Was there cannibalism in besieged Leningrad. Blockade of Leningrad - an open letter to cannibals. Nikolai Larinsky: “Our children will not believe what we experienced in Leningrad…”
Tragedies like the one
what happened to Leningrad
in 1941-1944, in the world
did not have. For 900 days
blockade starved to death
1 million 200 thousand people.
But the city didn't give up.
and survived.
Archival secrets in the light of day
It was customary to talk about the Leningrad blockade in a heroic perspective. The whole truth was never told about her horrors - for more than half a century archival documents were classified as "top secret". Now the St. Petersburg historian, candidate of historical sciences Nikita Lomagin is completing a lot of work on a book that will be devoted to many unknown pages of the blockade and life in the occupied territory of the Leningrad Region. He is a native Leningrader, his parents and grandmother survived the first blockade winter. Hence his interest in the blockade theme.
Nikita Lomagin studied materials in the archives of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Podolsk, Gatchina. He studied in detail the documents of the GKO related to the battle for Leningrad, various orders, reports and special messages on the moral and political state of the army and navy, the personal fund of Zhdanov and other persons who were related to Leningrad during the war years, the so-called special folders, which contain the most valuable information about the activities of the authorities and administration in Leningrad, as well as about the mood of the population.
Abroad, the historian has worked in the National Archives of the United States, the National Security Archive of the United States, the Bakhmetiev Archives of Columbia University, the archives of the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, and the W. Churchill Archives at Cambridge University. Now he is studying documents from the archives of Harvard University. “In the USA and Great Britain, I tried to unearth materials about the position of the allies regarding Leningrad,” Nikita Lomagin told an NG correspondent. “It was important to establish what they knew about the suffering of Leningraders and what they offered to alleviate their plight. the number of memories of the battle for Leningrad, the occupation of the Leningrad region, the propaganda activities of the ROA.
So far, the St. Petersburg historian has not managed to get into the archive of the President of the Russian Federation, which may contain interesting documents by Stalin, Molotov, Beria. Materials of the German Security Service (SD) remain in special storage in the former Leningrad State Archives. "As before, many archives contain a huge number of documents classified as "top secret," says Nikita Lomagin. again, they did not fall into the category of secret."
"Today they died, and tomorrow I"
The materials of the investigation cases tell about those convicted for violating sanitary standards, forging food cards, spreading false rumors, looting, cannibalism...
Solomon Perchenok was sentenced to four months in prison for violating the sanitary regime - he poured sewage out the window. Ephraim Podgorny received six months in prison for urinating from the window, and even chopping wood right in the apartment.
Maria Pushkina was sentenced to ten years in the camps (where she died of dystrophy) for keeping at home an officer's sword, 71 American dollars and a silver coin of Soviet minting, and also managed to "create at home a supply of acutely scarce products (sugar, rice, flour, cocoa ) exceeding personal needs.
Maxim Belov, passing through the site of recent battles near the village of Kokovo, found the corpses of soldiers and took off their clothes. The boots could not be removed, and then he chopped off his legs with an ax. The military tribunal sent the marauder to corrective labor for a period of five years.
To keep abreast of the mood of the population, military censorship opened almost all letters from citizens. Here are the lines from the letters that were seized and did not reach the addressees.
"┘The legs no longer move, but you have to walk. There are a lot of victims, the dead are buried without coffins, since there are no coffins. Varlasha died of hunger, he asked for food before his death, so we bury him without a coffin, they tied him in a sheet."
"┘Vanya, drop your rifles and don't dare to defend anymore until they give you more bread. Drop your rifles, go to the German, he has a lot of bread."
"┘Zhenya, we are dying of hunger. Barika prepared boards for the coffin. But I'm so weak that I can't take it to the cemetery. Yurik was so exhausted that he no longer asks for food, only occasionally shouts: "Mom, if you don't eat, kill me," says a four-year-old.
By November 20, 1942, the ice thickness on Lake Ladoga had reached 180 mm. Horse-drawn carts came out onto the ice. On November 22, cars followed the trail of the horses for the cargo. The next day, 52 tons of food were delivered. Due to the fragility of the ice, two-ton trucks carried 2-3 bags, and even with such caution, several vehicles sank. Later, sleds were attached to the trucks - this made it possible to reduce the pressure on the ice and increase the amount of cargo. Despite the fact that the Road of Life was under special control, the drivers managed to turn off the road, embroider bags of groceries, pour out several kilograms, and sew them up again. Theft was not found at the collection points - the bags were accepted not by weight, but by quantity.
When the fact of theft was proved, the driver immediately appeared before a military tribunal, which usually passed a death sentence. Here is how the commissioner of the echelons of the OATB of the 102nd military highway N.V. describes the mechanism for the execution of punishment. Zinoviev: “I happened to witness the execution of the driver Kudryashov. The battalion lined up in a square. A closed car drove up with the sentenced. He came out in felt boots, cotton trousers, one shirt and no hat. the tribunal reads the verdict.Then the order is given to the commandant, he commands the sentenced: "Circle! On your knees!" - and to the arrows: "Fire!" A volley of 10 shots sounds, after which Kudryashov shudders, continues to kneel for some time, and then falls face down in the snow. The commandant approaches and shoots from a revolver in the back of the head, after that The corpse is loaded into the back of a car and taken away somewhere.
The NKVD Directorate for the Leningrad Region carried out a survey of the state of storage of NZ (untouchable reserve) food. In its report labeled "top secret" addressed to the secretary of the Leningrad City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the department reported that the pantries were unsuitable for storing food, the requirements of sanitary supervision were not observed, and the emergency stock was spoiled. Due to water leaks from the ceiling, bags of dried fruits are soaked, butter is covered with mold, rice and peas are infested with mites, bags of breadcrumbs are torn apart by rats, covered with dust and rodent droppings...
Lines from letters seized from the mail by military censorship and transferred for storage to the NKVD Directorate for the Leningrad Region:
"┘Life in Leningrad is getting worse every day. People start to swell because they eat mustard, they make cakes out of it. You can't get the flour dust that was used to glue wallpaper anywhere."
"┘There is a terrible famine in Leningrad. We drive through the fields and dumps and collect all sorts of roots and dirty leaves from fodder beet and gray cabbage, and there are none."
"┘I witnessed a scene when a horse fell from exhaustion in the street near a cab driver, people ran up with axes and knives, started cutting the horse into pieces and dragging it home. It's terrible. People looked like executioners."
If in August 1941 the number of letters seized by military censorship was 1.6%, then in December the number of correspondence with "negative sentiments" reached 20%. Here is what Leningraders wrote to their relatives on the mainland:
"┘Our beloved Leningrad has turned into a dump of dirt and the dead. Trams have not run for a long time, there is no light, no fuel, the water is frozen, the latrines do not work. Most importantly, hunger torments."
"┘We have turned into a flock of hungry animals. You walk down the street, you meet people who stagger like drunks, fall and die. We are already used to such pictures and do not pay attention, because today they died, and tomorrow I will."
