The day of the complete liberation of Leningrad from the fascist blockade. Dossier
The Siege of Leningrad was a siege of one of the largest Russian cities that lasted more than two and a half years, which was waged by the German Army Group North with the help of Finnish troops on the Eastern Front of World War II. The blockade began on September 8, 1941, when the last route to Leningrad was blocked by the Germans. Although on January 18, 1943, Soviet troops managed to open a narrow corridor of communication with the city by land, the blockade was finally lifted only on January 27, 1944, 872 days after it began. It was one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history and perhaps the most costly in terms of casualties.
Prerequisites
The capture of Leningrad was one of the three strategic goals of the German Operation Barbarossa - and the main one for Army Group North. This importance was determined by the political status of Leningrad as the former capital of Russia and the Russian Revolution, its military significance as the main base of the Soviet Baltic Fleet, and the industrial power of the city, where there were many factories producing army equipment. By 1939 Leningrad produced 11% of all Soviet industrial output. It is said that Adolf Hitler was so confident of the capture of the city that, on his orders, invitations had already been printed to celebrate this event at the Astoria Hotel in Leningrad.
There are various assumptions about Germany's plans for Leningrad after its capture. Soviet journalist Lev Bezymensky argued that his city was supposed to be renamed Adolfsburg and turned into the capital of the new Ingermanland province of the Reich. Others claim that Hitler intended to completely destroy both Leningrad and its population. According to a directive sent to Army Group North on September 29, 1941, “After the defeat of Soviet Russia there is no interest in the continued existence of this major urban center. [...] Following the encirclement of the city, requests for negotiations for surrender should be rejected, since the problem of moving and feeding the population cannot and should not be solved by us. In this war for our existence, we cannot have an interest in preserving even a part of this very large urban population." It follows that Hitler's final plan was to raze Leningrad to the ground and give the areas north of the Neva to the Finns.
872 days of Leningrad. In a hungry loop
Preparing the blockade
Army Group North was moving towards Leningrad, its main goal (see Baltic operation 1941 and Leningrad operation 1941). Its commander, Field Marshal von Leeb, initially thought to take the city outright. But due to Hitler’s recall of the 4th Panzer Group (chief of the General Staff Halder persuaded him to transfer it further south, so that Feodor von Bock could attack Moscow) von Leeb had to begin a siege. He reached the shore of Lake Ladoga, trying to complete the encirclement of the city and connect with the Finnish army of the marshal Mannerheim, waiting for him on the Svir River.
Finnish troops were located north of Leningrad, and German troops approached the city from the south. Both had the goal of cutting off all communications to the city’s defenders, although Finland’s participation in the blockade mainly consisted of recapturing lands lost in the recent Soviet-Finnish war. The Germans hoped that their main weapon would be hunger.
Already on June 27, 1941, the Leningrad Soviet organized armed detachments of civilian militias. In the coming days, the entire population of Leningrad was informed of the danger. More than a million people were mobilized to build fortifications. Several defense lines were created along the perimeter of the city, from the north and south, defended mainly by civilians. In the south, one of the fortified lines ran from the mouth of the Luga River to Chudov, Gatchina, Uritsk, Pulkovo, and then across the Neva River. Another line ran through Peterhof to Gatchina, Pulkovo, Kolpino and Koltushi. The line of defense against the Finns in the north (Karelian fortified area) had been maintained in the northern suburbs of Leningrad since the 1930s and has now been renewed.
As R. Colley writes in his book “The Siege of Leningrad”:
...By order of June 27, 1941, all men from 16 to 50 years old and women from 16 to 45 were involved in the construction of fortifications, except for the sick, pregnant women and those caring for babies. Those conscripted were required to work for seven days, followed by four days of “rest,” during which they were required to return to their regular workplace or continue their studies. In August, the age limits were expanded to 55 years for men and 50 for women. The length of work shifts has also increased - seven days of work and one day of rest.
However, in reality these norms were never followed. One 57-year-old woman wrote that for eighteen days in a row, twelve hours a day, she hammered the ground, “hard as stone”... Teenage girls with delicate hands, who came in summer sundresses and sandals, had to dig the ground and drag heavy concrete blocks , having only a crowbar ... The civilian population erecting defensive structures often found themselves in the bombing zone or were shot at by German fighters from strafing flight.
It was a titanic effort, but some considered it in vain, confident that the Germans would easily overcome all these defensive lines...
The civilian population constructed a total of 306 km of wooden barricades, 635 km of wire fences, 700 km of anti-tank ditches, 5,000 earthen and wooden and reinforced concrete bunkers and 25,000 km of open trenches. Even the guns from the cruiser Aurora were moved to the Pulkovo Heights, south of Leningrad.
G. Zhukov claims that in the first three months of the war, 10 voluntary militia divisions, as well as 16 separate artillery and machine-gun militia battalions, were formed in Leningrad.
…[City party leader] Zhdanov announced the creation of a “people’s militia” in Leningrad... Neither age nor health were an obstacle. By the end of August 1941, over 160,000 Leningraders, of which 32,000 were women, signed up for the militia [voluntarily or under duress].
The militias were poorly trained, they were given old rifles and grenades, and were also taught to make incendiary bombs, which later became known as Molotov cocktails. The first division of militia was formed on July 10 and already on July 14, practically without preparation, it was sent to the front to help the regular units of the Red Army. Almost all the militia died. Women and children were warned that if the Germans broke into the city, they would have to throw stones at them and pour boiling water on their heads.
... Loudspeakers continuously reported on the successes of the Red Army, holding back the onslaught of the Nazis, but kept silent about the huge losses of poorly trained, poorly armed troops...
On July 18, food distribution was introduced. People were given food cards that expired in a month. A total of four categories of cards were established; the highest category corresponded to the largest ration. It was possible to maintain the highest category only through hard work.
The 18th Army of the Wehrmacht accelerated its rush to Ostrov and Pskov, and the Soviet troops of the North-Western Front retreated to Leningrad. On July 10, 1941, Ostrov and Pskov were taken, and the 18th Army reached Narva and Kingisepp, from where it continued to advance towards Leningrad from the Luga River line. The German 4th Panzer Group of General Hoepner, attacking from East Prussia, reached Novgorod by August 16 after a rapid advance and, having taken it, also rushed to Leningrad. Soon the Germans created a continuous front from the Gulf of Finland to Lake Ladoga, expecting that the Finnish army would meet them halfway along the eastern shore of Ladoga.
On August 6, Hitler repeated his order: “Leningrad should be taken first, Donbass second, Moscow third.” From August 1941 to January 1944, everything that happened in the military theater between the Arctic Ocean and Lake Ilmen in one way or another related to the operation near Leningrad. Arctic convoys carried American Lend-Lease and British supplies along the Northern Sea Route to the railway station of Murmansk (although its railway connection with Leningrad was cut off by Finnish troops) and to several other places in Lapland.
Troops participating in the operation
Germany
Army Group North (Field Marshal von Leeb). It included:
18th Army (von Küchler): XXXXII Corps (2 infantry divisions) and XXVI Corps (3 infantry divisions).
16th Army (Bush): XXVIII Corps (von Wiktorin) (2 Infantry, 1 Panzer Division 1), I Corps (2 Infantry Divisions), X Corps (3 Infantry Divisions), II Corps (3 Infantry Divisions), (L Corps - from the 9th Army) (2 infantry divisions).
4th Panzer Group (Göpner): XXXVIII Corps (von Chappius) (1st Infantry Division), XXXXI Motorized Corps (Reinhardt) (1 infantry, 1 motorized, 1 tank divisions), LVI Motorized Corps (von Manstein) (1 infantry, 1 motorized, 1 tank, 1 tank-grenadier divisions).
Finland
Finnish Defense Forces HQ (Marshal Mannerheim). They included: I Corps (2 infantry divisions), II Corps (2 infantry divisions), IV Corps (3 infantry divisions).
Northern Front (Lieutenant General Popov). It included:
7th Army (2 rifle divisions, 1 militia division, 1 marine brigade, 3 motorized rifle and 1 tank regiment).
8th Army: Xth Rifle Corps (2 rifle divisions), XI Rifle Corps (3 rifle divisions), separate units (3 rifle divisions).
14th Army: XXXXII Rifle Corps (2 rifle divisions), separate units (2 rifle divisions, 1 fortified area, 1 motorized rifle regiment).
23rd Army: XIXth Rifle Corps (3 rifle divisions), Separate units (2 rifle, 1 motorized division, 2 fortified areas, 1 rifle regiment).
Luga operational group: XXXXI Rifle Corps (3 rifle divisions); separate units (1 tank brigade, 1 rifle regiment).
Kingisepp operational group: separate units (2 rifle, 1 tank division, 2 militia divisions, 1 fortified area).
Separate units (3 rifle divisions, 4 guard militia divisions, 3 fortified areas, 1 rifle brigade).
Of these, the 14th Army defended Murmansk, and the 7th Army defended areas of Karelia near Lake Ladoga. Thus, they did not take part in the initial stages of the siege. The 8th Army was originally part of the Northwestern Front. Retreating from the Germans through the Baltic states, on July 14, 1941 it was transferred to the Northern Front.
On August 23, 1941, the Northern Front was divided into the Leningrad and Karelian fronts, since the front headquarters could no longer control all operations between Murmansk and Leningrad.
Environment of Leningrad
Finnish intelligence had broken some of the Soviet military codes and was able to read a number of enemy communications. This was especially useful for Hitler, who constantly asked for intelligence information about Leningrad. The role of Finland in Operation Barbarossa was defined by Hitler’s “Directive 21” as follows: “The mass of the Finnish army will be given the task, together with the advance of the northern wing of the German armies, to bind the maximum of Russian forces with an attack from the west or from both sides of Lake Ladoga.”
