The siege of Leningrad was broken. Heating and transport system

The Siege of Leningrad was a siege of one of the largest Russian cities that lasted more than two and a half years, which was waged by the German Army Group North with the help of Finnish troops on the Eastern Front of World War II. The blockade began on September 8, 1941, when the last route to Leningrad was blocked by the Germans. Although on January 18, 1943, Soviet troops managed to open a narrow corridor of communication with the city by land, the blockade was finally lifted only on January 27, 1944, 872 days after it began. It was one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history and perhaps the most costly in terms of casualties.

Prerequisites

The capture of Leningrad was one of the three strategic goals of the German Operation Barbarossa - and the main one for Army Group North. This importance was determined by the political status of Leningrad as the former capital of Russia and the Russian Revolution, its military significance as the main base of the Soviet Baltic Fleet, and the industrial power of the city, where there were many factories producing army equipment. By 1939 Leningrad produced 11% of all Soviet industrial output. It is said that Adolf Hitler was so confident of the capture of the city that, on his orders, invitations had already been printed to celebrate this event at the Astoria Hotel in Leningrad.

There are various assumptions about Germany's plans for Leningrad after its capture. Soviet journalist Lev Bezymensky argued that his city was supposed to be renamed Adolfsburg and turned into the capital of the new Ingermanland province of the Reich. Others claim that Hitler intended to completely destroy both Leningrad and its population. According to a directive sent to Army Group North on September 29, 1941, “After the defeat of Soviet Russia there is no interest in the continued existence of this major urban center. [...] Following the encirclement of the city, requests for negotiations for surrender should be rejected, since the problem of moving and feeding the population cannot and should not be solved by us. In this war for our existence, we cannot have an interest in preserving even a part of this very large urban population." It follows that Hitler's final plan was to raze Leningrad to the ground and give the areas north of the Neva to the Finns.

872 days of Leningrad. In a hungry loop

Preparing the blockade

Army Group North was moving towards Leningrad, its main goal (see Baltic operation 1941 and Leningrad operation 1941). Its commander, Field Marshal von Leeb, initially thought to take the city outright. But due to Hitler’s recall of the 4th Panzer Group (chief of the General Staff Halder persuaded him to transfer it further south, so that Feodor von Bock could attack Moscow) von Leeb had to begin a siege. He reached the shore of Lake Ladoga, trying to complete the encirclement of the city and connect with the Finnish army of the marshal Mannerheim, waiting for him on the Svir River.

Finnish troops were located north of Leningrad, and German troops approached the city from the south. Both had the goal of cutting off all communications to the city’s defenders, although Finland’s participation in the blockade mainly consisted of recapturing lands lost in the recent Soviet-Finnish war. The Germans hoped that their main weapon would be hunger.

Already on June 27, 1941, the Leningrad Soviet organized armed detachments of civilian militias. In the coming days, the entire population of Leningrad was informed of the danger. More than a million people were mobilized to build fortifications. Several defense lines were created along the perimeter of the city, from the north and south, defended mainly by civilians. In the south, one of the fortified lines ran from the mouth of the Luga River to Chudov, Gatchina, Uritsk, Pulkovo, and then across the Neva River. Another line ran through Peterhof to Gatchina, Pulkovo, Kolpino and Koltushi. The line of defense against the Finns in the north (Karelian fortified area) had been maintained in the northern suburbs of Leningrad since the 1930s and has now been renewed.

As R. Colley writes in his book “The Siege of Leningrad”:

...By order of June 27, 1941, all men from 16 to 50 years old and women from 16 to 45 were involved in the construction of fortifications, except for the sick, pregnant women and those caring for babies. Those conscripted were required to work for seven days, followed by four days of “rest,” during which they were required to return to their regular workplace or continue their studies. In August, the age limits were expanded to 55 years for men and 50 for women. The length of work shifts has also increased - seven days of work and one day of rest.

However, in reality these norms were never followed. One 57-year-old woman wrote that for eighteen days in a row, twelve hours a day, she hammered the ground, “hard as stone”... Teenage girls with delicate hands, who came in summer sundresses and sandals, had to dig the ground and drag heavy concrete blocks , having only a crowbar ... The civilian population erecting defensive structures often found themselves in the bombing zone or were shot at by German fighters from strafing flight.

It was a titanic effort, but some considered it in vain, confident that the Germans would easily overcome all these defensive lines...

The civilian population constructed a total of 306 km of wooden barricades, 635 km of wire fences, 700 km of anti-tank ditches, 5,000 earthen and wooden and reinforced concrete bunkers and 25,000 km of open trenches. Even the guns from the cruiser Aurora were moved to the Pulkovo Heights, south of Leningrad.

G. Zhukov claims that in the first three months of the war, 10 voluntary militia divisions, as well as 16 separate artillery and machine-gun militia battalions, were formed in Leningrad.

…[City party leader] Zhdanov announced the creation of a “people’s militia” in Leningrad... Neither age nor health were an obstacle. By the end of August 1941, over 160,000 Leningraders, of which 32,000 were women, signed up for the militia [voluntarily or under duress].

The militias were poorly trained, they were given old rifles and grenades, and were also taught how to make incendiary bombs, which later became known as Molotov cocktails. The first division of militia was formed on July 10 and already on July 14, practically without preparation, it was sent to the front to help the regular units of the Red Army. Almost all the militia died. Women and children were warned that if the Germans broke into the city, they would have to throw stones at them and pour boiling water on their heads.

... Loudspeakers continuously reported on the successes of the Red Army, holding back the onslaught of the Nazis, but kept silent about the huge losses of poorly trained, poorly armed troops...

On July 18, food distribution was introduced. People were given food cards that expired in a month. A total of four categories of cards were established; the highest category corresponded to the largest ration. It was possible to maintain the highest category only through hard work.

The 18th Army of the Wehrmacht accelerated its rush to Ostrov and Pskov, and the Soviet troops of the North-Western Front retreated to Leningrad. On July 10, 1941, Ostrov and Pskov were taken, and the 18th Army reached Narva and Kingisepp, from where it continued to advance towards Leningrad from the Luga River line. The German 4th Panzer Group of General Hoepner, attacking from East Prussia, reached Novgorod by August 16 after a rapid advance and, having taken it, also rushed to Leningrad. Soon the Germans created a continuous front from the Gulf of Finland to Lake Ladoga, expecting that the Finnish army would meet them halfway along the eastern shore of Ladoga.

On August 6, Hitler repeated his order: “Leningrad should be taken first, Donbass second, Moscow third.” From August 1941 to January 1944, everything that happened in the military theater between the Arctic Ocean and Lake Ilmen in one way or another related to the operation near Leningrad. Arctic convoys carried American Lend-Lease and British supplies along the Northern Sea Route to the railway station of Murmansk (although its railway connection with Leningrad was cut off by Finnish troops) and to several other places in Lapland.

Troops participating in the operation

Germany

Army Group North (Field Marshal von Leeb). It included:

18th Army (von Küchler): XXXXII Corps (2 infantry divisions) and XXVI Corps (3 infantry divisions).

16th Army (Bush): XXVIII Corps (von Wiktorin) (2 Infantry, 1 Panzer Division 1), I Corps (2 Infantry Divisions), X Corps (3 Infantry Divisions), II Corps (3 Infantry Divisions), (L Corps - from the 9th Army) (2 infantry divisions).

4th Panzer Group (Göpner): XXXVIII Corps (von Chappius) (1st Infantry Division), XXXXI Motorized Corps (Reinhardt) (1 infantry, 1 motorized, 1 tank divisions), LVI Motorized Corps (von Manstein) (1 infantry, 1 motorized, 1 tank, 1 tank-grenadier divisions).

Finland

Finnish Defense Forces HQ (Marshal Mannerheim). They included: I Corps (2 infantry divisions), II Corps (2 infantry divisions), IV Corps (3 infantry divisions).

Northern Front (Lieutenant General Popov). It included:

7th Army (2 rifle divisions, 1 militia division, 1 marine brigade, 3 motorized rifle and 1 tank regiment).

8th Army: Xth Rifle Corps (2 rifle divisions), XI Rifle Corps (3 rifle divisions), separate units (3 rifle divisions).

14th Army: XXXXII Rifle Corps (2 rifle divisions), separate units (2 rifle divisions, 1 fortified area, 1 motorized rifle regiment).

23rd Army: XIXth Rifle Corps (3 rifle divisions), Separate units (2 rifle, 1 motorized division, 2 fortified areas, 1 rifle regiment).

Luga operational group: XXXXI Rifle Corps (3 rifle divisions); separate units (1 tank brigade, 1 rifle regiment).

Kingisepp operational group: separate units (2 rifle, 1 tank division, 2 militia divisions, 1 fortified area).

Separate units (3 rifle divisions, 4 guard militia divisions, 3 fortified areas, 1 rifle brigade).

Of these, the 14th Army defended Murmansk, and the 7th Army defended areas of Karelia near Lake Ladoga. Thus, they did not take part in the initial stages of the siege. The 8th Army was originally part of the Northwestern Front. Retreating from the Germans through the Baltic states, on July 14, 1941 it was transferred to the Northern Front.

On August 23, 1941, the Northern Front was divided into the Leningrad and Karelian fronts, since the front headquarters could no longer control all operations between Murmansk and Leningrad.

Environment of Leningrad

Finnish intelligence had broken some of the Soviet military codes and was able to read a number of enemy communications. This was especially useful for Hitler, who constantly asked for intelligence information about Leningrad. The role of Finland in Operation Barbarossa was defined by Hitler’s “Directive 21” as follows: “The mass of the Finnish army will be given the task, together with the advance of the northern wing of the German armies, to bind the maximum of Russian forces with an attack from the west or from both sides of Lake Ladoga.”

The last railway connection with Leningrad was cut off on August 30, 1941, when the Germans reached the Neva. On September 8, the Germans reached Lake Ladoga near Shlisselburg and interrupted the last land road to the besieged city, stopping only 11 km from the city limits. The Axis troops did not occupy only the land corridor between Lake Ladoga and Leningrad. The shelling on September 8, 1941 caused 178 fires in the city.

Line of greatest advance of German and Finnish troops near Leningrad

On September 21, the German command considered options for the destruction of Leningrad. The idea of ​​occupying the city was rejected with the instruction: “we would then have to supply food to the residents.” The Germans decided to keep the city under siege and bombard it, leaving the population to starve. “Early next year we will enter the city (if the Finns do this first, we will not object), sending those who are still alive to internal Russia or into captivity, wipe Leningrad from the face of the earth, and hand over the area north of the Neva to the Finns " On October 7, 1941, Hitler sent another directive, reminding that Army Group North should not accept surrender from the Leningraders.

Finland's participation in the siege of Leningrad

In August 1941, the Finns approached 20 km to the northern suburbs of Leningrad, reaching the Finnish-Soviet border in 1939. Threatening the city from the north, they also advanced through Karelia to the east of Lake Ladoga, creating a danger to the city from the east. Finnish troops crossed the border that existed before the “Winter War” on the Karelian Isthmus, “cutting off” the Soviet protrusions on Beloostrov and Kiryasalo and thereby straightening the front line. Soviet historiography claimed that the Finnish movement stopped in September due to resistance from the Karelian fortified area. However, Finnish troops already at the beginning of August 1941 received orders to stop the offensive after achieving its goals, some of which lay beyond the pre-war 1939 border.

