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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Residents of besieged Leningrad with their pets

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

In the surgical department of the City Children's Hospital named after Dr. Rauchfus, New Year 1941/42

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

To the 70th anniversary of the complete lifting of the blockade of Leningrad.

From the memoirs of Academician D.S. Likhachev
“This ice road was called the road of death (and not at all the “road of life”, as our writers later called it tinsel).
Cars often fell into the polynyas (after all, they drove at night). It was said that one mother went crazy: she was driving in the second car, and her children were in the first, and this first car fell through the ice before her eyes. Her car quickly drove around the hole where the children were writhing under water, and rushed on without stopping. How many people died of exhaustion, were killed, fell through the ice, froze or went missing on this road! God alone knows! A. N. Lozanova (folklorist) lost her husband on this road. She carried him on a children's sled, as he could no longer walk. On the other side of Lake Ladoga, she left him on a sleigh along with his suitcases and went to get bread. When she returned with bread, there was no sleigh, no husband, no suitcases. People were robbed, their suitcases were taken from the emaciated, and they themselves were lowered under the ice. There were a lot of robberies. At every step meanness and nobility, self-sacrifice and extreme selfishness, theft and honesty.
*
The worst thing was the gradual dismissal of employees. By order of the Presidium, at the prompting of our director, P. I. Lebedev-Polyansky, who lived in Moscow and had no idea what was happening in Leningrad, there was a “downsizing”. Dismissal orders were posted every week. The dismissal was terrible, it was tantamount to a death sentence: the dismissed person lost his cards, it was impossible to go to work.
They did not give out cards for dismissed people. All ethnographers are dead. Librarians suffered greatly, many young and talented mathematicians died. But zoologists survived: many knew how to hunt.
*
The director of the Pushkin House did not go downstairs. His family was evacuated, he moved to live in the Institute and now and then demanded to his office either a bowl of soup or a portion of porridge. In the end, he fell ill with a stomach, asked me about the signs of an ulcer and asked me to call a doctor. The doctor came from the university clinic, entered the room where he lay with a bloated stomach, sniffed the disgusting air in the room and grimaced; leaving, the doctor was indignant and scolded: the starving doctor was called to the overeaten director!
*
In winter, the mice starved to death. In the cold, in the morning in silence, when we were already mostly lying in our beds, we heard how a dying mouse jumped convulsively somewhere at the window and then died: it could not find a single crumb in our room.
*
In this canteen they fed on special cards. Many employees did not receive cards and came ... to lick plates.
*
Meanwhile, food was rapidly exported from Leningrad and no attempts were made to disperse it, as the British did in London. The Germans were preparing to blockade the city, and we were preparing to surrender it to the Germans. The evacuation of food from Leningrad stopped only when the Germans cut all railways; it was at the end of August.
Leningrad was prepared for surrender in another way: the archives were burned. Ashes flew through the streets.
*
Meanwhile, the city was filled with people: the inhabitants of the suburbs fled to it, the peasants fled. Leningrad was surrounded by a ring of peasant carts. They were not allowed into Leningrad. The peasants stood in camps with cattle, crying children starting to get cold on cold nights. At first, they went to them from Leningrad for milk and meat: cattle were slaughtered. By the end of 1941, all these peasant carts were frozen to death. Those refugees who were sent to schools and other public buildings. I remember one such building crowded with people on Ligovka. Probably, now none of those working in it knows how many people died here. Finally, those who were subjected to “internal evacuation” from the southern districts of the city died out first of all: they were also without things, without supplies.
Those who could not receive cards were starving: those who fled from the suburbs and other cities. They were the first to die, they lived side by side on the floor of train stations and schools. So, one with two cards, the other without cards. There were an incalculable number of these refugees without cards, but there were also many people with several cards.
*
Indeed, orders were issued to evacuate the children. Women were recruited to accompany the children. Since leaving the city on personal initiative was forbidden, everyone who wanted to run was attached to the children's echelons ...
Later we learned that a lot of children were sent near Novgorod to meet the Germans. They told how in Lyuban the “ladies” who accompanied them, having seized their own children, fled, leaving the children of strangers. Children wandered around hungry, crying. Little children could not give their names when they were somehow collected, and forever lost their parents.
*
Some starving people literally crawled to the dining room, others were dragged up the stairs to the second floor, where the dining room was located, since they themselves could no longer climb. Still others could not close their mouths, and saliva ran out of their open mouth onto their clothes.
*
In the reception area, several people were lying on the floor, picked up from the street. They put heating pads on their arms and legs. Meanwhile, they simply had to be fed, but there was nothing to feed them. I asked: what will happen to them next? I was told: "They will die." "But can't we take them to the hospital?" “There’s nothing to feed them, and there’s nothing to feed them anyway. They need to be fed a lot, as they have a strong degree of exhaustion. Nurses dragged the corpses of the dead into the basement. I remember one was still quite young. His face was black: the faces of the starving people darkened greatly. The nurse explained to me that it was necessary to drag the corpses down while they were still warm.
When the corpse becomes cold, lice crawl out.
*
Already in July, registration for volunteers began. /…/. And L. A. Plotkin, who recorded everyone, achieved his release for health reasons and fled from Leningrad in the winter by plane, enrolling his “good friend” — a teacher — on the staff of the Institute a few hours before his departure. in English and arranging it also in his plane according to the armor of the Institute.
We, the “white-ticketers”, were enrolled in the institute's self-defense units, we were given double-barreled hunting rifles and forced to learn the formation in front of the Faculty of History.
Soon, the training stopped: people got tired, did not come to classes and began to die “untrained”.
*
I remember how two speculators came to us. I was lying, the children too. The room was dark. It was lit by electric batteries with flashlight bulbs. Two young men came in and quickly began to ask: “Baccarat, ready books, do you have cameras?” They also asked for something else. In the end, they bought something from us. It was already in February or March. They were scary, like grave worms. We were still stirring in our dark crypt, and they were already preparing to eat us.

