The 872-day siege of Leningrad, Russia, resulted from the failure of the German Army Group North to capture Leningrad in the Eastern Front during World War II. The siege lasted from September 8, 1941, to January 27, 1944, and was one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history, devastating the city of Leningrad.
This sign is located near the western end of Nevsky Prospekt and reads "Citizens! During artillery bombardment this side of the street is especially dangerous". The white plaque reads "In memory of the heroism and courage of the people of Leningrad during the 900-day siege of the city this inscription is preserved". The blue paint is refreshed every year on May 9.
Damage from one of 148,000 German shells and bombs dropped on Leningrad
As Soviet records during the war were incomplete, the ultimate number of casualties during the siege is disputed. The death toll of the siege varies anywhere from 600,000 to 2,000,000 deaths.[1] After the war, the Soviet government reported about 670,000 registered deaths from 1941 to January 1944, explained as resulting mostly from starvation, stress and exposure.[2]
Some independent studies suggest a much higher death toll of between 700,000 and 1.5 million, with most estimates putting civilian losses at around 1.1 to 1.3 million.[3][4] Many of these victims, estimated at being at least half a million, were buried in the Piskarevskoye Cemetery. Hundreds of thousands of civilians who were unregistered with the city authorities and lived in the city before the war, or had become refugees there, perished during the siege with no record at all. About half a million people, both military and civilians, from Latvia, Estonia, Pskov and Novgorod, fled from the advancing Nazis and came to Leningrad at the beginning of the war.[citation needed]
The flow of refugees to the city stopped with the beginning of the siege. During the siege, part of the civilian population was evacuated from Leningrad, although many died in the process. Unregistered people died in numerous air-raids and from starvation and cold while trying to escape from the city. Their bodies were never buried or counted under the severe circumstances of constant bombing and other attacks by the Nazi forces. The total number of human losses during the 29 months of the siege of Leningrad is estimated as 1.5 million, both civilian and military.[5] Only 700,000 people were left alive of a 3.5 million pre-war population. Among them were soldiers, workers, surviving children and women. Of the 700,000 survivors, about 300,000 were soldiers who came from other parts of the country to help in the besieged city. By the end of the siege, Leningrad had become an empty "ghost-city" with thousands of ruined and abandoned homes.[citation needed]
Food shortages
A victim of starvation in Leningrad suffering from dystrophia in 1941Leningrad receiving grain supplies in 1942. Photographer unknownBread ration card
Rations were reduced on September 2: manual workers had 600grams of bread daily; state employees, 400grams; and children and dependents (other civilians), 300grams per day.
After heavy German bombing in August, September, and October 1941, all main food warehouses were destroyed and burned in massive fires. Huge amounts of stored food reserves, such as grain, flour and sugar, as well as other stored food, were completely destroyed. In one instance, melted sugar from the warehouses had flowed through the floors into the surrounding soil. Desperate citizens began digging up the frozen earth in an attempt to extract the sugar. This soil was on sale in the 'Haymarket' to housewives who tried to melt the earth to separate the sugar or to others who merely mixed this earth with flour.[6] The fires continued all over the city, due to the Germans bombing Leningrad non-stop for many months using various kinds of incendiary and high-explosive devices during 1941, 1942, and 1943.
In the first days of the siege, people finished all leftovers in "commercial" restaurants, which used up to 12% of all fats and up to 10% of all meat the city consumed. Soon all restaurants closed, and food rationing became the only way to save lives, rendering money obsolete. The carnage in the city from shelling and starvation (especially in the first winter) was appalling. At least nine of the staff at the seedbank set up by Nikolai I. Vavilov starved to death surrounded by edible seeds so that its more than 200,000 items would be available to future generations.[7]
It was calculated that the provisions both for army and civilians would last as follows (on September 12, 1941):
Grain and flour (35 days)
Groats and pasta (31 days)
Meat and livestock (33 days)
Fats (45 days)
Sugar and confectionery (60 days)
On the same day, another reduction of food took place: the workers received 500grams of bread; employees and children, 300grams; and dependants, 250grams. Rations of meat and groats were also reduced, but the issue of sugar, confectionery and fats was increased instead. The army and the Baltic Fleet had some emergency rations, but these were not sufficient, and were used up in weeks. The flotilla of Lake Ladoga was not well equipped for war, and was almost destroyed in bombing by the German Luftwaffe. Several barges with grain were sunk in Lake Ladoga in September 1941 alone, later recovered from the water by divers.
