Russia at war 1941-1945

often the cards of people who had died or left the city. There were also many cases of forged cards; since there was scarcely any lighting in the shops, the sales staff were often unable to distinguish between real and forged cards. Particularly atrocious were cases when ration cards were stolen. The loss of a card was often equal to a death sentence.

An employee of the printing works where ration cards were printed, was found in

possession of 100 such cards; she was shot. It was also suspected that some forged cards had been dropped on Leningrad by German planes, to add to the confusion. In the middle of October a "re-registration" of all ration-cards holders was ordered; this showed that some 70,000 ration cards had, before that, been unnecessarily honoured. People had used the cards of the absent, the dead, or of some who were now in the Army.

At the height of the famine in December there was a "epidemic" of lost ration cards; in October 5,000 ration cards had been genuinely or fraudulently lost; in November the

figure rose to 13,000, in December to 24,000. The usual story was that the card had been destroyed in an air-raid. It is perhaps surprising that not more people should have resorted to this subterfuge, since the difference between one and two ration cards in December often meant the difference between life and death. The authorities' refusal to replace these lost ration cards, except when such loss and destruction could be more or less

satisfactorily proved, soon put an end to the "epidemic".

If, in September and October, most rations were still honoured, this was no longer true in November; the shortage of cereals, meat and fats was particularly serious, and card-holders had to accept substitutes. Some of these, such as 6 oz. of egg-powder instead of 2

lb. of meat, were not "equivalents" by the widest stretch. Other meat-substitutes were the horrible jelly from sheep's guts, or an evil-smelling jelly made out of calves' skins, of which a stock had been discovered in a warehouse. In November and especially

December, there were practically no fats (butter, oil or margarine) left, nor any kinds of substitutes.

During the first few months of the blockade the distribution of food was rather chaotic; in theory, anyone could have his ration coupon honoured anywhere; but this often produced queues of unequal length. In December, everybody had to register in a particular shop; the distribution centres were thus able to send each shop approximately its correct share

—not that this meant that all ration coupons could be honoured.

In November and December, the whole of Leningrad was living on starvation rations;

even many privileged ration holders (workers and technical and engineering staffs)—

representing 34.4% of the population—died of hunger; still lower ration cards were held by office workers (17.5%), dependants (29.5%) and children (18.5%). This system has

been severely criticised by Soviet authors—especially in relation to children's ration cards: a child of eleven certainly needed more food than a child of three, and it was particularly unfair to put children on the even lower dependants card once they had

reached the age of twelve.

As we have seen, the first cut in rations was decided on September 2; the second was on September 10, the third, on October 1, the fourth on November 13, and the fifth, the all-time low, on November 20. Already after the fourth cut, people began to die of hunger.

Apart from the food shortage, there was also a catastrophic fuel shortage in Leningrad.

Both oil and coal supplies were virtually exhausted by the end of September. The only hope was to cut whatever timber was still available in the blockaded territory.

On October 8, the City and Provincial Committees decided to cut timber in the Pargolovo and Vsevolozhsk areas north of the city...

The wood-cutting teams consisted mostly of women and adolescents; they arrived in the woods without proper instruments or clothing, and there was no housing and no transport there. The whole plan was threatened with collapse. Ely October 24 only one per cent of the plan had been fulfilled... in one area, only 216 people were working, instead of 800 as originally planned... In the circumstances the Komsomols, mostly girls, were sent out to Pargolovo and Vsevolozhsk. Without warm clothes and shoes, and sometimes wearing

only light shoes and overcoats, and suffering from hunger and cold, these girls of the Leningrad Komsomol nevertheless did wonders. Thus the girls of the Smolny area built, in forty degrees of frost [Centigrade], a narrow-gauge line from the forest to the nearest railway line. They built barracks, supplied them with rudimentary stoves, and so

delivered substantial quantities of timber to Leningrad.

[ Karasev, op. cit., pp. 237-8.]