Tue, 01/28/2014 - 16:23

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

From the blog of Stanislav Sadalsky

In front of me stood a boy, maybe nine years old. He was covered with some kind of scarf, then with a cotton blanket, the boy stood frozen. Cold. Some of the people left, some were replaced by others, but the boy did not leave. I ask this boy: “Why don’t you go and warm up?” And he: “It’s still cold at home.” I say: “What, do you live alone?” - “No, with your mother.” - “So, mommy can’t go?” - “No, she can’t. She's dead." I say: “Like she’s dead?!” - “Mom died, I feel sorry for her.” Now I guessed it. Now I only put her in bed during the day, and at night I put her near the stove. She's still dead. Otherwise it’s cold from her.”

"The Siege Book" Ales Adamovich, Daniil Granin

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

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

“...There were dead people in every apartment. And we were not afraid of anything. Will you go earlier? It’s unpleasant when the dead... Our family died out, and that’s how they lay. And when they put it in the barn!” (M.Ya. Babich)

“Dystrophic people have no fear. Corpses were dumped near the Academy of Arts on the descent to the Neva. I calmly climbed over this mountain of corpses... It would seem that the weaker a person is, the more afraid he is, but no, the fear disappeared. What would have happened to me if this had happened in peacetime? I would have died of horror. And now: there is no light on the stairs - I’m afraid. As soon as people ate, fear appeared” (Nina Ilyinichna Laksha).

Pavel Filippovich Gubchevsky, researcher at the Hermitage:
-What did the halls look like?
- Empty frames! It was Orbeli's wise order: to leave all the frames in place. Thanks to this, the Hermitage restored its exhibition eighteen days after the paintings returned from evacuation! And during the war they hung there, empty eye-sockets-frames, through which I conducted several excursions.
- By empty frames?
- On empty frames.

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

The siege apartment cannot be depicted in any museum, in any model or panorama, just as frost, melancholy, hunger cannot be depicted...
The siege survivors themselves, remembering, note broken windows, furniture sawn into firewood - the most dramatic and unusual. But then only the children and visitors who came from the front were truly amazed by the appearance of the apartment. As it happened, for example, with Vladimir Yakovlevich Alexandrov:
“You knock for a long, long time - nothing is heard. And you already have the complete impression that everyone died there. Then some shuffling begins and the door opens. In an apartment where the temperature is equal to the temperature environment, a creature appears wrapped in God knows what. You hand him a bag of some crackers, biscuits or something else. And what was surprising? Lack of emotional outburst.
- And even if it’s food?
- Even food. After all, many starving people already had atrophy of appetite.”

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

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

The amplitude of human passions during the blockade increased enormously - from the most painful falls to the highest manifestations of consciousness, love, and devotion.
“...Among the children with whom I was leaving was our employee’s boy, Igor, a charming, handsome boy. His mother looked after him very tenderly, with terrible love. Even during the first evacuation she said: “Maria Vasilievna, you also give your children goat’s milk. I’ll take goat’s milk for Igor.” And my children were even housed in another barracks, and I tried not to give them anything, not even an ounce more than they were supposed to. And then this Igor lost his cards. And now, in the month of April, I was walking past the Eliseevsky store (here dystrophies had already begun to crawl out into the sun) and I saw a boy sitting, a scary, edematous skeleton. “Igor? What happened to you?" - I say. “Maria Vasilievna, my mother kicked me out. Mom told me that she wouldn’t give me another piece of bread.” - "How so? This can’t be! He was in serious condition. We barely climbed up to my fifth floor, I barely pulled him in. By this time my children were already going to kindergarten and still held on. He was so scary, so pathetic! And all the time he said: “I don’t blame my mother. She's doing the right thing. It’s my fault, I lost my card.” - “I say, I’ll get you into school” (which was supposed to open). And my son whispers: “Mom, give him what I brought from kindergarten.”

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

The fate of the animals of besieged Leningrad is also part of the tragedy of the city. Human tragedy. Otherwise, you can’t explain why not one, not two, but almost every tenth blockade survivor remembers and talks about the death of an elephant in the zoo from a bomb.

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

“Below, below us, in the apartment of the late president, four women are stubbornly fighting for their lives - his three daughters and granddaughter,” records G.A. Knyazev. “Their cat, whom they pulled out to save during every alarm, is still alive.
The other day an acquaintance, a student, came to see them. He saw the cat and begged him to give it to him. He pestered me directly: “Give it back, give it back.” They barely got rid of him. And his eyes lit up. The poor women were even scared. Now they are worried that he will sneak in and steal their cat.
O loving woman's heart! Fate deprived student Nekhorosheva of natural motherhood, and she runs around with a cat like a child, Loseva runs around with her dog. Here are two examples of these rocks in my radius. All the rest have long been eaten!”
Residents of besieged Leningrad with their pets

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

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 and icy night. But among this darkness there was life, the struggle for life, persistent, hourly work, overcoming. Every day we had to carry water. Lots of water to wash diapers (that's diapers now). This work could not be postponed until later. Laundry was an everyday task. First we went by water to the Fontanka. It wasn't close. The descent onto the ice was to the left of the Belinsky Bridge - opposite the Sheremetyev Palace. Before the girl was born, my mother and I went together. Then my mother brought the required amount of water over several trips. The water from the Fontanka was not suitable for drinking; at that time, sewage flowed there. People said that they saw corpses in the ice hole. The water had to be boiled. Then, on our Nekrasova Street, near house number one, a pipe was taken out of the manhole. Water flowed from this pipe all the time, day and night, so as not to freeze. A huge ice formed, but the water became close. We could see this place from our window. On the frozen glass you could warm up a round hole with your breath and look out into the street. People took water and slowly carried it - some in a teapot, some in a can. If it's in a bucket, it's far from full. A full bucket was too much to bear.

On Nepokorennykh Avenue, on the wall of one of the new houses, there is a memorial medallion depicting a woman with a child in her hand and a bucket in the other. Below, a concrete half-bowl is attached to the wall of the house, and a piece of water pipe sticks out of the wall. Apparently, this was supposed to symbolize the well that existed here during the siege. It was removed during the construction of the new avenue. The comrades who made this memorial sign, of course, did not experience the blockade. The memorial plaque is a symbol. It must incorporate the most characteristic things, convey the main feeling, mood, and make a person think. The image on the relief is uninteresting and atypical. During the siege years, such a picture was simply impossible. Carrying a child, dressed in a coat and felt boots, on one hand, and even water, even if only an incomplete bucket... And it was necessary to carry him not along cleared asphalt, but along uneven paths trampled among huge snowdrifts. Nobody cleared the snow then. It is sad that our children and grandchildren, looking at this inexpressive relief, will not see in it what it should reflect. They won’t see, feel or understand anything. Just think, take water not from the tap in the apartment, but on the street - like in the village! Even now, when people who survived the siege are still alive, this medallion does not touch anyone.

To get bread you had to go to the corner of Ryleev and Mayakovsky streets and stand for a very long time. I remember this even before the girl was born. Bread cards were issued only in the store to which the person was “attached.” Inside the store it is dark, a smokehouse, a candle or a kerosene lamp is burning. On scales with weights, the kind you see now, maybe in a museum, the saleswoman weighs the piece very carefully and slowly until the scales freeze at the same level. 125 grams must be measured accurately. People stand and wait patiently, every gram is valuable, no one wants to lose even a fraction of that gram. What is a gram of bread? Those who received blockade grams know this. What a small thing - a gram, according to many living today. Now you can eat two or three pieces like the only one that was given out for a day with just soup, and even spread them with butter. Then, one for a day, which in the canteen they take for a penny and throw away without regret. I remember how, after the war, in a bakery, a woman tried a loaf of bread with a fork and loudly exclaimed with displeasure: “Stale bread!” I was very upset. It’s clear that she doesn’t know what 125 or 150 grams per day is. I wanted to shout: “But there’s a lot of bread!” As much as you want!". I don’t remember exactly when, but there was a period in Leningrad when sliced ​​bread was on the tables for free in the canteen. In a bakery you could take bread without a salesperson and go pay at the cash register. Few people remember this small fabulous period of such trust in people.

It was a shame if there was a rope in 125 grams. One day I came across something suspicious, it seemed to me - a mouse tail. That’s when we tried to fry our piece in drying oil, placing a toy frying pan on the coals in the stove. Suddenly the drying oil flared up and, although a rag was thrown over the fire, the bread turned almost into coal. Much has been written about the composition of siege bread. The most interesting thing in the recipe seems to me to be “wallpaper dust”. It's hard to imagine what it is.

While my mother was away and my Svetik was sleeping, I read. Wrapping myself in a blanket over my coat, I sat down at the table. Opened it in front of the smokehouse huge volume Pushkin. I read everything in a row, didn’t understand much, but was captivated by the rhythm and melodies of Pushkin’s lines. While reading, I wanted to eat less, and the fear of loneliness and danger went away. It was as if there was no empty frozen apartment, no high dark room where my shapeless shadow moved frighteningly on the walls. If she was really cold or her eyes were tired, she walked around the room, removed the dust, plucked a splinter for the stove, and ground food in a bowl for her sister. When my mother was away, the thought always stirred: what would I do if she didn’t come back at all? And I looked out the window, hoping to see my mother. Part of Nekrasova Street and part of Korolenko Street were visible. Everything is covered with snow, there are narrow paths among the snowdrifts. I didn’t talk to my mother about what I saw, just as she didn’t tell me what she saw outside the walls of our apartment. I must say that even after the war this part of the street remained cold and unpleasant for me. Some deep sensations, impressions of the past still force me to avoid this section of the street.

Rare passers-by. Often with a sled. Half-dead people carry dead people on children's sleds. At first it was scary, then nothing. I saw a man dump a corpse wrapped in white into the snow. He stood, stood, and then walked back with the sled. The snow covered everything. I tried to remember where the dead man was under the snow, so that later, sometime later, I would not step in a terrible place. I saw through the window how a horse, dragging some kind of sleigh, fell on the corner of Korolenko (this was somewhere in December 1941). She couldn’t get up, even though two guys tried to help her. They even unhooked the sled. But the horse, like them, no longer had the strength. It became dark. And in the morning there was no horse. The snow covered dark spots where the horse was.

Everything was fine while the child was sleeping. Every time there was a roar of explosions, I looked at my sister - if only I could sleep longer. Still, the moment would come, and she would wake up, start squeaking and stirring in her blanket. I could entertain her, rock her, invent anything, as long as she didn’t cry in a cold room. What I was strictly forbidden to do was unwrap the thick blanket in which she was packed. But who likes to lie in wet diapers for many hours? I had to make sure that Svetka didn’t pull her arm or leg out of the blanket - it was cold. Often my efforts did not help much. Piteous crying began. Although she had little strength, it happened that she managed to pull her little hand out of the blanket. Then we cried together, and I covered and wrapped Svetka as best I could. And she also had to be fed at the appointed hours. We didn't have pacifiers. From the first day the girl was fed from a spoon. It is a whole art to pour food drop by drop into a mouth that can only suck, without spilling a single drop of precious food. Mom left food for my sister, but it was all cold. It was not allowed to light the stove while my mother was away. I warmed the milk left in a small glass in my palms or, which was very unpleasant, I hid the cold glass under my clothes, closer to my body, so that the food would become at least a little warmer. Then, trying to keep warm, she squeezed the glass in one palm and fed her sister from a spoon with the other. Having scooped up a drop, she breathed on the spoon, hoping that this would make the food warmer.

