Blockade of Leningrad, children of the blockade... Everyone heard these words. One of the most majestic and at the same time tragic pages in the archives of the Great Patriotic War. These events are included in world history as the longest and most terrible siege of the city in its consequences. The events that took place in this city from 09/08/1941 to 01/27/1944 showed the whole world the great spirit of the people, capable of a feat in conditions of hunger, disease, cold and devastation. The city survived, but the price paid for this victory was very high.

Blockade. Start

Plan "Barbarossa" - that was the name of the enemy strategy, according to which the capture was carried out Soviet Union. One of the points of the plan was the defeat and complete capture of Leningrad in a short time. Hitler dreamed of taking the city no later than the autumn of 1941. The plans of the aggressor were not destined to come true. The city was captured, cut off from the world, but not taken!

The official beginning of the blockade was recorded on September 8, 1941. It was on this autumn day that German troops captured Shlisselburg and finally blocked the land connection of Leningrad with the entire territory of the country.

In fact, everything happened a little earlier. The Germans systematically isolated the city. So, from July 2, German planes regularly bombed railways, preventing the supply of products in this way. On August 27, communication with the city through the railways was already completely interrupted. After 3 days, there was a break in the connection of the city with hydroelectric power plants. And from September 1, all commercial stores stopped working.

In the beginning, almost no one believed that the situation was serious. Yet people who felt something was wrong began to prepare for the worst. The shops were empty very quickly. Right from the first days, food cards were introduced in the city, schools and kindergartens were closed.

Children of the besieged city

The blockade of Leningrad was imprinted with grief and horror on the fate of many people. Children of the blockade are a special category of residents of this city, who were deprived of their childhood by circumstances, forced to grow up much earlier and fight for survival at the level of adults and experienced people.

At the time of the closing of the blockade ring, in addition to adults, 400 thousand children of different ages remained in the city. It was the concern for children that gave the Leningraders strength: they were taken care of, protected, tried to hide from the bombings, comprehensively cared for. Everyone understood that the only way to save the children was to save the city.

Adults could not protect children from hunger, cold, disease and exhaustion, but everything possible was done for them.

Cold

Life in besieged Leningrad was hard, unbearable. The shelling was not the worst thing that the hostages of the city had to endure. When all the power plants were turned off and the city was enveloped in darkness, the most difficult period began. A snowy, frosty winter has come.

The city was covered with snow, frosts of 40 degrees led to the fact that the walls of unheated apartments began to be covered with frost. Leningraders were forced to install stoves in their apartments, in which everything was gradually burned for warmth: furniture, books, household items.

A new trouble came when the sewers froze. Now water could be taken only in 2 places: from the Fontanka and the Neva.

Hunger

Sad statistics says that the biggest enemy of the city's inhabitants was hunger.

The winter of 1941 was a test of survival. To regulate the provision of people with bread, food cards were introduced. The size of the ration was constantly decreasing, in November it reached its minimum.

The norms in besieged Leningrad were as follows: those who worked were supposed to have 250 gr. bread, the military, firefighters and members of the extermination squads received 300 grams each, and children and those who were on someone else's support - 125 grams each.

There were no other products in the city. 125 grams of besieged bread did not bear much resemblance to our ordinary, well-known flour product. This piece, which could only be obtained after many hours of standing in line in the cold, consisted of cellulose, cake, wallpaper paste, mixed with flour.

There were days when people could not get this coveted piece. During the bombing, the factories were not working.

People tried to survive as best they could. They tried to fill their empty stomachs with what they could swallow. Everything was used: first-aid kits were emptied (they drank castor oil, they ate Vaseline), they tore off the wallpaper to get the remains of the paste and cook at least some soup, they cut into pieces and boiled leather shoes, they prepared jelly from wood glue.

Naturally, for the children of that time, the most the best gift there was food. They were constantly thinking about delicious things. The kind of food that was disgusting in normal times was now the ultimate dream.

Holiday for children

Despite the terrible, deadly living conditions, Leningraders with great zeal and zeal tried to ensure that the children who were held hostage by the cold and hungry city lived full life. And if there was nowhere to get food and warmth, then it was possible to make a holiday.

So, during the terrible winter, when there was a blockade of Leningrad, the children of the blockade celebrated. By the decision of the executive committee of the Leningrad City Council, they were organized and carried out for the small inhabitants of the city.

All theaters of the city took an active part in this. Festive programs were drawn up, which included meetings with commanders and fighters, an artistic greeting, a game program and dances by the Christmas tree, and most importantly, lunch.

There was everything at these holidays, except for the games and the dance part. All due to the fact that weakened children simply did not have the strength for such entertainment. The children were not having fun at all - they were waiting for food.

The festive dinner consisted of a small piece of bread for yeast soup, jelly and a cutlet made from cereals. The children, who knew hunger, ate slowly, carefully collecting every crumb, because they knew the price of the besieged bread.

Hard times

It was much harder for children during this period than for an adult, fully conscious population. How to explain why during the bombing you need to sit in a dark basement and why there is no food anywhere, to children? About the blockade of Leningrad in the people's memory there are many terrible stories about abandoned babies, lonely guys who tried to survive. After all, it often happened that when leaving for the coveted ration, the relatives of the child simply died on the way, did not return home.

The number of orphanages in the city grew inexorably. In one year, their number grew to 98, and in fact at the end of 1941 there were only 17. About 40 thousand orphans tried to keep and keep in these shelters.

Every little resident of the besieged city has his own terrible truth. The diaries of the Leningrad schoolgirl Tanya Savicheva became famous all over the world.

The symbol of the suffering of Leningraders

Tanya Savicheva - now this name symbolizes the horror and hopelessness with which the inhabitants of the city were forced to fight. What then survived Leningrad! told the world this tragic story through his diary entries.

This girl was youngest child in the family of Maria and Nikolai Savichev. At the time of the blockade, which began in September, she was supposed to be a 4th grade student. When the family learned about the beginning of the war, it was decided not to leave the city anywhere, but to stay in order to provide all possible assistance to the army.

The girl's mother sewed clothes for the fighters. Brother Lek, who had poor eyesight, was not taken into the army, he worked at the Admiralty plant. Tanya's sisters, Zhenya and Nina, were active participants in the fight against the enemy. So, Nina, while she had strength, went to work, where, together with other volunteers, she dug trenches to strengthen the defense of the city. Zhenya, hiding from her mother and grandmother, secretly donated blood for the wounded soldiers.

Tanya, when schools in the occupied city started working again in early November, went to study. At that time, only 103 schools were open, but they also stopped working with the advent of severe frosts.

Tanya, being a little girl, also did not sit idle. Together with other guys, she helped dig trenches, put out "lighters".

Soon grief knocked on the family's door. Nina did not return home first. The girl did not come after the most severe shelling. When it became clear that they would never see Nina again, mother gave Tanya her sister's notebook. It is in it that the girl will subsequently make her notes.

War. Blockade. Leningrad - a besieged city in which entire families were dying out. So it was with the Savichev family.

Zhenya died next, right at the factory. The girl worked, working hard for 2 shifts in a row. She also donated blood. This is where the power ends.

The grandmother could not bear such grief, the woman was buried at the Piskarevsky cemetery.

And every time grief knocked on the door of the Savichevs' house, Tanya opened her notebook to note the next death of her relatives and friends. Leka soon died, followed by the girl's two uncles, then her mother died.

“The Savichevs are all dead. Only Tanya remained” - these terrible lines of Tanya's diary convey all the horror that the inhabitants of the besieged city had to endure. Tanya is dead. But the girl was mistaken, she did not know that a living person remained among the Savichevs. It was her sister Nina, who was rescued during the shelling and taken to the rear.

It is Nina who, returning to her native walls in 1945, will find her sister's diary and tell the world this terrible story. The history of a whole people who staunchly fought for their hometown.

Children - heroes of besieged Leningrad

All the inhabitants of the city, who survived and defeated death, should rightfully be called heroes.

Most of the children behaved especially heroically. Little citizens of a big country did not sit and wait for liberation to come; they fought for their native Leningrad.

Almost no event in the city took place without the participation of children. Children, along with adults, took part in the destruction of incendiary bombs, put out fires, cleared the roads, and sorted out the rubble after the bombing.

The blockade of Leningrad continued. The children of the blockade were forced to replace adults near the factory machines who died, died or went to the front. Especially for children who worked in factories, special wooden stands were invented and made so that they could, like adults, work on the manufacture of parts for machine guns, artillery shells and machine guns.

In spring and autumn, children actively worked in gardens and state farm fields. During the raids, the teacher's signal served to the fact that the children, taking off their hats, fell face down into the ground. Overcoming the heat, mud, rain and the first frosts, the young heroes of besieged Leningrad harvested a record harvest.

Children often visited hospitals: they cleaned there, entertained the wounded, and helped feed the seriously ill.

Despite the fact that the Germans tried with all their might to destroy Leningrad, the city lived on. Lived and endured. After the blockade was lifted, 15,000 children received the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad."

The road that brings back to life

The only way that gave at least some opportunity to maintain contact with the country. In the summer they were barges, in the winter they were cars moving on ice. Until the beginning of the winter of 1941, tugboats with barges reached the city, but the Military Council of the front understood that Ladoga would freeze and then all roads would be blocked. New searches and intensified preparation of other means of communication began.

Thus, a path was prepared along the ice of Ladoga, which eventually began to be called the "Road of Life". In the history of the blockade, the date was preserved when the first horse-drawn convoy paved the way on the ice, it was November 21, 1941.

Following this, 60 vehicles drove off, the purpose of which was to deliver flour to the city. The city began to receive bread, the price of which was human life, because moving along this path was associated with great risk. Often cars fell through the ice, drowned, taking people and food to the bottom of the lake. Working as a driver of such a car was deadly. In some places the ice was so fragile that even a car loaded with a couple of bags of cereals or flour could easily be under the ice. Each voyage made this way was heroic. The Germans really wanted to block it, the bombing of Ladoga was constant, but the courage and heroism of the inhabitants of the city did not allow this to happen.

The "Road of Life" really fulfilled its function. Food supplies began to replenish in Leningrad, and children and their mothers were taken out of the city by cars. This path was not always safe. Already after the war, when examining the bottom of Lake Ladoga, toys of Leningrad children were found who drowned during such transportation. In addition to dangerous thawed patches on the icy road, evacuation vehicles were often subjected to enemy shelling and flooding.

About 20 thousand people worked on this road. And only thanks to their courage, fortitude and desire to survive, the city got what it needed most of all - a chance to survive.

Surviving Hero City

The summer of 1942 was very busy. The Nazis stepped up the fighting on the fronts of Leningrad. The bombardment and shelling of the city increased noticeably.

New artillery batteries appeared around the city. The enemies had maps of the city, and important areas were shelled daily.

The blockade of Leningrad continued. People turned their city into a fortress. So, on the territory of the city, due to 110 large defense units, trenches and various passages, it became possible to carry out a covert regrouping of the military. Such actions served to significantly reduce the number of wounded and killed.

On January 12, the armies of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts launched an offensive. After 2 days, the distance between these two armies was less than 2 kilometers. The Germans stubbornly resisted, but on January 18 the troops of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts united.

This day was marked by another important event: the blockade was lifted due to the liberation of Shlisselburg, as well as the complete clearing of the southern coast of Lake Ladoga from the enemy.

