hckrnws
The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad: Science and Sacrifice in a City Under Siege
by mitchbob
My great-grandmother and grandfather were in Leningrad during the siege. My great-grandmother continued to teach throughout. At some point she was given the option to evacuate with my (very) young grandfather over the "road of life".
As my mother tells the story, my great grandmother had the choice of either taking a bus, or hanging on to the back of some delivery truck. She chose the truck. The bus broke through the ice and disappeared under the water.
It's strange to realize how close one can be to not being "here" and how history weaves its way through your blood and ends up on the front page of hackernews.
Thanks for this personal story with the historical connection.
I would like to invite the audience to remember how many similar stories are being played out in the present day.
A family friend was 7 years old in Leningrad when the siege started. He talked proudly of finding a cat and killing it so that he could bring it home for his aunt to cook (his father was conscripted and his mother was already dead). He talked about how they would peel down the wallpaper because the glue used to put it up before the war contained flour, and so a very weak sort of soup could be made from it.
They evacuated him over Lake Ladoga to Siberia where he spent the war. His father returned to Leningrad after the war and made contact, and they sent him at 10 years old by himself on the trans-Siberian railway back to Leningrad with a sack of potatoes to eat/trade.
Back at school in Leningrad they saw German POWs helping cleanup/rebuild and they would trade with them.
He also remembers enjoying American movies in the late 40's, before they were banned.
David Benioff’s (Game of Thrones show runner) City of Thieves is a very entertaining book set during the siege. It was an inspiration for The Last of Us video game (and later HBO series)
I've heard of this story before, the scientists who saved seeds and refused to eat them, despite the starvation everywhere.
It's remarkable that they sacrificed even their own lives to this end.
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Shostakovich's symphony is marvelous
The experience of Vladimir Putin's parents in the siege continue to shape Putin's views.
World War 2 or as it's called in Russia, the Great Patriotic war shapes Russia's perception a lot more than W22 does anywhere in the west.
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It seems from Wikipedia that there was a relief attempt, which failed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lyuban
We'd need some maps, but I can't see how an encircled city could be supplied?
It would depend on there already being beach landing craft in the lake when the encirclement happened. There weren't any other major ports on the lake at the time other than Leningrad and Shlisselburg which the was on the German side of the front and heavily contested. The German line also went to the Southern bank of the River there up until it turned North West to get into the city so you couldn't use that so the options for bringing food in via the lake were pretty limited and any losses would be effectively permanent until the siege was broken.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Leningra...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/Si...
https://64.media.tumblr.com/8fcb0d31607d4cd05fbe82998afc91ef...
It was supplied over Lake Ladoga when the ice froze, but unfortunately the ice froze later in the year than usual and thawed earlier than usual during that first winter. It was dangerous stuff when the ice was thin, but when it was thick you could drive a tank over it, and they did.
Later on they were able to partially lift the siege in the south east just below the lake and could get some supplies in by train.
Of course it's always possible to get small quantities in, but to feed a city of millions....
"could have supplied it if they wanted to. They just chose not to."
A simple google search will tell you the opposite.
Would it not have been the people besieging the city who were responsible?
That goes without saying. But the Soviets chose to abandon it. Brutality from the enemy wouldn't be that surprising, betrayal by your own government is.
The article mentions it below even:
> The betrayal came from the top. Stalin, neglecting the relevant intelligence and then focusing on Moscow, all but abandoned Leningrad, while his apparatchiks appeared at public baths milky and fat in their privilege. The man in charge of the city, Andrei Zhdanov, enjoyed butter on his bread and lashings of caviar while those in his care ate their pets, sometimes their neighbours, and fashioned tagliatelle out of slow-boiled strips of leather. Nor did the Soviets acknowledge the extent of the suffering.
> But the Soviets chose to abandon it.
They "chose" to abandon it? Weren't they forced to retreat by the german army who encircled it and chose to starve out the population rather than directly attack the city?