Over the next three years, the Finns contributed to the Battle of Leningrad by holding their lines. Their command rejected German entreaties to launch air attacks on Leningrad. The Finns did not go south of the Svir River in Eastern Karelia (160 km northeast of Leningrad), which they reached on September 7, 1941. In the southeast, the Germans captured Tikhvin on November 8, 1941, but were unable to complete the final encirclement of Leningrad by pushing further north , to connect with the Finns on Svir. On December 9, a counterattack by the Volkhov Front forced the Wehrmacht to retreat from its positions at Tikhvin to the line of the Volkhov River. Thanks to this, the line of communication with Leningrad along Lake Ladoga was preserved.

September 6, 1941 chief of the operational department of the Wehrmacht headquarters Alfred Jodl visited Helsinki in order to convince Field Marshal Mannerheim to continue the offensive. Finnish President Ryti, meanwhile, told his parliament that the purpose of the war was to regain areas lost during the "Winter War" of 1939-1940 and gain even more territory in the east, which would create a "Greater Finland". After the war, Ryti stated: “On August 24, 1941, I visited the headquarters of Field Marshal Mannerheim. The Germans encouraged us to cross the old border and continue the attack on Leningrad. I said that the capture of Leningrad was not part of our plans and that we would not take part in it. Mannerheim and War Minister Walden agreed with me and rejected the German proposals. As a result, a paradoxical situation arose: the Germans could not approach Leningrad from the north...”

Trying to whitewash himself in the eyes of the victors, Ryti thus assured that the Finns almost prevented the complete encirclement of the city by the Germans. In fact, German and Finnish forces held the siege together until January 1944, but there was very little systematic shelling and bombing of Leningrad by the Finns. However, the proximity of the Finnish positions - 33-35 km from the center of Leningrad - and the threat of a possible attack from them complicated the defense of the city. Until Mannerheim stopped his offensive (August 31, 1941), the commander of the Soviet Northern Front, Popov, could not release the reserves that stood against the Finnish troops on the Karelian Isthmus in order to turn them against the Germans. Popov managed to redeploy two divisions to the German sector only on September 5, 1941.

Borders of advance of the Finnish army in Karelia. Map. The gray line marks the Soviet-Finnish border in 1939.

Soon Finnish troops cut off the ledges at Beloostrov and Kiryasalo, which threatened their positions on the seashore and south of the Vuoksi River. Lieutenant General Paavo Talvela and Colonel Järvinen, the commander of the Finnish coastal brigade, responsible for the Ladoga sector, proposed to the German headquarters to block Soviet convoys on Lake Ladoga. The German command formed an “international” detachment of sailors under Finnish command (this included the Italian XII Squadriglia MAS) and the naval formation Einsatzstab Fähre Ost under German command. In the summer and autumn of 1942, these water forces interfered with communications with the besieged Leningraders along Ladoga. The appearance of ice forced the removal of these lightly armed units. They were never restored later due to changes in the front line.

City defense

The command of the Leningrad Front, formed after the division of the Northern Front in two, was entrusted to Marshal Voroshilov. The front included the 23rd Army (in the north, between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga) and the 48th Army (in the west, between the Gulf of Finland and the Slutsk-Mga position). It also included the Leningrad fortified area, the Leningrad garrison, the forces of the Baltic Fleet and the operational groups Koporye, Yuzhnaya (on the Pulkovo Heights) and Slutsk - Kolpino.

...By order of Voroshilov, units of the people's militia were sent to the front line just three days after formation, untrained, without military uniforms and weapons. Due to a shortage of weapons, Voroshilov ordered the militia to be armed with “hunting rifles, homemade grenades, sabers and daggers from Leningrad museums.”

The shortage of uniforms was so acute that Voroshilov addressed the population with an appeal, and teenagers went from house to house, collecting donations of money or clothing...

The shortsightedness of Voroshilov and Zhdanov had tragic consequences. They were repeatedly advised to disperse the main food supplies stored in the Badayev warehouses. These warehouses, located in the south of the city, extended over an area of ​​one and a half hectares. The wooden buildings were closely adjacent to each other; almost all the city's food supplies were stored in them. Despite the vulnerability of the old wooden buildings, neither Voroshilov nor Zhdanov heeded the advice. On September 8, incendiary bombs were dropped on warehouses. 3,000 tons of flour burned, thousands of tons of grain turned to ash, meat was charred, butter melted, melted chocolate flowed into the cellars. “That night, molten burnt sugar flowed through the streets,” said one of the eyewitnesses. Thick smoke was visible for many kilometers away, and with it the hopes of the city disappeared.

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

By September 8, German troops had almost completely surrounded the city. Dissatisfied with Voroshilov's inability, Stalin removed him and replaced him for a time with G. Zhukov. Zhukov only managed to prevent the capture of Leningrad by the Germans, but they were not driven back from the city and laid siege to it for “900 days and nights.” As A.I. Solzhenitsyn writes in the story “On the Edges”:

Voroshilov failed the Finnish war, was removed for a while, but already during Hitler’s attack he received the entire North-West, immediately failed both it and Leningrad - and was removed, but again - a successful marshal and in his closest trusted circle, like the two Semyons - Tymoshenko and the hopeless Budyonny, who failed both the South-West and the Reserve Front, and all of them were still members of the Headquarters, where Stalin had not yet included a single Vasilevsky, nor Vatutina, – and of course everyone remained marshals. Zhukov - did not give a marshal either for the salvation of Leningrad, or for the salvation of Moscow, or for the Stalingrad victory. What then is the meaning of the title if Zhukov handled affairs above all the marshals? Only after the Leningrad blockade was lifted - he suddenly gave it.

Rupert Colley reports:

...Stalin was fed up with Voroshilov's incompetence. He sent Georgy Zhukov to Leningrad to save the situation... Zhukov was flying to Leningrad from Moscow under the cover of clouds, but as soon as the clouds cleared, two Messerschmitts rushed in pursuit of his plane. Zhukov landed safely and was immediately taken to Smolny. First of all, Zhukov handed Voroshilov an envelope. It contained an order addressed to Voroshilov to immediately return to Moscow...

On September 11, the German 4th Panzer Army was transferred from near Leningrad to the south to increase the pressure on Moscow. In desperation, Zhukov nevertheless made several attempts to attack the German positions, but the Germans had already managed to erect defensive structures and received reinforcements, so all attacks were repulsed. When Stalin called Zhukov on October 5 to find out the latest news, he proudly reported that the German offensive had stopped. Stalin recalled Zhukov back to Moscow to lead the defense of the capital. After Zhukov's departure, command of the troops in the city was entrusted to Major General Ivan Fedyuninsky.

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

Bombing and shelling of Leningrad

... On September 4, the first shell fell on Leningrad, and two days later it was followed by the first bomb. Artillery shelling of the city began... The most striking example of devastating destruction was the destruction of the Badayevsky warehouses and dairy plant on September 8. The carefully camouflaged Smolny did not receive a single scratch throughout the entire blockade, despite the fact that all neighboring buildings suffered from hits...

Leningraders had to stand guard on roofs and stairwells, keeping buckets of water and sand ready to extinguish incendiary bombs. Fires raged throughout the city, caused by incendiary bombs dropped by German planes. Street barricades, designed to block the way for German tanks and armored vehicles if they broke into the city, only impeded the passage of fire trucks and ambulances. It often happened that no one extinguished a building that was on fire and it burned out completely, because the fire trucks did not have enough water to douse the fire, or there was no fuel to get to the place.

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

The air attack on September 19, 1941 was the worst air raid that Leningrad suffered during the war. A strike on the city by 276 German bombers killed 1,000 people. Many of those killed were soldiers being treated for wounds in hospitals. During six air raids that day, five hospitals and the city's largest market were damaged.

The intensity of artillery shelling of Leningrad increased in 1942 with the delivery of new equipment to the Germans. They intensified even more in 1943, when they began to use shells and bombs several times larger than the year before. German shelling and bombing during the siege killed 5,723 civilians and injured 20,507 civilians. The aviation of the Soviet Baltic Fleet, for its part, made more than 100 thousand sorties against the besiegers.

Evacuation of residents from besieged Leningrad

According to G. Zhukov, “before the war, Leningrad had a population of 3,103,000 people, and with its suburbs - 3,385,000. Of these, 1,743,129, including 414,148 children, were evacuated from June 29, 1941 to March 31, 1943. They were transported to the regions of the Volga region, the Urals, Siberia and Kazakhstan.”

By September 1941, the connection between Leningrad and the Volkhov Front (commander - K. Meretskov) was cut off. The defensive sectors were held by four armies: the 23rd Army in the north, the 42nd Army in the west, the 55th Army in the south, and the 67th Army in the east. The 8th Army of the Volkhov Front and the Ladoga Flotilla were responsible for maintaining the communication route with the city across Ladoga. Leningrad was defended from air attacks by the air defense forces of the Leningrad Military District and the naval aviation of the Baltic Fleet.

The actions to evacuate residents were led by Zhdanov, Voroshilov and A. Kuznetsov. Additional military operations were carried out in coordination with the Baltic Fleet forces under the overall command of Admiral V. Tributs. The Ladoga flotilla under the command of V. Baranovsky, S. Zemlyanichenko, P. Trainin and B. Khoroshikhin also played an important role in the evacuation of the civilian population.

...After the first few days, the city authorities decided that too many women were leaving the city, while their labor was needed here, and they began to send the children alone. A mandatory evacuation was declared for all children under the age of fourteen. Many children arrived at the station or collection point, and then, due to confusion, waited four days for departure. The food, carefully collected by caring mothers, was eaten in the very first hours. Of particular concern were rumors that German planes were shooting down trains containing evacuees. The authorities denied these rumors, calling them “hostile and provocative,” but confirmation soon came. The worst tragedy occurred on August 18 at the Lychkovo station. A German bomber dropped bombs on a train carrying evacuated children. The panic began. An eyewitness said that there was a scream and through the smoke he saw severed limbs and dying children...

By the end of August, over 630,000 civilians were evacuated from Leningrad. However, the city's population did not decline due to refugees fleeing the German advance in the west. The authorities were going to continue the evacuation, sending 30,000 people a day from the city, however, when the city of Mga, located 50 kilometers from Leningrad, fell on August 30, the encirclement was practically completed. The evacuation stopped. Due to the unknown number of refugees in the city, estimates vary, but approximately there were up to 3,500,000 [people] within the blockade ring. There was only enough food left for three weeks.

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

Famine in besieged Leningrad

The two and a half year German siege of Leningrad caused the worst destruction and greatest loss of life in the history of modern cities. By order of Hitler, most of the royal palaces (Catherine, Peterhof, Ropsha, Strelna, Gatchina) and other historical attractions located outside the city’s defense lines were looted and destroyed, many art collections were transported to Germany. A number of factories, schools, hospitals and other civilian structures were destroyed by air raids and shelling.

The 872-day siege caused severe famine in the Leningrad region due to the destruction of engineering structures, water, energy and food. It led to the death of up to 1,500,000 people, not counting those who died during the evacuation. Half a million victims of the siege are buried at the Piskarevskoye Memorial Cemetery in Leningrad alone. Human losses in Leningrad on both sides exceeded those suffered in the Battle of Stalingrad, the Battle of Moscow and atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Siege of Leningrad became the deadliest siege in world history. Some historians consider it necessary to say that in its course genocide was carried out - “racially motivated famine” - an integral part of the German war of extermination against the population of the Soviet Union.