Sometimes, if Svetka could not be calmed down, I would still light the stove to warm up the food as quickly as possible. She placed the glass directly on the stove. She used her pre-war drawings as fuel. I always loved to draw, and my mother folded the drawings and kept them. The pack was big. All of them were slowly used up. Every time I sent another piece of paper into the fire, I made a promise to myself: when the war ends, I will have a lot of paper, and I will again draw everything that is now burning in the stove. Most of all, I felt sorry for the sheet where Grandma’s spreading birch tree, thick grass, flowers, and a lot of mushrooms and berries were drawn.

Now it seems to me a mystery how I didn’t eat the food left for Sveta. I admit that while I was feeding her, I touched the tasty spoon with my tongue two or three times. I also remember the terrible shame that I felt at the same time, as if everyone could see my bad deed. By the way, for the rest of my life, no matter where I was, it always seemed to me that my mother saw me and knew that I should always act according to my conscience.

When my mother returned, no matter how tired she was, she hurried me to light the stove so that she could quickly change the baby’s clothes. Mom performed this operation very quickly, one might say masterfully. Mom had everything thought out; she laid out what was needed in a certain sequence. When they unwrapped the blanket and oilcloth in which the child was completely wrapped, thick steam rose up in a column. The girl was wet, as they say, up to her ears. Not a single dry thread. They took her out as if from a huge wet compress. Having thrown everything wet into a basin, covering Svetik with a dry diaper heated by the stove, mom surprisingly quickly coated her entire body with that same sunflower oil so that there would be no diaper rash from constantly lying in the wet and without air.

Svetochka was not able to move freely. There was freedom to move only when she was bathed. We washed the girl well, if only once a week. At that time, this was a complex and difficult undertaking that took away the last of my mother’s strength. A lot of water was needed, which had to not only be brought, but then also carried out into the yard. When my mother managed to get firewood somewhere, they kept the iron stove on for a longer period of time, on which pots of water were heated. They set up a canopy of blankets - like a tent, so that the heat did not escape upward. A large basin was placed on a stool, and Svetka was bathed in it. Here they wiped dry under the canopy. If there was no shelling or alarm, they let me flounder in freedom a little longer, my mother gave my sister massages and gymnastics. Before being wrapped again in diapers, oilcloths and a blanket, the girl was again carefully coated with the treasured sunflower oil. We could fry something in drying oil, dilute wood glue, boil pieces of some leather, but this oil was inviolable.

Then I fed my sister, and my mother had to do all the hard work again. Everything had to be cleaned up, everything had to be washed, and the dirty water had to be taken out. How did mom wash diapers? Her hands will say more about this than words. I know what she washed in cold water, more often than in warm. I added potassium permanganate to the water. Having hung all the rags to freeze in the frozen kitchen, my mother spent a long time warming up her numb red hands and told how in the winter in the villages they rinse clothes in an ice hole, as if she was consoling herself. When most of the water froze, the diapers dried in the room. We ourselves rarely washed, and only in parts. Mom didn’t want to cut my thick braids and after washing she rinsed my hair in water with a few drops of kerosene. I was afraid of lice and at every opportunity I heated up a heavy iron to iron our linen. How simple everything seems now, but then for any task you had to gather strength and will, you had to force yourself not to give up, every day to do everything possible to survive and at the same time remain human.

Mom had a strict schedule for everything. Morning and evening she took out the garbage can. When the sewage system stopped working, people took out buckets and poured everything onto the sewer manhole cover. A mountain of sewage formed there. The steps of the back door staircase were icy in places and it was difficult to walk. Every morning my mother made me get up. She forced me by example. I had to get dressed quickly. Mom demanded, if not to wash, then at least to run wet hands over my face. You had to brush your teeth while the water was warming up on the stove. We slept in our clothes, taking off only warm clothes. If in the evening it was possible to warm the iron on the stove, then they put it in bed at night. Getting out from under all the blankets in the cold in the morning, when the water in the bucket froze overnight, was terrible. Mom demanded that in the evening all things be in order. The order helped not to lose the warmth of the night and quickly get dressed. Not once during the entire war did my mother allow me to stay in bed longer. It was probably important. It’s hard for all of us, we’re all equally cold, we’re all equally hungry. Mom treated me as an equal in everything, as a friend you could rely on. And it remains forever.

Despite the exhaustion, the constant danger, I never saw my mother get scared or cry, throw up her hands and say: “I can’t do it anymore!” She stubbornly did everything she could every day, whatever was necessary to get through the day. Every day with the hope that tomorrow will be easier. Mom often repeated: “We have to move, whoever lies in bed, whoever is idle, has died. There will always be something to do, and you can always find a reason not to do it. To live, you have to work." What I don’t remember at all is what we ate during the first winter of the siege. Sometimes it seems like you haven’t eaten at all. It seems that my wise mother deliberately did not focus on food. But food for my sister was clearly separated from what we ourselves ate.

In her green notebook, my mother wrote down that all her peels and dried potato peelings had already run out in December. We passed over the topic of food in silence. There is no food for everyone who remained in Leningrad. Why ask for something that doesn't exist? I need to read, do something, help my mother. I remember after the war, in a conversation with someone, my mother said: “Thanks to Linochka, she never asked me for food!” No, once I really asked to exchange my father’s chrome boots for a glass of unshelled walnuts, which some man was loudly praising at a flea market. How many were there in a faceted glass? Five or six pieces? But my mother said: “No, this is too shameless.” She hated crowded markets and could neither sell nor buy. And she probably took me with her for courage. You could buy a lot of things at the flea market, even fried cutlets. But when you see corpses in the snowdrifts, different thoughts come to mind. No one has seen dogs, cats and pigeons for a long time.

In December 1941, someone came to our apartment and suggested that my mother leave Leningrad, saying that staying with two children was certain death. Maybe mom thought about this. She saw and knew more about what was happening than me. One evening, my mother folded and tied into three bags what she might need in case of evacuation. I went somewhere this morning. She returned and was silent. Then she said firmly: “We’re not going anywhere, we’re staying at home.”

After the war, my mother told her brother how at the evacuation point they explained to her in detail that she had to go through Ladoga, possibly in an open car. The path is dangerous. Sometimes you have to walk. No one can say in advance how many hours or kilometers. To be honest, she will lose one of the children (that is, one will die). Mom didn’t want to lose anyone; she didn’t know how to live later. She refused to go.

Mom became a donor. It probably took courage to decide to donate blood in such a weakened state. After donating blood, donors were not immediately allowed to go home, but were given something to eat. Despite the strict prohibition, my mother kept something from the food and brought it home. She donated blood very regularly, sometimes more often than allowed. She said that her blood was of the best type and was suitable for all wounded people. Mom was a donor until the end of the war.

I remember how in one of the last registrations of blockade survivors (on Nevsky 102 or 104), a middle-aged woman was holding our documents in her hands, which contained a certificate of the medal “For the Defense of Leningrad” and a document of an honorary donor, but upon hearing that my mother became a donor in December 1941 or January 1942, accused me of lying: “What a donor! She has the same Small child! Why are you lying! I took the papers. We survived the blockade, we will survive now. After the blockade I am not afraid of anything.

Who asked then? A man came. Blood was needed. Food was also needed. Donors were given a work card.

When my mother was not at home and the responsibility for everything fell on me, fear settled in me. Many may be imaginary, but one is quite real. It was knocks on the door. I was especially afraid when they knocked from the back door. There the door was closed with a long huge hook. For density, a log was inserted into the door handle. If you shook the door, the log would fall out and the hook could be opened through the crack. When I heard the knock, I didn’t immediately leave the room, I first listened - maybe they would knock and leave. If they continued to knock, she would go out into the icy corridor in horror and silently creep up to the door. Figuring out how I could portray that there were a lot of people in the apartment. If I asked, I tried – in a bass voice. She didn’t open it when they were silent, she didn’t open it when they asked to open it, she didn’t even open it for the guards on duty who were going around the “living” apartments after particularly heavy shelling. I only opened it to one Aunt Tanya, my mother’s younger sister. She came rarely, was very weak and scary to look at. Just recently young, beautiful and cheerful, she was now like a shadow, black, with protruding cheekbones, all in something gray. Tanya very slowly entered the room and stood there for a while. She couldn’t take her eyes off the small gauze bag in which the pieces of sugar that she had once bought for her grandfather hung near the stove: “Linochka, give me one piece!” Just one and I'll leave."

Tanya is a second mother for me. I felt like a traitor on the one hand, a benefactor on the other, or, more simply, a deceiver, because I didn’t dare tell my mother that I was giving Tanya sugar. I still haven't said it. I didn’t know whether my mother counted these pieces or not... I still blush at the thought that my mother might have thought that I was the only one who ate this sugar in her absence. It's sickening that I couldn't tell the truth. Surely my mother would not reproach me for a good deed.

One day the building manager knocked on our apartment. Mom opened and let in a dark man in a coat and earflaps for some reason with a towel around his neck instead of a scarf. The house manager asked how many of us there are and how many rooms we have? There were three of us now, and there was always one room.

- You’re cramped! Come on, I'll book another room or two for you. I just need one kilogram of bread!

- How is this possible? People will come back!

- No one will return, I assure you, no one will return. I only need one kilogram of bread!

- We have no bread. If we die, why do we need a room? If we survive, we will be ashamed to look people in the eyes. Better leave.

When after the war there were six of us in the room and it was really cramped and uncomfortable, we recalled with a smile the proposal of the house manager. How easy it was for us to get a room or two! If only there was a kilogram of bread, and conscience would not interfere (by the way, after the war there was a norm of three square meters of housing per person). When they spent time in our house central heating, we removed our tiled stove, and each of us had three meters and twenty centimeters. But we were immediately removed from the queue for housing improvements.

Of all the blockade years, only one New Year is remembered - this is the very first. Probably precisely because he was the first without a beautiful Christmas tree with sweets, nuts, tangerines and shiny lights. The Christmas tree was replaced by a dried chrysanthemum, which I decorated with paper chains and scraps of cotton wool.

Olga Berggolts spoke on the radio. I didn’t know then that this was our Leningrad poetess, but her voice, with its characteristic intonation, somehow touched me and made me listen carefully to what she said. Her voice sounded slowly and calmly: “I need to tell you what this year is like...”. Then I remembered the poems. It seems like this: “Comrade, we have had bitter, difficult days, and years and troubles threaten us. But we are not forgotten, we are not alone, and this is already a victory!” After the death of Olga Fedorovna, a memorial stele was erected on Italianskaya Street at the entrance to the radio committee building, on the right. It's a pity that few people know about this monument. Now there is a grate there, and the monument seems to be different.