> The article mentions it below even:
That reads like ww2 german propaganda. What did you expect. People in moscow to starve also? "Lashings of caviar"? Give me a break.
Also, once the soviets repelled the german attack on moscow, didn't the soviets liberate leningrad? If the soviets were as cruel as you claim, why would they even bother? Not only that, it's known the soviets tried to get food into the city even before they liberated the city.
> Nor did the Soviets acknowledge the extent of the suffering.
Is this a joke? The soviets took every opportunity to paint the germans as barbaric. The starvation of leningrad isn't some secret nobody knew about.
The easiest way to tell if some historical anecdote is true or not is how cartoonish the caricature becomes. Both on the positive/heroic and negative/villain side of the history.
> That reads like ww2 german propaganda. What did you expect. People in moscow to starve also? "Lashings of caviar"? Give me a break.
For better or worse, anecdotes of the caviar delivered by the crates to the top party officials appear in many Russian sources. I don't know whether independent historians confirmed these stories but they are believed by many. For very good reasons, since this is what the party did all along - it's the brutal conditions outside the party HQ in Leningrad that make these anecdotes especially poignant.
> Also, once the soviets repelled the german attack on moscow, didn't the soviets liberate leningrad?
Not until more than two years later. (It was not for the lack of trying - in 1942 an unsuccessful operation led to a complete loss of two full armies.)
> Is this a joke? / What did you expect. People in moscow to starve also? "Lashings of caviar"? Give me a break.
You didn't read the article, did you?
My great-grandfather was wounded during WW2 and after lengthy rehabilitation his command reassigned him from active combat duty to Ladoga’s “road of life”. The trucks would routinely attempt to cross the lake during winter with canned goods and were regularly blown up or sunken through the cracked ice. My great-grandfather was a trained diver, his task was to pull up crates from sunken trucks. So there definitely were attempts to deliver food. You talk about how easy it could have been to supply the city given the intent, but I encourage you to read how hunger stroked has been Gaza in the past year. And they were not surrounded by Nazis, who would indiscriminately blow up to pieces any approaching vehicle.
I haven't seen anyone talk about how easy it could have been to supply the city given the intent but I agree with you that it's a silly statement.
People don't understand how desperate it was. There was enough food in the USSR to keep it supplied, but creating a logistics chain from literal scratch in the middle of a war when not even the army has enough trucks and other logistical supplies for its own needs is a dire situation. The trucks from lend lease were a massive help.
> They ruled the skies even at night?
None of those technologies: newly developed radar, or even more exotic night vision at that time, would have allowed them to bomb ships at night over lake Ladoga. Dive bombing would have worked but not at night.
Radar's useful for finding ships.
Radio's useful for telling the planes where those ships are.
Even before radar, night missions were a thing (even in pre-radar WWI, a little). It's rarely completely dark out.
And as a bonus, supplies have to be loaded and unloaded, which tends to take time. The day comes eventually, and the loading points on the other side of the lake would've been well within range.
Even with modern instances of those technologies, finding and bombing a moving boat that wants to hide at night on water is not easy, but we're talking about the start of WWII, no smart bombs or other things like that.
Some years this might have been tricky but nowadays it's possible to fire up any somewhat realistic simulator and get on on any WWII era plane, say Ju-88 or Ju-87 and try hitting a supply boat in the middle of the night with a bomb.
> night missions were a thing (even in pre-radar WWI, a little).
Yes, carpet bombing cities and industrial complexes, not pin point targets on water!
The "state of the art" for attacking ships at night with aircraft at the time consisted of a radar equipped medium or heavy bomber that could get you "close enough" and then a giant light you'd flick on for your attack run, not a capability the german air forced was well practiced at.
What you are proposing is nonsensical and not an effective use of resources, hence why they didn't do it.
It also didn't matter much because the soviets didn't do a ton of shipping over the lake by boat.
> What you are proposing is nonsensical and not an effective use of resources, hence why they didn't do it.
