The 900 Days

by Harrison Salisbury

  Vsevolod Kochetov had returned from the front to the Leningradskaya Pravda on September 8 and was talking with his colleagues when the alert sounded. They saw planes, high in the sky, heard the AA guns and the sound of fire trucks and ambulances. Then they went up to the roof and someone said, “It’s the Badayev warehouses.”

  The tower of flame and smoke rising more than three miles provided an easy marker for the German planes when they returned to bomb the city again about 11 P.M. Yet it seemed to Kochetov that the Germans were being aided by rockets fired inside Leningrad, by signals sent up to guide the Nazi bombers. Who were these traitors? Former imperial bureaucrats? Elderly members of the old Russian intelligentsia? Kulaks? Old White Guard officers? Traders? Businessmen ready to greet Hitler with the traditional Russian offering of bread and salt? Kochetov, ever ready to suspect the worst, felt there was treachery all about him.

  Kochetov was not the only one to see Nazi agents and traitors signaling from windows and rooftops. That night and for weeks to come rumors of Nazi activity flooded the city. The Nazis did send agents into the city. There was hardly a Leningrader who did not believe that Nazi “rocketmen” were active. The reports found their way into official accounts, police documents, military reports, personal reminiscences and official histories.

  In reality, the “rocketmen” did not exist. They were a product of the hysteria and suspicion of the times.1

  Colonel B. V. Bychevsky was returning on the evening of September 8 from one of his endless trips to the front, this time to the Neva region, where he was working on a pontoon bridge. He was deep in thought when his chauffeur, Pavel Yakovlev, suddenly stopped the car, saying, “Comrade Chief, look at what’s happening in the city!”

  Bychevsky looked. The whole horizon over Leningrad was colored deep blood-red. The sky was crisscrossed by searchlights, and the flames of the fires, reflected back from the smoke clouds, filled the streets and squares with a strange light. People were running toward the conflagration with loads of sand and carts of water. AA guns rattled and bombs kept falling.

  It was midnight when Bychevsky got back to Smolny Institute. The news was all bad. The German air attack had been going on for hours. At the front the offensive was gathering strength. Secretary Kuznetsov had been at the great Peterhof Palace, the pride of Russia, the rival of Versailles. He ordered Its treasures evacuated but forbade the sappers to mine the noble buildings. By now the Germans probably were there. Bychevsky was still talking with M. V. Basov2 of the Leningrad Party organization when N. M. Shekhovtsev, deputy of the City Soviet, came in from the fire, his wide face lined with deep creases and smeared with soot. He sank into a chair, letting his heavy hands fall to his lap. It was now 6 A.M., and the fight with the fire was still going on.

  “Has it all burned?” asked Basov, referring to the tons of flour, sugar, meat and other provisions in the warehouse.

  “It’s burned/’ Shekhovtsev sighed. “We kept all these riches in wooden buildings, practically cheek by jowl. Now we will pay for our heedlessness. It’s a sea of flames. The sugar has flowed into the cellars—two and a half thousand tons.”

  Shekhovtsev launched into a bitter denunciation of himself, of the city authorities for their carelessness, for not dispersing the supplies, for not putting them in secure buildings, for the shortage of fire-fighting apparatus.

  “Well,” snapped Basov, “the leaders are to blame—ourselves among them. The people have good grounds for hurling some nasty words at us. What are the people saying?”

  “They’re saying nothing,” Shekhovtsev replied. “They are fighting the fire, trying to save what they can. . . .”

  The German air attack on Leningrad had begun September 6, but the first intensive raid was that of September 8. The Germans came that night in two main waves. The first, at 6:55 P.M., was carried out by 27 Junkers, dropping 6,3273 incendiary bombs, of which 5,000 fell on the Moscow region, 1,311 in the Smolny region and 16 in the Red Guard region. These incendiary bombs set 178 fires.4 At 10:35 P.M. a second wave of bombers dropped 48 high-explosive bombs of 500 to 1,000 pounds, mostly near Smolny Institute and the Finland Station. A pumping plant at the city waterworks was hit, and 24 people were killed and 122 wounded.

