The blockade has a woman's face: poignant memories of Leningrad residents. The extraordinary diary of an ordinary resident of besieged Leningrad

Special thanks to representatives of archives, museums and publishing houses for their assistance in publishing the diaries: Sergei Kurnosov, director of the State Memorial Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad (St. Petersburg), Irina Muravyova, head of the scientific and exhibition department of the State Memorial Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) ), Vladimir Taradin, Director of the Central Archive of Historical and Political Documents (St. Petersburg), Andrey Sorokin, Director of the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (Moscow), Valeria Kagramanova, Chief Curator of the Museum modern history Russia (Moscow), Victoria Kochenderfer, chief curator of the funds of the Battle of Stalingrad Museum-Reserve (Volgograd), Larisa Turilina, director of the State Archive Bryansk region(Bryansk), Bella Kurkova, deputy editor-in-chief of the “Culture” studio of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company “St. Petersburg”, Alexander Zhikarentsev, editor-in-chief of the branch of LLC Publishing Group “Azbuka-Atticus” in St. Petersburg, Leonid Amirkhanov, general director of the publishing house “Ostrov” (St. Petersburg), Mikhail Sapego, general director of the publishing house "Red Sailor" (St. Petersburg), Sergei Nikolaev, general director of the publishing house "Algorithm" (Moscow), Pavel Polin, historian, compiler of the series "On the Side of War" and "Scrolls" from the ashes: evidence of the Holocaust" (Moscow), Sergei Glezerov, journalist and researcher, author of the book "The Blockade through the Eyes of Eyewitnesses" (St. Petersburg), Valentin Verkhovtsev (Arkhangelsk), Natalya Adamovich-Shuvagina (Minsk, Belarus), Daniil Granin ( Saint Petersburg).

Our words of gratitude to the relatives and friends of war children for their careful attitude to the diaries and the opportunity given to us to print them: Nina Tikhomirova (Budapest, Hungary), Inna Chernomorskaya (St. Petersburg), Andrei Vassoevich (St. Petersburg), Tatyana Musina (Moscow ), Marina Borisenko (Moscow), Lyudmila Polezhaeva (Apatity), Olga Baranova (Bryansk), Yuri Andreev (St. Petersburg), Irina Novikova (St. Petersburg).

And of course, our gratitude to the authors of the diaries themselves, those who survived the war, who managed to save their diaries and who gave us the right to publish them: Natalya Kolesnikova (Moscow), Zoya Dobrokhotova (Khabarova) (Kokoshkino village, New Moscow), Maria Rolnikaite (St. Petersburg), Tamara Lazersson-Rostovskaya (Haifa, Israel), Vladislav Berdnikov (Perm), Valeria Trotsenko (Igosheva) (Vladivostok), Alexander Sedin (Ulyanovsk), Tatyana Grigorova-Rudykovskaya (St. Petersburg), Yuri Utekhin ( Moscow), Nikolay Ustinov (Kholmsk). Low bow to all of them.

The book contains a huge number of diaries of those who did not live to this day and were not able to see this volume. Eternal memory to them!

I left childhood not like everyone else,

And he stepped through the flames of the explosion...

In young silver oats

The mine tore up the soft earth.

They sowed the land again in the spring,

A crater has swollen from the rains...

It's hard to grow out of a child

Crippled by war.

Gleb Eremeev

A little boy draws. He is 3 years old, so the drawing is a lot of scribbles and curls around the edges, and in the center there is a small oval. “What did you draw?” – the teacher asks him. “This is war, that's all. And in the middle there is a white bun. “I don’t know anything else,” the kid answers.

The drawing is dated May 23, 1942. The boy's name is Sasha Ignatiev. He is one of the 400 thousand children who remained in Leningrad after September 8, 1941, when the blockade ring finally closed. 900 days later, when units of the Red Army finally broke through the blockade, it became known that out of 400 thousand children, less than half were alive.

Valentina Kozlovskaya, a teacher, worked in one of the kindergartens of besieged Leningrad. Children of 3-4 years old were in her care. It was winter 1943. The teacher sewed a cat from scraps, rags and tow. He became everyone's favorite - when the air raid sounded, the guys first of all took care of the cat. The most obedient or the weakest were trusted to carry it into the bomb shelter. One of these was Igorok Khitsun. A fragment of a fascist bomb shattered his shin. But he didn’t feel pain and didn’t quite understand what had happened: “Nanny, nanny, will they soon sew on my leg? After all, they sewed a whole cat together so quickly!”

During the worst winter, 1942-1943, everything was much darker. Many felt like they were in hell. “We have a hundred children,” recalled the sister-teacher of preschool orphanage No. 38. “They sit for hours silently and without moving. They get angry, cry and make trouble when they see a smile. It was painful to see the children at the table, how they ate. The bread was crumbled into microscopic pieces and hidden in matchboxes. Children could leave bread as the most delicious food and enjoyed the fact that they ate a piece of bread for hours, looking at it as if it were some kind of curiosity.”

There were also bright sides. Leningraders remember circus artist Ivan Narkevich. Due to disability, he did not go to the front. But he managed to keep two trained dogs and in April 1942 he began visiting kindergartens and schools. And the kids forgot that “grandmother was taken away dead on a sled”, that “when they bomb, it’s very scary.”

The kids forgot. They even need it. But those who say that Leningrad should have been surrendered to the Germans cannot be forgiven. In memory of children who died of hunger and saw the death of their parents.

Before the war, she lived on the 2nd line of Vasilyevsky Island, in house 13/6, the Savichev family - large, friendly and already with a broken destiny. The children of the Nepman, a “disenfranchised”, the former owner of a bakery-confectionery and a small cinema, the Savichevs Jr. had no right to enter college or join the Komsomol. But they lived and rejoiced. Little Tanya, while she was a baby, was put in the laundry basket in the evenings, placed under a lampshade on the table and gathered around. What was left of the whole family after the siege of Leningrad? Tanya's notebook. The shortest diary in this book.

No exclamation marks. Not even dots. And only the black letters of the alphabet on the edge of the notebook, which - each - became a monument to her family. To the elder sister Zhenya - with the letter “F” - who, dying in the arms of another sister, Nina, very much asked to get the coffin, a rarity in those days, - “otherwise the earth will get into your eyes.” Grandmother - with the letter “B” - who, before her death, ordered not to bury her for as long as possible... and to receive bread from her card. A monument to brother Leka, two uncles and mother, who was the last to leave. After the “Savichevs died,” 11-year-old Tanya put wedding candles from her parents’ wedding and sister Nina’s notebook in which she drew her drawings into the Palekh casket, and then Tanya herself chronicled the death of the family and, orphaned and exhausted, went to distant relative Aunt Dusa. Aunt Dusya soon gave the girl to Orphanage, who was then evacuated to the Gorky, now Nizhny Novgorod region, to the village of Shatki, where Tanya faded away for several more months: bone tuberculosis, dystrophy, scurvy.

Tanya never found out that not all of the Savichevs died, that Nina, with whose chemical eyeliner pencil she wrote the 41st line of her short story, and brother Mikhail, who were evacuated, survived. That the sister, having returned to the liberated city, found a Palekh box from Aunt Dusya and gave the notebook to the museum. I didn't recognize that her name sounded like Nuremberg trials and became a symbol of the Leningrad blockade. I didn’t find out that Edita Piekha sang “The Ballad of Tanya Savicheva”, that astronomers named minor planet No. 2127 - TANYA in her honor, that people carved her lines in granite...

The diaries of two Tans are like two sides of a coin. Dark side — tragic death, light - victory of the survivors.

Tanya's feat

Tanya Vassoevich's diary is kept in her son's house, Professor of St. Petersburg State University Andrey Vassoevich. Tanya began taking notes on June 22, 1941. Here are the first bombings of Leningrad, and July 18, 1941, when the ring around the city had not yet closed, but food cards had already been introduced. In September, the first lesson at an art school that did not take place: “Our teacher, folding his easel, said that he was going to the front as a volunteer.” Classes in high school began in November: “Our class was almost full” (later there would be two boys and nine girls out of forty in the class). Tanya describes endless standing in lines for a portion of bread, which for children and unemployed people in a few months shrank from 400 g per day to 125. They boiled wood glue and ate it.

Tanya describes how great happiness it was when she was standing in line for groceries with a classmate and they got a duranda (pressed tiles made from sunflower husks. - Ed.). They needed money to buy groceries using cards, and their family was sorely short of funds. And the older brother, instead of eating his portion of bread, sold it at the market and gave the money to his mother so that she could buy new cards. He did this until his mother realized and forbade him to do so.