In my mother’s notebooks there is this piece: “Despite the horrors of the blockade, constant shelling and bombing, the theater and cinema halls were not empty.” It turns out that my mother managed to go to the Philharmonic in this terrible life. “I can’t say exactly when it was. Violinist Barinova gave a solo concert in the Great Hall. I was lucky to get there. The hall was not heated, we sat in coats. It was dark, only the figure of the artist in a beautiful dress was illuminated by some unusual light. You could see how she breathed on her fingers to warm them up at least a little.”

There were four families left in our house during the siege, single-parent families, of course. In the first apartment on the second floor lived two old men - the Levkovichs, in the second apartment - a noisy, plump woman, Augustinovich. She worked at one of the factories and was rarely at home. My mother, sister and I stayed in the third apartment. Upstairs in apartment 8 lived a family of three – the Priputnevichs. They had a magnificent dog - a pinscher. There was nothing to feed the dog, and to look at the hungry animal... The owner himself shot his dog in our yard with a hunting rifle. They ate it down to the last piece with tears. Then they apparently left after all.

The Levkovichs from the first apartment seemed old to me. Their children were probably in the army. They had lived in this apartment since time immemorial, and now they occupied two rooms there. One overlooked the south side, onto Nekrasov Street - the most dangerous during shelling. The other was dark and looked through the windows into our courtyard-well, where, according to the general belief, a shell or bomb could only fly if they were lowered vertically from above. The Levkovichs had a samovar. I don’t know how they heated it, but they always had it warm and somewhat replaced the stove in the main bright room, furnished with massive carved furniture. On one wall hung a mirror in a dark oval frame, and opposite, in the same frame, was a large old photo, where the owners were young and very beautiful.

The samovar often gathered around the few inhabitants of our house. Associated with him are memories of warmth, cozy old people, and the fact that their dark room often served as a bomb shelter for everyone. If they came to drink boiling water, everyone brought with them what they had to eat.

After the war, when I was studying at the secondary school, returning home one day, I saw a truck in front of the front door of our house. Some people take out old things and throw them in the back. I go up the stairs and see that it’s from the first apartment. It flashed through my head: “So the Levkovichs have died, and people are throwing away everything.” The loader holds a familiar samovar in his hands. I ask:

-Where are you taking everything?

- We're taking it to the landfill!

- Give me this samovar!

- Give me three rubles!

- I'm coming now!

I run upstairs and shout:

- I’ll have three rubles, quickly!

Then I fly down, and the samovar is in my hands. And now I have this memory of the blockade and kind old people in my house.

In world history Many sieges of cities and fortresses are known, where civilians also took refuge. But during the days of the terrible blockade, which lasted 900 days, schools were open, in which thousands of children studied - history has never known such a thing.

Over the years, I recorded the memories of schoolchildren who survived the siege. Some of those who shared them with me are no longer alive. But their voices remained alive. Those for whom suffering and courage have become everyday besieged city.

The first bombings hit Leningrad 70 years ago, at the beginning of September 1941, when children had just started going to school. “Our school, located in an old building, had large basement rooms,” Valentina Ivanovna Polyakova, a future doctor, told me. - Teachers equipped classrooms in them. They hung school boards on the walls. As soon as the air raid alarms sounded on the radio, they fled to the basements. Since there was no light, they resorted to an old method, which they knew about only from books - they burned splinters. The teacher met us with a torch at the entrance to the basement. We took our seats. The class attendant now had the following responsibilities: he prepared torches in advance and stood with a lit stick, illuminating the school board on which the teacher wrote problems and poems. It was difficult for students to write in the semi-darkness, so lessons were learned by heart, often to the sound of explosions.” This is a typical picture for besieged Leningrad.

During the bombing, teenagers and children, together with MPVO fighters, climbed to the roofs of houses and schools to save them from incendiary bombs that German planes dropped in sheaves on Leningrad buildings. “When I first climbed to the roof of my house during the bombing, I saw a menacing and unforgettable sight,” recalled Yuri Vasilyevich Maretin, an orientalist scientist. – The beams of searchlights walked across the sky.

It seemed as if all the streets around had moved and the houses were swaying from side to side. Claps of anti-aircraft guns. The fragments drum on the roofs. Each of the guys tried not to show how scared he was.

We watched to see if a “lighter” would fall on the roof and quickly put it out by putting it in a box with sand. Teenagers lived in our house - the Ershov brothers, who saved our house from many incendiary bombs. Then both brothers died of starvation in 1942.”

“To cope with German lighters, we acquired a special skill,” recalled chemist Yuri Ivanovich Kolosov. “First of all, we had to learn to move quickly on the sloping, slippery roof. The incendiary bomb ignited instantly. Not a second could be missed. We held long tongs in our hands. When the incendiary bomb fell on the roof, it hissed and flared, thermite spray flying around. I had to not get confused and throw the “lighter” down to the ground.” Here are lines from the journal of the headquarters of the MPVO Kuibyshevsky district of Leningrad:

“September 16, 1941 School 206: 3 incendiary bombs were dropped into the school yard. Extinguished by the forces of teachers and students.

The front line surrounded the city like an iron arc. Every day the blockade became more merciless. The city lacked the most important thing - food. The standards for bread distribution were constantly decreasing.

On November 20, 1941, the most tragic days began. Critical standards for life support were established: workers were given 250 grams of bread per day, employees, dependents and children - 125 grams. And even these pieces of bread were incomplete. The recipe for Leningrad bread of those days: rye flour, defective - 50%, cake - 10%, soy flour - 5%, bran - 5%, malt - 10%, cellulose - 15%. Famine struck in Leningrad. They cooked and ate belts, pieces of leather, glue, and carried home soil in which particles of flour from food warehouses bombed by the Germans had settled. There were frosts in November. There was no heat supplied to the houses. There was frost on the walls of the apartments, and the ceilings were covered in ice. There was no water or electricity. In those days, almost all Leningrad schools were closed. The blockade hell began.

A.V. Molchanov, engineer: “When you remember the winter of 1941-42, it seems that there was no day, no daylight. And only the endless, cold night continued. I was ten years old. I went to get water with a kettle. I was so weak that while I was fetching water, I rested several times. Previously, when climbing the stairs in the house, I ran, jumping over the steps. And now, going up the stairs, he often sat down and rested. It was very slippery and the steps were icy. What I was most afraid of was that I might not be able to carry the kettle of water, I would fall and spill.

Leningrad during the siege. Residents leave houses destroyed by the Nazis
We were so exhausted that when we went out to buy bread or water, we didn’t know if we would have enough strength to return home. My school friend went for bread, fell and froze, he was covered with snow.

The sister began to look for him, but did not find him. Nobody knew what happened to him. In the spring, when the snow melted, the boy was found. In his bag there was bread and bread cards.”

“I didn’t take my clothes off all winter,” L.L. told me. Park, economist. - We slept in our clothes. Of course, we didn’t wash – there wasn’t enough water and heat. But then one day I took off my clothes and saw my legs. They were like two matches - that’s how I lost weight. I thought then with surprise - how does my body hold up on these matches? Suddenly they break off and won’t stand it.”

“In the winter of 1941, my school friend Vova Efremov came to me,” recalled Olga Nikolaevna Tyuleva, a journalist. “I hardly recognized him - he’s lost so much weight.” He was like a little old man. He was 10 years old. Sitting down on a chair, he said: “Lelya! I really want to eat! Do you have… something to read?” I gave him some book. A few days later I found out that Vova had died.”

They experienced the pangs of blockade hunger, when every cell of the exhausted body felt weak. They are accustomed to danger and death. Those who died of hunger lay in neighboring apartments, entrances, and on the streets. They were carried away and put into trucks by air defense soldiers.

Even rare joyful events were shadowed by the blockade.

“Suddenly I was given a ticket for New Year tree. It was in January 1942,” said L.L. Pack. – We lived then on Nevsky Prospekt. I didn't have far to go. But the road seemed endless. So I became weak. Our beautiful Nevsky Prospekt was littered with snowdrifts, among which there were trodden paths.

Nevsky Prospekt during the siege
Finally, I got to the Pushkin Theater, where they put up a festive tree. I saw a lot in the theater lobby board games. Before the war, we would have rushed to these games. And now the children did not pay attention to them. They stood near the walls - quiet, silent.

The ticket indicated that we would be given lunch. Now all our thoughts revolved around this upcoming dinner: what will they give us to eat? The performance of the Operetta Theater “Wedding in Malinovka” has begun. It was very cold in the theater. The room was not heated. We sat in coats and hats. And the artists performed in ordinary theatrical costumes. How could they withstand such cold? Intellectually, I understood that they were saying something funny on stage. But I couldn't laugh. I saw it nearby - only sadness in the eyes of the children. After the performance we were taken to the Metropol restaurant. On beautiful plates we were served a small portion of porridge and a small cutlet, which I simply swallowed. When I approached my house, I saw a crater, entered the room - no one was there. The windows are broken. While I was at the Christmas tree, a shell exploded in front of the house. All residents of the communal apartment moved into one room, the windows of which overlooked the courtyard. They lived like this for some time. Then they blocked the windows with plywood and boards and returned to their room.”

What is striking in the memories of the siege survivors who survived the hard times at a young age is the incomprehensible craving for books, despite the cruel trials. The long days of the siege were spent reading.

Yuri Vasilyevich Maretin talked about this: “I reminded myself of a head of cabbage - I had so many clothes on. I was ten years old. In the morning I sat at a large desk and, by the light of a homemade smokehouse, read book after book. Mom, as best she could, created conditions for me to read. We had a lot of books in our house. I remembered how my father told me: “If you read books, son, you will know the whole world.” During that first winter of the siege, books replaced school for me. What did I read? Works by I.S. Turgeneva, A.I. Kuprina, K.M. Stanyukovich. I somehow lost track of the days and weeks. When the thick curtains were opened, nothing living was visible outside the window: icy roofs and walls of houses, snow, a gloomy sky. And the pages of books opened up a bright world to me.”

Children in a bomb shelter during a German air raid
On November 22, 1941, first sleigh convoys, and then trucks with food for the siege survivors, walked across the ice of Lake Ladoga. This was the highway connecting Leningrad with the mainland. The legendary “Road of Life”, as it came to be called. The Germans bombed it from airplanes, fired at it from long-range guns, and landed troops. The shelling caused craters to appear on the ice route, and if they fell into them at night, the car went under water. But the following trucks, avoiding the traps, continued to go towards the besieged city. In the first winter of the siege alone, more than 360 thousand tons of cargo were transported to Leningrad across the ice of Ladoga. Thousands of lives were saved. Gradually the norms for bread distribution increased. In the coming spring, vegetable gardens appeared in courtyards, squares, and parks of the city.