Are we talking about the "flying night missions" bit - which is a historical fact (for example, here's an AA battery in Leningrad at night: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anti_aircraft_Lening...) - or the "supply an encircled city with millions of inhabitants via a 30 mile boat trip across a lake straight into enemy territory" bit?
>Are we talking about the "flying night missions" bit - which is a historical fact (for example, here's an AA battery in Leningrad at night: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anti_aircraft_Lening...) - or the "supply an encircled city with millions of inhabitants via a 30 mile boat trip across a lake straight into enemy territory" bit?
Man those goal posts move quick. The germans didn't try to shoot at small mobile targets on the ground/sea (i.e. not another airplane that has a giant sky behind it it stands in contrast from, because I'm pretty sure that's the next place these goal posts are moving) from the air at night. They didn't have the tech or the training fleshed out to make that effective, especially when the siege of Leningrad was taking place. End of story. There might be an exception or two but it generally wasn't done.
From which port? to which port? with what ships? The Germans owned the bank of the river between the lake and Leningrad until the river turned North West. There doesn't appear to be much of a port on the parts of the lake still controlled by the Soviets during the siege either.
Also they did provide supplies over the lake but there were limited boats and the lake was shared with the Finns who had their own tiny little navy operating in the lake (tonnage was limited by treaty and the Finns could only bring in new boats that were small enough to be transported over land). During the winter the lake froze and supplies came in over the frozen lake but there were ~3 million people in Leningrad when the siege was established and feeding that many people over improvised routes is... difficult to say the least even if the only thing being transported was food and didn't include the large amount of military supplies needed to continue to repel the besiegers.
> The sad part is the starvation and suffering was brought about by their own government.
That is not true. The starvation was planned by Hitler and he gave explicit directives to that effect. You're essentially reproducing the nazi propaganda.
> You're essentially reproducing the nazi propaganda.
And you're essentially reproducing Soviet propaganda. Over the years they covered it up extensively. If you read the article it mentions but doesn't go into details:
"The betrayal came from the top. Stalin, neglecting the relevant intelligence and then focusing on Moscow, all but abandoned Leningrad, while his apparatchiks appeared at public baths milky and fat in their privilege. The man in charge of the city, Andrei Zhdanov, enjoyed butter on his bread and lashings of caviar while those in his care ate their pets, sometimes their neighbours, and fashioned tagliatelle out of slow-boiled strips of leather."
This really is a "what if both sides were indifferent to the value of human life?" situation.
Very much so. And of course, one would expect the enemy to not care about human lives, but it hurts more when your own country doesn't value your and your fellow citizens' lives. Moreover the Soviets and now the Russian propaganda worked very hard to blame it all on Germans and cover their own mistakes.
One can tell this by the fact that they covered this up at the time:
> Nor did the Soviets acknowledge the extent of the suffering. State broadcasts told of ‘hardship’ and ‘shortage’ – not ‘starvation’ and never ‘famine’, a word that had been criminalised a decade earlier when the government’s collectivisation policy killed millions. The accepted word was distrofia, or dystrophy. Five thousand Leningraders died of distrofia on Christmas Day 1941.
The Soviet Union routinely starved its own people. And here was a golden opportunity to blame it all on Germans. But at the time they didn't! They hid the problem. Because they knew they had their hand in it. After the war, they "regrouped", got their story together and then all pointed fingers at Hitler and praising Stalin and touting "hard time" and "historical necessity" and so on.
My Soviet era school history textbook was a lot more balanced than what you are claiming here.
Both the Soviets and the Western allies worked very hard to look the other way. I'll quote the article again:
> "Nor did the Soviets acknowledge the extent of the suffering. State broadcasts told of ‘hardship’ and ‘shortage’ – not ‘starvation’ and never ‘famine’"
That's not made up and I was merely highlighting and connecting some dots that the article didn't, but, the main gist is right there. The Soviets covered it up because Stalin only half-heartedly approved supplying the city, they evacuated works of art, but didn't evacuate the people. They didn't leave stores of supplies in the city either. That is why they didn't jump on the radio and told the whole world about atrocious starvation going on there - because they knew they were complicit. Only later after the war when they had a chance to get all their ducks in a row, so to speak, they absolved themselves of any wrongdoing and told everyone that it was all just the Germans.