Girl's older brother, 15 years old Volodya, died of starvation on January 23, 1942 at 6.28 - written in the diary. And Tanya’s mother, Ksenia Platonovna, died on February 17, 1942 at 11.45. “More than 4 thousand people a day died in the city that winter. The corpses were collected and buried in mass graves. More than half a million people are buried in mass graves at the Piskarevskoye cemetery,” says Professor Vassoevich. — Tanya, being a 13-year-old girl, used the remaining money to buy a coffin for her brother. Her mother could no longer do this; she couldn’t get up due to weakness.” The city's Smolensk cemetery was closed; the dead were not accepted there, but Tanya persuaded the caretaker to dig graves. From the diary: “Aunt was at my brother’s funeral Lucy, Me and Tolya Takvelin— Vovin’s best friend and classmate. Tolya cried - this touched me most of all. Lucy and I were at my mother's funeral. Vova and mom are buried in real coffins, which I bought on Sredny Prospekt near the second line. Khudyakov(a caretaker at the cemetery - Ed.) dug graves for cereals and bread. He is good and has been good to me.”

When Tanya's mother died, her body lay in the apartment for 9 days before the girl was able to organize a new funeral. In her diary, she drew a plan of the site (see Tanya’s drawing - Ed.) and noted the burial places of her loved ones in the hope that, if she survived, she would definitely install monuments on the graves. And so it happened. In the picture with the cemetery, Tanya, indicating the dates of death of her brother and mother and their funeral, used a code she had invented: she understood that she buried her relatives in the closed Smolensk cemetery semi-legally. Only because the watchman Khudyakov was touched by her childish concern and went along with the child’s request. Exhausted no less than the others, he dug graves in almost forty-degree frost, fortifying himself with a piece of bread that Tanya received from her deceased brother’s card. Then she told her son, Professor Andrei Vassoevich, that she became truly scared when she was filling out her brother’s death certificate: “The registrar at the clinic took out Vladimir Nikolaevich Vassoevich’s card and wrote the word “died” in large handwriting.

A page from Tanya Vassoevich's diary. Photo from the archive of Professor Andrei Vassoevich

gold fish

“Mom and her deceased older brother were very close,” says Andrey Vassoevich. “Vladimir was interested in biology, their whole apartment was filled with flowers, and he built an aquarium with fish for his sister. In 1941-1942. It was an incredibly cold and snowy winter in Leningrad. People installed potbelly stoves in their apartments and heated them with furniture. Mom and brother wrapped themselves in a blanket and drew plans for palaces with swimming pools and greenhouses. It was not for nothing that after the war my mother entered college at the Faculty of Architecture. During the blockade, a library continued to operate in their area on Vasilyevsky Island, where they went to buy books. Mom said that she had never read as much as during the blockade. And her mother, while she had the strength, was on duty on the roof every day - guarding incendiary bombs. Shelling and bombing were daily. Leningrad was not only surrounded by a siege; there were battles going on for it all these almost 900 days. The Battle of Leningrad was the longest in the history of the war. In the directive Hitler No. 1601 of September 22, 1941, it is said in black and white about Leningrad: “to wipe the city off the face of the earth,” and about its inhabitants: “we are not interested in preserving the population.”

After the loss of her mother and brother in the spring of 1942, a miracle happened to Tanya. In her empty apartment there was a block of ice - a gift from her brother, a frozen aquarium with fish frozen in ice. When the ice melted, so did one gold fish and started swimming again. This story is a metaphor for the entire blockade: it seemed to the enemy that the city should be dead, it was impossible to survive in it. But he survived.

Memory of the Heart

“In the 90s, it became fashionable to say that cannibalism flourished in Leningrad, and people lost human form“My mother was terribly indignant at this. They tried to present blatant isolated cases as a mass phenomenon. Mom recalled how a music teacher came to them and said that her husband had died of hunger, and Volodya exclaimed that if he had known, he would have given him his bread. And a few days later he himself was gone. Mom often recalled the noble deeds of the siege survivors. Her diary echoes what the poet who survived the siege wrote Olga Berggolts: “... we discovered a terrible happiness - / Worthy not yet sung, - / When we shared the last crust, / The last pinch of tobacco.” “The city survived because people thought not about themselves, but about others,” says Professor Vassoevich.

“Sense of duty”, “friendship” - these are words from Tanya’s diary. When she found out that her dad died best friend, who was evacuated, she buried him next to her brother: “I couldn’t let him stay on the street.” The hungry girl spent her last crumbs of food on the funeral.

In the spring of 1942, Tanya was evacuated from Leningrad. For several weeks she traveled to Alma-Ata on different echelons, keeping her diary and photographs of loved ones as the apple of her eye. While evacuating, Tanya finally met her father, a famous petroleum geologist. When the blockade closed, he was on a business trip and found himself separated from his family. Both returned to Leningrad after the war. In her hometown, Tanya immediately went to her late brother’s best friend, Tolya, the same one who cried at the funeral. She learned from his mother that the young man died shortly after her brother. Tanya tried to find four more of Volodya’s friends - they all died during the siege. Tatyana Nikolaevna devoted many years of her life to teaching children painting. And I always told them: “Keep a diary, because a diary is a story!”

Leningrad was not wiped off the face of the earth. Can we say the same about our memory of the war today? Is it not erased in our heart? It’s sad that 95 pages of the diary of a 13-year-old schoolgirl who survived the siege have not been published. From it, modern teenagers could learn more about war than from some textbooks and modern films.

On the evening of January 27, 1944, the Leningrad sky was lit up with thousands of colorful lights. For the first time in many months, people rejoiced at the roar of artillery cannonade - after all, it was a salute in honor of the final lifting of the blockade.

And just recently, more than half a century after the end of the war, an amazing document was found in the archives of the St. Petersburg FSB department.

The author of this stunning chronicle is an ordinary Leningrad resident Nikolai Pavlovich Gorshkov. Throughout the 29 blockade months, day after day (without missing a single one!) he recorded the tragic events from the life of the besieged city. No, these were not official reports from the Sovinformburo or quotes from newspaper publications. He wrote down what he himself witnessed, what he saw or heard on the streets, in the courtyards and apartments of besieged Leningrad.

He was lucky to survive until Victory, but in December 1945 he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years. He died in the camp 6 years later. It is unknown where he was buried.

This essay was written in memory of him, in memory of the thousands of Leningraders who died in those terrible years.

But first, a few words about the document itself and its author.

His diary - six small checkered notebooks sewn with black, harsh thread - is written in a clear, easy-to-read handwriting. It was attached to file No. 62 625 for Nikolai Pavlovich Gorshkov, born in 1892, a native of the Uglichevsky district, the village of Vypolzovo, Russian, non-partisan, senior accountant at the Leningrad Institute of Light Industry. The person involved in the case was suspected of committing crimes under Art. 58–10 part 11 (anti-Soviet agitation) and 58–11 (organized anti-Soviet activity) of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. But, judging by the documents, Gorshkov’s case was going badly. Witnesses were confused or refused their testimony, and the accused himself did not admit his guilt. The materials were sent for further investigation twice, but after eight months of imprisonment, Nikolai Pavlovich was convicted.

The defendant seemed to know that the diary would outlive him, and asked to include his notes in the criminal case. However, it is possible that he hoped for leniency from Soviet justice - everyone treated the Leningraders who survived the siege after the war with sympathy and respect. But the diary was ignored by the investigator, who was not interested in purely personal notes.

But in vain. The diary, compiled during the hard times of the siege, when one could doubt anything and anyone, characterized the author as a man deeply devoted to his homeland, firmly convinced of victory over the enemy. But the investigator was least interested in this. I know this man's last name, but I just don't want to say it. Whether he was a front-line soldier who went through the war, or was holed up somewhere deep in the rear, I don’t know. One thing is clear - he knew little about besieged Leningrad. He does not know the taste of wood glue, which was boiled and chewed during the hungriest first winter, or the intoxicating smell of 150 grams of blockade bread with sawdust in half, which had to be divided for the whole day, because there was simply nothing else. He had also not heard about the children who died of hunger, whom their mothers hid in secluded corners in order to receive a ration card for the dead soul for as long as possible and at least somehow support those of their children in whom life had not yet died out. No, the investigator did not know this. Otherwise, his conscience, the conscience of a man familiar with the hardships of war, would not have allowed him to condemn the author of the blockade notes, Nikolai Gorshkov.

The first and probably the shortest note in the diary was made on September 4, 1941, when the first shells fell on Leningrad: “In Volkova village. Near "Kr. Neftyanika" destruction and fire." The last entry is dated January 31, 1944, four days after the city was completely liberated. There are 880 entries in the diary - 880 days of tragedy, hunger, death. Even in the harshest winter of 1941-1942, when up to a thousand (and maybe more) people died per day from hunger, frost and bombing, Nikolai Petrovich sat down in the evenings in the kitchen, the window of which looked out onto a remote Lithuanian courtyard, and...