A corridor of about 10 kilometers turned out along the coast, and it was he who restored the land connection with the country.

When the blockade was lifted, there were about 800 thousand people in the city.

The significant date of January 27, 1944 went down in history as the day when the blockade of the city was completely lifted.

On this joyful day, Moscow conceded to Leningrad the right to fire a salute in honor of the lifting of the blockade in commemoration of the fact that the city survived. The order for the troops that won was signed not by Stalin, but by Govorov. Such an honor was not awarded to any commander-in-chief of the fronts during the entire period of the Great Patriotic War.

The blockade lasted 900 days. This is the most bloody, cruel and inhuman blockade in the history of mankind. Its historical significance is enormous. Holding back the huge forces of the German troops throughout this time, the inhabitants of Leningrad provided invaluable assistance in conducting military operations in other sectors of the front.

More than 350 thousand soldiers participating in the defense of Leningrad received their orders and medals. 226 people were awarded the honorary title of Hero of the Soviet Union. 1.5 million people were awarded the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad".

The city itself received the honorary title of Hero City for heroism and steadfastness.

Here lie the Leningraders.
Here the townspeople are men, women, children.
Next to them are Red Army soldiers.
All my life
They protected you, Leningrad,
The cradle of the revolution.
We cannot list their noble names here,
So there are many of them under the eternal protection of granite.
But know, listening to these stones:
Nobody is forgotten and nothing is forgotten.

Olga Berggolts

Good morning! There are many important dates and memorable days in our country, but the day of the complete lifting of the blockade of Leningrad stands apart for me personally. Not only because I live near this city. My great-grandfather was one of the lorry drivers on the Road of Life, which was then called the Road of Death. He delivered shells and food to the besieged city, and took the inhabitants back. It was laid through Ladoga in the autumn of 1941 - in a narrow 16-kilometer strip, which the enemy failed to capture on the western shore of the lake. For more than two years, this was the only thread that connected Leningrad with the rest of the country. Unfortunately, when my grandfather died, I was too small to write down his story, I was only 6 years old. In this post, I have collected the memories of the winners who did not surrender their city to the enemy and their feat must be remembered.

Memoirs of Zinaida Pavlovna Ovcharenko (Kuznetsova).

She spent all 900 blockade days in the city. She buried her father and grandmother during this time, the brothers died at the front. Now she is 85.

On June 22, 1941, I turned 13. That day I was walking around the city with a friend. We saw a crowd of people at the store. There was a loudspeaker there. The women were crying. We hurried home. We learned at home that the war had begun.

We had a family - 7 people: dad, mom, 3 brothers, a 16-year-old sister and me, the youngest. On June 16, my sister went on a boat down the Volga, where the war found her. The brothers volunteered to go to the front, dad was transferred to the barracks in the Lesnoy port, where he worked as a mechanic. Mom and I were alone.

We lived behind the Narva Zastava, then it was a working outskirts. Around summer cottages, villages. As the Germans advanced, our entire street was crowded with refugees from the suburbs. They walked loaded with household belongings, carried and led their children by the hands.

I helped to be on duty in the sanitary squad, where my mother was the flight commander. Once I saw some kind of black cloud moving towards Leningrad from the Middle Rogatka. These were fascist planes. Our anti-aircraft guns began to shoot at them. A few got hit. But others flew over the center of the city, and soon we saw large puffs of smoke in the distance. Then they learned that it was the Badaev food warehouses that had been bombed. They burned for several days. The sugar was also on fire. In the hungry winter of 1941/42, many Leningraders who had enough strength came there, collected this land, boiled it and drank "sweet tea". And when the earth was no longer sweet, they still dug it and ate it right there.

By winter, our dad was completely weak, but he still sent me part of his labor ration. When my mother and I came to visit him, someone was being carried out of the door of the barracks to the carpentry workshop. It was our dad. We gave our bread ration for 3 days to the women from my father's work so that they would help my mother take it to the Volkovskoye cemetery - this is the other end of the city. These women, as soon as they ate bread, they left their mother. She took dad to the cemetery alone. She walked with a sled after other people. Got exhausted. Sleighs loaded with the bodies of the dead were being driven past. The driver allowed my mother to attach a sleigh with my father's coffin to them. Mom is behind. Arriving at the cemetery, I saw long ditches where the dead were piled, and just the pope was pulled out of the coffin, and the coffin was smashed into firewood.
Icon lamp in the night

From the blockade diary of Claudia Andreevna Semyonova.

It did not stop working all 900 blockade days. She was deeply religious, fond of music and theater. She died in 1972.

March 29, 1942 At 6 a.m. shelling. At 7 o'clock on the radio announced the end. Went to church. A lot of people. General confession. Communion of the Holy Mysteries. Came home at 11. Today Palm Sunday. At 3.30 alarm on the radio. Fighters. Anti-aircraft guns "talk". I feel tired, my right leg hurts. Where are my dears? I listen to a good program on the radio. Chilean song on the ukulele, Lemeshev.

5th of April. Today is Easter. At half past six in the morning I went to church, stood for Mass. The day is sunny but cold. Anti-aircraft guns were firing now. Scary.

22 April. I'm in the hospital at the hospital. The leg is a little better. They eat decently. The main thing is that they give oil (50 grams per day) and sugar - a portion for dystrophics. Of course not. During the night there was a heavy cannonade. Quiet during the day. Sluggishness in people and in nature. It's hard to walk.

1st of May. Working day. There are few flags on the streets, no decorations. The sun is wonderful. The first time I went out without a scarf. After work I went to the theatre. "Wedding in Malinovka". The location was good. At half past seven. There was shelling.

the 6th of May. The alarm was at 5, ended at half past six. The day is cold. I took a ticket to the Philharmonic on May 10 for Tchaikovsky's 5th symphony, conductor Eliasberg.

May 17th. At half-past five, heavy shelling began, somewhere close. At 7 I was at the Philharmonic. Mikhailov sang well "Beloved city, native city, I'm with you again."
"We will win!"

From the diary of Vladimir Ge.

During the war he served as a political commissar of a cavalry squadron. After the war, he taught at Leningrad universities. Died in 1981.

July 22, 1943 Today marks 25 months since the beginning of the great trials. I am not able to cover events chronologically, I will make brief sketches. If you are not destined to use it yourself, let these lines remain a memory of me for my infinitely beloved daughter. She will grow up, read and understand how people lived and fought for her future happiness.

July 25th. Yesterday, Stalin signed an order about the failure of the German summer offensive. I think next summer we will celebrate the victory. The defeat of Germany is possible even this year, if the allies still land troops in Europe. But there was a time when many did not believe in our strength. I remember a conversation in August 1941 with Major T. in the dining room of the command staff in Pushkin. He knew me as a boy. He has been serving in the army for 10 years. In a fatherly tone, patting me on the shoulder, he said: "Volodenka! Our position is hopeless. Our troops near Leningrad, there will even be nowhere to retreat. We are in a mousetrap. And we are doomed." In those days, many rushed about: evacuate the city or stay? Will the German break into the city or not?

August 19. Today I was at the cinema, the film "Elusive Yang". The shelling began. The walls shuddered from close ruptures. But the audience sat quietly in the dark room. Watched to the end. Such is the life of Leningraders now: they go to the cinema, to theaters, and somewhere nearby shells are exploding, people are falling dead. At the same time, the work of enterprises and institutions does not stop. Where is the front, where is the rear? How to define the line between heroism and carelessness? What is it - courage or habit? Each individually taken Leningrader did nothing to award him with an order, but all of them taken together, of course, embody the star of the Hero of the Soviet Union.

4 September. IN last days 10 cities in the Donbass were liberated, Taganrog was taken. August 23 was at a jazz concert by Shulzhenko and Korali. During the concert, they announced the capture of Kharkov. Hall applauded standing. Shouts were heard: "Long live our Red Army!", "Long live Comrade Stalin!"

31th of December. We have a new commander appointed. Short, stocky, speaks slowly, weightily, apparently, a strong-willed, tough person. This one will be stronger than its predecessor. His arrival reinforces the assumption that our army is destined for offensive operations not of local significance.

January 7, 1944 Looks like the city is surviving recent months blockade. I remember the general rejoicing of Leningraders when, for the first time after a 5-month break, trams rumbled through the streets. It was April 15, 1942. And today the tram has already become a common occurrence, and when you have to wait for it for more than 5 minutes, this causes discontent.

January 24th. Our army took Peterhof, Krasnoye Selo, Strelna, Uritsk. One of these days we will take Pushkin and Gatchina. Our neighbors took Mgu, Volkhov. A few more days - and Leningrad will be completely inaccessible to shelling. We are moving forward. Perhaps today is the last time I see my city. The nomadic life begins...

Kagan Igor Zakharyevich - born in 1936, shipbuilder, Honored Mechanical Engineer of Russia

The blockade is grief, suffering and death of loved ones, life deliberately erased it from my childhood memory, only separate strokes, scars remained, but remained for life. On the day of victory I was eight years old, in 1941 - only four.

Mother was drafted into the Navy during the Finnish war and worked as a doctor in a hospital near the Kalinkin bridge, where she met the war against fascism.

1940, summer, my mother takes me for one day to meet with my father in Moscow. Zoo, metro, lunch at a restaurant in the Moscow hotel. My father ordered “devolyay” cutlets (later they were called “Kiev cutlets”). I didn’t eat them, I asked for scrambled eggs, and my mother almost finished her cutlet, there was a small piece left.

June 22, 1941, my mother and I are walking in the park of Peterhof. Mom is happy, I asked for a cake, bought an eclair, I ate half, quietly threw the rest into the bushes.

1941, August. In our room on Mokhovaya 26, two people have been on duty by the window for several days, they are watching the doorway in the house opposite. Grandma says they're tracking spies. Our neighbor, German Maria Ernestovna, was evicted.

1941, November. We live, on the ground floor, an apartment with vaulted ceilings and tiled floors. Entrance directly from the street. During the NEP, my grandfather had a watch workshop here. The house has no cellars and no bomb shelter. Every night we have residents from the upper floors, they come with their own chairs and folding beds. They bomb every day, a lot, stubbornly. For what? To intimidate? But it's not scary anymore. The impending famine and frost are terrible. A kilometer from us is the Big House, they say that this is the goal for the German pilots, there are also bridges across the Neva. But the bombs hit the houses on Pestel, Mokhovaya, Rynochnaya. Airplanes do not reach the target, the pilots are afraid of anti-aircraft guns, or are they saving this building for the Gestapo? How are we protected? Blackout, curtains, electricity cut off. Lots of balloons and searchlights. Anti-aircraft guns stand on the Field of Mars, in Salt Lane

I still do not sleep. A bomb with a nasty squeal falls two meters from the window, not on a solid panel, but on a lawn, burrows into the ground (the Germans adjusted something in it incorrectly) and explodes. The meter-high walls of the old house survived, but the glass in the entire district shattered to smithereens. The wounded with glass cuts were brought into the room. Mother drags me through the back door to the neighbors, who have windows into the courtyard - they survived.

You can’t live without glasses, the frosts are terrible. My grandmother and I are moving to a hostel on Shchors Avenue. I want to eat all the time. All the time I remember the half-eaten cake in Peterhof. Once every two days, the mother comes and brings a jar of soup. Transport is not working. She walks in the evening in a thirty-degree frost from the Kalinkin bridge to the Petrograd side, often under shelling, and in the morning she returns to the hospital by 8 o'clock. She is close to insanity, all the time she talks about a half-eaten cutlet in Moscow. She, like other women, wears a diaper, the muscles are no longer able to resist the urge. Slippery, lots of snow. Once she fell and broke a precious can of soup.

