I could write how they lived, I could write how we lived. The besieged city was nearby, from the trenches without binoculars, the silhouette of the city was visible, spread out on the horizon. When it was bombed, the ground shook a little in Shushary. We saw black pillars of fire rising every day. Above us, softly rustling, shells rushed into the city, and then bombers sailed. Life in the trenches was also not sweet for us, life there was measured on average for a week or two. It was hungry. The frost was also common, both in our country and in the city -30-35 C, and yet it was a sin to compare with the Leningrad disaster. 
Residents of besieged Leningrad on the street. In the background on the wall of the house is a poster "Death to the child killers." Presumably winter 1941-1942.
The blockade consisted not only of hunger. I was able to truly understand the life of the blockade life much later, when Adamovich and I were working on the Blockade Book. We wrote story after story, 200 stories, about 6,000 pages. Then we began to select what was suitable for the book, and what was not suitable. Most, of course, did not fit, these were the details Everyday life which seemed obvious to us. Much later, I began to understand that not everything was reduced to starvation, to shelling. In fact, the blockade consisted of many hardships. Life did not fall apart immediately, but irreparably, we have little idea of the size and the growing horror of that catastrophe. 
She was gone. For some time, the pumps were still working, there was water in the laundries. Then everything froze - the faucets in the kitchen, in the bathroom, no longer even hissed, turned into a memory. We went for snow, there was a lot of snow, but it had to be melted, but how? On your stomach? There is no more heating. On the stove? Need to get her.
In some places, stoves and even stoves were preserved in the apartments. But how to heat them up? Where is the firewood? What were, quickly taken away, burned. The authorities allocated in the districts wooden houses allowed them to be dismantled for firewood. It's easy to say "disassemble": with crowbars, saws - an overwhelming job for hungry, quickly weakening people. It was easier to break out the parquet in my rooms (where it was), it was even more convenient to heat the potbelly stoves with furniture. There were chairs, tables, books for kindling.
Potbelly stove appeared on the black market quickly, it was necessary to buy for a lot of money, and then - for bread. And what to do, you will give everything. The winter of 1941-1942, as luck would have it, was fierce: -30-35╟ C. At our front, stoves were also burning in dugouts, firewood was also being mined, but the warming came from another five or six soldiers who crowded on the bunk; and in a city room from two or three dystrophics you can’t gain heat.
A potbelly stove is not everything, it needs, excuse me, a chimney, that is, pipes; they must be brought outside, into the window, which is somehow adapted so that the heated does not go into it.
Petersburg was a European city; when all his privileges collapsed into the blockade, it became clear that it would be much better to endure the blockade in the old days, and even better - in the cave; primitive life suddenly felt comfortable. 
At the Chernyshev Bridge. Air alert. 1941 
Blockade Nevsky Prospekt. Photo Kudoyarov B.P.
At the end of March 1942, I received a leave of absence and decided to visit our apartment. On the way, I broke off several icicles from pillboxes, enjoyed them clean water. Near the Neva, women were extracting water from the hole. They took it out with ladles, it was not possible to reach it with a hand, not to scoop it up; coastal residents went to the Neva, to the Fontanka, to Karpovka, they hollowed out the ice. They break the ice and carry it home. “The problem is to climb the icy stairs, hold on to the bucket and not slip,” complained to me Polya, the only one who survived in our large communal apartment. I myself barely climbed this filthy staircase; I remember her in every detail, in yellow ice growths from urine, and mountains of garbage, and everywhere mountains of frozen feces. It was a discovery for me, because the toilets didn't work, everything was thrown out onto the stairs, into the flight of stairs.
The fields this winter have already stacked most of the furniture from the entire apartment. From my room - wooden bed, bookshelves, chair; I didn't blame her at all.
"Civilization," she said, "damn it." 
At the water-folding column installed on the corner of Dzerzhinsky St. and Zagorodny Prospekt. 02/05/1942
But once the electricity was on, the lamps in the lampshade in the corridor remained, I flipped the switches, they did not respond. In the very first bombings, they began to seal the windows with paper crosses. To save glass. Then, for some reason, these crosses were poorly protected from bombing; Gradually the windows were blackened with empty frames. The shock wave of shells and bombs eventually shattered the glass; they began to cover the windows with blankets and carpets in order to somehow protect themselves from snow and wind. The rooms became quite dark. There was no morning, no day, constant darkness. They began to produce light with oil lamps, they were made from cans, bought in the markets, kerosene was poured there; he was gone - oil was extracted: lamp, machine, transformer, I don’t know what else ... From threads - they were pulled out of clothes, the wick was twisted. The light somehow shone, smoked, over it it was possible to warm the frozen hands; they managed to beg for oil in churches, from artillerymen, and also, I learned this after the war, from Lenenergo fitters, they took it from oil switches, from transformers. And they sold.
In retrospect, all these prey look different; they didn’t steal, but begged, bartered, it was as difficult to get light as in the Stone Age.
The radio was silent, the metronome pounded, at some hours the latest news was transmitted.
The rooms were smoky, the people were smoky. There were oil lamps in bakeries, oil lamps in police departments, oil lamps in offices. They are smokers, blinkers - as soon as they were not called! At the front they also shone
in our country, the wicks were clamped into shell casings, oil was stolen from the drivers, there was not enough oil lamp to read the light, but you can warm the porridge and somehow you could write a letter in its quivering light. This ancient apparatus nevertheless gave cosiness to the cave blockade situation, a small tongue of flame was burning, which means that life was warming, during the day it was possible to open the curtain, unfold the blanket, let in the light if it was frost-free. 