*
A kind of blockade theft also developed. Boys, especially those suffering from hunger (teenagers need more food), threw themselves on bread and immediately began to eat it. They didn't try to run away, just to eat more before they took it away. They turned up their collars in advance, expecting beatings, lay down on bread and ate, ate, ate. And other thieves were waiting on the stairs of the houses and they took food, cards, passports from the weakened ones. It was especially difficult for the elderly. Those who had their cards taken away could not restore them. It was enough for such weakened people not to eat for a day or two, as they could not walk, and when their legs stopped working, the end came. Usually families did not die immediately. As long as there was at least one person in the family who could walk and buy bread, the rest, who were lying, were still alive. But it was enough for this latter to stop walking or fall down somewhere on the street, on the stairs (it was especially hard for those who lived on high floors), as the end of the whole family came.
Dead bodies lay in the streets. Nobody picked them. Who were the dead? Maybe that woman still has a child who is waiting for her in an empty, cold and dark apartment? There were a lot of women who fed their children, taking away the piece they needed from themselves. These mothers were the first to die, and the child was left alone. So our colleague in the publishing house, O. G. Davidovich, died. She gave everything to the child. She was found dead in her room. She lay on the bed. The child was with her under the covers, tugging at her mother's nose, trying to "wake her up". A few days later, her "rich" relatives came to Davidovich's room to take ... not a child, but a few rings and brooches left from her. The child died later in kindergarten.
*
The soft parts of the corpses lying on the streets were cut off. Cannibalism has begun! First, the corpses were stripped, then cut to the bone, there was almost no meat on them, the cut and naked corpses were terrible.
*
So they ate one of the employees of the Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences - Vavilova. She went for meat (she was told the address where she could exchange things for meat) and did not return. She died somewhere near the Sytny market. She looked relatively good. We were afraid to take the children outside even during the day.
*
Despite the absence of light, water, radio, newspapers, government"watched". G. A. Gukovsky was arrested. Under arrest, he was forced to sign something1, and then B. I. Koplan and A. I. Nikiforov were imprisoned. V. M. Zhirmunsky was also arrested. Zhirmunsky and Gukovsky were soon released, and they took off by plane. And Koplan died in prison from starvation. His wife, the daughter of A. A. Shakhmatov, died at home. A. I. Nikiforov was released, but he was so exhausted that he soon died at home (and he was a hero, a Russian fellow blood and milk, he always swam in the winter in the hole opposite the Stock Exchange on the Strelka).

