Leningrad

by Anna Reid

  38 Likhachev, Reflections on the Russian Soul, p. 244.

  39 European University of St Petersburg Oral History Project, ‘Blokada v sudbakh i pamyati leningradtsev’, interviewee no. 42.

  40 Svetlana Magayeva and Albert Pleysier, Surviving the Blockade of Leningrad, p. 99.

  Chapter 13: Svyazi

  1 Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Avtobiograficheskiye zapiski: Leningrad v blokade, pp. 271, 275 (1 January and 13 February 1942).

  2 Aelita Vostrova, interviewee no. 17, European University at St Petersburg Oral History Project, ‘Blokada v sudbakh i pamyati leningradtsev’.

  3 Olga Grechina, ‘Spasayus spasaya chast 1: pogibelnaya zima (1941–1942 gg.)’, Neva, 1, 1994, pp. 249–50. Notes to Pages 254–261

  4 Richard Bidlack, ‘Survival Strategies in Leningrad during the First Year of the Soviet-German War’, in Robert Thurston and Bernd Bonwetsch, eds, The People’s War: Responses to World War Two in the Soviet Union, pp. 93–5.

  5 Yelena Skrjabina, Siege and Survival: The Odyssey of a Leningrader, p. 54 (15 January 1941).

  6 Georgi Makogonenko, in Ales Adamovich and Daniil Granin, A Book of the Blockade, p. 378.

  7 Olga Berggolts, ‘Blokadniy dnevnik’, Zvezda, 3, April 1991, p. 143 (25 February 1942).

  8 Berggolts, 23 and 25 March 1942, in ‘Ob etikh tetradyakh’, Zvezda, 5, 1990, pp. 190–91.

  9 Mariya Mashkova, ‘Iz blokadnykh zapisei’, in V pamyat ushedshikh i vo slavu zhivushchikh: dnevniki, vospominania, pisma, p. 77 (23 April 1942).

  10 Andrei Dzeniskevich, ed., Leningrad v osade: sbornik dokumentov, doc. 210, p. 517.

  11 William Moskoff, The Bread of Affliction: The Food Supply in the USSR during World War Two, p. 181.

  12 Vera Inber, Leningrad Diary, p. 72 (27 March 1942).

  13 Lidiya Ginzburg, Blockade Diary, pp. 66–7.

  14 For another example, see Dmitri Likhachev, Reflections on the Russian Soul: A Memoir, p. 228.

  15 Valerian Bogdanov-Berezovsky, Iz dnevnikov blokadnykh let, typescript, RGALI: Fond 1817, op. 2, yed. khr. 185, pp. 26–7 (25 January 1942).

  16 See Dzeniskevich, ed., Leningrad v osade, document no. 216, p. 528.

  17 Likhachev, Reflections on the Russian Soul, pp. 235–6.

  18 Ibid., pp. 238–40, 264. For more examples of corruption, see Skrjabina on senior hospital staff and their families, Siege and Survival, pp. 68, 71 (11 February 1942).

  19 Adamovich and Granin, A Book of the Blockade, p. 441.

  20 Skrjabina, Siege and Survival, p. 62 (4 February 1942).

  21 See James Clapperton, The Siege of Leningrad and the Ambivalence of the Sacred: Conversations with Survivors, Ph.D. thesis, Edinburgh University, 2006, p. 294.

  22 Skrjabina, Siege and Survival, p. 41 (26 November 1941).

  23 Tamara Neklyudova, in Cynthia Simmons and Nina Perlina, eds, Writing the Siege: Women’s Diaries, Memoirs and Documentary Prose, p. 62.

  24 Inber, Leningrad Diary, p. 65; Bidlack, ‘Survival Strategies’, p. 91.

  25 Bidlack, ‘Survival Strategies’, p. 94. Notes to Pages 261–269

  26 Ostroumova-Lebedeva, 22 May 1942, in Simmons and Perlina, eds, Writing the Siege, p. 32.

  27 Skrjabina, Siege and Survival, pp. 38, 42–3, 60 (12 and 29 November 1941, 27 January 1942).

  28 Aleksandr Boldyrev, Osadnaya zapis: blokadniy dnevnik, p. 82 (3 April 1942); Likhachev, Reflections on the Russian Soul, pp. 230–31. See also Ivan Zhilinsky, ‘Blokadniy dnevnik’, Voprosy istorii, 5, 1996, 22 December 1941, p. 9, on Leningraders trading dresses and hats with the workers at the pig farm behind the Serafimovskoye cemetery.