On September 1, 1942, schools opened in the besieged city. In each class, there were no children who died from hunger and shelling. “When we came to school again,” said Olga Nikolaevna Tyuleva, “we had blockade conversations. We talked about where which edible grass grows. Which cereal is more satisfying? The children were quiet. They didn’t run around during recess, they didn’t play pranks. We didn't have the strength.

The first time two boys fought during recess, the teachers did not scold them, but were happy: “So our kids are coming to life.”

The road to school was dangerous. The Germans shelled the city streets.

“Not far from our school there were factories that were fired upon by German guns,” said Svet Borisovich Tikhvinsky, Doctor of Medical Sciences. “There were days when we crawled across the street to school on our bellies. We knew how to seize the moment between explosions, run from one corner to another, hide in a gateway. It was dangerous to walk.” “Every morning my mother and I said goodbye,” Olga Nikolaevna Tyuleva told me. - Mom went to work, I went to school. We didn’t know if we’d see each other, if we’d stay alive.” I remember I asked Olga Nikolaevna: “Was it necessary to go to school if the road was so dangerous?” “You see, we already knew that death can overtake you anywhere - in your own room, in line for bread, in the yard,” she answered. – We lived with this thought. Of course, no one could force us to go to school. We just wanted to learn."

In the surgical department of the City Children's Hospital named after. Dr. Rauchfus 1941-1942
Many of my storytellers recalled how, during the days of the blockade, indifference to life gradually crept up on a person. Exhausted by hardships, people lost interest in everything in the world and in themselves. But in these cruel trials, even the young siege survivors believed: in order to survive, one must not succumb to apathy. They remembered their teachers. During the blockade, in cold classrooms, teachers gave lessons that were not on the schedule. These were lessons in courage. They encouraged the children, helped them, taught them to survive in conditions when it seemed impossible to survive. The teachers set an example of selflessness and dedication.

“We had a mathematics teacher N.I. Knyazheva,” said O.N. Tyuleva. “She headed the canteen committee, which monitored the consumption of food in the kitchen. So the teacher once fainted from hunger while watching how food was distributed to the children. This incident will forever remain in the memory of the children.” “The area where our school was located was shelled very often,” recalled A.V. Molchanov. – When the shelling began, teacher R.S. Zusmanovskaya said: “Children, calm down!” It was necessary to catch the moment between the explosions in order to reach the bomb shelter. Lessons continued there. One day, when we were in class, there was an explosion and the windows blew out. At that moment we didn’t even notice that R.S. Zusmanovskaya silently clasped her hand. Then they saw her hand covered in blood. The teacher was injured by glass shards.”

Incredible events happened. This happened on January 6, 1943 at the Dynamo stadium. Speed ​​skating competitions were held.

When Svet Tikhvinsky flew onto the treadmill, a shell exploded in the middle of the stadium. Everyone who was in the stands froze not only from the imminent danger, but also from the unusual sight. But he did not leave the circle and calmly continued his run to the finish line.

Eyewitnesses told me about this.

The blockade is a tragedy in which - in war as in war - heroism and cowardice, selflessness and self-interest, the strength of the human spirit and cowardice were manifested. It could not be otherwise when hundreds of thousands of people are involved in the daily struggle for life. It is all the more striking that in the stories of my interlocutors the theme of the cult of knowledge arose, to which they were committed, despite the cruel circumstances of the days of the siege.

IN AND. Polyakova recalled: “In the spring, everyone who could hold a shovel in their hands went out to chip away the ice and clean the streets. I also went out with everyone. While cleaning, I saw a periodic table drawn on the wall of one educational institution. While cleaning, I began to memorize it. I rake up the trash and repeat the table to myself. So that time is not wasted. I was in 9th grade and wanted to enter medical school».

“When we returned to school again, I noticed that during breaks I often heard: “What did you read?” The book occupied an important place in our lives,” said Yu.V. Maretin. - We exchanged books, childishly boasted to each other about who knew more poetry. Once I saw a brochure in a store: “Memo for air defense fighters,” who extinguished fires and buried the dead. I thought then: it will pass war time, and this monument will become of historical value. Gradually I began to collect books and brochures published in Leningrad during the days of the siege. These were both works of classics and, say, siege recipes - how to eat pine needles, which tree buds, herbs, roots are edible. I looked for these publications not only in stores, but also at flea markets. I have amassed a substantial collection of these now rare books and brochures. Years later, I showed them at exhibitions in Leningrad and Moscow.”

“I often remember my teachers,” said S.B. Tikhvinsky. “After years, you realize how much the school gave us.” Teachers invited famous scientists to come and give presentations. In high school, we studied not only from school textbooks, but also from university textbooks. We published handwritten literary magazines in which children published their poems, stories, sketches, and parodies. Drawing competitions were held. School was always interesting. So no shelling could stop us. We spent all our days at school."

They were hard workers - young Leningraders. “It turned out that only three older children were alive in our house,” Yu.V. told me. Maretin. - We were from 11 to 14 years old. The rest died or were smaller than us. We ourselves decided to organize our own team to help restore our house. Of course, this was already when the bread quota was increased, and we became a little stronger. The roof of our house was broken in several places. They began to seal the holes with pieces of roofing felt. Helped with water pipe repairs. The house was without water. Together with the adults, we repaired and insulated the pipes. Our team worked from March to September. “We wanted to do everything in our power to help our city.” “We had a sponsored hospital,” said O.N. Tyuleva. “On weekends we visited the wounded. They wrote letters under their dictation, read books, and helped the nannies fix their laundry. They performed concerts in the chambers. We saw that the wounded were glad of our arrival.. Then we wondered why they were crying while listening to our singing.”

German propaganda implanted delusional racial theories into the heads of its soldiers.

The people who inhabited our country were declared inferior, subhuman, incapable of creativity, who did not need literacy. Their destiny, they say, is to be slaves of German masters.

Reaching their schools under fire, weakened by hunger, the children and their teachers defied the enemy. The fight against the invaders took place not only in the trenches surrounding Leningrad, but also at the highest, spiritual level. The same invisible band of resistance took place in the besieged schools.

Therefore, it is not surprising that thousands of teachers and schoolchildren who worked in hospitals and in repair teams saving houses from fires were awarded a military award - the medal “For the Defense of Leningrad”.

Lyudmila Ovchinnikova

Boris Ivanovich Kuznetsov is my father. Born September 20, 1928; died November 28, 2010 A few years before his death, he decided to write memoirs about his childhood under the siege. Most likely, he did not have time to say everything he wanted, but he managed to say what he did. He died from cancer vomiting, he knew what awaited him, and if he missed something, then I think that the rest was not fiction, especially since my father had told me some episodes before. And before death, they usually don’t lie, especially to their loved ones, for whom these memories were originally intended. Then dad allowed me to introduce part of his (and not only his) life to everyone who might be interested in it. So one of his stories appeared on the Internet.

FAMILY TREE

We, the Kuznetsovs, were unlucky with the “tree”: of the St. Petersburg Kuznetsovs, I was the only one who had the chance to keep the surname (four sisters, and my brother died young).

Maybe somewhere in the west of the Pskov region a branch of the Kuznetsovs has survived, but I don’t know anything about them. I know, from the stories of my sister Lyudmila, that in St. Petersburg, somewhere in late XIX century, my great-grandfather appeared and became an average merchant, then my grandfather Andrei. Father, Ivan Andreevich, grabbed mustard gas during the First World War, somewhere married a Polish woman - Dora, in baptism - Daria. They lived together, suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis, and had children. I was the last one, the sixth. My father worked at a carriage factory, and we lived somewhere nearby. Life, obviously, was difficult - a lot of children, one worker. Mom, when she wasn’t sick, worked somewhere, and at work she became friends with Alexandra Alexandrovna Fedorova (nee Larina). That accepted
she took part in our misfortunes and took me and Zhenya in with her (for food, probably). She lived with her husband and had no children.

My mother died in 1933 - I don’t remember her at all. The Fedorovs took custody of me and Zhenya. Since then we lived with the Fedorov family. For us they became mom and dad and in the future, for simplicity, I will call them that.
My own father managed to get married and got a decent apartment on the street. Tchaikovsky, 36. I rarely visited them; the Fedorovs did not encourage contacts with other relatives. My father left work due to illness. He was also a good ladies' tailor and slowly earned his living at home. I remember him sitting on a large table with patterns. In 1937 he died. I remember his funeral: a hearse with horses, with an orchestra, and quite a lot of mourners behind. He entered before my birth
in the CPSU(b), was on the “account”. Probably because of this I was not baptized, or maybe I was baptized secretly, I don’t know.
In those days, this was the custom - they buried with dignity, even processions passed along Nevsky - a hearse with horses, mourners...
I will not describe the details of my life. There was everything, good and sad. There was much more good. I was never hungry, the summer was always warm and sunny, I had good friends. I felt bad when my mother harshly reminded me that I was not my own, I was “Kuznetsov’s offspring.” Zhenya was older, sometimes she ran to Tchaikovsky, to her father. But they brought her back.
In loving memory of my “father Fedorov,” Leonty Dmitrievich. Kindest man, we were on equal terms, friends.
I remember how I stood indifferently at my father’s coffin and someone tried to explain to me that it was my dead father lying there. And I almost joyfully objected: “No, my dad is alive, here he is,” pointing to his guardian.
The rest of the details of my pedigree can be found out from the questionnaires I specially saved. I have compiled many of them throughout my life. Any transition to another level was accompanied by writing a questionnaire and biography. Clearance for secret work also required this ritual, even more detailed. And I have clearance first
to “form 4”, then “3”, then “2” and, finally, to form 1. I was “sick” of all this - every time I had to remember all my scattered relatives.
I once made a copy of my works and then rewrote them. There is one copy somewhere.
Childhood probably ended with the start of the war. I will tell you about this period of my life in the next chapter.

The war did not come as a surprise to me. We were prepared for war from early childhood. Already in the second grade, we were ordered to tweet in textbooks the faces of leaders who turned out to be “bad guys.” In the 4th grade, I already knew what mustard gas, lewisite, phosgene, diphosgene were and received the first insignia - BGTO - “Be ready for work and defense” (no, the first was “October”). Then - GTO (“Ready for Labor and Defense”).

They explained to us that there are enemies all around, that people all over the world are groaning under the yoke of capitalists, we need to help them through the International Society for Aid to Revolutionaries. Free donations were made there. There was a phrase “in favor of MOPR”, this is when money was taken somewhere. Movies: There are spies and enemies of the people all around. Songs: “If there is war tomorrow”, “Three tankmen”, “Death of the squadron”, “Beloved city”... Everyone attacks us and we quickly defeat everyone. Life is an air raid drill (as in “The Golden Calf”, an exact copy). In general, psychologically we were ready.