The last railway connection with Leningrad was cut off on August 30, 1941, when the Germans reached the Neva. On September 8, the Germans reached Lake Ladoga near Shlisselburg and interrupted the last land road to the besieged city, stopping only 11 km from the city limits. The Axis troops did not occupy only the land corridor between Lake Ladoga and Leningrad. The shelling on September 8, 1941 caused 178 fires in the city.
Line of greatest advance of German and Finnish troops near Leningrad
On September 21, the German command considered options for the destruction of Leningrad. The idea of occupying the city was rejected with the instruction: “we would then have to supply food to the residents.” The Germans decided to keep the city under siege and bombard it, leaving the population to starve. “Early next year we will enter the city (if the Finns do this first, we will not object), sending those who are still alive to internal Russia or into captivity, erase Leningrad from the face of the earth, and hand over the area north of the Neva to the Finns " On October 7, 1941, Hitler sent another directive, reminding that Army Group North should not accept surrender from the Leningraders.
Finland's participation in the siege of Leningrad
In August 1941, the Finns approached 20 km to the northern suburbs of Leningrad, reaching the Finnish-Soviet border in 1939. Threatening the city from the north, they also advanced through Karelia to the east of Lake Ladoga, creating a danger to the city from the east. Finnish troops crossed the border that existed before the “Winter War” on the Karelian Isthmus, “cutting off” the Soviet protrusions on Beloostrov and Kiryasalo and thereby straightening the front line. Soviet historiography claimed that the Finnish movement stopped in September due to resistance from the Karelian fortified area. However, already at the beginning of August 1941, Finnish troops received orders to stop the offensive after achieving its goals, some of which lay beyond the pre-war 1939 border.
Over the next three years, the Finns contributed to the Battle of Leningrad by holding their lines. Their command rejected German entreaties to launch air attacks on Leningrad. The Finns did not go south of the Svir River in Eastern Karelia (160 km northeast of Leningrad), which they reached on September 7, 1941. In the southeast, the Germans captured Tikhvin on November 8, 1941, but were unable to complete the final encirclement of Leningrad by pushing further north , to connect with the Finns on Svir. On December 9, a counterattack by the Volkhov Front forced the Wehrmacht to retreat from its positions at Tikhvin to the line of the Volkhov River. Thanks to this, the line of communication with Leningrad along Lake Ladoga was preserved.
September 6, 1941 chief of the operational department of the Wehrmacht headquarters Alfred Jodl visited Helsinki in order to convince Field Marshal Mannerheim to continue the offensive. Finnish President Ryti, meanwhile, told his parliament that the purpose of the war was to regain areas lost during the "Winter War" of 1939-1940 and gain even more territory in the east, which would create a "Greater Finland". After the war, Ryti stated: “On August 24, 1941, I visited the headquarters of Field Marshal Mannerheim. The Germans encouraged us to cross the old border and continue the attack on Leningrad. I said that the capture of Leningrad was not part of our plans and that we would not take part in it. Mannerheim and War Minister Walden agreed with me and rejected the German proposals. As a result, a paradoxical situation arose: the Germans could not approach Leningrad from the north...”
Trying to whitewash himself in the eyes of the victors, Ryti thus assured that the Finns almost prevented the complete encirclement of the city by the Germans. In fact, German and Finnish forces held the siege together until January 1944, but there was very little systematic shelling and bombing of Leningrad by the Finns. However, the proximity of the Finnish positions - 33-35 km from the center of Leningrad - and the threat of a possible attack from them complicated the defense of the city. Until Mannerheim stopped his offensive (August 31, 1941), the commander of the Soviet Northern Front, Popov, could not release the reserves that stood against the Finnish troops on the Karelian Isthmus in order to turn them against the Germans. Popov managed to redeploy two divisions to the German sector only on September 5, 1941.
Borders of advance of the Finnish army in Karelia. Map. The gray line marks the Soviet-Finnish border in 1939.
Soon Finnish troops cut off the ledges at Beloostrov and Kiryasalo, which threatened their positions on the seashore and south of the Vuoksi River. Lieutenant General Paavo Talvela and Colonel Järvinen, the commander of the Finnish coastal brigade, responsible for the Ladoga sector, proposed to the German headquarters to block Soviet convoys on Lake Ladoga. The German command formed an “international” detachment of sailors under Finnish command (this included the Italian XII Squadriglia MAS) and the naval formation Einsatzstab Fähre Ost under German command. In the summer and autumn of 1942, these water forces interfered with communications with the besieged Leningraders along Ladoga. The appearance of ice forced the removal of these lightly armed units. They were never restored later due to changes in the front line.
City defense
The command of the Leningrad Front, formed after the division of the Northern Front in two, was entrusted to Marshal Voroshilov. The front included the 23rd Army (in the north, between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga) and the 48th Army (in the west, between the Gulf of Finland and the Slutsk-Mga position). It also included the Leningrad fortified area, the Leningrad garrison, the forces of the Baltic Fleet and the operational groups Koporye, Yuzhnaya (on the Pulkovo Heights) and Slutsk - Kolpino.
...By order of Voroshilov, units of the people's militia were sent to the front line just three days after formation, untrained, without military uniforms and weapons. Due to a shortage of weapons, Voroshilov ordered the militia to be armed with “hunting rifles, homemade grenades, sabers and daggers from Leningrad museums.”
The shortage of uniforms was so acute that Voroshilov addressed the population with an appeal, and teenagers went from house to house, collecting donations of money or clothing...
The shortsightedness of Voroshilov and Zhdanov had tragic consequences. They were repeatedly advised to disperse the main food supplies stored in the Badayev warehouses. These warehouses, located in the south of the city, extended over an area of one and a half hectares. The wooden buildings were closely adjacent to each other; almost all the city's food supplies were stored in them. Despite the vulnerability of the old wooden buildings, neither Voroshilov nor Zhdanov heeded the advice. On September 8, incendiary bombs were dropped on warehouses. 3,000 tons of flour burned, thousands of tons of grain turned to ash, meat was charred, butter melted, melted chocolate flowed into the cellars. “That night, molten burnt sugar flowed through the streets,” said one of the eyewitnesses. Thick smoke was visible for many kilometers away, and with it the hopes of the city disappeared.
(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)
By September 8, German troops had almost completely surrounded the city. Dissatisfied with Voroshilov's inability, Stalin removed him and replaced him for a time with G. Zhukov. Zhukov only managed to prevent the capture of Leningrad by the Germans, but they were not driven back from the city and laid siege to it for “900 days and nights.” As A.I. Solzhenitsyn writes in the story “On the Edges”:
Voroshilov failed the Finnish war, was removed for a while, but already during Hitler’s attack he received the entire North-West, immediately failed both it and Leningrad - and was removed, but again - a successful marshal and in his closest trusted circle, like the two Semyons - Tymoshenko and the hopeless Budyonny, who failed both the South-West and the Reserve Front, and all of them were still members of the Headquarters, where Stalin had not yet included a single Vasilevsky, neither Vatutina, – and of course everyone remained marshals. Zhukov - did not give a marshal either for the salvation of Leningrad, or for the salvation of Moscow, or for the Stalingrad victory. What then is the meaning of the title if Zhukov handled affairs above all the marshals? Only after the Leningrad blockade was lifted - he suddenly gave it.
Rupert Colley reports:
...Stalin was fed up with Voroshilov's incompetence. He sent Georgy Zhukov to Leningrad to save the situation... Zhukov was flying to Leningrad from Moscow under the cover of clouds, but as soon as the clouds cleared, two Messerschmitts rushed in pursuit of his plane. Zhukov landed safely and was immediately taken to Smolny. First of all, Zhukov handed Voroshilov an envelope. It contained an order addressed to Voroshilov to immediately return to Moscow...
On September 11, the German 4th Panzer Army was transferred from near Leningrad to the south to increase the pressure on Moscow. In desperation, Zhukov nevertheless made several attempts to attack the German positions, but the Germans had already managed to erect defensive structures and received reinforcements, so all attacks were repulsed. When Stalin called Zhukov on October 5 to find out the latest news, he proudly reported that the German offensive had stopped. Stalin recalled Zhukov back to Moscow to lead the defense of the capital. After Zhukov's departure, command of the troops in the city was entrusted to Major General Ivan Fedyuninsky.
(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)
Bombing and shelling of Leningrad
... On September 4, the first shell fell on Leningrad, and two days later it was followed by the first bomb. Artillery shelling of the city began... The most striking example of devastating destruction was the destruction of the Badayevsky warehouses and dairy plant on September 8. The carefully camouflaged Smolny did not receive a single scratch throughout the entire blockade, despite the fact that all neighboring buildings suffered from hits...
Leningraders had to stand guard on roofs and stairwells, keeping buckets of water and sand ready to extinguish incendiary bombs. Fires raged throughout the city, caused by incendiary bombs dropped by German planes. Street barricades, designed to block the way for German tanks and armored vehicles if they broke into the city, only impeded the passage of fire trucks and ambulances. It often happened that no one extinguished a building that was on fire and it burned out completely, because the fire trucks did not have enough water to douse the fire, or there was no fuel to get to the place.
(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)
The air attack on September 19, 1941 was the worst air raid that Leningrad suffered during the war. A strike on the city by 276 German bombers killed 1,000 people. Many of those killed were soldiers being treated for wounds in hospitals. During six air raids that day, five hospitals and the city's largest market were damaged.
The intensity of artillery shelling of Leningrad increased in 1942 with the delivery of new equipment to the Germans. They intensified even more in 1943, when they began to use shells and bombs several times larger than the year before. German shelling and bombing during the siege killed 5,723 civilians and injured 20,507 civilians. The aviation of the Soviet Baltic Fleet, for its part, made more than 100 thousand sorties against the besiegers.
