Leningrad

by Anna Reid

  23 Alexander Werth, Russia at War, 1941–1945, pp. 162–7.

  24 Ibid., p. 184.

  25 Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Avtobiograficheskiye zapiski: Leningrad v blokade, p. 250.

  26 David Glantz, The Battle for Leningrad 1941–1944, pp. 30–31.

  27 Eino Luukkanen, Fighter over Finland, p. 116; Salisbury, The 900 Days, p. 106.

  28 RGVA: Fond 32904, op. 1, delo 81, p. 28. Notes to Pages 41–52

  29 Glantz, The Battle for Leningrad, pp. 35, 37.

  30 Yelena Kochina, Blockade Diary, pp. 35–6, 3 and 9 July 1941; Ginzburg, Chelovek na pismennym stolom, p. 4.

  31 Antony Beevor and Lyuba Vinogradova, eds, A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941–1945, p. 9; Gouré, The Siege of Leningrad, p. 68.

  32 Skrjabina, Siege and Survival, pp. 13–15.

  33 Interviewed by the author, St Petersburg, September 2008.

  34 RGVA: Fond 32904, op. 1, delo 79, pp. 58, 86.

  35 Beevor and Vinogradova, eds, A Writer at War, p. 41.

  36 RGASPI: Fond 77, op. 4, delo 48, pp. 11–20.

  37 Charles Burdick and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, eds, Franz Halder, The Halder War Diary, 1939–1942, pp. 445–6, 3 July 1941.

  38 Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, p. 328; Richard Overy, Russia’s War, p. 81; Salisbury, The 900 Days, p. 105.

  39 TsAMO: Fond 96a, op. 1711, delo 24, pp. 24–5. Also quoted by Glantz, The Battle for Leningrad, pp. 42–3.

  40 See for example the 9th Pskov NKVD Border Detachment on 3 July 1941. RGVA: Fond 32904, op. 1, delo 79, p. 88.

  41 Sebag Montefiore, Stalin, p. 338; Geoffrey Jukes in Harold Shukman, ed., Stalin’s Generals, p. 129.

  42 Shukman, ed., Stalin’s Generals, pp. 313, 320. General Alan Brooke, Britain’s Chief of Imperial General Staff, sat next to Voroshilov at dinner during the Moscow Conference of August 1942. He reckoned him ‘a fine hearty old soul, willing to talk about anything with great vivacity’, but with the military expertise of a ‘child’.

  43 Salisbury, The 900 Days, pp. 112, 282, 322, 404. See also Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War 1941–1945, p. 450.

  44 Burdick and Jacobsen, eds, Franz Halder, The Halder War Diary, pp. 458–9, 446–7.

  Chapter 3: ‘We’re winning, but the Germans are advancing’

  1 Nikita Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, doc. 30, p. 161; Alexander Werth, Russia at War, 1941–1945, pp. 179, 241, 399; Leon Gouré, The Siege of Leningrad, pp. 68–70.

  2 Lidiya Osipova, 15 July and 13 August 1941, in Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, pp. 442–3.

  3 Georgi Knyazev, in Ales Adamovich and Daniil Granin, A Book of the Blockade, p. 261; Andrei Dzeniskevich, ‘The Social and Political Situation in Leningrad in the First Months of the German Invasion: The Psychology of the Workers’, in Robert Thurston and Bernd Bonwetsch, eds, The People’s War: Responses to World War II in the Soviet Union, p. 73; Igor Kruglyakov, interviewed by Dr Lyuba Vinogradova, Moscow, January 2007. Notes to Pages 52–64

  4 Irina Reznikova (Flige), ‘Repressii v period blokady Leningrada’, Vestnik ‘Memoriala’ 4/5 (10/11), p. 96; Gouré, The Siege of Leningrad, p. 71.

  5 Dmitri Likhachev, Reflections on the Russian Soul: A Memoir, p. 222; Yelena Skrjabina, Siege and Survival: The Odyssey of a Leningrader, p. 21. See also Dmitri Lazarev, in Trudy Gosudarstvennogo Muzeya Istorii Sankt-Peterburga, vol. 5, p. 195.