The diary of a Leningrad girl Tanya Savicheva with entries about the death of all members of her family. Tanya herself also died from progressive dystrophy shortly after the blockade. Her diary as a girl was shown at the Nuremberg trials

Civilians of the city especially suffered from hunger in the winter of 1941/42. From November 1941 to February 1942, only 125 grams of bread were given per person per day, which consisted of 50-60% sawdust and other non-food impurities. For about two weeks in early January 1942, even this food was available only to workers and soldiers. Mortality peaked in January–February 1942 at 100 thousand people per month, mostly from starvation.

...After several months there were almost no dogs, cats or birds left in cages in the city. Suddenly, one of the last sources of fat, castor oil, was in demand. His supplies soon ran out.

Bread baked from flour swept from the floor along with garbage, nicknamed the “siege loaf,” turned out black as coal and had almost the same composition. The broth was nothing more than boiled water with a pinch of salt and, if you were lucky, a cabbage leaf. Money lost all value, as did any non-food items and jewelry—it was impossible to buy a crust of bread with family silver. Even birds and rodents suffered without food until they all disappeared: they either died of hunger or were eaten by desperate people... People, while they still had strength left, stood in long lines for food, sometimes for whole days in the piercing cold, and often returned home empty-handed, filled with despair - if they remained alive. The Germans, seeing the long lines of Leningraders, dropped shells on the unfortunate residents of the city. And yet people stood in lines: death from a shell was possible, while death from hunger was inevitable.

Everyone had to decide for themselves how to use the tiny daily ration - eat it in one sitting... or spread it out over the whole day. Relatives and friends helped each other, but the very next day they quarreled desperately among themselves over who got how much. When all alternative food sources ran out, people in desperation turned to inedible things - livestock feed, flaxseed oil and leather belts. Soon, belts, which people initially ate out of desperation, were already considered a luxury. Wood glue and paste containing animal fat were scraped off furniture and walls and boiled. People ate soil collected in the vicinity of the Badaevsky warehouses for the sake of the particles of molten sugar it contained.

The city lost water because water pipes froze and pumping stations were bombed. Without water, the taps dried up, the sewer system stopped working... City residents made holes in the frozen Neva and scooped up water in buckets. Without water, bakeries could not bake bread. In January 1942, when the water shortage became particularly acute, 8,000 people who had remained strong enough formed a human chain and passed hundreds of buckets of water from hand to hand, just to get the bakeries working again.

Numerous stories have been preserved about unfortunate people who stood in line for many hours for a loaf of bread only to have it snatched from their hands and greedily devoured by a man mad with hunger. The theft of bread cards became widespread; the desperate robbed people in broad daylight or picked the pockets of corpses and those wounded during German shelling. Obtaining a duplicate turned into such a long and painful process that many died without waiting for the wandering of a new ration card in the wilds of the bureaucratic system to end...

Hunger turned people into living skeletons. Rations reached a minimum in November 1941. The ration of manual workers was 700 calories per day, while the minimum ration was approximately 3,000 calories. Employees received 473 calories per day, compared with the normal 2,000 to 2,500 calories, and children received 423 calories per day, less than a quarter of what a newborn needs.

The limbs were swollen, the stomachs were swollen, the skin was tight on the face, the eyes were sunken, the gums were bleeding, the teeth were enlarged from malnutrition, the skin was covered with ulcers.

The fingers became numb and refused to straighten. Children with wrinkled faces resembled old people, and old people looked like the living dead... Children, left overnight orphans, wandered the streets as lifeless shadows in search of food... Any movement caused pain. Even the process of chewing food became unbearable...

By the end of September, we ran out of kerosene for our home stoves. Coal and fuel oil were not enough to fuel residential buildings. The power supply was irregular, for an hour or two a day... The apartments were freezing, frost appeared on the walls, the clocks stopped working because their hands froze. Winters in Leningrad are often harsh, but the winter of 1941/42 was particularly severe. Wooden fences were dismantled for firewood, and wooden crosses were stolen from cemeteries. After the supply of firewood on the street completely dried up, people began to burn furniture and books in the stoves - today a chair leg, tomorrow a floorboard, the next day the first volume of Anna Karenina, and the whole family huddled around the only source of heat... Soon Desperate people found another use for books: the torn pages were soaked in water and eaten.

The sight of a man carrying a body wrapped in a blanket, tablecloth or curtain to a cemetery on a sled became a common sight... The dead were laid out in rows, but the gravediggers could not dig graves: the ground was frozen through, and they, equally hungry, did not have enough strength for the grueling work . There were no coffins: all the wood was used as fuel.

The courtyards of the hospitals were “littered with mountains of corpses, blue, emaciated, terrible”... Finally, excavators began to dig deep ditches for the mass burial of the dead. Soon these excavators were the only machines that could be seen on the city streets. There were no more cars, no trams, no buses, which were all requisitioned for the “Road of Life”...

Corpses were lying everywhere, and their number was growing every day... No one had the strength left to remove the corpses. The fatigue was so all-consuming that I wanted to stop, despite the cold, sit down and rest. But the crouched man could no longer rise without outside help and froze to death. At the first stage of the blockade, compassion and the desire to help were common, but as the weeks passed, food became less and less, the body and mind weakened, and people became withdrawn into themselves, as if they were walking in their sleep... Accustomed to the sight of death, they became almost indifferent towards him, people increasingly lost the ability to help others...

And amid all this despair, beyond human understanding, German shells and bombs continued to fall on the city

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

Cannibalism during the siege

Documentation NKVD Cannibalism during the siege of Leningrad was not published until 2004. Most of the evidence of cannibalism that had surfaced up to this time was tried to be presented as unreliable anecdotes.

NKVD records record the first consumption of human flesh on December 13, 1941. The report describes thirteen cases, from a mother who strangled her 18-month-old child to feed three older ones to a plumber who killed his wife to feed his sons and nephews.

By December 1942, the NKVD had arrested 2,105 cannibals, dividing them into two categories: “corpse eaters” and “cannibals.” The latter (those who killed and ate living people) were usually shot, and the former were imprisoned. The Soviet Criminal Code did not have a clause on cannibalism, so all sentences were passed under Article 59 (“a special case of banditry”).

There were significantly fewer cannibals than corpse eaters; of the 300 people arrested in April 1942 for cannibalism, only 44 were murderers. 64% of the cannibals were women, 44% were unemployed, 90% were illiterate, only 2% had a previous criminal record. Women with young children and no criminal records, deprived of male support, often became cannibals, which gave the courts a reason for some leniency.

Considering the gigantic scale of the famine, the extent of cannibalism in besieged Leningrad can be considered relatively insignificant. No less common were murders over bread cards. In the first six months of 1942, 1,216 of them occurred in Leningrad. Many historians believe that the small number of cases of cannibalism “only emphasized that the majority of Leningraders maintained their cultural norms in the most unimaginable circumstances.”

Connection with blockaded Leningrad

It was vitally important to establish a route for constant supplies to Leningrad. It passed through the southern part of Lake Ladoga and the land corridor to the city west of Ladoga, which remained unoccupied by the Germans. Transportation across Lake Ladoga was carried out by water in the warm season and by truck on ice in winter. The security of the supply route was ensured by the Ladoga Flotilla, the Leningrad Air Defense Corps and the Road Security Troops. Food supplies were delivered to the village of Osinovets, from where they were transported 45 km to a small commuter railway to Leningrad. This route was also used to evacuate civilians from the besieged city.

In the chaos of the first war winter, no evacuation plan was developed. Until the ice road across Lake Ladoga opened on November 20, 1941, Leningrad was completely isolated.

The path along Ladoga was called the “Road of Life”. She was very dangerous. Cars often got stuck in the snow and fell through the ice, on which the Germans dropped bombs. Due to the large number of people who died in winter, this route was also called the “Road of Death.” However, it made it possible to bring in ammunition and food and pick up civilians and wounded soldiers from the city.

...The road was laid in terrible conditions - among snow storms, under an incessant barrage of German shells and bombs. When construction was finally completed, traffic along it also proved to be fraught with great risk. Trucks fell into huge cracks that suddenly appeared in the ice. To avoid such cracks, the trucks drove with their headlights on, which made them perfect targets for German planes... The trucks skidded, collided with each other, and the engines froze at temperatures below 20 °C. Along its entire length, the Road of Life was littered with broken down cars abandoned right on the ice of the lake. During the first crossing alone in early December, over 150 trucks were lost.

By the end of December 1941, 700 tons of food and fuel were delivered to Leningrad daily along the Road of Life. This was not enough, but thin ice forced the trucks to be loaded only halfway. By the end of January, the lake had frozen almost a full meter, allowing the daily supply volume to increase to 2,000 tons. And this was still not enough, but the Road of Life gave Leningraders the most important thing - hope. Vera Inber in her diary on January 13, 1942 wrote about the Road of Life like this: “... maybe our salvation will begin from here.” Truck drivers, loaders, mechanics, and orderlies worked around the clock. They went to rest only when they were already collapsing from fatigue. By March, the city received so much food that it became possible to create a small reserve.

Plans to resume the evacuation of civilians were initially rejected by Stalin, who feared unfavorable political repercussions, but he eventually gave permission for the most defenseless to leave the city along the Road of Life. By April, 5,000 people were transported from Leningrad every day...

The evacuation process itself was a great shock. The thirty-kilometer journey across the ice of the lake took up to twelve hours in an unheated truck bed, covered only with a tarpaulin. There were so many people packed that people had to grab the sides; mothers often held their children in their arms. For these unfortunate evacuees, the Road of Life became the “Road of Death.” One eyewitness tells how a mother, exhausted after several hours of riding in the back of a snowstorm, dropped her bundled child. The driver could not stop the truck on the ice, and the child was left to die from the cold... If the car broke down, as often happened, those who were traveling in it had to wait for several hours on the ice, in the cold, under the snow, under bullets and bombs from German planes . The trucks drove in convoys, but they could not stop if one of them broke down or fell through the ice. One woman watched in horror as the car in front fell through the ice. Her two children were traveling in it.

The spring of 1942 brought a thaw, which made further use of the ice Road of Life impossible. Warming has brought about a new scourge: disease. Piles of corpses and mountains of excrement, which had until now remained frozen, began to decompose with the advent of warmth. Due to the lack of normal water supply and sewerage, dysentery, smallpox and typhus quickly spread in the city, affecting already weakened people...

It seemed that the spread of epidemics would finally wipe out the population of Leningrad, which had already been considerably thinned out, but in March 1942 people gathered and together began a grandiose operation to clear the city. Weakened by malnutrition, Leningraders made superhuman efforts... Since they had to use tools hastily made from scrap materials, the work progressed very slowly, however... the work of cleaning the city, which ended in victory, marked the beginning of a collective spiritual awakening.

The coming spring brought a new source of food - pine needles and oak bark. These plant components provided people with the vitamins they needed, protecting them from scurvy and epidemics. By mid-April, the ice on Lake Ladoga had become too thin to support the Road of Life, but rations still remained significantly better than they were in the darkest days of December and January, not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively: the bread now tasted like real bread. To everyone’s joy, the first grass appeared and vegetable gardens were planted everywhere...

April 15, 1942... the power supply generators, which had been inactive for so long, were repaired and, as a result, the tram lines began to function again.

One nurse describes how the sick and wounded, who were near death, crawled to the windows of the hospital to see with their own eyes the trams rushing past, which had not run for so long... People began to trust each other again, they washed themselves, changed their clothes, women began to use cosmetics, again theaters and museums opened.