In case you mean Soviet era school books in the West, that is even more interesting. Why didn't they talk about it? Because it was terribly inconvenient. Stalin was "Uncle Joe", and during the war he was just a confused, fumbling grandpa caught by surprise. But we helped him win the war. If we supported and supplied someone who was starving and killing his own people by the millions, what does that make us? That raises some questions. Britain, for instance, got into WII, to save Poland. But in the end they gave it to Stalin essentially. That's not a happy story to tell the kids, either. The fumbling and confused "Uncle Joe", somehow smartened up and became a cunning fox who tricked us at the end and took control of Poland for decades to control and oppress its population, along with many other countries.
Please don't try to equate the criminal and its victim.
Lets not forget that's where WW2 was fought and won. With two thirds of German army committed to eastern front, the entire D-day Normandy is just a pheriphiral operation.
Even Soviet propaganda aside, Leningrad (Saint-Petersburg now) objectively wasn't abandoned due to naked greed of the elite, after all USSR was fighting for survival and had to make tough decisions. Even if Stalin didn't care about the people, the city itself was really important strategically.
Minimizing the suffering of Soviet people in the WWII is always wrong. Sure members ate better than, but they still suffered. Caviar is a local and canned food. The Soviet people saved the world from the Nazi horror, and we must forever grateful.
> Stalin, neglecting the relevant intelligence and then focusing on Moscow
The seventh panzer division was within 29 km of Moscow in November, I am not sure how much or how strategic diverting resources from Moscow's defense could help Leningrad.
>>> The sad part is the starvation and suffering was brought about by their own government.
>> That is not true. The starvation was planned by Hitler and he gave explicit directives
>> to that effect. You're essentially reproducing the nazi propaganda.
> And you're essentially reproducing Soviet propaganda.
Are you actually claiming that the explicit Hitler's order to starve the city and bombard into submission is "Soviet propaganda"? Per Generalplan "Ost", city was to be flooded, population - starved.
You are engaging in literal genocide denial here.
Hundreds of thousands of people did not starve to death because of one man.
The Nazis wanted to starve millions of Russians to death. They even had a plan to do it and talked about it publicly.
Stalin starved millions of Russians to death on his own before any hostilities occured.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%93...
There was a famine, I don't think he deliberately did that. Yes it was his stupid policies that led to it, and he certainly didn't seem to care much, but it's different to an outright plan to starve 20-30 million slavs
Oh, I guess that makes it wholly different to the people who died, then
A decision like supplying or not supplying, defending or not defending a city like Leningrad is not something that was done without approval or disapproval of Stalin.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_of_Life
> Joseph Stalin tentatively approved, but he failed to appreciate the importance and only limited resources were committed.[19][20] The Leningrad Front planned the ice roads to bring 1965 tonnes of supplies to the city per day, but this was not initially met.[21] Little was achieved in the first weeks of operation.
That's putting it mildly. When Stalin "tentatively approved" but wasn't "enthused about it", so to speak, that meant to his minions that it should not be tried very hard and if they fail, their head is on the line.
"Stalin's warning served as a thinly veiled threat to the Leningrad leader
> The Nazis wanted to starve millions of Russians to death. They even had a plan to do it and talked about it publicly.
Just because Nazis had plans, that didn't stop Stalin from out-competing them. He started early even in the 30s. In fact it was the Soviet Union's government that killed millions of its own people in the end. It happened before, during and after the war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1946%E2%80%93..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%93...
The Soviet Union was under the greatest, most genocidal assault in human history. The Soviets launched multiple assaults on Leningrad from 1941 until they finally relieved it in 1944. It was at huge human cost that they did so.
But yes Stalin was a brutal dictator.
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