  6 Yelena Kochina, Blockade Diary, p. 33 (June 1941).

  7 Georgi Knyazev, 20 July 1941, in Adamovich and Granin, A Book of the Blockade, p. 256.

  8 Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Avtobiograficheskiye zapiski: Leningrad v blokade, pp. 250–51.

  9 Gatchina had officially been renamed Krasnogvardeisk, or ‘Red Guard-ville’, but the old name was more commonly used.

  10 David Glantz, The Battle for Leningrad 1941–1944, p. 38.

  11 Olga Grechina, in Cynthia Simmons and Nina Perlina, Writing the Siege of Leningrad: Women’s Diaries, Memoirs and Documentary Prose, p. 107.

  12 Olga Grechina, ‘Spasayus spasaya chast 1: pogibelnaya zima (1941–1942 gg.)’, Neva, 1, 1994, pp. 220–21.

  13 Kochina, Blockade Diary, p. 34.

  14 Skrjabina, Siege and Survival, pp. 12–13, 21 (8 July and 12 August 1941).

  15 Rimma Neratova, ‘Zhizn v Leningradskoi blokade’, Zvezda (1996), pp. 18–28.

  16 Charles von Luttichau, quoted in Glantz, The Battle for Leningrad 1941–1944, p. 41; General Blumentritt, quoted in Basil Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill: Germany’s Generals, Their Rise and Fall, p. 187.

  17 Glantz, The Battle for Leningrad 1941–1944, pp. 44–7; Harrison Salisbury, The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad, pp. 189–90.

  18 Yevgeniya Baikova, www.hermitagemuseum.org

  19 Militsa Matye, www.hermitagemuseum.org

  20 Knyazev, 7 and 15 July, in Adamovich and Granin, A Book of the Blockade, pp. 244–5.

  21 Skrjabina, Siege and Survival, pp. 8–9 (28 June 1941).

  22 Ibid., p. 15 (18 July 1941).

  23 Kochina, Blockade Diary, p. 36 (10 July 1941).

  24 Vasili Churkin, in Voyennaya literatura: dnevniki i pisma http://militera.lib.ru/db/churkin part 1, p. 2 (15 August 1941). Notes to Pages 65–77

  25 Glantz, The Battle for Leningrad 1941–1944, p. 58; TsAMO: Fond 217, op. 1217, dela 32, 33; Nikita Lomagin, Soldiers at War: German Propaganda and Soviet Army Morale during the Battle of Leningrad, 1941–44, Carl Beck Papers, 1306, p. 11.

  26 17 August 1941; RGASPI: Fond 558, op. 11, yed. khr. 492, p. 1.

  27 RGASPI: Fond 558, op. 11, yed. khr. 492, p. 13.

  28 Ibid., p. 20.

  29 Salisbury, The 900 Days, p. 228.

  30 People and freight numbers from Panteleyev, quoted in Salisbury, The 900 Days, p. 232.

  31 Death-toll estimates are very approximate. The rumour at the time was of 17,000 lives lost; the official Soviet version was 5,000. A post-Soviet Russian naval historian puts it at ‘over 12,000’. See Salisbury, The 900 Days, p. 238, and Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War 1941–1945, p. 83.

  32 Glantz, The Battle for Leningrad 1941–1944, p. 46.

  33 On 29 September 1941 the head of the Baltic Fleet’s Political Directorate instructed his staff to inform all naval personnel that family members of sailors who surrendered to the Germans would immediately be executed as ‘traitors to the Motherland’. In January 1942 the directive was rescinded and branded as illegal; there is no record of it having been put into force (see Lomagin, Soldiers at War, p. 15).

  Chapter 4: The People’s Levy

  1 Ilya Frenklakh, www.iremember.ru, pp. 2–3.

  2 TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 2281, op. 1, delo 22.

  3 Interviewed by the author, St Petersburg, March 2008.

  4 Report by Nikita Karpov, Partorg at the Kirov plant and member of the First Division of LANO, 30 September 1943. TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 4000, op. 10, delo 1320, p. 14.

  5 TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 25, op. 12, svyazkha 3, 1118, ed. kr. 13. Harrison Salisbury, The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad, p. 220.

