Bulletin of Leningrad University. 1958. 8. pp. 88-102.

The heroic defense of Leningrad from the Nazi invaders went down in the history of the Great Patriotic War as one of the brightest pages of the tenacity and selfless courage of the Soviet people. The heroism and dedication of Leningraders are an example of the devotion of Soviet people to their Motherland and the Communist Party.

During the Great Patriotic War, Leningrad withstood the most severe trials. The working people of the city showed heroism unparalleled in history.

The German command attached great importance to the capture of Leningrad, the largest industrial and cultural center of the USSR. “The Leningrad region,” Hitler said, “is claimed by the Finns. Raze Leningrad to the ground in order to then give it to the Finns." Such a fate was being prepared for Leningrad in the plans of the fascist invaders. Fulfilling this task would allow the Nazis to reign supreme not only in the Baltic Sea, but also in the entire north-west of Europe.

To capture the Baltic states and Leningrad, the fascist German command formed Army Group North. These armies began their offensive on June 22, 7 days later they occupied Riga and on July 9: they reached the northern outskirts of Pskov. On July 15, German tanks were already in the area of ​​Soltsa and Narva.

In the second half of August, the Germans concentrated an army of three hundred thousand near Leningrad. This army was armed with 6,000 guns, 19,000 machine guns, 4,500 mortars, 1,000 tanks and 1,000 combat aircraft.

At the same time, the Finnish army, consisting of 16 divisions, went on the offensive against Leningrad. On September 7, the enemy captured the city of Shlisselburg and blocked Leningrad. A huge city with a large population, factories and factories found itself cut off from the main economic base of the country.

In connection with the blockade of Leningrad, in addition to the tasks of defending the city, the most difficult tasks arose of evacuating the population and supplying the city; food and fuel. The solution to these problems was carried out under the leadership of party and Soviet organizations.

This article covers only one issue - the evacuation of the population of Leningrad.

The evacuation of the population can be divided into three periods, each of which has its own chronological framework and its own characteristics.

From the very first days of the Great Patriotic War, as a result of the unfolding military operations, people began to arrive from the front line. For the organized reception and evacuation of arriving citizens from Leningrad, by decision of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR on June 30, 1941, a city evacuation point was created in Leningrad.

The functions of the city evacuation point, located in the building on Griboyedov Canal, No. 6, in the first period were limited to recording all arriving citizens. Then these functions expanded significantly: the evacuation center took over providing food and housing to the population, provided them with material assistance, and prepared documents for further evacuation into the interior of the country.

To receive the population arriving in Leningrad and evacuate them from the city, seven evacuation points were subsequently organized: at the Moscow, Finlyandsky, Baltiysky and Vitebsky stations, in the Leningrad port, at the Moskovskaya Sortirovochnaya and Kushelevka stations.

For the accommodation and temporary residence of the population arriving in the city, dormitories were created in school buildings.

If in the first period, before the blockade, dormitories were located in only seven schools: at Ligovskaya Street 46 and 87, Rubinshteina 13, Goncharnaya 15, Moika 38, Zhukovsky 59 and Lesnoy Prospekt 20, then in connection with the blockade the population who arrived in the city found themselves shelter in 42 schools.

The city evacuation point received evacuated people from the Karelo-Finnish, Estonian and Latvian republics, the Leningrad region, as well as families of military personnel from the front line. These citizens had no shelter, had lost all their property, and were therefore in a particularly difficult situation.

The city's military commandant's office facilitated the evacuation of the population not registered in Leningrad. Before the blockade of Leningrad, 147,500 people were evacuated by vehicles into the interior of the country through the city evacuation point. In addition, 9,500 people were transported on foot. The latter accompanied livestock and property to the rear.

The approach of the front threatened children especially. The issue of saving children was specifically considered by the Soviet government. The government proposed to the Executive Committee of the Leningrad Council of Workers' Deputies to remove 400 thousand children from Leningrad. On July 2, 1941, the Lensoviet Executive Committee outlined specific measures for the removal of 400 thousand children of preschool and school age.

Seven days after the start of the war, a planned evacuation of not only children, but also the adult population was organized. The evacuation took place with the help of the administration of factories, evacuation centers and the city railway station. By August 7, 311,387 children were evacuated from Leningrad to the Udmurt, Bashkir and Kazakh republics, to the Yaroslavl, Kirov, Vologda, Sverdlovsk, Omsk, Perm and Aktobe regions.

The dispersal of evacuated children was mainly carried out in remote areas. Nevertheless, many urban children ended up in areas of the Leningrad region, which were soon occupied by Nazi troops.

For a more successful and planned removal of the population along the roads of the Leningrad railway junction, the Executive Committee of the Leningrad City Council at the beginning of September 1941 decided to create a central evacuation point, to which district points under the Executive Committees of the district Soviets were subordinated. Evacuation centers of district councils kept records of children and accompanying persons according to lists compiled by house managements. These lists gave the right to purchase train tickets, the free sale of which was stopped at the beginning of September at all Leningrad stations.

Evacuation was carried out along railways, highways and country roads. The evacuated population of the Karelian Isthmus was sent along the Peskarevskaya road and the right bank of the Neva, bypassing Leningrad. For him, by decision of the Leningrad City Council, near the hospital named after. Mechnikov at the end of August 1941, a food center was organized. Medical care and veterinary supervision of livestock were established at the site where the carts were parked.

The difficult journey without hot food exhausted the people. Many of them were on the move for more than 30 days. It was especially difficult for children. From the examination of the Leningrad City Health Department, it is clear that on August 21 alone, 15 children with dysentery were identified.

The approach of the front made evacuation increasingly difficult. Trains often came under bombing from enemy planes and stood idle for a long time due to the destroyed route and transport.

On August 27, railway communication with the country was completely interrupted: on September 8, the enemy, having captured Shlisselburg, reached the southern shore of Lake Ladoga; thus, railways and country roads were completely cut off. This ended the first period of evacuation.

Thus, the planned evacuation of the population began on June 29 and continued until September 6, 1941 inclusive. During this time, 706,283 people were evacuated, including factories evacuated 164,320 people, district councils - 401,748 people, evacuation points 117,580 people and the city railway station - 22,635 people.

In October and November 1941, the evacuation of the population of Leningrad took place by water - through Lake Ladoga. During this time, 33,479 people were transported to the rear. At the end of November 1941, the evacuation of the population by air began. By the end of December of the same year, 35,114 people were transported by plane.

The total number of evacuees during the first period was 774,876 people. In the second period, the evacuation of the population from blockaded Leningrad was carried out along the highway - through Lake Ladoga.

The road began behind the Okhtensky Bridge and went to Ladoga along the old highway. Having walked across the ice of the lake, she headed into the forests - north of the railway. Bypassing Tikhvin, where there were Germans, the highway went to Zaborovye station. With great difficulty, cargo was transported over narrow clearings over hundreds of kilometers.

On November 16, 1941, the first company of the road regiment set out to lay an ice route across Lake Ladoga. With great effort, the work was completed in a short time, and horse-drawn transport moved across the ice. Traffic controllers and guides came onto the road to clear the path of snow. At certain points along the route, tents were erected and ice shelters from bad weather were arranged. Warm dugouts were installed on the islands closest to the road. Every two hundred meters along the highway at night there were lit lanterns. The route was protected from enemy air raids by anti-aircraft guns. The closest distance from the road to the front edge was 10 km. This circumstance made it possible for the enemy to constantly conduct artillery fire on the route.

On November 22, several dozen vehicles passed on the Ladoga ice for the first time. On the eastern shore of the lake there were warehouses for bread, meat, potatoes, sugar, butter, salt and tobacco. In addition, ammunition, equipment, weapons and medicines were waiting to be sent to Leningrad.

