January 27th we celebrate breakthrough Blockade of Leningrad, which allowed in 1944 to finish one of the most tragic pages of world history. In this review, we have collected 10 ways who helped real people survive in blockade years. Perhaps this information will be useful to someone in our time.

Leningrad was surrounded on September 8, 1941. At the same time, the city did not have enough supplies that could provide the local population with essential products, including food, for any long time. During the blockade, front-line soldiers were given 500 grams of bread per day on cards, factory workers - 250 (about 5 times less than the actual required number of calories), employees, dependents and children - in general 125. Therefore, the first cases of starvation were recorded after a few weeks after the blockade ring was closed.

In conditions of acute shortage of food, people were forced to survive as best they could. 872 days of blockade is a tragic, but at the same time heroic page in the history of Leningrad. And it is about the heroism of people, about their self-sacrifice that we want to talk about in this review.

It was incredibly difficult during the Siege of Leningrad for families with children, especially with the smallest ones. After all, in conditions of food shortages, many mothers in the city stopped producing breast milk. However, women found ways to save their baby. History knows several examples of how nursing mothers cut the nipples on their breasts so that babies get at least some calories from the mother's blood.

It is known that during the Blockade, the starving residents of Leningrad were forced to eat domestic and street animals, mainly dogs and cats. However, it is not uncommon for pets to become the main breadwinners for entire families. For example, there is a story about a cat named Vaska, who not only survived the Blockade, but also brought mice and rats almost daily, of which a huge number divorced in Leningrad. From these rodents, people prepared food in order to somehow satisfy their hunger. In the summer, Vaska was taken out into the countryside to hunt birds.

By the way, after the war, two monuments to cats from the so-called “meowing division” were erected in Leningrad, which made it possible to cope with the invasion of rodents that destroy the last food supplies.

The famine in Leningrad reached such an extent that people ate everything that contained calories and could be digested by the stomach. One of the most "popular" products in the city was flour glue, which held the wallpaper in the houses. It was scraped off paper and walls, then mixed with boiling water and thus made at least a little nutritious soup. In a similar way, building glue was used, the bars of which were sold in the markets. Spices were added to it and jelly was cooked.

Jelly was also made from leather products - jackets, boots and belts, including army ones. This skin itself, often saturated with tar, was impossible to eat because of the unbearable smell and taste, and therefore people got the hang of first burning the material on fire, burning out the tar, and only then cooking nutritious jelly from the remnants.

But wood glue and leather products are only a small part of the so-called food substitutes that were actively used to fight hunger in besieged Leningrad. By the time the Blockade began, the factories and warehouses of the city had a fairly large amount of material that could be used in the bread, meat, confectionery, dairy and canning industries, as well as in public catering. Edible products at that time were cellulose, intestines, technical albumin, needles, glycerin, gelatin, cake, etc. They were used to make food by both industrial enterprises and ordinary people.

One of the actual causes of the famine in Leningrad is the destruction by the Germans of the Badaev warehouses, which stored the food supplies of the city of many millions. The bombing and subsequent fire completely destroyed a huge amount of food that could have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. However, the inhabitants of Leningrad managed to find some products even in the ashes of the former warehouses. Eyewitnesses say that people collected earth at the place where the sugar reserves burned down. They then filtered this material, and boiled and drank the cloudy sweetish water. This high-calorie liquid was jokingly called "coffee".

Many surviving residents of Leningrad say that one of the common products in the city in the first months of the Siege was cabbage stumps. The cabbage itself was harvested in the fields around the city in August-September 1941, but its root system with stalk remained in the fields. When problems with food in the besieged Leningrad made themselves felt, the townspeople began to travel to the suburbs to dig out plant shards that until recently seemed unnecessary from the frozen ground.

And during the warm season, the inhabitants of Leningrad literally ate pasture. Due to the small nutritional properties, grass, foliage and even tree bark were used. These foods were ground and mixed with others to make cakes and biscuits. Hemp was especially popular, as people who survived the Blockade said, because this product contains a lot of oil.

An amazing fact, but during the War the Leningrad Zoo continued its work. Of course, some of the animals were taken out of it even before the start of the Blockade, but many animals still remained in their enclosures. Some of them died during the bombings, but a large number, thanks to the help of sympathetic people, survived the war. At the same time, the zoo staff had to go to all sorts of tricks to feed their pets. For example, to make tigers and vultures eat grass, it was packed in the skins of dead rabbits and other animals.

And in November 1941, there was even a replenishment at the zoo - a baby was born to the hamadryas Elsa. But since the mother herself did not have milk because of the meager diet, the milk mixture for the monkey was supplied by one of the Leningrad maternity hospitals. The kid managed to survive and survive the Blockade.

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The blockade of Leningrad lasted 872 days from September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944. According to the documents of the Nuremberg Trials, during this time 632 thousand people out of 3 million pre-war population died from hunger, cold and bombing.

But the Siege of Leningrad is far from the only example of our military and civil prowess in the twentieth century. Online website you can also read about during the Winter War of 1939-1940, about why the fact of its breakthrough by Soviet troops became a turning point in military history.

Some in the blockade ate very satisfying and even managed to get rich. Leningraders themselves wrote about them in their diaries and letters. Here are quotes from the book "Blockade ethics. Ideas about morality in Leningrad in 1941-1942."

V. Bazanova, who more than once denounced the machinations of sellers in her diary, emphasized that her housekeeper, who received 125 g of bread a day, “always weighs 40 grams, or even 80 grams” - she usually bought bread for the whole family. The sellers managed and imperceptibly, taking advantage of the low lighting of the shops and the semi-conscious state of many blockade runners, to pull out more coupons from the “cards” when handing over bread than was supposed to be. In this case, it was difficult to catch them by the hand.

They also stole in canteens for children and teenagers. In September, representatives of the Leninsky district prosecutor's office checked cans of soup in the kitchen of one of the schools. It turned out that the liquid soup can was intended for children, and with the "regular" soup - for teachers. The third can contained "soup like porridge" - its owners could not be found.

It was all the easier to cheat in canteens because the instructions that determined the order and norms for the output of prepared food were very complex and confusing. The technique of theft in kitchens was described in general terms in the previously cited memorandum of the brigade for examining the work of the Main Directorate of Leningrad canteens and cafes: “Porridge of a viscous consistency should have a weld of 350, semi-liquid - 510%. The extra addition of water, especially at high throughput, goes completely unnoticed and allows canteen workers to keep kilograms of food without weighing it down.”

A sign of the collapse of moral standards in the "time of death" were attacks on exhausted people: they were deprived of both "cards" and food. Most often this happened in bakeries and shops, when they saw that the buyer hesitated, shifting products from the counter into a bag or bags, and “cards” into pockets and mittens. Robbers attacked people and near shops. Often, hungry townspeople came out with bread in their hands, pinching off small pieces from it, and were absorbed only in this, not paying attention to possible threats. Often they took away the "appendage" to bread - it was possible to eat it faster. Children were also victims of attacks. It was easier to take food away from them.

... "Here we are dying of hunger like flies, and in Moscow yesterday Stalin again gave a dinner in honor of Eden. It's just a disgrace, they are eating there<�…>and we cannot even get a piece of our bread as a human being. They arrange all sorts of brilliant meetings there, and we are like cavemen.<�…>we live, ”E. Mukhina wrote in her diary. The rigidity of the remark is also emphasized by the fact that she knows nothing about the dinner itself and how “brilliant” it looked. Here, of course, we are not dealing with the transfer of official information, but with its peculiar processing, which provoked a comparison of the hungry and the well-fed. The feeling of injustice gradually accumulated. Such sharpness of tone could hardly have been suddenly revealed if it had not been preceded by less dramatic, but very frequent assessments of smaller cases of infringement of the rights of blockade survivors - this is especially noticeable in the diary of E. Mukhina.

The feeling of injustice due to the fact that the hardships are laid out differently on Leningraders has arisen more than once - when sent to clean the streets, because of warrants for rooms in bombed-out houses, during evacuation, due to special food standards for "responsible workers". And here again, as in conversations about dividing people into “necessary” and “unnecessary”, the same topic was touched upon - about the privileges of those in power. The doctor, called to the head of the IRLI (he constantly ate and "got sick with his stomach"), cursed: he was hungry, and he was called to the "over-eaten director." In a diary entry on October 9, 1942, I. D. Zelenskaya comments on the news about the eviction of all those living at the power plant and using heat, light and hot water. Either they were trying to save money on human misfortune, or they were following some instructions - I. D. Zelenskaya was little interested in this. First of all, she emphasizes that this is unfair. One of the victims, a worker who occupied a damp, non-residential room, “was forced to travel there with a child on two trams ... in general, two hours on the road one way.” “You can’t do this to her, this is unacceptable cruelty.” No arguments of the authorities can be taken into account also because these “mandatory measures” do not concern him: “All the families [of leaders. - S. Ya.] live here as before, inaccessible to the troubles that befall mere mortals.

