.

  46 Almedingen, Tomorrow Will Come, p. 109.

  47 Goldman, Living My Life, Vol. II, p. 779.

  48 Serge, Victor, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, trans. Peter Sedgwick, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975, pp. 70–71.

  49 Goldman, Living My Life, Vol. II, pp. 873–6; McAuley, Bread and Justice, p. 252.

  50 McAuley, Bread and Justice, p. 389.

  51 ‘The Fight for Petrograd’, Pravda, No. 250, 30 October 1919, transcribed for the Trotsky International Archive by David Walters, Marxists.org; Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, pp. 90, 94.

  52 Wells, H. G., Russia in the Shadows, London: Hodder and Stoughton, n.d., pp. 9, 14–35; McAuley, Bread and Justice, p. 352.

  53 Bryant, Six Red Months in Russia, p. 44.

  54 Wells, Russia in the Shadows, p. 37.

  55 McAuley, Bread and Justice, pp. 354–5.

  56 Norman, The Hermitage, p. 167.

  57 Wells, Russia in the Shadows, pp. 9, 14–16, 21, 51, 134.

  58 Goldman, Living My Life, Vol. II, pp. 727, 732, 735, 742.

  59 Poretsky, Elisabeth K., Our Own People: A Memoir of ‘Ignace Reiss’ and His Friends, London: Oxford University Press, 1969, p. 102; McAuley, Bread and Justice, p. 293.

  60 Wolkonsky, The Way of Bitterness, p. 163.

  61 Cattell, David T., ‘Soviet Cities and Consumer Welfare Planning’, in Hamm, Michael F., The City in Russian History, Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1976, p. 272.

  62 Wolkonsky, The Way of Bitterness, pp. 166–7, 184.

  63 Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p. 117.

  64 Ransome, The Crisis in Russia 1920, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1921, p. 11; Harding, Luke, The Mafia State, London: Guardian Books, 2012, p. 103.

  65 Holquist, Peter, in The Twentieth Century Russia Reader, pp. 114, 117.

  66 Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, pp. 130, 149; Service, The Penguin History of Modern Russia, p. 108; Goldman, Living My Life, Vol. II, pp. 733, 740, 849, 927.

  67 Stites, Russian Popular Culture, pp. 39–40.

  68 Ransome, The Crisis in Russia, p. 40.

  69 Nabokov, Speak Memory, p. 183.

  70 Herzen, qtd in Berlin, Russian Thinkers, pp. 103, 226.

  13 A CITY DIMINISHED

  1 Davies, Sarah, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 18.

  2 Biely, Petersburg, p. 112.

  3 Fedotov, qtd in Schenker, The Bronze Horseman, p. 294.

  4 Koestler, Arthur, The Invisible Writing – The Second Volume of an Autobiography 1932–40 (1954), London: Random House, 2005, p. 33.

  5 Goldman, Living My Life, Vol. II, pp. 886–7.

  6 Stites, Russian Popular Culture, p. 61.

  7 Hessler, Julie, A Social History of Soviet Trade – Trade Policy, Retail Practices and Consumption – 1917–1953, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004, p. 7; Service, The Penguin History of Modern Russia, pp. 144–5, 196.

  8 Neville, Russia: A Complete History, pp. 191–2.

  9 Clark, Petersburg, Crucible of Cultural Revolution, p. 3; McAuley, Bread and Justice, p. 400.

  10 Stalin, qtd in Brendon, Piers, The Dark Valley – A Panorama of the 1930s, London: Jonathan Cape, 2000, p. 419.

  11 Conquest, Robert, The Great Terror – A Reassessment, London: Pimlico, 2008, p. 114; Andrew, Christopher, and Mitrokhin, Vasili, The Sword and the Shield. The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, New York: Basic Books, 1999, pp. 38–9.

  12 Poretsky, Our Own People, p. 91.

  13 Engel, Women in Russia, pp. 166–7; Figes, Revolutionary Russia, pp. 208, 210, 213; Service, The Penguin History of Modern Russia, pp. 6, 179–81.