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

Death of the Second Shock Army near Leningrad

In the winter of 1941-1942, after repelling the Nazis from near Moscow, Stalin gave the order to go on the offensive along the entire front. About this broad, but failed offensive (which included the famous, disastrous for Zhukov Rzhev meat grinder) was little reported in previous Soviet textbooks. During it, an attempt was made to break the blockade of Leningrad. The hastily formed Second Shock Army was rushed towards the city. The Nazis cut it off. In March 1942, the deputy commander of the Volkhov Front (Meretskova), a famous fighter against communism, general, was sent to command the army already in the “bag”. Andrey Vlasov. A. I. Solzhenitsyn reports in “The Gulag Archipelago”:

...The last winter routes were still holding out, but Stalin forbade withdrawal; on the contrary, he drove the dangerously deepened army to advance further - through the abandoned swampy terrain, without food, without weapons, without air support. After two months of starvation and the drying out of the army (the soldiers from there later told me in the Butyrka cells that they trimmed the hooves of dead, rotting horses, cooked the shavings and ate them), the German concentric offensive against the encircled army began on May 14, 1942 (and in the air, of course, only German planes ). And only then, in mockery, was Stalin’s permission to return beyond the Volkhov received. And then there were these hopeless attempts to break through! - until the beginning of July.

The Second Shock Army was lost almost entirely. Captured, Vlasov ended up in Vinnitsa in a special camp for senior captured officers, which was formed by Count Stauffenberg, a future conspirator against Hitler. There, from the Soviet commanders who deservedly hated Stalin, with the help of German military circles in opposition to the Fuhrer, a Russian Liberation Army.

Performance of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony in besieged Leningrad

...However, the event that was destined to make the greatest contribution to the spiritual revival of Leningrad was still ahead. This event proved to the whole country and the whole world that Leningraders had survived the most terrible times and their beloved city would live on. This miracle was created by a native Leningrader who loved his city and was a great composer.

On September 17, 1942, Dmitri Shostakovich, speaking on the radio, said: “An hour ago I finished the score of the second part of my new large symphonic work.” This work was the Seventh Symphony, later called the Leningrad Symphony.

Evacuated to Kuibyshev (now Samara)... Shostakovich continued to work hard on the symphony... The premiere of this symphony, dedicated to “our fight against fascism, our upcoming victory and my native Leningrad,” took place in Kuibyshev on March 5, 1942...

...The most prominent conductors began to argue for the right to perform this work. It was first performed by the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Sir Henry Wood, and on July 19 it was performed in New York, conducted by Arthur Toscanini...

Then it was decided to perform the Seventh Symphony in Leningrad itself. According to Zhdanov, this was supposed to raise the morale of the city... The main orchestra of Leningrad, the Leningrad Philharmonic, was evacuated, but the orchestra of the Leningrad Radio Committee remained in the city. Its conductor, forty-two-year-old Carl Eliasberg, was tasked with gathering the musicians. But out of one hundred orchestra members, only fourteen people remained in the city, the rest were drafted into the army, killed or died of hunger... A call was spread throughout the troops: all those who knew how to play any musical instrument had to report to their superiors... Knowing how weakened by the musicians who gathered in March 1942 for the first rehearsal, Eliasberg understood the difficult task facing him. “Dear friends,” he said, “we are weak, but we must force ourselves to start working.” And this work was difficult: despite the additional rations, many musicians, primarily wind players, lost consciousness from the stress that playing their instruments required... Only once during all the rehearsals did the orchestra have enough strength to perform the entire symphony - three days before public speaking.

The concert was scheduled for August 9, 1942 - several months earlier, the Nazis had chosen this date for a magnificent celebration at the Astoria Hotel in Leningrad for the expected capture of the city. Invitations were even printed and remained unsent.

The Philharmonic Concert Hall was filled to capacity. People came in their best clothes... The musicians, despite the warm August weather, wore coats and gloves with their fingers cut off - the starving body was constantly experiencing the cold. All over the city, people gathered in the streets near loudspeakers. Lieutenant General Leonid Govorov, who had headed the defense of Leningrad since April 1942, ordered a barrage of artillery shells to be rained down on German positions several hours before the concert to ensure silence at least for the duration of the symphony. The loudspeakers turned on at full power were directed towards the Germans - the city wanted the enemy to listen too.

“The very performance of the Seventh Symphony in besieged Leningrad,” the announcer announced, “is evidence of the ineradicable patriotic spirit of Leningraders, their perseverance, their faith in victory. Listen, comrades! And the city listened. The Germans who approached him listened. The whole world listened...

Many years after the war, Eliasberg met German soldiers sitting in trenches on the outskirts of the city. They told the conductor that when they heard the music, they cried:

Then, on August 9, 1942, we realized that we would lose the war. We have felt your strength, capable of overcoming hunger, fear and even death. “Who are we shooting at? – we asked ourselves. “We will never be able to take Leningrad because its people are so selfless.”

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

Offensive at Sinyavino

A few days later, the Soviet offensive began at Sinyavino. It was an attempt to break the blockade of the city by the beginning of autumn. The Volkhov and Leningrad fronts were given the task of uniting. At the same time, the Germans, having brought up the troops freed after capture of Sevastopol, were preparing for an offensive (Operation Northern Light) with the goal of capturing Leningrad. Neither side knew of the other's plans until the fighting began.

The offensive at Sinyavino was several weeks ahead of the Northern Light. It was launched on August 27, 1942 (the Leningrad Front opened small attacks on the 19th). The successful start of the operation forced the Germans to redirect the troops intended for the “Northern Light” to counterattack. In this counteroffensive they were used for the first time (and with rather weak results) Tiger tanks. Units of the 2nd Shock Army were surrounded and destroyed, and the Soviet offensive stopped. However, German troops also had to abandon the attack on Leningrad.

Operation Spark

On the morning of January 12, 1943, Soviet troops launched Operation Iskra - a powerful offensive of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts. After stubborn fighting, Red Army units overcame German fortifications south of Lake Ladoga. On January 18, 1943, the 372nd Rifle Division of the Volkhov Front met with the troops of the 123rd Rifle Brigade of the Leningrad Front, opening a land corridor of 10 - 12 km, which gave some relief to the besieged population of Leningrad.

...January 12, 1943... Soviet troops under the command of Govorov launched Operation Iskra. A two-hour artillery bombardment fell on the German positions, after which masses of infantry, covered from the air by aircraft, moved across the ice of the frozen Neva. They were followed by tanks crossing the river on special wooden platforms. Three days later, the second wave of the offensive crossed the frozen Lake Ladoga from the east, hitting the Germans in Shlisselburg... The next day, the Red Army liberated Shlisselburg, and on January 18 at 23.00 a message was broadcast on the radio: “The blockade of Leningrad has been broken!” That evening there was a general celebration in the city.

Yes, the blockade was broken, but Leningrad was still under siege. Under continuous enemy fire, the Russians built a 35-kilometer-long railway line to bring food into the city. The first train, having eluded German bombers, arrived in Leningrad on February 6, 1943. It brought flour, meat, cigarettes and vodka.

A second railway line, completed in May, made it possible to deliver even larger quantities of food while simultaneously evacuating civilians. By September, supply by rail had become so efficient that there was no longer any need to use the route across Lake Ladoga... Rations increased significantly... The Germans continued their artillery bombardment of Leningrad, causing significant losses. But the city was returning to life, and food and fuel were, if not in abundance, then sufficient... The city was still in a state of siege, but no longer shuddered in its death throes.

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

Lifting the blockade of Leningrad

The blockade lasted until January 27, 1944, when the Soviet "Leningrad-Novgorod Strategic Offensive" of the Leningrad, Volkhov, 1st and 2nd Baltic Fronts expelled German troops from the southern outskirts of the city. The Baltic Fleet provided 30% of the air power for the final blow to the enemy.

...On January 15, 1944, the most powerful artillery shelling of the war began - half a million shells rained down on German positions in just an hour and a half, after which Soviet troops launched a decisive offensive. One by one, cities that had been in German hands for so long were liberated, and German troops, under pressure from twice the Red Army in numbers, rolled back uncontrollably. It took twelve days, and at eight o’clock in the evening on January 27, 1944, Govorov was finally able to report: “The city of Leningrad has been completely liberated!”

That evening, shells exploded in the night sky over the city - but it was not German artillery, but a festive salute from 324 guns!

It lasted 872 days, or 29 months, and finally this moment came - the siege of Leningrad ended. It took another five weeks to completely drive the Germans out of the Leningrad region...

In the autumn of 1944, Leningraders silently looked at the columns of German prisoners of war who entered the city to restore what they themselves had destroyed. Looking at them, Leningraders felt neither joy, nor anger, nor thirst for revenge: it was a process of purification, they just needed to look into the eyes of those who had caused them unbearable suffering for so long.

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

In the summer of 1944, Finnish troops were pushed back beyond the Vyborg Bay and the Vuoksa River.

Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad

Even during the blockade itself, the city authorities collected and showed to the public military artifacts - like the German plane that was shot down and fell to the ground in the Tauride Garden. Such objects were assembled in a specially designated building (in Salt Town). The exhibition soon turned into a full-scale Museum of the Defense of Leningrad (now the State Memorial Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad). In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Stalin exterminated many Leningrad leaders in the so-called Leningrad case. This happened before the war, after murder of Sergei Kirov in 1934, and now another generation of local government and party functionaries was destroyed for allegedly publicly overestimating the importance of the city as an independent fighting unit and their own role in defeating the enemy. Their brainchild, the Leningrad Defense Museum, was destroyed and many valuable exhibits were destroyed.

The museum was revived in the late 1980s with the then wave of “glasnost”, when new shocking facts were published showing the heroism of the city during the war. The exhibition opened in its former building, but has not yet been restored to its original size and area. Most of its former premises had already been transferred to various military and government institutions. Plans to build a new modern museum building were put on hold due to the financial crisis, but the current Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu He still promised to expand the museum.

Green Belt of Glory and monuments in memory of the blockade

Commemoration of the siege received a second wind in the 1960s. Leningrad artists dedicated their works to the Victory and the memory of the war, which they themselves witnessed. The leading local poet and war participant, Mikhail Dudin, proposed erecting a ring of monuments on the battlefields of the most difficult period of the siege and connecting them with green spaces around the entire city. This was the beginning of the Green Belt of Glory.

On October 29, 1966, at the 40th km of the Road of Life, on the shore of Lake Ladoga near the village of Kokorevo, the “Broken Ring” monument was erected. Designed by Konstantin Simun, it was dedicated both to those who escaped through frozen Ladoga and to those who died during the siege.

On May 9, 1975, a monument to the heroic defenders of the city was erected on Victory Square in Leningrad. This monument is a huge bronze ring with a gap that marks the spot where Soviet troops eventually broke through the German encirclement. In the center, a Russian mother cradles her dying soldier son. The inscription on the monument reads: “900 days and 900 nights.” The exhibition below the monument contains visual evidence of this period.

The blockade of Leningrad was established not with the goal of forcing the city to capitulate, but in order to make it easier to destroy the entire surrounded population. Everyday life in the besieged city turned into daily exploits of the townspeople, which ultimately resulted in a great victory. The heroic struggle in the blockade ring and changes in the usual life of the city residents.

Leningrad blockade

When Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, the Soviet leadership understood that Leningrad would certainly be one of the key figures in the unfolding military operations. He ordered the organization of a commission to evacuate the city. It was necessary to remove the population, enterprise equipment and military cargo. However, no one expected the blockade of Leningrad. The German army had the wrong tactics.

