The first increase in the rate of delivery of bread based on the diaries of the siege

As part of a major project dedicated to preserving the historical memory of the siege of Leningrad, the Presidential Library has already digitized about 3800 documents. More than 250 people responded to the call to share memories of that time. Among the materials from personal archives are documents, letters, photographs and diaries of the residents of the besieged city. The theme of hunger and bread was the main message...

Everyone knows about “125 blockade grams with fire and blood in half”, which remained forever one of the symbols of the siege. This norm lasted a little over a month, but what a deep, unhealing mark it left in the hearts of Leningraders! Therefore, the first increase in the norm of bread in December 1941 was the biggest event for all the city residents.

At the beginning of the siege, Leningrad residents mainly wrote in their diaries about the bombing and shelling, but soon the fear of bombing was in the background. The main theme was hunger. The refrain in the diaries repeated the phrase "so much hungry".

“A fragment of the diary of Valentina Aleksandrovna Meller” (1941–1942) contains many psychologically accurate “impressions” of that terrible time when fates broke in the flame of war, mothers and children lost each other. Valentina Meller, who worked at one of the military factories, was in the very first days of the war separated from her most dear people: her little daughter and her grandmother looking after her. In the summer of 1941, they went to rest in Staraya Russa, where they were caught by Nazi bombing. For a long time there was no news from them. All her fear, all doubts and torment, the young woman trusted the diary:

“One word to get from them, and I would stop worrying and tormenting myself with all kinds of thoughts, - the young woman writes. - I look with envy at the children of Tanya’s age, here’s a cry on the street, so similar to her cry, and I really envy the mothers who are hugging their children now. I would very much like to go looking for them, but where?.. When will there be a joyful moment, when I read the news about my mother, even written in one word “alive”?.. In the village where they were, the Germans were more than once...".  

Living hell, fear, bombing, hunger - the bread delivery rate dropped to critical... And here is the first encouraging entry in Valentina Meller's diary dated December 25, 1941: “Today is the most joyful day during the war. In the morning, all people congratulate each other, and that's because from today they added the norm of bread to a work card of 100 grams, and for all the rest, dependent 75 grams are given. Today I haven’t eaten my whole norm, although of course I could, but I’m quite tolerantly looking at the wrapped bag, which still seduces me, but I think that I’ll survive until tomorrow's dinner, because today I ate 4 foolish cakes and a mint one, so I shouldn’t want to eat, - as the spell repeats Leningrad resident, - but I am surprised by the fact that, as long as you don’t eat, you want to eat everything”.

And not only about bread on January 3, 1942: “... Things are good at the front, the battles are near Volkhovstroy, in Mga, Gruzino district, they said that 50 settlements have been freed today. ...It would be nice to survive another 2-3 difficult months of this war, and there should be much better. But now things are bad in the city, with such a diet you are unlikely to survive 2 months...”

Olga Vladimirovna Doronina worked at the factory and had the opportunity to eat in the dining room. But she tried to take lunch home.

In December 1941, she writes that their family still has reserves, and other Leningraders are dying of starvation: “There are so many dead, there’s a horror, there are no more coffins, the people are buried without them. Or, to make a coffin, you need to give some of the products".

A rank 3 military engineer, Dado Mikhailovich Tide, described one of his dreams in a diary: “I saw in a dream plantations and gardens that I supposedly planted outside the city. Dreamed of potatoes and tomatoes".

The most difficult situation was for dependents. Here is an entry from the diary of Yuri Davidovich Khazanov, who at the age of 27 became disabled for health reasons: “I want to eat, I want simple bread, but 200 grams is little, very little, but what to do, we must endure. But my head is spinning and sick". On February 3, 1942, the last entry was left in the diary: “I want to live. I am only 27 years old and I have the right to live. Yes! There must be a twist. 8 months of torment with my strength and health - this is for me over the edge". Yuri Khazanov managed to leave Leningrad, but died in evacuation in 1942.

The fate of the authors of the besieged diaries has developed in different ways, but they all have one thing in common - the desire to remain human in the most inhuman conditions. Despite the most difficult conditions, life in the city continued. The pages of the diaries include these dumb witnesses to the fight against the horror and fear of the siege - people shared their impressions of new acquaintances, study and even visit theaters.

Leningrad residents won. And our task now is to carefully preserve the memory of the great feat of the residents of the city. The Presidential Library not only forms invaluable electronic content, which includes the collection “The Memory of the Great Victory” (including the siege collection), but also organizes large-scale and at the same time warm events for veterans and survivors of the siege.

“What do you know about bread? / You can break it with your hands, / You can cut it into pieces, / You can throw the birds under your feet / And squeeze it with a warm crust on your cheek...”, Tatyana Rudykovskaya, who survived the hardships of the 900-day siege, read these verses of her own composition in the Presidential Library on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the complete liberation of Leningrad from the Nazi siege this January.