  14 Stites, Russian Popular Culture, p. 40.

  15 Akhmatova, Anna, from ‘White Flock’, trans. D. M. Thomas, You Will Hear Thunder, p. 45, qtd in MacDonald, Ian, The New Shostakovitch, new ed. revised by Raymond Clarke, London: Pimlico, 2006, p. 96.

  16 Qtd in MacDonald, The New Shostakovitch, p. 38.

  17 Stites, Russian Popular Culture, pp. 43–4.

  18 Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art, pp. 234–5.

  19 Bowlt, John E., ‘Constructivism and Early Soviet Fashion Design’, in Bolshevik Culture, pp. 203–4.

  20 Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art, pp. 248, 253.

  21 Lissitzky, El, Russia: An Architecture for World Revolution, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984, p. 27.

  22 Taylor, in Bolshevik Culture, p. 190.

  23 Clark, Petersburg, Crucible of Cultural Revolution, p. 345 n.6o; Stites, Russian Popular Culture, p. 214 n.30.

  24 Stites, Russian Popular Culture, p. 56; Miles, Jonathan, The Nine Lives of Otto Katz, London: Bantam Press, 2010, p. 80.

  25 Eisenstein, Sergei, Film Essays and a Lecture, ed. Jay Leyda, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982, p. 31.

  26 Taylor, in Bolshevik Culture, p. 194.

  27 Maes, A History of Russian Music, pp. 245, 251

  28 Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia, pp. 24–5.

  29 Engel, Women in Russia, pp. 142–3, 152–4, 156, 175; Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia, p. 60.

  30 Engel, Women in Russia, p. 154.

  31 Pope-Hennessy, Dame Una Birch, The Closed City: Impressions of a Visit to Leningrad, London: Hutchinson, 1938, p. 37.

  32 Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia, p. 68.

  33 Miles, The Nine Lives of Otto Katz, p. 94.

  34 Gide, Back From the USSR, pp. 36, 48.

  35 Hessler, A Social History of Soviet Trade, pp. 201–202, 207; Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia, p. 30.

  36 Pope-Hennessy, The Closed City, pp. 177–8.

  37 Gide, Back From the USSR, pp. 50–51.

  38 Service, The Penguin History of Modern Russia, pp. 214–15; Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia, p. 117.

  39 Conquest, The Great Terror, pp. 12, 35, 215, 218; Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia, pp. 127, 178.

  40 Thurston, Robert W., Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia 1934–1941, New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1996, pp. 19–23; Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia, p. 164.

  41 Brendon, The Dark Valley, p. 399; Service, The Penguin History of Modern Russia, p. 222; Figes, Revolutionary Russia, p. 266; Conquest, The Great Terror, pp. 310–11; Dmitri Shostakovich, qtd by Karen Khachaturian in Weinstein, Larry, dir., Shostakovich Against Stalin – The War Symphonies, Rhombus Films, 1997.

  42 Koestler, The Invisible Writing, pp. 32–3.

  43 MacDonald, The New Shostakovitch, pp. 111, 124, 148–9; Shostakovich, quoting a Pravda article attributed to Stalin, in Weinstein, Shostakovich Against Stalin.

  44 Story told by Veniamin Basner in Weinstein, Shostakovich Against Stalin. Also the interview with Mariana Sabinina.

  45 MacDonald, The New Shostakovitch, pp. 35, 74, 86; Stites, Russian Popular Culture, p. 77.

  46 Stites, Russian Popular Culture, pp. 73–4.

  47 Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, pp. 279–80.

  48 Russian saying, qtd in Conquest, The Great Terror, p. 109.

  49 Norman, The Hermitage, pp. 155, 168, 182.

  50 Ibid., pp. 176, 179, 190–97.

  51 Osip Mandelstam, poem about Stalin, November 1933, passed by word of mouth.

  52 Stites, Russian Popular Culture, pp. 68, 71; Service, The Penguin History of Modern Russia, pp. 190–91.

  53 Service, The Penguin History of Modern Russia, pp. 140, 247; Stites, Russian Popular Culture, p. 51.

  54 Pope-Hennessy, The Closed City, pp. 102–103.

  55 Kahn, Albert E., Days with Ulanova, London: William Collins, 1962, pp. 115, 132, 202.

  56 Pope-Hennessy, The Closed City, p. 159; Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia, p. 76.

  57 Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russi
a, pp. 83–7.