The end of January - the strength leaves the mother, besides, there is no water in the hostel, the toilets do not work. She decides to take and hide me and my grandmother in the hospital. I, wrapped in a huge woolen scarf and a blanket, are being taken through the whole city on a sled. Shelling on the Kirov bridge. I remember howling shells overhead.

I am not the first to work illegally in the hospital, there are two more girls of about seven years old. The three of us secretly go to the wards of the wounded, read poems, sing songs. The hospital saved from death and cold. (maybe we got portions of the wounded who died in the morning?). A month later, the head physician caught the eye and we were evicted with a bang to a hostel on Yegorova Street. But spring was already coming, they began to give more bread, the water supply began to work.

1942 May. My grandmother and I stand in line for bread and dream that if there is a makeweight, my grandmother will give it to me. And now she really gives me a magically smelling piece of bread in my hands. Suddenly, someone pushes me in the back, takes a piece and puts it entirely in his mouth. People from the queue pounce on the guy, knock him to the ground, beat him, and he, covering his face with his hands, manages to swallow bread. I'm crying.
1942, August. The mother was completely exhausted. She is transferred to an aviation school in the village of Krasny Yar, 40 km from Kuibyshev. We are sailing across Ladoga in a small tanker adapted to transport people. It shakes, it makes me sick. Mother takes me on deck. Two planes are flying, the whistle of bombs, they are flying past, A machine gun is chirping on our ship, a cannon is firing on a guard guard. The planes are taking off.

1942 - September. Is there an address where you can stay for a couple of days strangers. I have a temperature of 39.5, diphtheria (this is contagious), and the hostess has two children, but they sheltered us, they help me to treat. In Krasny Yar we live in a room next to the headquarters of the aviation school. The cadet poured gasoline into the lamp without extinguishing the fire, Mother woke up from a crack and a glow - the headquarters was on fire. Jumped out barefoot, stripped through the broken window into the snow. Sheltered, warmed and clothed by collective farmers, complete strangers.
1943, autumn .. Stalingrad, Here we sailed along the Volga from Kuibyshev. Mother was transferred to a hospital in Yeysk and transplant here. Terrible view of a completely destroyed city. Absolutely all the buildings were smashed, only boxes of walls with holes from shells remained. Very few people. Night, we sit on knots on the street. They show the film "She Fought for the Motherland", the screen is stretched on the wall of the station.

May 9, 1945 Yeisk. Victory Day. They shoot a lot. Single rockets fly in the air. Few were destined to survive in the blockade, probably very lucky ones. Both my grandmother and mother fed me at first, being content with the leftovers. From the experience of the civil war, my grandmother had small stocks of flour and cereals, She also shared them with her sister. It was “lucky” that the bomb was buried in the ground before the explosion, that the broken windows forced them to move to a hostel, where it was warm, then to a hospital, where there was water. It was lucky that the wounded hungry sailors were treated to pieces of sugar and crackers. It was lucky that on the road of life the planes attacked not our ship, but the neighboring one, that we met kind-hearted people.

From the memoirs of Margarita Feodorovna Neverova

“... I left the house. We went with my little dog, so small, for bread. They left. The old man lay. Here he already had three fingers folded so prayerfully, and he lay in felt boots like that, frozen.
When we came to the bakery, there was no bread, my little dog suddenly poke-poke-poke me into a felt boot with his nose. I leaned over.

- What are you?
Turns out she found a piece of bread. He gives it to me. And, you know, like a raven, I jumped up, clutching bread. And she looks at me: “Will you give me or not?” I speak:
- Ladies, dear, ladies!
And I made such a soup out of this bread that you can’t even imagine how we treated ourselves to it!
And we went back - this old man was already lying without boots. Well, of course, he doesn’t need felt boots in the next world, - I understand ... Yes, he’s already folded the cross and didn’t inform, poor thing. ”"

Kolesnikova Elena Vladimirovna (born 1932)

"In 1941, I turned 9 years old. At the end of May, the first in my life ended academic year, but this summer my mother did not take me to my grandmother for the holidays as usual.
The first day of the war, my mother and I met on the beach near the Peter and Paul Fortress. When Molotov's speech was announced on the radio, the beach somehow froze. People listened in silence, quickly packed up and left. The word WAR was heard everywhere.

My father was drafted into the army, he was somewhere on the Leningrad front.
Children, together with adults, dragged sand to the attics, filled iron barrels with water, laid out shovels ... Everyone felt like a fighter. The basements were supposed to be bomb shelters.
The first bombing in my life remained in my memory brighter than others, because it was scary, like never before in my whole life. The roar of aircraft, the roar of anti-aircraft guns, explosions. And still darkness.
Once or twice during the bombing, my mother and I went down to the basement. Then they stopped. Mom said it was pointless to waste time like that.

Mom began to dry potato peels and all sorts of crusts. Since the summer, she left a bottle of boiled sunflower oil and told her not to touch it.

There were a lot fewer kids in the school. It was almost impossible to study: shelling, raids, we practiced by candlelight. When only three people came one day, the teacher said that we would not gather anymore.
Soon, my mother stopped going to work, her organization was evacuated. She often left for a long time, sometimes for the whole day - on duty, in line for bread, for water, for firewood, for some food.
Then everyone walked slowly, there was no strength. Yes, the blockade remained in my memory as a time when it was dark, as if there was no day, but only one very long, dark, icy night.

In December, all the crusts are over. There is no food, there is no food for everyone who remained in Leningrad. After the war, in a conversation with someone, my mother said: “Thanks to my daughter, she never asked me for food!”
Of the blockade years, I remember one New Year- this is probably the first New Year without a beautiful Christmas tree with sweets, nuts, tangerines and shiny lights. Olga Berggolts spoke on the radio. I did not know then that this was our Leningrad poetess, but her voice, with its characteristic intonation, somehow touched me and forced me to listen attentively to what she was saying. “I don’t need to tell you what it is, this year…”. Then I remember the verses. It seems like this: “Comrade, bitter difficult days have fallen on us, grief and troubles threaten us. But we are not forgotten, we are not alone, and this is already a victory!”

In my mother's notes there is such a piece: "Despite the horrors of the blockade, constant shelling and bombing, the halls of the theater and cinema were not empty."

I can't say exactly when it was. Violinist Barinova gave a solo concert in the Great Hall of the Philharmonic. I was lucky to get there. The hall was not heated, they sat in their coats. It was dark, only the figure of the artist was illuminated by some kind of light. You could see her breathing on her fingers to warm them up a little.
Our school had beds in the Summer Garden. There we weeded carrots, lettuce and beets. When in the spring green leaves were just breaking through on old lindens, we ate them endlessly, then we ate linden flowers, and then seeds.

One day in the spring of 1943, the courtyard of the Nekrasovskaya bath came to life. Dirty people in quilted jackets tried to revive the boiler room. The day came when the bath was opened. We went to the bathhouse, hoping to have time to wash between shelling. In the bath, walking barefoot on the cement floor, we held hands and for some reason laughed. We suddenly saw how scary we are! Two skeletons with washcloths in their hands are walking along an empty bathhouse, shivering from the cold and laughing. The water was warm, but the bath had not warmed up yet. Four more brave blockaders, thin and bony, splashed in the soapy. It was awkward to look at each other.

The war was still going on when the Leningrad Defense Museum appeared in the city. Everything about it was amazingly true. It is impossible to retell it. There has never been such a museum before. But then it was destroyed. Destroyed the memory, destroyed the experience of people, the experience of survival. Then some more time passed and the museum was opened, but what is now is a miserable reminder...
When people ask me about the happiest day of my life, I say that it was Victory Day on May 9, 1945. I have never seen happier faces in people. And then, on May 9, 1945, it was believed that after such losses, suffering, horrors, people would finally understand the senselessness of wars.

Now one cannot recognize in the overgrown trees those thin seedlings of lindens and apple trees that we planted by schoolchildren in the Moscow and Primorsky Victory Parks.

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 there were a huge number 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 destroyed 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 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 multi-million city. 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 stalks. 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 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. On the move thanks to small nutritional properties there was grass, foliage and even tree bark. 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.

***
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. On the site website you can also read about during the Winter War of 1939-1940, about why the fact of its breakthrough Soviet troops marked a turning point in military history.

Remembering the siege of Leningrad, we read the stories of those who survived 900 harsh days and did not give up - they survived ...

They endured a lot: cold (everything that burns went into the furnace, even books!), hunger (the norm for issuing bread was 150 grams, they caught birds, animals!), thirst (water had to be drawn from the Neva), darkness (the lights went out, the walls of houses covered with frost), the death of relatives, friends, acquaintances ...

On January 27, 1944, the blockade of Leningrad was lifted. 72 years have passed. A lifetime... Reading about this time is both hard and painful. For today's schoolchildren, the blockade is a long history.

Let us recall how the blockade was broken with dry numbers, and then we will read the stories-memories of those terrible days.

January 15 - In the area of ​​the Pulkovo Heights, the 42nd Army cut off the Krasnoe Selo - Pushkin road to the enemies.

January 17 - Fierce battles began for Voronya Gora - the highest point in the Leningrad region. The 2nd shock army continues fighting in the Ropshinsky direction.

January 20 - In the Ropsha area, the advanced units of the 42nd Army and the 2nd Shock Army united and completely surrounded the enemy grouping.

January 21 - The enemy grouping is destroyed. The troops of the Volkhov Front liberated the city of Mga.

On the evening of January 27, in honor of the complete liberation of Leningrad from the blockade, a solemn artillery salute from 324 guns thundered on the banks of the Neva.

Sometimes you will hear the comparison: "Just like in a blockade." No, not like a blockade. And God forbid anyone else to experience what the adults and children of Leningrad experienced: a piece of bread baked during the siege - an ordinary daily ration - almost weightless ...

But the inhabitants of the city, doomed to starvation, did not have anger. A common grief, a common misfortune rallied everyone. And in the most difficult conditions, people remained people.

Evgenia Vasilievna Osipova-Tsibulskaya, a resident of besieged Leningrad, recalls this. In those terrible years, she lost her entire family, was left alone, but did not disappear - she survived. Survived thanks to those who helped the little girl stay alive...

The passport to Zhenya Osipova was issued after the war, in the 48th year. She graduated from school in the 51st, entered the journalism department of the philological faculty at Leningrad University, worked as a correspondent on Sakhalin, in Leningrad newspapers, a librarian, and a lecturer. She spoke to schoolchildren and told them about what she experienced during the war.

The stories of Evgenia Vasilievna will not leave you indifferent.

E.V. Cybulska

From stories about the blockade

"MIR" CRASHED

I hold flowers in my hand. From the threshold I shout:

Mom, look! Lilies of the valley in the dew! - And I stop at the door, closing my eyes.

The whole room is in brilliant bouquets. Sunbeams jump on the walls, ceiling, floor. In the dazzling light, Mom kneels and collects the pieces of the broken mirror.

This mirror - from floor to ceiling, in a beautiful frame - we called "peace". It reflected the world outside. In autumn - flying golden leaves from maples and lindens, in winter - swirling snowflakes, in spring - singing birds at our feeder, and in summer - sunlight and blooming lilacs tumble from the front garden into the open window. And always playing in the yard girls and boys.