Z. S. Livshits, having visited the Philharmonic, did not find “swollen and dystrophics” there. It is not limited to just this observation. Emaciated people "do not care about fat" - this is her first attack against those "music lovers" who met her at the concert. The latter made a good life for themselves on the basis of common difficulties - this is her second attack. How did you "arrange" life? On the "shrinkage-utruska", on the body kit, just on theft. She has no doubt that the majority of the audience in the hall is only “commercial, cooperative and bakery people” and is sure that they received “capitals” in such a criminal way ... AI Vinokurov does not need arguments either. On March 9, 1942, when he met women among the visitors of the Musical Comedy Theater, he immediately assumed that they were either waitresses from canteens or grocery store saleswomen. He hardly knew this for sure - but we will not be far from the truth if we consider that the same appearance of the “theater-goers” served here as the rating scale.

D.S. Likhachev, entering the office of the deputy director of the institute for economic affairs, each time noticed that he ate bread, dipping it in sunflower oil: “Obviously, there were cards left from those who flew away or left along the road of death.” The blockade survivors, who discovered that the saleswomen in the bakeries and the cooks in the canteens, all hands were hung with bracelets and gold rings, reported in letters that "there are people who do not feel hunger."

... “Only those who work in the grain places are fed” - in this diary entry on September 7, 1942, the blockade survivor A.F. Evdokimov expressed, perhaps, the general opinion of Leningraders. In a letter to G. I. Kazanina, T. A. Konopleva told how their friend became fat (“right now you don’t know”), having gone to work in a restaurant - and the connection between these phenomena seemed so clear that they didn’t even discuss it. Perhaps they did not know that out of 713 employees of the confectionery factory named after. N. K. Krupskaya, who worked here in early 1942, no one died of starvation, but the sight of other enterprises, next to which stacks of corpses lay, spoke volumes. In the winter of 1941/42, 4 people died per day at the State Institute of Applied Chemistry (GIPH), and up to 5 people died at the Sevkabel plant. At the factory. Molotov during the issuance of food "cards" on December 31, 1941, 8 people died in line. About a third of the employees of the Petrograd Communications Office died, 20-25% of the workers of Lenenergo, 14% of the workers of the plant named after. Frunze. At the Baltic railway junction, 70% of conductors and 60% of track staff died. In the boiler room of the plant. Kirov, where the morgue was set up, there were about 180 corpses, and at bakery No. 4, according to the director, “three people died during this difficult winter, but ... not from exhaustion, but from other diseases.”

B. Kapranov has no doubt that not everyone is starving: sellers have a "fat" of several kilograms of bread a day. He does not say how he knows this. And it is worth doubting whether he could have received such accurate information, but each of the subsequent entries is logical. Since the "fat" is such, it means that they "make a lot of money." Is it possible to argue with this? He goes on to write about the thousands that the thieves have accumulated. Well, and this is logical - stealing kilograms of bread a day, in a hungry city, one could get rich. Here is a list of those who overeat: "Military officials and the police, employees of military registration and enlistment offices and others who can take everything they need in special stores." Is he familiar with everyone, and so much so that they tell him without hesitation about their prosperity? But if the store is special, it means that they give more than in ordinary stores, and if so, then it is indisputable that its visitors "eat ... as we ate before the war." And here is the continuation of the list of those who live well: cooks, canteen managers, waiters. "Everyone in the slightest degree occupying an important post." And you don't have to prove anything. And not only he thinks so: “If we received in full, then we would not starve and would not be sick ... dystrophics,” complained in a letter to A. A. Zhdanov, workers of one of the factories. They don’t seem to have hard evidence, but, they ask, “look at the whole canteen staff ... how they look - they can be harnessed and plowed.”

L. Razumovsky left a more fictionalized and picturesque story about a suddenly rich bakery worker. The narrative is based on almost polar examples: her obscurity in peacetime and her "elevation" in the days of war. “They seek her disposition, fawn over her, seek her friendship” - it is noticeable how this feeling of disgust grows and will accept her prosperity. She moved from a dark room to a bright apartment, bought furniture and even bought a piano. The author deliberately emphasizes this interest in music that suddenly appeared in the baker. He does not consider it superfluous to scrupulously calculate how much it cost her: 2 kg of buckwheat, a loaf of bread, 100 rubles. Another story - but the same scenario: “Before the war, she was an exhausted, ever-needy woman ... Now Lena has blossomed. This is a rejuvenated, red-cheeked smartly and cleanly dressed woman! ... Lena has many acquaintances and even caretakers ... She moved from the attic in the courtyard to the second floor with windows on the line ... Yes, Lena works at the base!

Reading the minutes of the discussion in Smolny of the film The Defense of Leningrad, it is difficult to get rid of the impression that its viewers were more concerned with the "decency" of the panorama of the blockade shown here than with the reconstruction of its true history. The main reproach: the film does not give a charge of vivacity and enthusiasm, does not call for labor achievements ... "The decline is overdone in the film," A. A. Zhdanov noted. And when you read the account of P. S. Popkov’s speech delivered here, you understand that, perhaps, this was precisely what was the main thing here. PS Popkov feels like an excellent editor. The film shows a line of dead people. This is not necessary: ​​“The impression is depressing. Part of the episodes about the coffins will have to be removed. He saw a car frozen in the snow. Why show it? "This can be attributed to our disorder." He is outraged that the work of factories and factories is not covered - he preferred to remain silent about the fact that most of them were inactive during the first blockade winter. The film features a blockade falling from exhaustion. This also needs to be ruled out: "It is not known why he is staggering, maybe drunk."

The same P. S. Popkov, at the request of the climbers who covered the high spiers with covers, to give them "letter cards", replied: "Well, you work in the fresh air." Here is an accurate indicator of the level of ethics. “What do you care about the district council, cash cow,” the chairman of the district executive committee shouted at one of the women who asked for furniture for the orphanage. There was enough furniture in the mothballed "hearths" - a significant part of the children were evacuated from Leningrad. This was not grounds for refusing assistance. The reason could be fatigue, and fear of responsibility, and selfishness. And it doesn’t matter what they were disguised with: seeing how they didn’t do what they could do, you can immediately determine the degree of mercy.

... “In the district committee, the workers also began to feel a difficult situation, although they were in a somewhat more privileged position ... No one died from the apparatus of the district committee, the Plenum of the district committee and the secretaries of the primary organizations. We managed to defend the people, ”recalled the first secretary of the Leninsky district committee of the CPSU (b) A. M. Grigoriev.

The story of N. A. Ribkovsky is noteworthy. Released from "responsible" work in the fall of 1941, he, along with other townspeople, experienced all the horrors of "death time". He managed to escape: in December 1941 he was appointed an instructor in the personnel department of the Leningrad City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In March 1942, he was sent to the hospital of the city committee in the village of Melnichny Ruchey. Like any blockade survivor who survived the famine, he cannot stop in his diary entries until he gives the entire list of foods that he was fed: “The food here is like in peacetime in a good rest home: varied, tasty, high quality ... Meat every day - lamb , ham, chicken, goose ... sausage, fish - bream, herring, smelt, and fried and boiled, and aspic. Caviar, salmon, cheese, pies and the same amount of black bread for the day, thirty grams of butter and fifty grams of grape wine, good port wine for lunch and dinner ... I and two other comrades get an additional breakfast, between breakfast and lunch: a couple of sandwiches or a bun and a glass of sweet tea.”

Among the mean stories about food in Smolny, where rumors are mixed with real events, there are some that can be treated with some confidence. O. Grechina in the spring of 1942, my brother brought two liter jars (“one contained cabbage, once sour, but now completely rotten, and the other - the same rotten red tomatoes”), explaining that they were cleaning the cellars of Smolny, taking out barrels of rotten vegetables. One of the cleaners was lucky enough to look at the banquet hall in Smolny itself - she was invited there "for service." They envied her, but she returned from there in tears - no one fed her, "but there was nothing on the tables."

I. Metter told how the member of the Military Council of the Leningrad Front A. A. Kuznetsov, as a token of his goodwill, handed over to the actress of the theater of the Baltic Fleet “specially baked at the confectionery factory named after. Samoil chocolate cake"; it was eaten by fifteen people and, in particular, I. Metter himself. There was no shameful intent here, just A. A. Kuznetsov was sure that in a city littered with the corpses of those who died from exhaustion, he also had the right to make generous gifts at someone else's expense to those he liked. These people behaved as if a peaceful life was going on, and you could feel free to relax in the theater, send cakes to artists and make librarians look for books for their "minutes of rest."

A lively discussion on the seemingly purely historical question of whether Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov, the first secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, ate cakes and other delicacies during the years of the blockade, unfolded between the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation Vladimir Medinsky and the liberal public, represented primarily by Boris Vishnevsky, deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly .

It must be admitted that although Mr. Minister is an ignoramus and does not know history (details are in our article "The Crocodile of Ensign Medinsky"), in this case he correctly called all this a "lie". The myth was analyzed in detail by the historian Aleksey Volynets in the biography of A.A. Zhdanov, published in the ZhZL series. With the permission of the author, "APN-SZ" publishes the corresponding excerpt from the book.