I have repeatedly had to say: under investigation, people were forced to sign what they did not say, did not write, did not assert, or what they considered to be complete trifles. At the time when the authorities were preparing Leningrad for surrender, a simple conversation between two people about what they would have to do, how to hide if the Germans occupied Leningrad, was considered almost a betrayal of their homeland.
*
Our deputy director for economic affairs, Kanaylov (what a surname!) kicked out everyone who tried to settle down and die in the Pushkin House: so that they would not have to take out the corpse. Some of our workers, janitors and cleaners were dying, who were transferred to the barracks, torn away from their families, and now, when many could not reach the house, they were thrown out to die in a thirty-degree frost. Kanailov vigilantly watched everyone who was weakening. Not a single person died in the Pushkin House.
One of the cleaners was still quite strong, and she took the cards from the dying for herself and Kanailov. I was in Kanailov's office. A dying worker enters (Kanaylov and the cleaner thought that he would not be able to get out of bed), he looked terrible (saliva ran from his mouth, his eyes got out, his teeth got out). He appeared at the door of Kanailov's office like a ghost, like a half-decomposed corpse, and muttered only one word: "Cards, cards!" Kanailov did not immediately understand what he was saying, but when he realized that he was asking to give him the cards, he became terribly furious, scolded him and pushed him. He fell. What happened next, I don't remember. He must have been pushed out into the street.
Now Kanailov works in Saratov, it seems, a member of the City Council, in general - "holds a position."
*
A woman (Zina knew her) took the children of the dead Putilov workers to her room (I already wrote that the children often died later than their parents, since the parents gave them their bread), received cards for them, but ... did not feed. She locked the children. Exhausted children could not get out of bed; they lay quietly and quietly died. Their corpses remained right there until the beginning next month while it was possible to receive more cards on them. In the spring this woman left for Arkhangelsk. It was also a form of cannibalism, but cannibalism of the most terrible kind.
*
the authorities in the city cheered up: instead of the old exhausted policemen, new healthy ones were sent along the road of death. They said - from the Vologda region.
*
I think real life is hunger, everything else is a mirage. During the famine, people showed themselves, exposed themselves, freed themselves from all sorts of tinsel: some turned out to be wonderful, unparalleled heroes, others - villains, scoundrels, murderers, cannibals. There was no middle ground.

The Modzalevskys left Leningrad, leaving their dying daughter in the hospital. In doing so, they saved the lives of their other children. The Eichenbaums fed one of the daughters, otherwise both would have died. The Saltykovs, leaving Leningrad in the spring, left their mother tied to a sled on the platform of the Finland Station, as the sanitary inspection did not let her through. They left the dying: mothers, fathers, wives, children; stopped feeding those whom it was "useless" to feed; chose which of the children to save; they left in hospitals, in hospitals, on the platform, in frozen apartments in order to save themselves; they robbed the dead - they looked for gold things from them; pulled out gold teeth; cut off fingers to remove wedding rings the dead have a husband or wife; undressed the corpses in the street to take away warm clothes from them for the living; they cut off the remnants of dried skin on the corpses to cook soup for children from it; they were ready to cut off their own meat for their children; those who were left remained silent, wrote diaries and notes, so that later at least someone would know about how millions died. Were the newly begun shelling and raids of German aviation terrible? Who could they scare? There were no satiated ones. Only those who are starving live real life, can commit the greatest villainy and the greatest self-sacrifice without fear of death. And the brain dies last: when conscience, fear, the ability to move, to feel died in some, and when egoism, a sense of self-preservation, cowardice, pain died in others.
The truth about the Leningrad blockade will never be published."

"People have changed..."

On September 7th, it will be exactly 70 years since the beginning of one of the most terrible pages of the Great Patriotic War. It would seem that over the past two decades, everything hidden in Soviet period information about the blockade of Leningrad, presented. However, every year the documents stored in the archives about the situation in those terrible years in the city on the Neva are declassified. Diaries kept by Leningraders dying of hunger are discovered. From them you can find out what the inhabitants were talking about in the first days of the war and the blockade, how they assessed the situation and the actions of the authorities, what they did and how they died.

The papers, hidden under the heading "top secret" for several decades, reveal a shocking truth.

The evacuation of residents and enterprises from Leningrad began on June 29, 1941. Many factories, research institutes, design and research organizations, theaters left the city.

On the morning of August 28, the last two echelons with evacuated Leningraders rushed past the Mga station. The station was captured by the Nazis, and the railway communication between the city and the country was interrupted. On the same day, the Nazi troops broke into the suburbs of Leningrad, German motorcyclists stopped the tram, following route No. 28: Strelna - Stremyannaya Street.

In the city, 216,378 people, registered and registered for evacuation, were sitting on bundles and suitcases. When the blockade ring closed, more than 2 million people remained there.

Elena Skryabina lived in Leningrad with her husband and two sons. They survived the terrible blockade winter of 1941-1942, after which Elena and her children were evacuated to Pyatigorsk, which was soon occupied by the Nazis. Elena had to work in labor camps in Poland and Germany. After the end of the war, she, wanting to save herself and her children from repression, did not return home. In the 1950s, Elena Skryabina emigrated from Germany to the United States, where she became a university professor and taught Russian literature.

From the diary of Elena Skryabina, which she kept in Leningrad during the blockade: "Friday, September 5, 1941

We returned to the prehistoric era: life was reduced to one thing - to search for food. Calculate your food resources. It turns out that my stock is barely enough for a month. Maybe things will change later. And I don't know what change I'm hoping for. Now we come close to the most terrible famine. Tomorrow we are going to go out of town with Lyubochka Tarnovskaya to change cigarettes and vodka, which we got in a stall on the street opposite the house.