“These notes are written in the light of a homemade flashing light bulb with a light intensity of no more than 1/2 candle. The light bulb consists of a 50 gram glass apothecary jar, through the stopper of which there passes a metal tube into which a wick is threaded.”

The principle underlying the recordings is amazing. The author avoids all personal problems. There are no stories here about how he cooked carpenter's glue, ate duranda, fluff from hunger, or burned furniture and books in a potbelly stove. Incredibly, the pronoun “I” is never used in the diary! But the punctuality of these records is phenomenal. The author seems to understand that every day of the blockade he lived through is a day that belongs to History. Of course, he did not know about the strategic plans of the warring armies, but everything that the most ordinary “little” person could see and hear was recorded in the diary with the amazing accuracy and pedantry of an accountant.

It also contains many simple and artless descriptions of the weather. But these are not lyrical sketches of a bored city dweller. The author, like any resident of a besieged city, associated thick low clouds, a dead moonless night or a clear sunny day with the likelihood of air raids and aerial bombings.

“...at about 5 p.m. a high-explosive bomb was dropped by the enemy great strength. She fell into the Moika River near the A.S. Apartment Museum. Pushkina (house 12). The explosion raised a mass of water and dirt, and window frames and doors were torn out near standing houses by the blast wave.

The night was dark and there was no night raid.”

Today, walking along the Moika embankment near house 12, it is even difficult to imagine how land mines exploded here. And if that bomb had gone a few meters to the side, this address, dear to the heart of every Russian, would not have remained. But who remembers this now?

“...The sixth raid (this day) at 1 hour 50 minutes. up to 2 hours 15 minutes nights and from 2 hours 30 minutes. up to 3 hours 08 minutes At the same time, the enemy fired heavy shells at the city, strong explosions were heard, so that the glass in the windows rattled. The night was very restless. The stars and a large crescent moon were shining in the sky.”

I don’t know if this day was the most intense in terms of the number of bombings, but in addition to air raids there were also constant artillery strikes. And while during the day people still found the strength to go down to the bomb shelter several times, at night many remained in their houses at their own risk. But there were also night watches on the roofs, when, exhausted from fatigue and hunger, having gathered all their will into a fist and conquering fear, the townspeople fought with enemy incendiary bombs.

“...the enemy drops high-explosive bombs anywhere, and there are very few reliable shelters in the city, and the existing bomb shelters in residential buildings - in basements - do not save from a direct hit from heavy bombs and all those present are covered by collapsed walls and are also flooded with water from a broken water supply... The city is dying. Email there is no light in the houses. The plumbing barely supplies water to the second floor. Trams run with long breaks only on some and then changed routes... Walking from the Novokamennoye Bridge along the bypass canal to International Avenue, within 25 minutes I met 57 dead people who were being taken to the Volkovo cemetery.”

For a long time I could not understand how it was possible to write so simply, artlessly and, as it were, detachedly about the tragedy of an entire city? Is it really possible to get used to death and become hardened in soul?

And only recently re-reading ancient Russian literature did I suddenly see that the style of the monastic chroniclers was just as detached. They wrote not for themselves, but for the edification of their descendants, firmly knowing that without the past there is no present, and without the present there is no future. Therefore, everything personal remained to itself. Only the most important things were trusted to eternity. Remember, in Nestor’s “Tale of Bygone Years: “Foreigners came to Russian land...”

And in this sense, Nikolai Gorshkov’s diary is not unique. Leningrad, and then the whole world, was shocked after reading Tanya Savicheva’s siege diary. In short lines, the girl wrote about the death of her loved ones. Last entry: “Everyone died.” Tanya herself did not live to see victory.

“Severe frost 33 with wind. Everything was frozen, there was a picture of an icy dying city all around. In most houses there is no water at all. You can see poured and discarded sewage everywhere, especially in courtyards... More and more often there are cases of banditry - bread and food cards, handbags and packages are taken from the hands of people leaving bakeries and shops. There are still no products. Hunger…"

Of course, at that time the newspapers did not write about this. They talked about courage, perseverance, heroism. But there was also a bucket on the streets, and the stench, and sewage, and banditry, and theft. And the courage of the people who survived frost, hunger, and death against this background did not become less significant. Vice versa. Living in unbearable conditions, overcoming such trials and not descending to the animal instinct of self-preservation at the expense of those like you, but only weaker - isn’t this true courage?!

“... At the flea market near the (Kuznechny) market there is exchange trading and speculation. You can exchange whatever you want for bread.

It is very difficult to buy anything with money. Belomor cigarettes - up to 60 rubles. A pack of tobacco 100 gr. - from 300 to 400 gr. of bread. Bread for money is rare - 40 rubles. per piece about 100 grams. Expensive trinkets, figurines, dishes go for next to nothing, for a piece of bread from 100 to 200 grams ... "

No money, no decorations - just bread. This is the true measure of value in a city under siege.

Of course, times are different now, and the money is no longer the same. And children not only throw bread, but even throw cakes at school tea parties - I myself have seen this more than once. But trinkets are now at a premium. But no one carefully wraps the leftover humpback after lunch in a clean white towel. Easier to throw in the trash.

“... in the criminal investigation department I saw twelve people arrested, women caught red-handed and accused of cannibalism. One woman said that when her husband lost consciousness while dying, she cut off part of his body from his leg in order to make a brew and feed the hungry children, who were also dying, and herself, who was already completely desperate and exhausted. Another said that she cut off a part from a corpse on the street frozen from hunger, but she was caught at the crime scene. Realizing their guilt, they cry and lament, confident that they will be sentenced to death. All this is too terrible... Cases of cannibalism in the city are spoken about openly, without hesitation..."

Yes, apparently, all these women were shot according to harsh wartime laws. And this too terrible truth a life that they prefer not to talk about out loud. After the publication of excerpts from the diary of Nikolai Pavlovich Gorshkov in the Parliamentary Gazette, I received a letter from St. Petersburg from a veteran of the siege. He talked about even more terrible facts. Every year there are fewer and fewer people who survived these horrors. They go away, and with them the memory goes away. However, even during their lifetime they did not like to talk about it. And yet this cannot be forgotten. It’s impossible, if only because it wouldn’t happen again.

“...There is a massive evacuation of the population in the city. People who are not busy with work... can sign up for evacuation at district councils, special commissions, and leave the city with luggage of 35 kg per person. They travel by train from the Finlyandsky Station to Lake Ladoga, and then by car on the ice to the railway station. station (Volkhov), from there by train into the interior of the country... It is reported that in recent days up to 4 trains with evacuees have left, approximately from 2 to 3 thousand people in each.... Many get a job driving cars that deliver food and cargo from the other side of Lake Ladoga and return from the city empty again to buy food. Presumably, from 1 to 3 thousand people leave by car per day. In just one day, in favorable weather, up to 15 thousand people leave the city in different ways. Yes, as they say, on some days just as many die from exhaustion..."

Just recently we heard that the authorities abandoned the surrounded city to the mercy of fate. Nonsense, that's all. The siege diary of Nikolai Gorshkov completely refutes these speculations. And the enterprises worked, and food was delivered across Ladoga, and exhausted people were taken out. Of course, there were mistakes, miscalculations, omissions. But, God forbid, if something like this happened now, would we be able to cope? Now is peacetime, and every year Russia loses a million of its citizens.

“Light clouds. A cold breeze is blowing. Our planes have been patrolling over the city since 5 am. At 12:35 p.m. air raid alert. Lights out at 13:10. Enemy planes are not allowed into the city.

The city is issuing additional food products on food cards for the May Day holidays:

Tea. Workers 25 gr., employees 25 gr., dependents 25 gr., children - 25 gr.

Dried fruits. Work 150 gr., serving 150 gr., dependent. 150 gr., children 150 gr.

Cranberry. Work - , servant 150 gr., izd. 150 gr., children 150 gr.

Starch. Worker -, service -, izd. - , children 100 gr.

Beer. Work 1.5 l., service 1.5 l., personal. 0.5 l., for children -.

Sol. fish. Work 500 gr., serving 400 gr., i.e. 75 gr., children 100 gr.

Cheese. Work 100 gr., serving 75 gr., Izd. 75 gr., children 100 gr.

Cocoa with milk. For children: 2 tablets. (50 gr.)

Tobacco. Work 50 gr., serving 50 gr., ID. - , children -.

Vodka or wine. wine. Work 0.5 l., serving 0.5 l., liquid. 0.25 l., for children -.

Everywhere on the streets and in the courtyards the last garbage collection is underway. The city took on a neat appearance. The night passed peacefully."

It was the May Day holidays that ended the first, most terrible winter of the blockade. But there were still many months of difficult trials and 643 diary entries ahead. But the city survived, survived and won.

From the materials of the criminal case of Nikolai Gorshkov, it became known that in 1920 his son Igor was born. During the war years he studied at the Air Force Academy. Mozhaisky, in January 1944 took part in lifting the blockade.