Still, try to imagine what life without a toilet means, how to defecate? To drag a pot every time to the street, to wash it with something - there is no strength. Mountains of garbage grew rapidly, blocking the way out of the house; sorry, to describe all this in detail is not comme il faut, but the list of decencies in the besieged city has been greatly reduced; a year has passed, another six months, how people managed without toilets, I don’t know anymore; another thing is more surprising - how a huge city in the spring of 1942 avoided epidemics. The unburied dead lay in the houses, the victims of hunger, frost, who fell under the shells, lay in the apartments, lay in the doorways; I saw the dead in a snow-covered tram, I myself went there to hide from the wind. Opposite me sat a completely white elderly man without a hat - someone must have taken it.
With incredible efforts, the resurrected people in the spring cleansed the city from corpses, from sewage; bombed-out houses and broken trams remained untouched.
At the end of May, beds appeared on the Field of Mars.
My personal memories faded, clouded, mixed with other people's memoirs. 
The deceased is being carried on a sled - the most common photograph of the blockade time. Everyone remembers this. But they died not only from hunger - shells, bombing, frost ... The cause of death was the same: the blockade. But it was known how many shells fell, how many bombs, there are approximate numbers of fires; there are no such reasons as despair, death of loved ones, hopelessness, despondency.
Try to imagine an apartment, the most ordinary, but comfortable, where there are dishes, plates, forks, knives in the sideboard; there are pots and pans in the kitchen - and all this is useless, because there is not a crumb of food anywhere. People live in the familiar environment of a comfortable life, where a telephone hangs, a samovar stands, blouses, trousers, an iron, sheets, a meat grinder are in the closets - food items are everywhere - and everything is useless. Life froze and left in an atmosphere of living well-being, sometimes it seemed to people that death in a prison cell, on camp bunk beds, was more natural than the death of a family in their apartment.
Hunger drove me crazy, a person gradually lost all ideas of what was possible and what was not. He is ready to chew the skin of a belt, boil glue from wallpaper, boil dried flowers.
I used to be terrified of cannibalism. During the war, I realized that it was not love, but “war and famine” that ruled the world. There were days at the front when we were left without food for a day, or two, or three, and were ready to chew at least our footcloths, we had to fill our stomach with anything. It was harder for the blockade survivors, it seemed to them that their hunger was indefinite. The frying pan smelled of fried food, there was still a faint smell in the breadbasket...
125 grams of bread - the established norm for employees, dependents and children in November 1941. 
The conversation with Grigory Romanov was short: the Leningrad blockade is a heroic epic, and you did not portray the feat of the people, but the suffering and horrors of hunger, reduced everything to this; it turns out that you are debunking the story of great merit, the stamina of people, how they managed to defend the city; you wonder how people suffered. This is an ideology alien to us. 
For a fresh newspaper. 1942-1943 Photo Kudoyarov B.P.
Approximately such a rebuke we received in the regional committee of the party, when the publication of the Blockade Book was banned. The second time Iosif Efimovich Kheifits, a famous film director and winner of various awards, heard the same thing when he was forbidden to make a film about the blockade based on our book.
Meanwhile, in his script there were wonderful heroes in addition to our Yura Ryabinkin, a young girl acted there, a poster-poster in the city; she appeared on the street, put up posters, appeals to residents with calls to hold on, help each other, put up announcements about organizing a funeral, about issuing boiling water; neither shells nor bombardments could kill her, she embodied the soul of this city, its resilience.
MPVO soldiers evacuate the victims after the German air raid on Leningrad. 1943 
For the Blockade Book, Adamovich and I first of all looked for the diaries of the blockade - they were more expensive than personal testimonies. The blockade survivors, whom we recorded, recalled their lives after more than thirty years. The peculiarity of any diary is authenticity; usually the author does not describe the past, but the present, he does not so much remember as shares his memories, reports the news, tells what happened today.
The Great Terror and repressions weaned the Petersburgers from keeping diaries. The job had become too dangerous. During the blockade, this natural need returned with unexpected force, people felt themselves not so much events as participants in history, they wanted to preserve, record the uniqueness of what was happening. But there was one more circumstance - a secret sensation of spiritual food appeared; surprisingly, the diary helped to survive. Strange, ghostly feeling; mental work, spiritual comprehension supported. After the publication of the Blockade Book, diaries began to be brought to us, and the further, the more; suddenly it turned out that, despite all the horrors, suffering, people recorded themselves. Details of your life, details of food.
Here is the diary of the chief engineer of the Fifth hydroelectric power station, Lev Abramovich Khodorkov - a priceless diary precisely for its details.
On December 26, the most difficult times of the blockade come, but meanwhile: “Zhdanov said that the hardest thing for Leningrad is behind<...>turbines are standing, out of five there are four boilers, there is no fuel in the city, out of 95 people on the list, 25 went to work, the rest are sick, weakened or died.
January 5, 1942: “Bakeries without energy, the station works with one boiler per boiler room<...>there is no firewood, the population breaks the plank covering of shop windows.
January 9, 1942: “Hospitals, hospitals, houses were left without fuel, everything is taken to power plants, where it is possible by rail, where by tram, where by car, coal has become blood for Leningrad, and this blood is getting smaller. There is barely enough capacity for bakeries and some food enterprises.”
January 14: “Installation of the boiler for anthracite has been completed, manual charging is needed. There is no healthy person suitable for this work.
I quote only a few lines from this wonderful diary, which was also a feat to keep.
Sometimes I read details unknown to me. In the month of June, the corpses of Red Army soldiers floated along the Neva, day and night, one after another, one after another.
There was a diary of a musician from the Philharmonic, a diary of a senior student, where there is a story of her evacuation. Dozens and dozens of them have been preserved; now some of them have begun to publish. I was shown those that keep
in family archives.