  29 Dzeniskevich, ed., Leningrad v osade, doc. 187, p. 436.

  30 Dmitri Lazarev, ‘Vospominaniya o blokade’, in Trudy Gosudarstvennogo Muzeya Istorii Sankt-Peterburga, vol. 5, p. 234.

  31 Report to Zhdanov by the head of the ‘instructors’ department’ of the city Party Committee, Antyufeyev, 27 January 1942. TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 24, op. 2v, delo 5760.

  32 Bidlack, ‘Survival Strategies’, pp. 96, 106; Leon Gouré, The Siege of Leningrad, p. 192. See also the Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System, Schedule B, vol. 2, case 260, pp. 6, 14 (available online from the Widener Library).

  33 Likhachev, Reflections on the Russian Soul, p. 253; Vasili Yershov, untitled typescript, Research Program on the USSR, Bakhmeteff Archive, Columbia University, p. 72.

  34 Nikolai Ribkovsky, in Nataliya Kozlova, ed., Sovyetskiye lyudi: stseni i istorii, pp. 264, 267–9, 276.

  35 Nikita Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 1, pp. 151–2.

  36 See Dzeniskevich, ed., Leningrad v osade, doc. 126, p. 273.

  37 Likhachev, Reflections on the Russian Soul, p. 223.

  38 Report to Kuznetsov, 28 November 1941. Dzeniskevich, ed., Leningrad v osade, doc. 127, pp. 274–6.

  39 Report of 28–29 January 1942. Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, doc. 64, pp. 281, 284.

  Chapter 14: ‘Robinson Crusoe Was a Lucky Man’

  1 Aleksandr Boldyrev, Osadnaya zapis: blokadniy dnevnik, p. 63 (21 February 1942).

  2 Vera Inber, Leningrad Diary, p. 75 (31 March 1942).

  3 Georgi Knyazev, 22 February 1942, in Ales Adamovich and Daniil Granin, A Book of the Blockade, p. 450.

  4 In the second half of March, according to a report to Beria of 4 April 1942, 7,540 houses, 1,020 cows, 134 horses and 92 other livestock were confiscated. See Nikita Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, doc. 9, p. 37.

  5 See a report from the Oranienbaum district soviet of 1 April 1942, in Andrei Dzeniskevich, ed., Leningrad v osade: sbornik dokumentov, doc. 184, pp. 430–33. Also Irina Reznikova (Flige), ‘Repressii v period blokady Leningrada’, Vestnik ‘Memoriala’, no. 4/5 (10/11), p. 99.

  6 NKVD report of 1 October 1942. Dzeniskevich, ed., Leningrad v osade, doc. 190, p. 442. Notes to Pages 269–281

  7 Report to Zhdanov and Kuznetsov from Antyufeyev, 21 March 1942. TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 24, op. 2v, delo 5760.

  8 Dzeniskevich ed., Leningrad v osade, doc. 146, p. 308.

  9 Dmitri Likhachev, Reflections on the Russian Soul: A Memoir, pp. 245–6.

  10 Yelena Skrjabina, Siege and Survival: The Odyssey of a Leningrader, pp. 60–61 (29 and 30 January 1942).

  11 Adamovich and Granin, A Book of the Blockade, p. 312.

  12 Ibid., p. 344.

  13 Ibid., p. 388.

  14 Ibid., p. 416.

  15 Ibid., pp. 483–93.

  16 Dmitri Pavlov, Leningrad 1941: The Blockade, p. 164. The war correspondent Alexander Werth equally erroneously describes the Ice Road as working ‘like clockwork’ (Russia at War, 1941–1945, p. 332).

  17 Adamovich and Granin, A Book of the Blockade, p. 185.

  18 Ibid., pp. 435–8.

  19 Vladimir Kulyabko, ‘Blokadniy dnevnik’, Neva, 3, 2004, pp. 262–7.

  20 For an account of an evacuation journey at the end of March 1942, see Yelena Kochina, Blockade Diary, pp. 101–9.

  21 Pavlov, Leningrad 1941, p. 164.

  22 Kochina, Blockade Diary, p. 108 (11 and 15 April 1942).

  23 Report to the Leningrad oblast Party committee, 5 March 1942. Dzeniskevich, ed., Leningrad v osade, doc. 137, pp. 292–4.