Employees of the St. Petersburg FSB found this man. Now Igor Nikolaevich is retired. But the most amazing thing is that he lived in the same house on Ligovka, in the same apartment No. 6, where his father wrote his chronicle of the siege. The son knew nothing about the diary and did not even suspect its existence. Tremblingly and carefully, he leafed through the yellowed notebook leaves, and his fingers trembled. And for kitchen window there was still the same cramped St. Petersburg courtyard, in which little had changed since the war.

I’m writing it down, my hands are getting cold...
“Our daughter Miletta Konstantinovna, born on 11/VIII 1933, died on IV 26, 1942 - 8 years 8 months and 15 days old.
And Fedor lived from 7/IV 1942 to 26/VI 1942 - 80 days...
On IV 26, the daughter died at one in the morning, and at 6 in the morning Fedor was breastfeeding - not a single drop of milk. The children’s doctor said: “I’m glad, otherwise the mother (that is, me) would have died and left three sons. Don’t feel sorry for your daughter, she’s a premature baby - she would have died at eighteen - for sure...”
Well, since there is no milk, I donated 3/V 1942 to the Institute of Blood Transfusion on 3rd Sovetskaya Street, I don’t remember how many grams, since I have been a donor since June 26, 1941. Being pregnant with Fedya, she donated blood: 26/VI - 300 g, 31/VII - 250 g, 3/IX - 150 g, 7/XI - 150 g. It's no longer possible. 11/XII - 120 gr. = 970 gr. blood..."
12/I - 1942 - I’m writing it down, my hands are getting cold. We had been walking for a long time; I walked across the ice diagonally from the University to the Admiralty along the Neva. The morning was sunny and frosty - a barge and a boat stood frozen in the ice. I walked from the 18th line of Vasilyevsky Island, first along Bolshoy Prospect to the 1st line and to the Neva past the Menshikov Palace and all the colleges of the University. Then from the Neva along the entire Nevsky Prospect, Staronevsky to the 3rd Sovetskaya...
At the doctor’s appointment I undressed, he poked me in the chest and asked: “What is this?” - “I will be a mother for the fourth time.” He grabbed his head and ran out. Three doctors came in at once - it turns out that pregnant women cannot donate blood - the donor card was crossed out. They didn’t feed me, they kicked me out, and I had to get a certificate for February 1942, a work card and rations (2 loaves, 900 grams of meat, 2 kg of cereal), if they took my blood...
She walked back slowly, slowly, and three children were waiting at home: Miletta, Kronid and Kostya. And my husband was hired as a sapper... I will receive a dependent card for February, and this is 120 grams. bread a day. Death…
When I got onto the ice, I saw a mountain of frozen people on the right under the bridge - some were lying, some were sitting, and a boy of about ten, as if alive, had his head pressed against one of the dead. And I so wanted to go to bed with them. I even turned off the path, but I remembered: at home three people were lying on one single bed, and I was limp, and I went home.
I walk through the city, one thought worse than the other. On the 16th line I meet Nina Kuyavskaya, my childhood friend, she works in the executive committee. I tell her: “They kicked me out as a donor and didn’t give me a certificate for a working card.” And she says: “Go to the antenatal clinic, they must give you a certificate for a work card”...
The apartment has four rooms: ours is 9 meters, the last one, the former stable of the owner of four houses (19, 19a, 19b, 19c). There is no water, the pipes have burst, but people still pour into the toilets, the slurry pours down the wall and freezes from the frost. But there is no glass in the windows; in the fall they were all broken from a bomb explosion. The window is covered with a mattress, only a hole has been made for the pipe from the potbelly stove...
She came home cheerful, and the children were glad that she came. But they see that it is empty, and not a word, they are silent, that they are hungry. And at home there is a piece of bread. Three times. For an adult, that is, me - 250 gr. and three children's pieces - 125 g each. Nobody took...
I lit the stove, put on a 7-liter saucepan, let the water boil, and threw in dry blueberry and strawberry herbs. She cut a thin piece of bread, spread a lot of mustard and salted it very strongly. They sat down, ate, drank a lot of tea and went to bed. And at 6 o’clock in the morning I put on trousers, a hat, a jacket, a coat, and go to take my turn. The store just opens at 8, and the line is long and 2-3 people wide - you stand and wait, and the enemy plane flies slowly and low over Bolshoy Prospekt and fires from cannons, people run away, and then again stand in turn without panic - creepy ...
And for water, you put two buckets and a ladle on the sled, and you go to the Neva along Bolshoy Prospekt, line 20, to the Mining Institute. There is a descent to the water, you cut a hole, and you scoop water into buckets. And we help each other lift the sleigh with water up. It happens that you go halfway and spill water, you get wet and again you go, wet, to get water...

The umbilical cord was tied with black thread
The apartment is empty, except for us, everyone has gone to the front. And so on day after day. Nothing from my husband. And then came the fateful night of 7/IV 1942. One in the morning, contractions. While I dressed my three children, I packed my laundry into a suitcase, tied my two sons to a sled so they wouldn’t fall - I took them to the yard to the trash heap, and left my daughter and suitcase in the gateway. And she gave birth... in her pants...
I forgot that I have children outside. She walked slowly, holding on to the wall of her house, quietly, afraid to run over the little one...
And in the apartment it’s dark, and in the corridor there’s water dripping from the ceiling. And the corridor is 3 meters wide and 12 meters long. I walk quietly. She came, quickly unbuttoned her pants, wanted to put the baby on the ottoman and lost consciousness from pain...
It’s dark, cold, and suddenly the door opens and a man comes in. It turned out that he was walking through the yard, saw two children tied to a sled, and asked: “Where are you going?” And my five-year-old Kostya says: “We’re going to the maternity hospital!”
“Eh, children, your mother probably brought you to your death,” the man suggested. And Kostya says: “No.” The man silently took up the sled: “Where should I take it?” And Kostyukha is in command. A man looks, and there’s another sled, another child...
So I took the children home, and at home I lit a cinder in a saucer, a varnish wick - it smokes terribly. He broke a chair, lit the stove, put a pot of water - 12 liters, ran to the maternity hospital... And I got up, reached for the scissors, and the scissors were black with soot. Wicky trimmed and cut the umbilical cord in half with such scissors... I said: “Well, Fedka, half is for you, and the other for me...” I tied his umbilical cord with black thread number 40, but not mine...
Even though I gave birth to my fourth, I didn’t know anything. And then Kostya took out from under the bed the book “Mother and Child” (I always read at the end of the book how to avoid unwanted pregnancy, but then I read the first page - “Childbirth”). Got up, the water warmed up. I tied up Fyodor’s umbilical cord, cut off the extra piece, smeared it with iodine, and didn’t put anything in his eyes. I could hardly wait for the morning. And in the morning the old woman came: “Oh, you didn’t even go for bread, give me the cards, I’ll run.” The coupons were cut off for a decade: from the 1st to the 10th, but there remained the 8th, 9th and 10th - 250 grams. and three 125 gr. For a three days. So the old lady didn’t bring us this bread... But on IV 9/4 I saw her dead in the yard - so there’s nothing to blame her for, she was a good person...
I remember the three of us were chopping ice, holding a crowbar in our hands, counting: one, two, three - and they lowered the crowbar and chopped off all the ice - they were afraid of infection, and the military threw ice into the car and took it to the Neva so that the city would be clean...
The man through the door said, “The doctor will come tomorrow morning.” The old woman went to buy bread. The sister came from the maternity ward and shouted: “Where are you, I have the flu!” And I shout: “Close the door on the other side, it’s cold!” She left, and five-year-old Kostya stood up and said: “The porridge is cooked!” I got up, lit the stove, and the porridge froze like jelly. On April 5, I bought a large bag of semolina at the Haymarket for 125 grams of bread. A man walked with me from Sennaya Square to the house, saw my children, took a coupon for 125 grams. bread and left, and I started cooking the porridge, but the porridge never thickened, although I poured all the cereal into a three-liter saucepan...