Each diary interprets the tragedy of the city in its own way. In each diary there is a talent for observation, an understanding of how precious the details of this incredible life of people under the siege are.
http://magazines.russ.ru/zvezda/2014/1/7g.html
Offensive fascist troops on Leningrad, the capture of which the German command attached great strategic and political importance, began on July 10, 1941. In August, heavy fighting was already on the outskirts of the city. August 30 German troops cut the railroads connecting Leningrad with the country. On September 8, 1941, the Nazi troops captured Shlisselburg and cut off Leningrad from the whole country from the land. An almost 900-day blockade of the city began, communication with which was maintained only through Lake Ladoga and by air.
Having failed in attempts to break through the defense Soviet troops inside the blockade ring, the Germans decided to starve the city out. According to all the calculations of the German command, Leningrad was to be wiped off the face of the earth, and the population of the city to die of hunger and cold. In an effort to implement this plan, the enemy carried out barbaric bombardments and artillery shelling of Leningrad: on September 8, the day the blockade began, the first massive bombardment of the city took place. About 200 fires broke out, one of them destroyed the Badaevsky food warehouses. In September-October, enemy aircraft made several raids a day. The purpose of the enemy was not only to interfere with the activities of important enterprises, but also to create panic among the population. To do this, during the hours of the beginning and end of the working day, especially intensive shelling was carried out. In total, during the blockade period, about 150 thousand shells were fired at the city and over 107 thousand incendiary and high-explosive bombs were dropped. Many died during shelling and bombing, many buildings were destroyed.
The autumn-winter of 1941-1942 is the most terrible time of the blockade. Early winter brought with it cold - heating, hot water was not, and Leningraders began to burn furniture, books, dismantled for firewood wooden buildings. The transport stopped. Thousands of people died from malnutrition and cold. But Leningraders continued to work - administrative offices, printing houses, polyclinics, kindergartens, theaters, a public library worked, scientists continued to work. 13-14-year-old teenagers worked, replacing their fathers who had gone to the front.
The struggle for Leningrad was fierce. A plan was developed that provided for measures to strengthen the defense of Leningrad, including anti-aircraft and anti-artillery. More than 4,100 pillboxes and bunkers were built on the territory of the city, 22,000 firing points were equipped in buildings, over 35 kilometers of barricades and anti-tank obstacles were installed on the streets. Three hundred thousand Leningraders participated in the detachments of the local air defense of the city. Day and night they kept their watch at enterprises, in the courtyards of houses, on roofs.
In the difficult conditions of the blockade, the working people of the city gave the front weapons, equipment, uniforms, and ammunition. From the population of the city, 10 divisions of the people's militia were formed, 7 of which became personnel.
(Military Encyclopedia. Chairman of the Main Editorial Commission S.B. Ivanov. Military Publishing. Moscow. In 8 volumes -2004. ISBN 5 - 203 01875 - 8)
In autumn, on Lake Ladoga, due to storms, the movement of ships was complicated, but tugboats with barges made their way around the ice fields until December 1941, some food was delivered by aircraft. Hard ice on Ladoga was not established for a long time, the norms for issuing bread were again reduced.
On November 22, the movement of vehicles along the ice road began. This highway was called "Road of Life". In January 1942, the movement winter road was already constant. The Germans bombed and shelled the road, but they failed to stop the movement.
In winter, the evacuation of the population began. The first to take out were women, children, the sick, the elderly. In total, about a million people were evacuated. In the spring of 1942, when it became a little easier, the people of Leningrad began to clean up the city. Bread rations have increased.
In the summer of 1942, a pipeline was laid along the bottom of Lake Ladoga to supply Leningrad with fuel, and in the fall, an energy cable.
Soviet troops repeatedly tried to break through the blockade ring, but achieved this only in January 1943. South of Lake Ladoga, a corridor 8-11 kilometers wide was formed. A 33-kilometer-long railway was built along the southern coast of Ladoga in 18 days and a crossing across the Neva was built. In February 1943, trains with food, raw materials, and ammunition went along it to Leningrad.
The memorial ensembles of Piskarevsky Cemetery and Seraphim Cemetery are dedicated to the memory of the victims of the blockade and the fallen participants in the defense of Leningrad, and the Green Belt of Glory was created around the city along the former blockade ring of the front.
The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources
- Why is the study of the health of people who survived the blockade of Leningrad 70 years ago interesting for today's people?
“Now that people's life expectancy is increasing, it's important that they stay physically and mentally healthy for as long as possible. Therefore, scientists are actively trying to understand what contributes to a healthy and long life.
We have a unique group of people whose study will allow us to explore these problems: people who survived the siege of Leningrad and have now lived more than 70 years after it. Most of the people we examined, of course, had health problems, but as it turned out, there were no more of them than the representatives of the control group.
- How many blockade survivors are left in St. Petersburg now?
- It's hard to say exactly, but in May 2015 there was a figure of 134 thousand people in the media.
— How did you search for people to attract them for research?
- We turned to the community of residents of the besieged Leningrad "Primorets". We were given lists of over 600 people, and we started inviting people. We were especially interested in those who suffered blockade in the womb. Such people are the most difficult to find, because it was extremely difficult for a woman to become pregnant, bear and give birth to a child at that time. We managed to find 50 people, and in total 300 blockade survivors took part in our study. We divided them into groups: those who were a child during the blockade, an infant, or were born during the blockade. In the control group, we took people of the same age who were not in Leningrad during the blockade, but came to live in this city after the war.
- How did you compare those who survived the blockade and the participants in the control group?
