Siege Diaries

"A day of alarms, worries, anxieties. I will tell everything in order. In the morning Mama runs home from work, says she is being sent to work at a state farm in Oranienbaum. She would have had to leave me and [my sister] Ira alone. She went to the district council — they gave her a deferral until tomorrow. Then we discussed the special school. <…> When I got home, Mama had already arrived. She told me they might accept me. But I very much doubt it. Then Mama left again. And that's when the most terrifying thing began. The air-raid alarm sounded. I paid no attention. But then I heard a commotion in the courtyard. I looked out, first down, then up, and saw… 12 Junkers. Explosions of bombs thundered. One deafening blast after another, but the windows didn't rattle. Evidently the bombs were falling far away, but were of extraordinary force. Ira and I rushed downstairs. The explosions did not stop. I ran back up. There on our landing stood Zagoskin's wife. She too was terrified and had run downstairs. I started talking to her. Then Mama came running from somewhere, having forced her way through the street. Soon the all-clear sounded. Yes, this was the first real bombing of the city of Leningrad. Now night will come, the night of 8 to 9 September. What will this night bring?"

"The situation is deteriorating on all fronts. The night passed quietly, but the city is being shelled by artillery — one shell hit near Nikolsky Lane, there were hits near Moskovsky Station. Our artillery responds from the port, from battleships and from the city itself. The station was very anxious. I asked one woman who was standing on the pavement crying, unable to manage with an infant in her arms, a three-year-old at her skirt and a large bundle: 'Where are you going?' She said: 'I don't know myself, we'll ask to be taken into some ground-floor flat.' <…> The bread ration has dropped from 400 to 200 grams for office workers and from 600 to 400 for manual workers in just 3 days, but there is little talk of it. Physical fear of the bombing prevails."

"I am still alive and can write my diary. I now have no confidence at all that Leningrad will not be surrendered. How much was said, how many loud words and speeches: Kyiv and Leningrad stand as an impregnable fortress!.. Never will a fascist foot step into the flourishing capital of Ukraine, into the northern pearl of our country — Leningrad. And now, on the radio they announce: after fierce, days-long battles our troops have abandoned… Kyiv! What does this mean? Nobody understands. We are shelled, we are bombed. Yesterday we went to look at the destroyed buildings. It's very close. On Bolshaya Moskovskaya, next to Vera Nikitichna's building, a bomb hit a house and destroyed almost the entire building. But the most terrifying sight was one building: its entire corner had been sliced off and everything was visible — rooms, corridors and their contents. In a room on the 6th floor a heavy oak sideboard stood against the wall, next to it a small table, and on the wall hung antique clocks with a long pendulum. With its back to us, at the very wall that was missing, stood a sofa covered with a white bedspread."

"With my canteen duties there is no end of running around — and rudeness and cursing too. Human nature reveals itself with extraordinary clarity in this trial, and I feel an incomparable sense of relief and even gratitude when I occasionally encounter decency and calm instead of the greedy cry 'Feed me!'. But this is rare; the majority can only defend the rights of their stomachs by any means. Today I was late for my shift at the canteen and didn't eat at all, but since this will probably happen again, I treated it as a test of my endurance. In the morning at tea I ate a thin slice of bread — about 20 grams — and 2 cold potatoes, during the day I drank several cups of tea, and by evening I felt perfectly normal."

"Today I have finally decided what to do. I won't go to the special school. I'll get my passport. I'll stay with the school brigade. I'll ask Mama to evacuate so I can keep studying. For now I'll go to dig trenches. In a year they'll draft me into the army. Killed or not killed. After the war I'll go to the shipbuilding institute or the history faculty. My decision is a heavy blow to me, but it will save me from another, even heavier blow. And if it's death, injury — it's all the same. But that is probably exactly what awaits me. If injury — I'll end my life; and death — you can only die once. So, for fear of staking my honour, I have staked my life. A grand phrase, but a true one."

"I am 16 years old, but my health is like that of a 60-year-old man. Oh, if only death would come sooner. If only it could happen so that Mama wouldn't be too upset by it. God knows what thoughts keep crawling into my head. Someday, re-reading this diary, I — or someone else — will smile contemptuously (and it would be good if nothing worse), reading all these lines, but right now I don't care. I've had one dream since earliest childhood: to become a sailor. And now this dream is turning to dust. So what have I been living for? If I don't get into the Naval special school, I'll join the militia or something else, so that at least I don't die uselessly. If I die — let it be defending my homeland."