  24 Skryabina, Siege and Survival, pp. 78, 101–2 (25 February and 11 April 1942).

  Chapter 15: Corpse-Eating and Person-Eating

  1 Dmitri Pavlov, Leningrad 1941: The Blockade, pp. 127–8.

  2 Yelena Kochina, Blockade Diary, pp. 55–6, 59 (15 and 19 December 1941).

  3 See for example Ales Adamovich and Daniil Granin, A Book of the Blockade, pp. 82–4. Notes to Pages 281–285

  4 Letters from Kosygin to Zhdanov, 10 and 17 February 1942. Andrei Dzeniskevich, ed., Leningrad v osade: sbornik dokumentov, docs 106 and 134, pp. 228, 288; Richard Bidlack, ‘Survival Strategies in Leningrad during the First Year of the Soviet-German War’, in Robert Thurston and Bernd Bonwetsch, eds, The People’s War: Responses to World War Two in the Soviet Union, p. 90. See also Adamovich and Granin, A Book of the B
lockade, p. 92.

  5 Report to Zhdanov by the ‘organisers’ department’ of the Leningrad Party Committee, 4 January 1942. Dzeniskevich, ed., Leningrad v osade, doc. 176, p. 414.

  6 Dmitri Lazarev, ‘Vospominaniya o blokade’, Trudy Gosudarstvennogo Muzeya Istorii Sankt-Peterburga, vol. 5, p. 204.

  7 Report to Popkov by the head of the city food trade organisation, 15 January 1942. Dzeniskevich, ed., Leningrad v osade, doc. 178, pp. 418–20. Also see an NKVD report to Beria of 23 February 1942, in Nikita Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, doc. 67, p. 296.

  8 Report to Zhdanov and Kuznetsov from Antyufeyev, 9 January 1942. TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 24, op. 2v, delo 5760.

  9 On increased security measures, see a report by the city militia to Popkov of 30 January 1942, in Dzeniskevich, ed., Leningrad v osade, doc. 179, p. 420. On the results see an NKVD report to Zhdanov, March 1942, in Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, doc. 68, p. 301.

  10 Kochina, Blockade Diary, pp. 60–64 (20, 21, 22 and 26 December 1941); pp. 80–83 (17, 18 and 23 January 1942).

  11 Boris Belozerov, ‘Crime during the Siege’, in John Barber and Andrei Dzeniskevich, eds, Life and Death in Besieged Leningrad 1941–44, London, 2005, p. 223.

  12 NKVD reports to Zhdanov of 13 December 1941, 28–29 January, 23 February and March 1942. Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, docs 56, 64 and 68, pp. 255–6, 283, 295, 300. Report to Zhdanov and Kuznetsov from Antyufeyev of 9 January 1942. TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 24, op. 2v, delo 5760.

  13 Report of 10 February 1942, in Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, doc. 23, p. 83.

  14 See also the record of a Party meeting ‘on strengthened vigilance’ of 9 January 1942, in Dzeniskevich, ed., Leningrad v osade, doc. 177, p. 418. One of the attendees complained that ‘due to poor food supply we have no guards in the city’. Touring his district at one o’clock in the morning he had seen ‘absolutely nobody’.

  15 Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System, Schedule B, vol. 2, case 260. (Available online from the Widener Library.)

  16 Interviewed by the author, September 2008. Notes to Pages 285–289

  17 Kochina, Blockade Diary, p. 62 (23 December 1941).

  18 Olga Berggolts, ‘Iz dnevnikov’, 20 May 1942. Zvezda, 6, 1990, p. 161.

  19 See Harrison Salisbury, The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad, pp. 479–81. The novel in question, Anatoly Darov’s Blokada, was published in Nikolayev in 1943. An English-language version was published in New York in 1964.

  20 Aleksei Vinokurov, in Stanislav Bernev and Sergei Chernov, eds, Arkhiv Bolshogo Doma: blokadniye dnevniki i dokumenty, p. 253 (14 March 1942).

