Russia at war 1941-1945

The driver of a truck was delivering loaves of bread to a bakery, when a shell hit the front of the truck and killed the driver... The loaves of bread were scattered over the pavement. Conditions were favourable for looting. Yet the people who gathered

round the wrecked vehicle, raised the alarm, and guarded the bread till the arrival of another truck. All these people were hungry, and the temptation to grab a fresh loaf of bread well-nigh irresistible. And yet not a single loaf was stolen.

[Op cit., p. 109.]

Whether, on the other hand, as Pavlov implies, a man who started screaming at people in a bread-queue urging them to loot the shop was an enemy agent or simply a man driven half-insane by hunger is difficult to say; many people were driven half-insane, as is suggested by Karasev and other writers.

Morale, even in the appalling conditions of the famine at its height, was kept up in all kinds of ways: there are many accounts of the theatrical shows that continued throughout the winter, given by actors almost fainting with hunger, and wearing (like the audience) whatever they could to keep themselves warm.

Much is also made of the role played by the Leningrad Komsomol organisations to help people in dire distress. The Komsomol organised bytovyie otriady ("everyday life teams") of several thousand young people:

These teams consisted of a total of 1,000 young people; moreover, in each district, some 500 or 700 temporary helpers were frequently mobilised. Tired and worn out,

these young people, mostly girls, would help the population to overcome their

terrible difficulties. Visiting dirty and freezing houses, they would use their swollen hands, cracked with cold and hard work, to chop wood, or light the little burzhuika

stoves, or bring pails of water from the Neva, or bring dinner from a canteen, or wash the floor or clothes, and the pathetic smile of a completely exhausted

Leningrader would then express his gratitude for this hard and honourable work.

In the Primorski district alone, the members of these Komsomol teams examined in

February-March 1,810 flats, looked after 780 sick people and, altogether, helped

7,678 persons... The Komsomol teams were authorised to resettle people into more

suitable houses, place homeless children in children's homes, and arrange about

evacuations... Largely through the help of the Komsomol teams, over 30,000

orphans were settled in the eighty-five new children's homes set up between January and May 1942.

[Karasev, op. cit., p. 190.]

Most of these children were the orphans of parents who had died in the famine.

If the civilian population of Leningrad had to suffer all the pangs of hunger, and many had to die, since there was no alternative so long as large scale evacuation was

impossible, there could be no question of letting the soldiers starve; for everything ultimately depended on them. Even so, the soldiers' rations had to be cut, too. The Red Army rations established on September 20, 1941, amounted to 3,450 calories in the case of front-line troops and 2,659 calories in the case of "rear personnel", with two intermediary categories between them.

In the conditions of Leningrad such rations could not be maintained for long. Between the middle of November 1941 and February 1942, the ration of front-line troops was