Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and Peter and Paul Fortress were camouflaged in coloured netting, which was
changed according to the weather and season. The youngest and oldest residents were
evacuated; everybody else braced themselves.
At the end of August the Germans captured the east-bound railway: Leningrad was
cut off. Instead of a bloody street fight, the Nazi command vowed to starve the city to
death. Food stocks were low to begin with but became almost nonexistent after nap-
alm bombs burned down the warehouse district. Moscow dispatched tireless and re-
sourceful Dmitry Pavlov to act as Chief of Food Supply. Pavlov's teams ransacked
cellars, broke into box cars and tore up floorboards in search of leftover cans and
crumbs. The city's scientists were pressed to develop something edible out of yeast,
glue and soap. As supplies dwindled, pets and pests disappeared. A strict ration sys-
tem was imposed and violators were shot. Workers received 15 ounces (425g) of
bread per day; everyone else got less. It was not enough. The hunger was relentless,
causing delirium, disease and death. Hundreds of thousands succumbed to starvation,
corpses were strewn atop snow-covered streets, mass graves were dug on the outskirts
Relief finally arrived in January, when food supplies began to reach the city from
across the frozen Lake Ladoga lifeline. Trucks made the perilous night-time trek on
ice roads, fearing the Luftwaffe above and chilled water below. Soviet military ad-
vances enabled the supply route to stay open in the spring when the lake thawed. Len-
ingrad survived the worst; still the siege continued. The city endured the enemy's
pounding guns for two more years. At last, in January 1944, the Red Army arrived in
force. They pulverised the German front with more rockets and shells than were used
at Stalingrad. Within days, Leningrad was liberated.
Composer Dmitry Shostakovich premiered his Seventh Symphony for a small
circle of friends in his Leningrad flat in 1941. His performance was interrupted by a
night raid of German bombers. He stopped and sent his family into the basement, then
played on in anguish and defiance as sirens sounded and fires flashed outside. In the
spring of 1942 the symphony was performed in Moscow and broadcast by radio to
Leningrad, to whom it was dedicated.
The 900 days marked history's longest military siege of a modern city. The city was
badly battered but not beaten. The St Petersburg spirit was resilient.