This grain was delivered to Leningrad at night, and was used for baking bread. When the city ran out of reserves of malt flour, other substitutes, such as finished cellulose and cotton-cake, were used. Oats meant for horses were also used, while the horses were fed wood leaves. When 2,000 tons of mutton guts had been found in the seaport, a food grade galantine was made of them. When the meat became unavailable, it was replaced by that galantine and by stinking[clarification needed]calf skins, which many survivors remembered until the end of their lives. During the first year of the siege, the city survived five food reductions: two reductions in September 1941, one in October, and two reductions in November. The latter reduced the daily food consumption to 250grams daily for manual workers and 125grams for other civilians.
The effects of starvation led to the consumption of zoo animals and household pets.[8] Much of the wallpaper paste in the buildings was made from potato starches. People began to strip the walls of rooms, removing the paste, and boiling it to make soup. Old leathers were also boiled and eaten.[8] The extreme hunger drove some to eat the corpses of the dead who had been largely preserved by the below freezing temperatures.[8] Reports of cannibalism began to appear in the winter of 1941–42 after all food sources were exhausted, but stayed comparatively low given the high amounts of starvation.[8] Meat patties, made from minced human flesh went on sale in the 'Haymarket' in November 1941,[9] leading to the banning of ground meat sales in the city.[8] Many bodies brought to cemeteries in the city were missing parts.[9]Starvation-level food rationing was eased by new vegetable gardens that covered most open ground in the city by 1942.[citation needed]
Civilian population evacuation
Almost all public transportation in Leningrad was destroyed as a result of massive air and artillery bombardments in August–September 1941. Three million people were trapped in the city. Leningrad, as a main military-industrial center in Russia, was populated by military-industrial engineers, technicians, and other workers with their civilian families. The only means of evacuation was on foot, with little opportunity to do so before the expected encirclement by the Wehrmacht and Finnish forces.
86 major strategic industries were evacuated from the city. Most industrial capacities, engines and power equipment, instruments and tools, were moved by the workers. Some defense industries, such as the LMZ, the Admiralty Shipyard, and the Kirov Plant, were left in the city, and were still producing armor and ammunition for the defenders.
Evacuation was organized by Kliment Voroshilov and Georgi Zhukov and was managed by engineers and workers of Leningrad's 86 major industries, which were themselves also evacuated from the city, by using every means of transportation available.
The evacuation operation was managed in several 'waves' or phases:
The 'First wave' was from June to August 1941; 336,000 civilians, mostly children, managed to escape because they were taken in, and evacuated with the 86 industries that were dismantled and moved to Northern Russia and Siberia.
The 'Second wave', from September 1941 to April 1942: involved 659,000 civilians who were evacuated mainly by watercraft and the ice road over lake Ladoga east of Leningrad.
The 'Third wave', from May 1942 to October 1942: 403,000 civilians were evacuated, mainly through the waterways of lake Ladoga east of Leningrad.
The total number of civilians evacuated was about 1.4 million, mainly women, children and personnel essential to the war effort.[10]
Urban damage
Severe destruction of homes was caused by the Nazi bombing, as well as by daily artillery bombardments. Major destruction was done during August and September 1941, when artillery bombardments were almost constant for several weeks in a row. Regular bombing continued through 1941, 1942, and 1943. Most heavy artillery bombardments resumed in 1943, and increased six times in comparison with the beginning of the war. Hitler and the Nazi leadership were angered by their failure to take Leningrad by force. Hitler's directive No. 1601 ordered that "St. Petersburg must be erased from the face of the Earth" and "we have no interest in saving lives of the civilian population."[11]
In a street of Leningrad after German air raidCivilians evacuating a bombed building
The siege of Leningrad's blockade lasted about 900 days. The city sustained damage due to artillery attacks, air raids, and the struggle of famine. Although the city took significant damage, Alexander Werth, a Leningrad native, claims the city took less damage than any other major city affected by the war. Cities like Rotterdam, Warsaw, and Coventry sustained far more damage than Leningrad did. Leningrad suffered less damage than most German occupied USSR cities, such as Stalingrad, which later was burned to ashes. The damages might not be catastrophic, but they were significant, German artillery and bombers destroyed 16% of the city's housing. They also targeted their infrastructure, destroying streets and water and sewage pipes. Nearly half of the schools were wiped out and 78% of the hospitals. Not all houses were destroyed but every single structure had some kind of damage to it that gives each house a historic-artistic value.[12]
Since the city was blockaded, nothing could move in or out of the city. The only time people could get food delivered was when Lake Ladoga froze over and soldiers could come in to help the civilians. Public utilities were completely cut off from Leningrad.[13]
Following Germany's capitulation in May 1945, a concerted effort was made in Germany to search for the collections removed from the museums and palaces of Leningrad's surrounding areas during the war. In September 1945, the Leningrad Philharmonic returned to the city from Siberia, where it was evacuated during the war, to give its first peacetime concert performances. For the defense of the city and tenacity of the civilian survivors of the siege, Leningrad was the first city in the Soviet Union to be awarded the title of Hero City in 1945.