What if there is no "peace"? I say bitterly:

It's a pity ... "Mir" crashed!

Daughter! War! - Mom answers and hides her tear-stained face in a towel.

Molotov’s speech is broadcast on the radio: “Our cause is just ... the enemy will be defeated ... victory will be ours!”

IVAN TSAREVICH

At the front, my elder brother Ivan composed a military fairy tale for me and signed it "Ivan Tsarevich". In each "triangle" came its continuation. But the last letter I could not understand. One sentence is written in large letters: “I’m doing well, only my legs have dulled ...”

Mom, - I pestered, - knives can become dull, but how about legs?

Mom went to the neighbors.

Calm down, Andreevna! - they consoled. - For reasons of military censorship, it is impossible to tell Ivan that in the army with rations it is a bit tight. Here is the code I wrote...

I did not know what a “code” was, and urgently sent a message to the front: “Ivan Tsarevich! What's with the feet joke? I don't know such a story."

Another letter came in response. I re-read it several times: “Gangrene ... amputated ... agony ... personnel ... wounded ...”

What is "gangrene" and "amputated"? These words are not in the dictionary of the school textbook. But I still caught the main thing: my Ivan Tsarevich remained only in a fairy tale:

He did not drive the waves of the sea,
The stars did not touch the gold ones,
He protected the child
Rocked the cradle...

STAY BOY!

Well, winter was in the 42nd! Fierce, snowy, long! And all gray. Gray-haired houses frowned, trees frozen from the cold turned gray, bushes and roads were wrapped in gray snowdrifts. The air is also gray and evil - there is nothing to breathe ...

The new year began with losses. On the first of January grandfather Andrey passed away. A week later, two sisters died on the same day - Verochka and Tamarochka. The brother died a few days later in the firebox of a round stove, basking on warm bricks. Mom found out about it only in the morning when she threw lit paper there.

In desperation, she broke the stove with an ax to get her brother out of there. The bricks did not give in, crumbled, the iron bent, and my mother pounded on the stove to the right and left, turning it into ruins. I raked a chipped brick.

The next day my mother could not get out of bed. I had to take care of the household, involuntarily become a “boy”. The whole house is my concern: chips, potbelly stove, water, a store.

From my brother, not only his affairs, but also clothes passed to me. Gathering in line, I put on his coat, hat with earflaps, felt boots. I've always been cold. I stopped undressing for the night, but in the early morning I was already ready to go for food. Waited in line for a long time. In order not to freeze, she pounded her legs and rubbed her face with mittens.

Women encouraged me

Hold on, little one! Look what a "tail" is stretching behind you ...

Once in a bakery, a woman standing behind me said to me:

Boy! Is mom alive?

At home lies...

Take care of her! Don't eat appendages on the way, bring everything to your mother!

And my mother is not a dystrophic! - I said. She even got better.

Why is she lying then? Tell him: let him get up, otherwise he will weaken.

Wait, wait! - another woman grabbed me by the sleeve, whose face was not visible at all, it was hidden in a scarf. - Doesn't she have dropsy?

I don't know... - I drawled in bewilderment. Her face is shiny and her legs are thick.

Having redeemed the bread, I hurried home. Falling into the snow, she climbed through the snowdrifts on all fours and dragged her mother's bread ration, with all the extras. Frozen, in hoarfrost, the bread hit the table with a brick. We have to wait until it thaws. Falling asleep, I leaned against the wall.

And at night, as if someone pushed me in the side. She opened her eyes - it was dark, she listened - quietly. She lit the oil lamp, poured water, lowered a piece of bread into it.

Mom didn’t want to swallow for anything and mooed loudly.

Mother! I begged her. - Eat some bread... and speak in words...

But my mother's huge glassy eyes were already staring indifferently at the ceiling.

It happened early in the morning. Simultaneously: mother's death and fire. The school I used to go to burned down.

"DRAW THE FOOD!"

Let's build our own fortress and live in it! - suggests sister. - War will never find us in the fortress.

We dragged all our clothes onto the bed, lowered the blankets all the way to the floor. The walls and floor were covered with pillows. The "fortress" turned out to be warm and quiet. Now, as soon as the "air raid" was announced on the radio, we climbed into our shelter and waited for the "all clear" there.

My sister doesn't understand war at all. She believes that the Nazis only drop bombs on our house, and asks to go to another where there is no war. From hunger, the little sister loses her memory. She does not remember what sugar, porridge, milk are ... Swinging like a dummy, she is waiting for her mother with gifts. Mom died before our eyes. Has she forgotten that too?

I found paper, pencils, leftover paints in my father's drawer. I lay everything out on the table. I warm my hands and get to work. I draw a picture "Little Red Riding Hood met a wolf in the forest."

Fascist! says the sister angrily. - Ate grandma! Don't choke, cannibal! Draw, - my sister gives me the task, - some food ...

I draw pies that look like rolls. My sister licks the paper, and then quickly eats my drawing and asks:

Draw more and more...

I draw all sorts of things on a sheet with a simple pencil, and my sister immediately destroys everything, stuffing it into her mouth. And I, turning away, swallow the remains of a notebook sheet.

My sister divides my drawings into two piles. One - "edible" - hides in the "fortress", the other - "harmful" - in the "potbelly stove", pronouncing strictly:

So that there were no fascists!

WHAT IS A HOSPITAL?

Unbearably cold. We don't heat a broken stove. And there is nothing to kindle the “potbelly stove” - the chips ran out. Sheds have long been dismantled for firewood. They broke the porch of our house, two steps remained. Stools, shelves, whatnot were burned. The kitchen table, where food for the day used to be stored, has been preserved. Now it is empty. And we don't sit at the table anymore. We chew our pieces without hot water. Sister sucks a cotton blanket day and night. From weakness, she cannot get out of the “fortress”, she does not recognize me, she calls me “mother”.

I went to look for the boss. They were a young girl. In a fur hat, in a short coat, in men's mittens and felt boots not for growth. She looked like a bunny. Here he will take it now and jump into the snow.

What's up girl? her tiny voice calls out. - You're all trembling!

Save my little sister, I ask, help her!

The "Bunny" is silent for a long time, leafing through the notebook, and then asks:

Do you want to go to the hospital? Can be determined!

I helplessly look at the "bunny", I'm afraid to refuse or agree. I don't know what "hospital" is...

Two places ... - the girl says and writes something in a notebook. - I'll come for you... Give me the address...

There were no two places in the hospital. They took my sister as the weakest. Next turn is mine...

COME MAY!

I was left alone.

A day passes, and I put a stick on the door with a pencil. I'm waiting for May. With warmth, streams, herbs. This is my hope. The sticks "passed" March, "moved" to April, but spring still does not come. Snow falls in large flakes, tightly covering the ground.

I don't want more white! I scream in an empty house. I scream to hear my voice. There is no one in the rooms. All neighbors are dead.

Burying my face in the pillow, I whine like a dog:

When will everything be green?

I try to get up and look out the window. Icicles are crying on the roof, their tears flow directly onto the windowsill.

Like a door slammed!

Which door? There are no doors, they were burned when the house was empty. Only two doors remain. Katyusha Minaeva - she needs a door, it says: "Digs trenches." And mine. She is in a dark corridor, no one can see her. This is where I keep my calendar. I put the sticks at the very bottom, because I can't reach the real calendar. I can only look at him. And next to the calendar hangs on a carnation a portrait of the one whom I look forward to with such impatience. She drew with colored pencils. I saw her like this. All in blue, joyful, smiling!

Spring! The face is like that of the sun, only blue, in orange-red colors. Eyes - two small suns, similar to blue lakes, from which blue and yellow rays come. On the head is a wreath of grass and bright flowers. Braids are green branches, and between them are blue rays. These are streams ... I am waiting for spring, as the dearest person.

Footsteps were heard outside the door. Yes, steps! They are approaching my door. Isn't spring knocking with its heels? They say she goes with a ring. No, it's ringing and crunching on the floor broken glass. Why does it ring like that?

Finally, the door opens wide, and I see the long-awaited guest in an overcoat and boots. The face is joyful, the hands are gentle, affectionate.

How I've been waiting for you!

Spinning with happiness, I plunged into the spring blue under the children's lullaby that my mother sang to us:

Come, oh May!
We are children
We are waiting for you soon!
Come, oh May!

I didn't recognize my father.

ORDER: STOP!

In the evening, a fire burned in a broken stove. Dad put his bowler hat on the cart and heated the water. A bath was being prepared for me in a barrel.

Now we're going to bathe! Dirt something! It's like you haven't washed in ages! - and put me in thick steam. From the barrel, I watch how dad lays black squares of crackers on the tablecloth, pours a pile of sugar, puts cans. Duffel bag hung on a carnation next to my "spring".

After washing, I sit at the table in my father's clean shirt and swallow black pasta with butter. Hardly anyone had such joy. And yet I ask anxiously:

Dad, are you going to war again?

I'll go! he says. - Here I will put things in order on the "Baltic" and go to my "horse".

The horse, I know, is a tank. What about Baltika? Password?

Dad laughs. Sitting down next to me, he watches me swallow food.

- "Baltika" - you, my dear ... - he whispers. - I'll take you to the hospital tomorrow. They'll treat you there... from there they'll send you to an orphanage... not for long, while I'm at war... You'll go to school... And then the war will end...

How many days do you need for this?

What days? Dad doesn't understand.

Days ... how long will the war end? I would draw such a calendar ... - I point to the door with sticks and a drawing of spring. - So the days of war would pass faster ...

Hey brother, this is not an easy task. The whole state decides it. The fascist must be defeated! In the meantime ... look, dug in ... near Leningrad itself.

I think, anxiety appears, but dad interrupts the conversation:

Get up early tomorrow... a lot to do!

However, we didn't have anything to do tomorrow.

A little light a messenger came to us - dad urgently needs to come to the unit. Hope for treatment, school, new life collapsed.

Now dad will put on an overcoat and go to war. Wrapped in a blanket, I'm afraid to breathe. Dad picks me up along with the blanket and puts me on my feet. I'm settling down He picks up again. I sit down again. Dad picks up, I fall.

I can't walk! I cried.

Do you know how to beat a Fritz? He starves us, and we will take it and stand! And we won't kneel! Here is your victory... There is no one else and nothing to lose, you yourself must hold on with your teeth... Through force, you still stand... as in battle... This is an order!..

It's time for dad to leave!

He comes to the door, removes the duffel bag from the carnation, puts on his overcoat, examining my picture.

Spring came! he says. - Soon there will be greenery, a good help ...

Take spring with you! She is happy!

Dad didn't take my picture.

Everyone has their own spring. This one came to you, so it's yours... And mine is waiting in the tank, on the front lines...

For the last time, dad presses me to him, strokes my hair, reminds me: "Stop ... and that's it."

I didn't cry. As an adult, she said parting words:

If only the bullet didn't hit you!

Dad died in the autumn of 1942 near Leningrad.

TIKHOMIROVA AND DMITRY KIRILLOVICH

I'm Tikhomirova... - said the girl in the uniform. - I came for you ... Let's go to the orphanage to the guys ...

She threw a large mother's scarf over my head, pulled on a warm sweater. Then she closed the door with sticks drawn by me and a calendar for waiting for spring and wrote in large chalk: “Front”.