And Hitler, according to the testimony of people from his circle, had a special attitude towards the capture of Leningrad. We should not forget that the German Fuhrer was not just a military strategist. First of all, he was a talented politician, and knew the value of ideology and the objects that symbolize it. Hitler didn't need the city. He was supposed to disappear from the face of the earth under German artillery fire. Plunge into the swamps on which, contrary to generally accepted norms, it was once erected. The brainchild of Peter the Great and the place of birth and victory of Bolshevism, hated by Hitler, during the Battle of Leningrad had to be destroyed. And to do this, first of all, not for military reasons (although this moment was also important for a successful advance towards Moscow), but in order to undermine the morale of Soviet citizens.

Hitler didn’t even need this territory. Neither the city itself nor the suburbs of Leningrad. At the Nuremberg trials his words were voiced, which were recorded by M. Bormann:

“The Finns are laying claim to the Leningrad region. Raze Leningrad to the ground in order to then give it to the Finns.”

Leningrad geographically turned out to be on the outskirts of the fighting country. The Germans captured the Baltic states very quickly. This closed the west side. Finland was advancing from the north. In the east lies the wide and very capricious Lake Ladoga in terms of navigation. Therefore, in order to surround Leningrad with a blockade ring, it was enough to capture and hold literally several strategically important points.

On the eve of the blockade

The first days of the war were very successful for the German army. According to Operation Barbarossa, Army Group North was supposed to destroy all Soviet troops in the Baltic states, developing an offensive, occupy all Baltic naval bases and capture Leningrad by the end of July. The first part of the plan went pretty smoothly. Due to the surprise of the attack and the geographical dispersion of the Soviet divisions, German troops were able to deliver powerful blows to them unit by unit. Enemy artillery bombardments mowed down the ranks of the defenders. In this case, a significant role was played by the attackers’ significant advantage in personnel and the large number of tanks and aircraft at their disposal.

In the meantime, the German leadership was making plans, and also intoxicated by the successes of past campaigns and the smooth start of the current one, the German army bravely advanced towards its intended goals, Soviet troops hastily erected defenses and prepared evacuation. Leningraders were rather cool about the possibility of evacuating. They were reluctant to leave home. But the call to help units of the Red Army in defense, on the contrary, was reacted with great enthusiasm. Both old and young offered their help. Women and men willingly agreed to work on the preparation of defensive structures. After the call to form a people's militia, military registration and enlistment offices were literally inundated with thousands of applications.

In a very short time, 10 divisions were formed from unprepared, but eager to fight residents. They were ready to fight to the death for their homes, their wives and children. These newly minted troops included college students, naval personnel, and ship personnel. They were formed into ground brigades and sent to the front. Thus, the command of the Leningrad district was replenished with another 80 thousand soldiers.

Stalin orders Leningrad not to surrender under any circumstances and to defend it to the last soldier. In addition to ground fortifications, air defense was also organized. It used anti-aircraft guns, fighter planes, searchlights, barrage balloons and radar stations.

The effectiveness of air defense can be judged by the first raid, carried out on June 23, 1941 - literally on the second day of the war. Not a single enemy plane broke through to the city. During the first summer, 17 raids were carried out, in which more than one and a half thousand aircraft took part. Only 28 units broke through to Leningrad. And 232 planes never returned anywhere - they were destroyed.

By July 10, 1941, German tank units were 200 km from Leningrad. Had they continued to advance at such a brisk pace, the army would have reached the city in 10 days. By this time, the front of the 11th Soviet Army had already been broken through. It seemed that nothing would stop us from taking Leningrad on the move. However, not all German generals agreed with this point of the plan. Even before the attack, there were thoughts that a siege could significantly simplify the task and save the lives of German soldiers.

Evacuation. First wave

The evacuation of residents from besieged Leningrad had to take place in several stages. Already on June 29 - a week after the start of the war - the first echelons carried 15 thousand children away from the city. In total, 390 thousand children had to leave Leningrad. Unfortunately, according to the evacuation plans, the final destination for a large number of them was supposed to be the south of the Leningrad region. But that’s where the German units were heading. Therefore, in a hurry, 170 thousand children were returned back to Leningrad.

But it was not only children who were taken away. A planned evacuation of the city’s adult population also took place. Over the summer, 164 thousand workers left Leningrad, who were evacuated along with their enterprises. The first wave of evacuation was characterized by the extreme reluctance of residents to leave the city. They simply did not believe in a protracted war. And leaving our homes and breaking away from our usual way of life was both undesirable and somewhat scary.

The evacuation continued under the supervision of specially created committees. All available routes were used - railways, highways and country roads. The situation was further complicated by the fact that, with the advance of German troops, a wave of refugees from surrounding areas poured into Leningrad. People had to be accepted and, in the shortest possible time, transported further into the interior of the country. All summer, all the structures involved in the evacuation process worked hard. When the evacuation began, train tickets stopped going on sale. Now only those who were subject to evacuation could leave.

According to the commission, before the start of the siege of Leningrad, 488 thousand Leningraders and 147.5 thousand refugees who arrived in the city were taken out of the city.

On August 27, 1941, railway communication between Leningrad and the rest of the Soviet Union was interrupted. On September 8, all land communications were finally interrupted. After the Germans managed to capture Shlisselburg. This date became the official day of the beginning of the blockade in Leningrad. There were almost 900 days of terrible, exhausting struggle ahead. But then the Leningraders did not yet suspect this.

The first days of the siege of Leningrad

Regular shelling of Leningrad began several days before the start of the siege. On September 12th, the German command received a new order from Hitler. The assault on the city was called off. The soldiers had to strengthen their existing positions and prepare for defense. The blockade ring had to be strong and indestructible. And the city had to be constantly bombarded with artillery fire.

The first days of the siege of Leningrad were characterized by very different moods of the residents. Often – diametrically opposed. Those who firmly believed in the existing regime believed that the Red Army could cope with the German troops. And those who allowed the surrender of Leningrad were sure that Hitler simply could not be worse than Stalin. There were even those who quite openly expressed the hope that the Bolshevik regime would fall. True, the vigilant and conscientious communists did not allow the brave souls to completely forget themselves, and there were no mass riots on this basis.

Ordinary residents could not possibly know that the plans of the fascist blockade did not include the liberation of civilians from anything. A professor at the University of St. Petersburg, as a historian, explained in an interview with TASS:

“The Nazi leadership, starting on August 21, 1941, quite clearly defined its intentions regarding Leningrad. The Germans intended to tighten the blockade ring as tightly as possible, depriving the city of the possibility of supply. And then the enemy counted on the fact that the city would capitulate quickly enough, not having the resources to provide for the multi-million population.”

Yes, the German leadership calculated that the food supply would be depleted very quickly. This means that, having weighed the incommensurability of losses and suffering, if not the Soviet government, then certainly the Soviet citizens themselves will stop their senseless resistance. But they miscalculated. They miscalculated in the same way as with the blitzkrieg. They miscalculated in the same way as with such familiar “boilers”, widely used by the German army in the Second World War. This tactic was also calculated on the fact that when finding oneself in a hopeless situation and enduring suffering, a person loses the will to fight. But the Russians did not lose it. And this axiom was once again proven by the besieged Leningrad. Not brilliant staff officers. Not the professional skill of commanders. And ordinary people. Who have not lost the will to live. Who continued to fight day after day for as long as the siege of Leningrad lasted.

German politics

An interesting look at Leningrad under the siege from the opposite – German – side. After the rapid advance of the fascist army in the Baltic states, the soldiers expected a repeat of the European blitzkrieg. At that time, Operation Barbarossa was still unfolding like clockwork. Of course, both members of the command and ordinary privates understood that Leningrad simply would not surrender. The history of Russia testified to this. This is precisely why, because of the stubborn resistance in the past, Hitler was so wary of this city. He really wanted to destroy it even before the capture of Moscow.

Finland took the side of Germany in World War II. And it was their army that advanced in the northern direction. And they still had fresh memories of the Finnish war, in which the Soviet Union had already been defeated once. Therefore, in general, the expectations of the advancing fighters were the most rosy.

When the order came to start the blockade, the Wehrmacht soldiers even became somewhat depressed. Spending a long time in cold trenches was very different from being billeted in cozy French houses. Hitler motivated his decision by the fact that in this way military forces would be saved. You just have to wait until hunger begins in the city. And help in this by destroying food warehouses with artillery fire. The fire had to be fired powerfully, massively and regularly. Nobody was going to save the city. His fate was sealed.

In general, this situation did not contradict any existing military ethics. These unwritten rules were contradicted by something else - the German command was forbidden to accept surrender. Nikita Lamagin speaks about this: “Capitulation as an act of war would impose on the Nazi leadership the need to think about the civilian population.” In practice, this means that the food supply (even in the most minimal quantities) of several million people would fall on the Germans. And they themselves have already experienced what it means to deliver food across the vast Russian expanses and roads that are unsuitable for this.

History professor Lamagin continues: “Moreover, any attempts to break out of the city, be it women, old people or children, had to be prevented, first with barrage fire, and then with destruction fire.”

And there have been such attempts. People fleeing one by one literally came to the German trenches. They were simply pushed back to return to where they came from. That was the order. Hitler's position on this issue was consistent. He was going to exterminate the Slavs, and now the opportunity to do this presented itself. What was at stake here was no longer just a military victory and division of territories. It was about the continued existence of millions of people.

With the passage of time, questions inevitably arise about whether it was possible to avoid the horrors that the siege of Leningrad brought in 1941-1943. Hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. Not from shelling, not from explosions, but from hunger slowly and painfully devouring the body. Even against the backdrop of all the horrors that occurred during the Great Patriotic War, this page of history continues to amaze the imagination. An incredibly high price was paid by the siege survivors for the defense of Leningrad during the siege.

Hitler's plans were not known to the general public. And the heroic defense of Leningrad will remain truly heroic. But today, having documents and eyewitness accounts, it is known for certain that the residents of Leningrad had no chance to save their lives during the enemy blockade by simply surrendering the city and entrusting themselves to the mercy of the winner. This winner did not need prisoners. German commanders had clear orders to crush resistance by destroying warehouses, waterworks, power plants and electrical supplies with artillery strikes.

Life of besieged Leningrad

The Soviet leadership did not consider it necessary to notify citizens about the real picture of what was happening at the front. Information about the progress of the war was briefly reported, but most often the information was sporadic and incomplete. And ignorance breeds anxiety and fear. In addition, soon the fighting began to get very close. People from the front appeared in the city who could convey the news first-hand. And such people came not in dozens, but in thousands. Soon food disappeared from the shelves. The search for food became the main task of the townspeople.

The worse the situation at the front became, the more gloomy the mood was in the city. It was not just that the city was surrounded by troops. Many cities of the Soviet Union fell victim to enemy aggression. There was a danger that the Germans would capture Leningrad. And this couldn’t help but frighten me. But the overall picture was shaped by other tones. After all, there was a shortage of food exactly as long as the blockade of Leningrad lasted. After some time, the supply of electricity to residential buildings stopped, and soon the water supply and sewerage systems also failed.

In addition to the fact that it was physically difficult, the situation was very depressing psychologically. One of the historian-researchers very aptly described the condition of people with the expression “tearing the fabric of life.” The usual way of life was completely disrupted. The city was constantly bombed. In addition, we had to work even more than in peacetime. And all this against the backdrop of chronic malnutrition.

And yet the city lived. He didn’t just survive, but lived and functioned as if he continued to breathe deeply. From the very day the blockade began, which ultimately lasted almost 900 days, Leningraders never ceased to believe in very early liberation. This hope gave strength to the residents of the besieged city throughout the three years.

The most pressing problem during the time that the blockade lasted was always the search for food. The system of food cards, which were used to sell goods, was introduced from the very beginning. But this did not save us from an acute shortage of the most necessary products. The city simply did not have the necessary food supplies.