Now about the “scenery” in which the war began for me.
We live on Zhukovsky street, house 23, apt. 3a. Entrance from the street, 2nd floor. The closest neighbors (the common first hallway) are a Jewish family: mom, dad and overweight 3-year-old daughter. We are not friends, sometimes we fight. (Dad once called a neighbor a Jew.) There is another apartment on the site. There is also a Jewish family there: Tsilya Markovna Kneller, Vladimir Moiseevich Tendler and their son Boris. Their apartment goes into a 2-story outbuilding and passes through a common corridor to another apartment where the Makhovs live. Kuzma Ilyich, a strong man, fought in civilian life with the Basmachi. Wife, hairy-eyed Armenian and son Ilya, my friend.
On the floor above there is a communal apartment, two Russians and one Jewish family. There are six Russians, one Armenian and one Tatar family in the yard.
We (the guys) live together, sometimes we fight, we play lapta, stander, “12 sticks”, “mothers and daughters”, “Cossack robbers”.

Mom is a housewife, dad works as the chief accountant in the 104th communications department on the street. Nekrasova, almost next to the house. Zhenya studies, then (I don’t know the reason) she began working at the same Egorov factory where her father worked, as an upholsterer (upholstering furniture). Zhenya has a boyfriend - a graduate of the Frunze School, submarine department, Gennady Pupkov. A tall guy from Siberia. They meet and come to visit. And I finished 5th grade. My school is wonderful, it was something for someone (Vosstaniya, 10?). Two halls, White and Blue, wide corridors, large classes, good teachers, nannies wipe away snot and fasten buttons.

Dad loved our city very much. I think he's the one
continued here for several generations. He dragged me to all the museums, just along the streets, where he knew the history of all the interesting houses.

On Sunday, June 22, 1941, the two of us sailed to Peterhof on a river bus. The day was warm and sunny. This was not my first time in Peterhof, but dad knew how to tell me something new every time. There are loudspeakers hanging around the park, like tetrahedral pipes. The people became quiet and grouped near these pipes. I didn’t hear the beginning, but the end is clear: “Our cause is just, the enemy will be defeated, victory will be ours,” Molotov’s speech. People began to disperse, we went to the pier. The return flight was not cancelled, we went to the city. On the sea canal, not far from Kronstadt, I saw a ship standing upright, like a float, with its stern up. After the war, having accidentally stumbled upon an article about the work of EPRON (underwater expedition), I read that German merchant ships that left the city on the night of June 22 threw mines into the fairway, and our cargo ship was blown up on one of them.

Outwardly nothing has changed in the city. I was really looking for signs of the outbreak of war, and I saw soldiers walking down the street, holding green inflated balloons ten meters long and two meters across by ropes.

There is some tension with food. I remember my mother and I walking along Mayakovskaya, they were selling something from a stall. Small queue. Mom says: “Let’s wait.” I say: “Mom, why stand still, the war will end soon and everything will be okay.” Persuaded, fool. In July, there was a card system, but commercial stores opened at higher prices. Dad came home from work and said: “I was taken into the army as a volunteer.” He was no longer quite of conscription age, but the Ministry of Internal Affairs was organizing troops to fight alleged paratrooper saboteurs. And dad became a fighter of the fifth fighter battalion. They explained to him that the time was difficult and they would take him anyway, and the volunteer would receive almost his entire salary. It was 500 rubles. Not bad for a non-working family.

The battalion was based on the Field of Mars (Square of the Victims of the Revolution), in the building of the present Lenenergo. In the square they were taught the art of marching in formation.
One day dad came in his clothes, but crossed himself machine gun belts(with cartridges), with a foreign rifle with a pouch and two RGD grenades on a belt. Mom was indignant: “You didn’t hold anything more menacing than a stick in your hands, but here you dressed yourself up.” (According to other testimonies of relatives, Leonty Dmitrieviy and my dad’s own father fought together in the First World War: that’s where they met. K.D).
Dad kissed us silently and went to war. The battalion was immediately thrown near Nevskaya Dubrovka.

And Zhenya went to the sandruzina (air defense fighter, local air defense), to a barracks position, she was rarely at home. Her fiancé, Gennady, was released from school with a diploma, the rank of lieutenant and two graduation suitcases - a uniform and underwear. He came to us with suitcases, but Zhenya was not there, at work. He let us play with a dirk and a pistol, then we went to the Colosseum. As soon as we sat down, there was an alarm, we were asked to leave, and managed to run into the ice cream parlor nearby. As soon as the sirens wailed and the air raid all cleared, we went home.
Air raid warnings were announced frequently, and people were herded into air-raid shelters or gateways.

The guys were interested. When the alarm was announced, we rushed to the office. There was a siren there - a metal cane, a drum with a handle on top, and a socket for the foot below. The lucky one ran out into the middle of the yard and turned the handle. A piercing howl came from the drum. The craftsmen changed the tonality by turning the handle at different speeds. The result was impressive howls, even when the broadcast was not turned on. Then they ran
to the next yard and repeated the “concert”.

The end of July, the alarms are still sound. Commercial stores are still open. The Germans are getting closer, but there is no obvious concern yet, no one is smashing stores, there are no protest rallies.

I went with my mother to the Big House to receive my father’s salary (500 rubles). We went into a commercial store, it was almost empty. We bought a jar of black caviar (500 grams). Last purchase outside of cards.

Then the evacuation began. They called my mother to the school and said that all students and teachers with children were being evacuated. A day is set and a list of things is given. Mom packed a backpack (homemade), an “eternal” pen, and bought an electric flashlight, which I was very happy about. I feel independent. The park near the school is crowded with kids and mothers. My mother ran around somewhere and found out that the children of many teachers were not leaving, and it was generally unknown where they would take us. She said: “Borya, let’s go home.” I was disappointed. Mom was called, but she said that she was only a guardian and therefore... in general, she made an excuse. (They were taken, it seems, somewhere near Luga, right under the German attack. I never met any of the guys from that echelon). August passed by somehow unnoticed. My school was turned into a hospital, I was assigned to school 206 - in the courtyard of the Colosseum cinema. Started studying in the sixth grade. There were few guys.

On September 8, in the quiet sunny afternoon, I was hanging out in the yard. Air raid warning, normal. Airplanes appeared in the clear sky. They walked straight, in rows. Anti-aircraft guns roared around, and fluffy clouds of explosions spread between the rows of aircraft. I realized that they were Germans, I was surprised that everyone was safe and walking smoothly, as if on a walk. Towards evening, a huge black cloud rose into the sky in the Lavra area. The rumor got around - the Badaevsky warehouses, where almost all of our food is on fire. I didn’t go, but I heard people were raking streams of burnt sugar.

From the first days of the war, a first aid post was created in the household. Household – three houses: 21, 23, 25.

25th exited at the corner onto the street. Mayakovsky. The corner of the first floor was the “red corner” before the war. This is a room where residents of houses could come, read newspapers, listen to a radio (which not everyone had then) or a lecture like “Is there life on Mars” or about bad bourgeoisie, spies, starving foreign class brothers. This room was given over to the first aid station. In a large room with mirrored “shop” windows overlooking Zhukovskaya and Mayakovskaya, they placed several made beds and hung a cabinet with first aid items - iodine, bandages, tablets, etc. Mom, as a non-working housewife, was appointed head of this sanitary unit. When alarmed, she went to the first aid station to wait for patients.
On September 8, after a daytime raid, by nightfall the sirens were blaring again. Mom went to her post, I went to bed.

The war has truly come to our home. The roar of anti-aircraft guns, heavy explosions of high-explosive bombs, the house shakes. Mom came running and told me to go to the bomb shelter. In house 21, the courtyard wing, there was a printing house with a floor made of reinforced concrete slabs. In the basement under it they equipped a bomb shelter - they installed bunks, a tank of water, kerosene lamps, and a first aid kit.

I got dressed. Mom was waiting. And a growing howl, almost a grinding sound, hit my ears. We pressed ourselves against the wall, I looked at the window. Our windows were large, high, curtained with thick green curtains made of thin cardboard. I saw what happened next as if in a slow motion movie. The blackout curtain is slowly torn to pieces, shards of window glass fly into the room, all this against the backdrop of a crimson glow. It seems that I didn’t hear the explosion itself, I just pressed myself against the wall. And a moment of ringing silence. Mom and I ran out onto the stairs. The first floor corridor leading to the front door is distorted by an extruded internal wall. Went outside. The first is a bright moonlit night, all along the street there are brightly glowing windows in houses (all their glasses and camouflage have blown out). On the right, diagonally, there are some fantastic moonlight ruins, lantern lights flicker in them, screams are heard. We went to the bomb shelter, glass crunching under our feet.

By morning, after lights out, we returned home. The windows are all broken, it's uncomfortable. There is a slight commotion in the courtyard - residents are exchanging impressions. Our janitor Uncle Vanya is quite old-fashioned. In the evening he locks both the front door and the gate. Those who return after midnight after calling the janitor's office unlock it and receive a ruble in gratitude. On holidays, he goes around to all the residents with congratulations, performs minor repairs - fix the lock, install glass...
Mom to him: “Vanya, put in the windows!” I heard the answer myself: “What are you talking about, Madame Fedorova! The Germans are in Ligovo, they will be here tomorrow, and you are glass!”
So as not to return to it again: in December, while walking to his home, he noticed a solid ham wrapped in paper in a concrete ring with sand for lighters. I took it and brought it home. The ham turned out to be female. He ran out into the yard with a scream, called people to make sure that the ham was completely frozen, not his job. And at the beginning of 1942, a truck arrived, loaded it with all sorts of belongings, and Uncle Vanya drove off for evacuation, through Ladoga. I don't know if I got there.

Let's get back to the topic. From that first day of the blockade there were worries every day, or rather evening. With German pedantry, the first raid began at 20.30. With short breaks, the anxiety continued until midnight, then, probably, everyone went to rest. People somehow found out where, how and how much. After the first bombing, we learned: that evening four thousand-kilogram high-explosive bombs were dropped, one of them hit a 5-story residential building on Mayakovsky. She tore down half the house and demolished the entire two-story corner building - the ISORAM dormitory (Art Studio for Working Youth - approximately). About 600 people died - in their houses and killed by the blast wave on the streets and in the entrances.
Our “first aid station” was completely destroyed, if my mother had not gone for me, I would have been left alone.

The relatives of those who died at home did not drag them to the pile and were left on the street, along the fence. Afterwards, the everyday life of the blockade began. In the morning I went to school. Fewer children came every day. In November they already went for a bowl of soup. The soup became paler. I remember the last soup at school - warm water, clouded with flour. Paid 4 kopecks. The school was not heated; we studied in the basement, where it was a little warmer. A bunch of kids gathered, each dressed in what, one lit a torch, the teacher quickly explained what to read at home, and dispersed. It’s not far from the school - along Mayakovskaya, left along Nevsky to the Colosseum. I pass by the fence of the hospital named after. Kuibysheva. The corpses are taken there. They are stored near the arch on the right side. The stack is 20 meters long and human height. For many people, the last time I went to school was when I saw my classmate slumped in the snow. I recognized him by his fiery red hair. I also went to school. I turned home, went to bed and almost never went out until spring, only for bread and water.
I must say that my mother and I were lucky. The windows in the apartment were somehow boarded up with plywood, but it was impossible to live in it in winter, especially since the winter turned out to be brutal - frost below 40, there was no electricity, kerosene, or water. But there were friends. The closest neighbors somehow quietly left even before the bombing, and never returned. In the family, on the site opposite, Vladimir Moiseevich went into the army. He knew perfectly well Polish language, and he was introduced into the Polish army we were creating as an officer, sent to Murmansk.