In December 1941, unprecedented severe frosts actually destroyed the water supply of the city, which was left without heating. Bakeries were left without water - for one day, the already meager blockade ration turned into a handful of flour.

Alexei Bezzubov recalls, at that time the head of the chemical-technological department of the All-Union Research Institute of the Vitamin Industry located in Leningrad and a consultant for the sanitary department of the Leningrad Front, a developer of the production of vitamins to combat scurvy in besieged Leningrad:

“The winter of 1941-1942 was especially hard. Unprecedented severe frosts hit, all water pipes froze, and bakeries were left without water. On the very first day, when flour was given out instead of bread, I and the head of the baking industry, N.A. There was a machine gun on the windowsill in his office. Zhdanov pointed to him: "If there are no hands that can firmly hold this perfect machine, it is useless. Bread is needed at all costs."

Unexpectedly, the way out was suggested by Admiral of the Baltic Fleet V.F. Tributs, who was in the office. On the Neva there were submarines frozen into the ice. But the river did not freeze to the bottom. They made an ice-hole and began to pump water through the sleeves with submarine pumps to the bakeries located on the banks of the Neva. Five hours after our conversation, four factories gave bread. Wells were dug at the rest of the factories, getting to artesian water ... "

As a vivid example of the organizational activity of the city leadership during the blockade, it is necessary to recall such a specific body created by the Leningrad City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks as the “Commission for the Consideration and Implementation of Defense Proposals and Inventions” - the entire intellect of Leningraders was mobilized for defense needs and all kinds of proposals capable of bringing even the slightest benefit to the besieged city.

Academician Abram Fedorovich Ioffe, a graduate of the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, “the father of Soviet physics” (teacher of P. Kapitsa, I. Kurchatov, L. Landau, Yu. Khariton) wrote: “Nowhere, never have I seen such a rapid pace of transition of scientific ideas into practice, as in Leningrad in the first months of the war.

From improvised materials, almost everything was invented and immediately created - from vitamins from needles to explosives based on clay. And in December 1942, Zhdanov was presented with prototypes of the Sudayev submachine gun, modified in Leningrad, PPS - in the besieged city at the Sestroretsk plant, for the first time in the USSR, the production of this best submachine gun of World War II began.

In addition to military tasks, issues of food supply and the military economy, the city authorities, headed by Zhdanov, had to solve a lot of various problems vital to saving the city and its population. So, to protect against bombing and constant artillery shelling, over 4,000 bomb shelters were built in Leningrad, capable of accommodating 800,000 people (it is worth estimating these scales).

Along with the supply of food under the blockade, there was also the non-trivial task of preventing epidemics, those eternal and inevitable companions of famine and city sieges. It was on the initiative of Zhdanov that special "household detachments" were created in the city. Through the efforts of the authorities of Leningrad, even with a significant destruction of public utilities, outbreaks of epidemics were prevented - and in fact, in a besieged city with broken water supply and sewerage, this could become a danger no less terrible and deadly than famine. Now this threat, crushed in the bud, i.e. tens, if not hundreds of thousands of lives saved from epidemics, are practically not remembered when it comes to the blockade.

But alternatively gifted of all stripes love to "remember" how Zhdanov "gorged himself" in a city that was dying of hunger. Here the most enchanting tales are used, which were bred in plentiful circulation even in the "perestroika" frenzy. And for the third decade, the spreading cranberry has been habitually repeated: about how Zhdanov, in order to escape from obesity in besieged Leningrad, played lawn tennis (apparently, couch whistleblowers really like the imported word "lawn"), how he ate from crystal vase cakes “bouche” (another beautiful word) and how he overate on peaches, specially delivered by plane from partisan lands. Of course, all the partisan regions of the USSR were simply buried in branchy peaches ...

However, peaches have an equally sweet alternative - so Evgeny Vodolazkin in Novaya Gazeta on the eve of Victory Day, May 8, 2009, publishes another ritual phrase about the city "with Andrey Zhdanov at the head, who received pineapples on special flights." It is significant that the doctor of philological sciences Vodolazkin repeatedly repeats about these “pineapples” with obvious enthusiasm and gusto in a number of his publications (For example: E. Vodolazkin “My grandmother and Queen Elizabeth. A portrait against the backdrop of history” / Ukrainian newspaper “Zerkalo Nedeli” No. 44, November 17, 2007) He repeats, of course, without bothering to give the slightest proof, so - in passing, for the sake of a red word and a successful turn - almost ritually.

Since pineapple thickets are not visible in the warring USSR, it remains to be assumed that, according to Mr. Vodolazkin, this fruit was delivered specifically for Zhdanov under Lend-Lease ... But in order to be fair to the doctor of philological sciences, wounded by pineapples, we note that he is far from the only , but just a typical distributor of such revelations. There is no need to provide links to them - numerous examples of such journalism can be easily found on the modern Russian-language Internet.

Unfortunately, all these tales, repeated from year to year by lightweight "journalists" and belated fighters against Stalinism, are exposed only in specialized historical publications. They were first considered and refuted in the mid-1990s. in a number of documentary collections on the history of the blockade. Alas, the circulation of historical and documentary research does not have to compete with the yellow press ...

Here is what the writer and historian V.I. Demidov, published in St. Petersburg in 1995, says in the collection “The Blockade Declassified”: . On the other hand, according to the testimony of servants who knew the life of the tops well (I interviewed a waitress, two nurses, several assistants to members of the military council, adjutants, etc.), Zhdanov was unpretentious: "buckwheat and sour cabbage soup are the height of pleasure." As for "press reports", although we agreed not to get involved in polemics with my colleagues, a week is not enough. All of them crumble at the slightest contact with the facts.

"Orange peels" were allegedly found in the garbage dump of an apartment building where Zhdanov allegedly lived (this is a "fact" - from the Finnish film "Zhdanov - Stalin's protégé"). But you know, Zhdanov lived in Leningrad in a mansion fenced with a blank fence - along with a "garbage dump" - during the blockade, he spent his five or six hours of sleep, like everyone else, in a small rest room behind the office, extremely rarely - in an outbuilding in the yard Smolny. And his personal driver (another "fact" from the press, from "Ogonyok") could not carry "pancakes" to him: a personal Zhdanov cook, "adopted" by him from S.M., also lived in the wing. Kirov, "Uncle Kolya" Shchennikov. They wrote about the "peaches" delivered to Zhdanov "from the partisan region", but did not specify whether there was a harvest for these same "peaches" in the Pskov-Novgorod forests in the winter of 1941-1942 and where the guards responsible for the life of the Secretary of the Central Committee looked with their heads, allowing products of dubious origin to his table ... "

The operator of the central communications center located in Smolny during the war, Mikhail Neishtadt, recalled: “To be honest, I didn’t see any banquets. Once, in my presence, as in the presence of other signalers, the top officials celebrated November 7 all night long. The Commander-in-Chief of Artillery Voronov was there, as well as the secretary of the city committee, Kuznetsov, who was later shot. Plates with sandwiches were brought to their room past us. No one treated the Soldier, and we were not offended ... But I don’t remember any excesses there. Zhdanov, when he came, first of all checked the consumption of products. Accounting was the strictest. Therefore, all this talk about "holidays of the stomach" is more speculation than the truth ... Zhdanov was the first secretary of the regional committee and city committee of the party, who carried out all the political leadership. I remember him as a person who was quite scrupulous in everything related to material issues.

Daniil Natanovich Alshits (Al), a native Petersburger, doctor of historical sciences, graduate and then professor of the history department of Leningrad State University, an ordinary Leningrad people's militia in 1941, writes in a recently published book: “... At least the constantly repeated reproaches against leaders of the defense of Leningrad: Leningraders de starved, and even died of hunger, and the chiefs in Smolny ate their fill, "overeat". Exercises in creating sensational "revelations" on this topic sometimes reach the point of complete absurdity. So, for example, they say that Zhdanov overate on buns. It couldn't be. Zhdanov had diabetes and did not eat any sweet buns ... I had to read such a crazy statement - that during the hungry winter in Smolny six cooks were shot for serving cold buns to the authorities. The mediocrity of this invention is quite obvious. First, chefs don't serve buns. Secondly, why are as many as six cooks to blame for the fact that the buns had time to cool down? All this is clearly nonsense of the imagination inflamed by the corresponding trend.

As Anna Strakhova, one of the two on-duty waitresses of the Military Council of the Leningrad Front, recalled, in the second decade of November 1941, Zhdanov called her and set a rigidly fixed cut-down rate of food consumption for all members of the military council of the Leningrad Front (commander M.S. Khozin, himself, A.A. Kuznetsov, T.F. Shtykov, N.V. Solovyov). A participant in the battles on the Nevsky Piglet, the commander of the 86th Infantry Division (the former 4th Leningrad People's Militia Division), Colonel Andrei Matveevich Andreev, mentions in his memoirs how in the fall of 1941, after a meeting in Smolny, he saw in Zhdanov's hands a small black pouch with a ribbon, in which a member of the Politburo and the First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee and the City Committee of the CPSU (b) wore the rationed bread that was due to him - a bread ration was given to the leadership several times a week for two or three days in advance.