  Almost all the city’s fire-fighting apparatus, 168 units, was brought out to fight the Badayev fire, which blazed over an area of more than four acres. It took all night to bring it under control.

  Not a person in Leningrad on the morning after the Badayev fire had reason any longer to doubt that the city faced the grimmest trial of its history. The smell of burning meat, the acrid stench of carbonized sugar, the heavy scent of burning oil and flour filled the air. Everyone knew Badayev was the city’s greatest warehouse. Everyone knew that here the grain, the sugar, the meat, the lard and the butter for the city were stored. Now it was lost. “Badayev has burned,” the babushkas said. “It’s the end—famine!”

  The iron ring of Hitler had closed. Indeed, Nazi troops were pounding into Shlisselburg and sealing the circle during the very hours in which Badayev went up in a pillar of flame. And even before Badayev went the city’s position had been desperate.

  For weeks Leningrad had glided along. To be sure, food was rationed, but no more strictly than in any other big city in Russia.

  Even now Kochetov could buy at the lunch counter at Leningradskaya Pravda luxury products without ration coupons—first-quality crabmeat, gray full-grained caviar. At a special “closed store” for generals the salesgirl pressed Kochetov to buy champagne. “It’s very nourishing,” she said, “full of vitamins.” At first he was going to take a bottle, but she insisted that he take more. He wound up coming away with a case. Thousands of Leningraders hoarded as much food as they could buy. Luknitsky visited a photographer with whom he had once traveled in Asia. The photographer showed him a special shelter which he had built in his apartment, filled with shelf after shelf of canned goods, food of every conceivable kind. He was certain there would soon be famine in the city. Luknitsky left the apartment with a feeling of revulsion. He recalled another friend, Major Boris Likharev, chairman of the Leningrad Writers Union. Likharev’s wife had found a ten-pound can of caviar in the store and bought it “just in case.” Likharev made her give it to a children’s home because he thought it was showing a bad example.5 Olga Iordan could still buy fresh caviar, real coffee, blackberry juice and sea cabbage. But shopping was getting more difficult.

  Yelena Skryabina had to spend long hours in queues. She was able to buy butter in the commercial stores (of which there were seventy-one in Leningrad) and sometimes sugar. But she had to scurry from one end of town to another, sometimes to Vasilevsky Island, sometimes to the Petrograd side. She had about a month’s supply of food oh hand September i.

  No one in Leningrad—up to September 8—had actually suffered for food. White bread was sold as late as September 10. The rationing imposed July i was close to the average normal food consumption. The bread ration was nearly two pounds (800 grams) a day for workers and about a pound for dependents and children. The 1940 average consumption had been 531 grams of bread a day. The cereal ration of 2,000 grams a month compared with 1940 consumption of 1,740; meat was 2,200 grams compared with 3,330 average; butter and fats 800 compared with 1,020 average, and sugar and sweets 1,500 compared with 3,630 average.

  No alarm about Leningrad’s food situation had been expressed until the special mission of the State Defense Committee discovered that on August 27, the date when for all practical purposes rail communications with Leningrad were severed, the city had on hand the following supplies: flour, exclusive of grain, 17 days’ supply; cereals, 29 days’; fish, 16 days’; meat, 25 days’; dried fish, 22 days’; butter, 28 days’.

  An urgent telegram was sent to the State Defense Committee in Moscow August 29 asking that emergency food shipments be sent to Leningrad. The committee decided to provide Leningrad with a 45-day reserve of food. It proposed to ship in 135,000 tons of flour, 7,800 tons of cereals, 24,000 tons of
meat and fish, 3,500 tons of dried fish, 3,000 tons of butter.

  It recommended that Leningrad reduce its free commercial sale of food (at high government prices) and put tea, eggs and matches on a ration basis. The government approved these recommendations and ordered the Transport Ministry to begin on August 31 sending eight food trains daily to Volkhovstroi and Lodeinoye Pole with food for the city. From those points the food was to be sent by barge, tugboat and tanker via Lake Ladoga and the Neva River to Leningrad.