  58 Miles, The Nine Lives of Otto Katz, p. 175.

  59 Roland, Betty, Caviar for Breakfast, Melbourne: Quartet Books, 1979, pp. 98–9, 114, 128–9.

  60 Pope-Hennessy, The Closed City, pp. 7, 16, 43, 78, 136–7, 140, 214, 248.

  14 DARKEST AND FINEST HOUR

  1 Liubov Shaporina, diary, 10 September 1941, qtd in Simmons, Cynthia, and Perlina, Nina, Writing the Siege of Leningrad – Women’s Diaries, Memoirs and Documentary Prose, Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002, p. 23.

  2 Service, The Penguin History of Modern Russia, p. 220; Conquest, The Great Terror, p. 182.

  3 Koestler, Arthur, Scum of the Earth, trans. Daphne Hardy, London: Victor Gollancz, 1941, p. 24; Service, The Penguin History of Modern Russia, p. 256; Orwell, George, Animal Farm, London: Penguin, 2008, p. 39; Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, The First Circle, pp. 196, 134, qtd in Neville, Russia: A Complete History, p. 205; Conquest, The Great Terror, pp. 195, 196.

  4 Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia, pp. 41, 43–5.

  5 Service, The Penguin History of Modern Russia, p. 257.

  6 Ibid., pp. 260–61.

  7 Mukhina, Lena, The Diary of Lena Mukhina–A Girl’s Life in the Siege of Leningrad, London: Pan Macmillan, 2016 pp. 51–2.

  8 Mukhina, Diary, p. 2; Reid, Anna, Leningrad –Tragedy of a City Under Siege, London: Bloomsbury, 2011; pbk 2012, pp. 3, 32, 95–7, 99.

  9 Simmons and Perlina, Writing the Siege, p. xiii.

  10 German Naval Command, qtd in Mukhina, Diary, p. 3.

  11 Reid, Leningrad, pp. 96, 115; Mukhina, Diary, p. 3; Schenker, The Bronze Horseman, p. 296.

  12 Norman, The Hermitage pp. 243, 246–7; Reid, Leningrad, pp. 62–3.

  13 Mukhina, Diary, p. 171; Reid, Leningrad, pp. 118–19.

  14 Much of the visual description of what follows in this chapter is inspired by a documentary compilation by Sergei Loznitsa, Blockade, using footage found in Soviet archives. St Petersburg Documentary Film Studios, 2005.

  15 Mukhina, Diary, pp. 57, 105, 114.

  16 Liubov Shaporina, diary, 8 September 1941, in Simmons and Perlina, Writing the Siege.

  17 Reid, Leningrad, pp. 144–5.

  18 Mukhina, Diary, p. 125.

  19 Anna Likhacheva, diary, 16 May 1942, qtd in Simmons and Perlina, Writing the Siege, p. 59.

  20 Ginzburg, Lydia, Blockade Diary, trans. Alan Myers, London: Harvill Press, 1995, p. 10.

  21 Yevtushenko, Yevgeny, ‘The City With Three Faces’, in Insight Guides – St Petersburg, ed. Wilhelm Klein, Hong Kong: Apa Publications, 1992, p. 38.