— We surveyed the participants in our study on several parameters. First, we looked at the general state of health, which diseases had already developed by the time of the study. In addition, we measured arterial pressure and pulse, blood counts (cholesterol, blood sugar, kidney function indicators); evaluated the work of the heart and blood vessels; found out how these people eat; conducted psychological and cognitive tests.
We are currently searching in three main areas. The first is nutritional habits. The hypothesis is that those residents of besieged Leningrad who have adhered to a healthy diet with calorie restriction have survived so far. The main cause of death in the post-war period was stress and overcompensation in nutrition: when the famine ended, some of those who suffered it began to eat more than the norm. obesity began to develop high blood pressure and people were dying. And those who maintained moderation in nutrition (as scientists today believe, this is one of the main factors of longevity) are still alive.
Moderate calorie restriction is considered to be one of the few ways associated with increased life expectancy. A possible explanation is the relationship between the decrease in the calorie content of the food consumed and the length of the telomeres of the chromosomes of peripheral leukocytes. The length of chromosome telomeres is currently considered as one of the biomarkers of aging of the body, which allows predicting cardiovascular risk and complications such as myocardial infarction, stroke, diabetes, cognitive dysfunction.
The second thing we looked at is psychological features. We tested the hypothesis that optimism and communication skills could help such patients survive.
Finally, we studied the genetic characteristics of long-lived blockade survivors. “Good” genes are, we suspect, the main factor that allowed people to endure that hard time. In addition, there is also epigenetics - changes on the surface of DNA that allowed the blockade survivors to survive and, possibly, pass something on to their descendants. Therefore, in the next step, we want to invite their children and grandchildren to check if they have inherited certain “tags”.
What differences did you find?
– In our study, blockade patients had shorter telomeres compared to the control group, and fasting in the prenatal period was the most strong factor affecting telomere length. Usually, shorter telomeres are associated with a greater risk of developing various diseases, but we found that this did not happen in the case of blockades.
- Will it be possible, as a result of your research, to accurately answer what saved those blockade survivors who have survived to this day?
- The most important factors limiting our study are that we cannot obtain data from those who have already died for comparison with the survivors of the blockade. In addition, it is impossible to accurately "measure" the impact of hunger. Firstly, these are already elderly people, and they do not remember all the details, and secondly, in other regions Soviet Union, where the participants in the control group came from, was also not heaven. In addition, so many years have passed and so many things have affected their health. Therefore, we write "possible connection", " possible consequences» - there are too many intervening factors for categorical conclusions.
Tue, 28/01/2014 - 16:23
The farther from the date of the event, the less people aware of the event. The modern generation is unlikely to ever truly appreciate the incredible scale of all the horrors and tragedies that occurred during the siege of Leningrad. More terrible than the fascist attacks was only a comprehensive famine that killed people with a terrible death. To the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Leningrad from fascist blockade, we invite you to see what horrors the inhabitants of Leningrad chewed at that terrible time.
From the blog of Stanislav Sadalsky
In front of me was a boy, maybe nine years old. He was covered with some kind of handkerchief, then he was covered with a wadded blanket, the boy stood frozen. Cold. Some of the people left, some were replaced by others, but the boy did not leave. I ask this boy: “Why don’t you go warm up?” And he: “It’s cold at home anyway.” I say: “What do you live alone?” - “No, with your mother.” - “So, mom can't go?” - “No, she can't. She is dead." I say: “How dead?!” - “Mother died, it’s a pity for her. Now I figured it out. Now I only put her to bed for the day, and put her to the stove at night. She's still dead. And it’s cold from her.”
Blockade book Ales Adamovich, Daniil Granin
Blockade book by Ales Adamovich and Daniil Granin. I bought it once in the best St. Petersburg second-hand bookstore on Liteiny. The book is not desktop, but always in sight. A modest gray cover with black letters keeps under itself a living, terrible, great document that has collected the memories of eyewitnesses who survived the siege of Leningrad, and the authors themselves, who became participants in those events. It's hard to read it, but I would like everyone to do it ...
From an interview with Danil Granin:
"- During the blockade, marauders were shot on the spot, but also, I know, without trial or investigation, cannibals were allowed to be consumed. Is it possible to condemn these unfortunate people, distraught from hunger, who have lost their human appearance, whom the tongue does not dare to call people, and how frequent were the cases when, for lack of other food, they ate their own kind?
- Hunger, I'll tell you, deprives the restraining barriers: morality disappears, moral prohibitions disappear. Hunger is an incredible feeling that does not let go for a moment, but, to the surprise of me and Adamovich, while working on this book, we realized: Leningrad has not dehumanized, and this is a miracle! Yes, there was cannibalism...
- ...ate children?
- There were worse things.
- Hmm, what could be worse? Well, for example?
- I don't even want to talk... (Pause). Imagine that one of your own children was fed to another, and there was something that we never wrote about. Nobody forbade anything, but... We couldn't...
- Was there some amazing case of survival in the blockade that shook you to the core?
- Yes, the mother fed the children with her blood, cutting her veins.
“... In each apartment, the dead lay. And we were not afraid of anything. Will you go earlier? After all, it’s unpleasant when the dead ... So our family died out, that’s how they lay. And when they put it in the barn!” (M.Ya. Babich)
“Dystrophics have no fear. At the Academy of Arts, on the descent to the Neva, they dumped corpses. I calmly climbed over this mountain of corpses ... It would seem that the weaker the person, the more scared he is, but no, the fear disappeared. What would happen to me if it were in peacetime - I would die of horror. And now, after all: there is no light on the stairs - I'm afraid. As soon as people ate, fear appeared ”(Nina Ilyinichna Laksha).
Pavel Filippovich Gubchevsky, researcher at the Hermitage:
What kind of rooms did they have?