Siege commemoration
Economic and human losses caused incalculable damage to the city's historic sites and cultural landmarks, with much of the damage still visible today. Some ruins are preserved to commemorate those who gave their lives to save the city. As of 2007, there were still empty spaces in St. Petersburg suburbs where buildings had stood before the siege.
Siege influence on cultural expression
The siege caused major trauma for several generations after the war. Leningrad/St. Petersburg as the cultural capital, suffered incomparable human losses and the destruction of famous landmarks. While conditions in the city were appalling and starvation was constantly with the besieged, the city resisted for nearly three years.
The siege of Leningrad was commemorated in the late 1950s by the Green Belt of Glory, a circle of public parks and memorials along the historic front line. Warnings to citizens of the city as to which side of the road to walk on to avoid the German shelling can still be seen (they were restored after the war). Russian tour guides at Peterhof, the palaces near St. Petersburg, report that it is still dangerous to go for a stroll in the gardens during a thunderstorm, as German artillery shrapnel embedded in the trees attracts lightning.
The siege in music
Dmitri Shostakovich wrote the Seventh Symphony, some of which was written under siege conditions, for the Leningrad Symphony. According to Solomon Volkov, whose testimony is disputed,[by whom?] Shostakovich said "it's not about Leningrad under siege, it's about the Leningrad that Stalin destroyed and that Hitler nearly finished off".
American singer Billy Joel wrote a song called "Leningrad" that referred to the siege. The song is partially about a young Russian boy, Viktor, whose father has died.
The Decemberists wrote a song called "When the War Came" about the heroism of civilian scientists. The lyrics state: "We made our oath to Vavilov/We'd not betray the solanum/The acres of asteraceae/To our own pangs of starvation". Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov was a Russian botanist whose laboratory, a seedbank containing 200,000 types of plant seeds, many of them edible, was preserved throughout the siege.
Italian melodic death metal band Dark Lunacy's 2006 album 'The Diarist' is about the siege.
A line in the song 'Scared', by the Canadian band 'The Tragically Hip', references Russian efforts to save paintings during the siege of Leningrad. "You're in Russia ... and more than a million works of art...are whisked out to the woods...When the Nazis find the whole place dark...they'd think God's left the museum for good."
Dutch death metal band Hail of Bullets' song, "The Lake Ladoga Massacre", from their album "...Of Frost and War" is about the siege.
American author Debra Dean's The Madonnas of Leningrad tells the story of staff of the Hermitage Museum who saved the art collection during the siege of Leningrad.
American playwright, Ivan Fuller, wrote a three-play cycle about various art forms that helped people survive the siege. Eating into the Fabric focuses on a theatre company rehearsing Hamlet during the siege. Awake in Me is the story of poet and radio announcer, Olga Bergholz. In Every Note focuses on Shostakovich composing the Seventh Symphony before being evacuated from Leningrad.
American author Elise Blackwell published a novel Hunger (2003), which provided an acclaimed historical dramatization of events surrounding the siege.
British author Helen Dunmore wrote an award-winning novel, The Siege (2001). Although fictitious, it traces key events in the siege, and shows how it affected those who were not directly involved in the resistance.
In 1981 Daniil Granin and Ales Adamovich published The Blockade Book which was based on hundreds of interviews and diaries of people who were trapped in the besieged city. The book was heavily censored by the Soviet authorities due to its portrayal of human suffering contrasting with the "official" image of heroism.
Kyra Petrovskaya Wayne, a Russian soldier and, later, writer, illustrated life in besieged Leningrad in Shurik: A Story of the Siege of Leningrad, which tells the story of an orphan whom Petrovskaya found and cared for during the siege.
Cory Doctorow's After The Siege is a science fiction story influenced by the author's grandmother's experiences during the siege.