At the very beginning, the Germans managed to set fire to the Badayev warehouses with bombs. Sugar, flour and butter burned there. Many Leningraders saw this enormous fire, and they understood perfectly well what it meant for them. There was even an opinion that the famine began precisely because of this fire. But these warehouses did not have enough food to supply the townspeople. At that time, about three million people lived in Leningrad. And the city itself has always depended on imported products. It simply did not have autonomous reserves. Now the besieged population of Leningraders was supplied with food along the Road of Life.

The norms of bread sold on ration cards changed depending on the developing situation. The table “Norms for the distribution of bread to the Leningrad population during the siege” indicates how much bread workers, employees and dependents received, including children. People stood in huge lines every day to get the bread they were entitled to on their coupons.

Standards for issuing bread to the Leningrad population during the siege

But under these conditions people continued to work. The Kirov plant, which produced tanks, produced products during the blockade. The children went to school. City services worked, order was maintained in the city. Even institute employees came to work. Later, eyewitnesses who survived the blockade will tell you that those who survived were those who continued to get out of bed in the morning and do something, adhere to some kind of schedule and rhythm. Their will to live did not fade. And those who preferred to save energy by stopping leaving the house most often died quickly in their own homes.

The history of the All-Union Institute of Plant Growing is very indicative. Academician Vavilov at one time collected a rich collection of plants, both cultivated and wild. To collect it, 110 special expeditions were made. Plant specimens were collected literally all over the world. The selection fund contained several tons of seeds and tubers from 250 thousand samples. This collection is still recognized as the richest on the planet. Institute employees came to work and heated the premises to save priceless specimens from the forty-degree frost. During the first winter of the siege, 28 employees of this institute died of hunger. Having potatoes, rice and other grains on hand. They didn't touch them.

The road of life

The only connecting link between the city sandwiched in the blockade ring and the rest of the world was Lake Ladoga. The Ladoga flotilla was used to supply food during the siege of Leningrad. Great difficulties were created by the fact that this lake was very difficult for navigation. In addition, the Germans did not stop bombing food ships. Right along the coast of Lake Ladoga, the aid brought was hastily unloaded. It was possible to deliver only a small part of the products it needed to the city. But even this small amount, transmitted across the lake, played a role. If this road of life did not exist, the deaths that resulted from the terrible famine would have been many times greater.

In winter, when navigation was impossible, the road of life was laid directly on the ice. Tents were set up on the snowy surface of the lake, where, if necessary, truck drivers could receive technical assistance and warm up. The road along Lake Ladoga was guarded by two lines of barriers, also installed directly on the ice. At one end the trucks were carrying food, and at the other - a large number of people who continued to be evacuated from the city. Many truck drivers made several dangerous trips per shift, even when, due to thin ice, they literally risked their lives. Many cars went under the ice.

Children's contribution to the liberation of Leningrad

The Leningrad Regional Committee decided to involve schoolchildren in the defense cause. On October 21, 1941, this appeal was published in the Smena newspaper. The children responded with great enthusiasm. And their contribution was truly enormous. In any task that was within the capabilities of their little, not yet strong hands, they gave their all one hundred percent.

At first, the tasks were quite pioneering. During the siege, children went from house to house and collected scrap metal, which was used for processing and making ammunition. Schoolchildren managed to send literally tons of both ferrous and non-ferrous metal to Leningrad factories. Soon, empty containers were needed to package a flammable mixture like a Molotov cocktail. And here the schoolchildren did not disappoint either. In just one week they collected more than a million bottles.

Then it was time to collect warm clothes for the needs of the army. This time the children did not limit themselves to simple rounds. They themselves knitted warm sweaters and socks, which they then sent to the soldiers at the front. In addition, they wrote letters and sent small gifts to the soldiers - notepads, pencils, soap, handkerchiefs. There were a lot of such parcels.

In hospitals, children were on duty along with adults. For how many days did the siege of Leningrad last, these little orderlies worked together with everyone else. They helped as best they could - they read to the wounded, helped them write and send letters home. The children cleaned the wards and washed the floors. These little orderlies performed the serious work that adults would do, freeing up the nurses, who thus had more time to help the wounded.

They were even in places where there was absolutely no place for children. It was decided that the children would be on duty with the adults. Little guys were on duty on cold roofs and attics, ready to extinguish the falling incendiary bombs and the fires that had already started because of them. They carried sand upstairs, which they covered the floor with in a thick layer to prevent fire, and filled huge barrels with water into which they could throw a fallen bomb.

The children bravely stood at their posts until the blockade was lifted. “Sentries of Leningrad roofs” - that’s what they were called. When during air raids everyone descended into bomb shelters, they climbed into the attics under the roar of falling and exploding shells; during the ongoing bombing, the guys vigilantly watched to defuse in time those bombs that would fall on the area entrusted to them. And they counted how many of these bombs they managed to extinguish. Here are some surviving data: Gena Tolstov (9 years old) - 19 bombs, Oleg Pegov (9 years old) - 15 bombs, Kolya Andreev (10 years old) - 43 bombs. About the last boy, Kolya, it is specified that he was “with his comrades.” The document does not say how old they were. And it's all. Nine-year-old children defending their duty to neutralize deadly projectiles. We will never know how many of them did not return from these duties.

"Sentries of Leningrad roofs"

Or here is another case described. Vitya Tikhonov saw an incendiary bomb on the street ready to explode. He grabbed her by the tail and pulled her into the sand. Vita was seven years old. He didn't even have the strength to lift this shell. But he knew what to do with it. And did. And his act was noted in the local newspaper as a real feat. But these, although impressive to the core, are the most gentle stories. The Leningrad heroic defense knows many other cases. Here is one of the episodes from the duty of teenager Pasha Lovygin.

During the next shelling of Leningrad by enemy artillery, two incendiary bombs burned through the roof of the house where Pasha was on duty and fell into the attic. The guy quickly grabbed them by the metal stabilizers, which burned his hands unbearably (there was simply no time left to neutralize them one by one, grabbing them with iron tongs) and threw them into the prepared barrels of water. But then he saw that at the other end of the attic a third bomb was already flaring up. It had to be extinguished there. And Pasha received such painful burns that he fell from unbearable pain. And then I saw the fourth burning bomb. He managed to extinguish it too. After which the young man was forced to be sent to the hospital, where other victims of the blockade were already located.

But the children’s contribution to the defense of their hometown, while the blockade continued, is not limited to this. They, hungry and exhausted, stood at their machines to replace their fathers and brothers who had gone to the front. And sometimes even take up the baton of a worker who has died of exhaustion. They worked full shifts, trying to keep up with, and sometimes exceeding, the skilled worker norm. They volunteered to build defensive structures. But most people knew shovels and picks almost only from pictures. They dug trenches and ensured that the streets were blocked with anti-tank fortifications.

The years of siege took countless lives. And it's terrible. But no less terrible is the fact that they took away their childhood from an entire generation of children. Yes, war is always terrible. And she doesn't spare anyone. But in the case of the blockade of Leningrad, what is terrifying is that it was an absolutely deliberate extermination of the civilian population. And including children. But, in spite of everything, they could not be exterminated either physically or morally. And this was also their help. The soldiers receiving the parcels, members of the city militia standing guard, and ordinary citizens. They saw with their own eyes that they had something to fight for and someone to protect. With their example, the little defenders of Leningrad inspired those around them.

Preparing for decisive action

In April 1942, Leonid Govorov was appointed commander of the Leningrad military district. He was supposed to lead the troops defending the city. Two months later, Govorov was appointed by Headquarters as commander of all forces of the Leningrad Front. The new commander approached his duties very responsibly. He spent a lot of time on plans, diagrams and calculations, trying to use every opportunity to improve the defense. The map of the environment was thoroughly studied by him. Govorov also looked for non-standard approaches to solving problems.

Thus, due to the fact that he reorganized the location of the artillery of the Leningrad front, the intensity of enemy artillery decreased significantly. Firstly, due to the fact that now Soviet soldiers, thanks to an increase in firing range (this was influenced by a change in deployment), hit German guns and disabled them. Secondly, due to the fact that the Germans had to spend a significant part of the shells fighting this very artillery. As a result, the number of shells falling within the city decreased by 7 times. This helped save thousands more lives. In addition, the damage caused to cultural and historical monuments of Leningrad has also decreased.

At the same time, Govorov was not just a theorist. He personally inspected the defensive structures created according to his designs. If it was impossible to calmly walk through the trenches he inspected without ducking, the commanders responsible for this sector personally dealt with stern superiors. The results were not long in coming. Losses from enemy sniper bullets and shell fragments began to decline sharply.

Govorov prepared very carefully for the operation to break the blockade. He understood perfectly well that the soldiers had no experience in breaking through the ring of serious fortifications. And he will not have a second attempt at liberating Leningrad. Therefore, he gradually withdrew individual units from the front line and trained them. Then these units returned to their positions, giving way to the next batch of fighters. So, step by step, Govorov honed the skills of his fighters.

And there was something to hone. In that part of the blockade ring that the Soviet troops were going to storm, the Germans fortified themselves on a high six-meter bank. They abundantly flooded its slopes with water, thereby turning it into a real glacier. But we still had to get to this glacier. Eight hundred meters of ice-bound river. Unprotected open area. We should not forget that by this time the siege of Leningrad had lasted for more than two years. The soldiers were weakened by prolonged hunger. But the commander believed that his fighters would break through the cordon ring. Govorov even shouted “Hurray!!!” during the attack he forbade it so that people would not waste their strength. Instead, the advance was accompanied by the playing of a military band.

Breakthrough and lifting of the blockade of Leningrad

On January 12, 1943, Soviet troops were ordered to begin implementing Operation Iskra to break the blockade. The offensive of the Leningrad front began with a massive two-hour artillery bombardment of German positions. Before the last explosion had time to die down, Soviet aviation became involved. The military band struck up the “Internationale,” and the infantry rushed to the attack. The training, which took place over several months, did not pass without a trace. Losses among the Red Army soldiers were minimal. They quickly reached the border of the fortifications, and, using crampons, hooks and assault ladders, climbed right up the ice wall close to the enemy and were able to break through the blockade. On the morning of January 18, 1943, in the northern suburbs of Leningrad, Soviet units moving towards each other finally met. They liberated Shlisselburg and relieved the coast of Lake Ladoga from the blockade.

However, this day is not considered the end of the blockade. After all, only a small plot of land was liberated. The blockade was not completely lifted. On January 14, 1944, the Leningrad-Novgorod strategic operation began with a powerful artillery strike. Formations of the two Soviet armies fought towards each other, crashing into the very heart of the echeloned German defense. They managed to first widen the gap and then push the enemy 100 km away from the city.

How many days did the siege of Leningrad last?

The beginning of the siege of Leningrad is counted from the moment the Germans captured the city of Shlisselburg on September 8, 1941. It ended on January 27, 1944. Thus, From the moment the blockade was established until the city was completely liberated, exactly 872 days passed.

The resilience of the defenders of Leningrad was noted by the country's leadership. It was awarded the honorary title of Hero City. In 1945, only four cities in the Soviet Union received such recognition. Poems were dedicated to the hero city of Leningrad, and many volumes of books were written about the feat of its inhabitants. Research into events related to the blockade is still ongoing.

Before the blockade began, Hitler had been massing troops around the city for a month. The Soviet Union, in turn, also took action: ships of the Baltic Fleet were stationed near the city. 153 main caliber guns were supposed to protect Leningrad from the German invasion. The sky above the city was guarded by an anti-aircraft corps.