Evacuation of residents from besieged Leningrad
According to G. Zhukov, “before the war, Leningrad had a population of 3,103,000 people, and with its suburbs - 3,385,000. Of these, 1,743,129, including 414,148 children, were evacuated from June 29, 1941 to March 31, 1943. They were transported to the regions of the Volga region, the Urals, Siberia and Kazakhstan.”
By September 1941, the connection between Leningrad and the Volkhov Front (commander - K. Meretskov) was cut off. The defensive sectors were held by four armies: the 23rd Army in the north, the 42nd Army in the west, the 55th Army in the south, and the 67th Army in the east. The 8th Army of the Volkhov Front and the Ladoga Flotilla were responsible for maintaining the communication route with the city across Ladoga. Leningrad was defended from air attacks by the air defense forces of the Leningrad Military District and the naval aviation of the Baltic Fleet.
The actions to evacuate residents were led by Zhdanov, Voroshilov and A. Kuznetsov. Additional military operations were carried out in coordination with the Baltic Fleet forces under the overall command of Admiral V. Tributs. The Ladoga flotilla under the command of V. Baranovsky, S. Zemlyanichenko, P. Trainin and B. Khoroshikhin also played an important role in the evacuation of the civilian population.
...After the first few days, the city authorities decided that too many women were leaving the city, while their labor was needed here, and they began to send the children alone. A mandatory evacuation was declared for all children under the age of fourteen. Many children arrived at the station or collection point, and then, due to confusion, waited four days for departure. The food, carefully collected by caring mothers, was eaten in the very first hours. Of particular concern were rumors that German planes were shooting down trains containing evacuees. The authorities denied these rumors, calling them “hostile and provocative,” but confirmation soon came. The worst tragedy occurred on August 18 at the Lychkovo station. A German bomber dropped bombs on a train carrying evacuated children. The panic began. An eyewitness said that there was a scream and through the smoke he saw severed limbs and dying children...
By the end of August, over 630,000 civilians were evacuated from Leningrad. However, the city's population did not decline due to refugees fleeing the German advance in the west. The authorities were going to continue the evacuation, sending 30,000 people a day from the city, however, when the city of Mga, located 50 kilometers from Leningrad, fell on August 30, the encirclement was practically completed. The evacuation stopped. Due to the unknown number of refugees in the city, estimates vary, but approximately there were up to 3,500,000 [people] within the blockade ring. There was only enough food left for three weeks.
(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)
Famine in besieged Leningrad
The two and a half year German siege of Leningrad caused the worst destruction and greatest loss of life in the history of modern cities. By order of Hitler, most of the royal palaces (Catherine, Peterhof, Ropsha, Strelna, Gatchina) and other historical attractions located outside the city’s defense lines were looted and destroyed, many art collections were transported to Germany. A number of factories, schools, hospitals and other civilian structures were destroyed by air raids and shelling.
The 872-day siege caused severe famine in the Leningrad region due to the destruction of engineering structures, water, energy and food. It led to the death of up to 1,500,000 people, not counting those who died during the evacuation. Half a million victims of the siege are buried at the Piskarevskoye Memorial Cemetery in Leningrad alone. Human losses in Leningrad on both sides exceeded those suffered in the Battle of Stalingrad, the Battle of Moscow and atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Siege of Leningrad became the deadliest siege in world history. Some historians consider it necessary to say that in its course genocide was carried out - “racially motivated famine” - an integral part of the German war of extermination against the population of the Soviet Union.
The diary of a Leningrad girl Tanya Savicheva with entries about the death of all members of her family. Tanya herself also died from progressive dystrophy shortly after the blockade. Her diary as a girl was shown at the Nuremberg trials
Civilians of the city especially suffered from hunger in the winter of 1941/42. From November 1941 to February 1942, only 125 grams of bread were given per person per day, which consisted of 50-60% sawdust and other non-food impurities. For about two weeks in early January 1942, even this food was available only to workers and soldiers. Mortality peaked in January–February 1942 at 100 thousand people per month, mostly from starvation.
...After several months there were almost no dogs, cats or birds left in cages in the city. Suddenly, one of the last sources of fat, castor oil, was in demand. His supplies soon ran out.
Bread baked from flour swept from the floor along with garbage, nicknamed the “siege loaf,” turned out black as coal and had almost the same composition. The broth was nothing more than boiled water with a pinch of salt and, if you were lucky, a cabbage leaf. Money lost all value, as did any non-food items and jewelry—it was impossible to buy a crust of bread with family silver. Even birds and rodents suffered without food until they all disappeared: they either died of hunger or were eaten by desperate people... People, while they still had strength left, stood in long lines for food, sometimes for whole days in the piercing cold, and often returned home empty-handed, filled with despair - if they remained alive. The Germans, seeing the long lines of Leningraders, dropped shells on the unfortunate residents of the city. And yet people stood in lines: death from a shell was possible, while death from hunger was inevitable.
Everyone had to decide for themselves how to use the tiny daily ration - eat it in one sitting... or spread it out over the whole day. Relatives and friends helped each other, but the very next day they quarreled desperately among themselves over who got how much. When all alternative food sources ran out, people in desperation turned to inedible things - livestock feed, flaxseed oil and leather belts. Soon, belts, which people initially ate out of desperation, were already considered a luxury. Wood glue and paste containing animal fat were scraped off furniture and walls and boiled. People ate soil collected in the vicinity of the Badaevsky warehouses for the sake of the particles of molten sugar it contained.
The city lost water because water pipes froze and pumping stations were bombed. Without water, the taps dried up, the sewer system stopped working... City residents made holes in the frozen Neva and scooped up water in buckets. Without water, bakeries could not bake bread. In January 1942, when the water shortage became particularly acute, 8,000 people who had remained strong enough formed a human chain and passed hundreds of buckets of water from hand to hand, just to get the bakeries working again.
Numerous stories have been preserved about unfortunate people who stood in line for many hours for a loaf of bread only to have it snatched from their hands and greedily devoured by a man mad with hunger. The theft of bread cards became widespread; the desperate robbed people in broad daylight or picked the pockets of corpses and those wounded during German shelling. Obtaining a duplicate turned into such a long and painful process that many died without waiting for the wandering of a new ration card in the wilds of the bureaucratic system to end...
Hunger turned people into living skeletons. Rations reached a minimum in November 1941. The ration of manual workers was 700 calories per day, while the minimum ration was approximately 3,000 calories. Employees received 473 calories per day, compared with the normal 2,000 to 2,500 calories, and children received 423 calories per day, less than a quarter of what a newborn needs.
The limbs were swollen, the stomachs were swollen, the skin was tight on the face, the eyes were sunken, the gums were bleeding, the teeth were enlarged from malnutrition, the skin was covered with ulcers.
The fingers became numb and refused to straighten. Children with wrinkled faces resembled old people, and old people looked like the living dead... Children, left overnight orphans, wandered the streets as lifeless shadows in search of food... Any movement caused pain. Even the process of chewing food became unbearable...
By the end of September, we ran out of kerosene for our home stoves. Coal and fuel oil were not enough to fuel residential buildings. The power supply was irregular, for an hour or two a day... The apartments were freezing, frost appeared on the walls, the clocks stopped working because their hands froze. Winters in Leningrad are often harsh, but the winter of 1941/42 was particularly severe. Wooden fences were dismantled for firewood, and wooden crosses were stolen from cemeteries. After the supply of firewood on the street completely dried up, people began to burn furniture and books in the stoves - today a chair leg, tomorrow a floorboard, the next day the first volume of Anna Karenina, and the whole family huddled around the only source of heat... Soon Desperate people found another use for books: the torn pages were soaked in water and eaten.
The sight of a man carrying a body wrapped in a blanket, tablecloth or curtain to a cemetery on a sled became a common sight... The dead were laid out in rows, but the gravediggers could not dig graves: the ground was frozen through, and they, equally hungry, did not have enough strength for the grueling work . There were no coffins: all the wood was used as fuel.
The courtyards of the hospitals were “littered with mountains of corpses, blue, emaciated, terrible”... Finally, excavators began to dig deep ditches for the mass burial of the dead. Soon these excavators were the only machines that could be seen on the city streets. There were no more cars, no trams, no buses, which were all requisitioned for the “Road of Life”...
Corpses were lying everywhere, and their number was growing every day... No one had the strength left to remove the corpses. The fatigue was so all-consuming that I wanted to stop, despite the cold, sit down and rest. But the crouched man could no longer rise without outside help and froze to death. At the first stage of the blockade, compassion and the desire to help were common, but as the weeks passed, food became less and less, the body and mind weakened, and people became withdrawn into themselves, as if they were walking in their sleep... Accustomed to the sight of death, they became almost indifferent towards him, people increasingly lost the ability to help others...
And amid all this despair, beyond human understanding, German shells and bombs continued to fall on the city
(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)
Cannibalism during the siege
Documentation NKVD Cannibalism during the siege of Leningrad was not published until 2004. Most of the evidence of cannibalism that had surfaced up to this time was tried to be presented as unreliable anecdotes.
NKVD records record the first consumption of human flesh on December 13, 1941. The report describes thirteen cases, from a mother who strangled her 18-month-old child to feed three older ones to a plumber who killed his wife to feed his sons and nephews.
By December 1942, the NKVD had arrested 2,105 cannibals, dividing them into two categories: “corpse eaters” and “cannibals.” The latter (those who killed and ate living people) were usually shot, and the former were imprisoned. The Soviet Criminal Code did not have a clause on cannibalism, so all sentences were passed under Article 59 (“a special case of banditry”).