Of course, these were not 125 grams, which were due to a dependent in the most critical period of the blockade supply, but, as we can see, there is no smell of lawn tennis cakes either.

Indeed, during the blockade, the top state and military leadership of Leningrad was much better supplied than the majority of the urban population, but without the “peaches” beloved by whistleblowers - here gentlemen whistleblowers clearly extrapolate their own morals to that time ... To present claims to the leadership of besieged Leningrad for better supplies - means making such claims to the soldiers of the Leningrad Front, who ate better than the townspeople in the trenches, or accusing pilots and submariners that they fed better than ordinary infantrymen during the blockade. In the besieged city, everything without exception, including this hierarchy of supply norms, was subordinated to the goals of defense and survival, since the city simply had no reasonable alternatives to resist and not surrender...

A revealing story about Zhdanov in military Leningrad was left by Garrison Salisbury, chief of the Moscow bureau of the New York Times. In February 1944, this quick-witted and meticulous American journalist arrived in Leningrad, which had just been liberated from the blockade. As a representative of an ally in the anti-Hitler coalition, he visited Smolny and other city facilities. He wrote his work on the blockade of Salisbury already in the 60s. in the USA, and his book certainly cannot be suspected of Soviet censorship and agitprop.

According to the American journalist, most of the time Zhdanov worked in his office in Smolny on the third floor: “Here he worked hour after hour, day after day. From the endless smoking, a long-standing illness worsened - asthma, he wheezed, coughed ... Deeply sunken, coal-dark eyes burned; tension had lined his face, sharpening sharply as he worked all night long. He rarely went outside the Smolny, even to take a walk nearby...

Smolny had a kitchen and a dining room, but almost always Zhdanov ate only in his office. Food was brought to him on a tray, he hurriedly swallowed it without looking up from work, or occasionally at three in the morning he ate as usual with one or two of his main assistants ... Tension often affected Zhdanov and other leaders. These people, both civilian and military, usually worked 18, 20 and 22 hours a day, most of them managed to sleep fitfully, resting their heads on the table or taking a quick nap in the office. They ate somewhat better than the rest of the population. Zhdanov and his associates, as well as front-line commanders, received military rations: no more than 400 grams of bread, a bowl of meat or fish soup, and, if possible, a little porridge. Tea was served with one or two lumps of sugar. ... None of the top military or party leaders fell victim to dystrophy. But their physical strength was depleted. The nerves are shattered, most of them suffered from chronic diseases of the heart or vascular system. Zhdanov soon, like others, showed signs of fatigue, exhaustion, and nervous exhaustion.

Indeed, during the three years of the blockade, Zhdanov, without stopping the exhausting work, suffered two heart attacks “on his feet”. His puffy face of a sick person in decades will give a reason to well-fed whistleblowers, without getting up from warm sofas, to joke and lie about the gluttony of the head of Leningrad during the blockade.

Valery Kuznetsov, son of Alexei Alexandrovich Kuznetsov, second secretary of the Leningrad regional committee and city committee of the CPSU (b), Zhdanov's closest assistant during the war years, in 1941 a five-year-old boy, answered a correspondent's question about the nutrition of the Leningrad elite and the Smolny canteen during the blockade:

“I dined in that canteen and I remember well how they were fed there. Lean, thin cabbage soup relied on the first. On the second - buckwheat or millet porridge and even stew. But the real delicacy was jelly. When my dad and I went to the front, we were given army rations. It almost did not differ from the diet in Smolny. The same stew, the same porridge.

They wrote that while the townspeople were starving, there was a smell of pies from the Kuznetsovs' apartment on Kronverkskaya Street, and fruits were delivered to Zhdanov by plane ...

How we ate, I have already told you. And for the entire time of the blockade, my dad and I came to Kronverkskaya Street only a couple of times. To take wooden children's toys, melt the stove with them and somehow warm up, and pick up children's things. As for pies... Probably, it will suffice to say that I, like other residents of the city, had dystrophy.

Zhdanov ... You see, my father often took me with him to Zhdanov's house, on Kamenny Island. And if he had fruit or sweets, he would certainly have treated me. But I don't remember that."

Tue, 28/01/2014 - 16:23

The farther from the date of the incident, the less the person is aware of the event. The modern generation is unlikely to ever truly appreciate the incredible scale of all the horrors and tragedies that occurred during the siege of Leningrad. More terrible than the fascist attacks was only a comprehensive famine that killed people with a terrible death. On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Leningrad from the fascist blockade, we invite you to see what horrors the inhabitants of Leningrad chewed at that terrible time.

From the blog of Stanislav Sadalsky

In front of me was a boy, maybe nine years old. He was covered with some kind of handkerchief, then he was covered with a wadded blanket, the boy stood frozen. Cold. Some of the people left, some were replaced by others, but the boy did not leave. I ask this boy: “Why don’t you go warm up?” And he: “It’s cold at home anyway.” I say: “What do you live alone?” - “No, with your mother.” - “So, mom can't go?” - “No, she can't. She is dead." I say: “How dead?!” - “Mother died, it’s a pity for her. Now I figured it out. Now I only put her to bed for the day, and put her to the stove at night. She's still dead. And it’s cold from her.”

Blockade book Ales Adamovich, Daniil Granin

Blockade book by Ales Adamovich and Daniil Granin. I bought it once in the best St. Petersburg second-hand bookstore on Liteiny. The book is not desktop, but always in sight. A modest gray cover with black letters keeps under itself a living, terrible, great document that has collected the memories of eyewitnesses who survived the siege of Leningrad, and the authors themselves, who became participants in those events. It's hard to read it, but I would like everyone to do it ...

From an interview with Danil Granin:
"- During the blockade, marauders were shot on the spot, but also, I know, without trial or investigation, cannibals were allowed to be consumed. Is it possible to condemn these unfortunate people, distraught from hunger, who have lost their human appearance, whom the tongue does not dare to call people, and how frequent were the cases when, for lack of other food, they ate their own kind?
- Hunger, I'll tell you, deprives the restraining barriers: morality disappears, moral prohibitions disappear. Hunger is an incredible feeling that does not let go for a moment, but, to the surprise of me and Adamovich, while working on this book, we realized: Leningrad has not dehumanized, and this is a miracle! Yes, there was cannibalism...
- ...ate children?
- There were worse things.
- Hmm, what could be worse? Well, for example?
- I don't even want to talk... (Pause). Imagine that one of your own children was fed to another, and there was something that we never wrote about. Nobody forbade anything, but... We couldn't...
- Was there some amazing case of survival in the blockade that shook you to the core?
- Yes, the mother fed the children with her blood, cutting her veins.

“... In each apartment, the dead lay. And we were not afraid of anything. Will you go earlier? After all, it’s unpleasant when the dead ... So our family died out, that’s how they lay. And when they put it in the barn!” (M.Ya. Babich)

“Dystrophics have no fear. At the Academy of Arts, on the descent to the Neva, they dumped corpses. I calmly climbed over this mountain of corpses ... It would seem that the weaker the person, the more scared he is, but no, the fear disappeared. What would happen to me if it were in peacetime - I would die of horror. And now, after all: there is no light on the stairs - I'm afraid. As soon as people ate, fear appeared ”(Nina Ilyinichna Laksha).

Pavel Filippovich Gubchevsky, researcher at the Hermitage:
What kind of rooms did they have?
- Empty frames! It was Orbeli's wise order: leave all the frames in place. Thanks to this, the Hermitage restored its exposition eighteen days after the return of the paintings from the evacuation! And during the war they hung like that, empty eye sockets-frames, through which I spent several excursions.
- By empty frames?
- On empty frames.

The Unknown Walker is an example of blockade mass altruism.
He was naked in extreme days, in extreme circumstances, but his nature is all the more authentic.
How many of them were - unknown passers-by! They disappeared, returning life to a person; dragged away from the deadly edge, they disappeared without a trace, even their appearance did not have time to be imprinted in the dimmed consciousness. It seemed that they, unknown passers-by, had no obligations, no family feelings, they did not expect either fame or pay. Compassion? But all around was death, and they walked past the corpses indifferently, marveling at their callousness.
Most say to themselves: the death of the closest, dearest people did not reach the heart, some kind of protective system in the body worked, nothing was perceived, there was no strength to respond to grief.

A besieged apartment cannot be depicted in any museum, in any layout or panorama, just as frost, melancholy, hunger cannot be depicted ...
The blockade survivors themselves, remembering, note broken windows, furniture sawn into firewood - the most sharp, unusual. But at that time, only children and visitors who came from the front were really struck by the view of the apartment. As it was, for example, with Vladimir Yakovlevich Aleksandrov:
“- You knock for a long, long time - nothing is heard. And you already have the complete impression that everyone died there. Then some shuffling begins, the door opens. In an apartment where the temperature is equal to the temperature of the environment, a creature wrapped up in god knows what appears. You hand him a bag of some crackers, biscuits or something else. And what struck? Lack of emotional outburst.
- And even if the products?
- Even groceries. After all, many starving people already had an atrophy of appetite.

