Russia at war 1941-1945

saved in the previous autumn "under Stalin's leadership", that his prestige was highest of all? Stalin was in Moscow. He belonged to Moscow, as it were, and had come to symbolise in popular imagination the capital's spirit of resistance.

In June 1942 Moscow was still very near the front line. The Germans were firmly

entrenched at Rzhev, Viazma and Gzhatsk, rather less than eighty miles away. Nobody

could be quite sure that the Germans would not attempt another all-out attack on the city.

The last bombs had been dropped on Moscow in March, and although the anti-aircraft

defences were said to be much better than in the summer of 1941, there was no certainty that air-raids would not begin again.

Moscow had a lean and hungry look. It had lived through a hard and, to many people,

terrible winter. It was nothing compared with what Leningrad had suffered, but many

individual stories were grim—stories of under-nourishment, of unheated houses, with

temperatures just above or even below freezing point, with water-pipes burst, and

lavatories out of action; and in these houses one slept smothered—if one had them—

under two overcoats and three or more blankets. In June bread still sold in the open market at 150 roubles a kilo (thirty shillings a pound). There was almost no cabbage or other vegetables, and although the bread ration varied from 28 oz. to 14 oz. a day, the rations of other foodstuffs were often honoured in a most irregular way, or not at all.

[In the case of "heavy" workers (railwaymen, for instance) the rations were as follows: Bread 1.5 lb. daily

Cereals 4 oz. daily

Meat 3.5 oz. daily

Fats 0.75 oz. daily

Sugar 0.75 oz. daily

Tobacco 0.5 oz. daily

Tea 1 oz. a month

Fish 2.5 oz. daily

Vegetables (cabbage or potatoes) 0.5 lb. to 1 lb. daily.

In most cases these rations were not fully honoured; in factories most of the food was handed over to the canteen. Rations for the three other categories were, of course, much lower.]

What reserves of potatoes and vegetables there had been in the Moscow province naa

either been looted by the Germans or taken over by the Army. Sugar, fats, milk and

tobacco were all very scarce. There was a peculiar form of profiteering which had

developed in Moscow during the spring, when the owner of a cigarette would charge any willing passers-by two roubles for a puff—and there were plenty of buyers.

[Nominally about a shilling.]

People in the Moscow streets looked haggard and pale, and scurvy was fairly common.

Consumer goods were almost unobtainable, except at fantastic prices, or for coupons, if and when these were honoured. In the big Mostorg department store strange odds and

ends were being sold, such as barometers and curling-tongs, but nothing useful. In the shopping streets like the Kuznetsky Most, or Gorki Street, the shop windows were mostly sand-bagged and where they were not, they often displayed cruel cardboard hams,

cheeses and sausages, all covered with dust.

There were other deplorable shortages. In dental clinics—with the exception of a few privileged ones—teeth were pulled without an anaesthetic. The chemists' shops were

about as empty as the rest.

A large part of the Moscow province had been devastated; many villages had been

burned down, and in towns like Kalinin, Klin or Volokolamsk life was slowly rising from the wreckage and rubble.

Moscow itself was very empty, with nearly half its population still away. Only half a dozen theatres were open in June, among them the Filiale of the Bolshoi, and tickets were easy to obtain. In the buffet, all they sold, for a few coppers, was—glasses of plain water. The Bolshoi itself had been hit by a ton bomb, and was out of action. There was a good deal of other bomb damage here and there, and the sky was dotted with barrage

balloons.

The panic exodus of October 16 had remained a grim and, to many, a shameful memory.

Hundreds of thousands who had left then had not yet returned. Many government offices were still in the east—at Kazan, Ulianovsk, Saratov, Kuibyshev and other places; the University and the Academy of Sciences had been moved east; many factories had also

evacuated much of their equipment and many of their workers, and were working on

skeleton staffs, if at all. On the other hand, those who had stayed on in Moscow during the two "danger months"—from October to December—now recalled with some pride of how they had stuck it through. Those had been heroic weeks, and there had been

something great and inspiring in the very air of Moscow during that time, with barricades and antitank obstacles in the main streets, especially on the outskirts; the timid had gone, but the Kremlin had not budged. Stalin had remained in Moscow and, with him, the

generals, and most of the Politburo. The Commissariat of Defence had not budged, nor had the Moscow Town Council, with Pronin at its head. Sure enough, there had been that panic on October 16, but the announcement on the following day that Stalin was in