There were significantly fewer cannibals than corpse eaters; of the 300 people arrested in April 1942 for cannibalism, only 44 were murderers. 64% of the cannibals were women, 44% were unemployed, 90% were illiterate, only 2% had a previous criminal record. Women with young children and no criminal records, deprived of male support, often became cannibals, which gave the courts a reason for some leniency.
Considering the gigantic scale of the famine, the extent of cannibalism in besieged Leningrad can be considered relatively insignificant. No less common were murders over bread cards. In the first six months of 1942, 1,216 of them occurred in Leningrad. Many historians believe that the small number of cases of cannibalism “only emphasized that the majority of Leningraders maintained their cultural norms in the most unimaginable circumstances.”
Connection with blockaded Leningrad
It was vitally important to establish a route for constant supplies to Leningrad. It passed through the southern part of Lake Ladoga and the land corridor to the city west of Ladoga, which remained unoccupied by the Germans. Transportation across Lake Ladoga was carried out by water in the warm season and by truck on ice in winter. The security of the supply route was ensured by the Ladoga Flotilla, the Leningrad Air Defense Corps and the Road Security Troops. Food supplies were delivered to the village of Osinovets, from where they were transported 45 km to a small commuter railway to Leningrad. This route was also used to evacuate civilians from the besieged city.
In the chaos of the first war winter, no evacuation plan was developed. Until the ice road across Lake Ladoga opened on November 20, 1941, Leningrad was completely isolated.
The path along Ladoga was called the “Road of Life”. She was very dangerous. Cars often got stuck in the snow and fell through the ice, on which the Germans dropped bombs. Due to the large number of people who died in winter, this route was also called the “Road of Death.” However, it made it possible to bring in ammunition and food and pick up civilians and wounded soldiers from the city.
...The road was laid in terrible conditions - among snow storms, under an incessant barrage of German shells and bombs. When construction was finally completed, traffic along it also proved to be fraught with great risk. Trucks fell into huge cracks that suddenly appeared in the ice. To avoid such cracks, the trucks drove with their headlights on, which made them perfect targets for German planes... The trucks skidded, collided with each other, and the engines froze at temperatures below 20 °C. Along its entire length, the Road of Life was littered with broken down cars abandoned right on the ice of the lake. During the first crossing alone in early December, over 150 trucks were lost.
By the end of December 1941, 700 tons of food and fuel were delivered to Leningrad daily along the Road of Life. This was not enough, but thin ice forced the trucks to be loaded only halfway. By the end of January, the lake had frozen almost a full meter, allowing the daily supply volume to increase to 2,000 tons. And this was still not enough, but the Road of Life gave Leningraders the most important thing - hope. Vera Inber in her diary on January 13, 1942 wrote about the Road of Life like this: “... maybe our salvation will begin from here.” Truck drivers, loaders, mechanics, and orderlies worked around the clock. They went to rest only when they were already collapsing from fatigue. By March, the city received so much food that it became possible to create a small reserve.
Plans to resume the evacuation of civilians were initially rejected by Stalin, who feared unfavorable political repercussions, but he eventually gave permission for the most defenseless to leave the city along the Road of Life. By April, 5,000 people were transported from Leningrad every day...
The evacuation process itself was a great shock. The thirty-kilometer journey across the ice of the lake took up to twelve hours in an unheated truck bed, covered only with a tarpaulin. There were so many people packed that people had to grab the sides; mothers often held their children in their arms. For these unfortunate evacuees, the Road of Life became the “Road of Death.” One eyewitness tells how a mother, exhausted after several hours of riding in the back of a snowstorm, dropped her bundled child. The driver could not stop the truck on the ice, and the child was left to die from the cold... If the car broke down, as often happened, those who were traveling in it had to wait for several hours on the ice, in the cold, under the snow, under bullets and bombs from German planes . The trucks drove in convoys, but they could not stop if one of them broke down or fell through the ice. One woman watched in horror as the car in front fell through the ice. Her two children were traveling in it.
The spring of 1942 brought a thaw, which made further use of the ice Road of Life impossible. Warming has brought about a new scourge: disease. Piles of corpses and mountains of excrement, which had until now remained frozen, began to decompose with the advent of warmth. Due to the lack of normal water supply and sewerage, dysentery, smallpox and typhus quickly spread in the city, affecting already weakened people...
It seemed that the spread of epidemics would finally wipe out the population of Leningrad, which had already been considerably thinned out, but in March 1942 people gathered and together began a grandiose operation to clear the city. Weakened by malnutrition, Leningraders made superhuman efforts... Since they had to use tools hastily made from scrap materials, the work progressed very slowly, however... the work of cleaning the city, which ended in victory, marked the beginning of a collective spiritual awakening.
The coming spring brought a new source of food - pine needles and oak bark. These plant components provided people with the vitamins they needed, protecting them from scurvy and epidemics. By mid-April, the ice on Lake Ladoga had become too thin to withstand the Road of Life, but rations still remained significantly better than they were in the darkest days of December and January, not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively: the bread now tasted like real bread. To everyone’s joy, the first grass appeared and vegetable gardens were planted everywhere...
April 15, 1942... the power supply generators, which had been inactive for so long, were repaired and, as a result, the tram lines began to function again.
One nurse describes how the sick and wounded, who were near death, crawled to the windows of the hospital to see with their own eyes the trams rushing past, which had not run for so long... People began to trust each other again, they washed themselves, changed their clothes, women began to use cosmetics, again theaters and museums opened.
(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)
Death of the Second Shock Army near Leningrad
In the winter of 1941-1942, after repelling the Nazis from near Moscow, Stalin gave the order to go on the offensive along the entire front. About this broad, but failed offensive (which included the famous, disastrous for Zhukov Rzhev meat grinder) was little reported in previous Soviet textbooks. During it, an attempt was made to break the blockade of Leningrad. The hastily formed Second Shock Army was rushed towards the city. The Nazis cut it off. In March 1942, the deputy commander of the Volkhov Front (Meretskova), a famous fighter against communism, general, was sent to command the army already in the “bag”. Andrey Vlasov. A. I. Solzhenitsyn reports in “The Gulag Archipelago”:
...The last winter routes were still holding out, but Stalin forbade withdrawal; on the contrary, he drove the dangerously deepened army to advance further - through the transported swampy terrain, without food, without weapons, without air support. After two months of starvation and the drying out of the army (the soldiers from there later told me in the Butyrka cells that they trimmed the hooves of dead, rotting horses, cooked the shavings and ate them), the German concentric offensive against the encircled army began on May 14, 1942 (and in the air, of course, only German planes ). And only then, in mockery, was Stalin’s permission to return beyond the Volkhov received. And then there were these hopeless attempts to break through! - until the beginning of July.
The Second Shock Army was lost almost entirely. Captured, Vlasov ended up in Vinnitsa in a special camp for senior captured officers, which was formed by Count Stauffenberg, a future conspirator against Hitler. There, from the Soviet commanders who deservedly hated Stalin, with the help of German military circles in opposition to the Fuhrer, a Russian Liberation Army.
Performance of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony in besieged Leningrad
...However, the event that was destined to make the greatest contribution to the spiritual revival of Leningrad was still ahead. This event proved to the whole country and the whole world that Leningraders had survived the most terrible times and their beloved city would live on. This miracle was created by a native Leningrader who loved his city and was a great composer.
On September 17, 1942, Dmitri Shostakovich, speaking on the radio, said: “An hour ago I finished the score of the second part of my new large symphonic work.” This work was the Seventh Symphony, later called the Leningrad Symphony.
Evacuated to Kuibyshev (now Samara)... Shostakovich continued to work hard on the symphony... The premiere of this symphony, dedicated to “our fight against fascism, our upcoming victory and my native Leningrad,” took place in Kuibyshev on March 5, 1942...
...The most prominent conductors began to argue for the right to perform this work. It was first performed by the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Sir Henry Wood, and on July 19 it was performed in New York, conducted by Arthur Toscanini...
Then it was decided to perform the Seventh Symphony in Leningrad itself. According to Zhdanov, this was supposed to raise the morale of the city... The main orchestra of Leningrad, the Leningrad Philharmonic, was evacuated, but the orchestra of the Leningrad Radio Committee remained in the city. Its conductor, forty-two-year-old Carl Eliasberg, was tasked with gathering the musicians. But out of one hundred orchestra members, only fourteen people remained in the city, the rest were drafted into the army, killed or died of hunger... A call was spread throughout the troops: all those who knew how to play any musical instrument had to report to their superiors... Knowing how weakened by the musicians who gathered in March 1942 for the first rehearsal, Eliasberg understood the difficult task facing him. “Dear friends,” he said, “we are weak, but we must force ourselves to start working.” And this work was difficult: despite the additional rations, many musicians, primarily wind players, lost consciousness from the stress that playing their instruments required... Only once during all the rehearsals did the orchestra have enough strength to perform the entire symphony - three days before public speaking.
The concert was scheduled for August 9, 1942 - several months earlier, the Nazis had chosen this date for a magnificent celebration at the Astoria Hotel in Leningrad for the expected capture of the city. Invitations were even printed and remained unsent.
The Philharmonic Concert Hall was filled to capacity. People came in their best clothes... The musicians, despite the warm August weather, wore coats and gloves with their fingers cut off - the starving body was constantly experiencing the cold. All over the city, people gathered in the streets near loudspeakers. Lieutenant General Leonid Govorov, who had headed the defense of Leningrad since April 1942, ordered a barrage of artillery shells to be rained down on German positions several hours before the concert to ensure silence at least for the duration of the symphony. The loudspeakers turned on at full power were directed towards the Germans - the city wanted the enemy to listen too.