  21 Dmitri Likhachev, Reflections on the Russian Soul: A Memoir, pp. 234–5.

  22 Olga Grechina, ‘Spasayus spasaya chast 1: pogibelnaya zima (1941–42 gg.)’, Neva, 1, 1994, p. 240.

  23 NKVD report to Zhdanov, 13 December 1941, in Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, doc. 56, pp. 256–7.

  24 Report by the Leningrad NKVD to Beria, 24 December 1941, in ibid., doc. 60, p. 264.

  25 NKVD report to Zhdanov, 12 January 1942, in Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 1, doc. 63, pp. 275–6.

  26 Report to Zhdanov from Kubatkin of 2 June 1942, in ibid., doc. 75, p. 322.

  27 This number is derived from Leningrad NKVD chief Kubatkin’s series of reports to Zhdanov and to Beria. A report by the prosecutor’s office (Dzeniskevich, ed., Leningrad v osade, doc. 195) gives a figure of 1,979.

  28 Report to Beria from Kubatkin, 3 May 1942. Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, doc. 74, p. 319. See also a report by the military prosecutor A. I. Panfilenko to Kuznetsov, 21 February 1942. Dzeniskevich, ed., Leningrad v osade, doc. 180, p. 421.

  29 NKVD report to Zhdanov, 2 May 1942. Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, doc. 73, p. 316.

  30 See Andrei Dzeniskevich, ‘Banditizm (osobaya kategoriya) v blokirovannom Leningrade’, Istoriya Peterburga, 1, 2001, p. 50.

  31 Report to Beria from Kubatkin, 24 December 1941, in Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, doc. 60, p. 264.

  32 Reports to Beria from Kubatkin, 13 March, April and 2 July 1942. Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, docs 69, 70 and 76, pp. 306, 310, 325–6.

  33 NKVD report to Beria and Zhdanov, 28–29 January 1942. Ibid., doc. 64, p. 282.

  34 Report to Beria from Kubatkin, 23 February 1942. Ibid., doc. 67, p. 297.

  35 NKVD report to Zhdanov, March 1942, ibid., doc. 68, p. 302.

  36 Lazarev, ‘Vospominaniya o blokade’, Trudy Gosudarstvennogo Muzeya Istorii Sankt-Peterburga, vol. 5, pp. 205–6.

  37 Dzeniskevich, ‘Banditizm’, p. 50. Report by military prosecutor A. I. Panfilenko to Kuznetsov, 21 February 1942, in Dzeniskevich, ed., Leningrad v osade, doc. 180, p. 422. Notes to Pages 290–297

  38 Dzeniskevich, ‘Banditizm’, pp. 50–51.

  39 Reports from Kubatkin to Beria and Merkulov, 10 and 23 February 1942. Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, docs 65 and 67, pp. 286, 292.

  40 Report to Zhdanov from Kubatkin, 2 June 1942, ibid., doc. 75, p. 323. This conflicts with a prosecutor’s report of 1 July 1943, according to which 1,700 people had been convicted of ‘special category banditry’, of whom 364 had been executed and 1,336 sentenced to imprisonment (Dzeniskevich, ed., Leningrad v osade, doc. 195, table on p. 461).

  Chapter 16: Anton Ivanovich is Angry

  1 Ales Adamovich and Daniil Granin, A Book of the Blockade, p. 65. See also Leon Gouré, The Siege of Leningrad, p. 190.

  2 Reports from the 18th Army to the OKW, 7 and 19 October 1941, in Nikita Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, docs 13 and 19, pp. 127, 139.

  3 Air defence workers were said to have formed ‘opposition groups’. SD reports, 24 October and 7 November 1941, ibid., docs 30 and 31, pp. 161, 164. On Soviet POWs, see Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War 1941–1945, pp. 103–5.

  4 SD report of 18 February 1941, in Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, doc. 39, pp. 196–7.

  5 NKVD report to Zhdanov, 28–29 January 1942, ibid., doc. 64, p. 280.

  6 See for example a table from 1939, in Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 1, doc. 7, p. 14.

  7 Georgi Knyazev, 9 November 1941, in Adamovich and Granin, A Book of the Blockade, pp. 323–4.

  8 Irina Zelenskaya, 1 September 1941, in ‘Ya nye sdamsya do poslednego . . .’: zapiski iz blokadnogo Leningrada, St Petersburg, 2010, p. 20.