  6 David Glantz, The Battle for Leningrad 1941–1944, pp. 126–7; Richard Bidlack, Workers at War: Factory Workers and Labor Policy in the Siege of Leningrad, Carl Beck Papers, 902, p. 8.

  7 TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 25, op. 12, svyazkha 13.

  8 Nikita Karpov. TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 4000, op. 10, delo 1320, p. 15.

  9 TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 2281, op. 1, delo 15, p. 9. Notes to Pages 77–89

  10 TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 2281, op. 1, delo 2, p. 35.

  11 Leon Gouré, The Siege of Leningrad, p. 31; Dmitri Likhachev, Reflections on the Russian Soul: A Memoir, p. 226.

  12 TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 2201, op. 1, delo 23.

  13 Ibid., political report of 10 July 1941.

  14 Ibid., political report from the Moskovsky district LANO division, 9 July 1941.

  15 Lidiya Ginzburg, Blockade Diary, p. 79.

  16 See for example TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 2281, op. 1, delo 28, p. 20.
<
br />   17 TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 2281, op. 1, delo 15, p. 12.

  18 TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 2201, op. 1, delo 23.

  19 Andrei Dzeniskevich, Leningrad v osade: sbornik dokumentov, doc. 49, p. 131.

  20 TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 2281, op. 1, delo 29, pp. 2–4.

  21 Iosif Altman, workshop supervisor at the Red Chemist Factory and member of the First Division. TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 4000, op. 10, delo 1305.

  22 From Subbotin to the Defence Council of the Northern Front, July 1941. TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 2281, op. 1, delo 11; Gouré, The Siege of Leningrad, pp. 33–4.

  23 Political Department meeting of 8 July 1941. TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 2281, op. 1, delo 15, pp. 7–8.

  24 TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 2281, op. 1, delo 15, p. 13.

  25 Charles Burdick and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, eds, Franz Halder, The Halder War Diary, 1939–1942, p. 452 (6 July 1941).

  26 Meeting of 29 July 1941. TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 2281, op. 1, delo 46.

  27 TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 2281, op. 1, delo 26, p. 2.

  28 Dobrzhinsky, First Division, TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 2281, op. 1, delo 15, pp. 10–11.

  29 TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 2281, op. 1, delo 22, pp. 132–4.

  30 Ibid., p. 137.

  31 Political dept report of 29 August 1941. TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 2281, op. 1, delo 202. Salisbury, The 900 Days, p. 191.

  32 Report to Zhdanov from LANO political department head Kononchuk, mid-August 1941. TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 2281, op. 1, delo 18.

  33 TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 2281, op. 1, delo 18.

  34 Dzeniskevich, Leningrad v osade, doc. 49, pp. 132–3.

  35 Gouré, The Siege of Leningrad, p. 35.

  36 Alexander Werth, Leningrad, pp. 110–11.

  37 TsAMO: Fond 96a, op. 2011, delo 5, pp. 133–7.

  38 Frenklakh, www.iremember.ru, p. 6. Notes to Pages 89–101

  39 Given in Dmitri Volkogonov, ‘Voroshilov’, in Harold Shukman, ed., Stalin’s Generals, p. 318.

  Chapter 5: ‘Caught in a Mousetrap’

  1 Vera Inber, Leningrad Diary, p. 10.

  2 Dmitri Pavlov, Leningrad 1941: The Blockade, p. 9. This is often wrongly referred to as the ‘Enemy at the Gates’ announcement. In fact the Leningradskaya Pravda article headlined ‘The Enemy is at the Gates’ did not appear until 16 September.

  3 Inber, Leningrad Diary, pp. 11, 13, 15 (24 and 26 August, 1 and 8 September 1941).

  4 Ales Adamovich and Daniil Granin, A Book of the Blockade, pp. 271–2.

  5 Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Avtobiograficheskiye zapiski: Leningrad v blokade, pp. 252–3 (4 and 16 August).

  6 Pavlov, Leningrad 1941, pp. 47–8; Ivan Andreyenko, deputy chairman of the wartime Leningrad City Soviet, quoted in Adamovich and Granin, A Book of the Blockade, p. 122.

