Russia at war 1941-1945

flames. It's bad for one's nerves to see such things happen; our ambulance services have instructions to wash away blood on the pavement as quickly as possible after a shell has landed.

From that visit to Leningrad I brought back countless impressions of human suffering and human endurance. The front round Leningrad had by this time become stabilised, and

Leningrad, though still surrounded, was confidently watching the Germans in full retreat along most of the Russo-German front, and waiting for its own turn to be finally

liberated. Although there was no longer any famine, life was still desperately hard for many people, not least the men and women of the Kirov Works, which were almost in the front line. Here, as well as in another important plant, I was not only shown what life was like then, but also told what it had been like during the famine. Here are two accounts.

First a visit to an important factory making optical instruments:

Here most of the smaller wooden buildings had been used up for fuel during the previous two winters. It was a large factory building, the outer brick walls of which were marked by shell splinters. Comrade Semyonov, the director of the factory, with a strong hard face, and wearing a plain khaki tunic to which were pinned the Leningrad medal and the Order of Lenin, was a typical Soviet executive to look at and listen to—very precise and to the point. In his office was a collection of the various things the factory was now making— bayonets, detonators and large optical lenses, and on the wall were portraits of Stalin and Zhdanov... Altogether, I had noticed in Leningrad a certain aloofness towards Moscow, a feeling that although this was part of the whole show, it was also, in a sense, a separate show, one in which Leningrad had survived largely through its own stupendous efforts.

Semyonov said that this was the largest factory in the Soviet Union for optical

instruments... "But during the first days of the war the bulk of our optical equipment was evacuated east, because this was considered one of the key factories for defence. One couldn't afford to take any risks with it. Early in 1942 we had a second evacuation, and those of the skilled workers who hadn't gone in the first evacuation were sent away—that is, those who were still alive."

"Already in the first weeks of the war, when most of our equipment and skilled men had been sent away, we started here on an entirely new basis—we started working

exclusively for the Leningrad Front, and we had to make things for which we had the

equipment— and there wasn't much of it. Our people had no experience in this kind of work. Even so, we started making things our soldiers needed most. But Leningrad has a great industrial tradition, a great industrial culture, and our hand-grenades and anti-tank-mine detonators turned out to be the best of any made. We made hundreds of thousands of these... Throughout the blockade we have also been repairing small arms, rifles and machine-guns; and now we are also working again on optical instruments—among them

submarine periscopes. For our Baltic Fleet isn't idle, as you know..."

I asked Semyonov to tell me something about life at the factory during the hunger

blockade. He was silent for a few seconds... "Frankly," he said, "I don't like to talk about it. It's a very bitter memory... By the time the blockade started half our people had been evacuated or had gone into the army, so we were left here with about 5,000. I must say it was difficult at first to get used to the bombing, and if anyone says it doesn't frighten him, don't you believe it! Yet, though it frightened people, it also aroused their frantic anger against the Germans. When they started bombing us in a big way in October 1941 our

workers fought for the factory more than they did for their own houses. One night we had to deal with 300 incendiaries on the factory grounds alone. Our people were putting the fires out with a sort of concentrated rage and fury. They had realised by then that they were in the front line—that was all. No more shelters. Only small children were taken to shelters, and old grannies. And then, one day in December, in twenty degrees of frost, we had all our windows blown out by a bomb, and I thought to myself: 'No, we really can't go on. Not till the spring. We can't go on in this temperature, and without light, without water, and almost without food.' And yet, somehow—we didn't stop. A kind of instinct told us we mustn't—that it would be worse than suicide, and a little like treason. And sure enough, within thirty-six hours we were working again—working in altogether hellish