“The very performance of the Seventh Symphony in besieged Leningrad,” the announcer announced, “is evidence of the ineradicable patriotic spirit of Leningraders, their perseverance, their faith in victory. Listen, comrades! And the city listened. The Germans who approached him listened. The whole world listened...
Many years after the war, Eliasberg met German soldiers sitting in trenches on the outskirts of the city. They told the conductor that when they heard the music, they cried:
Then, on August 9, 1942, we realized that we would lose the war. We have felt your strength, capable of overcoming hunger, fear and even death. “Who are we shooting at? – we asked ourselves. “We will never be able to take Leningrad because its people are so selfless.”
(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)
Offensive at Sinyavino
A few days later, the Soviet offensive began at Sinyavino. It was an attempt to break the blockade of the city by the beginning of autumn. The Volkhov and Leningrad fronts were given the task of uniting. At the same time, the Germans, having brought up the troops freed after capture of Sevastopol, were preparing for an offensive (Operation Northern Light) with the goal of capturing Leningrad. Neither side knew of the other's plans until the fighting began.
The offensive at Sinyavino was several weeks ahead of the Northern Light. It was launched on August 27, 1942 (the Leningrad Front opened small attacks on the 19th). The successful start of the operation forced the Germans to redirect the troops intended for the “Northern Light” to counterattack. In this counteroffensive they were used for the first time (and with rather weak results) Tiger tanks. Units of the 2nd Shock Army were surrounded and destroyed, and the Soviet offensive stopped. However, German troops also had to abandon the attack on Leningrad.
Operation Spark
On the morning of January 12, 1943, Soviet troops launched Operation Iskra - a powerful offensive of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts. After stubborn fighting, Red Army units overcame German fortifications south of Lake Ladoga. On January 18, 1943, the 372nd Rifle Division of the Volkhov Front met with the troops of the 123rd Rifle Brigade of the Leningrad Front, opening a land corridor of 10 - 12 km, which gave some relief to the besieged population of Leningrad.
...January 12, 1943... Soviet troops under the command of Govorov launched Operation Iskra. A two-hour artillery bombardment fell on the German positions, after which masses of infantry, covered from the air by aircraft, moved across the ice of the frozen Neva. They were followed by tanks crossing the river on special wooden platforms. Three days later, the second wave of the offensive crossed the frozen Lake Ladoga from the east, hitting the Germans in Shlisselburg... The next day, the Red Army liberated Shlisselburg, and on January 18 at 23.00 a message was broadcast on the radio: “The blockade of Leningrad has been broken!” That evening there was a general celebration in the city.
Yes, the blockade was broken, but Leningrad was still under siege. Under continuous enemy fire, the Russians built a 35-kilometer-long railway line to bring food into the city. The first train, having eluded German bombers, arrived in Leningrad on February 6, 1943. It brought flour, meat, cigarettes and vodka.
A second railway line, completed in May, made it possible to deliver even larger quantities of food while simultaneously evacuating civilians. By September, supply by rail had become so efficient that there was no longer any need to use the route across Lake Ladoga... Rations increased significantly... The Germans continued their artillery bombardment of Leningrad, causing significant losses. But the city was returning to life, and food and fuel were, if not in abundance, then sufficient... The city was still in a state of siege, but no longer shuddered in its death throes.
(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)
Lifting the blockade of Leningrad
The blockade lasted until January 27, 1944, when the Soviet "Leningrad-Novgorod Strategic Offensive" of the Leningrad, Volkhov, 1st and 2nd Baltic Fronts expelled German troops from the southern outskirts of the city. The Baltic Fleet provided 30% of the air power for the final blow to the enemy.
...On January 15, 1944, the most powerful artillery shelling of the war began - half a million shells rained down on German positions in just an hour and a half, after which Soviet troops launched a decisive offensive. One by one, cities that had been in German hands for so long were liberated, and German troops, under pressure from twice the Red Army in numbers, rolled back uncontrollably. It took twelve days, and at eight o’clock in the evening on January 27, 1944, Govorov was finally able to report: “The city of Leningrad has been completely liberated!”
That evening, shells exploded in the night sky over the city - but it was not German artillery, but a festive salute from 324 guns!
It lasted 872 days, or 29 months, and finally this moment came - the siege of Leningrad ended. It took another five weeks to completely drive the Germans out of the Leningrad region...
In the autumn of 1944, Leningraders silently looked at the columns of German prisoners of war who entered the city to restore what they themselves had destroyed. Looking at them, Leningraders felt neither joy, nor anger, nor thirst for revenge: it was a process of purification, they just needed to look into the eyes of those who had caused them unbearable suffering for so long.
(R. Colley. “Siege of Leningrad.”)
In the summer of 1944, Finnish troops were pushed back beyond the Vyborg Bay and the Vuoksa River.
Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad
Even during the blockade itself, the city authorities collected and showed to the public military artifacts - like the German plane that was shot down and fell to the ground in the Tauride Garden. Such objects were assembled in a specially designated building (in Salt Town). The exhibition soon turned into a full-scale Museum of the Defense of Leningrad (now the State Memorial Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad). In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Stalin exterminated many Leningrad leaders in the so-called Leningrad case. This happened before the war, after murder of Sergei Kirov in 1934, and now another generation of local government and party functionaries was destroyed for allegedly publicly overestimating the importance of the city as an independent fighting unit and their own role in defeating the enemy. Their brainchild, the Leningrad Defense Museum, was destroyed and many valuable exhibits were destroyed.
The museum was revived in the late 1980s with the then wave of “glasnost”, when new shocking facts were published showing the heroism of the city during the war. The exhibition opened in its former building, but has not yet been restored to its original size and area. Most of its former premises had already been transferred to various military and government institutions. Plans to build a new modern museum building were put on hold due to the financial crisis, but the current Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu He still promised to expand the museum.
Green Belt of Glory and monuments in memory of the blockade
Commemoration of the siege received a second wind in the 1960s. Leningrad artists dedicated their works to the Victory and the memory of the war, which they themselves witnessed. The leading local poet and war participant, Mikhail Dudin, proposed erecting a ring of monuments on the battlefields of the most difficult period of the siege and connecting them with green spaces around the entire city. This was the beginning of the Green Belt of Glory.
On October 29, 1966, at the 40th km of the Road of Life, on the shore of Lake Ladoga near the village of Kokorevo, the “Broken Ring” monument was erected. Designed by Konstantin Simun, it was dedicated both to those who escaped through frozen Ladoga and to those who died during the siege.
On May 9, 1975, a monument to the heroic defenders of the city was erected on Victory Square in Leningrad. This monument is a huge bronze ring with a gap that marks the spot where Soviet troops eventually broke through the German encirclement. In the center, a Russian mother cradles her dying soldier son. The inscription on the monument reads: “900 days and 900 nights.” The exhibition below the monument contains visual evidence of this period.
In accordance with the Federal Law of March 13, 1995 “On the Days of Military Glory (Victory Days) of Russia” and was previously called the Day of Lifting the Siege of the City of Leningrad (1944). In November 2013, the name of the day of military glory was changed to “Day of the complete liberation by Soviet troops of the city of Leningrad from the blockade of its fascist German troops (1944).”
At numerous requests from city residents, primarily blockade survivors, the name of the day of military glory was again adjusted, it became known as “The Day of the Complete Liberation of Leningrad from the Nazi Siege (1944).” The new name of this day most accurately reflects not only the role of Soviet troops in the liberation of Leningrad from the fascist blockade, but also the merit of the residents of besieged Leningrad in defending the city.
The heroic defense of Leningrad became a symbol of the courage of the Soviet people. At the cost of incredible hardships, heroism and self-sacrifice, the soldiers and residents of Leningrad defended the city. Hundreds of thousands of those who fought received government awards, 486 received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, eight of them twice.
On December 22, 1942, the medal “For the Defense of Leningrad” was established, which was awarded to about 1.5 million people.
On January 26, 1945, the city of Leningrad itself was awarded the Order of Lenin. Since May 1, 1945, Leningrad has been a hero city, and on May 8, 1965, the city was awarded the Golden Star medal.
The memorial ensembles of the Piskarevsky Cemetery and the Seraphim Cemetery are dedicated to the memory of the victims of the siege and the fallen participants in the defense of Leningrad; the Green Belt of Glory was created around the city along the former siege ring of the front.
(Additional
January 27- a special date in the history of our country. 73 years ago, on January 27, 1944, the blockade of Leningrad was lifted, which lasted 900 long days and nights. The defense of the city on the Neva became a symbol of the unparalleled courage and fortitude of the Soviet people.
According to the decree of the President of Russia on days of military glory, the Day of Lifting the Siege of Leningrad is celebrated on January 27. It was on this day that Soviet troops finally recaptured the city from the fascist invaders.
One of the saddest pages in the history of the USSR and the Second World War began with Hitler’s plan to attack the Soviet Union in a northwestern direction. As a result, the fighting that took place near the city’s borders completely blocked the most important road arteries. The city was in a dense ring of invaders, and the threat of a humanitarian catastrophe loomed. By September 8, 1941, it was necessary to acknowledge the fact that the city was surrounded by a tight ring. The city remained in complete isolation for more than two years...
Hitler's plan
The destruction of the civilian population of Leningrad by blockade was originally planned by the Nazis. Already on July 8, 1941, on the seventeenth day of the war, a very characteristic entry appeared in the diary of the Chief of the German General Staff, General Franz Halder: “... The Fuhrer’s decision to raze Moscow and Leningrad to the ground is unshakable in order to completely get rid of the population of these cities, which would otherwise We will then be forced to feed during the winter. The task of destroying these cities must be carried out by aviation. Tanks should not be used for this. This will be “a national disaster that will deprive the centers not only of Bolshevism, but also of the Muscovites (Russians) in general.”