Freeloader, or maybe victory
So we ate this porridge without bread and drank a 7-liter pot of tea, I dressed Fedenka, wrapped her in a blanket and went to the Vedeman maternity hospital on the 14th line. Brought it, mommies - not a soul. I say: “Treat your son’s belly button.” The doctor responded: “Go to the hospital, then we’ll treat you!” I say: “I have three children, they were left alone in the apartment.” She insists: “Still lie down!” I yelled at her, and she called the head doctor. And the head doctor yelled at her: “Treat the child and give a certificate to the registry office for birth certificates and a child’s card.”
She turned the child around and smiled. The umbilical cord, which I tied, praised: “Well done, mom!” She noted the baby's weight - 2.5 kg. She put drops in her eyes and gave all the information. And I went to the registry office - it was located on the 16th line, in the basement of the executive committee. The queue is huge, people are standing behind documents for the dead. And I’m walking with my son, the people make way. Suddenly I hear someone shouting: “You’re carrying a freeloader!” And others: “It brings victory!”
They wrote out the metrics and a certificate for the child’s card, congratulated me, and I went to the chairman of the executive committee. I went up the wide stairs and saw an old man sitting at a table with a telephone in front of him. He asks where and why I am going. I answer that I gave birth to a son at one in the morning, and there are three more children at home, in the corridor there is ankle-deep water, and in the room there are two front walls, and half-wet pillows are stuck to them, and slurry is creeping from the walls...
He asked: “What do you need?” I answered: “My eight-year-old daughter, sitting under the arch on a sled at night, got cold, she should go to the hospital.”
He pressed some button, three girls came out military uniform, as if on command, they ran up to me, one took the child, and two took me by the arms and took me home. I burst into tears, suddenly tired, I barely made it home...
On the same day we were moved to another apartment on our own stairs - the fourth floor. The stove is in working order, two glasses from ours are inserted into the window bookcase, and on the stove there is a 12-liter pan with hot water. The antenatal clinic doctor, who also came to the rescue, began to wash my children, the first - Miletta - bare head, not a single hair... The same with my sons - skinny, scary to look at...
At night there is a knock on the door. I open the door and my sister Valya is standing in the doorway - she was walking from the Finland Station. There is a bag behind my shoulders. They opened it, oh my God: pure rye bread, soldier's bread, a loaf - a fluffy brick, a little sugar, cereal, sour cabbage...
She is a soldier in an overcoat. And a feast like a mountain, what happiness!..
The radio worked for 24 hours. During shelling - signal, go to shelter. But we did not leave, although our area was shelled several times a day from long-range guns. But the planes didn’t spare bombs, there were factories all around...

Eyes overgrown with moss
26/IV - 1942 - Miletta died at one in the morning, and at six in the morning the radio announced that the bread quota had been increased. Workers - 400 grams, children - 250 grams... Spent the whole day in queues. She brought bread and vodka...
She dressed Miletta in a black silk suit... She was lying on the table in a small room, I came home, and my two sons - seven years old Kronid and five years old Kostya - were lying drunk on the floor - half of the little one had been drunk... I got scared and ran to the second floor to the janitor - her daughter graduated from medical school. She came with me and, seeing the children, laughed: “Let them sleep, it’s better not to disturb them”...
9/V - 1942 My husband came on foot from the Finland Station for a day. We went to the zhakt to get a cart and a certificate for the funeral at the Smolensk cemetery. Besides my baby, there were two unidentified corpses... One of the dead was dragged by the legs by the janitors and her head banged on the steps...
You couldn't cry in the cemetery. She carried Miletta and placed it neatly on the “woodpile” of the dead unknown woman...Miletta lay at home for 15 days, her eyes were overgrown with moss - she had to cover her face with a silk cloth...
At 8 o'clock in the evening, the husband left on foot to the station: he could not be late, otherwise he would end up in court, and the train ran only once a day.
6/V 1942 - went out for bread in the morning. I come, and Kronid is unrecognizable - he’s swollen, he’s become very fat, he looks like a Vanka-Vstanka doll. I wrapped him in a blanket and dragged him to the 21st line to the consultation, and there it was closed. Then she carried him to line 15, where the door was also locked. I brought it back home. She ran to the janitor and called the doctor. The doctor came, looked and said that this was the third degree of dystrophy...
There's a knock on the door. I open: two orderlies from the Krupskaya hospital - about my daughter. I closed the door in their face, and they knocked again. And then I came to my senses, my daughter was gone, but Kronya, Kronechka, was alive. I opened the door and explained that my son needed to go to the hospital. She wrapped him in a blanket and went with them, taking the metrics and the child's card.
In the waiting room, the doctor tells me: “You have a daughter.” I answer: “The daughter died, but the son is sick...” The son was taken to the hospital...
There are no tears, but my soul is empty, creepy. Kostyukha is quiet, kisses me and looks after Fedya, and Fedya lies in the children’s galvanized bathtub...
On the radio they say: “Every Leningrader should have a vegetable garden.” All public gardens have been turned into vegetable gardens. Carrot, beet, and onion seeds are given free of charge. We have onions and sorrel planted on Bolshoy Prospekt. There was also an announcement on the radio: you can get a pass to Berngardovka, to Vsevolozhsk, and Valya works there in my hospital. I'm going to the 16th police station, to the chief. He writes me a pass, and I ask him for a nanny while I’m leaving. And he calls a woman - Rein Alma Petrovna and asks her: “Will you go as her nanny?”, pointing at me. She has three sons: one is seven, the second is five years old, and the third is a newborn...
She went to my house. And I’m on foot to the Finland Station. The train was traveling at night, there was shelling. I arrived in Vsevolozhsk at five in the morning: the sun, the leaves on the trees were blooming. Valin hospital is a former pioneer camp.

Across the river, in the gazebo...
I’m sitting on the bank of the river, the birds are singing, there’s silence... Just like in peacetime. Some grandfather came out of the house with a shovel. He asks: “Why are you sitting here?” I explain: “Well, I came to dig a garden, but I don’t know how to hold a shovel in my hands.” He gives me a shovel, shows me how to dig, and he sits down and watches me work.
His land is light and well-groomed, and I try. I dug up a large area, and then my Valya came: she was carrying bread and half a liter of black currants...
I sat down, little by little I plucked some bread, ate some berries, and washed it down with water. My grandfather came up to me and said: “Write a statement - I’ll give you two rooms and a small room in the attic...

So I’m not far from here, but I took them out of the city. Fedenka was taken to a 24-hour nursery, and Kostyukha’s grandfather looked after him...
6/VI - 1942 Went to Leningrad for Kronid. He was discharged from the hospital with diagnoses of grade III dystrophy, paratyphoid fever, and osteomyelitis. Not a single hair on my head, but about 40 large white lice were killed. We sat at the station all day. I met women who explained: this is a cadaverous louse, it doesn’t run to a healthy person...
At five in the morning we got off the train. My son is heavy, I carry him in my arms, he can’t hold his head up. When we got to the house, Valya looked at him and cried: “He will die...” The doctor Irina Aleksandrovna came, gave an injection and left silently.
Kronya opened his eyes and said: “I’m great, I didn’t even wince.” And fell asleep...
And at 9 am the doctors came: the head physician of the hospital, a professor and a nurse, examined me and gave recommendations. We fulfilled them as best we could. But he still couldn’t hold his head up, he was very weak, he didn’t eat - he only drank milk. Day by day I got better a little...
I tried to make money. She made girls' tunics, subtracting from those that were made for men. And the customers brought me some stew, some porridge. And I sewed everything as best I could.
I sewed a gray suit for my blond Suit at home. One day I was at work, and so as not to get bored, he sang loudly and loudly: “ Partisan units are occupying the cities." Hospital doctors were sitting in a gazebo across the river, they heard a clear child's voice and could not stand it, they ran across the river along a log, asked them to sing again, and treated them to candy...

Fedora took the already hopeless man from the nursery
My husband came on leave and said that he was being transferred from sapper to driver in Leningrad. “I’m a sailor,” he said. “And I don’t know steam locomotives.” The boss even hugged him: “This is even better: take the new boat to the Central Park of Culture and Culture, load it onto a freight train and off to Ladoga!..”
6/VII 1942 We are going to Leningrad. Kronya should be admitted to the hospital, but I donate blood - I need to feed the children... I sit with my sons at the Institute of Blood Transfusion - where donors are fed lunch. We are sipping the soup, and the war correspondent films us and, smiling, says: “Let the front-line soldiers see how you are here in Leningrad...” Then we go to the Rauchfus hospital. There they take my documents, and Kronya goes into the ward. My son spent four months in the hospital...
A 26/VII 1942 Fedenka, Fedor Konstantinovich, died. I took him from the nursery, already hopeless. He died like an adult. He screamed somehow, took a deep breath and straightened up...
I wrapped him in a blanket - an envelope, very beautiful, silk, and took him to the police, where they wrote out a funeral certificate... I took him to the cemetery, picked flowers here, they put him in the ground without a coffin and buried him... I couldn’t even cry...
On the same day I met the doctor of Fedya kindergarten - the kindergarten of the Baltic Shipping Company. She told me that her son had died, we hugged and kissed...