"┘Leningrad has become a morgue, the streets have become avenues of the dead. In every house in the basement there is a warehouse of the dead. There are strings of the dead along the streets."
Facts are stronger than statistics
Could such a number of victims, such torment and suffering have been avoided?
Answering this question of an NG correspondent, Nikita Lomagin said: “There was no question of surrendering the city. Its strategic importance can hardly be overestimated. It can be said without exaggeration that by continuing the struggle for Leningrad and sacrificing the population of the city, Stalin saved Moscow and Russia Many Leningraders understood this, but to a certain extent this sacrifice could have been avoided if the leadership of Leningrad had shown the will and carried out the evacuation of the population in a more organized way in the pre-siege period, immediately introduced restrictions on the withdrawal of funds from savings banks, and also established a card card in time the system and secured the population behind the shops, thereby preventing many hours of exhausted Leningraders standing in huge queues.The authorities - Zhdanov, Voroshilov and others - had to remember the lessons of the Finnish war, which showed how the population would behave in the event of a crisis. late November - early December 1939, it could not be called anything other than panic. and from the savings banks and bought literally everything. Stabilization in the sphere of trade in Leningrad came only after a few months, and not without the help of Moscow. In June - the first half of July 1941, history repeated itself, this time in the form of a tragedy.
By November 1941, the famine in Leningrad reached monstrous proportions. Workers were given 250 g of bread, dependents - 125 g. And it was not always possible to buy cards. The number of thefts, murders with the aim of taking food cards has sharply increased. There were raids on bread vans and bakeries. In December 1941, the first cases of cannibalism were recorded.
Igor Shevchenko was born in Italy in 1924 in the family of a Russian émigré engineer. Fleeing from fascism, he moved to the USSR with his parents as a teenager. Leningrad was chosen as the place of residence. In June 1941, my father was arrested and sent to Zlatoust to serve his sentence. The mother also moved to live there. Igor himself decided to stay in Leningrad, because "it was a pity to leave the apartment and property." He worked in canteen # 16 of the Vyborg district as a loader. But once he was fired for absenteeism. “I received dependent cards, but the prescribed norm was not enough,” Igor wrote in his testimony. “I began to go out to catch cats, cut them and eat them. In addition, I ate dogs. I saw an unburied corpse of a man there in the snow. He took off his boots and put it on himself. He cut the corpse into pieces with an ax and brought it home. He roasted his left hand and ate it. He hid the rest of the parts in reserve. There was a knock on the door of the apartment. I opened it and saw policemen. They arrested me...
In January 1942, 18-year-old Vera Titanova drowned her newborn daughter in a basin, then dismembered the corpse and ate it with her mother. Three weeks later, cannibals from a neighboring apartment stole the corpse of a six-year-old girl and also ate it.
According to the NKVD Directorate for the Leningrad Region, 43 people were arrested for eating human meat in December 1941, 366 in January 1942, 612 in February, 399 in March, 300 in April, 326 in May, and 56 in June. The numbers then dwindled, from July to December only 30 cannibals were caught red-handed. Corpses were stolen from cemeteries, abducted from the morgue, and dead relatives were eaten. Adults were lured into apartments under the guise of exchanging things for food, and children - under the pretext of treating them with sweets, were killed - and into the pot.
The husband killed his wife and fed her meat to his son and two nieces. He told them that it was dog meat.
Two older sisters killed a younger 14-year-old sister and ate it.
A 69-year-old woman stabbed her granddaughter to death and fed her meat to the mother and brother of the murdered woman.
The father, in the absence of his wife, killed two sons 4 years and 10 months old and ate them.
The mother, who had four children, killed the youngest child and prepared food from his meat for herself and three children.
Most often, cannibal blockades were sentenced by military tribunals to be shot with confiscation of property. The verdicts were final, not subject to appeal and immediately carried out.
From the memorandum dated February 21, 1942, the military prosecutor of Leningrad A.I. Panfilenko to the Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks A.A. Kuznetsov about cases of cannibalism: "Under the conditions of the special situation in Leningrad, a new type of crime arose ... All murders for the purpose of eating the meat of the dead were qualified as banditry due to their special danger ... The social composition of persons put on trial for committing the above crimes is characterized by the following data. By gender : men - 36.5%, women - 63.5% By age: from 16 to 20 years old - 21.6%, from 20 to 30 years old - 23%, from 30 to 40 years old - 26.4%, older 40 years old - 29%. By occupation: workers - 41%; employees - 4.5%; peasants - 0.7%; unemployed - 22.4%; past convictions 2%."
“The fact that there was cannibalism in Leningrad during the blockade, I learned long before working in the archives from my grandmother, who, according to her, miraculously escaped from the cannibals who invited her to“ try the jelly, ”continues the conversation Nikita Lomagin. , of course, those who survived the blockade knew about this phenomenon and, recalling the war, they sometimes talked about it in the family circle.In addition, in the documents of the German special services, with reference to defectors and prisoners of war, the situation in the city was described in some detail.What to say, statistics, let even the most terrible, makes a different impression than the materials of specific criminal cases. It was really scary to read them."
Uncensored photos
Recently, the exhibition "Unknown Blockade" opened in the Peter and Paul Fortress, which presents unique photographic materials of the war period. Many of these materials were in the archives of the NKVD, and only now the FSB Directorate for St. Petersburg has handed them over for publication.
“A lot has been written about the Leningrad blockade, photographs and documentary evidence have been preserved, but they all passed through the sieve of censorship,” says Vladimir Nikitin, the author of the exhibition, a well-known photojournalist, head of the Department of Print Production and Design at the Faculty of Journalism of St. Petersburg State University. “Only heroics were allowed to be published. "The works, where the everyday life of an ordinary person is recorded, were confiscated by censorship. We will never see photographs with mountains of corpses at the Volkovsky and Serafimovsky cemeteries, apartments and courtyards turned into morgues with ice. But a certain number of pictures miraculously survived in the archives."
In preparing the photographs, many of the negatives were restored almost from the dust. In the photographs, the besieged city froze as the townspeople saw it. The bodies of the dead on carts, the emaciated faces of the fighters of the sanitary-cleaning detachments, the funnel on the Fontanka embankment, the corpses floating in the puddles formed after the thaw. 250 of these photographs are now being prepared for publication by the Limbus-Press publishing house.
At the photo exhibition, the NG correspondent met with the writer Daniil Granin, who, in collaboration with Ales Adamovich, wrote the famous Blockade Book, and asked him a few questions.
When you wrote your book, were these things known to you?
These things were unknown to us. We partially understood, we were told something. We have censorship demanded to withdraw 65 memories. We managed to defend only a few. Then it was impossible to write about false cards, marauders, cannibals. The scale of the blockade tragedy is still unknown to us today and, probably, will never be known.
Will you make changes or additions to your book in connection with the published new facts?
If there is a reprint, we will restore the seizures related to looting and cannibalism. But I have no right to change anything. Firstly, my co-author is gone, secondly, this book was compiled from the stories of people who lived at that time, and thirdly, I am afraid that patches will be visible.