Hitler's plans were soon embodied in official directives of the German command. On August 28, 1941, General Halder signed an order from the High Command of the Wehrmacht Ground Forces to Army Group North on the blockade of Leningrad:
“...based on the directives of the Supreme High Command, I order:
1. Block the city of Leningrad with a ring as close as possible to the city itself in order to save our forces. Do not put forward demands for surrender.
2. In order for the city, as the last center of red resistance in the Baltic, to be destroyed as quickly as possible without major casualties on our part, it is forbidden to storm the city with infantry forces. After defeating the enemy's air defenses and fighter aircraft, his defensive and vital capabilities should be broken by destroying waterworks, warehouses, power supplies and power plants. Military installations and the enemy's ability to defend must be suppressed by fires and artillery fire. Every attempt by the population to escape through the encircling troops should be prevented, if necessary, with the use of weapons..."
On September 29, 1941, these plans were recorded in a directive from the German Chief of Naval Staff:
“The Fuhrer decided to wipe out the city of St. Petersburg from the face of the earth. After the defeat of Soviet Russia, the continued existence of this largest settlement is of no interest.... It is planned to surround the city with a tight ring, and by shelling from artillery of all calibers and continuous bombing from the air, raze it to the ground. If, due to the situation created in the city, requests for surrender are made, they will be rejected, since the problems associated with the stay of the population in the city and its food supply cannot and should not be solved by us. In this war being waged for the right to exist, we are not interested in preserving even part of the population.”
As we see, according to the directives of the German command, the blockade was directed specifically against the civilian population of Leningrad. The Nazis did not need either the city or its inhabitants. The Nazis' fury towards Leningrad was terrifying.
“The poisonous nest of St. Petersburg, from which poison is pouring out into the Baltic Sea, must disappear from the face of the earth,” Hitler said in a conversation with the German ambassador in Paris on September 16, 1941. - The city is already blocked; Now all that remains is to fire at it with artillery and bomb until the water supply, energy centers and everything that is necessary for the life of the population are destroyed.”
FIRST BREAKTHROUGH OF THE BLOCKADE OF LENINGRAD
Only on January 18, 1943 was it possible to take the first step towards breaking the blockade. Enemy troops were driven out from the southern coast of Lake Ladoga, through the created corridor besieged Leningrad received communication with the country - food and medicine began to arrive in the city, and the evacuation of women, children and the elderly began
COMPLETE REMOVAL OF THE BLOCKADE OF LENINGRAD
The day of lifting the siege of Leningrad came on January 27, 1944, when it was possible to completely break the fascist resistance and break the ring. The Germans went into a deep and powerful defense, using mining tactics during their retreat, as well as constructing concrete protective structures.
The Soviet army deployed all the might of its troops, and used partisans and even long-range aviation when attacking enemy positions. It was necessary to properly clear the flanks and defeat the fascist troops in the area of the Luga River and the city of Kingisep. The summary of those years tells in detail about all subsequent victories of the Soviet army in the western direction. District after district, city after city, region after region went over to the side of the Red Army.
The simultaneous offensive on all fronts yielded positive results. On January 20, Veliky Novgorod was liberated. Having defeated the 18th Army and then the 16th German Army, Soviet troops liberated Leningrad and the Leningrad region. and on January 27, in Leningrad, for the first time during the siege, fireworks thundered, marking the Day of lifting the siege of Leningrad!
The blockade, in the iron ring of which Leningrad suffocated for 900 long days and nights, was put to an end. That day became one of the happiest in the lives of hundreds of thousands of Leningraders; one of the happiest - and, at the same time, one of the most sorrowful - because everyone who lived to see this holiday lost either relatives or friends during the blockade. More than 600 thousand people died of terrible starvation in the city surrounded by German troops, several hundred thousand in the Nazi-occupied area
This terrible tragedy must never be erased from memory. Subsequent generations must remember and know the details of what happened so that something like this never happens again. It was to this idea that St. Petersburg resident Sergei Larenkov dedicated his series of collages. Each picture combines as accurately as possible frames of the same place, but taken at different times: during the years of the siege of Leningrad - and now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Zinaida Shishova's poem "Blockade" is little known today. Although during the siege her name was not lost. At the end of 1942, she read a poem at the House of Writers in Leningrad, spoke on Leningrad radio... There is a lot of real living realism in the siege poems of Zinaida Shishova.
Our house is without radio, without light,
Warmed only by human breath...
And in our six-room apartment
There are three residents left - me and you
Yes, the wind blowing from the darkness...
No, however, I’m mistaken - there are four of them.
The fourth one, placed on the balcony,
The funeral is a week away.
Who hasn't been to the Volkovo cemetery?
If you don’t have enough strength at all -
Hire others, ask someone else
For tobacco, for three hundred grams of bread,
But don't leave the corpse in the snow,
Don't let your enemy rejoice.
After all, this is also strength and victory
On days like these, bury your neighbor!
Frozen ground meters deep
Does not lend itself to crowbars or shovels.
Let the wind knock you down, let it grab you
The forty-degree cold of February,
Let the skin freeze to the iron,
I don't want to be silent, I can't
Through slingshots I shout to the enemy:
“Damned, you’re going numb there too!
Remember this well,
Order for both your children and grandchildren
Look here, beyond our borders...
Yes, you tortured us with pestilence and fire,
Yes, you bombed and bombed our house,
But does this make us homeless?
You sent a shell for a shell,
And this is twenty months in a row,
But did you teach us to be afraid?
No, we are calmer than a year ago,
Remember, this city is Leningrad,
Remember, these people are Leningraders!”
Yes, Leningrad has cooled down and become deserted,
And empty floors rise,
But we know how to live, we want and we will,
We defended this right to live.
There are no panties here
There shouldn't be any timid people here,
And this city is invincible
What kind of lentil stew are we?
We will not sell our dignity.
There is a break - we will take a break,
There is no respite - we will fight again.
For the city consumed by fire,
For the sweet world, for everything that was in it.
For our city, tested by fire,
For the right to be called a Leningrader!
Stand as you stood, our majestic city,
Above the fresh and bright Neva,
As a symbol of courage, as the embodiment of glory,
Lifting the blockade of Leningrad (1944)
The Battle of Leningrad, which lasted from July 10, 1941 to August 9, 1944, was the longest during the Great Patriotic War. It was crowned with a brilliant victory for Soviet weapons, demonstrated the high moral spirit of the Soviet people, and became a symbol of the courage and heroism of the Soviet people and their Armed Forces.
General course of the battle for Leningrad
The military-political leadership of Nazi Germany attached paramount importance to the capture of Leningrad. The fall of the city on the Neva would lead to the isolation of the northern regions of the USSR; the Soviet state would lose one of the most important political and economic centers. The German command intended to launch the forces released after the capture of Leningrad into an attack on Moscow.
In their desire to take control of this city at any cost, the Nazi leadership did not hesitate to use the most inhumane methods of struggle. Hitler repeatedly demanded to raze Leningrad to the ground, exterminate its entire population, strangle it with hunger, and suppress the resistance of the defenders with massive air and artillery strikes.
The Battle of Leningrad, which lasted 900 days and nights, included defensive and offensive operations. They were carried out in order to defend the city and defeat the Nazi troops of Army Group North and Finnish troops between Lakes Onega and Lake Ladoga, as well as on the Karelian Isthmus. The battle for Leningrad at various times involved troops of the Northern, Northwestern, Leningrad, Volkhov, Karelian and 2nd Baltic fronts, formations of long-range aviation and the country's Air Defense Forces, the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, Peipus, Ladoga and Onega military flotillas, partisan formations .
In the battle for Leningrad, the efforts of the front troops and the working people of the city and region united. On the approaches to the city, they created centers of resistance and built defensive lines. A defense system consisting of several belts was created around Leningrad. Fortified areas were built on the closest approaches to the city, and the internal defense of Leningrad was created.
According to its military-strategic scope, the forces and means involved, tension, results and military-political consequences, the battle for Leningrad can be divided into the following stages.
1st stage (July 10 - September 30, 1941) - defense on the distant and near approaches to Leningrad. Leningrad strategic defensive operation.
Having overcome the resistance of Soviet troops in the Baltic states, fascist German troops launched an offensive on the southwestern approaches to Leningrad on July 10. Finnish troops went on the offensive from the north.
Hot battles broke out these days on the left flank of the North-Western Front. The enemy stubbornly made its way to Staraya Russa and Kholm. On July 17, the enemy broke through to the headquarters of the 22nd Rifle Corps in the area of Dno station. 20 soldiers, led by the deputy political instructor of the radio company A.K., boldly entered into battle with him. Mary. For several hours they repelled enemy attacks and prevented him from capturing the headquarters. A.K. Meri was wounded several times, but did not leave the battlefield. For his heroism he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
On August 8-10, defensive battles began on the near approaches to Leningrad. Despite the heroic resistance of the Soviet troops, the enemy broke through on the left flank of the Luga defense line and occupied Novgorod on August 19, Chudovo on August 20, and cut the Moscow-Leningrad highway and railway. By the end of September, in the Olonets and Petrozavodsk directions, Soviet troops, with the support of ships of the Ladoga military flotilla, stopped the enemy at the turn of the Svir River. On July 31, the enemy launched an offensive on the Karelian Isthmus. At the end of August, Finnish troops reached the line of the old state border. There was a real threat of encirclement of Leningrad.