In the morning I sat with Yurik(the youngest son of Elena Scriabina, who was five years old. "SP") on the boulevard My former classmate Miloradovich sat down with us. Without preamble, he started a conversation about how happy he was that the Germans were already standing under the city, that they were an incalculable force, that the city would not be surrendered today - tomorrow. He praised me for not leaving. “And this is just in case,” shows me a small revolver, “if my expectations are deceived.”

I didn't know how to react to his words. We are used to not trusting people. And there are many like him now. We are looking forward to the Germans as saviors.

I am writing half an hour after the new raid. I don’t know how long it all went on, but a few minutes after lights out we learned that a huge hospital a few blocks away from us had been damaged. It was only opened yesterday, and today the wounded were transported there. It is said that the bombers dived on this building. It flared up instantly. Most of the wounded died, they did not have time to save.

And we were told all the time that Leningrad was inaccessible, that there would be no raids. That's unavailable! air defense turned out to be a soap bubble. The guarantee of safety is an empty phrase.

The daily norm of bread has been reduced to 250 grams. Since there is almost nothing but bread, this decrease is very noticeable. I am still trying to get potatoes and vegetables in the surrounding villages in exchange for things. How painful these exchanges are! Yesterday I walked all day. I had cigarettes, my husband's boots and ladies' stockings. You feel like a pathetic beggar. Everywhere you have to persuade, literally beg. The peasants are already inundated with beautiful things. They don't even want to talk. Behind short term The terrible year of 1918 has returned. Then the townspeople, like beggars, begged for potatoes and flour in the villages in exchange for carpets, furs, rings, earrings and other valuables. Exhausted to the last degree, I finally exchanged all my goods for a pood of potatoes and two liters of milk. I don't know how long I can keep mining like this.

Literally before our eyes, people go wild. Who would have thought that Irina Levitskaya, until recently so calm, beautiful woman, able to beat her husband, whom she always adored? And for what? Because he wants to eat all the time, he can never get enough ...

... almost all people have become different as a result of hunger, blockade, stalemate.

… I don’t go to the market: there is absolutely nothing to change. What I can offer does not interest buyers. And the markets are littered with beautiful things: materials High Quality, cuts for suits and coats, expensive dresses, furs. Only for such things you can get bread and vegetable oil. It is no longer rumored, but according to reliable sources, that is, according to information from the police districts, it is known that a lot of sausages, jelly and the like, made from human meat. Reason admits even this terrible possibility: people have reached the limit and are capable of anything.

My husband warned me not to let Yurochka go for walks far from home, even with a nanny. The children were the first to disappear.

"We will no longer fight the Germans ..."

In November 1941, the first cases of loss of consciousness from starvation in the streets, shops and workplaces were noted, and then deaths from exhaustion. This month a real famine began in Leningrad.

After the onset of winter, the city almost ran out of fuel. The centralized heating of houses stopped, the water supply and sewerage were turned off.

Due to the lack of electricity and the destruction of contact networks, the movement of trams and trolleybuses stopped.

During the blockade, the mood of the Leningraders was monitored by the UNKVD. Letters were checked, and numerous informants reported on "anti-Soviet" conversations and "negative phenomena."

One of the reports said that some Leningraders reacted to Stalin’s appeal to the people in November 1941 as follows: “For 24 years they have brought the country to collapse and death, and now they say:“ Fight to the end - victory will be ours. But we have almost no planes and tanks, and they have a lot. Where is the logic? This is madness. They gave Ukraine, Belarus - the best central and southern regions - and said: "The enemy is exhausted, we will win." “Stalin did not open up any real prospects for the defeat of Germany. England and America help us only in words, they hate the USSR.” “They transferred advanced military technologies in aircraft construction to Germany before the war, but they themselves were not prepared for the war.” “The government of the USSR is not ready to solve the problem of breaking the blockade on its own. Only a second front will help us.”

The documents of the UNKVD say that in November 1941 the number of "anti-Soviet leaflets" distributed throughout the city increased. Unknown persons scattered many leaflets in the early morning, under the cover of darkness, on the territory of the Moscow railway station. The search for distributors was unsuccessful.

The UNKVD noted that these leaflets, in contrast to the leaflets dropped by the enemy, aroused confidence among the population, since they contained appeals that corresponded to the situation.

Anonymous letters addressed to Stalin, Molotov and Zhdanov were delayed. One of them said: “We, Russian women, inform you Comrade. Molotov that we will no longer fight the Germans. Let us recall our husbands, sons, brothers from the front, surrender all Russian cities to the Germans without a fight, without resistance, for further resistance is useless bloodshed. We no longer believe in your laws."