How, in your opinion, does a person turn into a cannibal, what happens at this time to his psyche?
To appreciate this, you need to put yourself in the place of that person. I knew a woman whose little son died during the blockade, leaving a daughter. She put the corpse of the boy between the windows so that the meat would not spoil, and fed her daughter with it, and the daughter remained alive, but does not know about it.
Do you think this is acceptable?
At least I can neither throw a stone at the mother nor say that this situation is immoral.
The blockade of Leningrad lasted from September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944 - 872 days. By the beginning of the blockade, the city had only inadequate supplies of food and fuel. The only way to communicate with besieged Leningrad was Lake Ladoga, which was within the reach of the besiegers' artillery. The capacity of this transport artery was inadequate for the needs of the city. The famine that began in the city, aggravated by problems with heating and transport, led to hundreds of thousands of deaths among residents. According to various estimates, from 300 thousand to 1.5 million people died during the years of the blockade. The number of 632 thousand people appeared at the Nuremberg Trials. Only 3% of them died from bombing and shelling, the remaining 97% died of starvation. Photos of Leningrad S.I. Petrova, who survived the blockade. Made in May 1941, May 1942 and October 1942 respectively:
"The Bronze Horseman" in blockade vestments.
The windows were sealed crosswise with paper so that they would not crack from explosions.
Palace Square
Harvesting cabbage at St. Isaac's Cathedral
Shelling. September 1941
Training sessions of the "fighters" of the self-defense group of the Leningrad orphanage No. 17.
New Year in the surgical department of the City Children's Hospital named after Dr. Rauchfus
Nevsky Prospekt in winter. Building with a hole in the wall - Engelhardt's house, Nevsky Prospekt, 30. The breach is the result of a German air bomb hit.
A battery of anti-aircraft guns at St. Isaac's Cathedral is firing, reflecting a night raid by German aircraft.
At the places where the inhabitants took water, huge ice slides formed from the water splashed in the cold. These slides were a serious obstacle for people weakened by hunger.
Turner of the 3rd category Vera Tikhova, whose father and two brothers went to the front
Trucks take people out of Leningrad. "Road of Life" - the only way to the besieged city for its supply, passed through Lake Ladoga
Music teacher Nina Mikhailovna Nikitina and her children Misha and Natasha share the blockade ration. They talked about the special attitude of the blockade to bread and other food after the war. They always ate everything clean, leaving not a single crumb. A refrigerator full of food to capacity was also the norm for them.
Bread card of the blockade. In the most terrible period of the winter of 1941-42 (the temperature dropped below 30 degrees), 250 g of bread was given out per day for a manual worker and 150 g for everyone else.
Starving Leningraders are trying to get meat by butchering the corpse of a dead horse. One of the worst pages of the blockade is cannibalism. More than 2 thousand people were convicted for cannibalism and related murders in besieged Leningrad. In most cases, cannibals were expected to be shot.
Barrage balloons. Balloons on cables that prevented enemy aircraft from flying low. Balloons were filled with gas from gas holders
Transportation of a gas tank at the corner of Ligovsky Prospekt and Razyezzhaya Street, 1943
Residents of besieged Leningrad collect water that appeared after shelling in holes in the asphalt on Nevsky Prospekt
In a bomb shelter during an air raid
Schoolgirls Valya Ivanova and Valya Ignatovich put out two incendiary bombs that fell into the attic of their house.
Victim of German shelling on Nevsky Prospekt.
Firefighters wash off the blood of Leningraders killed in German shelling from the asphalt on Nevsky Prospekt.
Tanya Savicheva is a Leningrad schoolgirl who, from the beginning of the blockade of Leningrad, began to keep a diary in a notebook. In this diary, which has become one of the symbols of the Leningrad blockade, there are only 9 pages, and six of them contain the dates of the death of loved ones. 1) December 28, 1941. Zhenya died at 12 o'clock in the morning. 2) Grandmother died on January 25, 1942, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. 3) Lyoka died on March 17 at 5 o'clock in the morning. 4) Uncle Vasya died on April 13 at 2 am. 5) Uncle Lyosha May 10 at 4 pm. 6) Mom - May 13 at 730 in the morning. 7) The Savichevs are dead. 8) Everyone died. 9) Only Tanya is left. In early March 1944, Tanya was sent to the Ponetaevsky Home for the Invalids in the village of Ponetaevka, 25 kilometers from Krasny Bor, where she died on July 1, 1944 at the age of 14 and a half from intestinal tuberculosis, blinded shortly before her death.
On August 9, 1942, Shostakovich's 7th Symphony "Leningradskaya" was performed for the first time in besieged Leningrad. The Philharmonic hall was full. The audience was very diverse. The concert was attended by sailors, armed infantrymen, air defense fighters dressed in jerseys, emaciated patrons of the Philharmonic. The performance of the symphony lasted 80 minutes. All this time, the enemy's guns were silent: the artillerymen defending the city received an order to suppress the fire of German guns at all costs. The new work of Shostakovich shocked the listeners: many of them cried, not hiding their tears. During the performance, the symphony was broadcast on the radio, as well as on the loudspeakers of the city network.
Dmitri Shostakovich in a fire suit. During the blockade in Leningrad, Shostakovich, together with the students, went out of town to dig trenches, was on duty on the roof of the conservatory during the bombing, and when the roar of the bombs subsided, he again began to compose a symphony. Subsequently, having learned about Shostakovich's duties, Boris Filippov, who headed the House of Art Workers in Moscow, expressed doubts about whether the composer should have risked himself like that - "because it could deprive us of the Seventh Symphony", and heard in response: "Or maybe otherwise this symphony would not have existed. All this had to be felt and experienced. "
Residents of besieged Leningrad cleaning the streets from snow.
Anti-aircraft gunners with an apparatus for "listening" to the sky.
On the last journey. Nevsky Prospect. Spring 1942
After the shelling.
On the construction of an anti-tank ditch
On Nevsky Prospekt near the Khudozhestvenny cinema. The cinema under the same name still exists on Nevsky Prospekt, 67.
A bomb crater on the Fontanka embankment.
Saying goodbye to a peer.
A group of children from the kindergarten in the Oktyabrsky district for a walk. Dzerzhinsky Street (now Gorokhovaya Street).
In a ruined apartment
Residents of besieged Leningrad disassemble the roof of the building for firewood.
Near the bakery after receiving a bread ration.
Corner of Nevsky and Ligovsky prospects. Victims of one of the first first shelling
Leningrad schoolboy Andrey Novikov gives an air raid signal.
On Volodarsky Avenue. September 1941
The artist behind the sketch
Seeing off to the front
Sailors of the Baltic Fleet with the girl Lyusya, whose parents died during the blockade.
Commemorative inscription on the house number 14 on Nevsky Prospekt
Diorama of the Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War on Poklonnaya Hill
There are people who want to expose and ask uncomfortable, as they consider, questions. Moreover, it is necessary that the damned Bolsheviks are to blame for everything.