At the end of August, the enemy resumed the offensive along the Moscow-Leningrad highway, on August 30 he reached the Neva and cut the railways connecting Leningrad with the country. Having captured Shlisselburg (Petrokrepost) on September 8, German troops cut off Leningrad from land. An almost 900-day blockade of the city began, communication with which was now maintained only by Lake Ladoga and by air. The next day, September 9, the enemy launched a new attack on Leningrad from the area west of Krasnogvardeysk, but as a result of stubborn resistance by the troops of the Leningrad Front, the enemy’s offensive, which suffered heavy losses, gradually weakened, and by the end of September the front on the nearest approaches to the city stabilized. The enemy’s plan to capture Leningrad immediately failed, and this entailed the disruption of the enemy’s intentions to turn the main forces of Army Group North to attack Moscow.
An important role in the defense of Leningrad from the sea was played by the heroic defense of the Moonsund Islands, the Hanko Peninsula and the Tallinn naval base, the Oranienbaum bridgehead and Kronstadt. Their defenders showed exceptional courage and heroism. So, for example, in the battles near the Kharku farm, the Nazis captured a seriously wounded reconnaissance sailor from the ship "Minsk" E.A. Nikonova. The Nazis wanted to get information from him about the number of our troops, but the courageous sailor refused to answer. The fascist executioners gouged out his eyes, tied him to a tree and burned him alive. E.A. Nikonov was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. He is forever listed on the ship's list.
2nd stage (October 1941 - January 12, 1943) - defensive military operations of the Soviet troops. Siege of the city of Leningrad.
Soviet troops made repeated attempts to lift the blockade of the city. In 1941, they carried out the Tikhvin defensive and offensive operations, and in 1942, the Lyuban and Sinyavin operations.
Hitler's command, having failed to realize their plans to capture Leningrad from the south, launched an attack on Tikhvin in mid-October 1941 with the goal of reaching the river. Svir, unite with Finnish troops and carry out a complete blockade of Leningrad. The enemy captured Tikhvin on November 8, cutting off the last railway along which cargo was delivered to Lake Ladoga and transported by water to the besieged city. In mid-November, Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive and on December 9 captured Tikhvin, driving the enemy beyond the river. Volkhov.
The current situation forced the German command to reconsider the tactics of the fight for Leningrad. Having failed to take the city by storm, it decided to achieve its goal with a long blockade, accompanied by artillery shelling and air bombing. Back on September 21, 1941, a report “On the Siege of Leningrad” was prepared at Hitler’s headquarters. It spoke of the need to raze Leningrad to the ground during the blockade, leave the city without food for the winter, and wait for capitulation. And those who will remain alive by spring will be driven out of the city, and the city itself will be destroyed.
The city defense committee, party and Soviet bodies did everything possible to save the population from hunger. Assistance to Leningrad was carried out along the transport route across Lake Ladoga, called the Road of Life. It made it possible to increase food supplies in the city, slightly increase food supply standards for the population, and bring in ammunition.
Transportation during navigation periods was carried out by the Ladoga Flotilla and the North-Western River Shipping Company.
To supply petroleum products to the city, from May 5 to June 16, 1942, a pipeline was laid along the bottom of Lake Ladoga, and in the fall of 1942, an energy cable was laid.
Leningrad was covered from the sea by the Baltic Fleet. It actively participated in the defensive and offensive operations of the troops of the Leningrad Front using its aviation, naval and coastal artillery, and marines, and also provided military transportation in the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga. In the enemy-occupied territory of the Leningrad, Novgorod and Pskov regions, partisans launched an active struggle.
In January - April 1942, strike groups of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts, advancing towards each other, fought stubborn battles in the Lyuban, and in August - October in the Sinyavinsk directions in order to break the blockade of the city. However, due to a lack of forces and means, the operations were not successful, but still the enemy suffered serious damage in manpower and military equipment. His strength was constrained.
3rd stage (1943) - military operations of Soviet troops, breaking the blockade of Leningrad.
In January 1943, in order to break the blockade of the city near Leningrad, the strategic offensive operation Iskra was carried out. On January 12, 1943, formations of the 67th Army of the Leningrad Front (commanded by Colonel General L.A. Govorov), the 2nd shock and part of the forces of the 8th Army of the Volkhov Front (commanded by Army General K.A. Meretskov) with the support of 13- The 1st and 14th Air Armies, long-range aviation, artillery and aviation of the Baltic Fleet launched counter strikes on a narrow ledge between Shlisselburg and Sinyavin. On January 18, they united in the areas of workers’ settlements No. 5 and No. 1. A corridor 8-11 km wide was formed south of Lake Ladoga. A 36-kilometer-long railway was built along the southern shore of Ladoga in 18 days. Trains went along it to Leningrad.
Breaking the blockade became a turning point in the battle for the city on the Neva. And although it still remained a front-line city, the plan to capture it by the Nazis was completely thwarted. Its food supply and the strategic situation near Leningrad improved significantly.
Soviet soldiers performed many heroic, immortal feats in these battles. Thus, signalman of the 270th regiment of the 136th rifle division D.S. Molodtsov, advancing along with the riflemen, volunteered to crawl to the enemy bunker, which covered the approaches to the enemy battery. In carrying out this task, at the cost of his own life, he enabled the regiment to capture a heavy enemy battery. Molodtsov was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
The mortarmen, the Shumov brothers Alexander, Vasily, Luka, Ivan, Avksentiy, fought courageously. All of them were awarded orders.
The heroic feat was accomplished by the pilot, senior lieutenant I.S. Panteleev. His plane, which was assisting ground troops in suppressing targets, was shot down and caught fire. The selfless pilot directed his burning car at an enemy battery, bombed it, and then threw the plane engulfed in flames onto a German convoy.
In the summer and autumn battles of 1943, troops of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts actively thwarted the enemy’s attempts to restore the complete blockade of Leningrad, carrying out many private operations. They contributed to improving the positions of the Soviet troops. At the same time, the combat activity of our troops pinned down about 30 enemy divisions. This did not allow the enemy to transfer at least one of them to the south, where, in particular near Kursk, the Nazis were defeated.
4th stage (January - February 1944) - the offensive of Soviet troops in the northwestern direction, the complete lifting of the blockade of Leningrad.
During this stage, Soviet troops carried out the Leningrad-Novgorod strategic offensive operation, within the framework of which the troops of the Leningrad Front carried out the Krasnoselsko-Ropshinskaya, and the Volkhov Front - the Novgorod-Luga offensive operations.
On January 14, 1944, Soviet troops went on the offensive from the Oranienbaum bridgehead to Ropsha, and on January 15 - from Leningrad to Krasnoye Selo. On January 20, the advancing troops united in the Ropsha area and eliminated the encircled enemy group. At the same time, on January 14, Soviet troops went on the offensive in the Novgorod area, on January 16 - in the Lyuban direction, and on January 20 they liberated Novgorod. By the end of January, the cities of Pushkin, Krasnogvardeysk, Tosno, Lyuban, and Chudovo were liberated.
January 27, 1944 will forever remain in the memory of Leningraders, of all our people. The siege of Leningrad was completely eliminated.
The date January 27 is immortalized in the Russian Federation as the Day of Military Glory of Russia - the Day of Lifting the Siege of the City of Leningrad (1944).
By February 15, as a result of fierce fighting, the enemy defenses in the Luga area were overcome. After this, the Volkhov Front was disbanded, and the troops of the Leningrad and 2nd Baltic Fronts, continuing to pursue the enemy, reached the border of the Latvian SSR by the end of March 1. As a result of the Leningrad-Novgorod operation, Army Group North was severely defeated, almost the entire Leningrad region and part of the Kalinin region were liberated, Soviet troops entered the Estonian SSR, and favorable conditions were created for the defeat of the enemy in the Baltic states.
In the summer of 1944, troops of the Leningrad and Karelian fronts, with the participation of the Baltic Fleet, Ladoga and Onega military flotillas, defeated the enemy group on the northern wing of the Soviet-German front, which predetermined Finland’s exit from the war, the security of Leningrad was completely ensured and most of the Karelo-Finnish SSR was liberated.
The historical significance of the victory in the Battle of Leningrad
The Great Patriotic War saw many outstanding battles and battles on the way to the world-historical Victory over German fascism and its allies. A special place among them and in world military history in general belongs to the persistent and heroic 900-day defense of Leningrad.
What is the historical significance of the Battle of Leningrad?
Firstly, the defense of besieged Leningrad became a symbol of the courage and heroism of the Soviet people. The defenders and residents of the city, being under blockade, selflessly repelled the superior forces of the Nazi troops. Despite unprecedented difficulties and hardships, countless sacrifices and losses, they did not doubt victory for a minute, stood and won, showing examples of perseverance, endurance and patriotism. The history of wars does not know such a feat.
Leningrad, its residents and defenders had to endure unprecedented difficulties and suffering during the blockade winter of 1941-1942. The city was deprived of food and fuel supplies. Electricity supply to residential buildings was cut off. The water supply system failed and 78 km of the sewer network was destroyed. Trams stopped and public utilities stopped working. In the fall of 1941, food standards were reduced five times. From November 20, workers received 250 grams of bread per day, all others - 125 grams. The bread was raw and consisted of 2/5 impurities. Scurvy and dystrophy began.
Hitler's command carried out barbaric bombings and artillery shelling of Leningrad. During the blockade, about 150 thousand shells were fired at the city and over 102 thousand incendiary and about 5 thousand high-explosive bombs were dropped. During September - November 1941, an air raid warning was announced in the city 251 times. The average daily duration of artillery shelling in November 1941 reached 9 hours.
The city's residents paid a high price. During the harsh days of the blockade, 641,803 people died from artillery shelling and bombing, hunger and cold. Many of them are buried in mass graves at the Piskarevskoye cemetery.
Hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers lost their lives in the battle for Leningrad. Irreversible losses amounted to 979,254 people, sanitary losses - 1,947,770 people.