- Empty frames! It was Orbeli's wise order: leave all the frames in place. Thanks to this, the Hermitage restored its exposition eighteen days after the return of the paintings from the evacuation! And during the war they hung like that, empty eye sockets-frames, through which I spent several excursions.
- By empty frames?
- On empty frames.
The Unknown Walker is an example of blockade mass altruism.
He was naked in extreme days, in extreme circumstances, but his nature is all the more authentic.
How many of them were - unknown passers-by! They disappeared, returning life to a person; dragged away from the deadly edge, they disappeared without a trace, even their appearance did not have time to be imprinted in the dimmed consciousness. It seemed that to them, unknown passers-by, they had no obligations, no kindred feelings, they did not expect either fame or pay. Compassion? But all around was death, and they walked past the corpses indifferently, marveling at their callousness.
Most say to themselves: the death of the closest, dearest people did not reach the heart, some kind of protective system in the body worked, nothing was perceived, there was no strength to respond to grief.
A besieged apartment cannot be depicted in any museum, in any layout or panorama, just as frost, longing, hunger cannot be depicted ...
The blockade runners themselves, remembering, note broken windows, furniture sawn into firewood - the most dramatic, unusual. But at that time, only children and visitors who came from the front were really struck by the view of the apartment. As it was, for example, with Vladimir Yakovlevich Alexandrov:
“- You knock for a long, long time - nothing is heard. And you already have the complete impression that everyone died there. Then some shuffling begins, the door opens. In an apartment where the temperature is equal to the temperature environment, a creature wrapped in God knows what appears. You hand him a bag of some crackers, biscuits or something else. And what struck? Lack of emotional outburst.
- And even if the products?
- Even groceries. After all, many starving people already had an atrophy of appetite.
Hospital doctor:
- I remember they brought the twins ... So the parents sent them a small package: three cookies and three sweets. Sonechka and Serezhenka - that was the name of these children. The boy gave himself and her a cookie, then the cookies were divided in half.
There are crumbs left, he gives the crumbs to his sister. And the sister throws him the following phrase: “Seryozhenka, it’s hard for men to endure the war, you will eat these crumbs.” They were three years old.
- Three years?!
- They barely spoke, yes, three years, such crumbs! Moreover, the girl was then taken away, but the boy remained. I don’t know if they survived or not…”
During the blockade, the amplitude of human passions increased enormously - from the most painful falls to the highest manifestations of consciousness, love, and devotion.
“... Among the children with whom I left was the boy of our employee - Igor, a charming boy, handsome. His mother took care of him very tenderly, with terrible love. Even in the first evacuation, she said: “Maria Vasilievna, you also give your children goat's milk. I take goat milk to Igor. And my children were even placed in another barracks, and I tried not to give them anything, not a single gram in excess of what was supposed to be. And then this Igor lost his cards. And now, in the month of April, I somehow walk past the Eliseevsky store (here dystrophics have already begun to crawl out into the sun) and I see a boy sitting, a terrible, edematous skeleton. "Igor? What's the matter?" - I say. “Maria Vasilievna, my mother kicked me out. My mother told me that she would not give me another piece of bread.” - "How so? It can't be!" He was in critical condition. We barely climbed with him to my fifth floor, I barely dragged him. By this time my children had already gone to Kindergarten and still holding on. He was so terrible, so pathetic! And all the time he said: “I don’t blame my mother. She is doing the right thing. It's my fault, I lost my card." - “I, I say, I will arrange a school” (which was supposed to open). And my son whispers: "Mom, give him what I brought from kindergarten."
I fed him and went with him to Chekhov Street. We enter. The room is terribly dirty. This dystrophic, disheveled woman lies. Seeing her son, she immediately shouted: “Igor, I won’t give you a single piece of bread. Get out!” The room is stench, dirt, darkness. I say: “What are you doing?! After all, there are only some three or four days left - he will go to school, get better. - "Nothing! Here you are standing on your feet, but I am not standing. I won't give him anything! I’m lying down, I’m hungry…” What a transformation from a tender mother into such a beast! But Igor did not leave. He stayed with her, and then I found out that he died.
A few years later I met her. She was blooming, already healthy. She saw me, rushed to me, shouted: “What have I done!” I told her: “Well, now what to talk about it!” “No, I can't take it anymore. All thoughts are about him. After a while, she committed suicide."
The fate of the animals of besieged Leningrad is also part of the tragedy of the city. human tragedy. Otherwise, you can't explain why not one or two, but almost every tenth blockade survivor remembers, talks about the death of an elephant in a zoo by a bomb.
Many, many people remember besieged Leningrad through this state: it is especially uncomfortable, terrifying for a person and he is closer to death, disappearance because cats, dogs, even birds have disappeared! ..
“Down below us, in the apartment of the late president, four women are stubbornly fighting for their lives - his three daughters and granddaughter,” notes G.A. Knyazev. - Still alive and their cat, which they pulled out to rescue in every alarm.
The other day a friend, a student, came to see them. I saw a cat and begged to give it to him. He stuck straight: "Give it back, give it back." Barely got rid of him. And his eyes lit up. The poor women were even frightened. Now they are worried that he will sneak in and steal their cat.
O loving woman's heart! Destiny deprived the student Nehorosheva of natural motherhood, and she rushes about like with a child, with a cat, Loseva rushes with her dog. Here are two specimens of these rocks in my radius. All the rest have long since been eaten!”
Residents of besieged Leningrad with their pets
A.P. Grishkevich wrote on March 13 in his diary:
“The following incident occurred in one of the orphanages in the Kuibyshev region. On March 12, all the staff gathered in the boys' room to watch a fight between two children. As it turned out later, it was started by them on a "principled boyish question." And before that there were "fights", but only verbal and because of the bread.