As a rule, these people do not know anything specific, do not want to know, and want only one thing - confirmation of their correctness.
And, the first of these questions, why don't you tell anything about how the authorities brought Leningraders to cannibalism.
Let's answer this question.
Firstly, it is simply impossible to write about such things in a book for children. People who are seriously asking why we haven't written about this in a children's book are causing serious concern and they should pay attention to their mental health.
Secondly, yes, of course, after the closing of the blockade ring in the late autumn of 1941, a terrible famine broke out in Leningrad, which actually continued until the end of the spring of 1942.
Hunger not only kills people, but also drives them crazy. One of the manifestations of such a hungry madness is cannibalism.
This is the inevitable companion of hunger. Cannibalism is not something unique to the Siege of Leningrad. At all times there were people whose morals were so weak that at some point they crossed the barrier that distinguishes a person from non-humans.
Alas, there were such in Leningrad. But, if you study the issue, it turns out that those who lost their human appearance and crossed the line turned out to be very few, and the city leadership, and ordinary Leningraders, did everything so that they did not exist at all.
About everything in order.
It is believed that the first case of cannibalism was recorded in Leningrad on November 15, 1941, when law enforcement officers detained a woman who strangled her one and a half month old daughter in order to feed three children.
About a month later, the NKVD for the Leningrad Region reported to Zhdanov that the townspeople were eating cats, dogs, and the meat of dead animals. The same document mentioned 25 cases of cannibalism. Moreover, it was about both murders, including for the purpose of selling human meat under the guise of an animal, and about the abduction of corpses.
As a rule, those arrested in such cases underwent a psychiatric examination. Almost all of them were declared sane. There was no article for cannibalism in the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. In ordinary times, crimes of this kind are exceptionally rare, but there was a "special situation" in Leningrad. Exit found: “All murders for the purpose of eating the meat of the dead, due to their particular danger, were qualified as banditry (Article 59-3 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR). At the same time, taking into account that the vast majority of the above type of crimes concerned the eating of cadaverous meat, the prosecutor's office of Leningrad, guided by the fact that by their nature these crimes are especially dangerous against the order of management, qualified them by analogy with banditry (according to Article 16 -59-3 of the Criminal Code). Equating it with banditry meant only one thing for the cannibals who killed people: ruthless persecution and death. Corpse snatchers were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, but they are unlikely to have survived in blockade prisons. By the way, in a number of documents cannibalism was listed as "banditry (special category)".
So, obviously, the leadership of Leningrad fought against this, and very hard. And the numbers are worth paying attention to - compare with the total number of people in a huge city.
Separately, we note that the city's leadership made an absolutely correct decision - not to mention cases of cannibalism, so as not to provoke the population and not aggravate the already difficult situation. But of course there were rumors. Now many unscrupulous scribblers are trying to pass off these rumors as eyewitness accounts, "memories of the blockade."
In reality, the following is known. November 1941 to December 1942 2,057 people were arrested for murder for the purpose of cannibalism, cannibalism and the sale of human meat. By March 1942, "a total of 1,171 people had been arrested for cannibalism." On April 14, 1,557 people were arrested; on May 3, 1,739; killings for the purpose of eating human flesh have been noted.
Among the 886 people arrested for cannibalism from December 1941 to February 15, 1942, the vast majority were women - 564 people. (63.5%). The age of criminals is from 16 to “over 40 years old”, and all age groups are approximately the same in number (the category “over 40 years old” slightly prevails). Of these 886 people, only 11 (1.24%) were members and candidates of the CPSU (b), another four were members of the Komsomol, the remaining 871 were non-party. The unemployed prevailed (202 people, 22.4%) and "persons with no fixed occupation" (275 people, 31.4%). Only 131 people (14.7%) were natives of the city. “The illiterate, semi-literate and people with lower education accounted for 92.5 percent of all defendants. Among them ... there were no believers at all.”
In the USSR, the topic of cannibalism in besieged Leningrad was generally strictly tabooed. For the author's refusal to remove the mention of this phenomenon from his book, the Soviet edition of Garrison Salisbury's 900 Days was canceled. It was one of the first foreign journalists who came to Leningrad back in 1943.
It was necessary to keep this topic secret or not after the war - a difficult question. Too many rumors gave rise to silence, including rumors about the prevalence of cannibalism. Perhaps some part of the "special category banditry" was not opened. Perhaps in reality there were more crimes of this kind.
But the conclusion from this sad page of the siege of Leningrad is unequivocal: in the conditions of a terrible disaster, the vast majority of people remained human, even despite the threat of painful death. And precisely because people remained people, the city survived.
Michael DORFMAN
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the 872-day siege of Leningrad. Leningrad survived, but for the Soviet leadership it was a Pyrrhic victory. They preferred not to write about it, and what was written was empty and formal. Later, the blockade was included in the heroic heritage of military glory. They began to talk a lot about the blockade, but we can find out the whole truth only now. Do we just want to?
“Leningraders lie here. Here the townspeople - men, women, children.Next to them are Red Army soldiers.
Blockade Bread Card
In Soviet times, I ended up at the Piskarevskoye cemetery. I was taken there by Roza Anatolyevna, who survived the blockade as a girl. She brought to the cemetery not flowers, as is customary, but pieces of bread. During the most terrible period of the winter of 1941-42 (the temperature dropped below 30 degrees), 250 g of bread per day was given to a manual worker and 150 g - three thin slices - to everyone else. This bread gave me much more understanding than the peppy explanations of the guides, official speeches, films, even an unusually modest statue of the Motherland for the USSR. After the war, there was a wasteland. Only in 1960 the authorities opened the memorial. Only recently have nameplates appeared, trees have been planted around the graves. Roza Anatolyevna then took me to the former front line. I was horrified how close the front was - in the city itself.
September 8, 1941 German troops broke through the defenses and went to the outskirts of Leningrad. Hitler and his generals decided not to take the city, but to kill its inhabitants with a blockade. This was part of a criminal Nazi plan to starve to death and destroy the "useless mouths" - the Slavic population of Eastern Europe - to clear the "living space" for the Millennium Reich. Aviation was ordered to raze the city to the ground. They failed to do this, just as the Allied carpet bombing and fiery holocausts failed to wipe out German cities from the face of the earth. As it was not possible to win a single war with the help of aviation. This should be thought of by all those who, over and over again, dream of winning without setting foot on the ground of the enemy.
Three quarters of a million citizens died from hunger and cold. This is from a quarter to a third of the pre-war population of the city. This is the largest mass extinction of a modern city in recent history. About a million Soviet servicemen who died on the fronts around Leningrad, mainly in 1941-42 and in 1944, must be added to the account of the victims.