In the same month, the documents contain the statements of Leningraders recorded by agents: “I will not hesitate to sacrifice my life if it will be useful. It is necessary to create an organization, to unite all the dissatisfied around a major figure. “We must first organize a group of a hundred people and begin to act. It is necessary to write leaflets with an appeal to the people. The Red Army will be with us." "Our leaders will do with us whatever they want, because we do not know how to act in an organized manner, as a whole plant or factory, but we express dissatisfaction one by one or in small groups."

And these statements of the inhabitants of the city were recorded in December: "The workers are waiting for the moment to speak out against the Soviet regime." “If the Soviet government is weak, then let the city surrender. Under the tsar, they didn’t want pies, but now they are dying like flies.” “The people were crushed by taxes, loans, high prices. The Red Army soldiers do not want to defend the power of the communists. "The city must capitulate, since attempts to break the blockade have not led to anything." "The Germans are a cultured nation, they will take care of the conquered city."

Scientists said: "The war will lead to a change in the political system, a democratic principle will operate in Russia." “The ideology of communism has no prospects. England and the United States will help establish a democratic form of government." "The people are clamped down, the words will not be allowed to be uttered." "Only a soulless attitude towards scientists it can be explained that janitors are given a norm of bread more than scientists. Our only hope is that the war will bring about a change for the better.”

In the same month, a leaflet fell into the hands of UNKVD workers, which said: “Down with the war, down with this system that is destroying our life. By December 25, we must rise. There were already strikes at the Kirov factory, but it was too early. Until the 23rd, it is necessary to come to an agreement between the shops, and on the 24th, contact the shop with the shop. On the 25th in the morning, do not start work, but only in an organized manner - they will shoot single people.

“There is only one lie in the reports and newspapers”

The winter of 1941-1942 was much colder than in previous years.

Residents of Leningrad heated their apartments with mini-stoves. They burned everything that could burn, including furniture and books.

Families in most cases did not die out immediately, but one by one. Those who could walk brought food purchased with cards. In that terrible winter, a lot of snow fell, which was not removed. Exhausted by hunger, people moved through the streets with great difficulty.

In February 1942, such conversations were recorded: "We need to get together and go to Smolny, demand bread and peace." "We need to organize a strike." "We need to smash the stores." “There will be no Soviet power after the end of the war. They will appoint a president at the direction of England and America. “There is no starvation in Germany. The employees there are better off than the workers. We don't have the truth. In reports and newspapers there is only lies. “If the Germans come, they won’t hang everyone, they will hang those who need it.”

The "Enkavedeshniki" zealously fought against the "anti-Soviet". On some days in January 1942, 20 people were arrested. But many Leningraders, barely alive from hunger and cold, continued to criticize the authorities.

The statements of the inhabitants of Leningrad, reflected in the documents of the NKVD in January and February 1942: "In no country have they brought their people to such a famine." "People die of starvation, but do not rebel against the rulers." "Things will come to the point that the people will demand to hand over the city to the Germans." “Everything was taken from the workers. We have no bread, no water, no heat, no light. The savages had food, fire and water, but we don't have that either." “Leningrad is abandoned by our leaders to the mercy of fate. They are obviously sacrificing it so that the Soviet government can survive.”

In the reports of the UNKVD, there are many references to the fact that Leningraders spoke about the need to conclude a separate peace with Germany. They did not believe in a quick victory and doubted the need for resistance. All of Europe is working for Germany, but no one wants to help the USSR.

Many residents believed that Leningrad should be handed over to a "neutral country" and then the "senseless" torment would end.

— It is impossible for us to imagine what the people of Leningrad experienced during the siege years. Despite the hunger, cold and living without basic amenities, people with the last of their strength did the work assigned to them, says the St. historian Alla Raznochinova. - The reports of the Sovinformburo about the fall of Sevastopol and Novorossiysk and other failures of the Red Army had a depressing effect on the Leningraders. The people became convinced that the Red Army would not lift the blockade. They were exhausted to the extreme. The blockade ring was broken on January 18, 1943, but Leningraders had to wait another year until the blockade was completely lifted - on January 27, 1944. The blockade of the city lasted 872 days.

According to official statistics, in January and February 1942, approximately 130,000 people died in the city every month, 100,000 people died in March, 50,000 people died in May, 25,000 people died in July, and 7,000 people died in September. The decrease in mortality was due to the fact that the weakest - the elderly, children and sick people - had already died. According to recent studies, during the first, most difficult year of the blockade, approximately 780,000 Leningraders died.

The Russian Information Agency positions itself primarily as an educational resource. And in this light, editorial materials, indeed, provide very valuable information that makes a person go out of the blinkered framework of the First Channel of Consciousness, oppressed by propaganda. But watching in Lately creativity of the bloggers of this resource, I would not say that their activities are very different from the activities of all this brainwashing public from the central TV channels of Russia.

