Blockade of Leningrad, children of the blockade … Everyone heard these words. One of the most majestic and at the same time tragic pages in the archives of the Great Patriotic War. These events went down in world history as the longest and most terrible siege of the city in its consequences. The events that took place in this city from 1941-08-09 to 1944-27-01 showed the whole world the great spirit of the people, capable of feat in conditions of hunger, disease, cold and devastation. The city held out, but the price paid for this victory was very high.
Blockade. Start
The "Barbarossa" plan was the name of the enemy strategy, according to which the capture of the Soviet Union was carried out. One of the points of the plan was the defeat and complete capture of Leningrad in a short time. Hitler dreamed of getting the city no later than autumn 1941. The plans of the aggressor were not destined to come true. The city was captured, cut off from the world, but not taken!
The official start of the blockade was recorded on September 8, 1941. It was on this autumn day that German troops captured Schliserburg and finally blocked the land communications of Leningrad with the entire territory of the country.
In fact, everything happened a little earlier. The Germans systematically isolated the city. So, since July 2, German planes regularly bombed the railways, preventing the supply of food in this way. On August 27, communication with the city through the railways was already completely cut off. After 3 days, the connection between the city and hydroelectric power plants was cut off. And from September 1, all commercial stores stopped working.
At first, almost no one believed that the situation was serious. Nevertheless, people who felt that something was wrong began to prepare for the worst. The shops were empty very quickly. From the very first days, food cards were introduced in the city, schools and kindergartens were closed.
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Children of the besieged city
The siege of Leningrad was imprinted on the fate of many people with grief and horror. Children of the blockade are a special category of residents of this city, whom circumstances have deprived of their childhood, forced to grow up much earlier and fight for survival at the level of adults and experienced people.
At the time of the closure of the blockade ring, in addition to adults, there were 400 thousand children of different ages in the city. It was caring for children that gave Leningraders strength: they were looked after, taken care of, tried to hide from the bombings, and were thoroughly cared for. Everyone understood that children could be saved only if the city was saved.
Adults could not protect children from hunger, cold, disease and exhaustion, but everything possible was done for them.
Cold
Life in besieged Leningrad was hard and unbearable. The shelling was not the worst that the hostages of the city had to endure. When all power plants were turned off and the city was enveloped in darkness, the most difficult period began. A snowy, frosty winter has come.
The city was covered with snow, frosts of 40 degrees led to the fact that the walls of unheated apartments began to be covered with frost. Leningraders were forced to install stoves in their apartments, in which everything was gradually burned for heat: furniture, books, household items.
A new trouble came when the sewer froze. Now water could be taken only in 2 places: from the Fontanka and the Neva.
Hunger
Sad statistics say that hunger was the biggest enemy of the city's inhabitants.
The winter of 1941 was a test of survival. To regulate the provision of bread to the people, ration cards were introduced. The ration size has been steadily declining, reaching its minimum in November.
The norms in besieged Leningrad were as follows: those who worked were supposed to 250 gr. bread, the military, firefighters and members of the extermination detachments received 300 gr., and children and those who were on someone else's support - 125 gr.
There were no other products in the city. 125 grams of blockade bread was not much like our usual, well-known flour product. This piece, which could only be obtained after standing in line for many hours in the cold, consisted of cellulose, cake, wallpaper glue mixed with flour.
There were days when people could not get this coveted piece either. During the bombing, the factories did not work.
People tried to survive as best they could. They tried to fill empty stomachs with something that could be swallowed. Everything went into action: the first-aid kits were emptied (they drank castor oil, ate petroleum jelly), tore off the wallpaper to get the remains of the paste and cook at least some kind of soup, cut into pieces and boiled leather shoes, made jelly from wood glue.
Naturally, food was the best gift for children of that time. They were constantly thinking about tasty things. That food, which in ordinary times was disgusting, was now the ultimate dream.
Holiday for children
Despite the terrible, deadly conditions of life, Leningraders with great zeal and zeal tried to ensure that children who were held hostage by a cold and hungry city live a full life. And if there was no place to get food and heat, then it was possible to make a holiday.
So, during a terrible winter, when there was a blockade of Leningrad, the children of the blockade celebrated the New Year. By the decision of the executive committee of the Leningrad City Council, New Year's holidays were organized and held for young residents of the city.