Taking my hand firmly, she hurried on. Pressing close to Tikhomirova, I, cautiously looking into her face, confessed:

They may not accept me in an orphanage - I ate a ration two days in advance ...

She did not hear the answer - something burst very close. Tikhomirova released my hand, and some kind of force hit me painfully in the back and carried me onto the tram rails ...

Where I am? - I can barely speak with thick parched lips, examining the stairs above my head.

Someone takes me along with a pillow and lifts me up. I look and I can't figure out who it is. A boy in a man's jacket, in a hat with earflaps.

Winter again? - I get scared of his warm hat and close my eyes.

Here, drink some boiling water... it will make you feel better...

The boy brings a hot mug to my lips. Because of the pain in my mouth, I turn away.

Everything is mixed up - when it's day, when it's night. It's dark all the time and the stove smokes. That's why I sleep all day long. I wake up: a boy in an earflap is sitting next to me with an iron mug in his hands.

Who are you? I whisper and don't close my eyes. Disappear or not?

Am I? he asks and thinks over the answer for a long time. - Dmitry Kirillovich, I ... I work at a factory ... I receive a work card ...

The boy's entire forehead is covered in soot, and his nose is dotted with brown. He does not look like a worker at all, and I say disappointedly:

I thought you were a boy...

The boy shrugs, leans awkwardly over me, knocking over a mug of hot water. Confused, he asks:

Get better, but... I'll help you get settled... It hurts, you're still small... Maybe they'll give you an "employee"...

We live under the stairs in a tiny closet with no window. A streak of light falls through a narrow slit. We do not have a stove, so Dmitry Kirillovich adapted an iron barrel. The pipe goes straight to the stairs. Smoke does not bother anyone - the house is empty.

I call Dmitry Kirillovich by his first name and patronymic, as he said. Worker. You have to respect. He leaves for work early in the morning, he is absent for days - he performs a "secret task". I wait for him and boil water with "rye".

And when Dmitry Kirillovich comes under the stairs, we have a real holiday. He puts his delicacies on the table: pieces of duranda, with purple potato sprouts, shakes bread crumbs out of his pockets. He cuts potatoes into round slices and glues them to the walls of a hot iron barrel. The smell becomes exactly like in the sand pits when we baked potatoes on the fire.

One day a boy mysteriously asks me:

You... how is it... without me? Will you live?

I shrink into a ball, anticipating something was wrong, put aside a mug of porridge. Dmitry Kirillovich also pushes the duranda aside, rakes the crumbs into a heap, and says decisively:

I'm going to war, little sister!

How they go to war, I already know. I swallow potatoes salted with tears. Dmitry Kirillovich consoles:

Soon ours will go on the offensive ... and I will go ...

He tilted his head, his cap slipped off, revealing his gray hair.

Old man! I screamed.

I turned white in one night ... I didn’t notice how ... - and Dmitry Kirillovich began to tell:

They didn’t leave the workshop for two days ... Everyone was on duty ... Bombs were flying ... Many wounded ... The master was killed ... my dad ... He returned home on the third day in the morning ... And on my black snow - six, swollen and burned ... The house burned down before my eyes ... - He spoke incoherently and abruptly, was silent for a long time, choosing his words, and ended the story with a confession:

You saved me...

I corrected it:

You messed up! It was you who saved me!

Salvation is different ... Now my salvation is the front! I'm going to take revenge on the bastards! I would have gone into reconnaissance a long time ago ... yes, daddy was standing at the machine ... The other day a replacement came ...

Can I come with you? I barely heard.

Hold on here! he demanded sternly. - The most correct thing is to go to a school where they feed. You won't get lost! Heard there is...

"GENERAL" CLASS

I was standing in front of a large table, at which sat a woman dressed in a man's jacket. For a few minutes she studied the thick book, turning the pages slowly. Having found the right one, she buried herself in it and ran a nervous finger over the graphs:

Andrew... January...

Fedor... January...

Anatoly... January...

Tamara... January...

Faith... January...

The woman took a breath.

Olga ... March, 31st ... I did not receive cards for April ...

This is my mother ... - I explained, but the woman, not listening to me, continued:

Evgeniya... April...

Everything ... - the woman summed up and slammed the book shut. - The Osipovs died at the beginning of 1942!

In order not to collapse, I grabbed the table on which the ominous book lay. Tears flowed down my cheeks.

I am alive! See? I am breathing! I screamed in despair in a hoarse voice. - Touch me!

The woman looked at me indifferently, addressing me as if to a ghost, repeating in a monotone:

Died... Everyone died! That's what it says in the book!

I need a card for May! Without her, I would die!

The woman spoke coldly.

Submit your documents!

Documentation! Yes, I have never held them in my hands.

Suddenly another woman appeared in front of me, dressed in a military style, rudely asked:

What are you rumbling?

I began my new explanation with tears.

So what?! the woman interrupted sharply. - You're the only one, right? Tears won't help! Once you decide to study - go to school! In life, you need to look for a masculine character. And you can't be weak! It's a hole!.. And we'll give you a card! So what, what without documents ... You yourself are a document!

But I calmed down only when I held brand new multi-colored sheets in my hands, which guaranteed me with their coupons a minimum - salvation.

Well, where is this school that Dmitry Kirillovich spoke about?

You won't be accepted to school!

Why won't they accept? - my heart beats.

Need weed! - explains the boy in a black sweater and black pants. - Grass two kilograms ... swans, nettles ... pine needles ... Then they will put on allowance!

I'm with a card ... - I say, considering the ration card the most important.

A girl with long braids comes up to me, takes my hand:

Let's go to! I have extra grass. You will be recorded, and tomorrow you will pick yourself up. Fresh!

We are heading towards the school.

What class would you like to go to? the girl starts talking.

In the third ... - I answer, thinking.

While you will walk, like everyone else, in the "common".

Literature

Tsibulskaya E.V. From stories about the blockade / Iskorka. - 1991. - No. 1.

Today, when the blockade is gradually passing from living memory into history, any evidence of it is very important. In each of them - a piece of what the townspeople had to endure in those tragic days.

There are many diaries and memoirs dedicated to the Leningrad blockade. In the first place, of course, is the Blockade Book by Daniil Granin and Ales Adamovich. And how many blockade memoirs were published in last years! And, nevertheless, the appearance of each new evidence adds new touches to the portrait of the blockade time, to the appearance of the inhabitants of the besieged, but unconquered city.

In some ways, these diaries are similar to each other, but at the same time, each of them is unique in its own way. They have a blockade without feats and heroism, without ideology. Blockade through the eyes of the most ordinary people who could only rely on themselves and their families. People who sometimes only miraculously escaped death from starvation, shelling and bombing.

Each of the diaries has its own recipe for survival in emergency conditions. But they have one thing in common - this is a special mood imprinted in them: the misfortune that befell Leningrad and Leningraders is what we are destined to experience by fate. And reading today's memoirs of the inhabitants of besieged Leningrad, one can add the thought appearing in them almost seventy years after the war: “We survived what happened to our native city, not trying to escape from the blows of fate. We lived with him. Only there was no special heroism in this - there was life, and we had to accept it for what it is.

Children's blockade diaries stand apart. They have their own view of the blockade. They sometimes do not have a sense of fear - there is curiosity.

Here is a paradox: many Leningraders who had not previously recorded the events of their lives, it was during the blockade that they began to keep diaries. Probably areas of psychology: why does a person during emergency, stressful situations, being practically on the verge of life and death, try not only to fix what he sees around, but also to express his feelings, emotions, experiences? Perhaps it is at times like these that people realize their belonging. historical events and begin to feel, much more than at the usual time, their own importance. Or maybe they are simply not sure that they will remain alive, and therefore they try to leave a memory of themselves at least with diary entries?

Only the closest relatives knew about these diaries. The times were such that for an "extra" word, or simply for a statement that could be interpreted as "decadent" or "defeatist", you could get in big trouble. And often it was the diaries found by the NKVD officers during the search that later served as the most important material evidence of the author's "anti-Soviet activities". And some of them even cost their authors their lives.

For example, this is exactly what happened to the Leningrad teacher Alexei Vinokurov, who was shot in March 1943. On March 16, 1943, the military tribunal of the NKVD troops of the Leningrad District and the guards of the rear of the Leningrad Front found him guilty of the fact that “... from July 1941 to February 1943, systematically carried out counter-revolutionary anti-Soviet agitation among school workers, students and those around him, in who slandered Soviet system and reality, the Red Army and the press...” 1.

The diary of the Red Army soldier Semyon Putyakov,2 arrested at the end of January 1942 under the infamous article 58-10, also served as evidence of his "anti-Soviet activities", for which he was shot by a military tribunal. And the diary entries of the Red Army soldier Stepan Kuznetsov3 directly appeared in the indictment drawn up against him: “while still a soldier of the Soviet Army, in his diary during 1941-1942 he made a number of entries of anti-Soviet content, in which he erected vile slanderous fabrications on Soviet people, on the laws of the Soviet Government, on Soviet army and her soldiers. Sentence SI. Kuznetsov had 10 years of forced labor camps...

The documents testify that the Stalinist repressive conveyor continued to work in full measure in besieged Leningrad. That is why the diaries, like the apple of an eye, were protected from prying eyes. That is why there are so few blockade diaries in the museums and archives of the city today: their descendants still keep them at home, although today, of course, there is no danger of making them public. Moreover, the publication of blockade diaries is necessary today, because they are now the most important historical sources and evidence of the era ...

No wonder they say that a Petersburger, a Leningrader is not a designation of a place of residence, this is a special feeling, this is a state of mind. More than a hundred years ago, this special historical and cultural type of Russian man, a special character and a special style of human behavior, took shape. Wherever during the war years the fate of these people brought them, everywhere they aroused respect. True, at that time they were already called not Petersburgers, but Leningraders. The name "Leningrader" was one of the most revered, most respected titles in the expanses of the Soviet country. And people of the older generation remember well that it was enough to call yourself a Leningrader to feel the sympathy and support of those around you in any corner of the former Soviet Union.

The memory of the blockade is part of a special, Leningrad-Petersburg self-consciousness. Mentality, as they say today. It combines everything - the pain of suffering, and the pride that, in spite of everything, survived. And having survived, they saved the city, and after the war they rebuilt it.

The city was a sufferer, a martyr. But its inhabitants did not lose their sense of human dignity. And thanks in large part to that, they survived.

“In a besieged, wounded city, deprived of normal conditions of existence, people did not lose their natural human feelings,” recalled Lev Moiseevich Nikolsky, a literary employee of Leningradskaya Pravda during the years of the blockade. “And therefore, artists performed in darkened theaters, music sounded in concert halls, long queues lined up for books ... "" Leningrad is a city that was distinguished by its high culture, intellect, intelligentsia, its spiritual life, - Daniil Granin noted, talking about the creation of the Blockade Book. - We wanted to show how people who were brought up by this culture, were able to remain human beings, survive...

People during the blockade treated each other much more cordially, humanely and mercifully than then, at the end of the seventies. ...Now there is a process of dehumanization of people, hardening, heartlessness; the blockade in this sense is an example of how, in those terrible conditions, people did not allow themselves selfishness ... "

Let us allow ourselves one more quotation. "At every step - meanness and nobility, self-sacrifice and extreme selfishness, theft and honesty." These words of Dmitry Likhachev referred to the conditions in which Leningraders were on the Road of Life - more precisely, the "road of death", as it was then called in the city. But these same words can also be applied to life in a besieged city, in which, indeed, the most gloomy meanness and the highest nobility and self-sacrifice coexisted.