  7 Leon Gouré, The Siege of Leningrad, pp. 51–2.

  8 Yelena Skrjabina, Siege and Survival: The Odyssey of a Leningrader, p. 7 (June 26 1941).

  9 Yelena Kochina, Blockade Diary, p. 35 (2 July 1941).

  10 Klara Rakhman, unpublished manuscript, held by the diarist’s family.

  11 Georgi Knyazev, 17 July 1941, in Adamovich and Granin, A Book of the Blockade, p. 246.

  12 Adamovich and Granin, A Book of the Blockade, pp. 250–52.

  13 Order to district Party secretaries, 11 August 1941. RGASPI: Fond 17, op. 22, delo 1644, p. 41.

  14 Skrjabina, Siege and Survival, pp. 17–18 (2 August 1941).

  15 Nina Malakova, in Michael Jones, Leningrad: State of Siege, p. 98. Jones interviewed survivors of the Lychkovo bombing in 2007.

  16 Mariya Motovskaya, in Adamovich and Granin, A Book of the Blockade, p. 247.

  17 Ibid., pp. 248–9. Dmitri Likhachev, Reflections on the Russian Soul: A Memoir, p. 218.

  18 William Moskoff, The Bread of Affliction: The Food Supply in the USSR during World War II, p. 34.

  19 Interviewed by the author, Vsevolozhsk, November 2006.

  20 Skrjabina, Siege and Survival, p. 10.

  21 Ibid., p. 24; Likhachev, Reflections on the Russian Soul, p. 227.

  22 Sidney Monas and Jennifer Greene Krupala, eds, The Diaries of Nikolay Punin, 1904–53, pp. 182–3. Notes to Pages 102–116

  23 Cynthia Simmons and Nina Perlina, eds, Writing the Siege: Women’s Diaries, Memoirs and Documentary Prose, pp. 107–8.

  24 Pavlov, Leningrad 1941, p. 47.

  25 Aleksandr Barbovsky, 30 August 1941. RGALI: Fond 2733, op. 1, yed. khr. 872, pp. 15–16.

  26 The commission’s visit is hard to date exactly. Salisbury infers from Admiral Kuznetsov’s memoirs that it set out on 27 August and arrived on the 28th. However, Stalin ordered the mission on the 21st, included Molotov among the addressees of a communication of 27 August and ordered its return on 29 August, suggesting that it arrived several days earlier.

  27 RGASPI: Fond 558, op. 11, yed. khr. 492, p. 27.

  28 Ibid., p. 35.

  29 Ibid., p. 39.

  30 Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, p. 627.

  31 Nikita Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, doc. 4, p. 29.

  32 Lyubov Shaporina, 4 September 1941, in Simmons and Perlina, eds, Writing the Siege, p. 22.

  33 Olga Berggolts, 2 September 1941; Zvezda, 3, April 1991, p. 128.

  34 TsAMO: Fond 148a, op. 3763, delo 97, p. 29.

  35 Skrjabina, Siege and Survival, p. 23 (23 August 1941).

  36 Adamovich and Granin, A Book of the Blockade, p. 269.

  Part 2. The Siege Begins: September–December 1941

  Chapter 6: ‘No Sentimentality’

  1 Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, eds, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, vol. 2, My Country Right or Left, London, 1970, p. 460.

  2 Winston Churchill, The Second World War, pp. 467–8.

  3 RGASPI: Fond 558, op. 11, yed. khr. 492, p. 49.

  4 The exact date of Zhukov’s arrival in Leningrad has only recently been firmly established. Though in practice he took over command immediately on arrival, the relevant Stavka order was not formally issued until 11 September.

  5 The Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov, London, 1971, pp. 300, 314–16.

  6 Viktor Anfilov, Zhukov, in Harold Shukman, ed., Stalin’s Generals, p. 350; David Glantz, The Battle for Leningrad 1941–1944, p. 78.

  7 V. F. Chekrizov, ‘Dnevnik blokadnogo vremeni’, in Trudy Gosudarstvennogo Muzeya Istorii Sankt-Peterburga, vol. 8.

  8 Anna Zelenova, Stati, vospominaniya, pisma: Pavlovsky dvorets, istoriya i sudba, pp. 83–90. See also Susan Massie, Pavlovsk: The Life of a Russian Palace, pp. 195–202. Notes to Pages 118–135

  9 Lidiya Osipova, ‘Iz dnevnika o zhizni v prigorodakh Leningrada’, in Lomagin, ed, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, p. 441. The full diary is held by the Hoover Institution.