The head of the house, comrade Vasilyeva says: “This is the most encouraging fact in the last six months. At first the children lay, then they began to argue, then they got out of bed, and now - an unprecedented thing - they are fighting. Previously, I would have been fired from work for such a case, but now we, the educators, stood looking at the fight and rejoiced. It means that our little nation has come to life.”
In the surgical department of the City Children's Hospital named after Dr. Rauchfus, New Year 1941/42
Original taken from bogomilos to Leningrad during the blockade was crammed with food.
With anger and indignation I reject the ridiculous accusation that I claimed that all Leningraders were cannibals. Vice versa! I can name a lot of those who obviously were not cannibals. This is all the leadership of the city, their rations included black and red caviar, fruits, beef, pork, lamb, etc. Of course, they looked at human meat with disgust.
And, finally, the entire army, down to the last soldier and sailor. What to say about human flesh, they looked at the blockade bread with disgust and cooked separately for them.
Here they are, true heroes who have maintained a high moral level among all these degraded old men, insolent women and depraved children!
This is repeated year after year. The first people of St. Petersburg speak and say, referring to the blockade: “You defended the city, you made a huge contribution to the victory, you are heroes" etc.
In fact: the main reason why Leningrad was not occupied by the Germans was Hitler's order forbidding troops to enter the city (by the way, there was a similar order in relation to Moscow). In practice, after the establishment of the blockade line, the Germans abandoned any action to further seize the territory.
And it is not true that the Germans wanted to starve the population of Leningrad. Separate negotiations were held in Smolny with the German command. The Germans offered to lift the blockade in exchange for the destruction of the Baltic Fleet, or rather submarines.
Zhdanov offered to surrender the city with the entire population in exchange for the withdrawal of troops along with weapons. Unilaterally, the Germans offered the unimpeded withdrawal of the entire civilian population from the city, and also allowed the free transport of food to the city.
And these were not just words - several grain carts passed unhindered to Leningrad (with one of them, sister Olga Berggolts calmly arrived from Moscow through two front lines.
By the way, many indirect facts indicate that the city was literally stuffed with food (the Confectionery factory worked almost the entire blockade, also oil and fat plants). After the war, the stew was “thrown out” into trade, made, as follows from the inscriptions on the banks, in 1941 in Leningrad! The population of the city - women, children, the elderly did not decide anything and did not protect anyone and could not protect. The authorities cared only that they died out calmly and without unrest.
As for "patriotism", there was none. People, at best, tried to survive. This led to a huge scale of crime. Murder, especially of children, has become commonplace. Teenagers united in real gangs attacked food trucks, shops and warehouses. They were ruthlessly killed by the guards.
Read the memo received by the military, for whatever reason, sent to the city. This memo considered the city as hostile, warned of the possibility of a surprise attack, and in case of danger, offered to immediately use weapons.
German agents operated freely and with impunity in the city. During the raids it was possible to observe rockets unusual for us - the so-called "green chains". They indicated to the aircraft targets for bombing. These agents were never caught. The frightened population not only did not help the NKVD in the fight against spies, but avoided all contacts with the authorities, agreeing to perform any task for a can of canned food.
After dogs, cats, pigeons, even crows with rats were eaten, the only meat available to the population was the people themselves.
Modern psychology makes it possible, through appropriate surveys, to reveal what people hide with all their might. There was a (secret, of course) study of survivors of the blockade on this topic. The result was stunning.
There is such a thing as justice. Even the most notorious villain and criminal has the right to it if he is unjustly offended.
All blockade survivors, regardless of how they survived, are entitled to compensation from the state and society that put them in such a position. But when they are called heroes and glorified, then this is only an attempt to pay with words, not money.
Gentlemen speakers! You all know as well as I do. Anyone who is really interested in the blockade can find out. And your false statements are a frank depreciation of all high words, a contribution to the general destruction of the morality of the whole country!
Damn you!
This is not me telling you, a rather objective and cynical intellectual (an intellectual in the second generation!) These are those who were killed during the blockade of Leningrad.
I am a careful and practical person; I'm just writing about how it all happened. I had to wait for this time for quite a long time.
If you are wondering what really happened at that time, then read the publications that have appeared recently. You can also listen to "Echo of Moscow" and their program "The Price of Victory". Cautious people also work there, and from this what they report becomes even more reasonable ...
There is no point in wasting time on propaganda fabrications of the past.
In short, I state only the most general conclusion: during the blockade of Leningrad, not the Germans, but our authorities were interested in the fact that the population of the city died of starvation.
The Germans, on the contrary, made attempts to charge the provision of food for the useless population of Leningrad, in the form of old people, women and children, to us. They didn't succeed.
Well, that's all right. "Everything for the front, everything for the Victory."
And we did everything that was needed for the front.
And now I'm just passing on to you the death curses of those who died of starvation in the icy ruthless city, especially children.
I am their age.
Damn you!
Lessons from the blockade and the desire for extinction
We are still not so imbued with civilization as to completely depend on refined food. Perhaps, on the contrary, genetically we have not yet fully adapted to such a diet. We are surrounded by a completely edible world for us. The plants surrounding us are more than 90% not only edible, but even beneficial to our health. It is quite possible to eat cow parsnip and burdock. The coltsfoot is edible whole. In burdock, for example, you can eat roots, stems, leaf cuttings; the leaves themselves are bitter and inedible. Reed roots, which grow in abundance along the shores of the Gulf of Finland, Sestroretsk and Lakhtinsky spills, as well as along numerous rivers and streams, can be dried, ground in hand mills or meat grinders. If you are already a completely helpless bungler, then feel free to rip off the lichen from the trunks of trees, stones, walls of buildings. You can either eat it or cook it. It is quite possible to dine on shellfish, many insects, frogs and lizards. From the beginning of the war to the beginning of the blockade, there was enough time to dry, pickle, salt unlimited supplies of all this food.