The trend of the past week was, of course, the blockade. Naturally, I did not hope to learn anything of value from the ritual incantations of the television on this occasion, but I was sadly convinced that some of the publications of the bloggers of the ARI are as far from objectivity as the evening news.

Of course, at first I was “pleased” by von Halk, where he reprinted a very emotional article by Vadim Fomchenko, with a general conclusion - the Soviet of Deputies staged sabotage, drove millions of people to Leningrad and starved everyone there. Especially to eradicate freedom-loving Leningraders. Of course, half of the survivors, and maybe all of them, survived only thanks to corpse-eating, while the party bosses ate chocolate and washed it down with cognac.

I'm not sure that Fomchenko is objective in everything. Here, for example, is a quote from his essay on Proza.ru:

“It was something like this: after a preliminary exchange of parliamentarians, a German officer arrived in Smolny with a field radio station and stayed there for a long time. According to some statements, until the end of the blockade. There were intensive negotiations on the surrender of the city. troops with all weapons.The Germans proposed lifting the blockade and withdrawing their troops approximately to the borders of Estonia, subject to the destruction submarine fleet, which is part of the Baltic Fleet. Remember the unforgettable Stirlitz and the noble indignation of the Soviet people that the Allies are generally conducting some kind of separate negotiations with the enemy. Well, we were far superior to the Americans in this respect. Perhaps some idiot will ask: Where are the references and evidence? I inform you that at least eat your ass with evidence! Of course, the bulk of the German sources, but even in Russia, you can type a lot. And I don’t have to chew everything and put it in your mouth, smelly p ...... m!

Comments are superfluous. And why should I believe a certain Fomchenko, who believes that it is not his royal business to dedicate the reader to where he gets his enchanting data from?

Then I was "pleased" by Vladimirov, where he reprinted the alternative writer Alexei Kungurov, who for some reason loves to expose the history of St. Petersburg-Leningrad. Of course, there was no blockade. For the fact of the blockade does not fit with the 10 points that the researcher invites us to study. At the same time, Kungurov himself, as usual, does not give any intelligible version of what, in his opinion, happened here. But it's in his spirit. Even with the story about St. Isaac's Cathedral and the Alexandria Column, I still did not understand who built them according to Kungurov's version.

Not relying on anyone else, I decided to find out for myself what was happening here, in St. Petersburg, during the years of the war and blockade.

Of course, in addition, I was pleased with the Dozhd TV channel with its survey. Of course, I would never have known about this, but the media did their best and now everyone down to the insane knows about “Rain” and about his now famous poll. Was it necessary to surrender the city? Indeed, I thought, I need to figure it out.

To begin with, the Germans, in principle, were not going to feed the population of Leningrad at all. They barely had enough food for their soldiers. So if the city was surrendered in that situation (autumn-winter 1941), the situation would hardly have changed dramatically. German documents testify to this:

If the Red troops in the region of Leningrad and Kronstadt lay down their arms and are taken prisoner, then the commander-in-chief does not see more reasons continue the blockade of the city. Troops must be redeployed to their places of permanent deployment. And in this case, most of the population will die, but at least not before our eyes."

The Finns also did not really want to do anything with Leningrad:

As reported from the Finnish General Staff to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland in early September 1941: "The occupation of St. Petersburg by the Finnish troops is considered unrealistic, since we do not have food supplies to give it to the civilian population."

“Zhdanov offered to surrender the city with the entire population in exchange for the withdrawal of troops along with weapons. Unilaterally, the Germans offered the unimpeded withdrawal of all th world many people, and also allowed the free transportation of food to the city.

Is anyone else so naive that he thinks about the possibility of supplying the city captured by the Germans by the Bolsheviks? Something tells me that in the event of the surrender of Leningrad, no one would lift a finger to somehow try to save civilians cities. Neither the Germans, nor the Finns, nor the Soviets. And, of course, Comrade Zhdanov, the party boss of Leningrad, would hardly have gone for such a thing.

I don't think he would have been a tenant then. No wonder he died suddenly in 1948 in a sanatorium of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in Valdai. Stalin, to be honest, did not really like the Leningrad party members. In 1950, for example, Zhdanov's successor Alexei Kuznetsov was shot, and in 1934 his predecessor Sergei Kirov was somehow unexpectedly killed. In a word, it is unlikely that Zhdanov would have wanted to voluntarily put his head in a noose, starting a story with separate negotiations, knowing that Comrade Stalin would immediately take advantage of this fact and gladly order the execution of the offender.