To save the civilian population of Leningrad and the army from starvation, all this had to be transported across the ice route.

People with families and alone flocked to the Finlyandsky Station from Leningrad. Family members who retained the ability to move carried homemade sleds with baskets and bundles.

Leningraders were transported by rail to the western shore of Lake Ladoga. Then the evacuees had to overcome an exceptionally difficult path along the ice track to the village of Kabon.

Cars carrying people constantly came under fire. The ice road was systematically destroyed. E. Fedorov describes one of the episodes of the crossing as follows: “... the ice broke under the running car, and the people plunged into the icy water. The travel fighters rushed into the wormwood and caught everyone. In clothes caught in the frost and frozen into an icy shell, they took the rescued people to a heating tent.”

A few days later, an incident occurred when a car crashed into a crack at full speed. “Women and children,” E. Fedorov wrote about this incident, “found themselves in icy water. Sergeant Major Shafransky and the traffic controllers came running to the screams of the dying people. Comrade Shafransky quickly took off his sheepskin coat and... jumped into the icy water. He began to bravely dive and pull the choking children out of the water and saved all the children.” After this, the children were put in a car that arrived and taken to a heating tent.

To speed up the movement, graders shoveled snow day and night. The resulting cracks and holes in the ice from aerial bombs and shells often had to be sealed with wooden flooring.

The people maintaining the track showed unparalleled dedication. Thousands of traffic controllers, sweepers, EPRON workers and doctors lived on the ice for several months without a shift under bombing, shelling, and bad weather. Hero drivers also appeared on the “road of life”, making two, three and even four trips in one shift.

The driver E.V. Vasiliev made eight trips in 48 hours of continuous work on the car. During this time, he traveled 1029 km and transported 12 tons of cargo. Then Vasiliev began to make three flights per shift every day.

Drivers Kondrin and Gontarev made four trips each shift. Often they had to save cars and cargo alone. “Once an enemy shell,” wrote A. Fadeev, “lit the barn where Condrin’s car was parked. Condrin ran into the burning barn and, jumping into a car with tanks full of gasoline, drove it out of the barn. And in another case, his car fell into the water, and in twenty-degree frost, he pulled the load out of the water onto the ice until he saved the entire load. He was picked up by his comrades, completely icy and unconscious, but, having slept and warmed up, he continued to perform four flights every day.”

Epron's team recovered the sunken cargo from under the ice. A diver pulled out of the water was instantly covered with ice, and the diving suit could only be removed from the diver in a heating tent.

Thanks to the courage and dedication of the Soviet people, work on the ice track improved every day.

The military successes of the Soviet troops played a decisive role in increasing and accelerating the flow of goods to Leningrad. At this time, the Soviet army dealt a decisive blow to the enemy and liberated Tikhvin on December 9, 1941. In battles from December 18 to 25, Soviet troops defeated enemy groups in the Volkhov and Voybokalo station areas and liberated the Tikhvin-Volkhov railway.

After the liberation of Tikhvin from the Nazi invaders, the section of the road beyond the lake was significantly reduced. Shortening the route speeded up the delivery of goods and greatly facilitated the conditions for evacuation of the population.

During the evacuation of the population along the ice route of Lake Ladoga, great tasks were assigned to the employees of the Lenavtotrans trust. The management and technical staff of the trust, together with the fleet directors, were charged with the responsibility of carefully checking the technical condition of the vehicles. It was also necessary to check the level of training and practical skills of drivers of cars mobilized by the district military registration and enlistment offices and the Leningrad city police. In conditions of blockade and famine, organizing the uninterrupted operation of the Lenavtotrans trust was far from easy. The trust's workers, overcoming enormous difficulties, still achieved great success in transporting people. However, there were cases when the management of Lenavtotrans did not ensure the implementation of the transportation plan.

So, on January 22, 1942, instead of 50 buses, only 40 went on the line. Of these, 29 cars reached their destination - the Zhikharevo station, 11 cars were out of service before reaching Lake Ladoga. The remaining passengers had to be transported around the city in cars to warm rooms.

Soviet and party organizations took decisive measures to eliminate deficiencies in transport. In his letter to the city prosecutor, Deputy Chairman of the Leningrad City Executive Committee, Comrade. Reshkin wrote on this occasion on February 2, 1942: “As a result of such a criminal attitude towards the assigned work, about 300 passengers, of whom there were many children, froze in 35-40° frost.” The case was transferred to the investigative authorities to bring the perpetrators to justice. To detain cars coming from Leningrad empty, by decision of the Military Council of the Leningrad Front, control posts were installed at the corner of Kommuna Street and Ryabovskoye Shosse and at the corner of Kommuna Street and Krasin Street. The detained cars followed people to the Zvezdochka cinema, where an evacuation point was organized, where the evacuees were boarded.

It should be noted that during the construction of the ice route, before the start of the mass evacuation of the population (January 22, 1942), 36,118 people were evacuated through Lake Ladoga by marching order and unorganized transport.

Only a few could get on the direct shuttle cars from Leningrad to the place of loading into the wagons. The majority of the population was evacuated in two stages, with a transfer. First of all, it was necessary to get to the Finlyandsky Station and travel by train to the western shore of Lake Ladoga. This part of the journey was relatively easy. It was much more difficult to wait in line for a car and cross Lake Ladoga in conditions of systematic bombing and artillery shelling. The final points of the exhausting journey were the stations of Zhikharevo, Lavrovo and Kabony. At each of the three stations there were evacuation points with warm rooms and food for people. From here the evacuees headed to the rear.

The issue of evacuating the population from Leningrad was considered by the State Defense Committee, whose decision proposed evacuating 500,000 people along the ice route.

Fulfilling this decision, party and Soviet organizations in Leningrad at the beginning of December 1941 organized evacuation points at the Finlyandsky Station, Borisovaya Griva, Zhikharevo, Voybokalo, Lavrovo and Kabon.

Starting on December 3, 1941, evacuation trains with Leningraders began to arrive in Borisov Griva. Two trains arrived daily. The evacuation point did not have equipped premises and therefore people were placed among the local population, 30-40 people per room.

Later, a tent camp was created in the village of Vaganovo to warm the evacuees. The town consisted of 40 tents and accommodated up to 2000 people.

The arrival of evacuation trains, cars and horses with people was uneven. Covered buses sent from Leningrad, as already indicated, were in poor technical condition and only in small numbers reached Borisovaya Griva. The evacuation center had to pick up stranded people, heat and feed them.

Sometimes 6 trains arrived at Borisov Griva per day. People were unloaded by carload and, as a rule, depending on the approach of vehicles. Later, on warm days, simultaneous unloading of the entire train was practiced. This made it possible to reduce the downtime of cars for unloading and speed up the delivery of empty cars to the station.

The Borisov Griva evacuation point had three loading areas with directions to Kabona, Lavrovo and Zhikharevo. The boarding of people from the platforms onto cars was carried out exclusively by the dispatch apparatus, and, as a rule, large families, sick people and children were placed on buses, and everyone else was placed in open cars. After boarding the vehicles, the NKVD border troops checkpoint checked the documents of the evacuees.

12 people with things sat on a one and a half ton GAZ-A car, and from 22 to 25 people on a bus.

From December 2, 1941 to April 15, 1942, 502,800 people arrived in Borisov Griva. A significantly smaller portion of the evacuees traveled by passing cars and walked along the Ladoga highway to Zhikharevo, Kabony and Lavrovo without stopping at Borisov Griva. The most massive evacuation took place in March and April 1942, when the transport of the ice route worked most efficiently. During the same time, 45% of the total number of evacuees of the total number of arrivals were sent from Borisovaya Griva to Zhikharevo and Voybokalo, 30% to Lavrovo and 25% to Kabona.