“... In the famine, people showed themselves, exposed themselves, freed themselves from all sorts of tinsel: some turned out to be wonderful, unparalleled heroes, others - villains, scoundrels, murderers, cannibals,” Dmitry Likhachev considered. - There was no middle ground. Everything was real, the heavens opened up, and God was visible in the heavens. He was clearly seen by the good. Miracles were performed... The human brain was the last to die... People wrote diaries, philosophical essays, scientific work, sincerely, "from the heart" thought and showed extraordinary firmness, not yielding to the pressure of the wind, not succumbing to vanity and vanity "...

Many survivors of the blockade note one more fact: communal apartments helped to survive in those inhuman conditions. During the war, they had an atmosphere of mutual assistance, mutual understanding, and support for each other.

“A common misfortune rallied people,” Yury Galakhov, a resident of besieged Leningrad, told the author of these lines. - We lived at that time in our communal apartment as amicably as we had never lived. Before the war, they constantly swore, even before the court it came. And after the war too. And here - the spirit of people in the war was amazing ... "

The memory of the blockade, like the memory of the war, has a hard fate. She was manipulated, made political capital out of her. Over the years, the memory of the blockade more and more "bronze" and less and less like the truth. "Zalgana" in the words of Solzhenitsyn, was not only a war. "Zalgana" was also a blockade.

The "Leningrad affair" dealt a severe blow to the city. One of Stalin's victims became the memory of the blockade. For many years, the suffering of Leningraders, the tragedy of the blockade became a taboo topic. Olga Berggolts mentioned that back in the forties she was asked not to speak in Moscow with a story about thousands of starving Leningraders. And her famous words “No one is forgotten and nothing is forgotten”, carved at the Piskarevsky cemetery, were appropriated by state ideology ...

“Stalin had already died, the 20th Party Congress had passed, everything had changed, but the Leningrad “syndrome” continued to operate,” noted Daniil Granin. “A great city with a regional destiny” did not dare to recall the blockade. It froze once and for all in the heroic epic of 900 days approved from above, during which the people of Leningrad survived primarily “thanks to the help of the whole country”, the attention paid by Comrade Stalin. This image of the blockade was approved by the decisions and indictments of the tribunals, therefore, it was not subject to appeal. „ The Leningrad case" sealed it with the blood of hundreds of its victims. Revision was not allowed.

“The truth about the Leningrad blockade will never be published,” Dmitry Likhachev wrote in those days. - From the Leningrad blockade they make "syusyuk" ... ". Thank God, today we still have lived to the time when we can read the truth about the Leningrad blockade.

Probably the first breakthrough to the tragic truth about the Leningrad truth was, after all, the Blockade Book. It was not for nothing that her entry into the Soviet time. Through what obstacles of censorship Daniil Granin and Ales Adamovich had to go through in order for their brainchild to see the light, at least in the edited form that sometimes had to be agreed to.

Why did we need more people? Yes, because it turned out that everyone has their own story, - Daniil Granin later told about the creation of the Blockade Book. - Everyone had their own tragedy, their own drama, their own history, their own deaths. People starved in different ways and died in different ways...

Much was decided by the talent of the storyteller. Women spoke best. Women's memory is arranged somewhat differently than men's. After all, men's memory is some kind of global one: men are more interested in general situations. And the details of life, life, what happened in a small area - a queue, a bakery, an apartment, neighbors, a staircase, a cemetery - this is the memory ... of a woman. She was more colorful and strong......

By that time, there was a well-established, petrified stereotype of the ideology of the blockade. The blockade is a heroic epic. The feat of the Leningraders, who did not surrender the city, defended it. Nine hundred days of blockade. The only city in the history of the Second World War, in the history of our Great Patriotic War, which did not surrender. And - everything! At the Nuremberg trials, it was recorded that six hundred and sixty thousand people died. None more! We soon realized that this figure was significantly underestimated. And, most importantly, it's not about heroism.

After all, for many it was forced heroism. Heroism was something else. It was intra-family, intra-apartment heroism, where people suffered, died, cursed; where incredible deeds were committed, caused by hunger, frost, shelling. It was an epic of human suffering. It was not a story of nine hundred days of feat, but nine hundred days of unbearable torment. Which, of course, did not correspond to the pathos of a feat, something that has firmly entered the history of the Great Patriotic War ... "

The blockade book was published in 1982. And she became one of the harbingers of the fact that the truth about the blockade - alive, real, not embellished with anything - will still make its way.

However, it is impossible not to mention that there were at the same time one more published memoirs about the blockade, in their truthfulness, passion and emotionality, perhaps not inferior to the “Blockade Book”. True, it was inaccessible to Soviet readers - only those who were not afraid to pick up "tamizdat" knew it. For these blockade memoirs in our country in Soviet times were banned due to their "anti-Soviet" and the author-emigrant - a woman who was persona non grata in the USSR. A representative of the "obsolete class", "anti-Soviet", hiding under the "guise" of an employee, after the evacuation from Leningrad - a resident of the occupied territory, and then - a "defector". All this set was enough to label Scriabina as an “enemy Soviet power", and her diary - "slanderous fabrications."

We are talking about the diary of Elena Scriabina - it was she who became the chronicler of the Leningrad blockade for the West. In 1964, in Munich, her book "In the blockade" was published in Russian, eight years later on German her “Leningrad Diary” was published, and in 1976 in Paris in Russian - “Years of Wanderings”. During the Iron Curtain, Scriabina's diary served abroad as the main and almost the only evidence of the tragic Leningrad epic during the war years.

Who is Elena Skryabina? She was born in 1904 in Nizhny Novgorod. Father - nobleman Alexander Gorstkin, owner of an estate in the Nizhny Novgorod province, monarchist, deputy of the IV State Duma. He was loved and respected by the peasants - this saved his relatives during the pogroms of landowners' estates in the fall of 1917. During the civil war, he joined the white movement, dreamed of saving the tsar and his family, leading them out of Siberia. Then he went into exile and died in Paris.

Elena Skryabina, by the will of fate, remained in Russia, from the mid-1920s she lived in Leningrad. She showed a penchant for literary creativity very early. Even as a child, she wrote diaries that had to be burned. IN civil war they could destroy the whole family - they told about the father's work in the Duma. In the 1930s, Scriabina miraculously escaped numerous "purges". She worked as a typist, before the war she graduated from the Institute of Foreign Languages.

“In my free time, I write a diary that I have been keeping since the very beginning of the war,” Scriabina noted. - All diary entries are scattered sheets, and even scraps of paper. Who knows, maybe someday they will be published as a document from one of the most important periods of history.”

Scriabina's diary has not been banned for a long time - it was published in our country in 1994. However, for many, he is capable of causing rejection: Scriabina took a painfully “unpatriotic” position from the very first days of the war. She didn't dig trenches, she didn't dig cracks, she didn't put out lighters. She just lived in a besieged city, thinking about one thing - how to survive and save the children. Caring for children takes her everywhere. What exactly is not in Scriabina's diary is the unanimity of the city's inhabitants, which is familiar to us. IN besieged Leningrad there were different people, and Scriabina's notes show that among them there are many who did not differ in sympathy for the Soviet regime. After all, only twenty years have passed since the revolution. Despite the "purges" and repressions, and in many respects thanks to them, there was a layer of people in society who internally felt their absolute alienation from the Stalinist regime.

For twenty years these people lived in the expectation that this power would end. And now, when the war began, many of them were torn between opposite feelings: on the one hand, the homeland is threatened by a terrible conqueror, bringing death and suffering, on the other hand, perhaps he will help free himself from Stalin's tyranny.

Here is what Scriabina wrote down on the second day of the war: “The former house owner Anastasia Vladimirovna did not hide her hatred of the Soviet regime and saw the only salvation in the war and the victory of the Germans. Although I largely share her views, but at that moment her smile irritated me insanely. I would like to believe that no matter what, Russia will not be destroyed, but at the same time, you realize that only this war is a real opportunity for liberation from the terrorist regime.”

The first blockade winter, the most terrible, Scriabina spent in besieged Leningrad. Then - evacuation to the "mainland". The result of long wanderings was Pyatigorsk. But a little time passed, and the war came there too.

In August 1942, the Germans captured Pyatigorsk. In 1943, Scriabina was taken to Germany, where she ended up in the camp of eastern workers in Bendorf on the Rhine. Allied troops freed Scriabin from the camp. Being in the category of "displaced persons", she understood what fate could be in store for her upon her return to her homeland. Once in the French zone of occupation, she avoided extradition. In 1950 she moved to the United States, where she entered the University of Syracuse, worked for three years to obtain a doctorate. In the early 1960s, Scriabina became a professor at the University of Iowa, at the same time her literary activity began ...

From the time of the publication of the "Siege Book" to the era of "glasnost", and then "freedom of speech", there was very little time left. It was then that all prohibitions collapsed. True, here, too, a cruel joke was played with the memory of the blockade. What at times looked most like a sensation came to the fore. And the notorious cannibalism, and the "fattening" Smolnin leaders of Leningrad ... The list goes on. And the starving Leningraders got the role of victims of the regime, which, with its inept actions, doomed the huge city to starvation. Was this the truth about the blockade that Dmitry Likhachev, Daniil Granin and Ales Adamovich dreamed about decades ago? Hardly...

And yet, despite all attempts to make sensations on the pages of the blockade, over the past two decades, bit by bit, sometimes almost from scratch, the memory of the blockade was collected anew. Diaries and memoirs play a very important role in this restoration of the true picture of the blockade. They very accurately make it clear the atmosphere of life in besieged Leningrad. And those diaries and memoirs that are collected in this book are also a kind of encyclopedia of Leningrad besieged life.

You can learn a lot from them. For example, why during the siege did Leningraders experience a sense of anxiety when they saw a clear sun and a cloudless sky, and rejoiced at cloudy weather? What movies were shown in the besieged city? How was the news spread in the face of a minimum of official information?

“The newspapers did not clearly report on the situation at the fronts, and people lived on rumors,” Dmitry Likhachev recalled. - Rumors were transmitted everywhere: in the cafeteria, on the streets, but they were not well believed - they were too gloomy. Then the rumors were justified.

Most rumors, often the most ridiculous, spread in crowded places - queues and markets. They immediately acquired all sorts of details and details and began their own lives. For example, in February 1942, a rumor spread in the city about the removal and trial of the chairman of the executive committee of the Leningrad City Council, Popkov. There were sentiments that the famine in Leningrad was the result of his "sabotage activities."

“It is difficult to say where this rumor originated, but it is obvious why it became so widespread,” notes historian Nikita Lomagin. - Probably, the people longed for revenge for the suffering and deprivation they had endured, they searched for and found a simple explanation for the causes of the famine. Popkov, as the personification of power, got what he deserved - "removed", "arrested", "shot". This rumor was a kind of people's verdict of the authorities, and the degree of its spread was an indicator of the general attitude not only to the person, but to the institution that he represented ... It is amazing that the people blamed the Germans, who organized the blockade and famine, much less than the Soviet government "4.