However, the German units went through the swamps, and by the fifteenth of August they formed the Luga River, finding themselves in the operational space directly in front of the city.

Evacuation - first wave

Some people were evacuated from Leningrad even before the blockade began. By the end of June, a special evacuation commission was launched in the city. Many refused to leave, inspired by optimistic statements in the press about the speedy victory of the USSR. The commission staff had to convince people of the need to leave their homes, practically agitating them to leave in order to survive and return later.

On June 26, we were evacuated across Ladoga in the hold of a ship. Three ships carrying small children sank when they were hit by mines. But we were lucky. (Gridyushko (Sakharova) Edil Nikolaevna).

There was no plan on how to evacuate the city, since the likelihood that it could be captured was considered almost impossible. From June 29, 1941 to August 27, about 480 thousand people were deported, approximately forty percent of them were children. About 170 thousand of them were taken to points in the Leningrad region, from where they again had to be returned to Leningrad.

They were evacuated along the Kirov Railway. But this route was blocked when German troops captured it at the end of August. The exit from the city along the White Sea-Baltic Canal near Lake Onega was also cut off. On September 4, the first German artillery shells fell on Leningrad. The shelling was carried out from the city of Tosno.

First days

It all started on September 8, when the fascist army captured Shlisselburg, closing the ring around Leningrad. The distance from the location of the German units to the city center did not exceed 15 km. Motorcyclists in German uniforms appeared in the suburbs.

It didn't seem like it for long then. It’s unlikely that anyone expected that the blockade would drag on for almost nine hundred days. Hitler, the commander of the German troops, for his part, hoped that the resistance of the hungry city, cut off from the rest of the country, would be broken very quickly. And when this did not happen even after several weeks, I was disappointed.

Transport in the city did not work. There was no lighting on the streets, no water, electricity or steam heating was supplied to the houses, and the sewage system did not work. (Bukuev Vladimir Ivanovich).

The Soviet command also did not foresee such a development of events. In the first days of the blockade, the leadership of the units that defended Leningrad did not report that Hitler’s troops were closing the ring: there was hope that it would be quickly broken. This did not happen.

The confrontation, which lasted more than two and a half years, claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. The blockade runners and the troops who did not allow German troops into the city understood what all this was for. After all, Leningrad opened the road to Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, where the ships of the USSR allies were unloaded. It was also clear to everyone that, by surrendering, Leningrad would have signed its own death sentence - this beautiful city simply would not exist.

The defense of Leningrad made it possible to block the path for the invaders to the Northern Sea Route and to divert significant enemy forces from other fronts. Ultimately, the blockade made a serious contribution to the victory of the Soviet army in this war.

As soon as the news that German troops had closed the ring spread throughout the city, its residents began to prepare. All the products were bought up in the stores, and all the money in the savings banks was withdrawn from the savings books.

Not everyone was able to leave early. When the German artillery began to conduct constant shelling, which happened already in the first days of the blockade, it became almost impossible to leave the city.

On September 8, 1941, the Germans bombed large Badayev food warehouses, and the city's three million population was doomed to starvation. (Bukuev Vladimir Ivanovich).

These days, one of the shells set fire to the Badayevsky warehouses, where the strategic food supply was stored. This is what is called the cause of the famine that the remaining residents had to endure. But the documents, whose secrecy status was recently lifted, say that there were no large reserves.

Preserving enough food for a city of three million was problematic during the war. No one in Leningrad prepared for such a turn of events, so food was brought into the city from outside. No one set the task of creating a “safety cushion”.

This became clear by September 12, when the audit of the food that was in the city was completed: the food, depending on its type, was only enough for a month or two. How to deliver food was decided at the very top. By December 25, 1941, bread distribution standards were increased.

The entry of food cards was done immediately - within the first days. The food standards were calculated based on the minimum that would not allow a person to simply die. Stores no longer simply sold groceries, although the black market flourished. Huge queues formed for food rations. People were afraid that they would not have enough bread.

Not prepared

The issue of providing food became the most pressing during the blockade. One of the reasons for such a terrible famine, experts in military history call the delay in the decision to import food, which was made too late.

one tile of wood glue cost ten rubles, then a tolerable monthly salary was around 200 rubles. They made jelly from the glue; there was pepper and bay leaves in the house, and all this was added to the glue. (Brilliantova Olga Nikolaevna).

This happened due to the habit of hushing up and distorting facts so as not to “sow decadent sentiments” among residents and the military. If all the details about Germany's rapid advance had been known to the high command earlier, perhaps our casualties would have been much smaller.

Already in the first days of the blockade, military censorship was clearly operating in the city. Complaining about difficulties in letters to family and friends was not allowed - such messages simply did not reach the recipients. But some of these letters have survived. Just like the diaries that some Leningraders kept, where they wrote down everything that happened in the city during the siege months. It was they who became the source of information about what happened in the city before the blockade began, as well as in the first days after Hitler’s troops encircled the city.

Could the famine have been avoided?

The question of whether it was possible to prevent a horrific famine during the siege in Leningrad is still asked by historians and the survivors of the siege themselves.

There is a version that the country's leadership could not even imagine such a long siege. By the beginning of the autumn of 1941, everything in the city with food was the same as everywhere else in the country: cards were introduced, but the norms were quite large, for some people it was even too much.

The food industry operated in the city, and its products were exported to other regions, including flour and grain. But there were no significant food supplies in Leningrad itself. In the memoirs of the future academician Dmitry Likhachev, one can find lines that no reserves were made. For some reason, the Soviet authorities did not follow the example of London, where they actively stocked up on food. In fact, the USSR was preparing in advance for the fact that the city would be surrendered to fascist troops. The export of food stopped only at the end of August, after German units blocked the railway connection.

Not far away, on the Obvodny Canal, there was a flea market, and my mother sent me there to exchange a pack of Belomor for bread. I remember how a woman went there and asked for a loaf of bread for a diamond necklace. (Aizin Margarita Vladimirovna).

Residents of the city began to stock up on food themselves in August, anticipating hunger. There were queues outside the shops. But few managed to stock up: those pitiful crumbs that they managed to acquire and hide were very quickly eaten later, during the blockade autumn and winter.

How they lived in besieged Leningrad

As soon as the standards for issuing bread were reduced, the queues at bakeries turned into huge “tails”. People stood for hours. At the beginning of September, German artillery bombing began.

Schools continued to operate, but fewer and fewer children came. We studied by candlelight. Constant bombing made it difficult to study. Gradually, schooling stopped altogether.

During the blockade, I went to kindergarten on Kamenny Island. My mother worked there too. ...One day one of the guys told a friend his cherished dream - a barrel of soup. Mom heard and took him to the kitchen, asking the cook to come up with something. The cook burst into tears and told her mother: “Don’t bring anyone else here... there’s no food left at all. There is only water in the pan." Many children in our garden died of hunger - out of 35 of us, only 11 remained. (Alexandrova Margarita Borisovna).

On the streets you could see people who could barely move their feet: they simply didn’t have the strength, everyone walked slowly. According to the recollections of those who survived the siege, these two and a half years merged into one endless dark night, in which the only thought was to eat!

Autumn days of 1941

The autumn of 1941 was only the beginning of trials for Leningrad. Since September 8, the city was bombed by fascist artillery. On this day, the Badayevsky food warehouses caught fire from an incendiary shell. The fire was huge, the glow from it could be seen from different parts of the city. There were 137 warehouses in total, twenty-seven of them burned out. This is approximately five tons of sugar, three hundred and sixty tons of bran, eighteen and a half tons of rye, forty-five and a half tons of peas were burned there, and 286 tons of vegetable oil were lost, and the fire also destroyed ten and a half tons of butter and two tons of flour . This, experts say, would be enough for the city for only two or three days. That is, this fire was not the cause of the subsequent famine.

By September 8, it became clear that there was little food in the city: in a few days there would be no food. The Military Council of the Front was entrusted with managing the available reserves. Card regulations were introduced.

One day, our flatmate offered my mother meat cutlets, but my mother sent her away and slammed the door. I was in indescribable horror - how could I refuse cutlets with such hunger. But my mother explained to me that they were made from human meat, because there was nowhere else to get minced meat in such a hungry time. (Boldyreva Alexandra Vasilievna).

After the first bombing, ruins and shell craters appeared in the city, the windows of many houses were broken, and chaos reigned on the streets. Slingshots were placed around the affected areas to prevent people from going there, because an unexploded shell could get stuck in the ground. Signs were hung in places where there was a likelihood of being hit by shelling.

In the fall, rescuers were still working, the city was being cleared of rubble, and even houses that had been destroyed were being restored. But later no one was interested in this anymore.

By the end of autumn, new posters appeared - with advice on preparing for winter. The streets became deserted, only occasionally people passed by, gathering at the boards where advertisements and newspapers were posted. Street radio horns also became places of attraction.

Trams went to the final station in Srednyaya Rogatka. After September 8, tram traffic decreased. The bombings were to blame. But later the trams stopped running.

Details of life in besieged Leningrad became known only decades later. Ideological reasons did not allow us to speak openly about what was really happening in this city.

Leningrader's ration

Bread became the main value. They stood for rations for several hours.

They baked bread from more than one flour. There was too little of it. Food industry specialists were tasked with coming up with something that could be added to the dough so that the energy value of the food would be preserved. Cotton cake was added, which was found in the Leningrad port. The flour was also mixed with flour dust, which had grown over the walls of the mills, and dust shaken out of the bags where the flour used to be. Barley and rye bran were also used for baking. They also used sprouted grain found on barges that were sunk in Lake Ladoga.

The yeast that was in the city became the basis for yeast soups: they were also included in the ration. The flesh of the skins of young calves became the raw material for jelly, with a very unpleasant aroma.

I remember one man who walked around the dining room and licked everyone’s plates. I looked at him and thought that he would die soon. I don’t know, maybe he lost the cards, maybe he just didn’t have enough, but he’s already gotten to this point. (Batenina (Larina) Oktyabrina Konstantinovna).

On September 2, 1941, workers in hot shops received 800 grams of so-called bread, engineering and technical specialists and other workers - 600. Employees, dependents and children - 300-400 grams.

From October 1, rations were halved. Those who worked in factories were given 400 grams of “bread.” Children, employees and dependents received 200 each. Not everyone had cards: those who failed to get them for some reason simply died.

On November 13, food became even scarcer. Workers received 300 grams of bread per day, others only 150. A week later, the norms dropped again: 250 and 125.

At this time, confirmation came that food could be transported by car on the ice of Lake Ladoga. But the thaw disrupted the plans. From the end of November to mid-December, food did not arrive in the city until strong ice was established on Ladoga. From December twenty-fifth, standards began to rise. Those who worked began to receive 250 grams, the rest - 200. Then the ration increased, but hundreds of thousands of Leningraders had already died. This famine is now considered one of the worst humanitarian disasters of the twentieth century.

In modern historiography, the title “Kyiv princes” is usually used to designate a number of rulers of the Kyiv principality and the Old Russian state. The classical period of their reign began in 912 with the reign of Igor Rurikovich, the first to bear the title of “Grand Duke...

the first days of the siege of Leningrad

On September 8, 1941, on the 79th day of the Great Patriotic War, a blockade ring closed around Leningrad

The Germans and their allies advancing on Leningrad had the categorical goal of its complete destruction. The headquarters of the Soviet command allowed for the possibility of surrendering the city and began the evacuation of valuables and industrial facilities in advance.

Residents of the city knew nothing about the plans of either side, and this made their situation especially alarming.

About the “war of tactics” on the Leningrad front and how it affected the besieged city - in the TASS material.