Secondly, the battle for Leningrad was of great military and strategic importance. It influenced the course of hostilities in other directions of the Soviet-German front. Large forces of Nazi troops and the entire Finnish army were drawn into battles in the North-West. If in June 1942 there were 34 divisions in Army Group North, then in October there were already 44. Hitler’s command, due to the activity of Soviet troops, could not transfer large forces from Leningrad to other sectors of the front (near Moscow, Stalingrad, Northern Caucasus, Kursk), when large-scale hostilities took place there. With the end of the battle for Leningrad, a significant number of troops from the Leningrad and Karelian fronts were released, which the Supreme High Command Headquarters used in other strategic directions.
Thirdly, during the battle for Leningrad, Soviet military art received further development. For the first time in the history of modern wars, the enemy, who had been blockading the largest city for a long time, was defeated here by an attack from the outside combined with a powerful blow from the besieged city. The offensive carried out according to this plan was fully prepared and successfully completed.
The victory was achieved through the efforts of all types and branches of the military with the active assistance of the partisans. The Supreme High Command headquarters directed and coordinated the actions of the fronts, fleet, air defense army, flotillas and air force. The skillful selection of the main directions of action of the troops, the timely assignment of combat missions to them, the strengthening of fronts in accordance with these tasks, and the prompt redirection of troops during operations were of great importance for the successful outcome of the battle.
At the defensive stage of the battle, the area where Soviet troops were blockaded from land (with Leningrad in the center) represented a unified system of positions and lines, which expanded the possibilities of maneuvering forces and means to concentrate them in threatened areas. On the Leningrad Front in September 1941, one of the first in the war carried out effective artillery counter-preparation against the enemy, who was preparing to storm the city.
Breaking the blockade was carried out by counter-attacks by groups of two fronts. During offensive operations, Soviet military art was enriched by the experience of overcoming heavily fortified enemy defenses in wooded and swampy areas. The tactics of offensive actions of small rifle and tank units have received significant development. Their actions were distinguished by independence in battles for individual points, crossings and across water obstacles. The effective counter-battery fight, in which the front and naval air forces took part, was an example of skillful counteraction to enemy siege artillery under blockade conditions.
Fourthly, the battle for Leningrad was a major military-political event and its significance went far beyond the borders of the Soviet Union. She was highly appreciated by our allies. US President F. Roosevelt, in a letter sent to Leningrad, wrote: “On behalf of the people of the United States of America, I present this letter to the city of Leningrad in memory of its valiant warriors and its faithful men, women and children, who, being isolated by the invader from the rest of their people and despite constant bombing and unheard of suffering from cold, hunger and disease, successfully defended their beloved city during the critical period from September 8, 1941 to January 18, 1943 and thereby symbolized the undaunted spirit of the peoples of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and all the peoples of the world, resisting the forces of aggression."
Fifthly, the battle for Leningrad demonstrated the great strength of the moral and political unity of Soviet society and the friendship of the peoples of our Motherland. Representatives of all nationalities of the Soviet Union fought near Leningrad, showing unparalleled courage and mass heroism. It was near Leningrad that the mass sniper movement began. In February 1942, the 10 best snipers of the Leningrad Front were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and 130 were awarded orders and medals.
The defense of Leningrad had a national character, expressed in the close cohesion of troops and population under the leadership of the city defense committee, which headed the political, military and economic life of the city during the blockade. On the initiative of party organizations, in July-September 1941, 10 divisions of the people's militia were formed in the city, 7 of which became personnel.
The Motherland highly appreciated the feat of the defenders of Leningrad. Many units and formations were converted into guards, awarded orders, and received honorary titles of Leningrad. For courage, bravery and heroism, over 350 thousand soldiers of the Leningrad Front were awarded orders and medals, 226 people were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. About 1.5 million people were awarded the medal “For the Defense of Leningrad”. On January 26, 1945, Leningrad was awarded the Order of Lenin, and on May 8, 1965, the hero city of Leningrad was awarded the Gold Star medal.
Sixth, victory in the battle for Leningrad was achieved thanks to the heroic feat of home front workers. The military highway, laid on the ice of Lake Ladoga and called the Road of Life, had no analogues in world history. In the first blockade winter of 1941 - 1942 alone, more than 360 thousand tons of cargo were delivered along it, including about 32 thousand tons of ammunition and explosives, about 35 thousand tons of fuel and lubricants. About 550 thousand people, about 3.7 thousand wagons of equipment, cultural values and other property were taken out of the city. Over the entire period of operation, 1,615 thousand tons of cargo were transported along the Road of Life, about 1,376 thousand people were evacuated.
Despite the most difficult conditions, the industry of Leningrad did not stop its work. In the difficult conditions of the blockade, the working people of the city provided the front with weapons, equipment, uniforms, and ammunition. During the blockade, 2 thousand tanks, 1.5 thousand aircraft, thousands of guns, many warships were repaired and built, 225 thousand machine guns, 12 thousand mortars, about 10 million shells and mines were manufactured.
The important role of cultural and educational work during the blockade, in which cultural and artistic figures actively participated, should be especially emphasized. It raised the morale of the blockade survivors, fostered courage, developed a burning hatred of the fascist invaders, inspired them to persistently overcome difficulties and dangers, and instilled confidence in victory.
At present, attempts are still being made to distort and misrepresent the heroic defense of Leningrad. It is argued, for example, that its defense allegedly had no military significance. Therefore, the death of many thousands of people was in vain. It was necessary to simply surrender the city to the Nazis. And he, they say, would have remained intact, like Paris, Brussels, The Hague and other capitals of many European countries. This shameless lie is dictated by political circumstances and the deliberate falsification of military history. It is aimed at removing blame from the Nazis for the deaths of people.
Almost 66 years have passed since the significant victory in the battle for Leningrad. But to this day, the feat of the Leningraders, the soldiers of the army and navy who defended our northern capital, personifies the military glory of Russia. He serves as an example for current generations of fidelity to patriotic and military duty, courage and bravery in defending the freedom and independence of the Fatherland.
Before studying this topic and during it, it is advisable to visit the museum of the military unit and invite veterans of the Great Patriotic War, home front workers, and Leningrad siege survivors to speak.
In the introductory speech, it is advisable to emphasize that the Battle of Leningrad is a worthy contribution to the treasury of Russia’s military glory, and it will forever be preserved in the military history of our people as a symbol of courage, perseverance and selfless defense of our Fatherland.
When covering the first question, it is necessary, using a map, to show the location and balance of forces of the opposing sides at different stages of the battle, talk in detail about the exploits, and give examples of the courage and heroism of Soviet soldiers.
When considering the second question, it is necessary to objectively show the place and role of the Battle of Leningrad in Russian historiography, and provide statistical data indicating the cost of victory.
The consideration of issues will be much more interesting if the story is accompanied by showing fragments of documentaries and feature films about the Battle of Leningrad, listening to fragments of the famous Seventh Symphony by Dmitry Shostakovich, reading excerpts from the works of poets Olga Bergolts and Anna Akhmatova.
At the end of the lesson, it is necessary to draw brief conclusions and answer questions from students.
1. The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union 1941-1945: A Brief History. - M., 1984.
2. Military encyclopedia. In 8 volumes. T. 1. - M., 1997.
3. Petrov B. Immortal feat of the defenders of Leningrad. // Reference point. - 2004. - No. 1.
4. Strelnikov V. Milestones of the Great Victory (to the 65th anniversary of the lifting of the siege of Leningrad). // Reference point. - 2008. - No. 12.
Lieutenant colonel
Dmitry SAMOSVAT.
Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Lieutenant Colonel
Alexey KURSHEV
It is impossible without tears and shudders to remember the events of the Great Patriotic War, which became a victorious, heroic and tragic page in the history of our people. One of these events was the blockade of Leningrad, which lasted 872 long days of death, hunger, cold, bombing, despair and courage of the residents of the Northern capital.
In 1941, Hitler launched military operations on the outskirts of Leningrad to completely destroy the city. On September 8, 1941, the ring closed around an important strategic and political center.
There are 2.5 million inhabitants left in the city. Constant bombing by enemy aircraft destroyed people, houses, architectural monuments, and food warehouses. During the siege in Leningrad there was no area that an enemy shell could not reach. Areas and streets were identified where the risk of becoming a victim of enemy artillery was greatest. There were special warning signs posted there with, for example, the text: “Citizens! During shelling, this side of the street is the most dangerous.” Several of them remain in the city today in memory of the siege.
Severe famine killed thousands of people. The card system did not save the situation. Bread standards were so low that residents still died from exhaustion. The cold came with the early winter of 1941. But the Reich's hopes for panic and chaos among the population did not materialize. The city continued to live and work.
In order to somehow help the besieged residents, the “Road of Life” was organized through Ladoga, along which they were able to evacuate part of the population and deliver some food.
On January 18, 1943, the forces of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts broke the blockade, and on January 27, 1944, the blockade of Leningrad was finally lifted. In the evening, the sky lit up with fireworks in honor of the liberation of the city on the Neva.
During the years of the blockade, according to various sources, from 400 thousand to 1.5 million people died. Enormous damage was caused to historical buildings and monuments of Leningrad. In honor of the heroic events of the siege of Leningrad, the Day of Military Glory of Russia is celebrated on the day the siege was lifted.
Music Isaac Luban. The song was written based on poetry by a poet and front-line correspondent Pavel Shubin.
Tatyana Bulanova:“For me this is a very close, very personal topic. I come from a family that endured everything, all the hardships of that time. My mother survived the blockade. She often shared her bitter memories.
For me, the date of the complete liberation of Leningrad from the siege is comparable to May 9. This is like the second Victory Day for Leningraders. Therefore, the song is like the anthem of this important date, a reminder of what the people who fought for Leningrad went through.”
Sound engineer Danil Zosin, video studio Inspire.