  In line with these decisions, on September 2 the Leningrad rations were reduced. The bread ration was cut to 600 grams—a little more than a pound —a day for workers, 400 grams for office workers and 300 grams—about half a pound—for dependents and children under twelve. The meat ration was cut to three pounds a month, cereals to the same level, fats to a pound and a half, and sugar and candy to five pounds. This meant belt-tightening. But it was not insupportable—especially since it was still possible to eat in restaurants or dining rooms attachéd to factories, institutions and offices without giving up ration coupons.

  But behind the façade of these still generous controls a deadly picture assumed shape.

  On September 6—two days before Badayev’s pillar of flame—Peter S. Popkov, Mayor of Leningrad, sent a cipher telegram to the State Defense Committee reporting that Leningrad was on the verge of exhausting her food reserves. Food trains must be expedited or the city would starve.

  Popkov’s telegram was based on an inventory which disclosed that the city then had on hand only these supplies: flour, 14.1 days; cereals, 23 days; meat and meat products, 18.7 days; fats, 20.8 days; sugar and confectionery, 47.9 days.

  In eight days—between the State Committee telegram of August 29 and Popkov’s—the city’s reserves of flour had dropped by three days, of cereals by six days, of meat by nearly seven.

  Should Leningrad’s consumption continue at these levels and delivery of supplies show no improvement, the city would be down to bare shelves within two or three weeks—possibly less. The time had come for extraordinary measures. Two days later Dmitri V. Pavlov arrived in Leningrad from Moscow, clothed with powers to handle all food questions in Leningrad, both for the civilian population and the army.

  Pavlov was one of the ablest and most energetic supply officials in the Soviet Union. He was thirty-six years old, a graduate of the All-Union Academy of Foreign Trade, and had devoted his whole career to food distribution and production. He was Commissar of Trade for the Russian Federated Republic and an important executive of the Main Administration of Food Supplies of the Defense Commissariat. He was a direct, honest, vigorous man who saw from the moment of his arrival in Leningrad that only spartan measures, applied with an iron hand, offered a chance for the city’s survival. The first thing he had to know was the facts, the tough, naked facts—not anyone’s political or propaganda-tinged facts. What was the actual position of Leningrad so far as food was concerned? Was the city down to two or three weeks’ reserves? What supplies had the army? The navy? What was the population load? What kind of supplies could be got into the city?

  Pavlov was at work almost before he clambered out of the Douglas DC-3 which brought him in low over Lake Ladoga to the Leningrad airport. He spent September 10 and 11 inventorying the city’s reserves. The figures were grim—he had known they would be—but not quite as bad as Popkov’s alarming telegram of September 6. Based on the actual rate of expenditure of food for the armed forces and the civilian population, the city’s reserves totaled: grain, flour, hardtack, 35 days; cereals and macaroni, 30; meat and meat products including live cattle, 33; fats, 45; sugar and confectionery, 60. The only food not included in Pavlov’s inventory was a small amount of “iron rations” (hardtack and canned goods) in the army and fleet reserves and a small amount of flour in the hands of the navy.

  The chief differences between Pavlov’s estimates and those of Popkov were that Pavlov included all the food in the city—that in military hands as well as civilian and unprocessed materials (unmilled grain and un-slaughtered cattle), as well as flour and meat in cold storage. Moreover, by the time Pavlov cast his estimates the ration had been again cut (as of September 12) to 500 grams of bread per day for workers, 300 for office employees, 250 for dependents and 300 for children under twelve.

  Pavlov calculated—correctly—that there was no hope for any supplies whatever from the outside for a considerable time. The only route open was across Lake Ladoga, and there were no boats, piers, highway and rail facilities or warehouses which could handle substantial shipments. To create them would require time.

  Leningrad, he was certain, must live on what it had on hand—for how long no one knew.

  How many people did he have to feed? This was not easy to establish. Pavlov estimated, on the basis of the distribution of ration cards, figures on evacuation, refugees and prewar population, that he had a civilian population of about 2,544,000, including about 400,000 children, in the city, and another 343,000 in the suburban areas within the blockade ring. The total was roughly 2,887,000. In addition, there were the military forces defending the city. No exact figure has ever been given for them, but they must have been in the neighborhood of 500,000. The number of mouths which he had to feed for an indefinite period of time, thus, was close to 3,400,000.6 It was no small task, and he was filled with the gravest foreboding. Like all Leningrad’s leadership, he inevitably lived for news that the city had been deblockaded. But, unlike the others, Pavlov had to face each day the reality of the city’s dwindling food reserves.