During the first period of mass evacuation along the ice route, the evacuation point in Borisovaya Griva encountered great difficulties: vehicles arrived there irregularly to transport people across the lake. On this issue, the Military Council of the Leningrad Front took a number of specific measures, after which the supply of vehicles improved. Vehicles began to regularly enter the evacuation point sites for loading. This, in turn, led to a decrease in echelon downtime. Some autobats and NKVD convoys worked especially efficiently.

In addition to the transport of the military highway, evacuated Leningraders were transported by buses of the Moscow and Leningrad columns. They had at their disposal up to 80 vehicles, with which they transported up to 2,500 people a day, despite the fact that a large number of vehicles broke down every day.

At the cost of enormous strain on the moral and physical strength of the drivers and the command staff of military units, the vehicles completed the task assigned to them. In March 1942, transportation reached about 15,000 people per day.

The personnel of the evacuation point in Borisovaya Griva numbered 120 people. The evacuation work was organized around the clock. Together with canteen workers and police officers, the Borisov Griva evacuation point numbered 224 people, including medical personnel - 29 people.

The mass evacuation of the population of Leningrad in the most difficult winter conditions was successful. However, the matter was not without victims. Deaths occurred at all evacuation points: Borisovaya Griva, Lavrov, Zhikharev, Tikhvin, and even in carriages and vehicles. They made up a small percentage of the total number of evacuees. Thus, in the spring of 1942, 2,813 corpses were discovered and buried in the immediate vicinity of Borisovaya Griva and in the village itself. The burial took place at the Irinovsky and New cemeteries. According to the lists of doctors at the Tikhvin evacuation point, for four months of 1942, from January to April inclusive, 482 people died in railway cars en route to Tikhvin. During the same time, 34 people died in the Tikhvin infectious diseases hospital.

The Leningrad party organization, together with the evacuation point, took decisive measures to save people along the way. Enhanced nutrition was required. Success, evacuation and saving human lives depended on regular nutrition along the way. The Soviet government, providing all possible assistance to the Leningraders, allocated them the necessary food funds.

By decision of the Military Council of the Leningrad Front, each evacuee at the Finlyandsky Station received a hot lunch and 500 g of bread. After lunch, before boarding the carriages, Leningraders received bread for the route using special coupons at the rate of 1 kg per person. During the first period of mass evacuation, the Borisov Griva evacuation point supplied Leningraders with bread and soup. On February 23, 1942, food supply in Borisovaya Griva was stopped.

By this time, the evacuation point and motor transport battalions had managed to quickly transfer people from railway cars to cars. In this regard, food bases beyond Lake Ladoga were expanded - in Zhikharevo, Lavrov and Kabon, Leningraders received a hot lunch of two courses and 150 g of bread. In addition, evacuation centers gave everyone 1 kg of bread and 200 g of meat products for the journey. Children under 16 years of age received an additional chocolate bar.

The head of the Tikhvin evacuation point, Korolkov, was ordered to give evacuated Leningraders, in addition to a hot two-course lunch, a dry ration, which consisted of 40 g of butter, 20 g of sugar and 500 g of bread. Children's trains also received dry rations for the journey. Funds for dry rations were issued by the People's Commissariat of Trade of the USSR, and funds for hot meals were issued by the Military Council of the Leningrad Front. Responsibility for food was assigned to the heads of evacuation points.

The chairmen of regional evacuation commissions issued coupons for bread and hot meals to all evacuees. These coupons were strictly taken into account and registered on the back of evacuation certificates. Those leaving with passing cars received only coupons for hot meals.

Evacuation centers overcame significant difficulties in supplying people with food in a timely manner. Particularly clear organization of work was required from food points in Volkhovstroi, where a huge number of people gathered. So, in March April 1942, 2 canteens operated in Volkhovstroi. These canteens had six lunch distribution points and four cash registers. Special responsibility was assigned to the lunch voucher workers.

The evacuation point, in exchange for coupons for bread and hot meals from the district health commissions, gave each evacuee their own coupon for lunch and bread, which the canteens used to issue them. Using these coupons, the consumption of food and the number of people arriving with the train were taken into account. After the train departed, the evacuation point took away the coupons from the canteen workers. At the end of the day, a general count of coupons was made and a food consumption report was drawn up. In order to prevent food theft, the form of coupons was changed daily in such a way that it was impossible to get lunch and bread again using the previous day’s coupon.

In Volkhovstroi, as at other evacuation points, in addition to a hot lunch, Leningraders received 1 kg of bread for the journey. In this regard, each echelon required up to 3 tons of bread, which had to be packaged in a timely manner. The trains came one after another, carrying from 12 to 16 thousand people every day.

From December 1, 1941 to April 15, 1942, the following was spent at the evacuation points of Borisov Griva, Lavrovo, Kabony, Zhikharevo, Voybokalo and Volkhovstroy:

Bread - 928.4 tons
Cereals - 94.4 t
Dry vegetables - 33.7 t
Meat - 136.6 tons
Meat products - 144.2 tons
Fats - 62.2 t
Sugar - 3.9 t
Chocolate - 22.1 t
Salts - 8.3 t
Tea - 113.0 kg
Vodka - 528 l.

The responsibility of evacuation points included not only timely provision of food to people, but also equipping the carriages with bunks, stoves and windows. The Volkhovstroy carriage section alone equipped 13,561 carriages: 7,876 stoves and 11,000 stove pipes were manufactured by the workers of the carriage section. To construct the bunks and stepladders, 123,650 boards had to be cut and used.

Boarding the cars took place at the Zhikharevo, Kabony and Lavrovo stations. Each echelon took from 2500 to 3800 people. Trains departed from these stations to Volkhovstroy without a schedule, as the cars were loaded. The lack of equipped cars sometimes led to large overloads of trains and huge crowds of people at stations. So, on March 29, 8 thousand people gathered at the Lavrovo and Kabony stations, and on March 30, another 10 thousand arrived at the same stations. To send these people, 7 trains of 2,500 people each were required. There were cases when each carriage accommodated 50-65 people.

In Volkhovstroy it was not always possible to attach additional cars to the train and thus free the cars from overload. The shortage of carriages was felt even more here. In addition, at the Volkhovstroy station, trains were included in the schedule and could not be delayed. At the same time, the cars were overloaded due to the lack of shunting locomotives to supply the cars to the train.

Upon arrival of each train at the station. Volkhovstroy staff of the first aid station went around all the cars and removed the weak and sick. Patients were sent to the clinic and medical centers, where they received inpatient treatment. There were 1,495 such patients in Volkhovstroi during the entire period of evacuation. In addition, 6,046 people received primary medical care directly in the carriages.

In each carriage there was a headman, appointed as the head of the train and the head of the evacuation point. These elders monitored order in the carriage, provided detailed information about the state of health of people in Smolny and Narkomput, and also brought to the attention of higher organizations about delays in movement or lack of food.

The proximity of the front had an extremely negative impact on the work of the Northern Railway. Enemy aircraft constantly bombed the road and put it out of action. For example, on March 29, all trains were delayed on the approach to Tikhvin from 7 to 9 o'clock.

Loading into trains was not always accompanied by rapid movement through Vologda and other points of the country. The delay occurred mainly on the front-line section of the road. In early April 1942, on the Volkhov-Efimovskaya section, the evacuation train covered only 100 km in 78 hours. There were 2,500 people in the carriages, including 900 children. The head of the train, Ulyamsky, in his telegram to the People's Commissariat of Railways regarding the delay in movement, wrote: “... We have been starving for three days. 16 people died on the way. I ask for urgent action."

