Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-1944 by Reid Anna

Author:Reid, Anna [Reid, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Non-Fiction, War
ISBN: 9780802715944
Publisher: Walker & Company
Published: 2011-08-30T06:00:00+00:00

For those living in communal flats, whose kitchens, bathrooms and hallways were shared, neighbours’ breakdowns could be very close indeed. Igor Kruglyakov, kept alive by the iron discipline of his mother and grandmother (no talk of death was allowed, and he and his sister were forced to stand outdoors in the snow for ten minutes each day to get light and air), heard the couple in the next-door room first quarrelling, then fighting, then thumps on the wall as the wife killed their baby.18

A consummate siege survivor was the Persianist Aleksandr Boldyrev. Good-looking, egotistical and possessed of a mordant wit, he had dodged the purges of 1936–7 by spending long spells in hospital with ulcers, or on research trips to remote parts of Central Asia. When war broke out he avoided the draft with the help of his lover, a colleague at the Hermitage, who interceded for him with the museum’s director via her long-suffering husband. Though not a Party member, Boldyrev continued indefatigably to work his contacts through the siege, inscribing himself at the Scholars’ Building and the Eastern Institute as well as at the Hermitage, and eating a daily ‘lunch’ at each. From the Hermitage he also managed to squeeze a manual worker’s card and, remarkably, 1,417 roubles in compensation for his lost summer holiday. He also delivered historical lectures – on ‘Peter’s Fleet’, ‘The Literature of the Fraternal Peoples of Central Asia’ and ‘Today’s Afghanistan’ – to sailors on Leningrad’s ice-bound ships. Sometimes these commissions meant a long walk across the city for no return, but usually they earned him a meal and a few Little Star cigarettes. His siege diary reads like an ever-changing to-do list of officials to be petitioned, debts to be called in and barter deals to be followed up – shifts he describes as like ‘leaping from tussock to tussock through a bog’.19 He managed, too, not to lose hope (the siege was always about to be lifted; England always about to open a second front) or his sense of humour. ‘All the time’, he wrote on 10 February, ‘sitting, standing or lying, I am reminded of my extreme emaciation. Especially striking is the disappearance of my buttocks, the one really distinguished aspect of my person, of which I was very proud. Now I have no bottom at all; my pelvis and hip bones clink against the chair.’

Though his family was far from harmonious (his wife quarrelled relentlessly with his mother, and he with his wife), they continued to operate as a team, Boldyrev bringing home ‘yeast soup’ and ‘jelly’ from his various cafeterias, his wife donating blood (for which extra rations were given) and his mother queuing for bread. Most of all they were fortunate in having inherited valuables to trade. As well as the usual clothes and shoes, in the course of the winter they sold three watches – Boldyrev’s own, his late father’s and his wife’s Longine – for ten kilos of flour and five of beef fat; an

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