The blockade of Leningrad is not the first experiment in this direction. In 1917-18. The Bolsheviks introduced a "grain monopoly" and began to shoot peasants who brought grain to the city. However, at that time it was not possible to bring the matter to an end, to the Piskarevsky cemetery and Victory Park on the ashes of those burned. The population simply fled to the villages.
In the 1950s I was surprised to learn that in the Leningrad region there are villages that cannot be reached in winter, and in summer only by tractor. During the war, neither the Germans nor the Red Army saw such villages. Is that sometimes the ubiquitous deserters.
In many cities there were empty houses: people left for the city, or the authorities evicted the "kulaks", and in 1939 also the Finns, evicted for the convenience of management from farms and small villages to villages along the roads.
So it was quite where to run.
But the opposite happened: the people fled to the city.
What happened, what broke in the psychology of the people?
Not only to fight for their rights and even for life itself, for the life of their children and families, Leningraders were not capable.
Operation Blockade
Scoundrels adore decent people, they simply idolize them. Their most cherished desire is that everyone around them be just the same saints. It is for this that they (the scoundrels) agitate, call, persuade. Well, of course, this love is purely platonic.
Didn't surprise you interesting fact: they have been talking about help, benefits for the blockade of Leningrad for more than half a century. And they don't just talk. Budget money, apartments and so on are allocated for this.
I know this firsthand: about 40 years ago I helped the blockade survivors to get the apartments due to them, and I remember what it cost them. With habitual arrogance, I can say that if it were not for my help, they would not have received anything. After all, if all the allocated assistance reached the addressees (those under blockade), then there would be no problem with them!
There have always been villains. They did not go anywhere during the blockade either. I must say that for many this time was a time of fabulous enrichment. When the museum of the blockade was created in its first execution, it so happened that it turned out to contain a large number of memories that reported facts that were very eloquent. And this is very dangerous for the rascals. And the museum was liquidated. collected materials destroyed (of course only those that were dangerous). By the way, at one time the number of blockades began to grow rapidly. Can you tell me why or can you guess the reasons for the “strange” phenomenon?
Here's what's especially amazing. So many revelations of abuses, waste of public funds in all areas. And complete silence and splendor in matters related to the blockade. No checks. Everything is honest and noble. But it's so simple. For example, obtaining apartments. Naturally, in the first place, the more seriously injured, the wounded, who have lost their health and relatives, should receive it. In principle, it is quite simple to draw up a certain scale.
But how was it really?
Another lie about the Blockade
“Leningrad was supplied with food “from the wheels”. Food supplies in Leningrad were on ... (further, depending on the speaker's imagination)."
Guys! We are in a country of seasonal food production. Not just grains and vegetables. Even the slaughter of livestock, the production of milk and eggs, in those days when special breeds had not yet been bred, was seasonal.
So, willy-nilly, for Moscow and Leningrad, and in general for the whole country, food supplies are created for at least a year. The only question is where they are stored. Once, indeed, in the villages, from where they were taken out in the winter, but also quite quickly: in 1-2 months. Soviet authority shortened and mechanized this path. Railways allowed to quickly deliver the crop to the place of consumption.
Where did these undoubtedly genuine alarm cries come from: “there is food left for 2 days in the city”? We are talking about food in the consumer network, practically about products that are in stores. Grain in elevators and flour mills, stocks of sugar, cocoa, and other ingredients in confectionery factories and other enterprises Food Industry did not apply to this.
Even in peacetime, more than a year's supply of food was, if not in the city, then nearby, in the nearest suburbs. You have to be a very unscrupulous person to pass off products in the consumer network for everything available.
By the way, consider this paradox: Leningrad region is able to satisfy one need of the city: potatoes!
It would seem that there is no bread, you have to sit on potatoes ...
Where did the potatoes disappear to?
The main question of the blockade
This was shortly after the war. At that time, the famine in Leningrad was still concealed, Leningraders died from “barbaric bombing and shelling”, but not from hunger. That was the official version.
However, the famine was already on the sly spoken. Anyway, I already knew enough about him. I asked my friend, who spent his childhood in the blockade, in the city itself.
- "Hunger?" He was surprised. “We ate normally, no one died of starvation!” It was shocking that this man was distinguished by amazing truthfulness. It was an amazing mystery to me until I thought to ask about his parents. And everything immediately fell into place!
His mother worked in Smolny. He lived in a guarded house and spent the entire blockade walking only in the courtyard of the house. They didn’t let him into the city (and they did it right!) He didn’t see anything and didn’t know.
Our historians sometimes like to conclude their speeches on the blockade with vague hints, something along the lines of "not everything has been said about the blockade yet, much remains to be learned." Well, if for half a century, in the presence of hundreds of thousands of living witnesses, they could not find out everything, then it is unlikely that they will be able to. Or rather, they want to.
The main issue is, of course, food. How much it was, where it was and who disposed of it.
Take the wartime Pravda binders. You will find there a bunch of fiery articles: “Leave not a single spikelet to the enemy! Take away or destroy food!” And food stocks were really taken out cleanly. There are published memoirs about the roads of Ukraine in the first months of the war. They were packed. Clogged not with refugees (unauthorized evacuation was prohibited), but with cows, sheep and other livestock. They were driven, of course, not beyond the Urals, but to the nearest meat processing plant, from where they were sent further in the form of carcasses, canned food, etc. Workers of meat-packing plants were exempted from conscription.