On April 5, a telegram was received from Zaborye in the name of A. A. Zhdanov from the warden of the carriage, Vasiliev, which read: “Evacuated train 406 received one hundred and fifty grams of bread for lunch on the morning of the first hour. To this day he receives neither food nor bread. People die along the way. Take urgent action." In response to the telegram, Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars A.N. Kosygin, who was in Leningrad at that time, ordered the distribution of 1 kg of bread to each passenger at the Volkhovstroy station.

The delay of echelons took place not only in the front line, but also at a considerable distance from the front. Thus, in the first half of April, it took 25-30 hours to travel a short section of the route between Babaevo and Cherepovets. The delay of the trains occurred not only due to the bombing of the route by enemy aircraft, but also due to the congestion of the road. Railway workers made desperate efforts to ensure the unimpeded movement of trains carrying the evacuated population to the eastern regions of the country.

Evacuation points at large railway stations, with their strict limits on food products, almost always could not fully satisfy the needs of passengers. Traffic jams that formed along the way disrupted the train schedule and the normal operation of food outlets. In such cases, wagons-shops came to the place where the trains gathered and supplied people with food.

Those responsible for a careless attitude towards evacuation transportation were severely punished. So, the head of the passenger service of the Northern Railway, Comrade. On March 31, 1942, Pronin was reprimanded in an order by the People's Commissariat of Railways “for unsatisfactory provision of evacuation transportation, systematic delays in the supply of trains and departure of trains.”

The rhythm of the work of the railway stations of Zhikharevo, Kabony, Lavrovo, Tikhvin and Volkhovstroy also depended on the accuracy of the work of the Ladoga route, which operated until April 21, 1942. The ice route played an exceptional role not only in the evacuation of the population of Leningrad, but also in supplying the city and the army with food and weapons. It transported 354,200 tons of cargo to Leningrad, including 268,400 tons of food.

Motor transport workers and railway workers, overcoming exceptional difficulties, fulfilled the task assigned to them with honor.

The archives of the fund (7384) of the Leningrad City Council contain numerous telegrams and telephone messages about the dispatch of special trains from the stations of Kabony, Zhikharevo and Lavrovo. The telegrams make it possible to imagine the life of these stations, full of incredible difficulties. It was at these stations that work of exceptional intensity took place from the beginning of the blockade until April 15, 1942, when the evacuation was temporarily stopped.

Thus, thanks to the colossal efforts of party and Soviet organizations, evacuation points, railway workers and military transport battalions, from January 22, 1942 to April 15, 1942, 554,463 people were evacuated into the interior of the country. This was the second, most difficult, period of evacuation.

The Defense Committee decided to evacuate 300,000 people from Leningrad during the navigation of 1942. First of all, it was necessary to ensure uninterrupted reception of ships of the Ladoga flotilla in Kabony. The existing pier No. 5 in Kabony could not provide unloading of people and cargo. Therefore, the Military Council of the Leningrad Front ordered the construction of two small piers in a short time. The piers were equipped in such a way as to prevent the accumulation of people on them, because enemy aircraft conducted systematic reconnaissance and bombing. Vehicles were assigned to service the piers, which were supposed to immediately take people away from the spit.

According to the plan, the removal of the evacuated population from Leningrad was supposed to increase to 10,000 people per day. Considering the impossibility of organizing landing for so many people at the Kabona dead end, it was necessary to organize a second landing site at Lavrovo station. A dirt road was built to access the dead end of Lavrovo station. To serve the evacuation population in Kabony, a winter canteen with a capacity of 10-12 thousand people per day was restored. At the same time, 46 field-type boilers were equipped and four bakeries were repaired with a total bread baking capacity of up to 16,000 kg per day. To provide shelter from the weather, 132 tents were pitched for the evacuated population. The workers of the bus column and 400 loaders were located in the forest with all the outbuildings.

The transportation of people in June, July and August took place in exceptionally rainy weather conditions. The rain washed out roads and made traffic impossible. Transportation had to be carried out at night in order to shelter ships and people from enemy aircraft.

Separate transportation of people and luggage of evacuees extremely complicated the work of the evacuation point in Kabony. People unloaded from ships were forced to wait for up to 5-6 days for their luggage. This circumstance led to a forced gathering of people. People demanded food for a longer period, which led to overconsumption of food. Enormous queues formed at food stations. At the end of July 1942, the canteen at Lavrovo station alone served up to 8-9 thousand meals daily in excess of the norm.

Nutritional standards in grams can be presented in the following table:

Product Name	Children's lunch	Lunch for adults	Packed rations for children	Packed rations for adults	For children from orphanages, kindergartens and nurseries
Cereals and vegetables
Meat products

In order to save food and eliminate unnecessary nervousness and confusion, separate transportation of people and luggage was abolished. Evacuees were allowed to take personal belongings with them onto the ship.

Unloading things from ships and loading them onto trolleys and vehicles, as a rule, was carried out by the evacuees themselves, since the assistance from the working companies was extremely insufficient. To transport things, the pier had a motorized locomotive, which, however, very often broke down. In this case, the evacuees were forced to transport the trolleys with cargo themselves to the end of the pier - to the place of departure.

Along with adults, orphans were also evacuated in the spring and summer of 1942. They were living witnesses to the death of their loved ones and experienced the horrors of destruction from bombing and artillery shelling. The physical and moral condition of the children urgently required a change of environment and a change in living conditions.

Leningrad party and Soviet organizations did everything possible to alleviate the plight of orphaned children. Therefore, orphans who were in orphanages and orphanages were taken out first.

In the fall, after the completion of the mass evacuation of the population, the Soviet government allowed the removal of children under 12 years of age, whose parents were busy at work and could not leave Leningrad. The transportation of children was given special attention by evacuation point workers and transport workers.

Enormous difficulties could not prevent the successful implementation of the plan outlined by the Soviet government to transport the population from Leningrad.

Thus, in the third period of evacuation, 448,694 people were transported (instead of 300 thousand according to plan):

in May 1942 - 2334 people
June - 83993;
July - 227583;
August - 91642;
September - 24216;
October - 15586;
November - 3340.

On November 1, 1942, further evacuation of the population was stopped. Departure from Leningrad was permitted only in exceptional cases, upon special instructions from the City Evacuation Commission.

On November 1, the evacuation point at the Finlyandsky station and the food service in Lavrovo ceased operation. At all other evacuation points, the staff of workers was reduced to a minimum. However, the evacuation of the population continued in 1943, until the final expulsion of the Nazi invaders from the Leningrad region.

The Leningrad city evacuation commission and all regional evacuation points were closed on January 1, 1944 in connection with the opening of direct railway communication from Leningrad to Moscow.

Thus, during the war and blockade, 1,814,151 people were evacuated from Leningrad, including:

in the first period - 774876 people,
in the second - 509,581 people,
in the third - 448,694 people.

The solution to this exceptionally difficult task cannot be overestimated. The Leningrad party apparatus showed exceptional tenacity and resourcefulness in saving people. Workers of the Soviet apparatus also worked hand in hand with party workers. Thousands of Soviet patriots worked to save people from hunger, the horrors of war and blockade at evacuation points, railways, and highways. The success in solving this noble task was due to the organization of all the working people of the city and the soldiers of the Leningrad Front.

The evacuation of people from Leningrad made it possible to solve the second problem - improving the nutrition of the remaining part of the population in the city. The decrease in the number of people in the city led to an increase in food supplies continuously flowing through Lake Ladoga.

Evacuated Leningraders made up a minority of the city's population. According to the All-Union Census in 1939, there were 3,191,304 people in Leningrad, including the population of Kolpino, Kronstadt, Pushkin and Peterhof. As a result of the occupation, part of the population of the Baltic states and the Karelian Isthmus was forced to remain in Leningrad. At the same time, there was a decrease in the civilian population due to evacuation and mobilization into the Soviet Army. On August 1, 1941, in Leningrad and its suburbs there were 2,652,461 people, including: workers and engineers 921,658, employees 515,934, dependents 747,885, children 466,984. These people survived the blockade.