City of Thieves by American writer David Benioff takes place in besieged Leningrad and its surroundings; it tells the story of two young Russians tasked with finding eggs by an NKVD colonel within six days.
Gillian Slovo's Ice Road written in 2004 is a fictional account of Leningraders from 1933 to during the siege. It has historical references and focuses on a number of people's quest for survival.
The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons, a novel about a young girl and her family. She lost all her family during the siege.
The Arab-Israeli author Emil Habibi also mentioned the siege in his short storyThe Love in my Heart (الحب في قلبي), part of his collection Sextet of the Six Days (سداسية الايام الستة). Habiby's character visits a graveyard containing the siege's victims and is struck by the power of a display he sees commemorating the children who died, it inspires him to write some letters in the voice of a Palestinian girl detained in an Israeli prison.
Ilya Mikson wrote a book inspired by the story and life of Tanya Savicheva.[14]
Catherynne M. Valente's Deathless, a 20th-century retelling of a Russian fairy tale, is set partly in Leningrad during the siege. Valente quotes Anna Akhmatova's poetry throughout the novel.
The siege in other art forms
Auteur film director Andrey Tarkovsky included multiple scenes and references to the siege in his semi-autobiographical film The Mirror.
At the time of his death in 1989, Sergio Leone was working on a film about the siege. It drew heavily on Harrison Salisbury's "The 900 Days", and was a week away from going into production when Leone died of heart failure.
Alexander Sokurov's 2002 film Russian Ark includes a segment which depicts a city resident building his own coffin during the siege.
The Continuation War, also known as the Second Soviet-Finnish War, was a conflict fought by Finland and Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union during World War II. It began with a Finnish declaration of war on 25 June 1941 and ended on 19 September 1944 with the Moscow Armistice. The Soviet Union and Finland had previously fought the Winter War from 1939 to 1940, which ended with the Soviet failure to conquer Finland and the Moscow Peace Treaty. Numerous reasons have been proposed for the Finnish decision to invade, with regaining territory lost during the Winter War regarded as the most common. Other justifications for the conflict include Finnish President Risto Ryti's vision of a Greater Finland and Commander-in-Chief Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim's desire to annex East Karelia.
Lake Ladoga is a freshwater lake located in the Republic of Karelia and Leningrad Oblast in northwestern Russia, in the vicinity of Saint Petersburg.
The Winter War was a war between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939, three months after the outbreak of World War II, and ended three and a half months later with the Moscow Peace Treaty on 13 March 1940. Despite superior military strength, especially in tanks and aircraft, the Soviet Union suffered severe losses and initially made little headway. The League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union from its organization.
The siege of Leningrad was a prolonged military siege undertaken by the Axis powers against the city of Leningrad on the Eastern Front of World War II. Germany's Army Group North advanced from the south, while the German-allied Finnish army invaded from the north and completed the ring around the city.
Tatyana Nikolayevna Savicheva, commonly referred to as Tanya Savicheva, was a Russian diarist who kept a diary in 1942 whilst enduring the siege of Leningrad during World War II. During the siege, Savicheva recorded the successive deaths of each member of her family in her diary, with her final entry indicating her belief to be the sole living family member. Although Savicheva was rescued and transferred to a hospital, she succumbed to intestinal tuberculosis in July 1944 at age 14.
Hero City is a Soviet honorary title awarded for outstanding heroism during World War II. It was awarded to twelve cities of the Soviet Union, today located in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Brest Fortress in Belarus was awarded the equivalent title of Hero Fortress. This symbolic distinction for a city corresponds to the individual distinction "Hero of the Soviet Union".
The Road of Life was the set of ice road transport routes across Lake Ladoga to Leningrad during the Second World War. They were the only Soviet winter surface routes into the city while it was besieged by the German Army Group North under Feldmarschall Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb.
Shlisselburg, formerly Oreshek (Орешек) (1323–1611) and Petrokrepost (Петрокрепость) (1944–1992), is a town in Kirovsky District, Leningrad Oblast, Russia, located at the head of the Neva River on Lake Ladoga, 35 kilometers (22 mi) east of St. Petersburg. Population: 13,170 (2010 Census); 12,401 (2002 Census); 12,589 (1989 Soviet census).
Leonid Aleksandrovich Govorov was a Soviet military commander. Trained as an artillery officer, he joined the Red Army in 1920. He graduated from several Soviet military academies, including the Military Academy of Red Army General Staff. He participated in the Winter War of 1939–1940 against Finland as a senior artillery officer.