Spy mania was added to word of mouth, reaching incredible proportions at the beginning of the war. “Spies were looked for everywhere,” said Dmitry Likhachev. - As soon as a person went to the bathhouse with a suitcase, they detained him and began to “check”. So it was, for example, with M. A. Panchenko (our academic secretary). There were many stories about spies. There were some supposedly automatic beacons that began to signal just at the hours of the raids.Such beacons, according to rumors, were located in the chimneys of houses (they were only visible from above), on the Champ de Mars, etc. Some grain of truth in these rumors, perhaps, it was: the Germans really knew everything that was happening in the city "...

Each of the survivors of the blockade has its own memory of it. And each of the diaries and memories included in this book has its own destiny, its own story. Gathered together, side by side, they surprisingly complement and confirm each other. And this means that all together, both diaries and memoirs, can nevertheless bring us closer to a true picture of the blockade days ...

A significant part of this book is made up of the blockade diaries of three adult residents of Leningrad - doctor Ekaterina Glinskaya, journalist Xavier Seltser and Maria Vasilyeva, as well as two teenage children - Galina Zimnitskaya and Elizaveta Veide.

A view from that time is confirmed by memoirs written almost seventy years after the siege. This book contains the memories of the children of besieged Leningrad, who survived the most difficult days of the 900-day siege - Dmitry Semenov, John Fedulov and Vladimir Morgachev.

Doctor Ekaterina Prokofievna Glinskaya kept her diary from December 12, 1941 to the end of the blockade. When the war began, she worked as a surgeon in the Obukhov hospital, then headed the surgical department of the infectious diseases hospital of the Frunzensky district, on Lazaretny Lane near the Vitebsk railway station. The unique illustrations for the diary are drawings by an unknown artist, made in the hospital. Some of them depict Ekaterina Glinskaya herself.

Her husband, a railroad worker, was far to the north, and she is here, in besieged Leningrad. Daughter Oksana is a little over a year old: she was born in October 1940. When their home at 33 Tchaikovsky Street was bombed, they had to move to Soyuz Pechatnikov Street, but they suffered the same fate there. From the spring of 1942 until the very end of the war, the Glinsky family lived at the hospital ...

It is amazing that in the midst of all this horror, hunger, bombing and shelling, she found the strength to talk about ... the beauty of the besieged city. “... The city has never seemed to me as beautiful as in these deadly days,” she wrote then, on December 12. “Such beautiful trees stand from the frost, so beautiful is the Neva and its embankments with frozen ships and frozen houses.”

It is also interesting that the mood of Leningraders was captured on the pages of the diary. Then, in the most terrible months of the blockade, people were left with only the hope of salvation and faith in a miracle, and therefore the cannonade at the front was perceived as a harbinger of imminent liberation. Alas, liberation was still very, very far away.

“The most painful was the question of leaving,” we read in the diary for March 23, 1942. Rumors and moods fluctuated like the sea. They came, they said: “Immediately run away from this doomed city. There will be no stone left on stone here.” Following others said: “They lie, scoundrels, the worst is behind us. You don't have to go. Everywhere there is hunger, nowhere they wait with fried pies, the road from Leningrad is littered with corpses. These contradictions literally tore my heart apart.”

The summer of 1942 gave hope. The tormented, tormented city gradually returned to its human form. “These Leningraders are amazing people,” Ekaterina Glinskaya wrote on June 21, 1942. “Many have the opportunity to leave - they don’t want to, they live poorly, they are starving, but they don’t want to leave the city.”

Today it may seem incredible that then, in the summer of 1942, when the enemy stood at the very walls of the city on the Neva, when the battle on the Volga was flaring up, the most incredible rumors were circulating in Leningrad. “A lot of contradictory talk about the end of the war and the second front,” Ekaterina Glinskaya wrote on June 21, 1942. - They stubbornly say that the war will end in August-September. But with us or after us, as the people of Leningrad say, it is not known ... ".

The people of Leningrad waited for the end of the war like a miracle... Would they have believed then if they knew that the war would continue for almost three more years? “The year 1943 is coming, millions of people are waiting for him to fulfill their cherished desire - the end of the war,” Ekaterina Glinskaya wrote on the last day of 1942. - What will he actually bring? ..».

But the end of the war still had to survive. “For two years Leningrad has been living under the yoke of death every minute,” Ekaterina Glinskaya wrote on April 19, 1943, trying to explain the reason for the sharp increase in “depressive psychoses” in the city. Danger lurked every minute. And this is the danger from which it is almost impossible to protect oneself, the misfortune that cannot be predicted and deceived. In the face of this threat, a person became absolutely defenseless. " A large number of civilian casualties,” she noted on July 17 of the same year. “The mood is such that you walk down the street and wait for a shot in the back.” And it is no coincidence that the all-clear signal is “the best symphony of war”, and the main dream is to sleep without anxiety and walk down the street without fear, without fear of falling under fire.

"How you want to live!" - constantly, in spite of everything, sounds on the pages of the diary. Live, survive, survive this terrible time. At least for the sake of her daughter, because it was she who, in the midst of all this horror, was the main meaning of life. Whatever words Ekaterina Prokofievna calls her on the pages of her diary - “baby”, “monkey”, “girl”, “chantrap”. “Baby today is 2 years 3 months old,” Ekaterina Glinskaya wrote on January 26, 1943. He speaks poetry in a funny way and this grain grows, he himself does not know on what terrible soil, watered with the blood of suffering.

A fragment of a shell stuck in a window frame is still kept in the family of Oksana Viktorovna Glinskaya as a family heirloom. And it will be kept forever, as a memory of the blockade. A terrible instrument of death - a small piece of iron with torn, sharp edges ...

“Mom later told me about that terrible episode more than once,” says Oksana Glinskaya. - With some unknown feeling, feeling the trouble, she covered me with her back from the hail of glass falling from the broken window. But there is nothing about this in the diary - my mother did not write about her exploits, all this was taken for granted. Salvation from almost certain death - it was just like a miracle, or a sign from above. And he filled with even greater thirst for life.

“Wonderful white nights,” Ekaterina Glinskaya wrote on June 9, 1943. -You can read all night. From 11 o'clock, air barrage balloons are raised, and against the background of a gray-blue sky they swim in the air like dolphins. Wonderful days and nights, if only to live. I want to wander along the Neva, I want to live.

“In my mother's blockade diary, indeed, there are no sighs, no groans, no denunciations,” says Oksana Glinskaya. - Mom never complained that she had such a test in her life. She was a very cheerful, talented person. She wrote poetry, played the violin, drew well, was a surgeon from God "...

For almost seventy years, the diary of the Leningrad journalist Xavier Naumovich Seltser also lay in the family archive. It was kindly provided to the compiler of this book by his relative Maria Yakovlevna Murina, the daughter of a front-line soldier from Leningrad, who went through the whole war from a simple militia member of the Vyborgsky district of Leningrad to the chief of staff of a division.

About the author of this literary work, entitled “Notes under Siege”, unfortunately, little is known: in the 1930s he was a journalist, newspaper worker, collaborated in one of the Leningrad newspapers. When the war began, he was already over 60 years old. In his lifetime, Xavier Seltzer has seen a lot - revolutions, civil war, the Stalinist gloom of the pre-war decade... But it was his time, terrible and at the same time happy, the one in which he lived, and there was no other ...

Despite all the tragic cataclysms, he retained his independence and critical judgment. There are a lot of sensitive topics and uncomfortable questions in the diary. Apparently, the author was far from servility to the then authorities: he sometimes speaks of her actions with irritation and indignation. It is difficult to say what would have happened if the diary had fallen into the hands of "vigilant authorities." As you know, they did not doze off even in the most terrible months of the blockade. Quite possibly, Seltzer would have been charged with "defeatism" and "counter-revolutionary agitation." But fate kept. Fortunately, among those who could know about this diary, there were no dishonorable people...

Xavier Seltser was from a generation of old St. Petersburg intellectuals. Judging by the diary, he had an undoubted artistic flair and literary talent. No wonder his diary reads like a real novel, and its main advantage is that there is not a word of untruth in it.

“The old habit of writing in front of people, which I have left from the time of reporting, helps me now,” Selzer noted in his diary. “There are old people around, and women, as usual, “talking” about anything, and whimpering mothers, and I - though with some tension - write, catch my thoughts and fix it on paper ... ”In these memoirs - a living person, with his thoughts and thoughts, anxiety and despair.Personal impressions of what is happening side by side with thoughts about fate hometown and countries. In principle, there is practically nothing to add to this diary - the author has already said everything, and we can only read the pages that have yellowed from time to time and listen to the voice of the era. Reading these notes, it is as if you are plunging into the tragic world of a besieged city - hunger, bombing, death. And at the same time, you feel the strong desire of people to survive, against all odds, the belief that this whole nightmare will end sooner or later and life will be different - definitely better than before the war ...

The blockade diary of Maria Vasilyeva, like many others, has never been published before. Being a family heirloom, it is kept in the home archive to this day. It was kindly provided to the compiler of this book by the St. Petersburg historian Vsevolod Abramov.

“The Vasilievs, our relatives, lived on Dostoevsky Street, almost opposite the Kuznechny Market,” says Vsevolod Valentinovich. - I often visited them, listened to the stories of Maria Alexandrovna, my grandmother's sister, about life in the blockade. In besieged Leningrad, she lived with her two daughters Vera and Maria and 14-year-old granddaughter Olya. One of the two sisters, Maria, kept a diary. She started it on January 19, 1942, and the last entry is dated May 18 of that year.

“The blockade history of this family is interesting and important in that it allows you to understand; as without food supplies, Money or values, people withstood hunger and survived in the most difficult conditions, - Vsevolod Abramov believes. - And the secret is simple: in a family, as in any team, in a difficult situation, a leader is important, decisive critical issues life. She became such a leader in the family; Vera Alekseevna (by her husband Savitskaya), an accountant at a small plant in Leningrad. Even when I was still very young, I remembered this aunt, strict to the point of being sour, who does not tolerate whining, whims and other weaknesses ... ".

In addition to her main job, Vera was a fighter of the local air defense, was on duty on the roof of her house. Even before the famine began, she took into account all the products. Not everyone understood this, but soon Maria wrote in her diary: “I am very grateful to our genius Verus, who managed to stop our burning appetites and put everything in a strict framework of division, and, most importantly, food at a strictly set time and with everyone together. The second rule of Vera was that everyone should move, work, have some kind of constant duties, she made sure that everyone bathed, washed clothes (even bedding), washed the floor, got firewood for a small stove, brought water. in the most difficult first blockade winter.

There is a lot of despair and bitterness in the diary, there is no heroism here, but there is a genuine sense of the tragedy of the inhabitants of the city, trying to survive with all their might...

The diary of the Leningrad schoolboy Dmitry Semenov is dedicated to the first months of the war. From the first day of the war, he kept a diary, which has survived to this day in his home archive. A simple student's notebook, with neat notes made in ink. Thirteen pages of small text.

When the war began, Dmitry Semenov graduated from four classes of the 2nd high school Vyborgsky district of Leningrad. His school profile, issued to him just after the fourth grade, has been preserved. “A capable boy, but lethargic, phlegmatic during answers. He speaks very quietly. He quickly gets tired of listening, gets distracted by extraneous things, starts pushing neighbors, talking to them or completely forgets the cool environment and thinks about something of his own. Gets sick very often. Performs public work meticulously. He is friendly to the guys, but he starts to make friends with the quietest students.

Maybe in some ways the teacher was wrong about an ordinary Leningrad teenager from an intelligent teacher's family. Moreover, the child, without any doubt, is not only very well-read and brought up on the best examples of Russian classical literature, but also gifted with literary and artistic talent in general.