To Ladoga
On July 1, 1942, I came to the personnel department of the shipping company. She said: she buried her daughter and son. And my husband serves in Ladoga. I asked to become a sailor. She explained: I don’t need cards, I’m a donor, I get a work card, but I need a permanent pass to Ladoga. He took the passport, stamped it, and wrote out a pass to Osinovets, the Osinovets lighthouse. I issued a permanent ticket for the second carriage of the train going there - free of charge, and on the 10th I arrived at my destination. They let me through to the port. They explained to me that the boat carrying evacuees and food (they managed to unload the cargo well) sank to the bottom during the bombing. And the crew - the captain, mechanic and sailor - escaped and swam out. Then the boat was raised, and now it is under repair...
The boats usually went to Kobona, carrying live cargo... From time to time I went to the city. But I couldn’t take even a grain, even a speck of flour with me - if they found it, I would immediately be shot. Over the pier, where there are sacks of cereal, peas, flour, an airplane will fly low, make a hole, supplies will spill into the water - disaster!
My Kostya made sourdough and baked pancakes - the whole pier came to us. Finally, the head of the port ordered to supply us with flour and butter. And then the loaders and the military took the soggy mass out of the water and onto the stove. They eat it, and then they twist their intestines and die... How many such cases have there been!
So I came to court again. I have two work cards: I give one to kindergarten, they are happy there, Kostyukha is well looked after, and I give the other card to Valya. When I go to my grandfather, who has our things, he pampers me with cabbage and berries. And he also gives me apples, I take them to Leningrad, to Krona’s hospital. I’ll treat the nanny, the doctor, deliver letters from Osinovets and back to Ladoga, to the port... So I’m spinning like a squirrel in a wheel. People’s smiles are a gift, and my husband is nearby...
27/VIII. Summer passed quickly. Ladoga is stormy, cold, windy, the bombing has intensified... We are sailing to Kobona. The cargo was unloaded, and the boat sank not far from the shore. This happened often, but this time the Epron team couldn’t lift the boat...
Kostya was sent to the water pumping station (Melnichny Ruchey station). He's on duty for 24 hours, he's free for two...
At that time, Kronya was transferred from the Rauchfus hospital to the hospital on Petrogradka, and was told that an operation would be performed there. They put him in the women's department. The women fell in love with him - they taught him to sew, knit...
At the end of December, Krone had a piece of her jaw removed, and in January she was told to take her home.
3/I 1943 Again I went to ask for housing, they offered me an empty house in Melnichny Ruchey. In this house the stove was lit - it smokes, there is a wonderful stove with a brick oven... And nearby the military dismantled the houses log by log and took them away, and they approached us, but we intimidated them, and they did not touch our house.

The ground is soft
Kronid and Kostyukha were taken home, and the kindergarten bought us cards. My husband Kostya is close to going down to work - he will cross the railway track, and there will be a water pump. While he is on watch for 24 hours, he will cut, split, dry, and bring home firewood.
To warm up the house, you have to fire the stove continuously. Warm, light, lots and lots of snow. My husband made a sled. On the way, a horse will pass by the house two or three times a day - children on a sled. They take with them a box, a broom, shovels - they will collect the horse’s “goods” and pile the manure near the porch - it will be useful for future plantings...
15/III 1943 A huge pile of manure has accumulated at the porch. "Leningradskaya Pravda" just published an article by Academician Lysenko that it is possible to grow a rich harvest of excellent potatoes from potato sprouts. To do this, you need to make a greenhouse, fill it with horse manure, then cover it with frozen soil and add snow. Cover with frames and plant sprouts after two to three weeks.
We had to remove five internal frames in the house, and they did something like what was written in the newspaper.
22/III 1943 The ground is soft. We bought a bowl full of sprouts from an old neighbor for 900 g of sweets. We spent a long time planting - it was a troublesome task...
5/VI 1943 The frosts were very severe, and the whole earth froze - it was a great pity for our labors. And now it’s time to plant cabbage, rutabaga, and beets. They dug day and night.
Opposite are two two-story houses. Former kindergarten of the Meat Processing Plant. No one guarded them, but no one touched them - state...
In Leningrad, I got hold of onion sets - these are the “onion” things: they last forever, once you plant them, they grow for several years. Onions are growing by leaps and bounds, but I don’t know how to sell, and I don’t have time - the market is far away. I’ll cut it into a basket and take it to the sailors. They wrote me a thank you note. Then they themselves came to me, carefully cut them with scissors and took them to their place...

Hope is born
...I haven’t taken up the diary for a long time - I didn’t have the time. I went to the doctors. They examine me, listen to how you are growing there, and I talk to you, stroke you - I dream that you will grow up affectionate, pretty, smart. And you seem to hear me. Kostya has already brought you a wicker crib - very beautiful, we are waiting for you with great joy. I know that you are my daughter, growing up, you know what Miletta was like...
I remember the blockade - it protects the brothers. I'll leave, and the three of them will be alone. As soon as the bombing begins, she will throw everyone under the bed... Cold, hunger, she will share her last crumbs with them. She saw me dividing bread, and she shared it too. He’ll keep a smaller piece for himself and more mustard, like me... It’s scary to be alone in a four-room apartment... Once a bomb exploded in the yard - glass from the neighboring house is falling down, and ours is staggering...
...I haven’t donated blood since May, because I know that it’s harmful to you, my beloved daughter. I went out to get some logs, neighbors were walking by, they were happy, the blockade had been broken...
The soldiers of the 63rd Guards Division gave my husband Kostya a new officer's fur coat. Full of people, noise, jokes, happiness! Is the blockade behind us?
2/II 1943 I tell Kostya: “Run for the doctor, it’s starting!” There is a 12-liter saucepan with warm boiled water on the stove, and water is already boiling in a 7-liter one. And yesterday, February 1, a doctor looked at me, put drops in my eyes, gave me iodine, a silk thread in a bag and said: “Don’t go to the hospital - it’s wildly cold there, and it’s all littered with dead people, and it’s located 4 kilometers from home.” ..."
The husband returned, his face was gone. He didn’t find a single person in the hospital - apparently they had quietly taken off at night... People told him that the weak were sent to the rear, and those who were stronger were sent to the front...
The contractions are already intolerable. The children are sleeping in the room, I’m standing in the trough, wearing Kostya’s shirt. He is opposite me, scissors at the ready... He’s already holding your head, you’re already in his arms... His face is bright... I take you in my arms. He cuts the umbilical cord, smears it with iodine, and ties it. There is a bath next to it. If you pour water on your head, your head is hairy. You yell, the children jump up, the father shouts to them: “Get in your place!”

He wraps you up and carries you to the bed...
I wash myself, Kostya takes me in his arms and also carries me to the bed. And he pours water out of the containers, washes the floor, washes his hands and comes to watch you sleep in the crib. Then he comes up to me, strokes my head, says good night, goes to sleep on the kitchen bench... The moon outside the window is huge...
In the morning, my husband tells me: “I didn’t sleep all night, listened to my daughter sniffle. And I thought: let’s call her Nadezhda, and we’ll think that Hope and joy await us. We’re lucky that he was there, took delivery, named you, and then everything was at sea...

Resin River
5/II 1944 Kostya was sent to Terijoki (translated from Finnish as the Resin River), and my mother Zoya, Dagmara and Lyusya came to see me from Udmurtia.
Zoya’s husband Ivan Danilovich Rusanov (they shared joy and sadness together for many years) was killed at the front...
Before the war, Ivan Danilovich and we were united by joint work: he was the chief engineer (graduated from the Forestry Academy), my Kostya was a mechanic, and I was a mechanic - I repaired and issued tools at the tool station at the Aleksandrovsky logging station. Mom Zoya and he got married on the eve of the war, in May, and left...
And now Ivan Danilovich is already lying somewhere in Sinyavino... And Kostya and I are young, healthy, but we lost our daughter and son, they were carried away by the blockade...
27/V 1944 We moved to Kostya in Terijoki. There are a lot of empty houses there. We settled in a small one with a veranda. Under the windows there is a garden, currant bushes, a well three steps from the porch. A huge barn and cellar - unexpectedly this cellar turned out to contain wine. Fifteen minutes to the station...
19/XI 1944 Kostya and I were invited to a holiday in honor of Artilleryman’s Day, we had to go to Leningrad. The children were put to bed - the train departed at three in the morning. Shortly before leaving, one military man brought us a bucket of gasoline. I covered the bucket with my basin, it stood next to the potatoes...
We arrived in the city, went to a meeting in honor of the holiday, and visited my mother. And then they didn’t know that our house in Terijoki caught fire. Fortunately, the children were not harmed - their neighbors saved them by pulling them out through the window. And when they pulled him out, the house collapsed. After the fire was extinguished by the arriving military, the following items were discovered missing: Kostya’s memory of her father - a heavy silver cigarette case, a box of bonds (maybe, of course, burned), and the military loaded the wine from the cellar onto a car and took it away.
They blamed everything on Kronya: as if he went with a candle to get potatoes, and a spark got into the gasoline...
November 20 - 1944 We got off the train, approached the house and saw ashes... Kostya says: “If only the children were alive, I don’t care about the rest!” It’s true: if we have an apartment in Leningrad, we won’t die. The neighbor comes out and reassures: “I have children, but without clothes, undressed...”
And they told how the house collapsed. They came up, and there was a 7-liter aluminum pan on the stove, like it was alive. They touched it and it fell apart. The box of wheat did not burn, but the grain turned out to be bitter...
We called the Leningrad military unit on Labor Square. Kostya called Valerian, he immediately took the car, loaded us up (and we took the frozen potatoes and two live rabbits and took them to Leningrad). In the city good people They put clothes on the children - at least they didn’t die, they just became very hungry.