  9 Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, 6 July 1941, in Cynthia Simmons and Nina Perlina, eds, Writing the Siege: Women’s Diaries, Memoirs and Documentary Prose, pp. 27–8.

  10 Quoted in an NKVD report to Zhdanov of December 1941, in Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, doc. 62, p. 271.

  11 Vera Inber, Leningrad Diary, p. 37 (25 December 1941).

  12 Ivan Zhilinsky, ‘Blokadniy dnevnik’, Voprosy istorii, 5–7, part 1, p. 21 (2 January 1942). Notes to Pages 298–303

  13 Reports to Zhdanov from the ‘organisers’ and ‘instructors’ departments of the City Party Committee, 9 and 27 January 1942. TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 24, op. 2v, delo 5760.

  14 Richard Bidlack, ‘The Political Mood in Leningrad during the First Year of the Soviet-German War’, The Russian Review, 59 (January 2000), pp. 110–11.

  15 NKVD report to Beria and Zhdanov, 28–29 January 1942, in Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, doc. 64, p. 278.

  16 Reports to Zhdanov from the ‘organisers’ department’ of the City Party Committee, 14 and 27 January 1942. TsGAIPD SPb: Fond 24, op. 2v, delo 5760. Andrei Dzeniskevich, ed., Leningrad v osade: sbornik dokumentov, doc. 199, p. 472.

  17 Report to Leningrad NKVD head Kubatkin, 12 February 1942, in Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, doc. 66, p. 290.

  18 NKVD report to Beria and Zhdanov, 28–29 January 1942, ibid., doc. 64, p. 278.

  19 Report to the head of the SD from Einssatzgruppe A, stationed in Krasnogvardeisk, 10 December 1941, ibid., doc. 35, p. 179.

  20 Vasili Yershov, untitled typescript, Research Program on the USSR, Bakhmeteff Archive, Columbia University, p.
77.

  21 NKVD report to Zhdanov, 12 January 1942, in Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, doc. 63, p. 274.

  22 NKVD report to Beria and Zhdanov, 28–29 January 1942, ibid., doc. 64, p. 285.

  23 Report from Leningrad NKVD head Kubatkin to Alexander Kuznetsov, 12 December 1943, ibid., doc. 15, pp. 57–60. See also Michael Jones, Leningrad: State of Siege, pp. 286–8. A report of November 1941 mentions that letters have been sent to the leadership threatening strikes and demonstrations unless rations are increased. See Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, doc. 53, pp. 243–4.

  Chapter 17: The Big House

  1 In his foreword to one of the best post-war studies, Leon Goure’s The Siege of Leningrad. Gouré, like the BBC journalist Alexander Werth, was born Russian. His Menshevik family fled the Revolution to Berlin, and the Third Reich to Paris and later New Jersey, where Leon joined the US Army and received citizenship for the first time in his life. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge and after the war worked as an interpreter for the occupying forces in Germany, before making a career in the Rand Corporation and academia. He died in 2007, at the age of eighty-five. Notes to Pages 303–308

  2 Rimma Neratova, quoted in Lisa Kirschenbaum, The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments, p. 34.

  3 An NKVD report of 1 July 1943 states that 80 per cent of convictions to date for counter-revolutionary crimes took place in the first year of the war. Nikita Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, doc. 195, p. 453.

  4 See Irina Reznikova (Flige), ‘Repressii v period blokady Leningrada’, Vestnik ‘Memoriala’ 4/5 (10/11), 1995, pp. 95–7; NKVD reports of 6 November and mid-December 1941, in Lomagin, Neizvestnaya blokada, vol. 2, docs 51 and 58, pp. 232, 259.

  5 NKVD report of 1 October 1942. Andrei Dzeniskevich, ed., Leningrad v osade: sbornik dokumentov, doc. 190, p. 441.

  6 Military prosecutor’s report, 1 July 1943, ibid., doc. 195, pp. 257–9.

  7 Dmitri Likhachev, Reflections on the Russian Soul: A Memoir, pp. 235, 295.

  8 Orlando Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia, pp. 445–6.

  9 ‘Blokadniy dnevnik uchitelya Vinokurova A. I.’, in Stanislav Bernev and Sergei Chernov, eds, Arkhiv Bolshogo Doma: blokadniye dnevniki i dokumenty, pp. 236–90.