Look at the map of the railways of Russia. All food could be brought only to two cities: Moscow and Leningrad. Moreover, Leningrad was “lucky” - trains to Moscow were filled with strategic raw materials, factory equipment, Soviet and party institutions, and there was almost no room for food. Everything had to be taken to Leningrad.
As you know, the girls of the city were sent to dig anti-tank ditches (by the way, they turned out to be useless). And what did the young men do? Cadets of numerous military schools and universities? The holidays were canceled, but without any preparation it was impossible to immediately send them to the front, so they studied during the day and unloaded the wagons in the evening. Wagons with food, mind you.
Zhdanov's telegram to Stalin is known: "All warehouses are crammed with food, there is nowhere else to take it." For some reason, no one gives an answer to this telegram. But it is obvious: Use all the free premises left from the evacuated factories and institutions, historical buildings, etc. Of course, such a “way out” as simply distributing food to the population was categorically excluded.
Oddly enough, but it is possible to objectively and documentary evaluate total food brought to Leningrad. A number of publications: "Railways during the war", "Civil fleet in the war" indicate with good departmental pride the many tens of thousands of tons of food delivered to Leningrad.
Anyone can simply add up the given figures (even if they are somewhat overestimated!) And divide them by the number of population and troops and by 900 days of blockade. The result will be simply amazing. On such a diet, not only will you not die of hunger, but you will not be able to lose weight!
Once I managed to ask the historian a question: "So who ate all the food, and even so quickly?" To which he received the answer: "Zhdanov handed over all the food to the army."
So what, you say. In any besieged city, food is transferred to the control of the military. The main thing is that it does not leave the city. For any opinion about mental capacity our military cannot be imagined that they took him to Vologda or Central Asia. It was just that guards were posted at the warehouses, and their location was declared a military secret.
Here is such a final "secret" - Leningraders were dying of starvation near warehouses full of food.
What makes us related to the Germans and sharply distinguishes us from the Americans, the French and the British? We, like the Germans, lost the war. The real winners are the Communist Party and its wise leadership. They defeated not only the Germans, but also us.
I confess honestly - I do not really feel sorry for the old men and women who died in the blockade. They themselves chose and tolerated this leadership.
However, I feel very sorry for the children, the future of Russia. They might be sorry...
It is probably fair that in such a country children stop being born!
How the Badaev warehouses burned
An interesting feature of the Bolsheviks was their desire for "scientific" or at least "scientific". In particular, this was reflected in their attitude to such a phenomenon as hunger. Hunger was diligently studied, quite practical conclusions were drawn, and, finally, quite “scientifically” used for their own purposes. Already the famine in the Volga region was under the supervision of numerous (of course, well-fed!) Observers who compiled and sent detailed reports. Frankly carried out "genetic" selection, selectively saving those who seemed promising for the creation of a "new" person. The further history of the country provided great opportunities in this regard. Extensive materials were collected, which were studied at the secret institutes of the NKVD and the KGB.
War. All for the front, all for victory!
For victory, among other things, it was useful to quickly get rid of the "useless" population of Leningrad. This could provide a properly organized famine.
The centralized supply system made it easy to do this. In the pre-war years, the population was not allowed to have subsidiary farms and make significant food supplies. However, in the summer of 1941, all food supplies from the western regions of the country were taken to Leningrad. Leningraders unloaded this food, held it in their hands. And the whole city knew about him. Therefore, it was necessary to come up with some explanation for the "disappearance" of food from the city.
So the operation "Badaev warehouses" was developed. These warehouses were never the main ones and were inferior in size to many others, but were, however, the most famous mainly because they traditionally stored sweet things - sugar and confectionery. Sometimes they were sold cheap directly from the warehouse.
Lawyers know that, due to individual perception, witness statements never completely match. However, the stories about the fire at the Badaevsky warehouses are very similar to the memorized text: thick smoke over Leningrad, burning sugar “flowing like a river”, sweet burnt earth that was sold after the fire ...
In fact, when the air defense observers saw the start of a fire in the warehouse area, they immediately reported it to the fire brigade. From all parts of the city, fire brigades immediately rushed to the warehouses. However, they were stopped by the cordon of the NKD. Until the very end of the fire, no one was allowed into the territory of the warehouses and no one saw the fire near! The firefighters standing at the cordon opened fire hydrants and found that there was no water and the system was blocked.
Warehouses burned down quickly and to the ground, leaving neither charred food nor ingots of melted sugar. As for the sweet burnt earth, the earth of any sugar refineries is always sweet, both before the fire and after.
But what about the thick black smoke that hung over the city? There was smoke, but not from burnt warehouses. At the same time, cakes (the famous "duranda") were burning, or rather smoldering, at a neighboring oil and fat plant. By the way, why they caught fire and why they were not extinguished - this is very interest Ask! There was practically no fire there, but there was a lot of smoke.
After the fire, it was announced that the bulk of the city's food stocks had perished. This immediately made it possible to impose drastic restrictions on the distribution of food and start the planned famine.
In this story, it is not the composure and insensitivity of our authorities that is striking (we have seen something else!), but the amazing gullibility of the blockade. The overwhelming majority still believes that the famine was caused by the fire of the Badaev warehouses and all the other nonsense that "historians" inspire us.
Well, well, sugar can still burn if it is laid in such a way as to provide free access to air, so be it, but what about canned food, potatoes, grains, meat, sausage and fish, dairy products? After all, they can only be burned in special furnaces.
In addition, is it really all the food brought (plus the obligatory ones, since civil war, strategic food reserves), could run out in a couple of weeks?!
What is happening to us?
Maybe we really are the Land of Fools?
Vadim Fomchenko.