Did you really survive the war?
We ate the rabbits and the potatoes. The children did not go to school because they were naked. And with railway Sergei Nikolaevich brought me work, collecting cartridges for street lighting, they paid me very little...
You'll stand in line for bran. If you stay overnight, they will give you enough bread in the morning. You soak the bread, the bran, scalded with boiling water, swells, mix the soaked bread and bran, crush frozen, boiled potatoes, and put it in a frying pan. Aroma in the rooms. Let’s eat and get to work collecting cartridges...
Finally the spring of 1945. Did we really survive the war?.. My husband and I went to Repino. They painted the beds and walls. They hired me as a management manager, at night I guarded the dachas of artists and performers - none of them lived there. The prisoners lived. Even one night they gave me a gun, unloaded. I put it on my right shoulder. And the prisoners are looking at me from the windows, cackling... The night ended, I came home and burst into tears. In the morning Kostya went to the board of directors to demand that they pay me off.
I'm still breastfeeding Nadya. We go to the bay with the whole family. Father and sons catch fish: perch and even pike perch. Shallow: fish gather near the stones, and there is a haze on the side of Kronstadt; naval sappers are clearing the fairway of mines. There are a lot of fish - we’ll collect a whole gas mask of little things, and we’ll string the big ones onto a branch and carry them over our shoulders. The shores are deserted, not a soul, but the sand is hot...
We take a bath and put the youngest Nadya in some water (she started early, at ten months). Cheerful, jumping, fussing, squealing, wants to catch a fish, but it runs away. The children laugh, and my father and I feel good...
Kostya is dragging two huge pike perch over his shoulder. We are walking along the alley, and a huge fellow comes towards us. First he looks at the pike perch, and then let’s hug! It turned out that Kostin is the head of the BGMP, captain. My husband was sailing with him on some ship...

• Leningraders. Siege diaries from the funds of the State Memorial Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad. - St. Petersburg: Lenizdat, 2014. - 704 p.

  Introduction

  The blockade from the horse's mouth

  Irina Muravyova

  The Museum of the Defense of Leningrad, created during the war, with the beginning of the “Leningrad affair” in 1949, was closed and liquidated in 1952.

  Forty years later, in 1989, the Leningrad Defense Museum was revived. And from the very first days, Leningraders began to bring diaries and memories of siege survivors and defenders of the city to its collections, along with other exhibits: handwritten and reprinted, photocopies and photocopies. They were brought by the authors themselves, who survived the siege, or by their children, relatives, acquaintances, and neighbors. Sometimes people left notebooks with diaries and memories at the museum guards, without including their phone number or address. Twenty-five years have passed, and documents from the war and blockade continue to arrive at the museum. Together with hundreds of war letters, they are stored in the museum's manuscript and documentary collections. Sometimes they are exhibited at exhibitions dedicated to the war and the siege.

  Adults and children, men and women, military and civilians recorded their perception of events, their experiences, their vision of what was happening. Laconic and detailed, with drawings and tablets, in small notebooks, in notebooks, albums and ledgers, with photographs, newspaper clippings and attached documents, these diaries are priceless documents of the era. They allow you not only to learn more fully and in detail the history of the blockade, but to practically become a witness to it in the present tense.

  Most handwritten diaries are difficult to read: decayed pages, faded ink or pencil, illegible handwriting of the author. Translating text from a manuscript into printed form is an extremely painstaking work that requires many hours, days, and months.

  Everyone can write, but only a few keep diaries. Why keep diaries? For what? Some people do this all their lives, others spend a long time gathering, thinking, and gradually getting involved. Still others are driven to this by strong emotional experiences and stress. For some, one or two lines are enough to describe what has accumulated in the soul. Others write in great detail. The authors of the diaries collected in this book began writing them in the first days of the war or a little later. But it is clear that it was the war and the blockade, the improbability of the surging experiences, their unprecedented nature that forced people to take up the diary. In these records there is a great need to express what has been experienced, to comprehend what is happening, to leave individual facts for memory.

  Holding someone else's diary in your hands, you can't help but wonder if the author wanted to make it public? Do we have the right to publish?

  But you soon become convinced: the author wanted the diary to be read. Moreover, some phrases, sometimes direct addresses to the future reader, indicate that the diaries were written in order to convey to loved ones, children, descendants - to us - an exceptional, incomparable siege experience.

  “In this book we will write down everything that the Leningraders, Kotya, dad and mom, experienced during the Great Patriotic War. Let the howl of a siren, the whistle of flying bombs, the roar of exploding land mines and the snake whistle of shells, disfiguring our beloved streets, houses, our native Leningrad hearths, burst from the pages of the book, let the cries of children orphaned in the winter of 1941-1942 be heard from its pages, the groans of those buried during the bombing of city citizens, recalling the great sacred revenge on the hated enemy, fanning the flame of hatred for damned fascism” (K.V. Mosolov).

  “I woke up and looked out from under the blanket. Cold. And quickly closed his head again. But I thought that I needed to write a diary, and quickly got up. It’s bad to write in the evening because there are a lot of people and they can interfere. And now no one will interfere” (Borya Kapranov).

  This book contains seven diaries: the diary of the chief engineer of the 8th (Dubrovskaya) hydroelectric power station, one of the largest in the USSR, Lev Khodorkov; diary of the head of the district health department of the Kirov region, Israel Nazimov; diary of the lecturer of the Political Department of the 42nd Army Vladimir Ge; diary of the interrogator of the military commandant's office of the Leningrad garrison Vladimir Kuznetsov; diary of a teacher at a vocational school at the Admiralty Plant, Konstantin Mosolov; a small diary of censor Sofia Neklyudova, mainly consisting of quotes, and a diary of a sixteen-year-old firefighting regiment fighter Bori Kapranov. This book also includes the memoirs of Zinaida Kuznetsova. On June 22, 1941, she turned 13 years old. It was from this day that her memories begin, more like a diary in terms of the accuracy and vividness of the events described. It seems that decades later Zina, as if through a wall, went through her blockade.

  These two “children’s” stories occupy a special place in the book.

  A worn notebook with yellowed, crumbling pages. On the first pages there are drawings: the Kremlin, a young drummer from the time of the Napoleonic wars, copies of posters by Galba and Muratov. Unstable handwriting of a schoolboy. This is the diary of Boris Kapranov. Two and a half months of blockade life, from October 14, 1941 to January 1, 1942. But what months these are! The forced departure of a family from their home in Kolpino, the Komsomol fire-fighting regiment, the Naval Political School... And the nightmare of December 1941 in a hostel for evacuees on Saltykov-Shchedrin Street.

  Borin's diary is a tragedy in which mental torment is often stronger than physical torment from hunger and cold. The boy writes that he will never forget the year 1941. But we will remember that terrible winter for him instead of him, because in February 1942, already in evacuation, Borya Kapranov will die.

  Thirteen-year-old Zina Kuznetsova. A little “steadfast tin soldier”, she takes care of her mother.

  “I had a thought: if they kill me, my mother will die of hunger. When the shelling ended, I began to get out and couldn’t, but I fought. I took small steps and climbed out. I found 4-5 stalks and 2-3 leaves there. I was so glad I got out and brought my mom lunch. It was already dark and it was a long way to go. But I got there by nightfall. I came, and my mother was barely breathing...”

  “At home I was greeted by a bitter picture. Mom almost always lay half asleep. I took out my saved ration and quickly tried to put it in her mouth. I heated the oil and poured it into her mouth as well. After a while she came to life and recognized me.”

  A typewritten version of Lev Abramovich Khodorkov's diary was brought to the museum by his son, Ilya Lvovich Khodorkov. Without exaggeration, the life of the city depended on Khodorkov’s activities. The first recordings were made in a dry telegraphic style. The most important facts and chronology of events are noted. One can feel the author's strong need to record everything that is happening. From the diary we learn how and under what conditions the Leningrad power engineers fought for each station so that bakeries could work, so that water could flow into houses at least occasionally, so that machines could work.

  “Severe frost. The steam line and water economizer of boiler No. 3 were frozen. Engineering staff gathered at the workshop manager. I give instructions on what to do. Vorontsov enters - a fireman is dying in the next room. We don't interrupt our activities. Barmaid. With a face bursting with fat, he says with a chuckle: “Where is the dying person, let him eat soup before he dies.” Everything is freezing. We need to save the equipment." “It’s heartbreaking to see what’s happening to our people. The golden people, who have grown up within 10-20 years, are dying.” “The water supply is frozen, there is no light, the restroom is not working, the baths are not working, there is hunger, there are sick, hungry, dead people all around.”

