Russia at war 1941-1945

"purge" activities and his subsequent vandalism in the cultural field) had become something of a Leningrad particularist himself, though he was not born there. There is little doubt that, especially after Zhdanov's death in 1948, Stalin decided to stamp out Leningrad's particularism. A remarkable museum, called The Defence of Leningrad, had been organised during and after the siege; this was a striking collection of documents and exhibits of every kind, illustrating the gigantic "mass effort" made by the Leningrad people, and their civilian and military leaders. This museum was closed in 1949. As

Pavlov wrote in 1961:

This was totally unjustified, and most regrettable. Immensely valuable data were

concentrated in this museum reflecting the heroic struggle of the besieged, the

conditions in which Leningraders lived during the fearful time of the Blockade; the defence measures taken against the air-raids and artillery bombardments; the

exhibits demonstrated the high degree of organisation in producing armaments and

in building defences, in dealing with delayed-action bombs, and so on. The museum was a remarkable tribute to the inventiveness, stubbornness and courage of

ordinary people. But this museum was organised in the days of the "personality cult" when the heroic deeds of so many Lenin-graders tended to be attributed to single personalities.

In 1957 (Pavlov goes on to say) a museum of the History of Leningrad was opened; but this, he says, "contains only a few rooms of exhibits relating to the war period; this

'museum', quite different from that assembled during the war, is utterly inadequate."

Not only was the museum of the Defence of Leningrad destroyed in 1949, but there was also the—still somewhat mysterious— "Leningrad Affair", in which Kuznetsov, Popkov and many other leaders of the defence of Leningrad lost their lives. Was the Leningrad Party organisation too "particularist", not sufficiently Stalinist? There have been no more than some vague references to it in Mr Khrushchev's speeches, with the suggestion that Malenkov played a particularly sinister role in this purge. It has also been suggested that both Stalin and Malenkov (who was an enemy of Zhdanov's) waited till Zhdanov was

dead until they settled their scores with the Leningrad organisation, which had never been particularly loud in its praise of Stalin, least of all during the War and the Blockade.

Chapter IX A NOTE ON FINLAND

One thing was very striking during the Leningrad Blockade; the enemy was Germany, and Finland was scarcely even mentioned. Yet the Finns were also at war with the Soviet Union, were taking part in the blockade of Leningrad, and their troops were within some twenty miles north and north-west of the city. Further east, they had penetrated deep into Soviet territory, and were holding a line along the Svir river, between Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega. The large Soviet city of Petrozavodsk, capital of the Karelo-Finnish SSR, was under Finnish occupation.

The position of the Finns in their war against the Soviet Union between 1941 and 1944

was, however, very unusual. They had many bonds with the Germans, but their war

against Russia was still a "separate" war, and they were certainly less subservient to the Germans than were, for instance, the Hungarians and Rumanians. After the war they were to claim that they had not allowed German troops to operate against Leningrad from

Finnish soil and that they had not taken part in the bombing or shelling of Leningrad.

There had, of course, been negotiations between Germany and Finland long before June 22, 1941 on joint operations against Russia. There is also no doubt that the Finns did, at one moment, push beyond the old frontier, since they captured the Russian frontier town of Beloostrov only twenty miles north-west of Leningrad; here, however, the Russians counter-attacked, and the Finns were thrown out on the very next day, after which this part of the front was stabilised.

The Germans were not satisfied with this, and on September 4, Jodl came specially to see Mannerheim and urged him to continue the Finnish offensive beyond the old border—i.e.