In the brutal struggle of the entire Soviet people against the Nazi invaders, Leningraders made a worthy contribution to the national cause. Leningraders, under the leadership of their party organization, accomplished the greatest feat in the Great Patriotic War. They fought for the gains of October, for the happiness of the working people of the whole world, for the city of Russian glory and the center of advanced culture. They defended the cradle of the proletarian revolution. Of course, without the people's help to Leningrad, without the daily care of the Communist Party and the Soviet government, the defeat of the enemy at the hero city would have been impossible.

In a mortal battle with a hated enemy, the residents of Leningrad and its suburbs showed mass heroism, courage and fortitude unparalleled in history. Leningrad communists were in the first ranks of the fighters. The organizer and inspirer of the city’s defense was the party organization. She rallied all the working people of the city and directed their efforts towards a common goal - victory over the enemy. The city's communists steadfastly endured all the difficulties of the blockade and, together with the entire population, suffered significant sacrifices. “Seventeen thousand communists,” wrote A. A. Kuznetsov, “died from hunger, from artillery shelling and air bombing, defending their beloved, native Leningrad.”

The great city suffered enormous sacrifices, but these sacrifices were not in vain. The city survived the bloody and brutal struggle. Leningraders defended him. They found the strength and ability to cope with the most unexpected difficulties. Leningraders withstood the trials that befell them with honor. In front of the whole world, they demonstrated the unshakable fortitude, courage and bravery of the Soviet people. The entire progressive world looked with admiration at this heroic defense of the city, in which the banner of socialism was first hoisted in 1917. In a difficult battle on the Neva, the inhabitants of the city of Lenin won a complete victory over the enemy.

On January 15, 1944, the troops of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts launched a decisive offensive and by January 27 finally liberated the great city of Lenin from the enemy blockade.

The struggle for Leningrad, which lasted about 900 days, ended with the complete defeat of enemy troops. It facilitated further offensive operations in Karelia, Belarus and the Baltic states. After the victory, the heroic Leningraders in a short time successfully healed the wounds inflicted on the city by the war and the blockade.

Notes

1.1 Nuremberg trials. Collection of materials, vol. 1. Ed. 2nd. State ed. legal literature, M., 1954, p. 269.

2. L. A. Govorov. In the battles for the city of Lenin. Articles 1941-1945 Voenizdat, L., 1945, p. 19.

3. Issues related to the coverage of military operations on the distant and near approaches of Leningrad, the formation of militia divisions, and the mobilization of the population to create defensive lines are beyond the scope of this work.

34. Ibid., l. 21.

35. Ibid., l. 36.

36. Ibid., l. 51.

37. GAORSS LO, f. 7384, op. 17, 1941, d. 677, l. 65.

38. F. I. Sirota. Military organizational work of the Leningrad organization of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) during the Great Patriotic War. “Questions of History”, 1956, No. 10, p. 29.

39. GAORSS LO, f. 330, op. 1, 1942, d. 5, l. 2.

40. Ibid., no. 38, l. 100.

41. GAORSS LO, f. 330, op. 1, 1942, d. 38, l. 101.

42. Ibid., l. 105.

43. Ibid., l. 114.

44. GAORSS LO, f. 330, op. 1, 1942, no. 40, pp. 6, 7.

45. GAORSS LO, f. 7384, op. 17, d. 456, l. 1.

46. ​​Ibid., l. 2. An accurate census of the population was carried out in connection with the introduction of a card system for food products.

47. A. A. Kuznetsov. Bolsheviks of Leningrad defending their native city. "Party Construction", 1945, No. 9-10, p. 61.

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

Prerequisites

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

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

872 days of Leningrad. In a hungry loop

Preparing the blockade

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Troops participating in the operation

Germany

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

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

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

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

Finland

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

Northern Front (Lieutenant General Popov). It included:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Environment of Leningrad

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

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

Line of greatest advance of German and Finnish troops near Leningrad

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

Finland's participation in the siege of Leningrad

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

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

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

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

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

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

City defense

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

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

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

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

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

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

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

Rupert Colley reports:

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

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

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

Bombing and shelling of Leningrad

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

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

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

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

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

Evacuation of residents from besieged Leningrad

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

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

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

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

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

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

Famine in besieged Leningrad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

Cannibalism during the siege

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

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

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

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

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

Connection with blockaded Leningrad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

Death of the Second Shock Army near Leningrad

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

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

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

Performance of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony in besieged Leningrad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

Offensive at Sinyavino

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

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

Operation Spark

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

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

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

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

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

Lifting the blockade of Leningrad

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

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

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

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

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

(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)

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

Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad

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

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

Green Belt of Glory and monuments in memory of the blockade

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

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

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

STORIES OF CHILDREN OF BLOCKETED LENINGRAD

On November 22, 1941, during the siege of Leningrad, an ice route across Lake Ladoga began to operate. Thanks to her, many children were able to evacuate. Before this, some of them went through orphanages: some of their relatives died, and some of them disappeared at work for days on end.

“At the beginning of the war, we probably didn’t realize that our childhood, family, and happiness would someday be destroyed. But we felt it almost immediately,” says Valentina Trofimovna Gershunina, who in 1942, at nine years old, was taken from orphanage in Siberia. Listening to the stories of survivors who grew up during the siege, you understand: having managed to save their lives, they lost their childhood. These guys had to do too many “adult” things while real adults were fighting - at the front or at the work benches.

Several women who once managed to be taken out of besieged Leningrad told us their stories. Stories about stolen childhoods, losses and life - against all odds.

"We saw grass and started eating it like cows"

The story of Irina Konstantinovna Potravnova

Little Ira lost her mother, brother and gift during the war. “I had perfect pitch. I managed to study at a music school,” says Irina Konstantinovna. “They wanted to take me to school at the conservatory without exams, they told me to come in September. And in June the war began.”

Irina Konstantinovna was born into an Orthodox family: her father was a regent in the church, and her mother sang in the choir. At the end of the 1930s, my father began working as the chief accountant of a technological institute. They lived in two-story wooden houses on the outskirts of the city. There were three children in the family, Ira was the youngest, she was called the stump. Dad died a year before the start of the war. And before his death he told his wife: “Just take care of your son.” The son died first - back in March. The wooden houses burned down during the bombing, and the family went to relatives. “Dad had an amazing library, and we could only take the most necessary things. We packed two large suitcases,” says Irina Konstantinovna. “It was a cold April. As if upstairs we felt that there should be frost. We wouldn’t have been able to pull it out in the slush at all. And On the way, our cards were stolen."

April 5, 1942 was Easter, and Irina Konstantinovna’s mother went to the market to buy at least duranda, the seed pulp left after pressing the oil. She returned with a fever and never got up again.

So the sisters, aged eleven and fourteen, were left alone. To get at least some cards, they had to go to the city center - otherwise no one would have believed that they were still alive. On foot - there has been no transport for a long time. And slowly - because there was no strength. It took three days to get there. And their cards were stolen again - all but one. The girls gave it away so that they could somehow bury their mother. After the funeral, the older sister went to work: fourteen-year-old children were already considered “adults.” Irina came to the orphanage, and from there to the orphanage. “We parted on the street and didn’t know anything about each other for a year and a half,” she says.

Irina Konstantinovna remembers the feeling of constant hunger and weakness. Children, ordinary children who wanted to jump, run and play, could barely move - like old women.