The Siege of Leningrad was one of the largest and most brutal atrocities of the war, an epic tragedy comparable to the Holocaust. Outside the USSR, almost no one knew about it and did not talk about it. Why? Firstly, the blockade of Leningrad did not fit into the myth of the Eastern Front with boundless snow fields, General Zima and desperate Russians marching in droves on German machine guns. Right down to Antony Beaver's wonderful book about Stalingrad, it was a picture, a myth, established in the Western mind, in books and films. Much less significant Allied operations in North Africa and Italy were considered the main ones.
Secondly, the Soviet authorities were also reluctant to talk about the blockade of Leningrad. The city survived, but very unpleasant questions remained. Why such a huge number of victims? Why did the German armies reach the city so quickly, advanced so far deep into the USSR? Why wasn't a mass evacuation organized before the blockade closed? After all, it took the German and Finnish troops three long months to close the blockade ring. Why was there no adequate food supply? The Germans surrounded Leningrad in September 1941. The head of the party organization of the city, Andrei Zhdanov, and the commander of the front, Marshal Kliment Voroshilov, fearing that they would be accused of alarmism and disbelief in the forces of the Red Army, refused the proposal of Anastas Mikoyan, Chairman of the Committee for Food and Clothing Supply of the Red Army, to provide the city with food supplies sufficient to the city survived a long siege. A propaganda campaign was launched in Leningrad, denouncing the "rats" fleeing the city of three revolutions instead of defending it. Tens of thousands of citizens were mobilized for defense work, they dug trenches, which soon ended up behind enemy lines.
After the war, Stalin was least interested in discussing these topics. And he clearly did not like Leningrad. Not a single city was cleaned the way Leningrad was cleaned, before the war and after it. Repressions fell upon the Leningrad writers. The Leningrad party organization was crushed. Georgy Malenkov, who led the rout, shouted into the hall: “Only the enemies could need the myth of the blockade to belittle the role of the great leader!” Hundreds of books about the blockade were confiscated from libraries. Some, like the stories of Vera Inber, for “a distorted picture that does not take into account the life of the country”, others for “underestimating the leading role of the party”, and the majority for the fact that there were the names of the arrested Leningrad leaders Alexei Kuznetsov, Pyotr Popkov and others, marching on the "Leningrad case". However, they are also to blame. The Heroic Defense of Leningrad Museum, which was very popular, was closed (with a model of a bakery that gave out 125-gram bread rations for adults). Many documents and unique exhibits were destroyed. Some, like the diaries of Tanya Savicheva, were miraculously saved by the museum staff.
The director of the museum, Lev Lvovich Rakov, was arrested and charged with "collecting weapons for the purpose of carrying out terrorist acts when Stalin arrives in Leningrad." It was about the museum collection of captured German weapons. For him it was not the first time. In 1936, he, then an employee of the Hermitage, was arrested for a collection of noble clothes. Then “propaganda of the noble way of life” was also sewn to terrorism.
"With all their lives, They defended you, Leningrad, the Cradle of the Revolution."
In the Brezhnev era, the blockade was rehabilitated. However, even then they did not tell the whole truth, but they gave out a strongly cleaned up and heroized history, within the framework of the leaf mythology of the Great Patriotic War that was then being built. According to this version, people were dying of hunger, but somehow quietly and carefully, sacrificing themselves to victory, with the only desire to defend the "cradle of the revolution." No one complained, shied away from work, stole, manipulated the rationing system, took bribes, killed neighbors to get their ration cards. There was no crime in the city, there was no black market. No one died in the terrible epidemics of dysentery that mowed down Leningraders. It's not that aesthetically pleasing. And, of course, no one expected that the Germans could win.
Residents of besieged Leningrad collect water that appeared after shelling in holes in the asphalt on Nevsky Prospekt, photo by B.P. Kudoyarov, December 1941
The taboo was also imposed on the discussion of the incompetence and cruelty of the Soviet authorities. The numerous miscalculations, tyranny, negligence and bungling of army officials and party apparatchiks, theft of food, the deadly chaos that reigned on the ice "Road of Life" across Lake Ladoga were not discussed. Silence was shrouded in political repression, which did not stop for a single day. The KGBists dragged honest, innocent, dying and starving people to Kresty, so that they could die there sooner. Before the noses of the advancing Germans, arrests, executions and deportations of tens of thousands of people did not stop in the city. Instead of an organized evacuation of the population, convoys with prisoners left the city until the closing of the blockade ring.
The poetess Olga Bergolts, whose poems, carved on the memorial of the Piskarevsky cemetery, we took as epigraphs, became the voice of besieged Leningrad. Even this did not save her elderly doctor father from arrest and deportation to Western Siberia right under the noses of the advancing Germans. All his fault was that the Bergoltsy were Russified Germans. People were arrested only for nationality, religious affiliation or social origin. Once again, the KGB went to the addresses of the book "All Petersburg" in 1913, in the hope that someone else had survived at the old addresses.
In the post-Stalin era, the entire horror of the blockade was successfully reduced to a few symbols - stoves, potbelly stoves and home-made lamps, when the utilities ceased to function, to children's sledges, on which the dead were taken to the morgue. Potbelly stoves have become an indispensable attribute of films, books and paintings of besieged Leningrad. But, according to Rosa Anatolyevna, in the most terrible winter of 1942, a potbelly stove was a luxury: “No one in our country had the opportunity to get a barrel, pipe or cement, and then they didn’t even have the strength ... In the whole house, a potbelly stove was only in one apartment, where the district committee supplier lived.
“Their noble names we cannot list here.”
With the fall of Soviet power, the real picture began to emerge. More and more documents are being made available to the public. Much has appeared on the Internet. The documents in all their glory show the rot and lies of the Soviet bureaucracy, its self-praise, interdepartmental squabbling, attempts to shift the blame on others, and attribute merit to themselves, hypocritical euphemisms (hunger was called not hunger, but dystrophy, exhaustion, nutritional problems).
Victim of the "Leningrad disease"
We have to agree with Anna Reed that it is the children of the blockade, those who are over 60 today, who most zealously defend the Soviet version of history. The blockade survivors themselves were much less romantic in relation to the experience. The problem was that they had experienced such an impossible reality that they doubted they would be listened to.
"But know, listening to these stones: No one is forgotten and nothing is forgotten."
The Commission for Combating the Falsification of History, set up two years ago, has so far turned out to be just another propaganda campaign. Historical research in Russia is not yet subject to external censorship. There are no taboo topics related to the blockade of Leningrad. Anna Reed says that there are quite a few cases in the Partarkhiv to which researchers have limited access. Basically, these are cases of collaborators in the occupied territory and deserters. Petersburg researchers are much more concerned about the chronic lack of funding and the emigration of the best students to the West.
Outside of universities and research institutes, the leafy Soviet version remains almost untouched. Anna Reid was struck by the attitude of her young Russian employees, with whom she sorted out cases of bribery in the bread distribution system. “I thought that during the war people behaved differently,” her employee told her. “Now I see it’s the same everywhere.” The book is critical of the Soviet regime. Undoubtedly, there were miscalculations, mistakes and outright crimes. However, perhaps without the unwavering brutality of the Soviet system, Leningrad might not have survived, and the war might have been lost.
