The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

They took the small children in trucks. Their little heads stuck out of the trucks like the heads of small mushrooms layered in baskets. Panic-stricken parents ran behind the vehicles.

Having blended in with the crowd, I howled together with the rest of the passers-by, feeling how both fear and anxiety had crept so close to our hearts.

3July 1941. With every minute of every hour the Germans get closer to

Leningrad. After waking up, we rush to the radios. Washing down the bitter

pills of war news with cold tea, we were slow to realize what was happening.

Nevertheless, we continued to believe that sooner or later victory would ap

pear before us with an apology.

Leningraders are hurriedly putting up barricades made of stone, metal, waste lumber, and of their fanatical love of the city. Camouflaging structures lean over architectural monuments with care.

Elena I. Kochina, Blockade Diary

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5 July 1941. The institute where I work is being evacuated to Saratov. Dima was given a military deferment and told to stay in Leningrad. That’s why he didn’t want me to leave. We fought. Hurtful and unfair words flew between us. We were helpless before them. They took on a life of their own, independent from ours. This was our first fight. Dima came home on his break. “I can’t work, knowing that you are angry,” he said. “Let’s make peace.” We made up, but something remained standing between us. We already were not the same as before the fight, and not the way we were before the war. We had changed with catastrophic speed.

July 1941. Bitter battles over Kiev! The Germans have taken Pskov! Leningrad is threatened!

July 1941. The Finnish army has begun an offensive toward Lake Ladoga. Apparently, together with the Germans, they want to encircle Leningrad.

July 1941. Lena has diarrhea and a fever. We’ll have to put off the evacuation for a few days. And in general, how is it possible to travel without sterile bottles? I just don’t know.

July 1941. The Germans have seized almost all of the Baltics and almost all of Belorussia. They have reached the West Dvina and the Dnieper.

July 1941. Hitler is a non-entity which imagines itself a genius. He is trying to force his “blitzkrieg” on the USSR with all of its expansive forests and absence of roads. But the USSR isn’t Poland. Sooner or later it will stick in his throat.

July 1941. My institute has left!

July 1941. Without warning, Lena’s nanny left for her village, appropriating some of my things.

—July 1941. The stores have re-opened. In two days all of the food was snatched up. The only thing left was millet. I bought two kilograms. (I hate millet porridge.)

8 August 1941. The enemy rushes toward Leningrad!

10 August 1941. With fantastic speed, the Germans have launched an offensive on the line of Novgorod, Chudov, and Tosno. Bitter as it is, we need to recognize that we were not prepared for Hitler’s aggression.

22 August 1941. Today, while walking with Lena to the children’s clinic for milk, I saw an appeal on the wall of a building: “Comrade Leningraders, dear friends!” I couldn’t read any further. I only pressed Lena closer to me. God, how I fear for her!

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Chapter Twenty-Four

23 August 1941. The Germans are between Bologoe and Tosno. The evacuation route runs through Ladoga. Lena is still sick, but we need to leave; waiting is not possible anymore.

August 1941. The road to Mga has been cut by the Germans. Convoys of Leningraders sat in a railroad yard for several days and then returned. Evacuation has ceased. I am to remain in Leningrad!

August 1941. People are fleeing from the suburbs into Leningrad, as into a mousetrap.

September 1941. I walked to the children’s clinic for milk. From afar I saw a huge hole in the façade of a four-story building. Next to the building stood a large crowd, staring at the hole. A part of a room was visible through the hole. I wanted to ask if there were any victims, but reconsidered. What was the point? War was just beginning for us. The casualties would be many, for sure. Each one of us must be ready for anything.

September 1941. There is still a crowd by the building, damaged by the shell.

September 1941. Almost all of the large-scale enterprises have been moved out of Leningrad.

—September 1941. Today Dima came by a kilogram of cookies somewhere. He was feeding them to Lena, stirring sugar into tea with a spoon. The sound of silver bells poured into the cup.

Suddenly, the silence of the city was torn by the roar of planes. I looked out the window. Low, just above the roofs, German bombers flew.

“Get down, quick!” cried Dima, leaping up from the table and tipping over a cup of tea on himself.

We ran downstairs for the building manager’s office; there was no bomb shelter in our building. A bomb explosion resounded. Then another, and another quite close. There was a jangling of broken glass.