Voices of the Great Patriotic War: Part 2. The Siege of Leningrad: A Сity That Refused To Die.

The Siege of Leningrad was a slow, grinding agony that lasted 872 days — from September 8, 1941, to January 27, 1944.

The Nazis' plan was not just to capture the city but to wipe it off the map. They intended to starve its population and then destroy what was left. The German command had no intention of accepting the city's surrender, as this would have forced them to take responsibility for the civilian population. Any attempts by women, children, or the elderly to break out of the encirclement were to be met with fire — first warning shots, then aimed to kill.

Imagine a city where the temperature drops to -30°C (-22°F) and below, but there is no firewood to heat apartments. A city plunged into darkness every night to hide from bombers. The only lifeline was the «Road of Life» across the frozen Lake Ladoga. The daily bread ration for civilians fell to a terrifying 125 grams — a small piece that often contained more sawdust than flour.

By September 12th, the city's food reserves were critically low: grain and flour for 35 days, meat for 33 days. But the psychological blow came with the fire at the Badayevsky warehouses on the very first day of the blockade. Although the food there was only enough for a week, in the minds of Leningraders, this fire became the main symbol and cause of the coming mass famine.

By December 1941, the situation had reached its peak: food rations were at their minimum, most enterprises had shut down due to lack of electricity, and the water supply, transport, and other infrastructure had virtually ceased to function.The population began to think of alternative ways to find food, new survival strategies.

Tatiana Savicheva was just 11 years old. Her diary, found after her death, became one of the most powerful symbols of the siege. Each page records the death of a family member.

«Zhenya died on December 28th at 12 noon... Leka died on March 5th at 5 in the morning... Uncle Vasya died on April 13th at 2 in the night... Uncle Lesha on May 10th at 4 in the afternoon... Mama on May 13th at 7:30 in the morning...»

The final page shows only one phrase: «SAVICHEVY ALL DEAD.» The last entry: «Only Tanya is left.»

People ate anything to survive: leather belts were boiled into jelly, wallpaper glue (made from potato starch) was scraped off walls, and joiner's glue was cooked into a protein "soup".

Throughout the blockade, a metronome beat through the city’s radio network. This device, usually used by musicians to keep time, became a lifeline for Leningrad.

A fast rhythm — 150 beats per minute — meant an air raid was coming. A slow rhythm was the all-clear.

«The radio is now the closest, most living creature to me», wrote a factory worker in her diary at the end of 1941. «It feeds me with stories, with culture. But most importantly — with news from the front».

The blockade forced children to grow up instantly. 11-year-old Antonina Grigorieva wrote in her diary about a nightmare that became routine.

«January 1942: I woke up my mother and said I was cold. Mom came up to me and discovered that grandma was dead. In the morning we sewed grandma in a sheet and with the help of a neighbor carried her outside».

Her evacuation across the frozen Lake Ladoga was a journey through hell:

«Wagons were stuffed with weak people like herring in a barrel... My brother Zhenya said: "Close your eyes so it's not so scary to drown". We made it to the shore. But then there was a terrible cry — seven cars with people had gone to the bottom of Lake Ladoga».

«In the church everything was broken, there were dead bodies around us, but we were not afraid — we were used to it at home».

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Read part 1 here

The blockade left no family untouched. The family of Vladimir Putin was among them.

His father was seriously wounded in battle near the city. His mother nearly died of starvation inside the besieged Leningrad.

My mother told me how she came to visit my father in the hospital. They had a small child, he was three years old. And there was hunger, the Siege... And my father gave her his hospital rations. In secret from the doctors and nurses. She hid it, took it home and fed the child. And then he began to faint in the hospital, the doctors understood everything and stopped letting her in.

Their one-year-old son Victor died of diphtheria in an orphanage during evacuation. His parents never knew where he was buried until recently.

Then they took her child away. They did it on purpose, with the aim of saving children from starvation. They gathered them in orphanages for evacuation. They didn't even ask the parents. He got sick there and didn't survive. And they weren't even told where he was buried. And then people I didn't know worked in the archives and found documents on my brother.
And this is indeed my brother. Not only the address from which he was taken matched. The first name, last name, patronymic, year of birth matched. And the burial place was indicated: Piskarevskoye Cemetery and even a specific plot.

Nina Sigal was only 12 when she joined a self-defense unit.

«We cleaned attics, carried sand and water, covered wooden beams with fireproof paint. We were taught first aid and how to sound an alarm», she recalls. «We collected bottles for Molotov cocktails».

«One day, my mother was let off work early and came home exclaiming: 'They've added bread! They've added bread!' My father did not react; he was no longer getting up. My mother sent me to the clinic to call a doctor and say he was dying. A woman came out of the clinic and said: 'Well, everyone is dying. Calmly and quietly, go home.' The doctor came only after my father's death»

During the siege, German forces dropped about 150,000 heavy artillery shells and over 100,000 bombs on Leningrad. The longest shelling lasted over 13 hours, with more than two thousand shells fired.

Over 3,000 buildings were destroyed to the ground. But iconic monuments survived because citizens protected them with sandbags and wooden shields. The famous statues on Anichkov Bridge were even buried in the ground until the war's end.

Historians still debate the death toll. While the Nuremberg Trials cited 649,000 victims, modern research suggests the actual number is no less than 800,000.

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