Russia at war 1941-1945

have been supplied, since the improvised 200-mile road was as good as useless. And, at that time, with the Russian counter-offensive at Moscow at its height, there could be no question of providing Leningrad with a sufficient number of transport and fighter planes for a super-airlift. Not only did General Meretskov's troops drive the Germans out of Tikhvin, but by the end of December the troops of the Volkhov Army Group had also

driven the Germans a considerable distance away from Voibokalo, half-way between

Volkhov and Mga (the latter still in German hands). By January 1, 1942, trains could travel all the way from Moscow and Vologda to Voibokalo, where the supplies were

taken by lorry across the now frozen Lake Ladoga to Leningrad. But the organisation of the "Road of Life" across the ice of Lake Ladoga is a long and complicated story, and it would be wrong to suppose that, with the liberation of Tikhvin on December 9,

Leningrad's supply troubles were over.

Chapter V THE GREAT FAMINE

Already in November, people in Leningrad (in the first place, elderly men) began to die of hunger, euphemistically described as "alimentary distrophy". In November alone over 11,000 people died; the cut in rations on November 20—the fifth since the beginning of the Blockade—enormously increased the death-rate.

On paper, but only on paper, these all-time-low daily rations were as follows:

Workers and Engineering and technical

Office Workers

Dependants

Children

staff

Bread

9 oz.

4.5 oz.

4.5 oz.

Fats

0.66 oz.

0.33 oz.

0.25 oz.

Meat

l.75 oz.

1 oz.

0.5 oz.

Cereals

1.75 oz.

1.16 oz.

0.75 oz.

Sugar and

1.75 oz.

1.16 oz.

1 oz.

conf.

8.16 oz. or 581

7 oz. or 466

8.33 oz. or 684

Total

15 oz. or 1,087 calories

calories

calories

Even these incredible figures for calories, representing, especially for the last three categories, only a tiny fraction of the human body's requirements, are an "optimistic"

exaggeration. Since the meat and fats rations were not honoured, or else were replaced by wholly inadequate substitutes (sheep-guts jelly, etc.), the calory content of the rations was even lower, except (it is claimed) in the case of children. In December 52,000 people died, as many as normally died in a year; while in January 1942, between 3,500 and

4,000 people died every day; in December and January 200,000 people died. Although,

by January, the rations had been somewhat increased, the after-effects of the famine were to be felt for many months after; altogether, according to the official Russian figures quoted at the Nuremberg Trial, 632,000 people died in Leningrad as a direct result of the Blockade—a figure which is undoubtedly an under-estimate. In 1959 I was told by

Shostakovich, who had been in Leningrad during the early stages of the blockade, that 900,000 people died, and even higher figures have been quoted.

Apart from hunger, people also suffered acutely from cold in their unheated houses.

People would burn their furniture and books— but these did not last long.

To fill their empty stomachs, to reduce the intense sufferings caused by hunger,

people would look for incredible substitutes: they would try to catch crows or rooks, or any cat or dog that had still somehow survived; they would go through medicine chests in search of castor oil, hair oil, vaseline or glycerine; they would make soup or jelly out of carpenter's glue (scraped off wallpaper or broken-up furniture). Butnot all people in the enormous city had such supplementary sources of "food".

Death would overtake people in all kinds of circumstances; while they were in the streets, they would fall down and never rise again; or in their houses where they would fall asleep and never awake; in factories, where they would collapse while

doing a job of work. There was no transport, and the dead body would usually be

put on a hand-sleigh drawn by two or three members of the dead man's family;

often, wholly exhausted during the long trek to the cemetery, they would abandon