The Baltic Sea campaigns were conducted by Axis and Allied naval forces in the Baltic Sea, the Gulf of Bothnia, the Gulf of Finland and the connected lakes Ladoga and Onega on the Eastern Front of World War II. After early fighting between Polish and German forces, the main combatants were the Kriegsmarine and the Soviet Navy, with Finland supporting the Germans until 1944 and the Soviets thereafter. The Swedish Navy and merchant fleet played important roles, and the British Royal Navy planned Operation Catherine for control of the Baltic Sea and its exit choke point into the North Sea.
Operation Iskra, a Soviet military operation in January 1943 during World War II, aimed to break the Wehrmacht's siege of Leningrad. Planning for the operation began shortly after the failure of the Sinyavino Offensive. The German defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad in late 1942 had weakened the German front. By January 1943, Soviet forces were planning or conducting offensive operations across the entire German-Soviet Front, especially in southern Russia; Iskra formed the northern part of the wider Soviet 1942–1943 winter counteroffensive.
The Vyborg–Petrozavodsk offensive or Karelian offensive was a strategic operation by the Soviet Leningrad and Karelian Fronts against Finland on the Karelian Isthmus and East Karelia fronts of the Continuation War, on the Eastern Front of World War II. The Soviet forces captured East Karelia and Vyborg/Viipuri. After that, however, the fighting reached a stalemate.
Saint Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia, after Moscow and the fourth most populous city in Europe.
The city of Saint Petersburg was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on 27 May 1703. It became the capital of the Russian Empire and remained as such for more than two hundred years. Saint Petersburg ceased being the capital in 1918 after the October Coup.
The Hunger Plan was a partially implemented plan developed by Nazi bureaucrats during World War II to seize food from the Soviet Union and give it to German soldiers and civilians. The plan entailed the genocide by starvation of millions of Soviet citizens following Operation Barbarossa, the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. The plan created a famine as an act of policy, killing millions of people.
Naval Detachment K was a Finnish military detachment—specifically, a flotilla that operated on Lake Ladoga during World War II.
The Sinyavino offensive was an operation planned by the Soviet Union in the summer of 1942 with the aim of breaking the siege of Leningrad, which had begun the previous summer, to establish a reliable supply line to Leningrad. At the same time, German forces were planning Operation Northern Light to capture the city and link up with Finnish forces. To achieve that heavy reinforcements were arriving from Sevastopol, which the German forces captured in July 1942. Both sides were unaware of the other's preparations, and this made the battle unfold in an unanticipated manner for both sides.
Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 had its Leningrad première on 9 August 1942 during the Second World War, while the city was under siege by the Nazi German forces.
The Einsatzstab Fähre Ost, referred to as EFO, was a German naval detachment operated by the Luftwaffe during the Second World War. It saw action on Lake Ladoga supporting other Axis units in the Siege of Leningrad.
Saving Leningrad, also known as Battle of Leningrad is a 2019 Russian war drama film written about the Road of Life, the tragedy of blood "barge 752", which took place on the night of September 16 to 17, 1941, at Lake Ladoga. During the evacuation of people from Leningrad, the barge was bombed by Nazi warplanes and went to the bottom, killing more than 1,000 people. At the same time, 460 people were killed in a barge towed by the gunship, "Selemdzha", which was carrying fuel and military supplies to Leningrad. Few were saved. The film takes place during the Eastern Front in World War II and focuses on the beginning of the Siege of Leningrad.
↑ Dondo, William A. (2012). "Russia and Soviet Famines 971-1947". In Dondo, William A. (ed.). Food and Famine in the 21st Century, Volume 1. ABC-CLIO. p.27. ISBN978-1598847307.
↑ Reagan, Geoffrey (1992). Military Anecdotes. Guinness Publishing. p.12. ISBN0-85112-519-0.
↑ Hartman, Carl (April 26, 1992). "Seed Bank Survived Leningrad Siege; Now, Budget Is The Threat". Philly.com. Associated Press. Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved 2015-12-15. Fifty years ago last winter, Dmitry S. Ivanov, who kept the rice collection at one of the world's biggest seed banks, died of starvation at his post during the siege of Leningrad in World War II. After his death, workmen found several thousand packs of rice that he had preserved. A.G. Stchukin, a specialist in peanuts, died at his desk. Liliya M. Rodina, keeper of the oat collection, and more than half a dozen others also succumbed. They all refused to eat from any of their collections of rice, peas, corn and wheat.
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