Hospital doctor:
- I remember they brought the twins ... So the parents sent them a small package: three cookies and three sweets. Sonechka and Serezhenka - that was the name of these children. The boy gave himself and her a cookie, then the cookies were divided in half.

There are crumbs left, he gives the crumbs to his sister. And the sister throws him the following phrase: “Seryozhenka, it’s hard for men to endure the war, you will eat these crumbs.” They were three years old.
- Three years?!
- They barely spoke, yes, three years, such crumbs! Moreover, the girl was then taken away, but the boy remained. I don’t know if they survived or not…”

During the blockade, the amplitude of human passions increased enormously - from the most painful falls to the highest manifestations of consciousness, love, and devotion.
“... Among the children with whom I left was the boy of our employee - Igor, a charming boy, handsome. His mother took care of him very tenderly, with terrible love. Even in the first evacuation, she said: “Maria Vasilievna, you also give your children goat's milk. I take goat milk to Igor. And my children were even placed in another barracks, and I tried not to give them anything, not a single gram in excess of what was supposed to be. And then this Igor lost his cards. And now, in the month of April, I somehow walk past the Eliseevsky store (here dystrophics have already begun to crawl out into the sun) and I see a boy sitting, a terrible, edematous skeleton. "Igor? What happened to you?" - I say. “Maria Vasilievna, my mother kicked me out. My mother told me that she would not give me another piece of bread.” - "How so? It can't be!" He was in critical condition. We barely climbed with him to my fifth floor, I barely dragged him. By this time, my children were already going to kindergarten and were still holding on. He was so terrible, so pathetic! And all the time he said: “I don’t blame my mother. She is doing the right thing. It's my fault, I lost my card." - “I say, I will arrange you for school” (which was supposed to open). And my son whispers: "Mom, give him what I brought from kindergarten."

I fed him and went with him to Chekhov Street. We enter. The room is terribly dirty. This dystrophic, disheveled woman lies. Seeing her son, she immediately shouted: “Igor, I won’t give you a single piece of bread. Get out!” The room is stench, dirt, darkness. I say: “What are you doing?! After all, there are only some three or four days left - he will go to school, get better. - "Nothing! Here you are standing on your feet, but I am not standing. I won't give him anything! I’m lying down, I’m hungry…” What a transformation from a tender mother into such a beast! But Igor did not leave. He stayed with her, and then I found out that he died.
A few years later I met her. She was blooming, already healthy. She saw me, rushed to me, shouted: “What have I done!” I told her: “Well, now what to talk about it!” “No, I can't take it anymore. All thoughts are about him. After a while, she committed suicide."

The fate of the animals of besieged Leningrad is also part of the tragedy of the city. human tragedy. Otherwise, you cannot explain why not one or two, but almost every tenth blockade survivor remembers, tells about the death of an elephant in a zoo by a bomb.

Many, many people remember besieged Leningrad through this state: it is especially uncomfortable, terrifying for a person, and he is closer to death, disappearance because cats, dogs, even birds have disappeared! ..

“Down below us, in the apartment of the late president, four women are stubbornly fighting for their lives - his three daughters and granddaughter,” notes G.A. Knyazev. - Still alive and their cat, which they pulled out to rescue in every alarm.
The other day a friend, a student, came to see them. I saw a cat and begged to give it to him. He stuck straight: "Give it back, give it back." Barely got rid of him. And his eyes lit up. The poor women were even frightened. Now they are worried that he will sneak in and steal their cat.
O loving woman's heart! Destiny deprived the student Nehorosheva of natural motherhood, and she rushes about like with a child, with a cat, Loseva rushes with her dog. Here are two specimens of these rocks in my radius. All the rest have long since been eaten!”
Residents of besieged Leningrad with their pets

A.P. Grishkevich wrote on March 13 in his diary:
“The following incident occurred in one of the orphanages in the Kuibyshev region. On March 12, all the staff gathered in the boys' room to watch a fight between two children. As it turned out later, it was started by them on a "principled boyish question." And before that there were "fights", but only verbal and because of the bread.
The head of the house, comrade Vasilyeva says: “This is the most encouraging fact in the last six months. At first the children lay, then they began to argue, then they got out of bed, and now - an unprecedented thing - they are fighting. Previously, I would have been fired from work for such a case, but now we, the educators, stood looking at the fight and rejoiced. It means that our little nation has come to life.”
In the surgical department of the City Children's Hospital named after Dr. Rauchfus, New Year 1941/42

"Survivors of the blockade"

Introduction

You need to know what war is like
to know what kind of blessing it is ...

A. Adamovich, D. Granin

Studying the life of my great-grandfather - Nikolai Danilovich, I found that most of the life of my relatives on the mother's side, Yulia Evgenievna Kirillova, was spent in Leningrad (St. Petersburg). Among them are native Leningraders, relatives who came to this city and, of course, relatives who are now living and living there.

In January, Russia celebrates another anniversary of the lifting of the blockade of Leningrad. This event is also directly related to my family, since many of my relatives survived one of the terrible stages of the Great Patriotic War - the blockade of Leningrad, fought in the Red Army on the outskirts of the city, were militiamen of the city militia, residents of besieged Leningrad. This work is dedicated to them.

The purpose of this research work consists in summarizing the collected material about my relatives related to besieged Leningrad.

Scientific research methods: field(a trip to St. Petersburg and visiting places associated with the siege of Leningrad and the life of my relatives - the State Memorial Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad, the Museum "Road of Life", the museum of railway workers "The Road of Life", Piskarevskoye Memorial Cemetery, Nikolsky Naval Cathedral, our ancestral home No. 92 on Moika Embankment Street); communication with relatives, contact with which has long been lost; historical analysis of sources and scientific literature. I met an amazing woman - Ugarova\Zaitseva\ Galina Nikolaevna, who is now 80 years old. She is the oldest representative of the Leningrad line of relatives. Thanks to her memoirs, I have reconstructed many forgotten pages of my family's history;

The basis of the historical part of the study was made up of works on the history of the Great Patriotic War by domestic authors, materials from periodicals, and the personal archive of the Poluyanchik-Moiseev family.

In besieged Leningrad

St. Petersburg (Leningrad) is one of the largest spiritual, political, economic, scientific and cultural centers of the country. Then, in June 1941, few suspected that what is to be endured city ​​over the next three years, laying hundreds of thousands of their sons and daughters on the altar of the common Victory. My family didn't know about it. In the Red Army in those fateful days on the North-Western Front, my great-grandfather on the mother's side, Poluyanchik Nikolai Danilovich, served as a career officer. (Three times Cavalier of the Order of the Red Star, lieutenant colonel (26.04.1913-02.08.1999) was born in Petrograd in the family of a peasant in the Minsk province, Slutsk district, Lansky volost, the village of Yaskovichi, in the family of Daniil Iosifovich and his wife Evdokia Nikolaevna.)

The German offensive against the Soviet Union was to develop along three main lines. Army Group "South" is advancing from the Lublin region to Zhitomir and Kyiv, Army Group "Center" from the Warsaw region to Minsk, Smolensk, Moscow, Army Group "North" is advancing from East Prussia through the Baltic republics to Pskov and Leningrad. The North group included the 16th and 18th armies, the 1st air fleet and the 4th tank group, a total of 29 divisions, the total number of troops reached approximately 500 thousand people. The troops were well armed and equipped with perfect means of communication. Hitler assigned the command of the "North" group to Field Marshal von Leeb, who was instructed to destroy the units of the Soviet Army located in the Baltic states and develop the offensive through Dvinsk, Pskov, Luga, capture all naval bases on the Baltic Sea and capture Leningrad by July 21 .

On June 22, the enemy attacked the covering units of the 8th and 11th Soviet armies. The blow was so powerful that soon our military formations lost contact with the headquarters of their armies. Scattered units could not stop the Nazi hordes, and by the end of the first day of the war, the formations of the enemy 4th Panzer Group broke through the defense line and rushed forward. A few days later, von Leeb's troops, having captured Lithuania and Latvia, entered the borders of the RSFSR. Motorized units rushed to Pskov. The actions of the enemy field troops were actively supported by the 1st Air Fleet. From the north, Finnish troops were advancing on Leningrad through the Karelian Isthmus as part of 7 infantry divisions. On July 10, enemy tank units, having broken through the front of the 11th Army south of Pskov, were moving in a wide stream towards Luga. Before Leningrad, there were 180-200 km; with the rapid pace of advance that the Germans managed to take from the first days of the war, they needed 9-10 days to approach Leningrad.