All theaters in the city took an active part in this. Festive programs were drawn up, which included meetings with commanders and soldiers, an artistic greeting, a game program and dances by the Christmas tree, and most importantly - lunch.
On these holidays there was everything except games and a dance part. All due to the fact that weakened children simply did not have the strength for such entertainment. The children were not at all having fun - they were waiting for food.
The festive dinner consisted of a small piece of bread for yeast soup, jelly and a cutlet made from cereals. The children who knew hunger ate, slowly, carefully collecting each crumb, because they knew the value of the blockade bread.
Hard times
It was much harder for children during this period than for an adult, fully conscious population. How to explain why during the bombing you need to sit in a dark basement and why there is no food anywhere, to children? There are many terrible stories about the siege of Leningrad in the people's memory about abandoned babies, lonely children who tried to survive. After all, it often happened that when leaving for the coveted ration, the child's relatives simply died on the way, did not return home.
The number of orphanages in the city grew inexorably. In one year, their number increased to 98, while at the end of 1941 there were only 17. About 40 thousand orphans were trying to support and keep in these shelters.
Every little resident of the besieged city has his own terrible truth. The diaries of the Leningrad schoolgirl Tanya Savicheva have become famous all over the world.
The symbol of the suffering of Leningraders
Tanya Savicheva - now this name symbolizes the horror and hopelessness with which the residents of the city were forced to fight. What then did Leningrad go through! Tanya Savicheva told the world this tragic story through her diary entries.
This girl was the youngest child in the family of Maria and Nikolai Savichev. At the time of the blockade, which began in September, she was supposed to become a 4th grade student. When the family found out about the beginning of the war, it was decided not to leave the city anywhere, but to stay in order to provide all possible assistance to the army.
The girl's mother sewed clothes for the fighters. Brother Leka, who had poor eyesight, was not taken into the army, he worked at the Admiralty plant. Tanya's sisters, Zhenya and Nina, were active participants in the fight against the enemy. So, Nina, while she was strong, went to work, where, together with other volunteers, she dug trenches to strengthen the defense of the city. Zhenya, hiding from his mother and grandmother, secretly donated blood for the wounded soldiers.
Tanya, when schools started working again in the occupied city in early November, went to study. At this time, only 103 schools were opened, but they also stopped working with the arrival of severe frosts.
Tanya, being a little girl, also did not sit idle. Together with other guys she helped to dig trenches, put out "lighters".
Soon grief knocked on the doors of this family. Nina was not the first to return home. The girl did not come after the fierce shelling. When it became clear that they would never see Nina again, my mother gave Tanya her sister's notebook. It is in her that the girl will subsequently make her notes.
War. Blockade. Leningrad is a besieged city where whole families died out. So it was with the Savichev family.
Zhenya was the next to die, right at the factory. The girl worked, working in 2 shifts in a row. She also donated blood. So the forces ended.
The grandmother could not bear such grief, the woman was buried at the Piskarevskoye cemetery.
And each time, when grief knocked on the door of the Savichevs' house, Tanya opened her notebook to mark the next death of her family and friends. Soon Leka died, two of the girl's uncles died after him, then her mother died.
“The Savichevs all died. There is only Tanya left - these terrible lines of Tanya's diary convey all the horror that the inhabitants of the blockaded city had to endure. Tanya is dead. But the girl was mistaken, she did not know that there was a living person among the Savichevs. It was her sister Nina, who was rescued during the shelling and taken to the rear.
It was Nina, who returned to her native walls in 1945, to find her sister's diary and tell the world this terrible story. The history of an entire people who fought steadily for their hometown.
Children are heroes of the besieged Leningrad
All residents of the city who have withstood and conquered death must rightfully be called heroes.
Most of the children behaved especially heroically. Small citizens of a big country did not sit and wait for liberation to come; they fought for their native Leningrad.
Almost no event in the city took place without the participation of children. Children, along with adults, took part in the destruction of incendiary bombs, extinguished fires, cleared tram tracks and roads, and dismantled debris after the bombing.
The blockade of Leningrad lasted. The children of the blockade were forced to replace adults near the factory machines, who died, died or went to the front. Especially for children who worked in factories, special wooden stands were invented and made so that they could, like adults, work on the manufacture of parts for machine guns, artillery shells and machine guns.
