“They have not yet known a more terrible and joyful road on earth...”

On November 22, 1941, the first trucks carrying food for besieged Leningrad passed across the ice of Lake Ladoga. The Ice Road of life was launched. 

“125 blockade grams with fire and blood in half” forever became one of the symbols of the siege. This bread quota lasted for just over a month, leaving a deep, unhealed mark in the hearts of Leningraders. If at the beginning of the siege in their diaries, which are available in the electronic collection of the Presidential Library Memory of the Great Victory, Leningraders wrote mainly about bombings and artillery shelling, then soon the fear of bombings took a back seat. The main theme was hunger.

On November 20, in the city on the Neva, the norms for the distribution of bread to the population were reduced for the fifth time - 250 grams for workers and 125 for employees and dependents. Ladoga remained the last hope for supplying the besieged city, but everyone understood perfectly well that sooner or later the shipping route would have to be closed due to the approaching cold weather. In October 1941, work began to prepare for the construction of an ice route across Lake Ladoga. On the very first ice that shackled Ladoga in November, teams of horses with convoys, on which sacks of flour were transported to Leningrad, first went.

On November 22, the first automobile convoy of 60 GAZ-AA vehicles entered the ice. On that day, 33 tons of food were delivered to Leningrad. The next day - only 19 tons. The city, even with an insignificant norm of 125 grams of bread per person, needed 500 tons.

For camouflage purposes, the cars were repainted white, the sleighs and horses were covered with light-colored sheets, and the drivers did not close the doors while driving in order to have time to leave the dying car, which was sinking under the ice. Despite all these measures, of the four thousand vehicles involved in transportation on the ice of Lake Ladoga, every fourth did not return from the trip.

The 30-kilometer ice road through Ladoga was serviced by tens of thousands of people - drivers, mechanics, traffic controllers, and signalmen. All along the highway, in villages, in houses and dugouts, slogans were posted: “Driver, remember! Every two flights provide 10 thousand Leningrad residents! Fight for two flights!”

On December 22, 1941, 700 tons of food were delivered to Leningrad via Ladoga, the next day - 100 tons more, that is, the delivery, albeit slightly, began to exceed the daily consumption. And although even the slightest hitch in delivery could lead to disaster, on December 24, at a meeting of the Military Council of the front, A. A. Zhdanov makes a proposal to increase the norms for the distribution of bread.

In total, during the worst siege winter of 1941–1942, thanks to the Road of Life, 361 thousand tons of cargo were delivered to Leningrad, including 262 thousand tons of food.

On January 22, 1942, the State Defence Committee adopted a resolution to evacuate 500 thousand people from Leningrad. In fact, by this time people had already been taken out of the besieged city, primarily children and women. They were transported to the Borisov Griva station by rail, then by car across the lake to Kobona, Zhikharevo, Volkhovstroy and other places, where they were transferred to trains to be sent to the cities and villages of the country. In total, 550 thousand people were evacuated along the ice road in the winter of 1941–1942.

During the first winter of the siege, the ice Road of Life operated until April 24, 1942. Eyewitnesses recalled that the trucks were driving on melting ice up to their bodies in water. Over three weeks in April, about 163,400 people were brought to the eastern shore of Ladoga - for many this was the only chance of salvation.

The Road of Life continued to operate in the winter of 1942–1943. The total amount of cargo transported to Leningrad along the Road of Life for the entire period amounted to over 1 million 615 thousand tons. About 1 million 376 thousand people were evacuated from the besieged city.