Jubilant Leningrad. Blockade lifted, 1944
Now Leningrad is again called St. Petersburg. Traces of the blockade are visible, despite the palaces and cathedrals restored in the Soviet era, despite the European-style repairs of the post-Soviet era. “It is not surprising that the Russians are attached to the heroic version of their history,” Anna Reed said in an interview. “Our Battle of Britain stories also don't like collaborators in the occupied Channel Islands, mass looting during German bombing raids, Jewish refugees and anti-fascist internment. However, sincere respect for the memory of the victims of the blockade of Leningrad, where every third person died, means telling their story truthfully.”
This title combines two books that I saw in a bookstore. The first contains the author's reasoning, they can be omitted. The second contains documents, they are interesting enough to understand the truth about the blockade.
Unfortunately, the main lie still remains. We will try to note which documents are missing. For example, there are no documents on the supply of the army and navy concentrated in the blockaded city. Generally speaking, in any besieged city, the army usually takes control of all food supplies and from them allocates food for the civilian population. In Leningrad, the supply of the population remained separated from the supply of the army.
Huge stocks of food brought from the Baltic States, Belarus, a number of regions and, finally, from the Leningrad region itself, were placed at the disposal of the army.
Do not accuse the army of pathological greed: it generously shared with party, state, economic workers of a certain level, all of them were taken for military supply according to the norms of command personnel.
But the army did not share with dying children.
Well, and, of course, no documents were given about such an event as the arrival of several grain wagons in the winter of 1941-42 in the city (Olga Bergholz's sister arrived with one of them). By the way, there were two films about this at the box office - one "documentary", the other feature. How they lie, figure it out for yourself, if you wish.
I spoke with a real participant in these convoys. He said the main thing: the carts crossed the front line with the consent and permission of the Germans!
Lord! Do you still think it should be kept a secret?
Article 2
An open letter to cannibals.
In an unkind hour, I decided to title one of my opuses: "Cannibals Equal to Heroes." Out of a stupid habit of prying into other people's affairs, I considered a small private problem - whether it is possible to consider as heroes people who used, constantly or occasionally, human meat for food while solving the problem of survival in the besieged city of Leningrad.
I had a vague premonition that the cannibals would not understand me and severely condemn me for not understanding the fact that the very eating of human (and not the best quality) meat is already a heroic deed.
But I didn't expect this. A whole flock fell on me. In excellent Internet language (I can still understand it - I still did it for several years) they explained to me that what I eat is g ... but compared to the noble food of cannibals. They wrote such that everything inside me turned cold and an alarming foreboding was born: “they will eat it”!
Half an hour later, my opus was banned in the ru_politics community (in the live Journal) and someone on the click of a Moderator or something like that answered me: “what you wrote is completely irrelevant and uninteresting.” For him, you see, it is uninteresting and irrelevant, but for me it is extremely interesting and relevant: where to run, where to hide? Turn to the police, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the prosecutor's office, the FSB for protection?
So after all, they will shrug their shoulders and maliciously note: “There are no grounds for interference, when they start eating, then contact me!”
Oh, how good it was when I was "socially dangerous" and was under constant and close surveillance. Cannibals did not even come close to me then.
My friends tried to comfort me: “Yes, the blockade cannibals have died a long time ago!” Indeed, one wrote about me: "He insulted our ancestors." Of course, most of even the most tenacious cannibals died, but it seems their descendants have inherited the ancestral appetite. What difference does it make to me whether a ninety-year-old old man will eat me with false teeth or some handsome man, 20-30 years old, for whom this will be the first experience of non-traditional nutrition.
Dear cannibals! What are you afraid of? Re-read the Criminal Code! You have nothing to fear: cannibalism is not a criminal offence. There is no such article. Well, of course, you often have to kill to get the freshest meat. But the statute of limitations for all types of murders has long since passed. You are not guilty of anything and can openly look into the eyes of your fellow citizens.
Well, the authorities (although there are probably no cannibals among them) treat you very well.
It is important for them that you love the Motherland. You love her, don't you? And are you ready to relive what you experienced for her sake?
Well, please forgive me!
With anger and indignation I reject the ridiculous accusation that I claimed that all Leningraders were cannibals. Vice versa! I can name a lot of those who obviously were not cannibals. This is all the leadership of the city, their rations included black and red caviar, fruits, beef, pork, lamb, etc. Of course, they looked at human meat with disgust.
And, finally, the entire army, down to the last soldier and sailor. What to say about human meat, they looked at the besieged bread with disgust and cooked it separately for them.
Here they are, true heroes who have maintained a high moral level among all these degraded old men, insolent women and depraved children!
Article 3 Cannibals equated with heroes.
This is repeated year after year.
The first people of St. Petersburg speak and say, referring to the blockade: “You defended the city, you made a huge contribution to the victory, you are heroes” and the like.
In fact: the main reason why Leningrad was not occupied by the Germans was Hitler's order forbidding troops to enter the city (by the way, there was a similar order regarding Moscow). In practice, after the establishment of the blockade line, the Germans abandoned any action to further seize the territory.
And it is not true that the Germans wanted to starve the population of Leningrad. Separate negotiations were held in Smolny with the German command. The Germans offered to lift the blockade in exchange for the destruction of the Baltic Fleet, or rather submarines.
Zhdanov offered to surrender the city with the entire population in exchange for the withdrawal of troops along with weapons. Unilaterally, the Germans offered the unimpeded withdrawal of the entire civilian population from the city, and also allowed the free transport of food to the city.
And these were not just words - several grain carts passed unhindered to Leningrad (with one of them, sister Olga Berggolts calmly arrived from Moscow through two front lines).
By the way, many indirect facts indicate that the city was literally stuffed with food (the Confectionery factory worked almost the entire blockade, also oil and fat plants). After the war, the stew was “thrown out” into trade, made, as follows from the inscriptions on the banks, in 1941 in Leningrad! The population of the city - women, children, the elderly did not decide anything and did not protect anyone and could not protect. The authorities cared only that they died out calmly and without unrest.
As for "patriotism", there was none. People, at best, tried to survive. This led to a huge scale of crime. Murder, especially of children, has become commonplace. Teenagers united in real gangs attacked food trucks, shops and warehouses. They were ruthlessly killed by the guards.
Read the memo received by the military, for whatever reason, sent to the city. This memo considered the city as hostile, warned of the possibility of a surprise attack, and in case of danger, offered to immediately use weapons.
German agents operated freely and with impunity in the city. During the raids, it was possible to observe rockets unusual for us - the so-called "green chains". They indicated to the aircraft targets for bombing. These agents were never caught. The frightened population not only did not help the NKVD in the fight against spies, but avoided all contacts with the authorities, agreeing to perform any tasks for a can of canned food.
After dogs, cats, pigeons, even crows with rats were eaten, the only meat available to the population was the people themselves.
Modern psychology makes it possible, through appropriate surveys, to reveal what people hide with all their might.
There was a (secret, of course) study of survivors of the blockade on this topic.