"…We lived on trembling earth, under a howling sky. Our hearing worked beyond our control, catching every sound — is that a siren? The whistle of a bomb or a shell? A German aircraft? Ours or German? Aimed at me or not at me? When the all-clear sounded, everyone quietly echoed it, hummed along, thinking: 'This will never happen again…' We learned to understand what a home means — a dwelling, a human dwelling, which was ready at every moment to protect us. The buildings smothered their owners."

"Today there was an ugly scene at home. Ira threw a tantrum saying I had eaten in the office canteen while she hadn't even had a bowl of soup. Mama told her to calm down. At the same time she told me that Ira had been offered borscht and beans with bacon fat, but Ira said they made her sick and wouldn't eat. She ate half a bar of chocolate and nothing else. She won't eat herself and is angry at me! Mama is already telling me I must get used to the idea that if a person gets a bowl of soup during the day, they should be content. But what if I can't get used to that idea?.. I don't eat even half, a quarter of what it would take to feel full… Oh, war, war… Gloomy overcast weather now. Frost, a little snow falling."

"Oh, how I want to sleep, sleep, eat, eat, eat… Sleep, eat, sleep, eat… What else does a person need? And once a person is full and healthy, they'll want something else, and so on endlessly. A month ago I wanted — rather, I dreamed of — bread with butter and sausage, but now I dream of just bread… <…> Mama tells me that now is not the time to keep a diary. But I will keep it. I won't get to re-read it — someone else will re-read it, learn what kind of person there was in this world — Ryabinkin Yura — and laugh at this person, yes…"

"Now I can barely move my legs from weakness, and climbing the stairs is an enormous effort. Mama says my face is beginning to swell. All because of malnutrition. I don't know how I will be able to study. The other day I tried to do algebra, but in my head there are not formulas — there are loaves of bread. Now I take little care of myself. I sleep in my clothes, barely rinse my face once in the morning, don't wash my hands with soap, don't change. Our flat is cold, dark; we spend the nights by candlelight."

"The start of a new month, and on this occasion I've been running around with ration cards, passes, and so on. The food situation naturally worsens with each day. Each new milestone — month, ten-day period — brings a new tightening of norms. And the fight for every morsel grows ever more fierce, people grow ever more embittered. A small red-haired lame man drowns among screaming and weeping women, helplessly fending them off. And people look to these passes as their salvation."

"School continues, but somehow I don't like it. We sit at our desks in fur coats, many pupils don't study at all. It turns out we have no rice porridge left. So — I'll go three days completely hungry. I'll barely drag my feet, if I'm alive and well at all. Back to water again. Mama is ill. Studying somehow doesn't go into my head now. No desire to study whatsoever. My head is full of nothing but thoughts of food and bombings and shells. Yesterday I lifted a basket of rubbish, took it out to the yard, and barely managed to climb back up to our 2nd floor."

"Falling asleep, every day I dream of bread, butter, pies, potatoes. And before sleep — the thought that in 12 hours the night will pass and I will eat a piece of bread… My whole character has somehow changed drastically. I have become lethargic, weak — I write, and my hand trembles; I walk, and my knees are so weak: it seems — one step, and you won't be able to take another and will fall."

"So my birthday has come. Today I turned 17. I am lying in bed with a fever and writing. Aka has gone out searching for some butter, groats or pasta. When she'll return is unknown. Perhaps she'll come back empty-handed. But I'm glad all the same — this morning Aka gave me my 125 grams of bread and 200 grams of sweets. <…> I'm terribly hungry. In my stomach is a revolting emptiness. How I want bread, how I want it. I think I would give everything right now to fill my stomach. <…> Dear Mama, darling Mama, where are you. You lie in the earth, you are dead. You are at peace forever. I, I, I suffer, suffer together with hundreds and millions of Soviet citizens, and because of whom — because of the deranged fantasy of that madman. Lord, when will all this end. Surely it must end sometime?!"