  Almost Pavlov’s first act was to evaluate the consequences of the Badayev fire. They were serious, but perhaps not quite so serious as most Leningrad-ers thought. The destruction of Badayev did not doom the city to famine.

  Pavlov estimated the Badayev losses at 3,000 tons of flour and about 2,500 tons of sugar, of which, in the grimmest months of the winter that lay ahead, about 700 tons, blackened, dirty and scorched, would be reclaimed and converted into “candy.”7

  Nevertheless, he took no chances on a new Badayev. Almost all Leningrad’s flour was stored at the city’s two big milling combines—the Lenin and the Kirov. He ordered it dispersed throughout the city. He did the same with the grain in harbor elevators and storehouses.

  Despite Pavlov’s insistence that Badayev was not the key to Leningrad’s future suffering, many Leningraders—Pavel Luknitsky among them—remained convinced that the great fire had more to do with the city’s suffering than the authorities have ever been willing to acknowledge.8

  Pavlov blamed other causes. Ten different economic agencies had a hand in administration of food supplies. Each operated on orders from its Moscow headquarters. So long as Moscow did not forbid the sale or distribution of food, they continued. The commercial restaurants fell in this category. And they were dispersing 7 percent of Leningrad’s total food consumption, 12 percent of all fats, 10 percent of the meat and 8 percent of the sugar and candy. Cattle slaughter was being carried out without care or plan. Vegetable fat was stored in commercial warehouses, animal fats in military supply dumps. Because of consumer prejudice against crabmeat it was sold without ration coupons. Invalids in hospitals and children in nurseries were fed off-ration, but got ration cards besides. In mid-September the Moscow Sugar Administration ordered its Leningrad subsidiary to send several freight cars of sugar to Vologda—although Leningrad, of course, had lost all rail connections with the rest of the country.

  Pavlov moved in. He halted the sale of food without ration coupons. He closed down the public commercial restaurants. He stopped the making of beer, ice cream, pirogi (meat pies) and pastry. He canceled all orders to food agencies from Moscow and took control of these supplies, insisting on immediate and accurate inventories. He eliminated ration cards for persons being fed in hospitals or children’s homes, cutting the total by 80,000.

  But he made mistakes—as he was later publicly to admit. Even after his first harsh cuts in rations the city was still consuming more than 2,000 to
ns of flour a day. He permitted an increase in the sugar and fat rations in September to make up for the cuts in meat and cereals. That took 2,500 tons of sugar and 600 tons of fats—quantities which could have been saved in September and October and used to help tide over the terrible December which lay ahead.

  Leningrad had entered the war with a normal reserve of food. On June 21 she had 52 days’ supply of flour and grain, including stores in the port elevators which were intended for export, 89 days’ supply of cereals, 38 days’ supply of meat, 47 days’ of butter and fats, 29 days’ supply of vegetable oils.

  In July and August Leningrad received far less than normal food shipments from the nearby Yaroslavl and Kalinin regions—only 45,000 tons of wheat, 14,000 tons of flour and 3,000 tons of cereal. About 23,300 tons of grain and flour came in from Latvia and Estonia before the Germans occupied those areas. About 8,146 tons of meat were obtained from the Leningrad suburbs up to the end of the year. The Leningrad area had 25,407 pigs, 4,357 cattle and 568 goats on September 1. Total meat reserves, slaughtered and on the hoof, were 12,112 tons. Daily consumption after the September 12 ration cut was 246 tons.

  The city got only a handful of the market produce she normally consumed. In 1941 Leningrad received only 6,960 tons of potatoes against a supply of 245,032 in 1940—and potatoes were the basic diet of tens of thousands. The city received 30,376 tons of vegetables against 154,682 the previous year and 508 tons of fruit against 15,234.

  Leningrad used more food than usual in the weeks after the outbreak of war. The output of flour in July, for example, was 40,000 tons. In August consumption of bread went up 12.4 percent from an average of 2,112 tons to 2,305 tons daily, largely because of the influx of refugees.