The result was stunning.
There is such a thing as justice. Even the most notorious villain and criminal has the right to it if he is unjustly offended.
All blockade survivors, regardless of how they survived, are entitled to compensation from the state and society that put them in such a position. But when they are called heroes and glorified, then this is only an attempt to pay with words, not money.
Gentlemen speakers! You all know as well as I do. Anyone who is really interested in the blockade can find out.
And your false statements are a frank depreciation of all high words, a contribution to the general destruction of the morality of the whole country!
Article 4 Damn you!
This is not me telling you, but rather an objective and cynical intellectual (an intellectual in the second generation!). These are those who were killed during the blockade of Leningrad.
I am a careful and practical person; I'm just writing about how it all happened.
I had to wait for this time for quite a long time.
If you are wondering what really happened at that time, then read the publications that have appeared recently. You can also listen to "Echo of Moscow" and their program "The Price of Victory". Cautious people also work there, and from this what they report becomes even more reasonable ...
There is no point in wasting time on propaganda fabrications of the past.
In short, I state only the most general conclusion: during the blockade of Leningrad, not the Germans, but our authorities were interested in the fact that the population of the city died of starvation.
The Germans, on the contrary, made attempts to charge the provision of food for the useless population of Leningrad, in the form of old people, women and children, to us.
They didn't succeed.
Well, that's all right. "Everything for the front, everything for the Victory."
And we did everything that was needed for the front.
And now I'm just passing on to you the death curses of those who died of starvation in the icy ruthless city, especially children.
I am their age.
Damn you!
Article 5 Lessons of the blockade and the desire for extinction.
We are still not so imbued with civilization as to completely depend on refined food. Perhaps, on the contrary, genetically we have not yet fully adapted to such a diet. We are surrounded by a completely edible world for us. The plants around us are more than 90% not only edible, but even beneficial to our health. It is quite possible to eat cow parsnip and burdock. The coltsfoot is edible whole. In burdock, for example, you can eat roots, stems, leaf cuttings; the leaves themselves are bitter and inedible. Reed roots, which grow in abundance along the shores of the Gulf of Finland, Sestroretsk and Lakhtinsky spills, as well as along numerous rivers and streams, can be dried, ground in hand mills or meat grinders. If you are already a completely helpless bungler, then feel free to rip off the lichen from the trunks of trees, stones, walls of buildings. You can either eat it or cook it. It is quite possible to dine on shellfish, many insects, frogs and lizards.
From the beginning of the war to the beginning of the blockade, there was enough time to dry, pickle, salt unlimited supplies of all this food.
The blockade of Leningrad is not the first experiment in this direction. In 1917-18, the Bolsheviks introduced a "grain monopoly" and began to shoot the peasants who brought bread to the city. However, at that time it was not possible to bring the matter to an end, to the Piskarevsky cemetery and Victory Park on the ashes of those burned. The population simply fled to the villages.
In 1950 I was surprised to learn that in the Leningrad region there are villages that are impossible to get to in winter, and in summer only by tractor. During the war, neither the Germans nor the Red Army saw such villages. Is that sometimes the ubiquitous deserters.
In many villages there were empty houses: people left for the city, or the authorities evicted the "kulaks", and in 1939 also the Finns, evicted for the convenience of management from farms and small villages to villages along the roads.
So it was quite where to run.
But the opposite happened: the people fled to the city.
Why?
What happened, what broke in the psychology of the people?
Not only to fight for their rights and even for life itself, for the life of their children and families, Leningraders were not capable.
Article 6 Operation Blockade
Scoundrels adore decent people, they simply idolize them. Their most cherished desire is that everyone around them be just the same saints. It is for this that they (the scoundrels) agitate, call, persuade.
Well, of course, this love is purely platonic.
You were not surprised by an interesting fact: for more than half a century people have been talking about help and benefits to the blockade survivors of Leningrad. And they don't just talk. Budget money, apartments and so on are allocated for this.
I know this firsthand: about 40 years ago I helped the blockade survivors to get the apartments due to them, and I remember what it cost them. With habitual arrogance, I can say that if it were not for my help, they would not have received anything. After all, if all the allocated assistance reached the addressees (those under blockade), then there would be no problem with them!
There have always been villains. They did not go anywhere during the blockade either. I must say that for many this time was a time of fabulous enrichment. When the museum of the blockade was created in its first execution, it so happened that it turned out to contain a large number of memories that reported facts that were very eloquent. And this is very dangerous for the rascals. And the museum was liquidated. The collected materials are destroyed (of course, only those that were dangerous).
By the way, at one time the number of blockades began to grow rapidly. Can you tell me why or can you guess the reasons for the “strange” phenomenon?
Here's what's especially amazing. So many revelations of abuses, waste of public funds in all areas. And complete silence and splendor in matters related to the blockade. No checks. Everything is honest and noble.
But it's so simple. For example, obtaining apartments. Naturally, in the first place, the more seriously injured, the wounded, who have lost their health and relatives, should receive it. In principle, it is quite simple to draw up a certain scale.
But how was it really?
02.02.2013. The other day I heard (of course, from "Echo") an amusing story: a "blockade" got into some minor accident and began to "swing rights". She proudly presented her blockade certificate, but inadvertently presented her passport, from which it followed that she was born in 1947. Draw your own conclusions...
Another lie about the Blockade.
“Leningrad was supplied with food “from the wheels”. Food supplies in Leningrad were on ... (further, depending on the speaker's imagination)."
Guys! We are in a country of seasonal food production. Not just grains and vegetables. Even the slaughter of livestock, the production of milk and eggs, in those days when special breeds had not yet been bred, was seasonal.
So, willy-nilly, for Moscow and Leningrad, and in general for the whole country, food supplies are created for at least a year. The only question is where they are stored. Once, indeed, in the villages, from where they were taken out in the winter, but also quite quickly: in 1-2 months. The Soviet government shortened and mechanized this route. Railways made it possible to quickly deliver crops to the place of consumption.
Where did these undoubtedly genuine alarm cries come from: “there is food left for 2 days in the city”? We are talking about food in the consumer network, practically about products that are in stores.
Grain in elevators and flour mills, stocks of sugar, cocoa, and other ingredients in confectionery factories and other food processing enterprises were not included.
Even in peacetime, more than a year's supply of food was, if not in the city, then nearby, in the nearest suburbs.
You have to be a very unscrupulous person to pass off products in the consumer network for everything available.
By the way, think about this paradox: the Leningrad region is still able to satisfy one need of the city: potatoes! It would seem that there is no bread, you have to sit on potatoes ....
Where did the potatoes disappear to?
And two more articles about the Blockade:
The main issue of the blockade.
This was shortly after the war. At that time, the famine in Leningrad was still concealed, Leningraders died from “barbaric bombing and shelling”, but not from hunger. That was the official version.
However, the famine was already on the sly spoken. Anyway, I already knew enough about him. I asked my friend, who spent his childhood in the blockade, in the city itself.