From the memoirs of great-grandfather Poluyanchik Nikolai Danilovich: “By 06/29/1941, our 708 s.p. 115 s.d. was advanced to the state border in the area of ​​​​the city of Lahtenpokhya, took up defense on the left flank of the 168th rifle division. 7 pages of the army. The enemy delivered the main blow at the junction of the 7th and 23rd armies, trying to break through to the northwestern shore of Lake Ladoga. On 07/04/1941, the enemy managed to break through the defenses in the Mensuvaari area with the forces of two rifle regiments and develop an offensive on the city of Lahdenpokhya. 08/10/1941, starting a new offensive with the main blow in this direction. After stubborn fighting, the enemy broke through the defenses at the junction of the 462nd and 708th rifle regiments. We withdrew to the defense zone of the 168th rifle division. on this day, the Finns captured the city of Lahdenpohjai and reached the coast of Lake Ladoga. At this time, I received the first shrapnel wound in the right side of the face. In the hospital in Leningrad, the fragment was taken out, and I was sent by the transit point of the city to my division, which, without 708 s.p. fought a defensive battle near the city of Vyborg. The troops of the 23rd Army were ordered to withdraw to the line of the former Manngerheim Line. 08/26/1941 in a defensive battle of the headquarters of the 115th rifle division. I received a second shrapnel wound in the knee joint of my right leg and was evacuated to Leningrad. Then by plane to Moscow. Then on the ambulance train to Orenburg to evacuation hospital No. 3327.”

In July 1941, in heavy bloody battles, the troops of the North-Western and Northern Fronts, the sailors of the Baltic Front, and the people's militia detained the enemy on the distant approaches to Leningrad, at the cost of heavy losses in early September, the Nazis managed to go directly to the city. Unable to capture the city on the move, the enemy moved on to a long siege.

From the memoirs of Ugarova Galina Nikolaevna: “My husband Ugarov Dmitry Semenovich was unfit for military service for medical reasons, but he considered it his duty to volunteer for the front. He, as part of one of the divisions of the people's militia, defended the suburbs of Leningrad - Pulkovo, Gatchina "Ugarov Dmitry Semenovich will bear the brunt of the first battles on his shoulders, according to his recollections:" The personnel of the militia divisions were extremely motley: young people who first picked up rifles, and people of mature age who had experience of the civil war. In haste, volunteers were trained and hastily sent to the front. Insufficient training of new formations and their weak armament caused many casualties. Only severe necessity compelled such measures.

All its inhabitants rose to the defense of Leningrad. In a short time it was turned into a city-fortress. Leningraders built 35 kilometers of barricades, 4,170 pillboxes, 22,000 firing points, created air defense detachments, security detachments at plants and factories, organized duty in houses, and equipped first-aid posts.

Since September 8, Leningrad has been blocked from land, and the movement of ships from Lake Ladoga along the Neva has been paralyzed. Fascist propaganda, warming up the offensive spirit of their soldiers, announced that institutions, factories, and the population were being evacuated from Leningrad, and that the city, unable to withstand the attacks of the German troops and their allies, the Finns, would surrender in a few days.A terrible danger hung over Leningrad, heavy fighting went on day and night. These 900 days of blockade were not an easy test for the inhabitants of Leningrad. They heroically survived the grief that suddenly fell upon them. But, in spite of everything, they not only managed to withstand all the hardships and hardships of the blockade, but even actively helped our troops in the fight against the Nazi invaders.

Over 475 thousand people worked on the construction of defensive structures near Leningrad from July to December. 626 km of anti-tank ditches were dug, 50,000 gouges, 306 km of forest blockages, 635 km of barbed wire, 935 km of communication passages were installed, 15,000 pillboxes and bunkers were built. In Leningrad itself, 110 defense units were built 25 km of barricades, 570 artillery pillboxes, about 3600 machine-gun pillboxes, 17 thousand embrasures in buildings, about 12 thousand rifle cells and a large number of other structures.

In 1942, Leningrad industry mastered the production of more than 50 new types of weapons and ammunition, produced over 3 million shells and mines, about 40,000 air bombs, and 1,260,000 hand grenades. The labor heroism of Leningraders made it possible to speak out and be sent to the front in the second half of 1941. 713 tanks, 480 armored vehicles, 58 armored trains.

During the blockade, 2 thousand tanks, 1500 aircraft, 225 thousand machine guns, 12 thousand mortars, about 10 million shells and mines were manufactured and repaired. In the most difficult period of the blockade, unprecedented in the history of September-November 1941, the norms for issuing bread to the population were reduced 5 times. From November 20, 1941, workers began to receive 250 grams of surrogate bread per day, employees and dependents - 125 grams. To help Leningrad and its defenders, by decision of the Central Committee of the Party and the Government, the "Road of Life" was created.

The history of besieged Leningrad overturns the arguments of those authors who argue that under the influence of a terrible feeling of hunger, people lose their moral principles. If this were so, then in Leningrad, where 2.5 million people were starving for a long time, there would be complete arbitrariness, not order. I will give examples in support of what has been said, they tell the actions of the townspeople and their way of thinking in the days of acute famine more than any words.

Winter. The driver of the truck, going around the snowdrifts, was in a hurry to deliver freshly baked bread to the opening of stores. At the corner of Rasstannaya and Ligovka, near the truck, a shell exploded. The front part of the body was cut off like an oblique, loaves of bread scattered along the pavement, the driver was killed by a shrapnel. The conditions for theft are favorable, there is no one and no one to ask. Passers-by, noticing that the bread was not guarded by anyone, raised the alarm, surrounded the crash site and did not leave until another car arrived with the forwarder of the bakery. The loaves were collected and delivered to the stores. Hungry people guarding the car with bread felt an irresistible need for food, however, no one allowed himself to take even a piece of bread. Who knows, maybe soon many of them died of starvation.

With all the suffering, Leningraders have not lost either honor or courage. I quote the story of Tatyana Nikolaevna Bushalova: “In January, I began to weaken from hunger, I spent a lot of time in bed. My husband Mikhail Kuzmich worked as an accountant in a construction trust. He was also bad, but still went to work every day. to the store, received bread on my and my card and returned home late in the evening. I divided the bread into 3 parts and at a certain time we ate a piece, drinking tea. The water was heated on the stove "potbelly stove". "I was looking forward to the evening hour when my husband came home from work. Misha quietly told who of our friends had died, who was sick, whether it was possible to change something from things to bread. I imperceptibly put a larger piece of bread on him, if he noticed, then very he was angry and refused to eat at all, believing that I was infringing on myself. We resisted the impending death as best we could. But everything comes to an end. And it came. On November 11, Misha did not return home from work. Not finding a place for myself, I waited all night for him, on the At dawn, I asked my flatmate Ekaterina Yakovlevna Malinina to help me find a husband.

Kate responded to help. We took children's sledges and followed the route of my husband. We stopped, rested, with every hour our strength left us. After a long search, we found Mikhail Kuzmich dead on the sidewalk. He had a watch on his hand, and 200 rubles in his pocket. CARDS were not found." . Hunger revealed the true essence of each person.

Many construction sites were in close proximity to the enemy and were subjected to artillery fire. People worked 12-14 hours a day, often in the rain, in soaking wet clothes. This required great physical endurance.

The population of the besieged city was impatiently awaiting news of the 54th Army advancing from the east. On January 13, 1942, the offensive of the troops of the Volokhov Front began. At the same time, the 54th Army of the Leningrad Front under the command of Major General I. I. Fedyuninsky also went on the offensive in the direction of Pogost. The advance of the troops developed slowly. The enemy himself attacked our positions, and the army was forced to conduct defensive battles instead of an offensive. By the end of January 14, the strike groups of the 54th Army crossed the Volkhov River and captured a number of settlements on the opposite bank.

Under the conditions of the blockade, the most difficult task was to supply the population and troops with food and water, the military equipment of the front - fuel, factories and factories - raw materials and fuel. Food supplies in the city were dwindling every day. Gradually reduced the rate of issuance of products. From November 20 to December 25, 1941, they were the lowest, negligible: workers and engineers received only up to 250 grams of surrogate bread, and employees, dependents and children - only 125 grams per day! There was almost no flour in this bread. It was baked from chaff, bran, cellulose. It was almost the only food of the Leningraders. Those who had carpenter's glue and rawhide belts at home used them for food.

From the memoirs of my great-grandfather Nikolai Danilovich Poluyanchik: “My wife Poluyanchik\Shuvalova\Tamara Pavlovna lived in Leningrad with her parents Pavel Efimovich Shuvalov and Claudia Ivanovna Shuvalova. In this winter of 1941-1942, they had to cook jelly from glue. In those days, that was the only way to save their lives.” The blockade brought other hardships to the people of Leningrad. In the winter of 1941-1942, the city was shackled by a fierce cold. There was no fuel or electricity. Exhausted by hunger, exhausted and exhausted by continuous bombing and shelling, Leningraders lived in unheated rooms with windows sealed with cardboard, because the glass had been shattered by the blast wave. The lamps glowed dimly. The water and sewer lines froze. For drinking water, they had to go to the Neva embankment, go down to the ice with difficulty, take water in quickly freezing holes, and then deliver it home under fire.