Unfortunately, all this fuss in the higher echelons had absolutely nothing to do with ordinary residents of the city. It's just that Leningrad turned out to be an important point on the map, in which, by the will of circumstances, there were several million civilians. I am not ready to judge how important or unimportant it was from a strategic point of view, but war involves both defense and offensive, so it is likely that Leningrad needed to be defended. The only question - why such a large number of victims were allowed at the same time, remains open.

Official propaganda says to this question that Leningraders, under the conditions of a cruel blockade, DEFENDED this city. That is, the emphasis is on the fact that all this great amount people fought against the enemy in his city, steadfastly endured all the horrors of hunger and cold, while fighting the Nazis, not surrendering to the enemy, defending the principles of a Soviet citizen. Naturally, all the victims are victims of the noble struggle against fascism, testifying to the feat of the Leningraders, etc., etc.

Of course, things were a little different.

The question is that who really does not want to admit the fact that the civilian population was superfluous in the city at that time. In fact, people found themselves in a hopeless trap, from which not everyone could get out ...

An interesting point is connected with the evacuation of the population from the city. Some citizens with clearly limited thinking argue that it was wrong to evacuate the city in those conditions. Like, all the roads were clogged with trains with troops, with factories going to the east. Plus, this would cause panic, give rise to rumors that they want to leave Leningrad, all this would have a negative impact on fighting spirit army and people. In a word, they thus calm themselves and their minds, getting used to the idea that for the sake of a higher goal, in literally, you can burn millions and millions of people in the furnace.

At the same time, Sovietologists somehow forget that for all that, a lot of enterprises and organizations were taken out of the city. Here is what, for example, Encyclopedia "St. Petersburg" writes about this:

"Until September 8, 1941, 86 largest enterprises in various industries were evacuated from Leningrad. At the same time, in July - August, a number of institutions, research institutes, universities, theaters, etc. were evacuated. A significant part of the treasures of the Hermitage and the Russian Museum, suburban palaces were taken out of Leningrad - museums".

And here is what S.A. Urodkov wrote about the scale of the evacuation. in 1958:

"Thus, the planned evacuation of the population began on June 29 and lasted 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 centers 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 transferred 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 had been airlifted.

The total number of evacuees during the first period was 774,876 people."

In a word, the city nevertheless began to actively evacuate ALREADY a week after the start of the war. Even then, for some reason, the question of leaving the entire population in the city was not raised, so as not to lower the morale of the army and the people and not to give rise to unnecessary rumors. Thus, we can conclude that the modern admirers of Stalin and the Soviets are simply zombie creatures, who have a degree of misanthropy and insanity going off scale even in comparison with their beloved leaders.

But of course in Soviet history you won't be without a trick. Elsewhere you can find out that:

Excellent, 775,000 people were taken out, and 323,000 were brought in. Thus, it turns out that during the period of evacuation before the blockade, not 775 thousand people were taken out of the city, as stated in the Soviet accounting, but about 450,000 people. Very many of them died on the way from shelling, bombing, hunger and cold, so here you should not count on the fact that all people reached their destination safely.

And then the blockade began, as a result, 2,544,000 civilians, including about 400,000 children, ended up in the besieged city. In addition, 343 thousand people remained in suburban areas (in the blockade ring). These figures were established by the total number of ration cards issued for the month of September 1941. Almost 2 million 900 thousand people were forced to start a brutal struggle for survival, suddenly cut off from mainland despite all the loud statements of the Soviet government about the imminent defeat of the Nazis.

All photos are of the same woman before and during the siege.

Naturally, for most of them there was no talk of any fight against fascism. By that time, about a third of Leningraders received work rations, all the rest were employees, children or dependents, and it was these people who, in the main, became victims big game two totalitarian ideologies, which turned out to be, in fact, an unnecessary balance on the gigantic accounts of the universal tragedy in the history of the Russian people.

Despite all the efforts of the Moscow prosecutors, the charge of blockade of Leningrad was dropped from Germany in Nuremberg. And if Germany is not to blame, then who is to blame for the deaths of almost 700,000 Petersburgers?

My grandfather ended his successful career shortly before I was born. And the reason for this was not his unwillingness, but the inability to continue to be silent. He was tired of constantly being silent, and began to talk a lot about what the USSR was afraid to think about.

He began to tell the truth about the Great Patriotic War. A terrible disgusting truth, from which the blood ran cold in the veins and just became creepy.

At the same time, he did not tell anything particularly criminal. Just stories from life, of which I especially remember his stories about Leningrad "blocked by the Germans".

He said bluntly: there was never any "Blockade" by the Germans! The military, ammunition, food and even such unprecedented delights as cakes were freely delivered to the city!

