History of St. Petersburg: Siege diary highlights evacuation of Leningrad University to Saratov

On March 25, 2011 at the lecture hall of the Peter and Paul Cathedral was held a presentation of a new joint edition of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg and the St. Petersburg State University “All and sundry remained in Leningrad. The diary of 1942-1944. Evacuation of the Leningrad University to Saratov”.

This is the first complete publication of the diary, written during the Great Patriotic War by the Leningrad pupil Sergei Lavrov, later the graduate and lecturer of the Leningrad State University (LGU), President of the Russian Geographical Society.

Sergei Lavrov was born in Leningrad in the family of philologists. The most frightful winter of the siege he spent in Leningrad. His father passed away in February 1942. With his mother Maria Alexandrovna Sokolova, professor of the Faculty of Philology of the Leningrad State University, he was evacuated to Saratov with one of the university’s groups.

During the evacuation in Saratov Sergei Lavrov kept a diary, every day making notes on the back side of propaganda posters, on discovered pieces of paper. The diary of the 14-year-old pupil gives a vivid picture of evacuation of the Leningrad University from the besieged Leningrad in 1942, the life of lecturers and their families, work of the university in the rear Saratov between 1942-1944, the return to Leningrad in summer 1944.

Diary’s notes were accompanied by press cuttings with round-ups and poems, maps of military actions and sketches, made by the author himself; they also went hand in hand with playbills, cinema tickets, food cards, menu of the university’s canteen etc.  

So far only extracts from Lavrov’s diary were published in the St. Petersburg University’s magazine. Current edition includes a complete text of the diary. All materials which were attached to the diary (drawings, press cuttings, tickets) have been published in the book as illustrations.