“Once on a walk I saw painted hopscotch books,” she says. “I wanted to jump. I got up, but I couldn’t tear my legs off! I’m standing there, that’s all. And I look at the teacher and I can’t understand what’s wrong with me. And Tears are flowing. She told me: “Don’t cry, honey, then you’ll jump.” We were so weak.”

In the Yaroslavl region, where children were evacuated, collective farmers were ready to give them anything - it was so painful to look at the bony, emaciated children. There was just nothing special to give. “We saw grass and started eating it like cows. We ate everything we could,” says Irina Konstantinovna. “By the way, no one got sick with anything.” At the same time, little Ira learned that she had lost her hearing due to the bombing and stress. Forever.

Irina Konstantinovna

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There was a piano in the school. I ran up to him and realized that I couldn’t play. The teacher came. She says: "What are you doing, girl?" I answer: the piano here is out of tune. She told me: “You don’t understand anything!” I'm in tears. I don’t understand, I know everything, I have an absolute ear for music...

Irina Konstantinovna

There were not enough adults, it was difficult to look after the children, and Irina, as a diligent and smart girl, was made a teacher. She took the children to the fields to earn workdays. “We were spreading flax, we had to fulfill the norm - 12 acres per person. It was easier to spread the curly flax, but after the long-lasting flax, all our hands festered,” recalls Irina Konstantinovna. “Because the little hands were still weak, with scratches.” So - in work, hunger, but safety - she lived for more than three years.

At the age of 14, Irina was sent to rebuild Leningrad. But she had no documents, and during the medical examination, the doctors wrote down that she was 11 - the girl looked so undeveloped in appearance. So, already in her hometown, she almost ended up in an orphanage again. But she managed to find her sister, who by that time was studying at a technical school.

Irina Konstantinovna

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They didn’t hire me because I was supposedly 11 years old. Do you need anything? I went to the dining room to wash dishes and peel potatoes. Then they made me documents and went through the archives. Within a year we got settled

Irina Konstantinovna

Then there were eight years of work at a confectionery factory. In the post-war city, this made it possible to sometimes eat defective, broken candies. Irina Konstantinovna fled from there when they decided to promote her along the party line. “I had a wonderful leader who said: “Look, you are being trained to become a shop manager.” I said: “Help me get away.” I thought that I should be ready for the party.”

Irina Konstantinovna “ran away” to the Geological Institute, and then traveled a lot on expeditions to Chukotka and Yakutia. “On the way” she managed to get married. She has more than half a century of happy marriage behind her. “I’m very happy with my life,” says Irina Konstantinovna. But she never had the opportunity to play the piano again.

“I thought that Hitler was the Serpent Gorynych”

The story of Regina Romanovna Zinovieva

“On June 22, I was in kindergarten,” says Regina Romanovna. “We went for a walk, and I was in the first pair. And it was very honorable, they gave me a flag... We went out proud, suddenly a woman runs, all disheveled, and shouts: “ War, Hitler attacked us!" And I thought that it was the Serpent Gorynych who attacked and fire was coming from his mouth..."

Then five-year-old Regina was very upset that she never walked with the flag. But very soon “Serpent Gorynych” interfered in her life much more strongly. Dad went to the front as a signalman, and soon he was taken away in a “black funnel” - they took him immediately upon returning from the mission, without even allowing him to change clothes. His last name was German - Hindenberg. The girl stayed with her mother, and famine began in the besieged city.

One day Regina was waiting for her mother, who was supposed to pick her up from kindergarten. The teacher took the two delayed children outside and went to lock the doors. A woman approached the kids and offered them candy.

“We don’t see bread, there’s candy here! We really wanted to, but we were warned that we shouldn’t approach strangers. Fear won, and we ran away,” says Regina Romanovna. “Then the teacher came out. We wanted to show her this woman, but she was already the trail has disappeared." Now Regina Romanovna understands that she managed to escape from the cannibal. At that time, Leningraders, mad with hunger, stole and ate children.

The mother tried to feed her daughter as best she could. Once I invited a speculator to exchange pieces of fabric for a couple of pieces of bread. The woman, looking around, asked if there were any children's toys in the house. And just before the war, Regina was given a stuffed monkey; she was named Foka.

Regina Romanovna

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I grabbed this monkey and shouted: “Take what you want, but I won’t give this one up! This is my favorite.” And she really liked it. She and my mother were tearing out my toy, and I was roaring... Taking the monkey, the woman cut off more bread - more than for the fabric

Regina Romanovna

Having already become an adult, Regina Romanovna will ask her mother: “Well, how could you take away a little child’s favorite toy?” Mom replied: “This toy may have saved your life.”

One day, while taking her daughter to kindergarten, her mother fell in the middle of the street - she no longer had the strength. She was taken to the hospital. So little Regina ended up in an orphanage. “There were a lot of people, two of us were lying in the crib. They put me with the girl, she was all swollen. Her legs were all covered in ulcers. And I said: “How can I lie with you, I’ll turn around and touch your legs, it will hurt you." And she told me: “No, they don’t feel anything anymore anyway.”

The girl did not stay in the orphanage for long - her aunt took her. And then, together with other kids from the kindergarten, she was sent for evacuation.

Regina Romanovna

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When we got there, they gave us semolina porridge. Oh, that was so cute! We licked this mess, licked the plates from all sides, we hadn’t seen such food for a long time... And then we were put on a train and sent to Siberia

Regina Romanovna

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The guys were lucky: they were received very well in the Tyumen region. The children were given a former manor house - a strong, two-story one. They filled the mattresses with hay, gave them land for a garden and even a cow. The guys weeded the beds, caught fish and collected nettles for cabbage soup. After hungry Leningrad, this life seemed calm and well-fed. But, like all Soviet children of that time, they worked not only for themselves: girls from the older group cared for the wounded and washed bandages in the local hospital, boys went to logging sites with their teachers. This work was hard even for adults. And the older children in the kindergarten were only 12–13 years old.

In 1944, the authorities considered fourteen-year-old children already old enough to go to restore liberated Leningrad. “Our manager went to the regional center - part of the way on foot, partly by hitchhiking. The frost was 50-60 degrees,” recalls Regina Romanovna. “It took three days to get there to say: the children are weakened, they will not be able to work. And she defended our children - in Only seven or eight of the strongest boys were sent to Leningrad."

Regina's mother survived. By that time, she was working at a construction site and corresponded with her daughter. All that remained was to wait for victory.

Regina Romanovna

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The manager wore a red crepe de Chine dress. She tore it up and hung it like a flag. It was so beautiful! So I didn’t regret it. And our boys staged a fireworks display: they blew out all the pillows and threw feathers. And the teachers didn’t even swear. And then the girls collected the feathers and made pillows for themselves, but the boys were all left without pillows. This is how we celebrated Victory Day

Regina Romanovna

The children returned to Leningrad in September 1945. That same year, we finally received the first letter from Regina Romanovna’s father. It turned out that he had been in a camp in Vorkuta for two years. Only in 1949 did mother and daughter receive permission to visit him, and a year later he was released.

Regina Romanovna has a rich pedigree: in her family there was a general who fought in 1812, and her grandmother defended the Winter Palace in 1917 as part of a women’s battalion. But nothing played such a role in her life as her German surname, inherited from her long-Russified ancestors. Because of her, she not only almost lost her father. Later, the girl was not accepted into the Komsomol, and as an adult, Regina Romanovna herself refused to join the party, although she held a decent post. Her life was happy: two marriages, two children, three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. But she still remembers how she didn’t want to part with the monkey Foka.