  22 Vera Kostrovitskaya, diary, n.d., qtd in Simmons and Perlina, Writing the Siege.

  23 Reid, Leningrad, pp. 164–5.

  24 Mukhina, Diary, pp. 5, 10, 159, 220; Dmitri Tolstoy, interview in Weinstein, Shostakovich Against Stalin.

  25 Yevtushenko, ‘The City With Three Faces’, in Insight Guides-St Petersburg, p. 40; Reid, Leningrad, p. 236.

  26 Reid, Leningrad, pp. 180–81; Mukhina, Diary, p. 8.

  27 Vera Kostrovitskaya, diary, April 1942, qtd in Simmons and Perlina, Writing the Siege, pp. 50–51.

  28 Valentina Gorokhova, ‘memoir’, n.d., qtd in Simmons and Perlina, Writing the Siege.

  29 Mukhina, Diary, pp. 6, 223.

  30 Reid, Leningrad, p. 230.

  31 Ibid., pp. 219–20; Gautier, The Complete Works, p. 163; Porter, Travelling Sketches in Russia, p. 108.

  32 Ginzburg, Blockade Diary, p. 14.

  33 Elza Greinert, letter of 25 January 1942 to her children, qtd in Simmons and Perlina, Writing the Siege, pp. 34–5.

  34 Ginzburg, Blockade Diary, p. 76.

  35 Mukhina, Diary, p. 5.

  36 Simmons and Perlina, Writing the Siege, p. xvi.

  37 Mukhina, Diary, p. 7: Reid, Leningrad, p. 264.

  38 Hessler, A Social History of Soviet Trade, p. 302.

  39 Mukhina, Diary, pp. 200–201.

  40 Simmons and Perlina, Writing the Siege, pp. xviii.

  41 Reid, Leningrad, pp. 280–85.

  42 Pavlov, Dmitri V., Leningrad 1941 – The Blockade, trans. John Clinton Adams, Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1965, pp. 136–8, 151, 153, 161–2, 164, 166.

  43 Reid, Leningrad, pp. 248–9; Simmons and Perlina, Writing the Siege, p. XX.

  44 Norman, The Hermitage p. 258.

  45 Ginzburg, Blockade Diary, pp. 12, 58.

  46 Mukhina, Diary, p. 8.

  47 Reid, Leningrad, p. 246.

  48 Stites, Russian Popular Culture, p. 102.

  49 Prokofiev, Sergei, War and Peace, conducted by Valery Gergiev, Kirov/ Opera Bastille, 1991.

  50 Robinson, Harlow, ‘Composing for Victory – Classical Music’ in Stites, Richard, ed., Culture and Entertainment in Wartime Russia, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995, pp. 63, 66.

  51 Interview with Ksenia Matus, in Simmons and Perlina, Writing the Siege, pp. 147–9.

  52 MacDonald, The New Shostakovitch, pp. 179–80; interview with Ksenia Matus, in Simmons & Perlina, Writing the Siege, p. 151, and in Weinstein, Sbostakovich Against Stalin. Also in that documentary: the interview with Dmitri Tolstoy.

  53 Yevtushenko, ‘The City With Three Faces’, in Insight Guides-St Petersburg, p. 41.

  54 Gregory and Ukladnikov, Leningrad’s Ballet, p. 25; Vera Kostrovitskaya, diary, n.d., qtd in Simmons and Perlina, Writing the Siege, p. 51; Kahn, Days with Ulanova, p. 118.

  55 Mukhina, Diary, pp. 163, 311.

  56 Reid, Leningrad, pp. 140, 226.

  57 Lila Solomonovna Frankfurt, memoir, n.d., qtd in Simmons and Perlina, Writing the Siege, pp. 164–7.

  58 Norman, The Hermitage, pp. 253–4.

  59 Valentina Gorokhova, memoir of 1946, qtd in Simmons and Perlina, Writing the Siege, p. 94.

  60 Reid, Leningrad, p. 377.

  61 Simmons and Perlina, Writing the Siege, p. xxiii.

  62 Service, The Penguin History of Modern Russia, p. 300.

  63 Kelly, Catriona, St Petersburg – Shadows of the Past, New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2014, p. 4.

  64 Shostakovich, Testimony, qtd in Weinstein, Sbostakovich Against Stalin.

  15 MURMURS FROM THE UNDERGROUND

  1 Reid, Leningrad, p. 399; Simmons and Perlina, Writing the Siege, p. xxvi.

  2 Buckler, Mapping St Petersburg, p. 240; Kirshchenbaum, Lisa A., The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad 1947–1995: Myth, Memories and Monuments, Cambridge and New York, 2006, pp. 124–6.

  3 Irina Antonova, Director of Moscow’s Pushkin Museum, ‘Politicians Come and Go, But Art Is Eternal’ in Der Spiegel, 13 July 2012.

  4 Norman, The Hermitage, pp. 261–2.

  5 De Madariaga, Catherine the Great, p. 155.

  6 Hessler, A Social History of Soviet Trade, pp. 5, 302; Service, The Penguin History of Modern Russia, pp. 237, 298, 314.