Mom, Natalya Pavlovna Semenova, was a teacher of music, drawing and physical education, she taught all subjects in the zero (preschool) classes. Father, Vasily Ivanovich Semenov, taught Russian language and literature. Grandmother, Nadezhda Nikolaevna Zakharova, was also a teacher.

“On June 28, 1941, I turned twelve years old,” says Dmitry Vasilyevich. - I immediately began to write everything as it was, as I imagined and saw it, without any outside help. I wrote a little, then very hard times began, and I stopped writing. Before that, I already had some “literary experiments”, but they were devoted to more prosaic things - for example, the life of a cat. And I made the first notes at the age of six.

At first, the war was perceived by him as something happening somewhere far away, and the evacuation seemed like an exciting adventure, like a trip to a pioneer camp. And only after the bombing of the echelon comes the tragic understanding that the games are over, there will be no more fun adventures, that the war - terrible, ruthless, cruel and merciless - has decisively and irrevocably burst into life. The former life will no longer be, and you will have to fight not for life, but for death, and you can’t stay on the sidelines in any way ...

In those days, Dmitry Semenov almost fell victim to a tragedy similar to Lychkov's. As you know, in the village of Lychkovo in the present Novgorod, and then Leningrad, region in July 1941, an echelon with children from Leningrad came under enemy bombing. For a long time after the war, the Lychkov tragedy was hushed up, and only in recent decades has it ceased to be a "blank" spot in history. Although in Lychkovo itself about that scary story they didn’t forget, and on the grave of the Leningrad children who died in that bombing there are always flowers, toys and sweets ...

However, Lychkov's tragedy was not a single episode. There were many similar cases when Leningrad children became martyrs of war. One of the reasons for this was a fatal mistake, or rather, a fatal delusion that led to a monstrous tragedy. As you know, shortly after the start of the war, the evacuation of children from Leningrad began, but “at the top” in the first weeks of the war they were sure that Leningrad was in danger from Finland, so the children were sent to those places that they considered safe, namely, to the southern regions of the Leningrad region . Therefore, a large number of evacuated children ended up in Demyansky, Marevsky, Molvotitsky, Valdai and Lychkovsky districts of the then Leningrad region. As it turned out, the children were taken straight towards the war...

The train, in which Dmitry Semenov returned from the Valdai evacuation to Leningrad in August 1941, also came under bombardment. Until now, among the family rarities of Dmitry Vasilyevich, a military relic is kept - a fragment of an enemy bomb that fell into the car during that bombing. And next to it is an inscription made by my father's hand: “A fragment of a bomb dropped from a German plane on our train at the Burga station during the return to Leningrad from Borovichi. August 1941"5.

In addition to the diary, during the Valdai evacuation, Dmitry Vasilyevich made sketches, where he depicted in great detail the places where he happened to be. And he not only captured the views of the surroundings, as well as the characteristic personalities he met (portrait of a shopkeeper), but also drew an exact plan called: “The area where we lived in the evacuation. Summer 1941”, marking villages, individual houses and roads, mills and factories, rivers and bridges, lakes and rivers, fields and forests with conventional signs ...

John Fedulov at the very beginning of the war, among the thousands of Leningrad children, was also evacuated to the southern regions of the Leningrad region. In July 1941, by the will of fate, he ended up in the thick of it - at the Lychkovo station. I saw with my own eyes the death of a train with Leningrad children ...

The diary of Galina Zimnitskaya has never been published either. In the year of the fortieth anniversary of the Victory, in 1985, Galina Karlovna turned to one of the Leningrad newspapers, but came across a strange wall of alienation. “Now there are so many memories of the blockade,” she was told, “that we have much more interesting diaries than yours.” Indeed, at a time when military-patriotic education was one of the pillars of Soviet ideology, such a diary, in which there were “too few” feats, did not fit into the official, heroic interpretation of the Leningrad blockade.

In this diary, all 900 days of the siege are presented through the eyes of a simple teenage girl. Two months after the start of the war, she turned 14 years old. The war forced her to grow up early and, of course, she did not want to stay away from "adult" life. At first, everything looked like a game, because the war was somewhere far away, and the city lived, though not the same, but still quite a peaceful life. On the third day of the war, June 25, the attic was being prepared for fire protection. “After work, I wanted to swim, wash off the sweat. We are lying on the beach in Ozerki. The sun is hot, the sky is bright blue. But even here the war reminds itself: the serene heat is interrupted by an air raid siren. “I look at the sky: everything is calm, clean. Suddenly, a policeman appears on the beach and drives everyone into the bushes and under the trees. For what? We think this is redundant. There are no planes."

But it soon turns out that it is not at all superfluous. Record dated August 6, 1941: “Alarms have become more frequent. The city is changing its face. Storefronts were filled with sandbags. “Every day it’s getting harder and harder for me to write a diary,” Galya wrote on August 15. - Will I quit? True, these days pass monotonously, without special events. If you look into our souls, then, for sure, everyone wants to experience at least a little bit of the combat situation (bombing) and try their skills on the wounded. It's stupid though."

“It became really bad with food,” we read on September 9, 1941. “The food is very scarce and monotonous, and the appetite is increasing every day.” In diary entries - hunger and constant shelling. From the roof of the native house on Serdobolskaya Street, the highest in the district, one could see far away. Everything is visible - both the death of people under the bombing in the park of the Forestry Engineering Academy, and the treacherous signal rockets that an unknown enemy sends somewhere very close.

Death became everyday, but it was still impossible to get used to it. And in the midst of this realm of death, there is a stubborn belief that these horrors will end sooner or later. October 10, 1941. The other day, my mother and I went to the Vyborg department store to see what was there. We saw bathing suits made of black satin with blue trim and flirty elastic bands on the sides of the panties and on the bra. Bought a bathing suit. The saleswoman looked at my mother and me as if we were crazy or knew the great secret of the end of the war. No, we don’t know anything, we just want to live until peaceful days.”

The most poignant in their tragic records are dedicated to the first blockade winter. "Hunger sucks day and night." Thoughts only about how to survive in these inhuman conditions. Mother exchanges things for bread on the black market. “Lord,” the grandmother exclaims, “this is stolen bread! For this now execution, and you will go as an accomplice. “I understand,” the mother replies desperately. “But I can't see how we're all approaching death. How else can we survive?”

Entry dated December 11, 1941: “I saw a terrible scene in the bakery during the day. A boy of about ten snatched a ration of bread from an old woman and immediately began to eat. The women rushed to take it away, and he lay down on the floor, face down, and, ignoring the falling blows, finished the bread on the dirty floor. The worst thing is that no one stood up for the child. After lying down for a while, the thief got up, wiped his tears and blood with his sleeve, and left dirty, ragged, completely alone. Now I feel sorry for him to the point of pain in my heart. Where was I then? She stood, looked and was silent.

In the direction of the Shuvalovsky cemetery, through Poklonnaya Gora, residents carry coffins on sledges or corpses sewn into a sheet, “resembling the pupae of some huge insect.” There is simply no one to bury them at the cemetery itself; the unburied dead lie behind the fences and on the paths...

And another scary picture from that winter. December 26, 1941. ...On the way home, we saw a dead young woman in the snow. She was lying on the roadway of Lesnoy Prospekt, apparently, she fell from the wagon when the sleigh with the dead tipped over a bump. At first it seemed to us that it was a mannequin from a broken shop window - this woman was so beautiful. She was wearing a dark, light dress with a deep neckline. Beautiful swarthy hands were folded on his chest, like a singer. Gorgeous dark hair scattered across the muddy snow. Her lovely, not emaciated, slightly bony face with thick eyelashes surprised. My mother and I stood and looked with great pity at this lost beauty, and people walked by and no one stopped ... "

And in the midst of all this besieged hell - an exclamation: "Lord, when will all this end?". When, finally, that terrible first blockade winter was gone, it seemed that nothing could be worse than it, that now the worst was over. Death continues to multiply around, but life still takes its toll. Ahead - youth, ahead - first love. And thoughts are not only about the war. “October 20, 1942. I want to go to the Forestry Academy to dance, but what to wear? From my old dresses, I have long grown. A friend came to the rescue and offered her outfit. “I got dressed and looked in the mirror. Yes! I'm already a girl. No matter how many dresses I have later in my life, I will never forget this first adult dress.

Another siege year passes. It has a lot of things - service in the fire regiment, admission to the FZO school. And although death from brutal shelling lurks at every step, it is felt throughout that the end of the blockade is already close.

“October 3, 1943. The offensive of our troops now cannot be stopped until Berlin itself! Everyone says like that. The mood is good, upbeat. I often go to the hairdresser on Liteiny, I do curling with tongs. Dreams about needing dress shoes. You can't dance in strangers all the time! To buy beautiful shoes on the black market (they are not available in stores), you have to sell sewing machine. Trips to dances and going to the cinema are under fire. How unnatural death seems now, when love reigns in the soul. And the meeting of the new, 1944, in the circle of "cavaliers" ...

The entry dated January 3, 1944 read: “How exhausting these shellings are, how sick of it all! After all, life has improved, trams are running, electricity is on, cinemas are working. But shelling sometimes completely crosses out all plans, and sometimes life. How to come to terms with this? Survive the entire blockade - and almost die during shelling at the very beginning of January 1944, just a few weeks before the “Leningrad victory”! ..

And finally, on January 27, 1944. “The mighty voice of Levitan: “Sovinformburo message. Complete release Leningrad from the enemy blockade!" it is such a long-awaited and joyful news. There will be fireworks in the evening! No, I can’t write, I’m crying with happiness. ”And the record of the next day:“ The salute was grandiose. ", so it was solemn and beautiful. There were people - as many eyes as they could see, many were crying "...

In the diary of Elizaveta Georgievna Veide, there is a unique chronicle of all those ordeals, hardships and sufferings that befell a simple Leningrad girl from Grazhdanka. Before the war, she managed to finish six classes. The diary began in the spring of 1942 - with the evacuation from Leningrad to the Caucasus, includes the occupation and export to work in Germany. The diary was completed in the summer of 1945. This is a witness of the era, allowing even today, after more than sixty years, through the eyes of a teenage girl, to see and feel the terrible drama that has fallen on the family. We are confident that it will be of interest to readers, so we have brought it here almost completely, without cuts and almost without editorial corrections. This is not just a chronicle of the tragedy, it can be called a real confession, addressed to himself, and to contemporaries, and to descendants ...

“Were Leningraders heroes? No, that’s not it: they were martyrs…”, noted Dmitry Likhachev. "Second World War gave rise to three symbolic cities, - Daniil Granin continues this thought. “Hiroshima is like the horror of the atomic bomb, Stalingrad is a symbol of resistance and Leningrad is a symbol of the suffering of innocent people.”

P.S. Illustrations for blockade diaries and memoirs are unique photographs from family and home archives, as well as from Vladimir Nikitin's album “Unknown blockade. Leningrad 1941-1944" (St. Petersburg, 2002).

1 Siege Diaries and Documents St. Petersburg, 2004. P. 237. A. I. Vinokurov’s diary was published in the same place, p. 238-291.

4 Lomagin N.A. unknown blockade. Book. 1. St. Petersburg, 2002. S. 285. 12

5 Burga - a village in the Malovishersky district of the Novgorod region and the railway station of the same name, 18 km southeast of Malaya Vishera.