Regina Romanovna

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The elders told me: when the blockade began, the weather was beautiful, the sky was blue. And a cross of clouds appeared over Nevsky Prospekt. He hung for three days. This was a sign to the city: it will be incredibly difficult for you, but still you will survive

Regina Romanovna

"We were called 'pimps'

The story of Tatyana Stepanovna Medvedeva

Little Tanya’s mother called her the last child: the girl was the youngest child in a large family: she had a brother and six sisters. In 1941 she was 12 years old. “On June 22 it was warm, we were going to go sunbathe and swim. And suddenly they announced that the war had started,” says Tatyana Stepanovna. “We didn’t go anywhere, everyone started crying, screaming... And my brother immediately went to the military registration and enlistment office and said: I’m going to go to fight.” .

The parents were already elderly, they did not have enough strength to fight. They died quickly: dad - in February, mom - in March. Tanya stayed at home with her nephews, who were not much different from her in age - one of them, Volodya, was only ten. The sisters were taken to defense work. Someone dug trenches, someone took care of the wounded, and one of the sisters collected dead children around the city. And the relatives were afraid that Tanya would be among them. "Raya's sister said: 'Tanya, you won't survive here alone.' The road of life."

The children were taken to the Ivanovo region, to the city of Gus-Khrustalny. And although there were no bombings and “125 blockades”, life did not become simple. Subsequently, Tatyana Stepanovna talked a lot with the same grown-up children of besieged Leningrad and realized that other evacuated children did not live so hungry. Probably it was a matter of geography: after all, the front line here was much closer than in Siberia. “When the commission arrived, we said that there was not enough food. They answered us: we give you horse-sized portions, but you still want to eat,” recalls Tatyana Stepanovna. She still remembers these “horse portions” of gruel, cabbage soup and porridge. As is the cold. The girls slept in twos: they lay down on one mattress and covered themselves with another. There was nothing else to hide with.

Tatyana Stepanovna

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The locals didn't like us. They called them "pimps". Probably because, having arrived, we began to go from house to house, asking for bread... And it was hard for them too. There was a river there, and in winter I really wanted to go ice skating. The locals gave us one skate for the whole group. Not a pair of skates - one skate. We took turns riding on one leg

Tatyana Stepanovna

This entry, like , is dedicated to the 71st anniversary of the complete lifting of the siege of Leningrad, which is celebrated today. Unlike the first entry, where Deborah Khotina’s own siege memories were published (she turned 20 on December 19, 1941), fragments of her memories of the evacuation from besieged Leningrad on February 9, 1942 are published here. For background and source of materials, see the previous entry:

Residents of besieged Leningrad collect water that appeared after artillery shelling in holes in the asphalt on Nevsky Prospekt, photo by B. P. Kudoyarov, December 1941

BLOCKADE: EVACUATION FROM LENINGRAD

“I didn’t want to leave Leningrad by any means, I refused, despite the hunger, the cold and, by the way, the lack of an institute. The institute has left - where should I study? I say I won't go. But Uncle Folya:
- How come you won’t go? You'll go. I'm giving you an escort! We won't survive the next winter here. Here we go: we won’t all be here. And I won’t be there, and he won’t be there...
...Where will I go then if they are all gone?...
Uncle Folya was adamant and said that I needed to go with his friend to Siberia. So what? And I, so to speak, grieving and suffering...
But then the evacuation begins: how he issued, how he made the evacuation certificate - I don’t know, I don’t remember at all.
Here. So we set out to evacuate... And this little aluminum saucepan: millet porridge. The Indian girl gave us some cooked food for the trip - it was a tough porridge...
They gave me a sleigh, a children's sleigh, I put my skinny bag with my things in there, and there were the things of this comrade, Moisei Grigorievich, and we drove away from this house on Zhukovskaya Street. He came out to see us off, Uncle Folya, he even wiped away a tear, he felt sorry for me. He was a heavy man...
And off we went. So, yes. So we drag the sled and walk along Liteyny Prospekt, across the Liteyny Bridge, and I look and mentally say goodbye to the Peter and Paul Fortress - the spire over the Neva... Will I ever see my city again in my life? ..."
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Blue sky expanse,
The languid light
And he knows a slice of bread,
Live - or die.

Eyes wouldn't look
Like, stacked in a row,
Boys in greatcoats
They lie in a woodpile.

And silent soldiers
Standing in front of the bridge
As if the candidates
In the other - an alien hell.

From mom's letter:
“Daughter!
Well, let's try to discuss your siege poem - how I see it.
The first 4 lines are excellent. And they are even clearly timed to coincide with the day (February 9, 1942) when my evacuation from Leningrad began. I really didn’t want to leave, but I had to. And so I walk with my guide and a small sleigh across the Liteiny Bridge - to the Finlyandsky Station - and it’s such a “blue sky” day, and on the left, across the Neva, is the spire of the Peter and Paul Fortress, and my heart aches sadly - is this really the last time I’m seeing it? All this really happened. But the “boys in greatcoats” were not in front of the Kirov Bridge, but on the other side of Ladoga. There I saw this “woodpile”. But here it is very difficult to give a correct understanding of these unfortunate “boys” - why are they in greatcoats, because they are not soldiers? What are they? The tragic page of the war was the “labor reserves” - they were supposed to be trained and replace workers in factories who had gone to the front. I don’t know where they were recruited, they were brought from somewhere, they recruited someone from Leningrad schools. They dressed us in black overcoats - they didn't keep us warm, of course - but they couldn't feed us. And so they began to send them out of the city along the “road of life” - did any of them make it there alive? And the age was the most vulnerable. I feel terrible for them, I still feel sorry for them - innocent children, senseless deaths. So, I saw the “woodpile” myself, although now I don’t imagine it so clearly; but we understand that it was not in Leningrad, but on the other side of Ladoga, where the echelon journey of 1 month began for me. I don’t know what happened to those of the boys who made it out alive, and somehow I haven’t read it. But here is the cry of the soul: now several years ago I read it either in some newspaper or in a collection - either poetry or prose, but I see it very clearly. In the spring, as always, ice began to flow along the Neva. The Neva ice passed, followed by the Ladoga ice. And on one of the ice floes - frozen in it - lies with his arms outstretched - like Christ - a boy in a black overcoat. One can only imagine how he got onto this ice floe, but there is no need to do this. I kept trying to find this description in newspapers and siege collections - no, I couldn’t find it. Let's take his word for it. (...)"

From mom's stories:

“Where have we come? To Finlyandsky Station. What am I leaving with? On a dacha train, so to speak. I need to get to the other side of Lake Ladoga. So we got out of the carriages and got into the cars. Trucks: some covered with tarpaulin, some just like that. Now we have already traveled along the “Road of Life”, and at the end of the “Road of Life” we find ourselves in Voybokalo (in Zhikharevo) - we crossed the lake. We were driving on ice. By the way, those who traveled a month after us, they no longer crossed over ice, but through water. And now, when we were already on the other side of Lake Ladoga, we were loaded into freight cars, in Rus' they were called “veal cars,” in which bunks were equipped, they were two-story, and, maybe, somewhere three-story, and, as it seems to me, maybe not in all the carriages, but in most of them there were small potbelly stoves. But the walls, doors, and ceiling were poorly put together, so there was a fair amount of snow on our bunks. It was snowing, snowing. Tough journey. Having already left hungry Leningrad, people continued to die from dystrophy, despite the fact that food points were organized here and there along the way. And that’s when our food cards, which we were provided with back in Leningrad, began to work - trip cards, or simply, as people called them, “rice cards”.
And people continued to die. They, the dead, were taken out of our carriages; they should have been buried, but what? Where? Deep snow. So they buried them in the snow, they were buried in the snow, simply. 6 people were soon taken out of our carriage. Thus, cemeteries were organized along the route of our train. I remember how a little girl, five months old, died. Oh, how she cried for a long time! How long she cried! Poor child. She undoubtedly had pneumonia, I could already hear from her cough. Where did they go with these wet diapers? She wants to eat, her mother gives her breasts, but there is nothing in her breasts. Well, at some stop they took her out...
Every living person needs to relieve his needs at some point. Of course, at some stops we jumped off our cars, but how to get back? Well, someone from the carriages will lend a hand and help you get on. And if at this time your legs are sore, then it’s really bad.
My feet hurt, and I tried to take off my shoes to see what was wrong with my feet, and my shoes were so scratchy, but I couldn’t take them off: my feet hurt, and I couldn’t undress them. At one of the stops, Moisei Grigorievich, my fellow traveler, went to the first aid station, a nurse came, a medical nurse, of course, she cut the remains of my shoes with scissors and freed my feet. It turned out that my feet were covered with purulent blisters and were very swollen - which is why they could not undress. She, of course, wrapped my feet in bandages and bandaged the remains of the shoes to my feet...
But soon we arrived in Novosibirsk. In Novosibirsk we were met by the relatives of Moisei Grigorievich. And right away, right there at the station, they took us to the disinfection facility, in Russian it was called “vosheboyka.” Well, here they treated me along with my legs, and only after all this we were brought to the relatives of Moisei Grigorievich. These were wonderful people, they shared their food cards with me. As they say, they put us to bed, covered us warmly, and at the same time they themselves suffered so much! Their son was at the front, and there was no news from him for a long time, and only then did it become known that he had died. They sheltered me, a stranger, but their child died somewhere. His last name was Yaroshevsky...
Here I developed a high temperature, with a suspicion of typhus, they admitted me to the infectious diseases hospital of the city of Novosibirsk, and shaved my braids bald... When they shaved my head, I remembered how my mother told me how she had typhus, and they shaved her head , and therefore, when they began to cut my head, I even had some satisfaction that here I am - like a mother. It was very important for me to be like my mother. And this is not the only case that I want to be like my mother. Already in later years, your dad and I came to Tartu, and we came to the university, and it was very important for me to walk through these corridors, walk along these stairs, hold on to these railings - to be like my mother...
I stayed in the hospital in Novosibirsk for either 5 or 7 days, not knowing where my relatives were. Siberia is great! Where is my mom, where is my dad - unknown. And again, good people, Yaroshevsky’s relatives - they were medical workers - began to look for my parents. And while I was in the hospital, the district health or city health was raised, some medical authorities were involved in the search for my parents, and by the end of my stay in the hospital they found that my mother works in a hospital in the city of Barnaul, and it’s a 12-hour drive - that’s all, and my dad works in a hospital in the city of Kansk, but it’s already far away, you can’t get there.. They contacted Barnaul by phone, and my mother finally found out that I was alive, 12 hours away drive away from her.
They put me on the train and called my mother that I was on my way to see her. And at this time I am traveling on a train from Novosibirsk to Barnaul, and I don’t know anything. At night - for some reason we arrive at night - and so I go out onto the platform in the city of Barnaul, and someone is riding with me in my compartment, maybe he is a military man, and so, when I went out onto the platform in Barnaul, he I went out and looked to see if they were meeting me, and if they weren’t, he was ready to help me and take me into his house to spend the night.
And I got out of my carriage onto the platform and stood there, looking around. And now I see a little woman in a military overcoat running from one door of a carriage to another door of another carriage and further on and asking each conductor:
-You didn’t bring the sick girl?
Well, of course, I left the hospital, so, of course, I’m a sick girl. There is a sleigh and a horse harnessed, my mother took this from her hospital. The uncle, seeing that they were greeting me, said goodbye to me and left. Mom rushed to me and began to look at me, her eyes and my whole body, I was wrapped in God knows what, so it was just another meeting...”

From Lily's memories:
“It all happened so unexpectedly. My mother and I felt like we were in some kind of unreality... The train was supposed to arrive at night, and here we are riding in a sleigh (my mother was given a horse at the hospital), trembling with excitement and fear, since we don’t know what the state of Debochka’s health is. And now there is a clearly printed picture in front of my mind’s eye: a snow-covered platform at night. Stopped train. A living Debochka comes out of the carriage, supported by some man, who immediately disappears, handing Debin’s mother and me luggage - a small backpack and a small handbag. Deba is very thin, wearing some kind of pointed earflaps with fish fur, a well-worn winter coat, and on her feet some wide half-felt boots, half-chun boots. She couldn't walk well. We put her in the sleigh and brought her home to a hotly heated room. When we took off her “pointed” earflaps, we saw a baldly shaved head, a thin face with huge shining eyes. The legs were more difficult. When their felt boots were removed, they revealed a terrible picture. The feet and toes were in bandages that were not the freshest. When, having soaked the bandages, we (i.e., mother, of course) were able to unbind our feet, we saw horror...!
On my feet, instead of fingers, there was a continuous purulent, foul-smelling mess - the result of frostbite when crossing Lake Ladoga in tight shoes. In Novosibirsk, where she ended up thanks to her uncle Folin’s friend Yaroshevsky, she was admitted to the hospital. It was about gangrene starting. Doctors insisted on amputating the legs. However, friends of Yaroshevsky (who, by the way, had just received a funeral notice about the death of his son), the Belkins, as it later turned out, were also doctors, persuaded the hospital doctors to wait with the amputation. The girl’s legs were treated for a month, and she could already walk a little, stepping on her heels. The same Belkins (they are no longer alive, of course!) - may God grant their descendants and the descendants of their descendants great, great happiness! So, the same Belkins, having broken through all the obstacles, found the address of my mother’s hospital, put Debochka on the train and sent my mother a telegram. This is how people are!!”

From mom's stories:
“Well, now she led me to this sled. They put me in this sled, covered my legs with something and took me to the city of Barnaul, where my mother lived with Lilka, and also with Anna Antonovna, in a small room - the windows were level with the ground. Lilka got up in the morning, went to open the shutters: they were closed at night, and looked into the room from the street. My bed was under the window. She opens the shutters, and I see her face: rosy, cheerful, even jubilant - well, well, I’ve arrived, after everything! And I felt good."
From Lily's memories:
“At first, Debochka was in a state of euphoria. She talked a lot, laughed and still couldn’t believe that she was alive - that she had survived! She told me:
- Lilka, pinch me, please! Pinch it harder. I want to make sure I'm alive. What do you think, am I alive?
I cried. And then there was complete relaxation. She became depressed, slept all day, and was silent.
At the beginning of the year, when my mother received an appointment in Barnaul, at the request of the head of the hospital, she had to stop for a couple of days on some business in the city of Biysk - the capital of the Altai Mountains, famous for its incomparable honey, a very special smoked cheese soaked in butter , and pork lard - bacon. From there my mother brought some food. She considered these products an emergency supply. And she said, even when Debochka was in besieged Leningrad and it was not known whether she was alive:
- These products are N.Z. When Debochka comes to us, we will fatten her up.
With what tenth maternal feeling, contrary to all logic, she could predict a happy outcome! And here is honey, lard, and especially wonderful Altai cheese, in addition, at the market you could also buy sea buckthorn and get carrots - all this gradually began to lift Deba from dystrophy and depression. Staying alone with her for a long time, when mom and everyone else were at work, we talked, each telling us about our lives. True, she did not tell me about all the horrors of the blockade. We slowly sang our favorite songs. But when they sang the song from the movie “Treasure Island”, in the place where it is sung:
“Where horses walk over corpses,
Where the whole earth was stained with blood
Let it help you, save you from bullets
My young love,” she looked into my eyes with a long look and asked:
- And where people walk over corpses?
Along with “Katyusha” we really liked the song “Beloved City”. When we sang:
“The beloved city can sleep peacefully,
And see dreams, and turn green in the middle of spring,”
- She suddenly rose from the pillow and asked, grinning sarcastically:
“So he can sleep peacefully, right?”