In spring and autumn, children actively worked in vegetable gardens and state farm fields. During the raids, the teacher's signal served to the fact that children, taking off their hats, fell face down on the ground. Overcoming heat, mud, rain and the first frosts, the young heroes of besieged Leningrad reaped a record harvest.
Children often visited hospitals: they cleaned up there, entertained the wounded, helped feed the seriously ill.
Despite the fact that the Germans did their best to destroy Leningrad, the city lived on. He lived and survived. After lifting the blockade, 15 thousand children received the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad".
The road to life
Lake Ladoga is the only way that gave at least some opportunity to maintain contact with the country. In summer they were barges, in winter they were cars moving on ice. Until the beginning of the winter of 1941, tugboats with barges reached the city, but the Military Council of the front understood that Ladoga would freeze and then all routes would be blocked. New searches and intensified preparation of other methods of communication began.
So the way was prepared on the ice of Ladoga, which eventually began to be called the "Road of Life". In the history of the blockade, the date when the first horse-drawn carriage paved the way on the ice was preserved, it was November 21, 1941.
This was followed by 60 vehicles, the purpose of which was to deliver flour to the city. The city began to receive bread, the price of which was human life, because progress along this path was associated with a huge risk. Often the cars fell through the ice, drowned, taking people and food to the bottom of the lake. Working as a chauffeur in such a car was deadly. In some places the ice was so fragile that even a car loaded with a couple of bags of cereal or flour could easily end up under the ice. Every voyage passed this way was heroic. The Germans really wanted to block it, the bombings of Ladoga were constant, but the courage and heroism of the inhabitants of the city did not allow this to happen.
The Road of Life has really fulfilled its function. In Leningrad, food supplies began to be replenished, and children and their mothers were taken out of the city by cars. This path was not always safe. After the war, when examining the bottom of Lake Ladoga, toys were found by Leningrad children who drowned during such transportation. In addition to dangerous thawed patches on the icy road, evacuation vehicles were often subjected to enemy shelling and flooding.
About 20 thousand people worked on this road. And only thanks to their courage, fortitude and desire to withstand the city received what it needed most - a chance to survive.
Enduring hero city
The summer of 1942 was very busy. The Nazis stepped up hostilities on the fronts of Leningrad. The bombing and shelling of the city has noticeably increased.
New artillery batteries have appeared around the city. The enemies had schemes of the city, and important areas were shelled daily.
The blockade of Leningrad lasted. People turned their city into a fortress. So, on the territory of the city due to 110 large defense nodes, trenches and various passages, it became possible to carry out a hidden regrouping of the military. Such actions served to significantly reduce the number of wounded and killed.
On January 12, the armies of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts launched an offensive. After 2 days, the distance between the two armies was less than 2 kilometers. The Germans stubbornly resisted, but on January 18, the troops of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts united.
This day was marked by another important event: the lifting of the blockade occurred due to the liberation of Shlisselburg, as well as the complete clearing of the enemy from the southern coast of Lake Ladoga.
Along the coast, a corridor of about 10 kilometers turned out, it was he who restored the land connection with the country.
When the blockade was lifted, there were about 800 thousand people in the city.
The significant date January 27, 1944 went down in history as the day when the blockade of the city was completely lifted.
On this joyous day, Moscow ceded to Leningrad the right to fire a salute in honor of the lifting of the blockade in commemoration of the fact that the city survived. The order for the troops that won was not signed by Stalin, but by Govorov. This honor was not awarded to any commander-in-chief of the fronts during the entire period of the Great Patriotic War.
The blockade lasted 900 days. This is the most bloody, cruel and inhuman blockade in the entire history of mankind. Its historical significance is enormous. Restraining the huge forces of German troops throughout this time, the inhabitants of Leningrad provided invaluable assistance in conducting military operations in other sectors of the front.
More than 350 thousand soldiers participating in the defense of Leningrad received their orders and medals. 226 people were awarded the honorary title of Hero of the Soviet Union. 1.5 million people were awarded the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad".
The city itself received the honorary title of Hero City for its heroism and fortitude.
Larisa Kozyrka