  7 Shostakovich, qtd in Weinstein, Shostakovich Against Stalin.

  8 Smith, The Russians, p. 416.

  9 Kirshchenbaum, The Legacy of the Siege, p. 141; Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia, p. 18.

  10 Simmons and Perlina, Writing the Siege, p. xxv.

  11 Qtd in Ulam, Adam B., Stalin – The Man and his Era, London: Allen Lane, 1974, p. 644.

  12 Ibid., pp. 706–707; Simmons and Perlina, Writing the Siege, p. xxv–vi; Reid, Leningrad, pp. 401–404.

  13 Service, The Penguin History of Modern Russia, p. 303.

  14 Stites, Russian Popular Culture, p. 125; Service, The Penguin History of Modern Russia, pp. xxxii, 331, 338–9.

  15 Leningradskaya Pravda, qtd in Steven E. Harris, ‘Soviet Mass Housing and the Communist Way of Life’, in Chatterjee, Ransel, Cavender and Petrone, eds, Everyday Life in Russia Past and Present, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2015, p. 187; Kelly, St Petersburg, p. 70.

  16 Kelly, St Petersburg, p. 71.

  17 Harrison, Mark, prod., The Last Days of Leningrad, BBC Bristol, 1991, extracts of newsreels about chocol
ate-making for the 250th anniversary, and ‘Summer Comes Soon’ of 1987.

  18 Kirshchenbaum, The Legacy of the Siege, pp. 125, 127; Kelly, St Petersburg, p. 170.

  19 Ostrovsky, Arkady, The Invention of Russia – The Journey from Gorbachev’s Freedom to Putin’s War, London: Atlantic Books, 2016, pp. 32–3, 47; Harding, Luke, ‘How MI6 Helped CIA to Bring Doctor Zhivago in from Cold for Russians’, Guardian, 10 June 2014.

  20 Norman, The Hermitage, pp. 285, 300–301, 311; Kelly, St Petersburg, p. 232.

  21 ‘Rural Evenings’, a 1954 lyrical comedy about life on a collective farm, and It Was Once So by Dmitri Gordunov – extracts in Sergei Loznitsa, Revue, Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography and St Petersburg Documentary Film Studios, 2008.

  22 Shostakovich, Dmitri, Cheryomushki, dir., Paul Rappaport, Lenfilm, 1963, DVD – Decca 2007.

  23 Feyginburg, Yosif, dir., Glenn Gould-The Russian Journey, documentary, Atlantic Productions, 2002.

  24 Kavanagh, Julie, Rudolf Nureyev – The Life, London: Penguin, 2008, pp. 37, 40, 46, 51, 52, 56–7, 83, 90, 112.

  25 Krushchev, qtd in Stites, Russian Popular Culture, p. 132.

  26 Qtd in ibid., p. 133.

  27 Polsky, Gabe, Red Army, documentary, Weintraub and Herzog, 2014; ‘Patience and Labour’ (1985 – not released until 1991 because of disturbing images of training young ice-skaters), extract in Harrison, The Last Days of Leningrad.

  28 A 1966 newsreel about robots in the home in Harrison, The Last Days of Leningrad; Kelly, St Petersburg, p. 258; Figes, Revolutionary Russia, p. 363.

  29 Harris, ‘Soviet Mass Housing and the Communist Way of Life’, in Everyday Life in Russia Past and Present, pp. 194–5.

  30 Loznitsa, Revue.

  31 McAuley, Soviet Politics, p. 78; Kelly, St Petersburg, pp. 5, 142; Smith, The Russians, p. 8; ‘To Drink or Not to Drink’ (1977), extracted in Harrison, The Last Days of Leningrad.

  32 ‘The Working Lunch’, in Meader, Vaughn et al., The First Family, LP, New York: Cadence Records, November 1962; McAuley, Soviet Politics, p. 72.

  33 Qtd in Ostrovsky, The Invention of Russia, p. 50.

  34 Harris, ‘Soviet Mass Housing and the Communist Way of Life’, in Everyday Life in Russia Past and Present, p. 190; Smith, The Russians, pp. 97–8; Stites, Russian Popular Culture, p. 124; Kelly, St Petersburg, pp. 65, 70.

 

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