  The station, which was in direct line of sight of the Nazis, was destroyed by shelling and bombing, but it continued to operate, and this is due in no small part to Lev Khodorkov. The diary of Konstantin Vasilyevich Mosolov begins in 1943. He does not have the right to write about the work of a defense enterprise, so only a few facts tell us about the busy life of the plant. He keeps a diary together with his six-year-old son Kotya.

  “The fragments fell from the sky like peas and knocked on the roof, walls, and the pavement of the yard. The spotlights were shining. At 0.10 it became quieter, and we went home again. Kitty draws, mom reads a book, dad takes notes. Going to bed a little early - serious anxiety, with music. During alarms and shelling, it’s difficult to do anything like work, especially at night, and that’s why you write in this notebook.” But the calmness of these notes is apparent: “Perhaps we all have a quiet insanity based on the momentary expectation of death hanging over sheep, like over sheep, for a long time.”

  His photographs speak without words about how Mosolov experienced the first winter of the siege. The photographs from May 1941 and December 1942 show two completely different people.

  The lives of thousands of people also depended on the activities of Israel Veniaminovich Nazimov. Nazimov is a doctor. The naturalism of his descriptions is sometimes terrifying, but he, like other diarists, only records facts.

  Nazimov works in the most dangerous area of ​​Leningrad - Kirovsky, which was almost on the front line. It is no coincidence that residents of Stachek Avenue said: “We live on the same street as the Germans.”

  Nazimov’s diary is filled with searches for opportunities to save people and the city, to make life easier for suffering Leningraders. The diary of Vladimir Vasilyevich Kuznetsov is unique in its kind: it tells about the work of the garrison commandant’s office. We are encountering this side of military everyday life for the first time. Such a diary is a great success for blockade researchers. The diary talks about the fight against desertion and military crimes. Every day, faced with actions that fall under strict penalties - fines, prison sentences - V.V. Kuznetsov did not become embittered and even tries to understand the reasons for the offenses: “<...>This is the first real deserter in all this time. All the rest are not cowards after all. They were drunks, lovers, homesick for their families, or unwilling to serve where they served.” But there are also harsh lines: “The day before yesterday at the PRB, in front of the formation, five of the most qualified deserters were shot. They say it made an impression.”

  From the diary of V.V. Kuznetsov we also learn about the creation of the exhibition “Heroic Defense of Leningrad” in Salt Town, the prototype of the future Museum.

  Vladimir Nikolaevich Ge is a professional political worker. Pre-war practice of permanent public speakinğ also left its mark on keeping diary entries. Without fear that the diary might be read by someone from the authorities, the author boldly criticizes the situation in the army and the actions of the command. From the records we receive unique information about the first months of the war, about the peculiarities of the formation of a cavalry squadron in August 1941, about the warehouse security service, about the tragic facts of the work of the Road of Life, little described in the siege literature, and much more. Many of the entries are shocking: “I do not know of a single case of openly expressed political discontent, blaming the Soviet government for the misfortune that befell, grumbling or indignation. But in their position they had nothing to lose. And rare raids on trucks or carts carrying bread or food for the purpose of theft were an exception, caused by an acute feeling of hunger, which did not carry any signs of protest. Of course, there were anti-Soviet people among such a huge city, but they did not have a mass base, despite the seemingly “favorable” circumstances for this. People did not grumble, but made peace. People were not indignant, but clung to an invisible ray of hope. People hated the enemy; they saw him as the culprit of their disasters. People stubbornly, using their last strength, continued to work for the defense of the city. People died without protest and, I would say, without fear. Psychologically, they have already prepared themselves. Many buried themselves while still alive. I have heard some argue that they are not afraid that they will die in a few days, but are depressed that they will be thrown into the dustbin of the dead, like thousands of others before them. They were depressed by the thought that they would die, perhaps somewhere in the yard or on an unfamiliar street, that they would not be able to bury them, and that in a day, two, three they would be picked up strangers, will be thrown onto a truck filled with the bodies of the dead, and dumped somewhere outside the city in a pit dug by an excavator. And everyone understood that this was inevitable, that the authorities could not, were not able to change the situation.”

  The diary of censor Sofia Neklyudova looks like a collection of siege folklore. Here the tragic coexists with the comic. In her diary she writes down rumors, tales, and lines from letters she has seen. "Filmmakers on labor work to strengthen the city: “Let us go early today, otherwise we’ll be late for the bombing!”

  “The largest library in the world is probably those millions of books that burned in the Leningrad potbelly stoves.”

  “During the famine, many who lived long life together, they only recognized each other now. Husbands and fathers ate the rations of their wives and children. Sometimes sneaking, secretly, which was the cause of their death. Oh, this had to be experienced when thoughts did not give rest for a minute - to eat, to eat, even in a dream!

  “On the morning of the 1st I dreamed of lying in bed longer, reading, relaxing, but the impudent Germans (they became completely insolent) without warning, they shot into house 27, as our house was already entering and my bed began to do morning exercises...”

  “One Leningrad baby, when asked who he loves more, dad or mom, answered: “Dad, mom and lights out.”

  There are in these, such different diaries and general: this is a scrupulous, painful description of food standards, purchased with cards or, conversely, unredeemed products, a story about the days when nothing could be purchased in stores at all, not even bread, because there was none...

  In almost every diary we come across numbers of human losses. The data varies because the diarists did not know the true state of affairs in the city.

  Mosolov: “There are days about which entire books can be written, for example, about the day in the winter of 1942 when four people died in the Smirnovs’ apartment at once: a husband and wife, a daughter and a grandmother. Or about how, while going to work, during a 15-minute walk, I met sleighs with dead people on the road, 15-20 sleighs with 1-2-3 dead people. During these days, Leningraders died in the thousands—they say 30-40 thousand.”

  Khodorkov: “25/XII-41. They say up to 10,000 people die a day. In any case, many thousands die every day. 30/I-42 Conversations - 700,000-1,000,000 have already died of hunger, I don’t think that’s true, but no less than 300,000 in any case.”

  Kapranov: “31/XII-41. In Leningrad, they say, from 6 to 9 thousand people die a day.”

  Ge: “August 13, 1943. I think that at least a million people died in the city during this winter. Of the three million population after the evacuation and extinction by the summer of 1942, it seems that 800 thousand people remained.<...>... graves were dug out with excavators - pits for 30-40 thousand people. Three- and five-ton vehicles drove around the city with piled-up corpses..."

  Nazimov: “When will the mortality curve begin to fall? Today at the hospital. Volodarsky again 500 corpses. 60 corpses were accidentally discovered in one of the barricades. Corpses, corpses, corpses. How many are there? Thousands? Many, very many. They are everywhere - in the streets and squares, attics and basements, in houses and courtyards, near gates and front doors, in cesspools and restrooms. Everywhere and everywhere."

  Kuznetsova: “A horse fell near the hospital. I don't know why she died. In a short time it was cut into pieces and taken away, but I had nothing with which to cut it, or I could not do it.”

  Ge: “...The horse stumbled again and this time fell backwards. Silence on the street, the slow movements of people suddenly give way to unusual animation, exclamations, swearing, and screams. Everyone rushed to the fallen horse. It is unknown where the ax came from; they even used pocket knives. The “butchering” of the horse’s corpse began. People push each other, snatching prey from their hands. After a few minutes, silence reigns again. The street is empty again."

  Khodorkov: “A coachman approaches a group of people: “T.t. bosses, help me, save me, some two people are pestering me, they want to kill a horse on the move, let’s go, we’ll drive it away!”

  The paths of these people actually crossed: Nazimov, Khodorkov and Kuznetsova’s memoirs describe the life of the Kirov region. V. N. Ge worked before the war at the Equality factory, also located in the Kirov region.

  Almost every blockade diary records the day of April 15, 1942, when the first tram after winter went through the streets of the city (Khodorkov: “I almost cried from excitement. Only we can know what it is - a tram in Leningrad”).

  And in every blockade diary, along with the Leningraders, there is another “character” - the city itself. Each diary can be called a declaration of love for Leningrad: “Although there was tension in the city, there was no destruction yet. People went to shelters. How dear and beautiful the city seemed then” (Kapranov). “...the night is beautiful. The moon illuminates the city. And in the houses of this big beautiful city, in different corners, people, adults and children, are trying to keep warm, using all means.” “White Leningrad nights, blossoming lindens and poplars, blooming bird cherry and lilac - how beautiful everything is outside the war and how sad, especially sad, to see these beauties of nature against the backdrop of difficult trials” (Nazimov).