German plans: war of annihilation

Hitler's plans did not leave Leningrad any future: the German leadership and Hitler personally expressed intentions to raze the city to the ground. The same statements were made by the leadership of Finland, Germany’s ally and partner in the military operations for the siege of Leningrad.

In September 1941, Finnish President Risto Ryti directly stated to the German envoy in Helsinki: “If St. Petersburg no longer exists as a large city, then the Neva would be the best border on the Karelian Isthmus... Leningrad must be liquidated as a large city.”

The Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht Ground Forces (OKH), giving the order to encircle Leningrad on August 28, 1941, defined the tasks of Army Group North advancing on the city as the most dense encirclement. At the same time, an attack on the city by infantry forces was not envisaged.

Vera Inber, Soviet poet and prose writer

On September 10, the First Deputy People's Commissar of the NKVD of the USSR, Vsevolod Merkulov, arrived in Leningrad on a special mission, who, together with Alexei Kuznetsov, the second secretary of the regional party committee, was supposed to prepare a set of measures in the event of the forced surrender of the city to the enemy.

“Without any sentimentality, the Soviet leadership understood that the struggle could develop even according to the most negative scenario,” the researcher is confident.

Historians believe that neither Stalin nor the command of the Leningrad Front knew about the Germans’ abandonment of plans to storm the city and the transfer of the most combat-ready units of Gepner’s 4th Tank Army to the Moscow direction. Therefore, until the blockade was lifted, this plan of special measures to disable the most important strategic facilities in the city existed and was periodically checked.

"In Zhdanov's notebooks ( First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. - Approx. TASS) at the end of August - beginning of September there is a record that it is necessary to create illegal stations in Leningrad, keeping in mind that the possibility of continuing the fight against the Nazis and the occupiers can occur in conditions when the city is surrendered,” says Nikita Lomagin.

Leningraders: in the ring of ignorance

Leningraders followed the developments of events from the first days of the war, trying to predict the fate of their hometown. The Battle of Leningrad began on July 10, 1941, when Nazi troops crossed the then border of the Leningrad region. Siege diaries indicate that already on September 8, when the city was subjected to massive shelling, most of the townspeople realized that the enemy was nearby and tragedy could not be avoided. One of the dominant moods of these months was anxiety and fear.

“Most of the townspeople had a very poor idea of ​​the situation in the city, around the city, at the front,” says Nikita Lomagin. “This uncertainty was characteristic of the mood of the townspeople for quite a long time.” In mid-September, Leningraders learned about the difficult situation at the front from military personnel who found themselves in the city for redeployment and other reasons.

Since the beginning of September, due to the very difficult food situation, the rules for the operation of the supply system began to change.

Leningraders said that not only the food, but even the smell of it, had disappeared from the stores, and now the trading floors smelled of emptiness. “The population began to think about some additional ways to find food, about new survival strategies,” explains the historian.

“During the blockade, there were a lot of proposals from below, from scientists, engineers, inventors, on how to solve the problems that the city faced: from the point of view of transport, from the point of view of various kinds of food substitutes, blood substitutes,” says Nikita Lomagin.

The fire at the Badayevsky warehouses on the first day of the siege, where 38 food warehouses and storerooms burned down, had a particular effect on the townspeople. The supply of food they had was small and could have lasted the city for a maximum of a week, but as rations tightened, Leningraders became increasingly confident that this fire was the cause of mass starvation in the city.

bread grain and flour - for 35 days;

cereals and pasta - for 30 days;

meat and meat products - for 33 days;

fats - for 45 days.

The norms for issuing bread at that time were:

workers - 800 g;

employees - 600 g;

dependents and children - 400 g.

The mood of the townspeople worsened as changes occurred at the front. In addition, the enemy actively carried out propaganda activities in the city, of which the so-called whisper propaganda was especially widespread, spreading rumors about the invincibility of the German army and the defeat of the USSR. Artillery terror also played a role - constant massive shelling to which the city was subjected from September 1941 until the blockade was lifted.

Historians say that the totality of tragic circumstances that disrupted the normal course of life of Leningraders reached its peak in December 1941, when food standards became minimal, most enterprises stopped working due to a lack of electricity, and water supply, transport, and other city infrastructure practically stopped working.

“This set of circumstances is what we call a blockade,” says Nikita Lomagin. “It’s not just the encirclement of the city, it’s the shortage of everything against the backdrop of hunger, cold and shelling, the cessation of the functioning of traditional connections for the metropolis between workers, engineers, enterprises, teachers, institutions, etc. The rupture of this fabric of life was an extremely severe psychological blow."

The only link connecting the urban space during the blockade was the Leningrad radio, which, according to the researchers, united both the meaning of the struggle and the explanation of what was happening.

“People wanted to hear news, receive information, emotional support and not feel lonely,” says Lomagin.

From the end of September 1941, historians note, the townspeople began to expect an early lifting of the blockade. No one in the city could believe that it would last long. This belief was strengthened by the first attempts to liberate Leningrad, made in September-October 1941, and later by the success of the Red Army near Moscow, after which Leningraders expected that, following the capital, the Nazis would be driven back from the city on the Neva.

“No one in Leningrad believed that this would last for a long time until January 1943, when the blockade was broken,” says Irina Muravyova, a researcher at the State Memorial Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad. “Leningraders were constantly waiting for a breakthrough and the release of the blockade of the city.”

The front has stabilized: who won?

The front near Leningrad stabilized on September 12. The German offensive was stopped, but the Nazi command continued to insist that the blockade ring around the city shrink closer and demanded that the Finnish allies fulfill the conditions of the Barbarossa plan.

He assumed that the Finnish units, having rounded Lake Ladoga from the north, would meet Army Group North in the area of ​​the Svir River and thereby close the second ring around Leningrad.

“It was impossible to avoid the blockade of Leningrad under those conditions,” says Vyacheslav Mosunov.

“Up until the start of the Great Patriotic War, the defense of Leningrad was built primarily on the condition that the enemy would attack from the north and west,” the historian notes. “The Leningrad Military District, which had the most extensive territory, from the very beginning of hostilities was focused on the defense of the northern approaches to the city. This was a consequence of pre-war plans."

Alexander Werth, British journalist, 1943

The question of declaring Leningrad an open city could never arise, as it did, for example, with Paris in 1940. The war of Nazi Germany against the USSR was a war of extermination, and the Germans never made a secret of this.

In addition, the local pride of Leningrad was of a peculiar nature - an ardent love for the city itself, for its historical past, for the wonderful literary traditions associated with it (this primarily concerned the intelligentsia) here was combined with the great proletarian and revolutionary traditions of the city’s working class. And nothing could bind these two sides of the love of Leningraders for their city into one stronger whole than the threat of destruction hanging over it.

In Leningrad, people could choose between a shameful death in German captivity and an honorable death (or, if they were lucky, life) in their own unconquered city. It would also be a mistake to try to distinguish between Russian patriotism, revolutionary impulse and Soviet organization, or to ask which of these three factors played the more important role in saving Leningrad; all three factors were combined in that extraordinary phenomenon that can be called “Leningrad in the days of the war.”

“For the German command, the offensive turned into an actual military defeat,” notes Vyacheslav Mosunov. “Out of the 4th Panzer Group, only the 41st Motorized Corps was able to fully complete its task without additional assistance. It managed to break through the defenses of the 42nd Army and complete the task to capture the Dudergof Heights. However, the enemy was unable to use his success."

Hitler dreamed of sweeping Leningrad off the face of the earth. He realized that the city, which was the cradle of the revolution for the Soviet country, was of considerable importance in maintaining the morale of the Soviet state. He hoped to demoralize the country by destroying Leningrad. The Fuhrer was not interested in the military-industrial and cultural potential of the city. His goal was to force the population to leave the city, in the hope that the massive flow of refugees into the interior of the country to the east would cause discord and confusion in those cities where refugees would appear.

The blockade ring and the first attempts to break the siege

He managed to create a ring around the city. In this he was largely helped by Finnish troops, who closed the exit from the city to the north.

Since the autumn of 1941, the Soviet troops were faced with the task of breaking the blockade of the city at any cost. Attempts to open the ring and ensure communication between Leningrad and the rest of the country by land were made repeatedly.

Soviet troops carried out an offensive from the Sinyavinsk-Shlisselburg ledge along the southern coast of Ladoga. But the German occupiers managed to create powerful fortifications in this zone and the weakened, exhausted soldiers of the Soviet army were never able to move forward.

The Red Army troops concentrated on the left bank of the Neva on an elongated strip about 3 kilometers long and no more than a kilometer wide. This section of the front was called the Nevsky Piglet. The Germans spared no ammunition in shelling this area of ​​land, and Soviet troops suffered numerous losses. In 2 years, the Soviet army lost 50 thousand soldiers on the Nevsky patch.

At the beginning of 1942, the front command attempted to liberate Leningrad from the siege ring with the forces of the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts. However, the offensive movement of the Soviet troops was accompanied by huge losses, and ended in a crushing defeat of the 2nd Shock Army of the Volkhov Front.

The second attempt to break the blockade was called the Sinyavinsk operation. And although it did not achieve its goal, during this offensive operation the Reichstag’s “Northern Lights” plan, aimed at deepening the blockade, was thwarted.

In April-May 1942, the Germans tried to sink ships standing on the Neva. By the summer, the German command set as its goal to speed up military operations on the Leningrad Front and at the same time the bombing and artillery shelling of the city intensified.

To this end, the Germans deployed new artillery batteries equipped with heavy guns that fired at a distance of up to 25 km. The Nazis outlined several strategically important points in the city, which were fired on daily from these guns.

But Leningrad and its surroundings also managed to turn into a fortification area. Many engineering structures were created that made it possible to carry out a hidden regrouping of troops, bringing in reserves, and withdrawing soldiers from the front line. Thanks to these measures, the losses of Soviet troops decreased. Camouflage was organized, reconnaissance was streamlined.

Breaking the blockade

On the morning of January 12, 1943, artillery preparation began, which lasted 2 hours and 10 minutes, after which the 67th Army of the Leningrad Front and the 2nd Shock Army of the Volkhov Front launched a massive offensive. By the end of the day they had approached 3 km on each side. The next day, despite the stubborn confrontation of the Germans, the Red Army troops approached another 5-6 km. The distance was reduced by another 2 kilometers on January 14.

The Germans sought to hold the first and fifth workers' villages, strongholds on the flanks of the breakthrough, at any cost. They transferred reserve potential from ammunition and units here. The group located north of the villages tried to break through to its main forces.

On January 18, the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts closed in the area of ​​workers' settlements, thereby depriving the German units of their strongholds. During the military operation, Shlisselburg and the entire southern coast of Lake Ladoga were cleared of Germans. Thanks to the broken corridor, land communication between the city and the country was resumed.

Attempts by the 67th and 2nd Shock armies to continue the offensive to the south were hampered by enemy forces, who regularly brought new forces into the Sinyavin area. This forced the Red Army troops to switch to defensive tactics.

On January 14, troops of the Leningrad, Volkhov and 2nd Baltic fronts launched an offensive planned by headquarters in the sector between Leningrad and Novgorod. The complete and final liberation of Leningrad from the blockade ring was carried out on January 21-25, when the armies of the Leningrad Front destroyed the Krasnoselsko-Ropshinsky fascist formation, and parts of the Volkhov Front liberated Novgorod. On January 27, the city celebrated its liberation with fireworks.

In memory of the breaking of the siege of Leningrad, the “Broken Ring” memorial was erected on the shore of Lake Ladoga.