  10 Valerian Bogdanov-Berezovsky, Iz dnevnikov blokanikh let (typescript), pp. 9–10; RGALI: Fond 1817, op. 2, yed. khr. 185.

  11 Konstantin Plotkin, Kholokost u sten Leningrada, pp. 33–56.

  12 Glantz, The Battle for Leningrad, pp. 81–2.

  13 Dmitri Pavlov, Leningrad 1941: The Blockade, p. 21.

  14 G. F. Krivosheyev, ed., Rossiya i SSSR v voinakh XX veka: poteri vooruzhyonnykh sil, p. 271; Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War 1941–1945, pp. 86–7.

  15 Charles Burdick and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, eds, Franz Halder, The Halder War Diary, 1939–1942, pp. 487, 498–500 (26 July and 6, 7 August 1941).

  16 Ibid., pp. 511, 514–15 (18 and 22 August 1941).

  17 See Führer Directive no. 35, 6 September 1941.

  18 Burdick and Jacobsen, eds, Franz Halder, The Halder War Diary, 18 September 1941, p. 536.

  19 Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv: RM7/1014. Given in Verbrechen der Wehrmacht: Dimensionen des Vernichtungskrieges 1941–1944, p. 310.

  20 Hugh Trevor-Roper, ed., Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941–44, pp. 39–40.

  21 Burdick and Jacobsen, eds, Franz Halder, The Halder War Diary, p. 458.

  22 Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv: RW4/v. 578, bl. 144–146. Given in Verbrechen der Wehrmacht, pp. 312–1
4.

  23 Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv: RM7/1014, bl. 39–41. Given in Verbrechen der Wehrmacht, pp. 315–17.

  24 Trevor-Roper, ed., Table Talk, p. 44.

  25 ‘The Führer’s Decision on Leningrad’, transmitted by naval command to Army Group North, 29 September 1941. Tagebuch der Seekriegsleitung, quoted in Max Domarus, Hitler Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945, vol. 4, Mundelein, 2000, p. 1755.

  26 Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb, Tagebuchaufzeichnungen und Lagebeurteilungen aus zwei Weltkriegen, Stuttgart, 1976, p. 373 (12 October 1941), in Verbrechen der Wehrmacht, p. 318.

  27 Army Group North war diary 27 October 1941, Verbrechen der Wehrmacht, p. 12. Notes to Pages 136–150

  28 Führer Directive no. 35, 6 September 1941. In Hugh Trevor-Roper, ed., Hitler’s War Directives, 1938–1945.

  29 Michael Jones, Leningrad: State of Siege, p. 33.

  30 For more on Halder’s post-war career see Ronald Smelser and Edward Davies, The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture.

  Chapter 7: ‘To Our Last Heartbeat’

  1 Lyubov Shaporina, 8 September 1941, in Cynthia Simmons and Nina Perlina, eds, Writing the Siege of Leningrad: Women’s Diaries, Memoirs and Documentary Prose, p. 23.

  2 MPVO report of 9 September 1941, in Andrei Dzeniskevich, ed., Leningrad v osade: sbornik dokumentov, p. 364.

  3 The first artillery shells reached the suburbs on 4 September, and the first bomb on the 6th, unnoticed by most Leningraders. The date of the first full-scale raid was 8 September.

  4 Nikolai Sokolov, ‘Tyoplaya vanna dlya begemota: zoosad v gody voiny’, Rodina, 1, 2003, p. 153.

  5 Olga Berggolts, ‘Blokadniy dnevnik’, Zvezda, 4, April 1991, p. 130 (8–9 September 1941).

  6 Leon Gouré, The Siege of Leningrad, pp. 101–2.

  7 Unpublished manuscript, in possession of the diarist’s family.

  8 Vladimir Garshin, ‘Tam, gde smert pomogayet zhizni’, Arkhiv Patologii, vol. 46, no. 5, 1984, p. 84.