His son went to the front, Tsilya Markovna went to barracks in the hospital. Mother and son Makhov, even before the war, left for the summer to visit relatives in Kashin, and Kuzma Ilyich was drafted into the army - first to the front, but soon, probably due to his age and merits, he was appointed commandant in Pargolovo, where he comfortably commanded until the invasion of our troops in Germany (he also served there as a commandant in a small German city).

Both families left us the keys to their apartments and offered to live with them. Each family had its own corner in the basement where firewood was stored. We went to live in the Makhovs’ apartment. There was enough firewood until spring. When the famine began, they stopped going to the bomb shelter. During the night's troubles, I huddled under the covers and listened. At first, after the siren sounds on the radio (the broadcast worked throughout the war), there is silence, then the characteristic intermittent rumble of German Junkers is heard in the sky, then the chorus of anti-aircraft fire begins, the final chords of explosions of high-explosive bombs. There are only thoughts - it will fly away or... And again silence, until the next alarm. In the morning they found out where it was, and if it was close, I went to take a look. Zhenya rarely appeared, at night she dug into fresh ruins, pulling out the wounded and dead, and slept during the day. They were fed a little better, but they were still hungry, worse than in the army.
One day Kuzma Ilyich (Makhov) stopped by and brought some bread and a piece of horse meat - their horse had been killed. She and her mother had a quarrel for some reason. Kuzma Ilyich took out a pistol and shouted: “I will kill you!” Mom calmly said: “Kill, you’ll have something to brag about after the war.” Then they hugged and cried. It seems that his mother hooked him on his time in Pargolovo.

New Year has arrived. Mom and I alone (Zhenya didn’t let go, or didn’t want to, it’s probably better with friends). Our lights are on! Our house was connected
to the cable supplying the hospital (Kuibyshev Hospital). Gen's uncle, Gennady Pupkov, lieutenant, commander of the Shch (Pike) series submarine, came. He hoped that Zhenya would be at home, but Zhenya did not think that he could come. He brought a whole loaf of bread and something else. The three of us celebrated the New Year, the sky was quiet. We saw him for the last time. Our fleet was locked in the Neva Bay, the bay was filled with mines from both warring sides. Light only warships and the submarines tried to fight. Probably, in one of the forays outside Kronstadt, Gena’s “Pike” was blown up by a mine.

At the end of the war, a letter arrived from Gennady’s parents from Siberia. They received a funeral, but they hoped, knowing from their son’s letters about his love, that suddenly their grandson remained in Leningrad... We wrote to the parents and sent his modest property by parcel.

January was very difficult. I was lying in bed, thinking about something, more about food (“How could I not love semolina porridge!”). Lice appeared. They bothered me and bit me. I somehow indifferently caught them and crushed them. Mom came to her senses, got water, heated it, washed it, changed clothes. I must especially say about my mother - her character saved us both. She established a strict regime - she divided our pitiful food allowance into breakfast, lunch, and dinner. At least a piece, but three times a day, without getting ahead of yourself. Many died due to impatience with hunger - they managed to get bread “in advance” using a ration card, and then nothing. Already in November 1941, she exchanged everything we had, valued in those days, for food. She had a friend - a God-fearing old woman from Rybatskoye, on the outskirts of the city. She gave half a bag of small potatoes for her father's gold watch. For my dad's weekend suit, something also made from vegetables. I remember, somewhere in September, this old lady came to us and drank tea. Daytime raid, everything shakes and rumbles, the window was pierced by a fragment of an anti-aircraft shell. My mother and I pressed ourselves against the wall, and from above our stucco cornice was falling into pieces. The guest sits calmly with a cup of tea at the table and says: “The Lord God said - where you found yourself, stop there”... Tsilya Markovna gave us an address on Chekhov Street, nearby. A certain Nodelman, before the war, the director of a grocery store, assessed the situation in time and bought up the remaining products in his store, without forgetting or offending the workers. We went to see him. There were bags of cereal and sugar in the apartment. We bought 1 kg of millet once for 400 rubles and again something else, I don’t remember. Mom exchanged her gold watch for food; we had nothing else for sale. I wandered around our three apartments in search of pre-war edibles. I found our cat under the table in the hallway, lying at attention. Somehow, in the turmoil of all things, we forgot about him, he seemed to have left. Apparently he, feeling that no one cared about him, crawled into a secluded corner and died. And in Tsilya Markovna’s cupboard I found a two-liter jar full of lump sugar! She lived in the hospital and almost never came home. He knew that it was not good, he stole a piece at a time, shook the jar to make it seem larger, and licked this piece under the blanket.

Dad returned in mid-January. Overgrown with a beard, quite alive. He was recalled because there were almost no postmen left in the city - some died, some were called up. They handed him the keys to the post offices of the Kuibyshevsky district (abandoned, closed) and all the management of postal affairs in the district. What's going on? Basically, he sat at home and went hungry more than we did, after receiving a fuller soldier's ration. I remember how my mother caught him eating our common supply and scolded him very much - my father cried and asked for forgiveness.

But time passed towards spring. Mom got a job as a janitor - work card (400 grams of bread). By the way, life was good for the building managers. These are like the heads of small housing offices. Three houses, she (or he) receives and issues food cards to the residents for a month. They contain coupons for every day of 125 grams. bread for dependents and children, 200 for employees, 400 for workers. If you hide the dead, and there were them!.. In general, dead souls fed the building managers. The building managers had the keys to the apartments of all the evacuees. There's a lot left there. People left in the hope of returning soon. They expertly took Chinese porcelain from our apartment, of which there was a lot. (Once my mother served in the bonds of the Countess, after the revolution they remained a good relationship. The Countess's living space was cut down and many trinkets migrated to us. Then she was exiled, it seems, to Karaganda, and her son, a pilot, was repressed.) Our “house manager” had music and dancing in her apartment during the worst times with guests - officers. Those who were caught were dealt with harshly by the authorities. Our house manager disappeared unnoticed, the new house manager was shot (I learned this from the newspaper). He visited Professor Belenky’s apartment (at house 25) and stole some rare book from his library. And then, in 1942, when the antique book store on Liteiny began to operate, he put it there for sale. The book was registered with the state. In general, there was a lot of dirt, but this was nothing compared to those who survived, worked, and fought.

The most difficult times were remembered clearly, like scenes from a movie. Here I am standing in line for a ration of bread. In the bakery, by candlelight, the saleswoman cuts out bread coupons, glues them to a piece of paper for reporting, cuts off a slice from a moist black loaf, puts it on the scale, adds or cuts. Standing to the side of the queue, swaying, is a shadow - a dystrophic person. A sudden jerk, a crooked hand grabs the bread from the scales - and into the mouth. The man, or what is left of him, falls to the floor, covers his head with his hand and eats this piece, and those closest to him kick him...

In September, in a bomb shelter, we met a mother and daughter, a charming 4-year-old girl, who lived in house 21. In January, we learned that the mother ate her daughter after her death.

The winter passed in famine, there were no heavy bombings, only artillery shelling.
Spring came. April 4th, I remember it was Easter, a sunny day and an air raid. They mainly targeted Navy ships stationed on the Neva. Dive bombers were operating. The roar was such that we, already accustomed to the noise, jumped out into the yard and watched as German planes fell into a dive, falling onto their wings.

I also remember a raid on hospitals, then in one day bombs were dropped on several hospitals, including our neighbor - the Kuibyshev hospital.
I don’t count the shells, we hid from them under the arches and in the front doors - like from the rain.

More than sixty years have passed since then; due to the paucity of my memory, I remember everything in fragments, but what I remember is how it was.

Spring, May. School No. 206 came to life and gathered the surviving students. We quickly and painlessly passed the exams for the 6th grade and were sent (those who wished to) to the state farm “Vyborzhsky” (“Vyborzhets”?).

Before leaving, I took the tram (it had already begun to run in some places) to the outskirts (Murino) to collect quinoa and nettles for food.

State Farm. There are about thirty of us in the hall of the state farm club. Weeding the beds. Depending on the type of weed, the norm is 200–300 m of bed per day. The beds with woodlice are good - the soil is softer there and you can eat them. We take salt with us. A bunch of grass in the salt and in the mouth. When the vegetables are ripe, life becomes more satisfying, we nibble on carrots and turnips, and bake potatoes without leaving the garden bed. Remembering the house, we try to get something for the family, we hide some carrots and potatoes under the mattresses, in the corners. Raid! The director (in general, the boss) of the state farm rode up on a dashing horse (not some kind of nag) and ordered a search of our housing. Helpers shovel a pile of vegetables onto the ground near the porch. The boss, prancing on a well-fed horse, playing with a whip, explains to us how wrong we are doing. We get it. They carried a few carrots at a time and hid them not in the house, but in a ditch, near the road to the tram.

One day we were working in a field in the beds, suddenly there was a plane, a German was making circles above us at an altitude of 50–100 m. We became quiet and hid. The pilot, almost at low level, turned over us, leaned out, waved his hand, and threw a stack of leaflets and pop-up books. The leaflets contain photographs from the life of our prisoners of war. Well-fed former soldiers play volleyball with the Germans, cooks bake pies in the kitchen, in general - a sanatorium idyll. By the way, about leaflets, I looked at them, these pinkish pieces of paper are the size of an envelope. The primitive is creepy, like a comic book. Here are some “verses” that I remember.

The commissar leads the fighter to fight the German to the end.
But as soon as he saw the German, our commissar ran to the rear.
And before us are two soldiers (Russian and German)
They joke and smoke like two brothers.

Let us remember, brothers, how we were all called to war.
Let us remember how the political instructors sent us into battle.
Only we are not fools, brothers, we turned out to be.
And when they met the enemy, they surrendered to him.
We live in Stalin's paradise
For more than twenty years now,
But the Russian peasant has neither food nor a home.
All Soviet teachings and all Ilyich’s nonsense,
I will give it without regret for two fresh rolls.

Leningrad ladies, don't dig your dimples.
German tanks will come and bury your dimples

(this is about defensive work with the participation of townspeople).

And in each “Passierschain” leaflet, a pass for going into captivity with a drawing “Bayonets in the ground.”
You could pay with your life for reading and keeping such sheets of paper, but I hid it somewhere for memory. Mom probably burned it.

In the club where we slept, rats ran around the guys at night, gnawing on the vegetables we stole. I fell ill and could barely crawl in the beds. They guessed to take the temperature and sent me home. Jaundice. I got sick quickly - no amount of jaundice can cope with such a “diet”. I went to the state farm to get the “payment.” I earned 3-4 kilograms of turnip.