"Today the daytime alarm has been going on for about three hours. The shops are closed. As for evacuation, I've lost hope. It's all just talk… I'll quit school — studying won't go into my head. At home there's not just no bread (they now give 125g of bread per person per day), but not a single crumb, nothing that can be eaten. And the cold — my hands freeze, my feet freeze… What an egoist I am! I've become callous, I… What have I become! Am I anything like the person I was 3 months ago?.. The day before yesterday I was scooping my spoon into Anfisa Nikolaevna's pot, I secretly stole butter and cabbage from the hidden stores, I watched greedily as Mama divided a tiny piece of candy… I can't write any more — my hand has frozen."

"What a torture Mama and Ira put me through every evening… At the table Ira eats deliberately slowly, not only to get pleasure from eating but also to feel that she is still eating while the rest of us, having already finished, sit watching her with hungry eyes. Before, I needed 2 or 3 canteen meals during the day plus a filling supper and breakfast to be full. But now I make do with 100g of biscuit in the morning, nothing during the day, and a plate of soup or gruel in the evening. Plus water. Water called tea, coffee, soup, plain water. That is my menu."

"Frost has set in. Today it was 22 degrees below zero with wind. Boris's face has swollen. I gazed with pain at his unhealthily puffy cheeks. His self-control is flawless. He works a great deal, always on the move, never a single complaint. He slips pieces of food to me or Natka, but he is hungrier and has it harder than we do."

"I begin this diary on the evening of 8 December. The threshold of real winter. Leningrad is ringed by blockade; frequently bombed, shelled by artillery. We survive on 125g of bread a day; per month we receive roughly 400g of groats, a little candy, butter. We study in the school's bomb shelter since the windows are boarded up with plywood and it's bitterly cold in the classrooms. At home we live in one room. We eat twice a day. We bought about 5 kg of carpenter's glue; we make jelly from it and eat it with mustard."

"Yes, for the living — but not for the dead, who lie unburied in great numbers in homes and cemeteries, and wander in even greater numbers among the living. These are people for whom it no longer matters where disaster came from. Hungry, freezing, perishing — everything weak is being destroyed now by the force of circumstances with unprecedented ruthlessness. A coffin is nearly impossible to get. You have to stand in line for days to receive a roughly nailed box full of cracks. The approaches to cemeteries are lined with corpses without coffins, wrapped in sheets. Against fences stand stacked unburied coffins. There is no one to dig graves. The gravediggers don't take money — they demand bread."

"In Leningrad there is monstrous hunger. All the cats and dogs have been eaten. Every day dozens of people collapse in the streets and die. Passers-by don't even pick them up. The war in Leningrad has now fallen with all its weight on the citizens. What horror our dwellings are! Mountains of snow on the streets, no trams running, a quiet, quiet city — only shutters creak — and in the dwellings icy cold, almost nowhere any light, no water. Recently we visited the Marins — to say goodbye, thinking we would leave. We had lived through '37 and '38 together, when everyone was smeared and unjustly slandered. And now here we were gathered. I was choking with sobs."

"I haven't written for many days. For 8 whole days my hand didn't pick up a pen. What is this? This used to be our dining room — a place of fun, of study, of rest. Once upon a time there stood a sofa, a sideboard, chairs; on the table lay an unfinished meal, and I lay on the sofa reading The Three Musketeers, snacking on a roll with butter and cheese, or nibbling chocolate. The room was warm… And finally — what it is to remember the Leningrad Palace of Pioneers, its evenings, the reading room, the games, the history club, the chess club, the dessert in its canteen, the concerts, the balls… That was happiness I didn't even suspect — the happiness of living in the USSR, in peacetime, the happiness of having a mother who cared for you… The cold, the cold drives us from this room too."

"I haven't taken up my pen for a long time. The new year, 1942, has come. Now Mama and I are alone. Aka has died. She died on her birthday, the day she turned 76. She died yesterday, 1 January, at 9 o'clock in the morning. I wasn't home at the time. I was out getting bread. When I came back from the bakery, I was very surprised that Aka was lying so quietly. To tell the truth, if Aka dies, it will be better both for her and for Mama and me. Otherwise we have to divide everything into three parts, but this way we'll divide it in two. Aka is just an extra mouth. I don't know how I can write such lines. But my heart is now like stone. I'm not afraid at all. How heartless I am."