Trams, trolleybuses, buses stopped. Leningraders had to walk to work on snow-covered and not cleared streets. The main "transport" of the city's residents is children's sledges. They carried belongings from destroyed houses, furniture for heating, water from the hole in cans or saucepans, seriously ill and dead, wrapped in sheets (there was no wood on the coffins).

Death entered all houses. Exhausted people were dying right on the streets. Over 640 thousand Leningraders died of starvation. From the memoirs of my great-grandfather Poluyanchik Nikolai Danilovich: “My parents Poluyanchik Daniil Osipovich and Poluyanchik Evdokia Nikolaevna were in a besieged city. They lived in house number 92 on the street. River embankment Washers. In the cold winter of 1942, my father died of starvation. My mother, on a children's sleigh, overcoming pain and suffering, according to Christian customs, took her husband to the church, where they got married, where their children were baptized, for a funeral service.\photo24\. (Metropolitan of Ladoga and St. Petersburg Alexy (Simansky) refused to leave the city, and, starving together with the population every day, despite the bombing, served the Liturgy. For consecration, instead of the prosphora needed in the service, people carried small pieces of cellulose bread - the highest sacrifice. ) After that, she took her husband on a sled to St. Isaac's Cathedral, where special funeral services took away dead people. They buried their father at the Piskarevsky cemetery, but in which grave it is not known. The mother did not have the strength to get to the cemetery.”

My great-grandfather's father, Daniil Osipovich Poluyanchik, was born in Belarus in the Minsk province of the Slutsk district, Lanskoy volost, the village of Yaskovichi in 1885, nowBaranovichi region. He worked as a printer in three printing houses in Leningrad. Married in 1912. He was not called up for military service. He died of starvation in Leningrad during the blockade in March 1942. He was taken by his wife on a sledge to the church and then by car to the cemetery. He was buried in a mass grave at the Piskarevsky cemetery.

My great-grandfather lived with his parents, brother and sister in a house on the embankment of the river. Moika, studied at school No. 42 in Leningrad.From the memoirs of Ugarova Galina Nikolaevna: “The father and mother of my husband Ugarov Dmitry Semenovich lived in besieged Leningrad. In the winter of 1943, they were severely exhausted. On one of the days of winter, the husband's father, Semyon Ivanovich Ugarov, went to his brother. A few hours later, his wife Ugarova Vera Ivanovna went in search of her missing husband with her sister Anna Ivanovna Kuracheva. She never found her husband.”

Enemies hoped that heavy hardships would awaken base, animal instincts in Leningraders, drown out all human feelings in them. They thought that the starving, freezing people would quarrel among themselves over a piece of bread, over a log of firewood, stop defending the city and, in the end, surrender it. On January 30, 1942, Hitler cynically declared: "We are not deliberately storming Leningrad. Leningrad will eat itself out" . The challenge to the enemy was the work of 39 schools in the besieged city. Even in the terrible conditions of blockade life, when there was not enough food, firewood, water, warm clothes, many Leningrad children studied. Writer Alexander Fadeev said: "And the greatest feat of Leningrad schoolchildren is that they studied."

At the time of the blockade, there were 2 million 544 thousand civilians in the city, including about 400 thousand children. In addition, 343 thousand people remained in suburban areas (in the blockade ring). In September, when systematic bombardments, shelling and fires began, many thousands of families wanted to leave, but the paths were cut off. The mass evacuation of citizens began only in January 1942 along the ice road.

November came, Ladoga began to gradually tighten with ice. By November 17, the thickness of the ice reached 100 mm, which was not enough to open the movement. Everyone was waiting for frost.

On November 22, that long-awaited day came when cars took to the ice. Observing the intervals, at low speed, they followed the trail of the horses for the load.

It seemed that the worst is now behind us, you can breathe more freely. But the harsh reality overturned all calculations and hopes for an early improvement in the nutrition of the population.

But in the beginning, transportation on the lake gave negligible in comparison with what was needed.

At first they carried two or three sacks of flour on sleds, then cars with bodies half loaded went. Drivers began to attach sleds on cables to the cars, and the sleds were also loaded with flour. Soon it was possible to take a full load, and the cars - at first one and a half, then three-ton and even five-ton ones went out onto the lake: the ice was strong.

On November 22, the convoy returned, leaving 33 tons of food in the city. The next day, only 19 tons were delivered. On November 25, only 70 tons were delivered, the next day - 150 tons. On November 30, warming came, only 62 tons were transported.

On December 22, 700 tons of food were delivered across the lake, the next day, 100 tons more. On December 25, the first increase in the norms for issuing bread took place, workers by 100 grams, employees, dependents and children by 75 grams. How many joys and tears people had, notes Galina Ivanovna, because of these grams.

For the entire period of the road, 361,419 tons of various cargoes were delivered to Leningrad along it, of which 262,419 tons were food. This not only improved the supply of the heroic Leningraders, but also made it possible to create a certain supply of food by the time the ice road was completed, amounting to 66,930 tons.

The ice road also played an important role in the evacuation of the city's population. It was a very difficult task. The evacuation from Leningrad was subject not to the amateur part of the population, but also to the workers of the evacuated factories, institutions, scientists, etc.

Mass evacuation began in the second half of January 1942, after the State Defense Committee on January 22, 1942. adopted a resolution on the evacuation of 500 thousand residents of Leningrad.

From the memoirs of my great-grandfather Nikolai Danilovich Poluyanchik: “My wife Tamara Pavlovna Poluyanchik, together with her parents P.E. Shuvalov, K.I. My sister left Leningrad at the urging of my mother Evdokia. Sister Nadezhda had two young children. They were evacuated to Kazakhstan.”

In early December 1942, Soviet troops surrounded, and in January - early February 1943, they defeated the main enemy grouping, broke through the German defenses and went on the offensive, pushing the enemy hundreds of kilometers to the west, using the favorable situation, the troops of the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts, reinforced reserves struck from two sides at the fortified positions of the enemy south of Ladoga.

The sixteen-month blockade of Leningrad was broken through the efforts of Soviet soldiers on January 18, 1943.

The supply of the city has improved dramatically. Coal was brought in, industry received electricity, frozen plants and factories came to life. The city was recuperating.

The general situation on the Soviet-German front remained tense and did not allow at that time to completely defeat the German troops near Leningrad.

By the end of 1943, the situation had changed radically. Our troops were preparing for new decisive blows against the enemy.

The hour of reckoning has come. The troops of the Lenfront, well trained and equipped with military equipment, under the command of Army General Govorov, in mid-January 1944, went on the offensive from the areas of Oranienbaum and Pulkovo. The forts and ships of the Baltic Fleet opened heavy fire on the fortified positions of the Germans. At the same time, the Volkhov Front hit the enemy with all its might. Before the start of the offensive of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts, the 2nd Baltic Front pinned down enemy reserves by active actions and did not allow them to be transferred to Leningrad. As a result of a plan carefully developed by talented commanders, well-organized interaction between the troops of the three fronts and the Baltic Fleet, the strongest German grouping was defeated, and Leningrad was completely freed from the blockade.

“From the memoirs of Ugarova Galina Nikolaevna: “The brother of my husband Ugarov Dmitry Semenovich-Ugarov Vladimir Semenovich survived the blockade. He worked at Marty's Admiralty Shipyards and received an increased ration card as an employee. He survived thanks to his mother Ugarova Vera Ivanovna, who herself did not live to see the victory for 1 year, died of exhaustion in 1944. Even when the food supply improved, exhausted, emaciated people continued to die.”

1.5 million defenders of Leningrad were awarded the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad", including my relatives.

Chronological dates of some important events of the siege of Leningrad.

1941

4 September The beginning of the artillery shelling of Leningrad

8 September The capture of Shlisselburg by the Germans. The beginning of the blockade of Leningrad. The first massive enemy air raid on the city.

12-th of September Reducing the norms for issuing bread, meat, cereals to the population. Arrival in Osinovets of the first ships with food from the eastern shore of Lake Ladoga.

September 29 Stabilization of the front line around Leningrad.

October 1 Reducing the norms for issuing bread to the population and the norms for allowances for the troops.

the 13th of November Reducing the distribution of food to the population

November 16 The beginning of the transfer of food cargo by aircraft to Leningrad.

20 November Reduction in the distribution of bread and other foodstuffs to the population

November 22 Start of traffic on the Ice Road across the lake

9th December The defeat of the German group near Tikhvin. Liberation of Tikhvin from invaders.

December 25 The first increase in the norms for issuing bread to the population

1942

January 24 The second increase in the norms for issuing bread to the population

February 11th Increasing the distribution of food to the population

December 22 By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad" was established

1943

January 18 Breaking the blockade. The connection of the Leningrad and Volokhov fronts

February 6 The first train arrived in Leningrad along the newly built railway in the breakthrough zone.

1944

January 14 - 27 Complete liberation of Leningrad from enemy blockade.

List of relatives who died, survived the blockade and defense of Leningrad.