Moreover, while hundreds of thousands of "blocked" Petersburgers went out like candles from cold and hunger, his friend the supplier boasted that he destroyed stale expired cakes that the commissars refused to eat!

He laughed to tears talking about the mountains of gold, diamonds and other valuables that he could exchange for bread!

Bread, which he also destroyed if he did not have time to exchange. And all why? Not to break orders!

An order stating that informing about the true state of affairs was strictly prohibited.
The city was tritely suffocated, just as Ukraine was suffocated at one time - by organizing the Holodomor.

The most terrible thing for me in this story, which tore my imagination to shreds, was not even that the enterprising supplier had amassed huge fortune. And it's not that instead of handing out bread to "HIS" he burned it.

The most terrible thing for me is the information that his wife, either from boredom or from idleness, was so gorged in "besieged" Leningrad that she simply could not get out of bed!

Can you imagine, while the compatriot brothers were saved by eating each other, the woman managed to become so round that she even stopped walking!

It is clear that you can not believe me, like my grandfather, but here are some more facts found by the St. Petersburg historian Igor Bogdanov based on the study of archival documents, “The Leningrad Siege from A to Z”, which states:

“In the archival documents there is not a single fact of starvation among representatives of the district committees, the city committee, the regional committee of the CPSU (b).”

Any food was available in the Smolny canteen: fruits, vegetables, caviar, buns, cakes. Milk and eggs were delivered from a subsidiary farm in the Vsevolozhsk region.

The instructor of the personnel department of the city committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Nikolai Ribkovsky, was sent to rest in a party sanatorium, where he described his life in his diary:

“Meat every day - lamb, ham, chicken, goose, turkey, sausage; fish - bream, herring, smelt, and fried, and boiled, and aspic. Caviar, salmon, cheese, pies, cocoa, coffee, tea, 300 grams of white and the same amount of black bread per day ... and to all this, 50 grams of grape wine, good port wine for lunch and dinner. You order food the day before according to your taste.

Daniil Granin, together with Ales Adamovich, interviewed about 200 blockade survivors and wrote the Blockade Book. The book is politically correct. The author began to publish the truth later.

So in 2014, in the Zvezda magazine, his article “How they lived in the blockade” was published:

“The unburied dead lay in the houses, the victims of hunger, frost, who fell under the shells, lay in the apartments, lay in the doorways; I saw the dead in a snow-covered tram, I myself went there to hide from the wind. Opposite me sat completely white old man without a hat - someone must have taken it. …

Hunger drove me crazy, a person gradually lost all ideas of what was possible and what was not. He is ready to chew the skin of a belt, boil glue from wallpaper, boil dried flowers. I used to be terrified of cannibalism. During the war, I realized that not love, but "war and hunger rule the world." …

Officially, only in December 1941, 26 people were prosecuted for such crimes, in January 1942 - 336 people, in two weeks of February 494 people, in March - more than a thousand.

In the city, up to 3,000 people died per day. The cannibals did not have to exert themselves especially to find food.

But, this is all controversy. In practice, the issue is much more sinister.

According to official figures, 671,635 people died during the blockade. These figures have been presented on Nuremberg Trials in 1946.

But the Moscow prosecutors failed to prove the guilt of Genrmania in the "Blockade" invented in the Kremlin ...

What to do? What if the Germans are not to blame? Who to blame? Who can be responsible for the death of more than half a million Petersburgers? Generalissimo who led the country and the army? But no!

Comrade Stalin decided that the leaders of Leningrad were to blame for the "Blockade", and therefore they should be punished.

As in 1937, the "Leningrad case" was quickly drawn up, and in 1949-1950 several dozen people from the top leadership of Leningrad were executed, and over 200 received various terms of imprisonment.

After Stalin's death, they were rehabilitated, "for lack of corpus delicti."

True, the trial, over "Comrade Stalin" did not take place.

What can be added here?

That one should not be surprised that the ancestors of the ancient cannibals justify the actions of modern cannibals? That it is normal for Russia to justify the crimes of the authorities and even be proud of them?

What can be added when the picture is so terrible that all the horrors of the Underworld pale in front of it?

Stalin needed a myth. Heroic myth. And they created it.

He created it. And others answered for his initiative. The ones he chose. - This is the principle of the Kremlin's power, the principle on which the power of the Kremlin is based. If they were not so cruel, they would not be able to keep such a number of gold and robbed slaves.

And you know what else is interesting. What is certain, if a similar situation happens in Russia in the near future, close Russia’s border with outside world, the story of "besieged" Leningrad will repeat itself. Only nationwide.

The Russians will die of hunger, eat each other and be proud. Himself, his feat, his country... And Putin? What is Putin?

He will be canonized, and monuments will be erected around the country, as today to Stalin.

To put and be proud that he taught them to eat each other.