"Yesterday Mama and I sat by the dying stove, pressed close together. We felt so good — warmth from the stove washed over us, our stomachs were full. We pressed tight against each other and dreamed about our future life. About what we would cook for dinner. We decided that we would definitely fry lots and lots of pork cracklings and dip bread straight into the hot fat and eat. But enough writing — my fingers have gone numb."

"I am almost completely unable to walk or work. An almost total absence of strength. Mama too can barely walk — I can't even imagine how she does it. Now she often hits me, scolds me, shouts — she has violent nervous fits, she cannot stand the sight of my wretched appearance — the sight of a person weak from lack of strength, starving, exhausted, who can barely move from place to place, who gets in the way and 'pretends' to be sick and powerless. But I am not faking my helplessness. No! It is not pretence — my strength… is leaving me, leaving, drifting away… And time drags on and on, long and slow!.. Oh God, what is happening to me?"

"Life grows more terrifying with each day. Every day we have a death. People collapse and die literally on their feet. Yesterday a young man was still standing watch, today he took to his bed, and by the next morning he was gone. In the shed lie five or six accumulated corpses, and nobody seems to be planning to bury them."

"Yesterday Kolya died. I still don't understand this. He will come back. This will pass. HE WILL COME BACK. Together with Yurka we went to the hospital, and I decided to let them bury him from the hospital, in a trench, in a mass grave. We are at the front, and let him be buried as a soldier, at the front, in a mass grave. To make a wooden box for 250 grams of bread, to dig a grave for 800 grams — why? Better to give that bread to swollen Marusya, feed her, remember him with bread."

"Yesterday morning Mama died. I am left alone."

"People are happy today — the bread ration has been increased: 500 grams for category I, 400 for II, 300 for III. Indeed, the mood is better. And besides, today I'll receive a dry stationary ration from the Union — yesterday I got 400 grams of real white bread! And all this when Kolya is no longer here. How little he fell short. How senselessly the cursed machine of this vile war chewed him up, swallowed him. I only remember the pictures of his death in flashes — one cannot live, cannot live, if one has them before one's eyes."

"The samovar had just begun to boil when the door unexpectedly opened and there appeared a real, living Borya!!! in Red Army uniform. We all rushed to him. We nearly wept with joy! We sat down at the samovar. Borya took from his bag butter, bread, rusks, condensed milk. We drank tea and couldn't stop talking! We ate, of course, not the way we used to. Mama arrived… She wept from emotion and joy; watching their reunion, we too couldn't hold back our tears… This evening there will be a real feast."

"In conversation we recalled the first months of the war, and all agreed that those months seem infinitely separated from the present, as if a decade had passed. So the skeleton remains. And then? No trams. Only military vehicles run through the streets. Passers-by walk, not too many of them. Many with sledges. On the sledges mostly firewood, household goods, and corpses. You often see them transporting weakened invalids — wrapped-up mummies on children's sledges, a thin bluish nose poking out from clothes and scarves, eyes staring with an unliving gaze. The city is monstrously filthy due to the absence of sewerage and running water. Courtyards have turned into cesspools, flooded with waste."

"The day can truly be called spring-like, for it is very warm, the thaw is tremendous, the breeze warm and filled with various smells, many of which stir a host of pleasant memories. On Nevsky Prospect, on every ledge and bollard, emaciated Leningraders who have crept out of their houses with books and newspapers sit warming themselves in the sun. In recent days there has been silence over the city: no raids, no shelling. And we now often build conjectures and plans for the future, which is shrouded in such darkness that the devil himself would gouge out both eyes…"

"Sunday. The weather is completely summery: 15 degrees above zero. Every minute I recall the past, which would be repeating itself now if not for this cursed war. And it's understandable: the grass is already tall, soon there will be leaves, and the weather!.. Again I want to flee as far as possible from heroic, hateful, tedious Leningrad."

"Such a cold spring. End of May and not a single leaf on the trees. On every patch of green, people crawl with little baskets and bags, plucking nettle barely unfurling its first two tiny leaves, and other grasses, digging dandelion roots. The Germans near Leningrad seem frozen in place — neither forward nor backward. And I am inclined to regard any stability as our loss. What will summer bring? Indeed, a second winter under siege would be impossible to endure."