The second blockade winter has arrived. We already had three apartments in our possession, but the building manager gave us another one to use, in building 21 in the outbuilding.
3-room, 2nd floor, protected from shells. The owners' belongings were taken into one room and sealed. A beautiful tiled stove, however, the wood supply became poor. We installed a potbelly stove and got firewood with dad, if possible. Once they stole a huge wooden ladder abandoned by someone. The owners of the apartment left behind a bunch of pre-revolutionary Niva magazines. I read and burned.
At that time, some schools were departmental. My mother “settled” me for school No. 32 Oktyabrskaya railway, on the street Vosstaniya, no. 8. There were no problems with firewood - OZD supplied it. They drowned and stabbed themselves. And there was a canteen, they added something to the rations. Due to the lack of children, our class, the seventh, was the eldest, so before graduation we were the eldest. There were about 16 of us.

And I turned 14 years old. I joined the Komsomol. The Nazis are nearby, but I have no doubts, it’s not scary. District Komsomol Committee on Nevsky (in the courtyard of the current Palace Hotel, or nearby). Top floor. The floor is surprisingly warm and light. They ask something, I answer. They hand me a Komsomol card, I go home, ironing a modest little gray book as I go.

Somehow he immediately became the secretary of the Komsomol organization of the school. I probably did something useful. I remember how I admonished the idiots from the lower grades on the subject of “learning is light.” With my own methods...

But I am already a “nomenklatura”. On New Year's Eve, the Komsomol activists of the district gathered somewhere on Pushkinskaya Street in a warm basement. The tables are set, everyone has a large plate of meat pasta soup (lots of pasta!), a large mug of beer and a glass (100 g) of vodka. Before the war, we always had vodka in a decanter at our house - my dad infused it with hot pepper pods, but I never even thought of trying it, but here... I doubted it, but the neighbors encouraged me - once it was poured, I had to drink it! He drank and ate everything. Returning home, I thought about how to show my “drunkenness.” I remembered that dad sang and danced on holidays. I limited myself to tumbling through drifts of snow, and when I came home, I was surprised that my mother did not notice that I was drunk. I couldn’t stand it and told my mom that I drank vodka. Mom slapped me and sent me to bed.

In the new year, 1943, we gathered at the “celebratory” table, there was already something on the table and my mother, to my father’s surprise, put a glass for me, saying something like this: if the Komsomol poured him the first glass, then it’s not a sin at home. And something else, about stopping in time.

I want to write about 1943, but I come back in my thoughts
by the 42nd, so many things were left unsaid, details that at that time meant living or not living.

Here I am lying on the bed, almost motionless, remembering the well-fed times. Tsilya Markovna comes and says: “Come to me at the hospital tomorrow, I’ll feed you.” I came to the lobby, and there they dragged a dying dystrophic patient from the street. I remember how the doctor said: “Give me an injection of morphine.” Dali, he perked up and, it seems, was escorted out. A hospital for the military. Tsilya Markovna worked there as a wardrobe maid. She took me to her closet and brought me a large bowl of soup. And one day her husband, Vladimir Moiseevich, managed to transport a parcel from Murmansk. I remember how she came to us with an unopened package: “Let’s see what’s there...” And there was butter, sugar, cheese and something else. The first thing she did was put a thick slice of butter on a thin slice of Leningrad bread and gave it to me. I took a couple of bites and... lost consciousness.

Dad works, category “employee”. This is 300 g of bread. The pre-war firewood has run out. My dad and I went looking for fuel. He is in charge of several post offices of the Kuibyshevsky district (now Central). They are all locked, dad has the keys. They opened them, broke the wooden parcel racks, and loaded them onto sleds. Let's take it home. We already live in our fourth apartment, in house 21. Here we have a potbelly stove; there is not enough wood for a beautiful tiled stove. The Niva magazine has already been burned.

Somehow, unnoticed by me, my older brother Igor died; he lived on the street. Tchaikovsky 36, with the rest of the Kuznetsovs. I only remember how at the end of 1941 one of my sisters came to us and said that they were very hungry. Mom and I had half a bag of small potatoes, which Mom traded for Dad’s gold watch with a “friend” from Rybatskoe. Mom wasn't at home and I poured a bag of potatoes... Mom didn't swear when I told her.

From Moskovsky district from Blagodatny lane
Our relatives, the Koptyaevs, Aunt Tonya and her son, my peer Volodya, came to visit us. Aunt Tonya’s husband, Uncle Kostya, worked at Elektrosila before the war; immediately after the start of the war, he was sent to the front as a political instructor, and Aunt Tonya soon received notice that he was “missing in action.” The Blagodatnoye area became a front-line zone, everyone was evicted, they asked us for shelter. They lived together for about a year, then they were allowed to return home. Volodya and I went to the Neva for water; to the right of the Liteiny Bridge there was an ice hole. We took a sled and two buckets - enough for two days.

The descent to the Neva - granite steps, from constant splashes from buckets it became icy, the steps were barely visible. Supporting each other, we rose from the Neva and sat down to rest. I remember how in slow motion - a man is trying to crawl up the icy steps. Gaunt, almost black face. And hands, frostbitten hands with broken nails, cling to the icy steps. Together with Volodya we somehow helped him overcome the last steps. He lay down next to us. I caught my breath. He said that everyone was released from Kresty under his article (?) - there was nothing to feed them. We transferred him to the other side. He walked, holding onto the wall of the house, and turned the corner onto Liteiny.

I remember the spring of 1942 well. After the severe cold, a stormy spring came. And so, on the streets of the city, littered with snowdrifts, on staircases and courtyards filled with sewage, people appeared. There were, of course, calls on the radio and in the newspaper, but the townspeople themselves understood that the city had to be cleaned up. I remember how my mother would break the ice with a crowbar, and I would scrape it onto the pavement with a shovel.
I also remember our first experience of gardening.

In 1942, city residents were allowed to dig, plant and even harvest crops. Dad was given 100 m2 somewhere near Murinsky, and even some seeds. We arrived (the tram was already going there), dug up the soil, sprinkled it with seeds, and came in the fall to look for a harvest. Not found.

In 1942 there was a department store on Nevsky. They traded all sorts of things left over from peacetime and objects of life during the siege - smokehouses (a bottle with a tube containing a wick), bags of flint, kresal (a steel block) and tinder - a piece of cotton wool. Glowing icons different shapes, even with drawings.

So, 1943. It's bad, but I remember. I study at School No. 32 of the October Railway. Teachers of the good old school. I am a school Komsomol organizer. Komsomol load - we go to the Moscow station: we clear the tracks - roads leading to nowhere for now, but we believe that “our sorrowful work will not be lost.” On the sidings is the carriage of Admiral Tributs, commander of the Baltic Fleet.

Two naval officers come to the lesson and very politely say that after our help in clearing the tracks, a plexiglass handle (a rarity at that time) disappeared from the admiral’s carriage and it would be nice if it returned to its place. This story ended quite happily.

On May 1, I go to lunch at the Palace of Pioneers, as a Komsomol activist who is weakened by health. From the street Zhukovsky on the street. Mayakovsky, along Nevsky and to the palace across the Anichkov Bridge. Red clouds scatter in the sky above Nevsky - the Germans are firing shrapnel - a fireworks display for the townspeople. True, there weren’t very many people - on Nevsky the interval between people was on average 100 meters. But at the tram stop near Sadovaya (trams then ran along Nevsky) it was worse - artillery shelling covered those getting off the tram. Smoke from explosions, bodies... And I go to lunch.
On topic: very quickly a person gets used to the scary. I walked past mountains of frozen corpses, past bodies torn apart by shells... Probably a defense mechanism was triggered, otherwise how could one live after everything I had seen.

In 1943, dad was given 100 m2 for a vegetable garden near the Mill Plant named after. Lenin and 100 m2 right in the bowl of the stadium. Kirov. We planted potatoes at the stadium. It seems that the soil there was just sand, but the potatoes turned out good, they collected a bag or two. Vegetable seeds were planted at the mill (they were given out somewhere). They traveled and looked after. But they started stealing. I, who already had experience with ammunition, came up with a defense plan - wire to a mousetrap, and instead of cheese - a live cartridge. It worked once, there were no obvious casualties, and we collected the carrots.

Like all normal boys, he loved everything that shoots and explodes. Having learned that a whole trainload of ammunition exploded on Rzhevka, I got there with a friend. And it’s true what kind of placers we found there. We walked over piles of rifle cartridges and “pasta” from artillery shells. They filled the bags full. At home I had several bottles filled with gunpowder from rifle cartridges (and I was not too lazy to loosen the bullet and pour out the gunpowder). At my school friend, Yura Tamarsky, in his huge apartment on Nevsky, we fired from a German machine gun along the corridor at a woodpile. At school (may the teachers forgive us) we committed complete hooliganism: we attached a bullet from another to a live cartridge on a piece of cardboard... In general, I will not reveal our technologies, but at the right moment all this exploded, made a loud noise: the stoves in the classroom exploded, During lessons, the lights went out and the contents of the inkwells flew up like a fountain. Even the teacher's desk sometimes became the object of our terror. So, despite everything terrible, life went on. People believed, hoped, loved, and laughed and joked too. Faith, Hope, Love helped us.
Shelling. There are no bombings, I don’t remember. In the spring, I was sent with a group of schoolchildren to the Pargolovsky state farm. I still don’t understand why only I from our class went there. It is also true that only I (from our class) was awarded the medal “For the Defense of Leningrad”.

Work was good in Pargolovo - either the summer was warm, or my health had improved. We went to the field through a “false airfield”.

Now, when we drive from the city to Vyborg, to the left of Pargolov there are fields crossed by the Ring Road. This is where the airfield was. The “runways” were mowed down in the grass, there were even three real planes (apparently decommissioned), there were even real bombs lying around (we rolled one for a long time to put it in the middle of the road). On one of these planes I once lay (on the wing) watching a sluggish air battle.

By the way, nearby, closer to Levashovo, there was a real airfield, and twice I had the opportunity to be present when our pilots crashed. One day, a Cobra fighter plane (England) flew over our heads (we lived in the building of the state farm club), two landing gear on the sides, a third in front, seemed to hover in the air and crashed about 100 meters into the woods near the club. The guys ran up, the pilot was lying 20–30 meters from the plane. Literally nearby there was a field bakery - several barracks fenced off with wire. An officer jumped out from there and, shooting upward, shouted to disperse. Pilot Goryachev, we read his name on the obelisk - in the cemetery located not far from us (now it has probably merged with Severny).
We then pulled out belts of shells and large-caliber cartridges from this plane. They blew it up.