-"Hunger?" He was surprised. “We ate normally, no one died of starvation!” It was shocking that this man was distinguished by truthfulness. It was an amazing mystery to me until I thought to ask about his parents. And everything immediately fell into place!
His mother worked in Smolny. He lived in a guarded house and spent the entire blockade walking only in the courtyard of the house. They didn’t let him into the city (and they did it right!)
He didn't see or know anything.
Our historians sometimes like to conclude their speeches about the blockade with vague hints, something like "not everything has been said about the blockade, much remains to be learned." Well, if for half a century, in the presence of hundreds of thousands of living witnesses, they could not find out everything, then it is unlikely that they will be able to. Or rather, they want to.
The main issue is, of course, food. How much it was, where it was and who disposed of it.
Take the wartime Pravda files. You will find there a bunch of fiery articles: “Leave not a single spikelet to the enemy! Take away or destroy food!” And food stocks were really taken out cleanly. There are published memoirs about the roads of Ukraine in the first months of the war. They were packed. Clogged not with refugees (unauthorized evacuation was prohibited), but with cows, sheep and other livestock. They were driven, of course, not beyond the Urals, but to the nearest meat processing plant, from where they went further in the form of carcasses, canned goods, etc. Workers of meat-packing plants were exempted from conscription.
Look at the map of Russian railways. All food could be brought only to two cities: Moscow and Leningrad. Moreover, Leningrad was “lucky” - trains to Moscow were filled with strategic raw materials, factory equipment, Soviet and party institutions, and there was almost no room for food. Everything had to be taken to Leningrad.
As you know, the girls of the city were sent to dig anti-tank ditches (by the way, they turned out to be useless). And what did the young men do? Cadets of numerous military schools and universities? The holidays were canceled, but without any preparation it was impossible to immediately send them to the front, so they studied during the day and unloaded the wagons in the evening. Wagons with food, mind you.
Zhdanov's telegram to Stalin is known - "All warehouses are full of food, there is nowhere else to take it." For some reason, no one gives an answer to this telegram. But it is obvious: Use all the free premises left from the evacuated factories and institutions, historical buildings, etc. Of course, such a “way out” as simply distributing food to the population was categorically excluded.
Strange as it may seem, but it is possible to quite objectively and documentarily evaluate the total amount of food brought to Leningrad. A number of publications: "Railways during the war", "Civil fleet in the war" indicate with good departmental pride the many tens of thousands of tons of food delivered to Leningrad.
Anyone can simply add up the given figures (even if they are somewhat overestimated!) And divide them by the number of population and troops and by 900 days of blockade. The result will be simply amazing. On such a diet, not only will you not die of hunger, but you will not be able to lose weight!
Once I managed to ask the historian a question: "So who ate all the food, and even so quickly?" To which he received the answer: "Zhdanov handed over all the food to the army."
So what, you say. In any besieged city, food is transferred to the control of the military. The main thing is that it does not leave the city. With any opinion about the mental abilities of our military, it is impossible to imagine that they took him to Vologda or Central Asia. It was just that guards were posted at the warehouses, and their location was declared a military secret.
Here is such a final "secret" - Leningraders were dying of starvation near warehouses full of food.
What makes us related to the Germans and sharply distinguishes us from the Americans, the French and the British? We, like the Germans, lost the war. The real winners are the Communist Party and its wise leadership. They defeated not only the Germans, but also us.
However, the Germans at least got the pleasure of seeing the Nuremberg trials, where the perpetrators of their defeat were tried ...
I confess honestly - I do not really feel sorry for the old men and women who died in the blockade. They themselves chose and tolerated this leadership.
However, I feel very sorry for the children, the future of Russia. They might be sorry...
It is probably fair that in such a country children stop being born!
How the Badaev warehouses burned.
An interesting feature of the Bolsheviks was their desire for "scientific" or at least "scientific". In particular, this was reflected in their attitude to such a phenomenon as hunger. Hunger was diligently studied, quite practical conclusions were drawn, and, finally, quite “scientifically” used for their own purposes. Already the famine in the Volga region was under the supervision of numerous (of course, well-fed!) observers, who compiled and sent detailed reports. Frankly carried out "genetic" selection, selectively saving those who seemed promising for the creation of a "new" person. The further history of the country provided great opportunities in this regard. Extensive materials were collected, which were studied at the secret institutes of the NKVD and the KGB.
War. All for the front, all for victory!
For victory, among other things, it was useful to quickly get rid of the "useless" population of Leningrad. This could provide a properly organized famine. The centralized supply system made it easy to do this. In the pre-war years, the population was not allowed to have subsidiary farms and make significant food supplies. However, in the summer of 1941, all food supplies from the western regions of the country were taken to Leningrad. Leningraders unloaded this food, held it in their hands, and the whole city knew about it. Consequently, it was necessary to come up with some explanation for the "disappearance" of food from the city.
So the operation "Badaev warehouses" was developed. These warehouses were never the main ones and were inferior in size to many others, but were, however, the most famous, mainly because they traditionally stored sweet things - sugar and confectionery. Sometimes they were sold cheap directly from the warehouse.
Lawyers know that, due to individual perception, the testimonies of witnesses never completely coincide. However, the stories about the fire at the Badaevsky warehouses are very similar to the memorized text: thick smoke over Leningrad, burning sugar "flowing like a river", sweet burnt earth, which was sold after the fire …
In fact, when the air defense observers saw the start of a fire in the warehouse area, they immediately reported it to the fire brigade. From all parts of the city, fire brigades immediately rushed to the warehouses. However, they were stopped by the cordon of the NKVD. Until the very end of the fire, no one was allowed into the territory of the warehouses and no one saw the fire near! The firefighters standing at the cordon opened fire hydrants and found that there was no water and the system was blocked.
Warehouses burned down quickly and to the ground, leaving neither charred food nor ingots of melted sugar. As for the sweet burnt earth, the earth of any sugar warehouses is always sweet, both before the fire and after.
But what about the thick black smoke that hung over the city? There was smoke, but not from burnt warehouses. At the same time, cakes (the famous "duranda") were burning, or rather smoldering, at a neighboring oil and fat plant. By the way, why they caught fire and why they were not extinguished is a very interesting question! There was practically no fire there, but there was a lot of smoke.
After the fire, it was announced that the bulk of the city's food stocks had perished. This immediately made it possible to impose drastic restrictions on the distribution of food and start the planned famine.
In this story, it is not the composure and insensitivity of our authorities that is striking (we have seen something else!), but the amazing gullibility of the blockade. The overwhelming majority still believes that the famine was caused by the fire of the Badaev warehouses and all the other nonsense that "historians" inspire us with.
Well, well - sugar can still burn if it is laid in such a way as to provide free access to air, so be it, but what about canned food, potatoes, grains, meat, sausage and fish, dairy products? After all, they can only be burned in special furnaces.
In addition, could all the food brought in (plus the obligatory, since the Civil War, strategic food reserves) run out in a couple of weeks?! What is happening to us?
Maybe we really are the Land of Fools?