Dead in the blockade:

1. Poluyanchik Daniil Osipovich \ 1986-1942 \, born in the village of Yaskovichi, Baranovichi district of Belarus, worked in a printing house in Leningrad, married in 1912, was not called up for military service \ warrior of the 2nd category \, died in 1942 in Leningrad into blockade. He was buried in a common grave at the Piskarevsky cemetery in Leningrad.

2. Ugarova \ Gasilova \ Vera Ivanovna \? -1944 \ was born in the village of Potapovo, Myshkinsky district. She died of exhaustion in 1944.

3. Ugarov Semyon Ivanovich \? -1942 \ was born in the village of Potapovo, Myshkinsky district. From 1936 to 1942 he lived in Leningrad. Died in blockade. Where he is buried is unknown.

Survivors of the blockade

4. Ugarov Dmitry Semenovich \ 1919-2005 \ was born in the village of Potapovo, Myshkinsky district. In 1935 he moved to Leningrad. He went to the front as a volunteer. Fought near the city of Leningrad. Defended Pulkovo, Gatchina.

5. Poluyanchik \ Ivanova \ Evdokia Nikolaevna \ 1888-1964 \, was born in the city of Kalyazin, married in Petrograd in 1912, gave birth to three children: Nikolai, Pavel, Maria. survived the blockade. After the war she lived in Uglich.

6. Ugarov Vladimir Semenovich \ 1927-1995 \, was born in the village of Potapovo, Myshkinsky district. In 1936 he moved to Leningrad. survived the blockade. He graduated from the FZU, worked at the Marty plant / Admiralty shipyards \. In 1944 he was sentenced to forced labor for being late for work in the city of Molotovsk. Then he lived in the town of Myshkin, where he was buried.

Taken out along the "Road of Life".

7. Poluyanchik \ Shuvalova \ Tamara Pavlovna \ 09/30/1920-03/07/1990 \ was born in the village of Potapovo, Myshkinsky district, Yaroslavl region. Lived in Leningrad. It was taken to the blockade along the "Road of Life" on Lake Ladoga. She lived in Myshkino, got married. She was a housewife. Since 1957 she lived in Uglich. Worked in the organization Raypotrebsoyuz. Buried in Uglich.

8. Zakharyina \ Poluyanchik \ Nadezhda Danilovna \ 1917-1998 \ lived in Leningrad. She gave birth to three children. Sons - Vladimir, Yuri. Vladimir and Yuri live in Leningrad, pensioners. Daughter Lydia /1939-1998\ lived and died in Leningrad. Taken out of the city along the "Road of Life".

9. Shuvalov Pavel Efimovich \ 1896-1975\ was born in the village of Glotovo, Myshkinsky district. He worked at the Kazitsky factory and the Vera Slutskaya factory in Leningrad. Taken out along the "Road of Life". Lived in Uglich

10. Shuvalova \ Gasilova \ Claudia Ivanovna \ 1897-1967\, was born in the village of Potapovo, Myshkinsky district, lived in Leningrad, gave birth to two children, lived in the city of Uglich. Taken out along the "Road of Life" in 1942.

11. Kuracheva \ Gasilova \ Anna Ivanovna \ 1897-1987 \, was born in the village of Potapovo, Myshkinsky district. From 1936 to 1942 and from 1950 to 1957 she lived in Leningrad. Taken out along the "Road of Life". From 1957 to 1987 she lived in Uglich, where she was buried.

12 . Poluyanchik Nikolay Danilovich. My maternal great-grandfather, three times holder of the Order of the Red Star, Lieutenant Colonel Poluyanchik Nikolai Danilovich\26.04.1913-02.08.1999. Personnel officer. Participated in the battles for the defense of Leningrad.

I also established relatives who lived in Leningrad at different times:

Ugarov Pavel Semenovich \ 1924-1995 \ was born in the village of Potapovo, Myshkinsky district. In 1935 he moved to live in Leningrad. In 1941 he was taken prisoner. After captivity, he lived in the village of Potapovo, Myshkinsky district. In 1947 he moved to live in Leningrad. He worked as a cashier in a circus, a bookbinder in a printing house. He died and was buried in Leningrad.

1. Mishenkina Alla Dmitrievna

2. Mishenkin Yury Vasilievich

3. Mishenkina Maria Yurievna

4. Mishenkina Antonina Yurievna

5. Kiselevich Kirill Nikolaevich

6. Kiselevich Anna Kirillovna

7. Mishenkin Alexander Kirillovich

8. Zakharyin Yury Grigorievich

9. Zakharyin Vladimir Grigorievich

10. Zakharyin Alexey Yurievich

11. Zakharyin Andrey Vladimirovich

12. Balakhontseva Olga Lvovna

13. Ivanova Zinaida Nikolaevna

Eternal flames burn at the Piskarevsky and Serafimovsky cemeteries .

His monuments and monuments, the names of streets, squares, embankments tell in different ways and about different things. Many of them are like scars left from severe trials and bloody battles. Time, however, does not extinguish the living feeling of human gratitude to those who with their lives blocked the path to the city of the fascist hordes. Splitting the sky, rose at the entrance to the city, in its southern front gate, a tetrahedral obelisk, on the sides of which, like our contemporaries, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the bronze figures of the heroic participants in the legendary defense of Leningrad during the Great Patriotic War froze; hundreds of thousands of Soviet people, with their labor or their own means, took part in its construction. It turned into a 220-kilometer belt of Glory, dressed in granite and concrete of monuments, memorials, a fiery, incompressible ring of blockade: at Pulkovo and Yam-Izhora, at Kolpino, on the Pulkovo Heights, in the area of ​​Ligov and former Uritsk, along the borders of the Oranienbaum "piglet", on the Nevsky "patch" obelisks, steles, memorial signs, sculptures, guns and combat vehicles raised on pedestals froze, like immortal sentries, in the guard of honor. Commemorative wayposts lined up along the Road of Life from Leningrad to the Ladoga coast. Eternal flames burn at the Piskarevsky and Serafimovsky cemeteries

900 birch trees have been planted along the entire "Road of Life" highway according to the number of days of blockade. On all birches, red bandages are tied as a symbol of memory. About 470 thousand Leningraders are buried at the Piskarevsky Memorial Cemetery (in 1980). Men, women, children... They also wanted to live, but they died in the name and for the sake of the future, which today has become our present. Victims of the blockade of Leningrad and soldiers of the Leningrad Front were buried in mass graves (a total of about 470 thousand people; according to other sources, 520 thousand people - 470 thousand blockade and 50 thousand military personnel). The largest number of deaths occurred in the winter of 1941-1942.

In two pavilions at the entrance to the Piskarevskoye cemetery - a museum dedicated to the feat of the inhabitants and defenders of the city: exhibiteddiary of Tanya Savicheva - a Leningrad schoolgirl who survived the horrors of the winter of 1941-1942.

For heroism and courage shown in the battle for Leningrad, 140 soldiers of the army, 126 of the fleet, 19 partisans were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. 350 thousand soldiers, officers and generals participating in the defense of Leningrad, 5.5 thousand partisans and about 400 ice road workers were awarded orders and medals of the Soviet Union.

1.5 million defenders of Leningrad were awarded the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad".

Enemies hoped that heavy hardships would awaken base, animal instincts in Leningraders, drown out all human feelings in them. They thought that the starving, freezing people would quarrel among themselves over a piece of bread, over a log of firewood, stop defending the city and, in the end, surrender it. On January 30, 1942, Hitler cynically declared: "We are not deliberately storming Leningrad. Leningrad will eat itself out." The challenge to the enemy was the work of 39 schools in the besieged city. Even in the terrible conditions of blockade life, when there was not enough food, firewood, water, warm clothes, many Leningrad children studied. Writer Alexander Fadeev said: "And the greatest feat of Leningrad schoolchildren is that they studied."

“Eternal memory to the dead, and the dead inhabitants and wars

besieged Leningrad! Glory to the survivors!”

Bibliography

Literature:

Molchanov A.V. Heroic defense of Leningrad. St. Petersburg: Madam, 2007. 57s,

Survivors of the blockade / Comp. S.A. Irkhin. Yaroslavl, "Upper Volga", 2005. 156s

The feat of Leningrad//Ontology of literary works about the war in 12 volumes. V.3. M., Sovremennik., 1987, 564p.

Pavlov D.S. Leningrad in the blockade. M .: "Young Guard", 1989. 344 p.

Zhukov G.K. Memories and reflections.M. Novosti Press Agency, 1990.V.2.368 p.

Lisochkin I.I. With fire and blood in half. M. "Science", 312p.

Ladoga Native. Leningrad. Lenizdat, 1969 487s.

Defense of Leningrad 1941-1944 M. "Science", 1968 675s.

Vinogradov I.V. Heroes and fate. Leningrad. Lenizdat, 1988 312s.

Bezman E.S. Hours of partisan air. M. Science, 1976 267s.

Tributs. V.F. The Baltics go into battle. Leningrad. Lenizdat, 1973. 213s.

Periodicals:

"Battle for Leningrad" // "Red Star" 09/04/1991.