The second, in the same summer, LI-2 (our “Flying Fortresses”), before my eyes, suddenly descended sharply when approaching the real airfield in Levashovo, tore through the field with its belly, crawled across the road to Pargolovo station and sat down on the other side of the road. As we ran up, we saw bombs sticking out of the walls of the ditch, not very large, we also saw a pilot saying all sorts of obscene words, and the second pilot did not speak, but groaned and his forehead was already bandaged. This plane was taken away quickly, but the first one remained in the forest. I asked the LI-2 commander why the bombs did not explode, and he explained why quite politely.
In the summer of 1943 we were no longer hungry. I wanted to eat constantly, but it was quite tolerable. We were already playing, climbing trees, exploding shells from the Cobra. Once the commandant of Pargolov, Kuzma Ilyich, visited me and brought me a loaf of bread. white bread, then we went to an army shoemaker, and he made me chrome boots - at that time “the squeak of fashion.”

The workers of the bakery (which was next to us) slipped bread under the wire, disguised it with grass, moss - for their own people, who then took it away. We had our own game - to find these hiding places.

We worked conscientiously. From weeding to cleaning. Then I had the opportunity to follow a horse with a hiller - hill up potatoes. The work is hard.
For the New Year, he was invited to the Palace of Pioneers for the Christmas tree. It was light, warm, interesting. There were gifts, there was the film “The Three Musketeers” in a comedy version, allies were visiting - Americans, British, and they took pictures together.
Life gradually got better. With additional coupons, more and more often, something was given out - either American stew, or even a bar of chocolate.
And finally, January '44.

REMOVAL OF THE BLOCKADE

When on the evening of January 27 I walked along Zhukovskaya, Liteiny, Belinsky to the Field of Mars, I already felt: something grandiose was happening, a moment in history.
Then it seemed to me that the city itself had run out of patience and started talking. The continuous, growing roar of guns hung over the entire city for several hours. The city roared, but no shells exploded in the streets, no houses collapsed. The city went on the offensive.

Hundreds of people flocked to the Field, dozens of guns stood on the left side, it was dark, only the flickering of blue street lamps. And suddenly everything exploded, guns roared, thousands of rockets illuminated everything: both the city and joyful faces. There were no festive fireworks then, but everything was firing - the cannons on the Champ de Mars, and on the Neva, and the continuous fires of rockets. Rockets were launched both by special installations and by soldiers from hand-held rocket launchers - from the streets, from the roofs of houses. It seemed that the whole city was on fire, recouping 900 days of fear.

Life is gradually getting better. There is electricity, but the standards are very strict, I remember, 4 kW/hours per month. We moved into our pre-war apartment and lived until Victory Day. Sister Zhenya began working as a nurse - first at the Comedy Theater, then on the Leningrad-Moscow train, then at the sanitary and epidemiological station, in the City Health Department. I finished school and entered VAMU. In 1948, the card system was abolished.

The memory of the past is still strong, but many details have already been erased. Dad's letters from the front disappeared somewhere, thrown out as unnecessary small items life under siege. Our house on the street. Zhukovsky was closed for major renovations. My wife and daughter Nina were given an apartment in Vesyoly Settlement. Moving from the city center, and then “perestroika” broke my sister’s psyche, she was unable to accept the new rules of life, to enter into it...

I remember my life during the siege more with interest than with horror... Combined with my many years of work in the Arctic, where there was also plenty of everything, life is remembered as a struggle with difficulties, and this is interesting.

More than 60 years have passed, it would seem that everything should be overgrown. But sometimes at night, when you have insomnia, you remember fragments of the war:

Here I am walking along our street and fire, smoke, and roar burst out from the facade of the house ahead. Projectile.

My mother and I, in the entrance yard at the back door to the store, saw cereal spilling out of a bag. A little, mixed with road dirt. They collected it by hand, then washed it and baked flat cakes. Sand crunches on your teeth.

A truck full of frozen corpses passes by and is taken to the cemetery. Women sit on top.

In the winter of 1942, house 5 on Zhukovskaya caught fire. The fire broke out on the top, 6th floor. The house burned out from top to bottom for several weeks - there was nothing to put it out with. There is a short article in Leningradskaya Pravda - a worker at such and such a factory left his felt boots to dry at the stove, fell asleep, and because of this the house caught fire. The worker was sentenced to death.

On Nevsky (then 25th October Avenue), corner of the street. Marat, a very large bomb fell, but did not explode, it went deep into the asphalt. In the summer of 1942, when the tram was already running, they began to remove the bomb. They surrounded it with a fence, close to the tram tracks. Trams walked along the fence “on tiptoes.”
In the spring of 1942, for the first time during the blockade, my mother cooked porridge - millet, thin. How delicious it seemed!

The yeast factory learned to make yeast almost from sawdust. They were sold without cards, by weight, and also in cans. We fried them in a frying pan. Disgusting, even for that time. In the summer of '42, I killed a crow with a slingshot. Cooked. The broth is cloudy, the meat is tough and tasteless. Despite being hungry, I couldn’t eat.

A boy from our class died of hunger already in 1943. He sold his ration of bread at the bakery corner of the street. Vosstaniya and Nevsky. He boasted of a thick wad of money... By the way, after the blockade was lifted, a decree was issued - all transactions in exchange for food were declared illegal and, if there was evidence, things and valuables were returned to the owner. I don't know if this law was in effect.

After the war, thousands of German prisoners were marched in a column along Nevsky. People watched in silence, there were no special emotions. Leningrad was quickly restored, German prisoners were working, the facility was surrounded by a fence, and sentries stood. The Germans are a disciplined people: the war is lost, so obey.
Over time, the security regime weakened. One summer they called at our apartment - a German, puny, quiet (they were restoring the house opposite us). Politely asked for something to eat. My stern mother poured him a bag of potatoes, about 2 kilograms. The next day he came and returned the bag - washed, almost ironed. And he didn’t ask for anything, he just said thank you.

There are many such passages that come to mind.
Another stage of life has begun. Study, interesting work, family, children, grandchildren, old age.

My immediate memory fails me, I look for the glasses that sit on my nose, I forget the names of long-gone friends, but I remember my childhood...
Ice cream maker with a blue cart on the corner of Zhukovskaya and Mayakovsky. Places a round wafer in the mold
with names: Igor, Lena, Borya, Dima, Seryozha, Alyosha... Ice cream with a spoon on top, another waffle - Dima, Tanya, Luda...

We ask for your prayers for repose from the Eliseevsky Readings website).

From the son: Thank God that my father managed to confess and receive communion at home several days before his death. May the kingdom of heaven rest with him.

P.S/ If my dad’s story touched anyone, then I had the idea to tell about other interesting episodes of his life that he told me - about his work in the Arctic, for example.

But this is if the readers wish.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to insert several photographs in one work, and this greatly compromises the design.

Although, I may not have figured out such nuances yet and this is possible.

I wish you health and a peaceful life.
Dmitriy.

When my mother remembered the blockade, she always cried. She told how people fell from hunger while walking and died. And if a person fell, he asked: “Pick me up!” - but those passing by could not lift him, because from weakness they themselves could fall. The military raised people; they still had good rations.

Mom was young and did not save anything for future use, as old people used to do. When the war began, my mother’s husband was offered a bag of flour and cereals, but she refused: “Well, how can we get flour and cereals for free?” And I didn’t take it. Then, of course, she bitterly regretted it and said: “If only I could give my children five grains!”

They only had 125 grams of bread per day. Mom dried this bread on a stove-stove so that it would not melt in the mouth longer. Hoping to bring at least something for the children, my mother went to the markets. Out of weakness, the children always lay in bed, covered with whatever they could, and when they heard that their mother had come, they pulled their hands out from under the blanket and held them out for food, palms up, but it was not always possible to put anything in these palms.

The eldest son Slavik ate well before the war, loved fish oil very much, drank it straight, was plump, and this saved him. And the youngest son Volodya was two and a half years old, he became like a perfect skeleton and died quietly in his mother’s arms - he looked at her, sighed and died. And then my mother prayed for the first time in her life: “Lord! Leave us life! When I come to my parents, I’ll light a candle for you!”

That’s why now, when people come to church just to light a candle, I rejoice and say: “It’s good that you came. Very good! It’s good that you didn’t pass by, but still came in to light a candle, it means that God is calling you, your soul wants to come in, and you heard this voice.” I always remember my mother’s candle.

During the blockade, my mother sold things in order to bring home at least a small piece of dried bread or a piece of sugar. “Once,” she recalled, “a woman brought a very expensive fur coat to sell, and they bought this fur coat from her for half a loaf of black bread and a lamb.” And so some who had a supply of food made money there.

The dead were picked up on the street and stacked on trucks. Mom recalled how one day a truck drove past her, in which lay a frozen girl with red golden hair, it went down almost to the ground.

There was no heating or water in the city - everything was frozen. To save energy, my mother did not carry water from the river, she simply took snow. There was no firewood. Houses exploded due to bombing, but my mother did not go to hide in the basements, she stayed in her house. In order to at least eat something and hold it in their mouth, they boiled paste and even a leather belt, and they chewed it.

During the blockade, my mother’s husband, the father of my brothers, died. One day he fell right at his entrance and began to freeze. A military man was walking by and heard: “Lift me up! Here is my door! He picked him up, led him into the house, put him against the wall, and so along the wall he walked to the second floor. His hands were frozen; his blood was not warm. Two weeks later he died. Mom recalled how she dressed him in a nice suit that he had, made of bouclé fabric, and five-year-old Slavik crawled on him, tore off woolen pellets of bouclé and ate...

My mother’s husband had a sister, and her family did not go hungry, since her husband held a high position, but she only helped her mother a couple of times, and then she stopped. After the war, she came to us and cried so much that she did not share food with her nephews and brother. She could not relieve herself of this pain, she constantly cried, because the cereal remained, and her brother and his son died. She couldn’t live with this, she was so desperate, and her mother persuaded her: “You must go to church and repent. God will remove this sin from you, and it will be easy for you.” But since she was an unbeliever, she could not enter the temple for a long time, and only in the late fifties did she do so and repent.

At that time, there was almost no possibility of evacuating, all roads were closed, except for the Road of Life, where it was difficult to get into, obtain and issue exit documents. And then the sister’s husband, who held a high position, gave them permission to leave. They were given rations for the journey - a whole loaf of bread, dry sausage and something else - I don’t remember. However, many people died on the road because they ate everything at once.

Mom saw many terrible things and always said: “Thank God that He didn’t take my mind away!..” She took a small piece from this loaf for herself and her son. They set off at the end of March, when the Road of Life was already closing, because the ice was breaking and it was impossible to travel. Mom chose the bus because she understood that if they got into an open truck, they would freeze. And people froze.

She was the last one to get on the bus, Slavik was already sitting inside, and my mother couldn’t lift her leg, she didn’t have enough strength. The driver was in a hurry, and then one man, a Jew, helped her. He extended his hand to her and pulled her in. She prayed for him all her life and said: “He helped me so much! I am grateful to him for the rest of my life!” The car driving in front of them fell through the ice. But they still got there.

On the other bank, peasants brought them cloudberries and cranberries. People took berries into their mouths, but their mouths were white, stiff, they no longer opened or closed—there was no saliva. They put cloudberries in their mouths, and they turned red and came to life.

Mothers: Priests' wives about life and themselves. / Luchenko K.V.: Nikea; Moscow; 2012